This summer, the Nisqually Tribe, the Nisqually Land Trust and the South Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group are tacking on another 1.5 miles of restored habitat to Ohop Creek.
“In this stretch of creek, salmon aren’t really given much space to feed or hide,” said David Troutt, natural resources director for the tribe. “We’ll be restoring the creek back to a natural shape and giving the salmon the habitat they need to survive.”
Over a century ago farmers turned the creek into a straight-flowing ditch in an attempt to dry out the valley floor and create cattle pasture. However, deep clay deposits in the soil continued to hold water year round, and despite the failed effort to completely dry the valley the stream remained channelized.
“It went from a shallow, meandering stream that was very good for salmon to a straight ditch,” Troutt said.
The Ohop Creek restoration will include digging an entirely new channel as well as adding other features, such as logjams and deep pools, that will provide habitat for salmon.
Salmon habitat restoration on the creek began in 2009 with a repaired one-mile channel just upstream of the new site. That channel was constructed to restore a sinuous stream that connected to its floodplain. The floodplain, now replanted with native vegetation, re-creates 80 acres of healthy riparian habitat that controls water temperatures and stabilizes the stream banks.
The project partners have already documented the progress of the upstream restoration. “We’ve seen a lot of changes, down to the types of birds that visit the site,” Troutt said. Early results include increased use by salmon and the return of wildlife species, such as elk, that had not been seen in the valley for decades.
Ohop Creek is one of two major tributaries to the Nisqually River that can support chinook salmon and steelhead, both of which are listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. “Because there are only a few places other than the mainstem of the Nisqually River where they can spawn, increasing the quality of habitat in those places is important,” Troutt said. Ohop Creek also supports coho and pink salmon and cutthroat trout.
“Throughout Puget Sound, we’re seeing available salmon habitat continue to disappear, despite millions of dollars spent to restore and protect it,” Troutt said. “There is no larger threat to treaty rights than lost salmon habitat. Projects like this are a small step to reversing that trend.”
When Samuel Henry was a kid growing up in D.C. in the late 1950s, he and his friends were devoted Washington Redskins fans — they had the jerseys and knew the lore. And as the lore had it, the “reddish-brown tint” of paint on the team’s downtown D.C. headquarters came from the blood of Native Americans. “When I was a kid, me and my friends, we really thought that they had captured and killed Native Americans and pasted them all over the building,” Henry said. “We were just kids, we didn’t know any better. But we really, honestly believed that.”
Now, almost 60 years later, the Redskins are enmeshed in a debate about whether their name is a racist epithet and should be changed. Advocates for keeping the name reference its origins: In 1937, owner George Preston Marshall changed the team name from the Braves to the Redskins. Marshall said the change was in honor of the head coach at the time, William Henry Dietz, who claimed to be part Sioux (although that claim is suspect). Critics including Henry say its origins are irrelevant and that the name is racist and demeaning. “I’d love to see a boycott of all things Redskins,” he said.
Dan Snyder, the current owner, purchased the team in 1999, when it was fighting its first legal battle over the name. The lawsuits have continued, and earlier this year, the Trademark Trials and Appeal Board canceled the franchise trademark because “a substantial composite of Native Americans found the term Redskins to be disparaging.” Snyder has faced mounting pressure to change the name, even from President Obama and George Preston Marshall’s granddaughter. But Snyder plans to appeal the trademark decision and says he will “NEVER” change the name. Polling suggests Snyder has the backing to ignore the calls; most NFL fans (and Redskins fans in particular) oppose a name change.
What’s considered an outrage in the NFL is embraced or at least tolerated all over the country. While we’ve been consumed by the debate about the Washington Redskins, we’ve overlooked thousands of team names and mascots depicting Native Americans, often stereotypically. These teams are not feeling the kind of pressure that Snyder is. To understand the Washington Redskins, we have to understand the Estelline Redmen, the Natick Redmen, and the Molalla Indians, too.
