By Micheal Rios, Tulalip News; photos courtesy of Adiya Jones
The 13th annual Native American Basketball Invitation (NABI) tournament, presented by Nike N7, the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the Ak-Chin Indian Community, took place from June 30 thru July 4 in Phoenix, Arizona. NABI has become the largest basketball tournament in the world featuring Native and Indigenous high school youth. This year’s tourney featured 152 teams, totaling 1,600 Native high school-age youth representing teams from all across the United States, Canada and New Zealand. Through NABI, Native American high school athletes are given the opportunity to shine and use their talent to secure college athletic scholarships, while being showcased in front of countless college scouts.
This summer’s tournament featured over 350 games played in three days of pool play and bracket games, with the Gold Division Championship games played at U.S. Airways Center, home of the Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury, on Saturday, July 4. NABI also features a college and career fair, Team Meet & Greet pool party and educational seminars where the high school athletes are taught skills that inspire them to succeed and strive for higher education.
For Tulalip tribal member Adiya Jones, her talents on the basketball court were sought after by Team Nez Perce, the Idaho State Champions from Lapwai, ID. Nez Perce lost in heart breaking fashion in the finals of NABI 2014 and felt that by adding the post presence of Jones they would have enough fire power to win it all this year.
According to Jones, the invitation to play with an all-state championship team was an opportunity she couldn’t refuse. “The Lapwai team have been my rivals in most all-Native tournaments. They’ve always brought out the best in my game when I play against them. Being asked to play with them at NABI was very humbling and would give me a chance to work on my skills while being surrounded with a state champion.”
Not only was Jones playing on the Nez Perce team, but she would be starting at center every tournament game. The combination of speed and outside shooting that separates the Nez Perce girls from their opposition is usually enough to claim victory in any game. Now, with Jones holding down the paint, Nez Perce was the clear favorite to win the Gold Division championship.
Through the first four games of the tournament team Nez Perce, led by Jones, rolled teams in dominant fashion; winning by an average margin of 29 points per game. It wasn’t until the quarter-finals that Nez Perce finally found themselves in a competitive game versus Pueblo Elite. At halftime, the offensive driven Nez Perce, had only managed 7 points and were trailing 7-11.
“It was 112 degrees outside and we were playing our 2nd game in a gym with no A/C,” says Jones, who attributes the team’s poor first half to the tough to play in conditions. “We were super tired, but at halftime we had the chance to rehydrate, sit down, and catch our breath finally.”
Following halftime, Nez Perce would go on to outscore their opponents 31-16 in the 2nd half and claimed a 38-27 victory. Things wouldn’t get any easier for the now battle-tested Nez Perce, as they would have to play their semi-final game in less than two hours. The game would be another highly contested battle, but Nez Perce would prevail 40-33 and get a night’s rest before their championship game versus Cheyenne Arapaho.
The Championship game was held at U.S. Airways Center, home of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, July 4. It featured two undefeated squads in Nez Perce and Cheyenne Arapaho who were both 7-0 to this point.
As detailed by Jones, “our final game was such a good game. It was so close the whole time, with neither team taking more than a 4 or 5 point lead. It was the only game we played that I had doubts if we’d be able to pull out the win because Cheyenne just looked like they wanted it more. With like 2:00 to play we finally managed a little run and took a 6 point lead, but then Cheyenne pushed the tempo on us and we were really tired so it worked. They went up 2 points with barely any time remaining. We called a timeout, drew up a play, and were fortunate to execute the play perfectly. Cayla Jones made a game-tying basket right before the final buzzer to tie it up.”
The clutch basket by Nez Perce forced a 3-minute overtime period in the final game of the tourney. Nez Perce would ride that momentum in the extra period and earned a hard fought 78-75 victory to claim the Gold Division Championship. For her stellar tournament play, averaging a stat line of 18 points, 9 rebounds and 7 blocks, Adiya Jones was awarded tournament MVP.
