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Fine Print: 7 American Indian Women Novelists You Have to Read

When people talk about American Indian women novelists, the names that come to mind are typically Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich and Joy Harjo. But there are many worthy yet lesser-known American Indian female fiction writers whose names do not trip off the tongue. Here are some of them:

Debra Magpie Earling

Earling, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation, published her award-winning Perma Red in 2002. The novel recounts the hardships suffered by Louise White Elk, a tale based on the true-life story of Earling’s aunt. Twenty years in the writing, Perma Red tells “a story that has burdened my family for years,” says Earling.

In describing the difficulty of getting the book written, which included a fire that destroyed her first 800-page draft, and getting it published, which included a decision to revise the ending because publishers would not accept a novel in which the protagonist dies—the real Aunt Louise died at 23 of exposure after a car accident—Earling says, “If you have a story that you need to tell and you want it out in the world, there’s some tenacious spirit that we [writers] all have.”

Earling has taught creative writing at the University of Montana, where she is a full professor, for the past 22 years.

Perma Red won the Western Writers Association Spur Award, the Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for Best First Novel, a WILLA Literary Award and the American Book Award.

Earling is working on a proposal for a second novel and hopes eventually to write a novel based on the life of Sacajawea. “She was a traditional woman… some accounts suggest she was as young as 14 years old when she was traveling [with Lewis and Clark]. She saw the true coming of the white man and the movement westward in a way that no one else had the opportunity to see. My biggest dream is to write that novel,” says Earling.

Linda LeGarde Grover

Author of two award-winning book-length collections of interconnected short stories, Grover, Bois Forte Band of Objiwe, is a professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

Grover’s novels are based on her long-standing academic research interest—looking at how federal and state Indian policies affect Ojibwe families. As an undergraduate, “I began my research on boarding schools in northern Minnesota and that became the foundation for everything I’ve done.”

When she was doing the research for her master’s the chairman of her committee suggested she give fiction a try. “I started out by writing a story, and then another one that was connected to it. I ended up with a box of stories and put together eight of them when the University of Georgia Press sent out a call for manuscripts. That became The Dance Boots,” which was published in 2010 and won the 2009 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and the 2011 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize.

Grover’s second novel-length collection of stories, The Road Back to Sweetgrass, is expected to be published in 2014. In 2008, the manuscript won the Native Writers Circle of the Americas First Book Award. The novel is arranged in four sections, each of which has linked stories that do not follow a linear timeline. The format for both books, says Grover, “seems to me a natural way of Native storytelling that has existed for a really long time. I never thought, ‘I’m going to write a book.’ I said to myself, ‘I think I will write a story.’” The old traditional stories, says Grover, are linked stories that are all part of a big picture. Grover’s research on boarding school families, beginning with the Dawes Act and continuing to the present, is integrated into Sweetgrass, which depicts people who, like herself, grew up during the era of federal termination policy.

Linda Hogan

Hogan, Chickasaw, won a National Endowment for the Arts fiction grant in 1986, a Guggenheim for fiction in 1990, and a Lannan Award in 1994. She has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, The Wordcraft Circle, and The Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association.

Hogan’s first novel, Mean Spirit (1991) received the Oklahoma Book Award and the Mountains and Plains Book Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize the year that honor went to John Updike. Solar Storms (1997) and Power (1999) were both finalists for the International Impact Award.

Hogan’s writing reflects her commitment to cultural conservation and traditional ecosystem knowledge, among other interests. “The spiritual tradition is part of all of my work, my daily life, because it acknowledges the life of the earth and all that lives on it. I do not place any life above other life. I watch how the forest is important to water, both to aquifers and to calling down rain, even to communication with other trees, and the ground it exists in and the Earth is filled with so much life inside it, a terrestrial intelligence we no longer understand. But our people of the past knew,” she says.

In addition to her extensive and highly-praised oeuvre as a poet, Hogan is a renowned nonfiction writer. Her works include Dwellings, A Spiritual History of the Land; and The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir. She is currently working on another novel.

Hogan says of her novels, “I am working on re-telling our past. Still, even with all the research, I am merely a writer trying to put it all together. We have all been brilliant people and it is an incredible world even now, ongoing in its creation and we are participants in it.”

Formerly a full professor at the University of Colorado, Hogan now lives in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, with “a wild mustang who turned out to be a Chickasaw pony” and a wild burro.

Sara Sue Hoklotubbe

Hoklotubbe, Cherokee, grew up in northeastern Oklahoma near the banks of Lake Eucha, the location that is the setting for her mysteries. She worked at the University of Oklahoma for more than 20 years in finance. No wonder the heroine of her novels, Sadie Walela, is a banker!