Terry Borning, the proprietor of MascotDB, has kept a database of the nation’s mascots since 2006. He gathers his data from a variety of sources, including state high school athletic associations, websites and local newspapers. Borning’s database doesn’t have every high school, college and pro team in the country, but it does have 42,624 of them. Looking at MascotDB is as close as we can get to understanding how prevalent Native American team names and mascots are across the country.
“There were a lot of interesting mascots where I lived growing up,” Borning said. “But those have mostly fallen by the wayside. Some of those things of the past were definitely offensive, but also more interesting than the generic mascots we have now.”
I searched the database and found 2,129 sports teams that reference Braves, Chiefs, Indians, Orangemen, Raiders, Redmen, Reds, Redskins, Savages, Squaws, Tribe and Warriors, as well as tribe names such as Apaches, Arapahoe, Aztecs, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Chinooks, Chippewas, Choctaws, Comanches, Eskimos, Mohawks, Mohicans, Seminoles, Sioux and Utes. (Not all teams with the names “Raiders” and “Warriors” are referencing Native Americans, but we spot-checked 20 schools with each name and a majority of each did.)
Some 92 percent of those 2,129 team names belong to high schools (the rest were college, semi-pro, pro and amateur league teams). Of all the active high schools in the database, 8.2 percent have Native American team names.
I reached out to about a dozen of those high schools, and most didn’t want to comment on a controversy that hadn’t yet arrived. But the conversations I did have suggested that the way communities regard their teams’ Native American names and mascots depends on the makeup of the communities themselves.
Estelline High, home of the Redmen, is located in a small town in South Dakota, 24 miles west of the Minnesota border. South Dakota has the third-largest Native American population share in the country, but Estelline hasn’t seen the kinds of protests directed at the Washington Redskins. The town has experienced little, if any, controversy over the Redmen name.
The mascot dates back to sometime between 1915 and 1920, when a local newspaper referred to the Estelline athletic team by the color of its uniforms — “the men in red.” The name wasn’t officially adopted, but the team soon became known by its unofficial moniker, the Redmen. According to Estelline superintendent and high school principal Patrick Kraning, the association with Native Americans didn’t come until around 1930. Estelline followed with its own depiction of a “Redman” as a stereotype of a Native American chief wearing a headdress. Events such as the annual naming of a “Moon Princess” and “Big Chief” at homecoming became part of the tradition.
“There’s been very little controversy over the team name,” Kraning said. “In the ’90s there was some discussion about changing the name for a series of schools [throughout southeastern South Dakota] that still referred to themselves as ‘Redmen.’ But in the end, a lot of us — Estelline included — decided to keep the name and just keep away from any Native American imagery associated with it.”
Since then, the only symbol associated with the Estelline Redmen is a logo of an E with two feathers attached. Kraning believes that this change, combined with the fact that Estelline doesn’t have a significant Native American population, is why there hasn’t been much local debate on the topic.
“There’s a community feeling that since the origin of the nickname was not a Native American reference, there’s not a desire for change,” he said. “If there were a discussion, most people would probably view it as going against 80 or 90 years of tradition.”
Natick, Massachusetts, did go against tradition. In 2007, the school board dropped its high school mascot — also the “Redmen” — after an alumna of Native American descent came to the board and said she was offended by the activities surrounding the team she had experienced at Natick High School. The historian for the local Nipmuc tribe told me that the logo and mascot used by the school depicted a “stereotypical northern Native with a headdress,” but that depiction bore no resemblance to the actual indigenous people who lived in the Natick area. Nevertheless, protest groups soon sprouted up, claiming that the Natick Redmen honored Native Americans and were an important tradition.
Soon after the change, school board meetings and a town-wide referendum turned the issue into a much broader discussion. The main critique came from the Redmen Forever Committee, a self-described grassroots effort that sought to influence the non-binding referendum. “We added a question to the referendum asking if townspeople wanted the Redmen name restored,” said Erich Thalheimer, co-founder of the Redmen Forever Committee. “It won overwhelmingly, but the school committee didn’t abide by the town’s wishes.”
