May 2014 - Page 7 of 18

Muckleshoot Tribe Urges Rejection of Genetically Engineered Salmon Application

Business Wire Source: Muckleshoot Indian Tribe

AUBURN, Wash. — The Muckleshoot Indian Tribe has joined with the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI) in calling on the United States Food and Drug Administration to deny any application for the introduction of genetically engineered salmon into the United States until a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and further scientific review is completed and formal consultation with Northwest Treaty Tribes undertaken.

AquaBounty, a large Boston-based biotechnology company, has proposed to produce genetically engineered salmon eggs in Canadian waters, ship them to Panama where the engineered salmon would be raised to maturity in inland tanks, then slaughtered and processed in Panama and shipped to the United States for human consumption.

AquaBounty has patented a process whereby the DNA of wild Chinook salmon and an eel-like pout fish are fused and injected into Atlantic salmon. That engineered salmon is said to grow to full size in half the time of a wild fish and, according to AquaBounty, “increase the efficiency of production.”

According to federal guidelines, not only would the genetic engineering process and resultant salmon be owned by a corporation, but the fish would not be labeled as genetically modified so consumers wouldn’t know if they are buying it.

Northwest Tribes share a number of serious concerns about genetically engineered salmon, including the possibility of escape into the wild habitat and competing with wild salmon for food and rearing locations, or inbreeding with wild salmon which could result in the destruction of the species upon which all Indian people of the Pacific Northwest depend. Studies have not ruled out those possible impacts.

“From time immemorial salmon has been central to the culture, religion and society of Northwest Indian people,” said Virginia Cross, Muckleshoot Tribal Council Chair. “Genetically engineered salmon not only threaten our way of life, but could also adversely affect our treaty rights to take fish at our usual and accustomed places.”

In opposing FDA approval, the Muckleshoot Tribe and ATNI cite the precautionary principle, which states that habitat modification should not be undertaken until the full impacts are known and the natural and human environments are protected – and that the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls upon those proposing the action.

“The Coast Salish people have organized their lives around salmon for thousands of years,” said Valerie Segrest, Muckleshoot Tribal member and Native Foods Educator. “We see them as our greatest teachers, giving their lives for us to have life. Corporate ownership of such a cultural keystone is a direct attack on our identity and the legacy our ancestors have left us. Absent indisputable evidence that there is no harm in human consumption, wild fish habitat or the treaty-protected fishing rights of Northwest Indians the FDA must not permit the promised increase of production efficiency to trump sound science or fishing rights and culture of Northwest Indians.”

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2014/05/19/5977165/muckleshoot-tribe-urges-rejection.html?sp=/100/773/385/#storylink=cpy

Racism claim dooms bid to honor Mark Twain in Nevada

By Martin Griffith, The Associated Press

RENO, Nev. (AP) — A state panel has effectively killed a bid to name a Lake Tahoe cove for Mark Twain, citing opposition from a tribe that says he held racist views on Native Americans.

The Nevada State Board on Geographic Names this week voted to indefinitely table the request after hearing opposition from the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California, whose ancestral homeland includes Lake Tahoe.

Supporters had sought to name a scenic cove on the lake’s northeast shore for Samuel Clemens, Twain’s real name.

But Darrel Cruz, head of the tribe’s cultural resource department, said Twain was undeserving of the honor because of derogatory comments about the Washoe and other tribes in his writings.

Among other things, he cited Twain’s opposition to the naming of the lake as Tahoe, which is derived from the Washoe word “da ow” for lake.

Cruz also objected to a Twain quote about Lake Tahoe: “People say that Tahoe means ‘Silver Lake’ — ‘Limpid Water’ — ‘Falling Leaf.’ Bosh! It means grasshopper soup, the favorite dish of the digger tribe — and of the Pi-utes as well.”

Cruz said Washoes dislike being referred to as the “digger tribe,” a derogatory term applied to some tribes in the West who dug roots for food. Other tribes ate grasshoppers.

“Samuel Clemens had racist views on the native people of this country and has captured those views in his literature,” Cruz wrote in a letter to the board. “Therefore, we cannot support the notion of giving a place name in Lake Tahoe to Samuel Clemens.”

But James Hulse, history professor emeritus at the University of Nevada, Reno, said it’s irrelevant whether Twain’s writings were insulting to Native Americans.