Hoklotubbe describes her beginnings as a writer: “It was a long journey and I started late in life… I loved English in high school, but when I got to college my focus switched over to political philosophy. Out of college the first thing I needed to do was get a job, which I did in the banking business. That was 1974. I always thought I would do something else—this was just going tide me over for a little while.” Twenty years later she was a VP at the bank.

But the job took “so many hours a day I really couldn’t focus on anything else. Then my husband and I got married in 1997. When we moved [to Hawaii] I couldn’t get a job…. It was a new situation for me.” Given the opportunity to think about what she actually wanted to do, Hoklotubbe decided, “I’d really like to try to write. I was 45. I went to the community college and took some non-credit classes in creative writing. It was just like someone flipped on a switch inside me.”

She soon decided to try to write a book about how badly women are treated in the banking business. The book started out with a bank robbery. “But it just took a 90 degree turn and ended up completely different. I just wanted to tell a good story; I wasn’t trying to write a mystery…. I really liked the way [Tony Hillerman] was able to convey things about the Navajo culture and the way of life, and yet it was in a good story. I wanted to do that for my people. So I guess unconsciously that’s how I ended up writing a mystery.”

Hoklotubbe was named Writer of the Year by Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers in 2004 for her first novel, Deception on All Accounts (Sadie Walela Mystery), 2003. The American Café (Sadie Walela Mystery), 2011, has won several awards, including the 2012 WILLA Literary Award given by Women Writing the West, the 2012 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award for Mystery/Suspense, and the 2012 Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers award for Mystery of the Year. Hoklotubbe’s third mystery, Sinking Suspicions, is expected out in fall 2014, and she’s working on a fourth.

LeAnne Howe

Howe, an enrolled Citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, has an extensive publications list that includes fiction, poetry, screenplays, creative non-fiction, plays and scholarly articles. She is a faculty member in the creative writing program, a professor of English and American Indian Studies, and an affiliated faculty member in the Theatre Department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

“In teaching creative writing,” she says, “I try to advocate for stories that come from someplace inside the students themselves, the stories they carry—how we embody as tribal people our land, our landscape, our community. So in my mind these two prongs of teaching [creative writing and American Indian Studies] work together.”

She is working on her third novel, Memoir of a Choctaw Indian in the Arab Revolts, 1917 & 2011, set in Allen, Oklahoma, and Bilaad ash Sham, which she visited in 2010-2011. Bilaad ash Sham, she explains, was a “region that included what is now Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, all the way over to Jerusalem.” The region was broken up after the Arab Revolt of 1921 when the British and French imposed the borders that created modern Middle Eastern countries. “There’s no such thing as Iraq, there’s no such thing as Syria in the way it’s shaped now. Those were imposed borders. It’s a very similar process to what happens to tribes here in terms of this is your border, this is where you live. These kinds of colonial processes are not dissimilar… I’m well-known for choosing time periods and comparing those time periods through the experience of tribal people, so this is another project in line with Shell Shaker and Miko Kings.”

Shell Shaker (2001), Howe’s first novel, won the American Book Award 2002, Before Columbus Foundation and was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award 2003. Howe was chosen as the Wordcraft Circle Writer of the Year for Fiction in 2002. Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story (2007) was selected as the Read-in Selection for Hampton University, 2009-2010. Howe is the recipient of the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas.

Evelina Zuni Lucero

Lucero, Isleta/Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, is winner of the 1999 Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas First Book Award for Fiction for her first novel, Night Sky, Morning Star, published in 2000. She is working on her second, Sovereign Seven, a story about Indian gaming.

Night Sky, Morning Star was developed from another novel that made the rounds but did not get picked up. Lucero took the one chapter in that book that everyone liked and built a story around it. The characters are based partly on people she knew in high school in Nevada, but the story is an act of imagination. “I had a lot of fun discovering who the characters were,” she says.

Lucero is chair of the Creative Writing Department at the Institute of American Indian Arts, following a stint as a journalist for tribal and national Indian news publications.

Her second novel is a challenge, says Lucero. “I thought that since I’ve written one novel, the second one should be easy, but it turns out that every book, every set of characters, has its own life. It took me a while to figure that one out.” This book is based on a short story she wrote in the late 1990s about the State of New Mexico’s conflict with the pueblo and Apache tribes over casinos with high stakes gaming. “It was a major conflict between the tribes and the state; eventually the tribes were successful.”

One of the historical figures Lucero encountered when she was doing research on the arrival of the Spanish in New Mexico was a “true life Native person who tricked the Spanish into thinking there were huge kingdoms of gold to the East as part of a plot of the Pueblo peoples to lure them onto the plains where they would travel until they got weary and tired—the idea was to do them in.” The Spanish, who first entered New Mexico in the 1540s looking for land to settle and to find riches, had heard stories of about seven cities of gold. The concocted story fit right into their expectations, Lucero says.