“I was shocked. Extremely thankful, but shocked more than anything. There were so many good girls there,” says Jones. “My MVP and our tournament Championship is all do to the team chemistry we had. There were several scouts who commented on how good we looked playing together, they thought we had been playing together for years, but this was my first time playing with this team. They made me feel super comfortable in their system and it really showed in my performance. It was definitely the highest level of play I’ve been a part of and the best competition I’ve gotten from a tournament.
“Overall, NABI was such a great experience for me. Off the court I was able to sit down and talk to basketball mentors A.C. Green, 3x NBA Champion, and Kenny Dobbs, world renowned slam-dunk champion. Their words were so inspiring, just hearing them talk of their trials and tribulations…their motivational speeches to us. After the tourney was over I had college coaches and scouts give me their contact information. We’ve had some back and forth via email already and, hopefully, now there are some potential opportunities available for me to play college ball.”
On Saturday, July 18, Seattle’s KeyArena was home to the WNBA’s Seattle Storm second annual ‘Native American Heritage Night’, as the Storm hosted the Atlanta Dream and their Native all-star guard Shoni Schimmel. For the second straight year, KeyArena reported a sellout crowd of 9,686 fans against the Atlanta Dream thanks in large part to the growing popularity of Schimmel to urban tribal youth. The sellout crowd was made up primarily of Native American tribes from all over the Pacific Northwest who journeyed to Seattle to root for Schimmel. In fact, every time Shoni “Sho-Time” Schimmel came into the game or had her name announced, the crowd went wild with excitement and joy.
Schimmel, a 5-foot-9 guard, is a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and was raised on the reservation just outside Pendleton, Oregon. Many fans in the building wore her image on t-shirts and waved homemade signs celebrating Schimmel. The fan base even helped vote her to next week’s All-Star Game as a starter, but Schimmel is far from the player who last year became the first rookie to win the game’s MVP honor.
Schimmel’s popularity among Native Americans has made her one of the more recognizable names in the WNBA, and nowhere is her popularity on greater display than in her annual trip to Seattle. Fans from as far away as the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana made the journey to Seattle just to watch her play.
Photo/Micheal Rios
Prior to the game, Schimmel spoke on the tremendous outpouring of support she receives on the west coast.
“It’s a bunch of support out there, especially in Seattle. There’s a lot of people coming out there because it’s the closest to home I get to play. My whole family has traveled to Seattle to watch me play, it’s going to be special for me.”
The Tulalip Youth Services department seized the opportunity of ‘Native American Heritage Night’ to provide a fun and exciting activity for our tribal youth. Over one hundred tickets were purchased and given to youth who showed on Saturday afternoon at the Don Hatch Teen Center, where they were then transported via shuttle bus to Seattle’s Key Arena.
According to Shawn Sanchey, Youth Services Activity Specialist, the youth were abuzz all week about the chance to see Shoni play in person.
“The kids all know who Shoni is and the excitement was building all week leading up to the game. A lot of it has to do with her being Native and growing up on a reservation. It helps a lot for the kids to see someone with a similar background succeed on the professional level, she inspires them. They really like her and look up to her,” said Sanchey.
Photo/Micheal Rios
The Storm got off to a scorching start, outscoring the Dream 27-16 in the first quarter. By halftime, the Storm had torched the befuddled Dream for 48 first-half points and took a 48-33 lead to the locker room. All those Shoni fans in attendance were given a very lackluster 1st half performance, as she hadn’t even attempted a field goal.
In keeping with the Native theme of the night, the Storm provided a half-time entertainment consisting of pow-wow dancers and drummers from the Chief Seattle Club, Young Society, and Northwest Tribal Dancers.
After Seattle went ahead by 19 points to start the 4th quarter, Schimmel, who had been held scoreless to that point, finally got in rhythm and displayed why she’s called “Sho-Time”. She recorded all eight of points, two of her three rebounds, and one monstrous block that sent the crowd into a short frenzy during the final quarter. The biggest cheer was when she hit her first 3-pointer with 3:59 left in the game. Her late game efforts come up short though, as the Storm would go onto claim victory after scoring a season high 86 points.