The cove should be named for Twain because he praised Tahoe’s beauty while visiting the lake in 1861-1862, and he became one of America’s most beloved authors after assuming his pen name as a Nevada newspaper reporter around the same time, Hulse said.

“In his early days, (Twain’s) ironic-comic mode was insulting to everyone, including governors, legislators, mine bosses and journalistic colleagues,” he told the board. “He learned and overcame his prejudices far better than most of his contemporaries and successors.”

Thomas Quirk, an English professor emeritus at the University of Missouri and leading Twain scholar, said the author eventually overcame his racism against blacks. But Quirk said he has found no evidence that he significantly changed his views on American Indians.

Twain did not embrace the idea of idolizing what he called the “noble red man,” Quirk said, and poked fun at writer James Fenimore Cooper for doing so.

“When it comes to African Americans, he was ahead of his time substantially,” he said. “When it comes to Native Americans, his record is not very good. If he were alive today, he would sing a different tune.”

Board member Robert Stewart, who initiated the plan to name the cove for Clemens, said it’s unlikely it would resurface.

He said he dropped his support of it, even though he learned about a later letter Twain wrote objecting to the treatment of tribes in Arizona and New Mexico.

“I have a great deal of respect for the Washoe Tribe. And if their cultural committee is unhappy with naming the cove for Mark Twain, I’m not going to fight them,” Stewart said. “We need to show sensitivity to the tribe.”

Stewart said he still believes the cove near Incline Village is where Twain camped and accidentally started a wildfire while preparing to cook dinner in September 1861. But David Antonucci, a civil engineer from Homewood, California, maintains Twain camped on the California side of the lake.

It’s the second time the bid to name the cove for Twain failed. In 2011, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names rejected the request after the U.S. Forest Service said Twain’s influence on the Sierra Nevada lake was minimal and other historical figures were more deserving of the honor.

Supporters sought to honor him because there is no geographic feature in the state named for Twain, whose book “Roughing It” put Nevada on the map.

In Alaska Village, Banishment Helps Keep Peace

FILE - In this May 7, 2014, file photo, residents make their way along First Street in the village of Tanana, Alaska. Without a jail or even armed law enforcement, the isolated Alaska village where two state troopers were shot and killed is turning to a traditional form of justice: banishment. The Tanana Village Council, the Athabascan Indian tribal authority in the village of 250, is taking steps to expel two men whose actions contributed to the homicides and who have threatened other community members, council Chairman Curtis Sommer said. (AP Photo/Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Eric Engman, File) — FILE – In this May 7, 2014, file photo, residents make their way along First Street in the village of Tanana, Alaska. Without a jail or even armed law enforcement, the isolated Alaska village where two state troopers were shot and killed is turning to a traditional form of justice: banishment. The Tanana Village Council, the Athabascan Indian tribal authority in the village of 250, is taking steps to expel two men whose actions contributed to the homicides and who have threatened other community members, council Chairman Curtis Sommer said. (AP Photo/Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Eric Engman, File)

By Dan Joling, The Associated Press

Without a jail or even armed law enforcement, the isolated Alaska village where two state troopers were shot and killed is turning to a traditional form of justice: banishment.

The Tanana Village Council, the Athabascan Indian tribal authority in the village of 250, is taking steps to expel two men whose actions contributed to the homicides and who have threatened other community members, council Chairman Curtis Sommer said.

“This is the only way we have to remove individuals who are — how do we say it? — who are dangerous to members of the community,” Sommer said.

The action is infrequent in Alaska, and when it is used, some question whether a tribal entity has the right to limit access to a community otherwise governed by state law. Those who are banished rarely contest the action publicly, and it isn’t clear if banished residents go on to cause problems in other communities because no one tracks them.

“We like to think that we have the right to travel wherever we want,” said Anchorage attorney Wayne Anthony Ross, who former Gov. Sarah Palin nominated for Alaska attorney general in 2009. “On the other hand, a small village should have the right to decide who they want to live in that village, specifically if that person is a troublemaker. I can see both sides of it.”

If it’s not lawful, it should be, said Heather Kendall-Miller, senior staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund in Anchorage. Tribal councils always have attempted to protect the peace.

“It seems to me like a reasonable approach to avoid violent situations, especially when you have no law enforcement providers within a community,” she said. “Try to pre-empt a bad situation before it happens.”

Tanana is on the Yukon River, a traditional transportation artery in Alaska’s vast interior. More than a century after changing from trading site to permanent community, Tanana has a school, clinic and store but no mental health treatment facilities and no connection to the highway system.