The novel, which Lucero describes as the “intersection of history, myth and the imagination,” marries the whole idea of modern-day casinos to the mythological Seven Cities of Gold, not coincidentally the basis for the name of one of the first casinos in northern New Mexico. “The casinos are another good trick that Native people came up with to lure non-Natives and get some enrichment and benefits out of that whole arrangement,” says Lucero, who hopes to finish the novel during her sabbatical next year.

Lee Maracle

It was a dark and stormy night in Sardis, British Columbia, when Lee Maracle, Sto:Loh Nation, discovered she was a novelist as well a short-story writer. “There was a storm at the house and I was terrified,” she says. “I started writing so I wouldn’t hear the thunder. I had 80 pages written before anyone came home and the storm stopped.” She was so engrossed that “a tree fell on my house and I didn’t notice.” So far she has four novels to her credit: Sundogs: A Novel, 1992; Ravensong, 1995; Daughters are Forever, 2002; and Will’s Garden, 2002. She is working on the fifth, which will be a continuation of Ravensong, telling the story of the little child named Celia. “People kept asking what happened to her,” says Maracle.

Maracle teaches in the Aboriginal Studies Program and the Centre for Indigenous Theatre and she is the Traditional Teacher for First Nations House, all at the University of Toronto. She is one of the founders of the En’owkin International School of Writing in Penticton, B.C. In addition to her novels, she has published poetry and several non-fiction works.

Maracle is a member of the Red Power Movement and Liberation Support Movement; her political and social views are integral to her writing, she says. Sundogs is set during the Oka crisis between the Canadian government and the Mohawk Nation, while Ravensong deals with the flu epidemic of the 1950s, and Daughters tells of the healing that is possible within a dysfunctional family.

Among the points Maracle stresses is the importance of readers paying attention to emerging First Nations writers, a few of whom she mentioned. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Mississauga Nishnaabeg, has just published Islands of Decolonial Love: Stories & Songs, her debut collection of short stories. Cherie Dimaline, Ojibway and Métis, published her first novel, The Girl Who Grew A Galaxy, last June. Canadian poet Katherena Zermette, Metis, is the first Native woman writer to win the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry, which she received for North End Love Songs.

Marysville arts center launches online fundraising campaign

Conceptual artist Cassandra Canady's illustration of what the Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts in Marysville could look like.— image credit: Courtesy image. — Conceptual artist Cassandra Canady’s illustration of what the Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts in Marysville could look like.
— image credit: Courtesy image.

by KIRK BOXLEITNER, Marysville Globe Reporter

Jan 16, 2014

MARYSVILLE — The Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts has entered the next phase of settling into its new home in Marysville, but it needs the public’s help to complete the transition.

Scott Randall, president of the Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts, started the nonprofit organization in June of 2009, and in June of 2013, the group moved into the former Dunn Lumber building in Marysville.

“The next step in the process came on Dec. 3 of last year, when I was doing a site walkthrough of the facility with the building commissioner and the fire marshall,” Randall said. “I asked them what we would need to do in order to start operating from this building sooner.”

The Foundation won’t be hosting concerts or plays from the Dunn Lumber building for a while yet, but if Red Curtain can raise the funds to get the facility in shape to meet the current regulations for fire safety and ADA compliance, then the group can provide a space for classes, meetings and other small events, to help it generate semi-regular revenue toward the down payment that needs to be made before more significant renovations are performed.

“We’re looking to add extras, to tear up pavement, and to put up and knock down walls, but we can’t do that now, because we don’t actually own the building yet,” Randall said, noting that the Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts is still operating under a lease agreement with Dunn Lumber. “In the meantime, because the facility has had hardly any updates since it was first built in 1967, we need to upgrade its fire system, make its restrooms ADA-compliant, put up new exit signs and install new doorhandles. And we need to do all of that immediately, before we can begin to offer even scaled-down programming on a regular basis.”

Beyond that, Randall eventually plans to install sprinkler systems and redesign the building’s exterior to include an enclosed space outdoors, but while conceptual artist Cassandra Canady has illustrated what Randall hopes the fully refurbished facility will ultimately look like, and engineer and architect Doug Walter has even drawn up a schematic for its interior layout, Randall himself knows that the Marysville community will need some persuading.

“What I’m finding is that folks in Marysville are very excited about having the Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts in their town, but they’re still saying, ‘Okay prove it,'” Randall said. “By hosting these smaller events to start with, we can prove that this center can be a benefit to the community. In an ideal world, it’d be nice to generate enough donations and revenue to have our facility fully ready for the art season this fall, maybe even by launching it with a concert, but if it takes us a while longer, at least by taking care of the immediate concerns, we can do enough good stuff to sustain ourselves and show some of what we’re capable of.”

The Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts invites those interested in donating or learning more to visit its Indiegogo fundraising campaign page at www.indiegogo.com/projects/new-marysville-community-arts-center.

“Also, we’ve always looking for volunteers,” Randall said. “There are lots of opportunities to participate, and those will increase as time goes by.”

For more information on the Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts, log onto www.redcurtainfoundation.org.

KIRK BOXLEITNER, Marysville Globe Reporter

kboxleitner@marysvilleglobe.com or 360-659-1300 Ext. 5052

Salmon Conservation Efforts Honored

Jan 16, 2014

US Dept of Interior and US Geological Survey

SEATTLE — Today the U.S. Department of Interior recognized the Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership (PNAMP) for its conservation achievements focused on federally listed salmon species. The partnership was selected for a “Partnership in Conservation” award because it improves the scientific foundation for natural and cultural resource management and advances government-to-government relationships with Indian nations.

“The Department of the Interior is proud to recognize the accomplishments of those who are innovating and collaborating in ways that address today’s complex conservation and stewardship challenges,” Secretary Jewell said at an awards ceremony at the Interior headquarters in Washington today. “These partnerships represent the gold standard for how Interior is doing business across the nation to power our future, strengthen tribal nations, conserve and enhance America’s great outdoors and engage the next generation.”

For the past eight years, the Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership has promoted the recovery of Endangered Species Act listed salmon populations that represent a significant cultural resource for four Treaty Indian tribes and numerous non-Treaty tribes, as well as state commercial and sport fisheries. The partnership helps ensure program accountability and avoid duplication of efforts, which can pose problems for resource management. The partnership also plays an important role in increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of water and biological monitoring and in management and exchange of data.

The “Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership demonstrates that the whole truly can be more than the sum of its parts,” said Max Ethridge, U.S. Geological Survey’s Regional Director for the Northwest, “with partners working together in a time of scarce resources, the winner is conservation.”

The Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership is a voluntary partnership of state, tribal and federal entities, supported by a small team of four USGS employees. Working to coordinate efforts of partners and other entities, the Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership strives to improve efficiency and effectiveness of aquatic monitoring programs in the Pacific Northwest. Ultimately, these efforts contribute to the restoration of salmon populations and protection of aquatic habitats throughout the region.

“Salmon recovery is a shared goal,” said Jennifer Bayer, USGS Biologist who oversees the Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership’s staff, “by focusing on common needs and sustaining collaboration among many entities, the Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership enhances partners’ contributions to salmon conservation, ultimately working towards more effective monitoring and data collection efforts.”

The Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership has created free, web accessible tools that help users discover and share data, document methods, and design and manage monitoring programs. The team also organizes workshops, standing workgroups and technical forums to share best practices for documentation, data sharing and data management related to salmon conservation.

The Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership has a unique geographic, technical and policy scope. The Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership supports partners across Washington, Oregon, Idaho and northern California; engages technical experts in water quality, water supply, energy resources, endangered species recovery, invasive species, ecological modeling and data management; and reports annually to federal, state and tribal executive leadership.

The Partners in Conservation Awards recognize outstanding examples of conservation legacies achieved when the Department of the Interior engages groups and individuals representing a wide range of backgrounds, ages and interests to work collaboratively to renew lands and resources. At the annual awards ceremony, the Department of the Interior celebrated conservation achievements that highlight cooperation among diverse federal, state, local and tribal governments; public and private entities; non-profit organizations; and individuals.

Chainsaw art honors 12th Man, Seahawks, Native culture

carvingblog-300x199 — Jacob Lucas’ chain saw art is show on Wednesday, January 15, 2014. The Bonney Lake artist spent more than three weeks creating the tribute to the Seattle Seahawks and the 12th Man. (Joshua Trujillo, seattlepi.com)

January 15, 2014 | By Joshua Trujillo

Seattle PI

Jacob Lucas has always been an artist. He has painted, worked with clay, blown glass, drawn and went to college for graphic design. But it is the magic he creates with a much less elegant tool that has been buzzing on social media and captured the attention of Seahawks fans recently.

Lucas spent more than three weeks finessing a Western red cedar log with his collection of 22 chainsaws. The stunning result of his work —a 7-foot-tall tribute to the Seahawks, the 12th Man and Native American culture — has been shared and “liked” online countless times.

“I’d like to see it on display in the CLink,” he said Wednesday after trucking the finely detailed creation to the Virginia Mason Athletic Center in Renton, where the Seahawks train.