Following the game, many of the fans who came to see Shoni remained in their seats after it was announced she would be addressing the crowd and signing autographs. In her post-game interview, Schimmel took to the mic to talk to the all-Native crowd and thanked them for their support. She was asked about the hundreds of young Native American girls in the stand who idolize her and what message she wanted to send to them.
“I never thought I would be in the WNBA, but here I am. Follow your dreams! Look at me now, this little Native girl from Oregon playing professional basketball.”
A Riverton, Wyoming man reportedly broke into a detox center over the weekend and shot two sleeping men in the head, killing one, because he was tired of cleaning up after homeless people.
The Associated Press reported that Roy Clyde, a 32-year-old city parks employee, was resentful of the homeless people he has to clean up after as part of his daily duties.
Riverton Police Department spokesman Capt. Eric Murphy told the AP that Clyde snuck into the Center of Hope recovery facility and shot the two men as they slept. Clyde is a 13-year city employee and was apparently acting out of rage at people known as “park rangers,” Native Americans who leave nearby Wind River Indian Reservation — where drinking is illegal — to drink in the city’s public parks.
“(B)asically he was angry at that, and that’s what precipitated him to go and do this violent act,” Murphy said.
After shooting the men, Clyde called police on himself and surrendered when they arrived, not far from Center of Hope.
Murphy told the AP that neither of the two victims nor anyone else at Center of Hope is currently homeless. The recovery center specializes in detox and addiction therapy and serves recovering people from all walks of life.
Wind River Reservation is home to both Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone Native Americans. A spokesperson for the reservation said that both of the shooting victims were Northern Arapaho.
Clyde told police that he was specifically targeting “park rangers” and would have gunned down anyone he met who matched that description, but that whether they were white or Native American was immaterial.
Murphy told the AP that police bring all kinds of people with substance abuse problems to Center of Hope.
“They have different levels of treatment,” he said. “If they encounter somebody who’s intoxicated, they can take them there for the evening until they sober up.”
Prosecutor Patrick LeBrun argued for no bond in the case on Monday, accusing Clyde of going “hunting for people.”
BISMARCK, N.D. | State and federal officials in the Dakotas are working with a Native American reservation that straddles the two states’ border on a unique project to reduce the number of released felons who return to a life of crime.
Officials cite a lack of services and jobs as big reasons for recidivism on the Standing Rock Reservation. The Multijurisdictional Re-entry Services Team hopes to come up with a blueprint for addressing those problems.
The team includes federal prosecutors from both states, state corrections and tribal relations officials, and Sioux tribe officials.
Possible measures include identifying employers on and off the reservation who would be willing to hire convicted felons, identifying housing resources and establishing American Indian mentors.
Officials say the effort eventually could be used as a model by other tribes.
About a dozen Native American extras walked off the film’s set in April, criticizing passages in the script as offensive.
by The Associated Press
Adam Sandler feels that when audiences finally see his upcoming Netflix comedy, The Ridiculous Six, they will realize he wasn’t trying to offend anyone.
The spoof takes its name from the Western classic The Magnificent Seven and pokes fun at the genre. But not everyone found it funny.
Earlier this year, a group of Native American actors walked off the New Mexico film set over complaints that content in the film was offensive to their culture. The actors objected over the vile names of some of the characters, as well as a Native American woman urinating while smoking a peace pipe.
“It was just a misunderstanding and once the movie is out will be cleared up,” Sandler told theAssociated Press on Saturday on the red carpet for the world premiere of his new film, Pixels.
Sandler called The Ridiculous Six 100 percent pro-American Indian.
U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran has nearly $30,000 from 12 different American Indian tribes since January in support of his re-election bid.
Moran, a Hays Republican who was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, received $1.43 million from January through June for his re-election campaign, according to his most recent filing with the Federal Election Commission. So far $1,000 of that has come from Kansas’ Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation.