The state can’t afford to pay for law enforcement in small villages like this but they also refuse to let tribes have full authority over law enforcement, beyond an unarmed public safety officer, Kendall-Miller said. State troopers are flown in to deal with violence, but they can sometimes take days to arrive.

The latest trouble in Tanana began when Arvin Kangas, 58, drove into town without a license and pointed a gun at the unarmed village public safety officer, investigators said. He called Alaska State Troopers, and one day later, on May 1, Sgt. Scott Johnson and Trooper Gabe Rich flew to Tanana. As they tried to arrest Kangas, his son, Nathanial “Satch” Kangas, 20, shot and killed the officers, investigators said.

The village council later voted to banish Arvin Kangas and a second man who has assaulted tribal employees, Sommer said. The matter, after legal review, will be presented to the tribal court for a final decision at an undetermined date.

Banishment is not limited to Athabascan communities. Last August, a man identified as a drug supplier stepped off a flight to Sand Point, a city with strong Aleut and Scandinavian roots at the beginning of the Aleutian Chain. A semi-circle of residents informed the man he was not welcome. They bought him a return ticket and he never left the airport terminal, said Tina Anderson, who witnessed the exchange. The fishing community has a high rate of drug abuse.

“We’re tired of it, and we’re concerned about the future of the community,” she said.

Akiak, a Yupik Eskimo village in southwest Alaska, voted in April 2013 to ban a man suspected of bootlegging and dealing drugs.

Sommer concedes banishment is a “slippery slope.”

“It’s got to be very significant circumstances that would warrant this, either violent assaults or murder,” he said. “At what point do we draw the line on this? I do not know. I do know it’s not going to be used frivolously just to get back at someone.”

The village council will ask the state to enforce banishments. The Alaska Department of Law said it would carefully evaluate a banishment order. Kendall-Miller has seen unofficial support in the past.

“We have seen state police officers that have attempted to accommodate the tribal council’s blue ticket orders by helping to prevent individuals from coming back,” Kendall-Miller said. “It has been an informal arrangement that was done out of necessity.”

“If they do not enforce it, we will enforce it ourselves. We will get a group of men together and go to that person and tell him to leave and to not come back.”

NCAI Congratulates Diane Humetewa On Her Confirmation To The U.S. District Court

Source: The National Congress of American Indians

WASHINGTON, DC – The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) congratulates Diane J. Humetewa of the Hopi Indian Tribe on her confirmation as federal judge in the U.S. District Court of Arizona. As the newest member of the federal bench, she is the first Native American woman ever appointed to serve in that position.

The Honorable Humetewa is impeccably qualified for her new role. She has practiced law in federal courts for over a decade – as Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, as Assistant U.S. Attorney, and as the U.S. Attorney for Arizona – and is experienced in a wide array of complex proceedings, hearings, and cases.

Further, Judge Humetewa has dedicated time to serving the interests of Native peoples. She has been the Appellate Court judge for the Hopi Tribe, counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, and special advisor to the President on American Indian Affairs at Arizona State University.

NCAI greatly appreciates the efforts of the President and Senate in achieving this historic confirmation. There are many qualified, talented people like Diane Humetewa in Indian Country who are able and willing to serve. We eagerly anticipate many more nominations of Native people to the federal bench and other offices.

Alaskan Inupiat group develops video game

Never Alone expected this fall for PS4 and XBox One

CBC News May 18, 2014

A video game that draws from Alaskan Inupiat culture is expected to be released this fall.

Never Alone is the first title from Upper One Games, a joint venture between the Cook Inlet Tribal Council and E-Line Media of New York.

“We call it an atmospheric puzzle platformer,” says Sean Vesce of E-Line Media.

“The game stars two characters: an Inupiat girl named Nuna and her unlikely companion, an Arctic fox. The game provides an adventure in which the two characters must work together to overcome challenges.”

Listen to The Trailbreaker’s interview with the people behind Never Alone

Each of the characters has unique skills and abilities. The game can be played by a single player, who can switch between the two characters at any time, or by two players.

never-alone-video-game-still — Never Alone is the first title from Upper One Games, a joint venture between the Cook Inlet Tribal Council and E-Line Media of New York. (courtesy of Upper One Games)

Vesce says it’s styled as a 2-D side scroller, where players jump and run through perilous environments found in the North slope such as ice fields, ice floes and forests.