The Bonney Lake artist first noticed chainsaw art at the Puyallup Fair when he was 13. He saved up money and purchased a saw. Unfortunately, it was stolen about two weeks later.

He mostly forgot about the unique art form until his grandmother paid for him to attend a class a decade later.

Since then his skill with a STIHL has led to a full-time career turning logs into masterpieces.

Lucas has 20 carvings lining the main drag in Bridgeport, Wash., near Omak. The award-winning carver has also been commissioned to create custom carvings.

Lucas hopes to have his Seahawks carving on display Friday at a rally for the team.

Click through the gallery above to see the detail work he put into the carving. You can see more of his work on his website.

Visit seattlepi.com’s home page for more Seattle news. Contact Seattle photographer Joshua Trujillo at joshuatrujillo@seattlepi.com or on Twitter as @joshtrujillo.

IHS Confused Whether Indian Diabetes Funding Faces Another Sequestration

Rob Capriccioso

1/16/14 ICTMN.com

For the second year in a row, Indian Health Service (IHS) leadership is confused how federal sequestration will impact its budget, leading to questions of responsibility and competency from Native-focused health officials.

The latest confusion centers on how the Special Diabetes Program for Indians (SDPI), a program created in 1997 by Congress for the prevention and treatment of diabetes in American Indian and Alaska Natives, will be affected under the new federal budget deal. The December congressional arrangement alleviates sequestration on many so-called discretionary Indian-focused programs, but it leaves cuts in place for some mandatory programs.

SDPI last year was classified as mandatory under White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) rules, so the program received a 2 percent cut, translating to $3 million. That reduction was able to be absorbed by IHS through an internal reshuffling of funds, according to agency officials last year.

This year, under the budget deal hammered out for 2014 by Democratic and Republicans congressional negotiators in December, mandatory programs would be subject to the same cut. As of December 24, 2013, IHS officials believed that SDPI would face the same cut as last year, and agency leadership was communicating that information to Indian health officials and to the press. An IHS spokeswoman told Indian Country Today Media Network by e-mail on December 24 that “SDPI has been sequestered by 2 percent again as other mandatory health programs.” A question at that time left unanswered was whether IHS would be able to absorb the $3 million shortfall, as it had in 2013.

Fast forward to mid-January, with IHS now telling Indian health officials that it doesn’t know if SDPI will be subject to sequestration in 2014. They also told Indian health officials on January 15 that the agency does not know when they would have more information on this issue.

When asked by ICTMN again on January 16 if SDPI would be subject to sequestration and if so whether IHS would be able to administratively pick up the slack as it did last year, Dianne Dawson, a spokeswoman for IHS, said that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should be contacted for details on the 2014 budget.

OMB has not responded to requests for comment, but one thing is for sure: IHS leadership is no stranger to accusations of not knowing how federal sequestration affects their budget. Yvette Roubideaux, acting director of the agency, told Indian health officials at various tribal meetings and in letters throughout 2011 and early 2012 that “the worst-case scenario would be a 2 percent decrease from current funding levels” for IHS under sequestration, rather than the 9 percent that was forecasted for most federal agencies if the sequester went into effect. But that information was a misreading of the law, according to OMB, and IHS ended up being subject to higher levels of sequestration.

Indian health officials were outraged that Roubideaux had fed them wrong information, and they said it cost them the ability to prepare tribal budgets to help make up for the greater shortfall. They were also concerned with OMB’s interpretations of the law.

Questions over this issue and others involving lacking tribal consultation, transparency and funding issues have caused Democratic senators to hold up Roubideaux’ re-nomination to her director position. She has been reduced to acting capacity, which has reduced morale in the agency, according to Indian-focused officials who have discussed the situation with IHS staff.

Given the new confusion surrounding the SDPI program and sequestration in 2014, Indian health officials are again angry with IHS leadership and are demanding clarification.

“I am not sure what IHS is doing anymore; we have hardly any transparency when it comes to IHS budget issues with this director and administration,” said Jim Roberts, a policy analyst with the Northwest Portland Indian Health Board, when asked about the SDPI situation in December. “I’ve never seen budget and administrative transparency worse in the history of the agency despite its mantra and their espousal that this is their priority.”

From Roberts’ own reading of the law, he says that if Congress does its job and stays within the allocation caps reached under the December budget deal, there should not be a two percent reduction to the general IHS appropraition.

National Indian Health Board officials say they are investigating the situation with the agency.

Group: Protect Orcas In West Coast Waters

Credit AP Photo/NOAA Fisheries Service, Candice EmmonsFILE - In this file photo provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and shot Oct. 29, 2013, orca whales from the J and K pods swim past a small research boat on Puget Sound in view of downtown Seattle. — Credit AP Photo/NOAA Fisheries Service, Candice Emmons
FILE – In this file photo provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and shot Oct. 29, 2013, orca whales from the J and K pods swim past a small research boat on Puget Sound in view of downtown Seattle.