“If it were decided by popular vote, we would have the name,” said Anne Blanchard, a member of the Natick School Board. “But we had to take into account our nondiscrimination policy, as well as minority and majority interests.”
The Redmen Forever Committee says it won’t give up the fight. “We chose the name of our committee very intentionally, very purposefully,” Thalheimer said. “This is our town. We’re going to live here until we die. We will forever try to re-establish the Redmen name.”
While the controversy in Natick stemmed from a decision that affected one school, several states have taken a grievance from a single school and used it to forbid Native American mascots. One of the more sweeping bans so far was implemented with the help of Samuel Henry, the man who grew up earnestly believing that the Washington Redskins had painted their downtown D.C. headquarters with the blood of Native Americans. Henry is currently the chair of Oregon’s Board of Education, which instituted a statewide ban on Native American mascots and team names in 2012.
The story goes back to 2006, when Che Butler, a member of the Siletz tribe and a student at Taft High School, raised the issue before the board. Butler said he was offended by the stereotypical and inauthentic manner in which the mascot of a rival school, the Molalla Indians, portrayed Native Americans. He and fellow Taft student Luhui Whitebear, a member of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Tribe, made a presentation at a board meeting asking for a statewide ban on mascots that “misrepresent” Native people, who instead “should be represented with true honor and respect.”
According to Henry, the board agreed that “having Native American mascots did not seem like a good idea,” but decided to defer the decision.
The grievance was taken up again six years later, when the director of public instruction decided to put it back on the board’s agenda. This time around, after some member turnover, the board agreed to ask its chief attorney to draft a proposal for a ban on the use of Native American mascots in public schools. The only dissenting vote came from a woman who claimed that it was too selective, and that devils and saints should be banned as well.
As in Natick, one of the major arguments against the ban came from people who said that the mascots didn’t disparage Native Americans, but honored them. Many of these opponents knew little of Native American culture, Henry said. “I asked one of the students who made that argument what the name of the local Native American tribe was, and she didn’t know,” he said. “To me, that indicated that her reliance on saying that they were honoring Native Americans — that the support for that argument was pretty thin at best.”
For high schools, a statewide ban is about as sweeping as it gets. Graduate to the next level, though, and schools have broader authorities to answer to. In 2005, the NCAA implemented its own de facto ban1 on Native American mascots for all NCAA colleges.2 The ban focused on a specific list of schools whose mascots were deemed “hostile or abusive,” and precluded them from participating in postseason play if those nicknames or mascots appeared on any team uniforms or clothing.
The NCAA had already taken a stand on a similar issue: the use of Confederate flags. In 2001, the organization banned arenas in South Carolina and Mississippi from hosting postseason championships because the Confederate flag flew proudly on their statehouse grounds. After that decision, the president of St. Cloud State University in Minnesota asked the NCAA to impose a ban on Native American mascots.
The NCAA called on 18 schools (out of 1,046 total member schools at the time, or 1.7 percent) to drop their mascots.
Not all of the targeted schools felt that their nicknames or mascots were “hostile or abusive,” and the ban was followed by a surge of criticism.
“I must have gotten 2,000 emails from people just complaining about it,” the NCAA’s executive committee chairperson at the time, Walter Harrison, said. Even almost 10 years later, he still remembers one persistent caller. “He, or she, I don’t know if it was a man or a woman, would call my office phone at four in the morning and just play their school’s chant until the answering machine cut off,” he said.
But the more serious backlash came in the form of appeals. One came from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and its Fighting Illini. The Fighting Illini were portrayed at halftime performances by a student dressed in full Lakota regalia, including face paint and a headdress. He went by the name “Chief Illiniwek,” and became the focus of the university’s fight against the ban.