The over-arching storyline is told by an Inupiat storyteller.

Amy Fredeen, executive vice president of both the Cook Inlet Tribal Council and Upper One Games, says the game highlights the value Inupiat culture puts on interdependence.

She says the tribal council chose to found Upper One Games to connect with the growing population of Inupiat youth.

“What’s been really phenomenal is seeing the video game come around as a new way of storytelling,” she says.

“Indigenous people have always had an indigenous way of learning, and we have our Western models that we work within now, but we’ve always held on to our storytelling and our dancing as a way to pass wisdom and knowledge. And this is just another new way we’re going to be able to share this with the younger generation.”

She also says the game is an invitation to anyone to learn more about Inupiat culture.

The game is expected to be released this fall for PS4, Xbox One and PC.

Land trust hopes to buy Lummi Island quarry site

By KIE RELYEA

THE BELLINGHAM HERALD May 18, 2014

LUMMI ISLAND – The Lummi Island Heritage Trust wants to buy quarry land on the island for conservation and low-impact recreation with saltwater access.

“We’re interested in doing what we can to protect it,” said Rebecca Rettmer, executive director of the trust.

The land trust is negotiating with Resource Transition Consultants, the receiver for Lummi Rock quarry, to buy 105 acres on the southeast side of the island near Scenic Estates.

While receivership is an alternative to bankruptcy, it is similar in that creditors must line up to get paid under the direction of the receiver.

Lummi Rock and its operator, Aggregates West of Everson, have both turned their assets over to Resource Transition Consultants, which is charged with selling off those assets to pay the companies’ debts.

The companies have been in receivership since 2013.

Both sides declined to reveal the trust’s purchase offer. But Resource Transition Consultants’ Robert Nall said it was too low.

“We felt it was substantially below fair market value,” he said of the offer, adding that as receiver his company must by court order maximize the value of the companies’ assets.

Nall’s company had an appraisal done and then gave that to the land trust for evaluation.

Resource Transition Consultants would like to sell the property to the trust, provided it can get a fair-market value for the land or something close, Nall said.

“I think that would be a wonderful solution,” he said.

If the two sides don’t reach a deal, the property eventually will be listed for sale – primarily as a mining asset, Nall said.

When Lummi Rock’s receivership was filed last June in Whatcom County Superior Court, documents listed its most valuable asset as the 114 acres of property it owns at and near the quarry on Lummi Island.

The land was worth $1.55 million, and the company owed more than $10 million to shareholders, Union Bank and other creditors, according to those documents.

Lummi Rock’s mining operations were on 20 acres.

Rettmer went before a Whatcom County Council Natural Resources Committee in January to talk about the project and a possible partnership with the county, including its help in buying the 105 acres.

The land has more than 3,000 feet of saltwater shoreline that includes pocket beaches and critical nearshore habitat, with 80 acres of forestland and wildlife habitat in the upland, according to the trust.

Lummi Island Heritage Trust has conserved 853 acres of land on the island. It owns and manages three preserves that provide public access.

Lummi Nation challenges Bellingham plans for work related to new Costco

Shoppers enter the Bellingham Costco store Jan. 8, 2013. City officials are continuing to work on projects designed to clear the way for development of a West Bakerview Road site that could accommodate a new Costco store. THE BELLINGHAM HERALD |Buy Photo

By JOHN STARK

THE BELLINGHAM HERALD May 16, 2014

BELLINGHAM – Lummi Nation and Fred Meyer Stores have appealed the city’s preliminary approval of wetlands, stormwater and street modifications along West Bakerview Road to accommodate a new Costco store.

The appeals will trigger a city hearing examiner review of the development proposal. In technical terms, the review will determine whether City Planning Director Jeff Thomas was justified in issuing a “mitigated determination of non-significance” for the work in and around the proposed Costco store. Thomas’ finding meant that the project could move ahead without a more extensive review of environmental issues, as long as steps were taken to deal with traffic and other impacts.

Brian Heinrich, Mayor Kelli Linville’s executive coordinator, said there was no way to know how long that process might delay final approval of the project. The hearing examiner will set a hearing date after checking with attorneys representing the tribe and Fred Meyer.

“Any delay can have an impact, but we trust the process and are confident that city staff have acted appropriately in application of our land use and environmental regulations,” Heinrich said in an email.

In a press release, Lummi Nation Chairman Tim Ballew said the appeal was based on concern about the project’s potential impact on salmon and the Nooksack River.