Moran has also received money from Oklahoma’s Chickasaw Nation; Louisiana’s Tunica-Biloxi Tribe; Washington State’s Puyallup Tribe of Indians, Snoqualmie Tribe and Lummi Indian Business Council; Arizona’s Gila River Indian Community; California’s Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians, Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation and Shingle Springs Band Miwok Indians; Alabama’s Poarch Band of Creek Indians; and New York’s Seneca Nation of Indians.
The donations from the various tribes add up to $29,700.
The support from the tribes shouldn’t come as a surprise. Moran, a member of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, has championed legislation to strengthen the autonomy of tribal governments in recent years.
He co-sponsored the Tribal General Welfare Exclusion Act, which broadened tax exemptions for tribes and was signed into law in 2014. He has also sponsored and pushed for the Tribal Labor Sovereignty Act, which would have exempted tribal governments from the National Labor Relations Act.
“These Native American tribes are part of a diverse group of individuals and organizations who support Senator Moran – including Kansans in each of our state’s 105 counties,” Moran for Kansas spokeswoman Elizabeth Patton said in an e-mailed statement.
Moran has also received money from Kansas born billionaire Phillip Anschutz and his wife, Nancy, for $2,700 each. Anschutz, a native of Russell and alum of the University of Kansas, helped found Major League Soccer.
Charles Koch, CEO of Koch Industries, gave Moran $2,700. His son, Chase Koch, president of Koch Fertilizer, and Chase’s wife, Anna, also each gave Moran $2,700.
Moran’s most recent report also includes contributions from state Rep. Mark Hutton, R-Wichita, who gave $2,700, and Kansas Secretary of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism Robin Jennison, who gave $1,000.
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/prairie-politics/article27927961.html#storylink=cpy
OPINION: The Affordable Care Act continues to evolve and improve, but more important, as more states expand Medicaid, they add real dollars to the Indian health system. 401(K)2013 / cc via flickr
These days “new” money is hard to find. That’s the kind of money that’s added to a budget, money that allows programs to expand, try out new ideas, and look for ways to make life better. Most government budgets are doing the opposite: Shrinking. Calling on program managers and clients alike to do more with less.
That’s why the news from Alaska last week is so exciting: Alaska’s new governor announced the expansion of Medicaid and this will significantly boost money for the Alaska Native medical system. Indeed, the significance of this announcement to the Indian health system was clear when Gov. Bill Walker and Department of Health and Social Services Commissioner Valerie Davidson made the announcement at the Alaska Native Medical Center on July 16. The governor took this action using executive authority because the Alaska Legislature had failed to even vote on legislation to accept Medicaid.
The governor says Medicaid expansion would reduce state spending by $6.6 million in the first year, and save over $100 million in state general funds in the first six years. “Every day that we fail to act, Alaska loses out on $400,000,” the governor said. “With a nearly $3 billion budget deficit, it would be foolish for us to pass up that kind of boost to Alaska’s economy.”
“We know Gov. Walker has worked tirelessly to expand Medicaid since he came into office on December first,” Davidson said at the news conference. It was one of the campaign promises made by the independent governor. “He included it in the budget. He introduced a bill both in the House and in the Senate side. It was a subject of both special sessions. And, it’s the right thing do do for Alaska.”
The expansion of Medicaid is one of key components of the Affordable Care Act. It’s critical a tool for the Indian Health System because it opens up a revenue channel for clinics and hospitals to bill Medicaid, a third-party insurance, for services. That boosts budgets at the local level, in a political climate where Congress is unlikely to spend more money on Indian health. How big a number? More than a million American Indians and Alaska Natives are now insured by Medicaid. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated in 2013 that Indian health facilities collected $943 million in third-party payments.
“By far the largest third-party payer is Medicaid, which accounts for $683 million or 70 percent of total third-party revenues, and 13 percent of total IHS program funding for FY2013,” Kaiser reported. Nearly 150,000 Alaska Natives and American Indians receive health services across the state from tribal and nonprofit health organizations funded by the Indian Health Service. By law IHS-funded clinics must seek third-party billing from patients, such as Medicaid, the Veterans Administration or private, employer-based health insurance.