Jan 16 2014

By The Associated Press

A conservation group is asking federal officials to protect endangered killer whales in the marine waters off the West Coast.

The Center for Biological Diversity on Thursday petitioned the National Marine Fisheries Service to designate critical habitat for orcas along the coast of Washington, Oregon and California.

The southern resident killer whales are frequently seen in Puget Sound during the summer, but little was known about their winter movements until recently.

Federal biologists have tracked the orcas as they traveled extensively along the coast, from Cape Flattery, Wash. to Point Reyes, Calif.

The group says those offshore areas should now be added as critical habitat. Such a designation would require federal officials to limit activities that harm the whales.

A message left with the federal agency was not immediately returned.

Fmr. Snoqualmie gaming commissioner calls casino operation ‘illegal’

by JOHN LANGELER / KING 5 News

Bio | Email | Follow: @jlangelerKING5

January 15, 2014

SNOQUALMIE — William Papazian, the former chairman of the Snoqualmie Gaming Commission, is suing three casino executives and two tribal council members for ousting fellow commissioners and replacing the entity responsible for independent oversight of gambling operations with themselves.

The litigation was flied in U.S. Federal Court last Friday.

The Snoqualmie Tribe, which is not specifically named in the lawsuit, denied Papazian’s claims and said it planned to help defent the accused.

Papazian chaired the Snoqualmie Gaming Commission for five years. He resigned November 27, 2013 as other employees with the body were being fired, he alleged.

The commission is required by federal law and through a gaming compact, or agreement, the tribe has with U.S. and state authorities. It is tasked to handle background checks of employees, ensure protocol is followed and keep an eye on casino floor operations. It is supposed to be, “independent” and “separate…from that of the Gaming Facility or Tribal Government,” according to the compact.

Papazian alleges he and his fellow commission members and employees were removed and replaced by the Snoqualmie Tribal Council so it could “run an illegal, unregulated gambling operation”.

Furthermore, he accuses the defendants of racketeering, money laundering and fraud.

Papazian, who lives in Arizona, declined to comment.

The Washington State Gambling Commission confirmed Wednesday it was told by the Snoqualmie Tribe its council was taking “interim control” of its own gaming commission, and that it had no immediate concerns.

A spokesperson with the National Indian Gaming Commission, which approves all gaming compacts, would not confirm or deny if it was investigating the Snoqualmie Casino.

The tribe would not say who is on its gaming commission now or when a new one would be selected.

In a statement, the tribe wrote, “It is disappointing to know that our former employee, Mr. Papazian, has chosen to file a baseless civil complaint. Mr. Papazian’s allegations are completely false and without merit. The Snoqualmie Tribe will vigorously defend this case and support the named defendants. This

complaint will not disrupt the workings of Tribal Government or Casino operations. We will continue to work hard to help our people.”

$3,000 Tulalip grant helps buy student laptops

Herald Staff January 16, 2014

LAKE STEVENS — The Lake Stevens School District has received a grant of $3,000 from the Tulalip Tribes that will be used to partially offset the purchase of ChromeBooks laptops for classroom use.

The School District recently purchased a package of 32 laptops and related equipment for use by third and fourth graders and staff at Sunnycrest Elementary. The computers cost $12,000, with the balance being paid for by the district’s technology levy.

The school district also received a donation of $1,887 from board director David Iseminger through Microsoft’s Giving Campaign. Iseminger works at Microsoft, and the company matches employee volunteer work with cash grants. Iseminger’s donation goes into a fund that allows students who otherwise don’t have access to financial resources to take part in extracurricular activities such as sports, music programs and field trips.

EPA: Mining poses risks to Bristol Bay salmon

FILE- In this July 13, 2007 file photo, a worker with the Pebble Mine project test drills in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska near the village of Iliamma, Alaska. An EPA report indicates a large-scale copper and gold mine in Alaska's Bristol Bay region could have devastating effects on the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery and adversely affect Alaska Natives, whose culture is built around salmon. Photo: AL Grillo, AP — FILE- In this July 13, 2007 file photo, a worker with the Pebble Mine project test drills in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska near the village of Iliamma, Alaska. An EPA report indicates a large-scale copper and gold mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region could have devastating effects on the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery and adversely affect Alaska Natives, whose culture is built around salmon. Photo: AL Grillo, AP

By BECKY BOHRER, Associated Press

anuary 15, 2014

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A government report indicates a large-scale copper and gold mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region could have devastating effects on the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery and adversely affect Alaska Natives, whose culture is built around salmon.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday released its final assessment of the impact of mining in the Bristol Bay region. Its findings are similar to those of an earlier draft report, concluding that, depending on the size of the mine, up to 94 miles of streams would be destroyed in the mere build-out of the project, including losses of between 5 and 22 miles of streams known to provide salmon spawning and rearing habitat. Up to 5,350 acres of wetlands, ponds and lakes also would be lost due to the mine footprint.