“Filling wetlands that nourish salmon-spawning streams is significant,” Ballew said. “It is significant to the health of the river, the Lummi people, and everyone who calls the Nooksack River watershed home. As the steward of the environment, it is the Lummi Nation’s responsibility to protect these waters and the fish that live in them.”

In an email, Heinrich said the city shares the Lummi concern with the environment and salmon. Because of those concerns, the city is following the law in requiring the project to add wetlands to make up for those that will be filled, while restoring a salmon-bearing stream.

Heinrich noted that Lummi Nation also has offered developers the opportunity to compensate for wetland-filling projects by buying shares in the tribe’s wetlands bank to help cover the cost of creating new wetlands to make up for those lost to development.

Lummi Nation has its own long-term plans for major retail development on tribally owned real estate farther north. In the past, tribal leaders have negotiated with the city of Ferndale on division of tax revenues from major retail development of tribally owned property inside that’s city’s boundaries. So far that issue has not been settled, and no specific development plans for the tribal real estate have emerged.

Fred Meyer’s objections to the West Bakerview project are based on traffic impacts on its existing store on the other side of West Bakerview.

“The proposed development will significantly and adversely affect (Fred Meyer’s) interests by, among other things, substantially interfering with access to the Fred Meyer store by unreasonably increasing traffic on West Bakerview Road.”

Seattle attorney Glenn Amster, representing Fred Meyer, asks the hearing examiner to order preparation of an environmental impact statement, or the imposition of other measures to reduce the traffic impacts.

The city already has decided to impose the cost of some traffic improvements on Costco as a condition of city approval, including the construction of added turning lanes for cars entering the site. The city will require Costco to provide a right-turn lane into the store parking lot for westbound traffic, plus an additional left-turn lane for eastbound traffic.

Costco has agreed to pay for those improvements, Heinrich said, but as yet there is no cost estimate.

The 20-acre Costco site is on the north side of West Bakerview Road near Pacific Highway.

Reach John Stark at 360-715-2274 or john.stark@bellinghamherald.com . Read the Politics Blog at bellinghamherald.com/politics-blog or get updates on Twitter at @bhampolitics.

California OKs Clear Lake tribe’s request for fish consumption guidelines

story — Clear Lake. (John Burgess / The Press Democrat, 2013)

By GUY KOVNER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

May 18, 2014, 2:09 PM

CALIFORNIA -New guidelines for safe consumption of fish and shellfish of interest to a Clear Lake-area Pomo tribe were released last week by the state Environmental Protection Agency.

The recommendations are based on the levels of mercury found in 15 species of fish and shellfish in Clear Lake, long known for contamination from extensive mercury mining from the 1870s to as recently as 1957.

The state EPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment said it developed the food advisory based on requests from the Big Valley Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians located in Finley, a small town near Lakeport.

Species added to the new guidelines based on the tribe’s interest include threadfin shad, prickly sculpin, mosquitofish, inland silverside, winged floater mussels and Asian clams, the EPA said.

Sarah Ryan, the tribe’s environmental director, said clams were the Pomos’ main interest. Tribal members who eat clams from the lake recall their parents and grandparents doing the same, she said, though it was unclear whether those clams were the same kind that are eaten today.

Beyond that, Ryan said it seemed right to assess the mercury in other species from the lake.

“We’re really glad they took on the task,” she said.

Dr. George Alexeeff, director of the environmental health hazard office, said in a press release that fish are “part of a healthy and well-balanced diet.”

“They are an excellent source of protein and can help reduce the risk of heart disease,” he said.

The guidelines are designed to help people balance the health benefits “against the risk of exposure to mercury from fish in Clear Lake,” Alexeeff said.

Mercury can harm the brain and nervous system of people, especially in fetuses and children, the EPA said.

Consumption standards for women age 18 to 45 and children under 18 are more restrictive than they are for women over 45 and men.

The advisory said that all people can consume seven servings a week of Asian clams or winged floater mussels, and that women over 45 and men can eat the same amount of inland silverside or threadfin shad.

Women 18 to 45 and children should limit silverside and shad to three servings per week, and should limit the other 10 species — blackfish, bullhead, catfish, crayfish, mosquitofish, bluegill or other sunfish, carp, crappie, hitch and prickly sculpin — to one serving a week.

Women over 45 and men can eat three servings a week of the 10 species, or one weekly serving of bass. Younger women and children should not eat bass.