Medicaid is an odd program for Indian country. Most of us understand the IHS to be the government’s fulfillment of its treaty obligations. However the agency has never been fully funded. Medicaid, however, is an unlimited check. If a person is eligible, then the money is there. Yet states, not tribes nor the federal government, determine the rules for Medicaid. And many Republican states have been determined to fight the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” at every turn, and that means refusing to accept Medicaid expansion (the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that states could turn it down).
Alaska’s decision means the number of states rejecting Medicaid is continuing to shrink. Most recently, Montana agreed to expand Medicaid in April. The states with large American Indian and Alaska Native populations that have not expanded Medicaid include Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Maine, Wyoming, and Idaho. Utah is the next state considering an expansion.
The Affordable Care Act continues to evolve — and improve. But more important, steps that states are taking to expand Medicaid are adding real dollars to the Indian health system.
Mark Trahant is an independent journalist and a member of The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. He served two terms as the Atwood Chair of Journalism at the University of Alaska Anchorage. For updated posts, download the free Trahant Reports smartphone and tablet app.
The views expressed here are the writer’s own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, emailcommentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.
The Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation, an American Indian tribe of 3,000 members, filed a civil-rights action lawsuit in federal court against the state and Gov. Chris Christie’s administration Monday.
The tribe alleges that between 1980 and 1982, the state officially recognized it and two other tribes in New Jersey as American Indian tribes, confirming that recognition through numerous actions and subsequent decades, but the Christie administration is attempting to rescind the state’s recognition.
The tribe also alleges in the lawsuit that the state is motivated by an irrational, stereotype-driven fear of an Indian casino. But the tribe’s charter and religious tenets expressly prohibit gaming.
State recognition plays no role in securing federal gaming rights, and the tribe has never sought such rights during 33 years of state recognition, according to the full complaint.
The lawsuit, filed by Washington, D.C., law firm Cultural Heritage Partners, PLLC and New Jersey law firm Barry, Corrado Grassi, PC, alleges that the state’s position regarding the tribe’s status is causing “extensive damage” to tribal members of all ages.
The suit say the tribe faces the imminent loss of dozens of jobs, withdrawal of federal economic development grants, college scholarships, and the revocation of its ability to label the arts and crafts produced by its 40 professional artisans as “American Indian made.”
“They are denying the way we exist,” said Mark Gould, tribal chairman and principal chief of the tribe. “Our people have been an integral part of this region for thousands of years.”
The Governor’s Office did not respond to calls for comment Monday evening.
The Lenape tribe are not recognized as a tribe by the federal government, only by the state. Taking away state recognition would cost health grants for the tribe, many of whose members battle diabetes, Gould said.
The loss of state recognition would also cost the Lenape nearly $260,000 yearly from items labeled “American Indian made,” $600,000 in health grants from the federal government, $650,000 per year in tribal employment, and about $7.8 million from their company, NLT Enterprises, since the company was formed a decade ago, the lawsuit says.
The tribe’s lawyer, Greg Werkheiser, said the withdrawal of recognition injures an already vulnerable community based on a racial stereotype that all tribes want casinos. Gaming has only been available to American tribes since October 1988, when the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was enacted.
Werkheiser has filed eight counts against the state and Christie’s administration.
“They are saying they don’t exist. Imagine what that does economically — not only psychologically,” he said. “Without due process, (this) violates federal and state civil-rights laws. While the rest of the country is having an adult conversation about racial reconciliation, the administration in New Jersey is pretending select minorities out of existence.”
“We are entitled to fair and proper treatment by the state, and to confirmation of our long-held status as a state-recognized tribe,” Gould said.
In 2001, the tribe sued a private citizen who claimed to have his own, new constituted tribe, and the Lenape stopped him from implying association with them and pursuing gaming rights, the lawsuit says.