Controversy surrounding Chief Illiniwek predated the NCAA’s ruling by decades. The university’s board of trustees had been quietly in the process of considering a potential mascot change since 2001, and the publicity surrounding the nationwide ban reignited already-existing tension among students and alumni. Lawrence Eppley, who was the chair of the university’s board of trustees at the time, said he received hundreds of comments from foundations and alumni organizations threatening to withhold donations. He and the rest of the board figured the only option was to strike a compromise to keep both sides — passionate students and alumni and the NCAA — happy.
Through its appeal, the school was allowed to keep its team name, but not its mascot. Chief Illiniwek portrayers, who had been a part of an official student organization called the Council of Chiefs, could continue the tradition as long as the group no longer had any official affiliation with the university. “One of the things that made it tough to retire it was making sure the fans knew that, if you loved the chief, that was nothing to feel guilty about,” Eppley said. “It’s just that times change, and there’s not much we can do about that.”
Ivan Dozier, who currently portrays Chief Illiniwek, said that officially retiring the mascot was the wrong way for the university to respond. He believes that Native American mascots are a way to reach and educate an audience that wouldn’t normally be knowledgeable about Native American culture or history. “What concerns me is if you eliminate all references to Native American culture, people aren’t asking questions anymore,” he said. “Sports fans here are the vocal majority. They’re the ones who need this information the most, and now they have no way to go about getting it.”
Eight of the schools on the NCAA’s list secured vocal support from local Native American tribes to successfully appeal and retain their team names and mascots. Eight others have changed their names and one dropped the use of a mascot entirely. Carthage College changed its team name from the Redmen to the Red Men and dropped all Native American imagery, which satisfied the NCAA’s requirements.
Turning the Washington Redskins into the Red Skins is unlikely to appease the team’s critics, though. Given that the name is racist by definition and no tribe has come out in support of Snyder, it probably wouldn’t pass the NCAA’s grounds for appeal, and it certainly doesn’t pass in the court of Native American opinion.
But even if the Redskins became the Red Skins or the Red Flyers or the Red Snyders, there would still be thousands of other teams that reference Native American imagery. Whatever happens with the Redskins, there will still be the Estelline Redmen, Chief Illiniwek, and the West Texas Comanches, each upholding the questionable legacy of Native American sports names.
Seattle, WA (9/3/2014) – Cabin Games emcee Redskin is gearing up to release a new mixtape titled Big Red, in which he spits hard-hitting rhymes over 14 classic Notorious B.I.G. instrumentals. This tribute to Biggie has been in the making for quite some time, and Redskin did not take the challenge of paying homage lightly, attacking each beat with the same calculated force and delivery as the last. With select features from Pez Paradise and Mya Rose, and mixing by Cabin Games producer Kjell Nelson, Big Red builds on the rapidly growing catalogue of dope music coming out of the Cabin.
The cover art for the mixtape features both the legendary Biggie Smalls and Redskin himself, and was designed by Native American artist Steven Judd. The project will be released on September 11th, 2014.
Cabin Games is a new music label co-founded in Seattle by Rich Jensen, former Co-President of Sub Pop Records, and Redskin, a Tulalip Tribal member. Current artists include Silas Blak, Hightek Lowlives, Pigeonhed, Richie Dagger’s Crime, Redskin, Yardbirds and Steve Fisk.
For bookings and more information about Cabin Games:
The United States Mint has announced the design selections for the reverse of the 2015 and 2016 Native American Dollars. The theme for the designs will be the Mohawk Ironworkers and Code Talkers of Word War I and World War II.
The Native American $1 Coin Program was authorized under Public Law 110-82 and features annually rotating reverse designs celebrating the important contributions made by Native American tribes and individuals to the history and development of the United States. Since the launch of the series in 2009, themes have included the Three Sisters method of planting (2009), the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy (2010), the Wampanoag Treaty of 1621 (2011), the spread of horse culture (2012), the Treaty with the Delawares of 1778 (2013), and native hospitality ensuring the success of the Lewis and Clark expedition (2014).