Six other tribes — the Elem Indian Colony, Robinson Rancheria, Middletown Rancheria, Scotts Valley Rancheria, Koi Nation and the Habematolei Pomo — are also located in Lake County.

Mercury mining was prevalent in the Clear Lake area in the late 1800s, including a productive site, the former Sulphur Bank Mercury Mine, which operated on the lake’s shore until 1957, the EPA said.

The advisory on eating fish from the lake was originally issued in 1987 and was last updated in 2009.

For details on the advisory, go to http://www.oehha.ca.gov/fish/pdf/AdvyClearLake051514.pdf

(You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.)

Sealaska regional Native corporation stumbles, reporting $35 million loss

By PAT FORGEY Alaska Dispatch

May 15, 2014

JUNEAU — Sealaska Corp. had an operating loss of $35 million last year and a 22 percent drop in revenue, the Native corporation said in an annual report released Thursday.

Sealaska said the largest of its losses was $24 million at subsidiary Sealaska Constructors but said the company had taken steps to limit the losses.

“Sealaska management has taken corrective action and the losses will be contained in 2013,” the report said.

Surprise losses from the subsidiary mean that the even with investment earnings and profits shared by other Native corporations, Sealaska was forced to post the large loss. Sealaska had net revenue from continuing operations of $165 million, it said.

The management of the subsidiary has been “released,” the report said, without providing additional details. It said bidding on new projects has been halted. The problems stemmed from civil construction projects in Hawaii on which the company underestimated construction costs when bidding.

The company provided some written answers to questions from the Alaska Dispatch, but declined to say exactly how big the projects were, although officials maintained they were multimillion dollar contracts.

Sealaska Constructors specializes in 8(a) contracting on federal projects in which the its status as a Native-owned company gives it bidding preference.

The news did not sit well with some of Sealaska’s 21,600 shareholders.

“It literally made me sick to my stomach,” said Carlton Smith, a shareholder and a City and Borough of Juneau assembly member. “The results for 2013 were far worse than I thought they would be.”

Smith is also part of a slate of independent candidates seeking to win seats on the corporation’s board of directors and running against corporation-backed candidates.

Smith said the corporation needs to provide shareholders with more information about its finances, including what happened at Sealaska Constructors.

“This report puts shareholders in a challenging position to try to figure that out,” he said.

The losses at Sealaska Constructors overshadowed other losses, including Sealaska’s long-profitable natural resources segment and $25 million in losses due to accounting changes.

The company’s total revenue of $165 million, with operating losses of $35 million in 2013 contrasts with revenue of $211 million and operating profits of $11 million the previous year.

But the company also showed a decrease in total assets of $66 million during the year, falling to $319 million. The company’s investments amounted to about $180 million at the year’s end, which produced investment profits of almost $17 million this year. But that wasn’t enough to make Sealaska profitable.

This has been a year of transition for Sealaska, as Chris McNeil, the company president and CEO, announced his resignation from the job he’s held since 2001. Further, Board Chairman Albert Kookesh has announced he’ll be stepping down as chairman but will remain on the board.

Kookesh is a former state senator who lost his seat after redistricting, and also recently stepped down as co-chairman of the Alaska Federation of Natives

Longtime board member Byron Mallott has also announced he’ll be leaving the board when his term expires this year to concentrate on his campaign for governor.

Also in the last year Sealaska sold off its plastics manufacturing business, Nypro Kanaak, to focus on other businesses.

Despite the difficult year, company executives emphasized that Sealaska remains strong, with significant assets, including cash.

Contact Pat Forgey at pat@alaskadispatch.com

Protest march draws about 225 people on UND campus

May 18, 2014 • The Associated Press

GRAND FORKS, N.D. — About 225 people marched at the University of North Dakota to protest T-shirts that have been called racist toward American Indians.

The shirts that some young people wore during an annual spring party last week depicted a caricature of the University of North Dakota’s former Indian head logo drinking out of a beer bong.

KNOX radio reports that UND President Robert Kelley, who has denounced the shirts in both written and video messages, was near the head of the line during Friday’s march.

Grand Forks Mayor Mike Brown and city council president Hal Gershman said in a joint statement issued Friday that it’s important to speak out against intolerance.

The school’s longtime Fighting Sioux logo was dropped in 2012 after several years of bickering with the NCAA.

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Information from: KNOX-AM, http://knoxradio.com