Since then, the tribe believed, the earliest attempt by the state officials to undermine the tribes’ state-recognized status was a letter written by the Division of Gaming Enforcement in 2001 during the pendency of the lawsuit by the private citizen against the state for a land claim.
The federal Indian Arts and Crafts Board sent its standard inquiry to the state Commission on American Indian Affairs asking for any additions to the state’s list of recognized tribes. Before the commission replied, the state’s Division of Gaming Enforcement intervened, asserting New Jersey has no state-recognized tribes.
The lawsuit says Christie’s admininstration stopped communicating with the tribe for months, and ultimately told the Lenape it would do nothing to resolve the matter.
ROLLA, Missouri — The paperwork for Southern Cherokee’s application to become a federally recognized Native American tribe weighed 79 pounds. Members divided the forms into three boxes, posed for a picture, and shipped them to Washington for $105, plus $12.90 for a signature upon delivery. More materials, 26 boxes of genealogies and family trees, will soon follow.
“It’s going to open some eyes,” said Steve Matthews, the group’s leader.
Fifteen years ago, members of the Southern Cherokee Indian Tribe — the group’s official name — began researching their ancestry and heritage. Finally, after years of compiling materials, in early May of this year, the group’s 484 members reached the end of the first step of the tribal recognition process.
Also called the acknowledgment process, it determines who is or isn’t a Native American tribe in the eyes of the federal government. Being granted tribal status gives a group access to federal funds, to the legal processes to obtain land and water rights, to tribal sovereignty, or self-governance, and to the right to define what indigenousness means.
Although there is no universally agreed-upon opinion about federal recognition, benefits do include an immediate financial infusion. Through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the New Tribes Program gives tribes with fewer than 1,700 members $160,000 a year for a period of three years.
If the Southern Cherokee receive federal aid, Matthews said, they would use it to address health problems within the community, and to fund heritage preservation and education. But unless they are federally recognized, they’ll never see a dime — and even under new regulations, which went into effect on June 29, it could take years before that happens.
In Missouri, there are nearly 30,000 American Indian and Alaska Natives, according to the 2010 Census. Although some belong to federal and state-recognized tribes, none of these groups are legally headquartered in Missouri. If their paperwork is approved, the Southern Cherokee Indian Tribe could become the first one. The only question is whether their story will stand up to scrutiny.
Hiding History
Traces of Missouri’s first peoples are scattered throughout the state. Osage Beach, a town on Lake of the Ozarks, was named after the Osage Indians before they were edged into Oklahoma. Chillicothe, a 10,000-person town in northwest Missouri now perhaps more famous as the home of sliced bread, was named after the Shawnee, who had their own “chillicothe,” or big town, nearby. The name of the state itself is indebted to the Missouria Indians.
Many Native groups fear fading away without federal support, but the Rolla group has held on for decades without it. Fearing persecution from the state and the bigger Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, with whom it has long-standing disagreements, the group’s ancestors would meet in secret in one another’s homes, Matthews said. Charles Wilcox, a barber and Southern Cherokee member, said that when he was young, his mother would tell him and his siblings to hide whenever someone came to the house unexpectedly. When he would ask her how much Indian heritage he and his siblings had, she would always respond, “just a little,” Wilcox said. “And she was a full-blood.”
When Wilcox and Matthews’ generation decided to take up the cause of recognition, their parents didn’t like it. Some were wary that just being a member of a tribe might mean that they would all be relocated to Oklahoma.
Guidelines and reform
The majority of the 566 tribes officially recognized in the U.S. never had to go through the recognition process. Their origins were established long ago via policy decisions, lawsuits and treaties with the government. Those who have gone through the process have often found it, as the Southern Cherokee do, monumental, overwhelming and expensive.
From 1978, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs implemented its previous standard, to this year, when the new system was put into place, there were 316 petitioners. Only 51 managed to complete the application, and just 17 were “acknowledged as an Indian tribe within the meaning of Federal law.” The other 34 were denied. Even tribes with documented historical lineages have taken decades to be acknowledged: The Mashpee Wampanoag, who greeted the Pilgrims in Massachusetts in 1620, waited 29 years before they were federally recognized in 2007.