The 2015 Native American Dollar celebrates the Mohawk high iron workers as builders of New York City and other skylines from 1886. The Mohawk Ironworkers had a reputation as top notch workers who did not fear the heights or dangerous conditions on high steel. They worked on prominent landmarks within New York City such as the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the George Washington Bridge, and the World Trade Center.
The reverse design of the coin carries a depiction of a Mohawk iron worker reaching for an I-beam as it swings into position. A high elevation view of the city skyline appears in the background. Inscriptions include “United States of America”, “$1″, and “Mohawk Ironworkers”. The reverse was designed by Ronald D. Sanders and will be engraved by Phebe Hemphill.
The 2016 Native American Dollar honors the Code Talkers from both World War I and World War II. The Native American Code Talkers had served in the United States Armed forces and used their tribal languages as a basis for secret communication, which proved unbreakable to enemy forces.
The reverse design of the coin includes two helmets with two feathers in the background that form a “V,” symbolizing victory, unity, and the important role that Code Talkers played. The inscriptions include “United States of America”, “$1″, “WWI”, “WWII”, and “Code Talkers”. The reverse was designed by Thomas D. Rodgers, Sr. with the engraver to be determined.
The obverse design for each coin will feature the design of Sacagawea and child designed by Glenna Goodacre and introduced in 2000. The obverse inscriptions include “Liberty” and “In God We Trust”. The date, mint mark, and motto “E Pluribus Unum” are incused on the edge of the coins.
OGLALA — A South Dakota language revitalization initiative has received a three-year grant from the federal Administration for Native Americans.
Lakota Immersion Childcare announced Tuesday it’s one of 13 organizations to receive part of $2.6 million through the Native American Language Preservation and Maintenance initiative. It says it’s the only organization in the Dakotas to receive language funds from the administration. It didn’t say what portion of the money it will receive.
The grant supports immersion programming to teach and preserve Native American languages through curriculum development, teacher training and technology.
Lakota Immersion Childcare has three fluent speakers who teach 15 students. It will admit five new toddlers this fall. The program aims to partner with a local school to create a full-immersion elementary program.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Most Americans are supposed to have health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. But up to 50,000 Alaska Natives and American Indians in Alaska are excused from the requirement. They have to apply for that lifetime exemption though. And the federal government is mishandling many of those applications.
The form Alaska Natives and American Indians need to fill out to get an exemption from the individual mandate.
Evelyn Burdick thought it would be easy to apply for her American Indian exemption. As a member of the Cherokee Nation, the Anchorage resident sees a doctor at the Alaska Native Medical Center. Burdick likes the care she gets there and has no plans to sign up for private insurance under Obamacare. So she sent an exemption application to the federal government almost as soon as it was available, on January 9th:
“I have yet to receive any correspondence from them back whatsoever. Not even to let me know they’ve received my application.”
Burdick is not alone. The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium has helped hundreds of Alaska Natives and American Indians in the state who have had problems with their exemption applications. The exemption is a simple six digit number applicants need for their tax forms to avoid paying a penalty ($95 dollars or 1% of income, whichever is greater) for not having health insurance. Monique Martin, with ANTHC, has been working with the federal government to resolve the problems:
“Every time we call it’s a bear with us sort of request but we’ve been bearing with them since February when we first started reporting issues and we are anxious for a resolution to this issue.”
The Federal government has fumbled the applications in several different ways. Martin works closely with three other people at ANTHC who all applied for the exemption for themselves. Martin’s exemption number came back with no problems. But her three colleagues were not so lucky:
“One of our coworkers received her letter twice, with two different exemption numbers for her and her kids. One received the wrong exemption… and another one is still waiting to hear on her application. So we’ve seen all the errors come to us, so we have real world examples that we can show the federal government.”
No one from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was willing to do an interview for this story. In an e-mail, a spokesperson with the agency wrote that they are working to improve the process daily and committed to providing consumers with their exemption numbers in time for tax filing season. Martin says she’s cautiously optimistic that can happen:
“We are the squeaky wheel in Alaska and we’re really pushing the federal government to resolve this issue and to get this addressed for people so they aren’t negatively impacted.”