The report concludes that “large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay watershed poses significant near- and long-term risk to salmon, wildlife and Native Alaska cultures,” EPA regional administrator Dennis McLerran said in a conference call with reporters.

The battle over the proposed Pebble Mine has been waged for years and extended beyond Alaska’s borders, with environmental activists like actor Robert Redford opposing development. Multinational jewelers have said they won’t use minerals mined from the Alaska prospect, and pension fund managers from California and New York City last year asked London-based Rio Tinto, a shareholder of mine owner Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., to divest, a request Rio Tinto said it planned to consider.

EPA has said its goal was to get the science right. McLerran said the report doesn’t recommend any policy or regulatory decisions and will serve as the scientific foundation for the agency’s response to the tribes and others who petitioned EPA in 2010 to use its authority under the Clean Water Act to protect Bristol Bay. He said no timeline for a response had been set.

The report also found that polluted water from the mine site could get into streams through runoff or uncollected leachate, even with the use of modern mining practices. It noted culvert blockages or other failures could impede fish passage and failure of a tailings dam, where mining waste is stored, could be catastrophic though the probability of such a failure was considered quite low.

Supporters of the EPA process hoped it would lead the agency to block or limit the project, action they urged again Wednesday; opponents saw it as an example of government overreach and feared it would lead to a pre-emptive veto.

Jason Metrokin, president and CEO of Bristol Bay Native Corp., said the corporation supports “responsible development where it can be done without causing unacceptable risks to the people, cultures and fishing economy of our region. The proposed Pebble mine is not such a project.”

John Shively, the chief executive of the Pebble Limited Partnership, which was created to design, permit and run the mine, called the report rushed and flawed, saying EPA did not take the time or commit the financial resources to fully assess such a large area. In a statement, he said the report is “a poorly conceived and poorly executed study, and it cannot serve as the scientific basis for any decisions concerning Pebble.”

Some see the mine as a way to provide jobs, but others fear it will disrupt or devastate a way of life. A citizens’ initiative scheduled to appear on the August primary ballot would require legislative approval for any large-scale mine in the region.

The Bristol Bay watershed produces about 46 percent of the world’s wild sockeye salmon, and salmon are key to the way of life for two groups of Alaska Natives in the region, Yup’ik Eskimos and the Dena’ina. The report said the response of Native cultures to any mining impacts was unclear, though it could involve more than the need to compensate for lost food and include some degree of cultural disruption.

Jeff Frithsen, a senior scientist and special projects coordinator with EPA, said the Pebble deposit is a low-grade ore deposit, and over 99 percent of the ore taken from the ground will end up as waste. He said the deposit’s location is at the headwaters of two of the watersheds that make up half the Bristol Bay watershed and produce half its sockeye salmon.

He said the existence of a large-scale mining operation there would affect fish habitat and any accidents would add to that. He said any loss of habitat can affect the overall diversity of the fishery habitat in the watershed.

“Changes in the portfolio of streams within the Bristol Bay watershed can reduce the overall reliability and increase the variability of the fishery over time,” he said.

Asked whether EPA believed a mine could co-exist with fish, McLerran said the assessment spoke for itself.

While EPA initiated the review process in response to concerns about the impact of the proposed Pebble Mine on fisheries, the report wasn’t meant to be about a single project.

EPA said the report looks at possible impacts of reasonably foreseeable mining activities in the region. The agency said it drew on a preliminary plan published by Northern Dynasty and consulted with mining experts on reasonable scenarios.

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell said in a statement the report was little more than a pretext for an EPA veto of the state’s permitting process. “As my record demonstrates, I will not trade one resource for another, and every permitting application — when filed — deserves scientific and public scrutiny based on facts, not hypotheticals.”

The Pebble Partnership has called the mine deposit one of the largest of its kind in the world, with the potential of producing 80.6 billion pounds of copper, 107.4 million ounces of gold and 5.6 billion pounds of molybdenum over decades.

While EPA focused on the effects of one mine, the report said several mines could be developed in the watersheds studied, each of which would pose risks similar to those highlighted.