Martin worries about how the federal government will handle the rush of exemption applications as tax time approaches. She expects many Alaska Natives and American Indians haven’t even thought about sending in the application yet. Evelyn Burdick, who was proactive and applied early in the process, says the nine month long wait for a response has been frustrating:
“I don’t want to be penalized for not having the healthcare.gov insurance. I’m trying to follow the rules and regulations that healthcare.gov set up and they’re not making it any easier.”
Late last month, Monique Martin was able to get Burdick’s exemption number for her from a contact at the federal government. Burdick is happy to have the number, but she still wants to see it in writing. She says she has no idea when it will arrive in her mailbox, but at this rate she’s not expecting it any time soon.
This story is part of a reporting partnership between APRN, NPR and Kaiser Health News.
Courtesy Sen. Jon Tester/Flickr About 100 people gathered for a listening session with Sen. Jon Tester on August 28 to discuss the increased trafficking of mostly young girls and women in Indian country.
As the trafficking of Native women and girls becomes more prevalent in an expanding radius around the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota, politicians and indigenous leaders are seeking to protect these young victims—and help the survivors heal.
“Human trafficking is a serious issue afflicting our region and much of Indian country. Tribes from Washington State to New York have felt its terrible impact,” said Montana Senator Jon Tester during opening remarks at a listening session he held at Ft. Peck Community College on August 28. “Montana and North Dakota have been especially hard-hit by increases in crime, including human trafficking, due to the explosive influx of people and resources following the oil and gas boom in the Bakken.”
The listening session was aimed at gathering more information from tribal leaders and local law enforcement regarding the spike in sex trafficking of underage girls, as well as other related crimes that have increased since the oil boom began in the Bakken region. Also among the panelists at Thursday’s session was United States Attorney Mike Cotter, who appeared at the event to voice the growing alarm shared by he and his colleagues in Montana, the Dakotas and Wyoming, about the exploding industry of human trafficking involving mostly Native girls aged 12 to 14 who are being sold for sex.
“If you look around the rural regions of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, you would not expect to find 12-14 year old girls sold for sex on the Internet, or lured by an adult for sex or forced into a life of servitude by predators to sell their bodies to strangers,” Cotter told the audience of about 100 tribal leaders, community members and law enforcement. “It is hard to imagine but it is here in our region, and this corruption occurs with too much frequency and is more prevalent than one would imagine.”
Cotter underscored the fact that human trafficking is a global, national and regional problem that has snared millions of men, women and children into being trafficked for labor and commercial sex. Situated on the energy-rich Williston Basin, the Bakken Oil Patch is located in North Dakota. Since the energy boom in that state began, crime rates in the multi-state region have also spiked, including sexual violence, domestic violence, multiple murders and an increase in the use of meth and other drugs.
“We’re dealing with drug cartels, we’re dealing with people who don’t come to the door with a shotgun, they come to the door with a sub-machine gun,” said Tester. “And it’s very different. A lot of law enforcement agencies have seen a real uptick in crime, but haven’t seen an uptick in police officers or staffing or training.”
Typically, traffickers target mostly young girls who average between 12 and 14 years in age and are usually from low-income homes where one or both parents are absent. Additionally, many of the girls are already victims of child abuse and neglect, and many are struggling with drug and alcohol abuse. In South Dakota alone, Tester said, at least half of the sex trafficking victims are Native girls. Many of the girls, he said, are lured during times of vulnerability, when they may be homeless or struggling in other ways.
Tribal leaders across the region have also begun to feel the burden of the crime rates in their own communities, which are often underfunded, understaffed and ill-equipped to take on Mexican cartels, who they say have infiltrated the region and are well-organized and armed with heavy weaponry, including machine guns, which heretofore have been a rarity in the Northern Plains. The Fort Peck Indian Reservation, for example, is located approximately two and a half hours west of the Bakken region. Still, their tribal chairman said, his community is feeling the downside of the boom.
“Because of our proximity to the Bakken oil field, we are already seeing the negative effects of oil and gas development without any financial benefits,” Chairman Rusty Stafne of the Fort Peck Tribes of Montana, told the audience. “Washington has been quick to promote the exploitation of natural resources, but slow to provide the necessary funding for the increased demand on our services and infrastructure.”
“Adding to the problem is the lack of treatment available to survivors,” said Tester. “The survivors are often children or young adults from impoverished homes with broken family ties. Help for them is rarely available in the Native community—or even within a manageable drive.”
The negative impacts of the rise in crime is also being felt among tribes in South Dakota and Wyoming, both of whom have had an increase in the trafficking of their young girls.
“Energy development is bringing tremendous new opportunities to the region, but with the good comes the bad,” said Tester. “Many of the small towns on reservations and surrounding areas are being inundated with new businesses and more jobs, but also with infrastructure challenges and bad actors attracted to the profits and free-wheeling environment.”
Cotter said the Department of Justice launched the Human Trafficking Enhanced Enforcement Initiative in 2011. In 2012, the Montana U.S. Attorney’s office created the Montana Human Trafficking Task Force to confront the “complex, multi-dimensional crime of human trafficking, which includes sex crimes, violent crimes, immigration crimes, labor exploitation, fraud, money laundering and organized crime.
Among the attendees were Three Affiliated Tribes Chairman Tex Hall, Montana State Director of Indian Affairs Jason Smith, Roosevelt County Sheriff Freedom Crawford and Annie Daumiller of the Annie Casey Foundation.
“As Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, I am very aware of the economic and social challenges facing the tribes in the region. And it’s understandable that no tribe is prepared to deal with the rapid changes affecting the Bakken,” said Tester. “Tribal police departments lack the resources to investigate and detain human trafficking offenders, most of whom are non-Native. By no fault of their own, departments are often ill-equipped to root out the players in trafficking rings that can span reservation, state, and national boundaries.”
Tester added that even though the passage of the Violence Against Women Act had allowed tribes more authority to prosecute crimes committed on Indian reservations by non-Indians, “there is so much more to do.”
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — American Indians in Wyoming increasingly are asserting themselves, fighting for more say on environmental issues and fielding more candidates in state and local elections.
The Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes share the Wind River Indian Reservation, a block of land in central Wyoming that’s roughly the size of Yellowstone National Park.
Rep. Patrick Goggles, D-Ethete, announced early this year he’s not seeking re-election to the Legislature after 10 years of representing a district centered on the reservation. Yet Goggles, a Northern Arapaho and the only Indian in the Legislature, said it’s critical that the tribes continue to have a political presence in the state.
“There are issues that are unique to this reservation, and to the other Native Americans that reside here,” Goggles said. “That perspective should not get lost.”
Democrat Andi Clifford, a Northern Arapaho, is running for Wyoming House of Representatives seeking the District 33 seat held by Goggles, her uncle. Clifford, 42, works as a manager at the Wind River Hotel and Casino.
“We have 2.2 million acres with a lot of resources in our land and water,” Clifford said. “We want to be sitting at the table. We want to start discussing things that impact us and start having those conversations, and people to respect those conversations and respect where we’re coming from, because we live here.”
Gary Collins, tribal liaison between the Northern Arapaho Tribe and the state of Wyoming, said he counts seven Native American candidates in area legislative and local elections this year, up from three in 2012.
Collins, a Northern Arapaho, said a victory he and other tribal members won in a Voting Rights Act lawsuit against Fremont County a few years ago has inspired greater political involvement among Wyoming Indians.
U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson in 2010 ruled Fremont County’s system of at-large voting for county commissioner elections left Indians disenfranchised. Despite bitter opposition from county officials, Johnson ordered the county to establish voting districts to ensure Indian representation.