___

Online:

To read the assessment: http://www2.epa.gov/bristolbay

In the Red $8M in 2009, Colville Tribal Federal Corp. Grossed $86M in 2013

Courtesy Colville Tribal Federal Corp.Left to right: CEO Joe Pakootas, Pearline Kirk, Butch Stanger, Lynn Palmanteer-Holder, Susie Marchand, Sneena Brooks, John Sirois, Randy Williams, Debi Condon, Debbie Atuk — Courtesy Colville Tribal Federal Corp.
Left to right: CEO Joe Pakootas, Pearline Kirk, Butch Stanger, Lynn Palmanteer-Holder, Susie Marchand, Sneena Brooks, John Sirois, Randy Williams, Debi Condon, Debbie Atuk

Lynn Armitage

1/15/14 ICTMN.com

By the end of 2009, the tribal business for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in North Central Washington—Colville Tribal Enterprise Corp.—was nearly bankrupt.

Then tribal member Joe Pakootas, the newly hired CEO, took charge, and within a year, he turned an $8.1 million loss into a $2.3 million profit. If you’re doing the math, that’s a turnaround of copy0.4 million in just nine months—a remarkable accomplishment for the tribe’s 25th CEO in 29 years.

According to Pakootas, he did it by cutting costs, eliminating wasteful spending and most significantly, restructuring the business as a federally chartered corporation—the Colville Tribal Federal Corp., or CTFC—under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.

He explained the economic advantages: “When we do business within the boundaries of the reservation on trust property, we are exempt from federal and state taxes.”

But Pakootas hasn’t rested on his laurels one bit. Since his last interview with Indian Country Today Media Network, “Big Turnaround for Colville Tribal Enterprises,” Pakootas and his management team have been busy controlling expenses, diversifying CTFC’s business portfolio and investing in profitable ventures—including two smoke shops, two convenience stores (which generate one-quarter of total revenues) and another casino (the tribe now runs three)—and it has all paid off handsomely, once again.

“The very first year we were in operation, our gross revenues were about $49 million from all of our businesses. This year, our gross revenues were at $86 million, so we almost doubled that in two to three years,” Pakootas explained with great pride. “And our projections for this next year are about copy20 to copy40 million in gross revenues.”

Understandably, the business community has taken notice. CTFC recently won the 2013 William D. Bradford Minority Business of the Year Award. It’s the granddaddy of seven awards given annually by the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business that recognizes a company “that has demonstrated success in areas of revenue, size, superior management practices and commitment to the community.”

“What is most impressive to me is how the tribe and the enterprise leadership have been able to transform their operations following the economic collapse of 2007-2008,” said Michael Verchot, one of the judges and director of the Consulting and Business Development Center at the university’s business school. “They also received high marks for their community impact by employing many tribal members.”

In fact, laying off so many employees during the reorganization was the most difficult part of the job, claimed Pakootas. “It was heart-wrenching to let so many people go—85 percent were tribal members—but it was necessary to improve the business.”

Initially, there was some backlash from the tribe from all the layoffs, according to Pakootas. “But after a while, they understood the reason behind it. Basically, it was the future health of the tribe that we were looking at and the future of our children and grandchildren.”

“Joe has provided invaluable leadership and vision in this transformation and has built a solid and unified vision for CTFC’s future,” said Verchot.

Currently, CTFC employs about 500 people in 13 different businesses that include gaming (the biggest revenue generator), recreation and tourism, retail, construction and wood products—12 which are profitable, and the 13th one, a small electrical company, will be closing this spring.

However, more business development is in the works. “We are looking at developing our own fuel distribution,” because, Pakootas said, CTFC pays a hefty cost right now to have fuel delivered, and there is a lot of money to be saved by doing it themselves.

While the 56-year-old CEO has a lot to be proud of in his four years as head of CFTC, he is quick to share credit with his Board of Directors and managers for the enterprise’s overall success. “We are all Native American, and that makes a real difference because there’s more understanding of our tribe’s cultures and traditions. In the past, many of our policies have been put together by non-Indians.”

As much as Pakootas enjoys working for his tribe, very soon he could be heading down a different path entirely. “I haven’t made a formal announcement yet, but I have filed—and I am a certified candidate—for Congress for the 5th Congressional District here in Washington.”

Running for Congress, he said, will allow him to be a voice for the Native American community and middle-class America, as well—segments of the country that he says face the same difficult issues: poverty, unemployment and poor health care.

Depending upon how the election goes, Pakootas said he may or may not continue with his duties as CEO. “I would like to stay here until some of these operations are going that we are working on right now. I want to make sure that we continue to grow and continue to diversify.”

The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation is a federally recognized tribe located in the state of Washington, and is comprised of 8,700 descendants from 12 aboriginal tribes.

Lynn Armitage is a freelance writer and enrolled member of the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin. She writes the “Spirit of Enterprise” column for ICTMN.