“The long history of discrimination against Indians in the United States, Wyoming and Fremont County is undeniable,” Johnson wrote in his 2010 decision. “The evidence presented to this court reveals that discrimination is ongoing and the effects of historical discrimination remain palpable.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency added to local tensions late last year when it ruled that lands around Riverton, a town on the reservation’s eastern boundary, legally remain Indian Country.
The EPA addressed the boundary issue when it granted a request from both the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes to treat their reservation as a separate state under the federal Clean Air Act.
Wyoming, together with Riverton, Fremont County and other groups, has appealed the EPA decision in federal court in Denver. The tribes have entered the lawsuit, too, arguing to uphold the federal agency’s position.
The tribal boundary dispute also drew the attention of a national group that’s dedicated to ending tribal sovereignty. The Citizens Equal Rights Alliance held a workshop in Riverton in June, saying they wanted to instruct local officials how to fight over federal government overreach.
Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, is a veteran state lawmaker and a non-Indian. He faces Democratic challenger Sergio Maldonado Sr., a Northern Arapaho, in November’s general election.
Case said he was invited to the CERA workshop but didn’t attend. Although he said he believes the state ultimately will win on the boundary issue in court, he said he regarded CERA’s presence as unhelpful and divisive.
Case served as chairman of the legislative committee that redrew legislative districts after the 2010 census. He said the committee was careful not to dilute Native American voting strength and credits that as a factor in their increasing involvement.
Case said all voters in his district will have to assess which candidate they believe can do the best job. “I’m not native, but I really try very hard to do a good job of representing them,” Case said.
Kimberly Varilek, attorney general for the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, said she believes both the Voting Rights Act ruling and the uproar over the EPA boundary decision both have given tribal members hope that they have a chance to play a greater role in politics beyond the reservation boundaries.
“I’ve noticed that there’s more interest in regards to tribal members,” Varilek said. “Potentially, maybe they feel like there’s more access.”
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TULALIP – Through the summer break, 175 storm drains on the Tulalip Indian Reservation received a mini makeover due to a collaborative effort between Tulalip Tribes Natural Resources department and the Goodwill Aerospace Program.
Receiving help from 20 students from the Marysville/Everett area who participated in the Goodwill Aerospace program, the drains, located near the Tulalip Resort Casino, Totem Beach Road and Totem Beach Loop Road, now display a stenciled salmon graphic and custom message reading, “No Dumping; Drains to Salmon Habitat.” Tulalip Natural Resources hopes the message will remind the public of the risks salmon habitat face.
“Many people have the misperception that a drain in a street or parking lot is sent to a wastewater treatment plant, but it is not,” explains Valerie Streeter, Tulalip Natural and Cultural Resources stormwater planner. “ After a rain storm, stormwater runoff enters the drain and is usually piped directly to a ditch, stream or bay with very little treatment. This water picks up heavy metals, copper from brake pads, Zinc from tires, and oils from engines, and delivers these pollutants to our waterways. Salmon are especially sensitive to copper, which alters their response to predators and damages their olfactory organs, how they smell. Zinc and oils also damage aquatic plants and animals.”
Students involved in the program were required to participate in service learning projects, which involves learning about the science and background of a project and then volunteer their time toward that project.
“Protecting our watersheds and salmon habitat are very important and we want the community to understand that dumping anything down storm drains can impair fish and other aquatic creatures because storm drains drain directly to streams, lakes, and even the bay,” said Kelly Finley, Tulalip Tribes Natural Resources Outreach and Education Coordinator.
Streeter explains that when people wash their cars or driveway and either dump or allow the dirty wash water into the storm drains, this contributes to water pollution. “It is better to wash your car on the lawn or use a car wash, which are connected to wastewater treatment plants. Pet waste is another common pollutant in our water, which can pass diseases on to other animals or even us humans.”
“The worst is an old practice of dumping used oil from an oil change into the storm drains,” said Streeter, who recommends discarding used oil at appropriate places, such as the automotive center at the Walmart Supercenter located in Quil Ceda Village, who will discard the oil free of charge.