The new guidelines will make it easier to obtain recognition. Under the revised criteria, only 80 percent of a group’s members have to be descendants of a historical tribe (instead of 100 percent); and only 30 percent need to maintain an active community (instead of a “predominant portion”). Tribes that have already been rejected won’t be able to re-petition. Luckily for the Southern Cherokee, the new standards will not force groups currently in the middle of the process to start over.
Not everyone is pleased about the reforms. Some politicians fear incursion from the casino industry if more petitioners are acknowledged. Then there are financial limitations: the more tribes there are, the less the federal government can assist each one. Recognized tribes also worry about diluting tribal sovereignty and the meaning of being Native. Principal Chief Bill John Baker of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, for example, worries that groups with “loose citizenship requirements” might have an easier time becoming tribes. Baker, like many tribal leaders, fears imposter groups may undermine the power and legitimacy of recognized tribes.
In evaluating candidates, the BIA uses a three-person team that includes a historian, a genealogist and an anthropologist. To be recognized, a group must satisfy seven mandatory criteria, including the tricky stipulation that petitioners show they have maintained community and political authority since 1900 to the present. For this reason, approving the Southern Cherokee in Rolla may be difficult. There are three other “Southern Cherokee” petitioners in different states, and the BIA frowns on what it calls “splinter groups.”
Differences between the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the Southern Cherokee, for example, are reflected in the records they use to evaluate members — preferring certain records over others means privileging a specific interpretation of the past. For Cherokee Nation, the Dawes Rolls, which were kept from 1898 to 1914, are the most important. Signing the Rolls was necessary to receive a land allotment during a period when the federal government was attempting to break up reservations. Members of the Southern Cherokee, Matthews is proud to say, never joined the 101,000 Dawes signatories. Instead, Southern Cherokee membership is based on the Tompkins Roll, a census of Cherokee living in Oklahoma in 1867, and on the muster rolls of Stand Watie, a Civil War brigadier general who is viewed as one of their founding leaders.
Still, these records don’t clarify what makes a tribe and when exactly a new one forms.
For example, several Southern Cherokee groups claim the 1834 Treaty of New Echota, which led to the Trail of Tears, as their founding document.
The treaty was signed by Major Ridge, a minority leader in the Cherokee tribe, amid pressure from the federal government to sell Cherokee land in what is now Northwest Georgia and parts of the southeast. The treaty deeply angered Cherokee Principal Chief John Ross and his followers, who had wanted to sell the land for a better price. This led to deep divisions between the groups, and after both resettled in Oklahoma, members of the Ross Party began to attack the Ridge Party and assassinate some of its leadership. When the Civil War came, Stand Watie, a confidant of Ridge, formed a military regiment and fought for the South, which is where the Southern Cherokee get their name. After the war, Steve Matthews said, some Southern Cherokee families moved to Missouri to escape Ross Party violence.
The complexities of histories like this, and the BIA’s reluctance to acknowledge them, are why many Native people are frustrated with what they see as a narrow recognition process. “We’re not any better or worse than the federally recognized groups,” said Robert Caldwell, a member of the Choctaw-Apache in Ebarb, Louisiana, which has not been officially recognized by the federal government. “We’re just different.”
Looking ahead
The Rolla Cherokee hold meetings once a month at the Elks Lodge a little south of town. On a cold night last February only one door was unlocked. It opened into a long white hall with a disco ball and a drum set at one end, and a mounted deer head at the other.
They spend a lot of time here reviewing birth and death records to trace individual members’ lineages back to their rolls. Other records — from letters to signatures in Bibles — are scrounged from handed-down papers and official repositories. The group’s journal, which Steve Matthews kept from 1976 through 2004, will also help establish their history, but the Rolla Cherokee will try to bolster their claims with anything relevant they can find. No one knows if they have enough material.
With the first part of their application finished, raising money to send the other 26 boxes of genealogies and ancestral charts is now the biggest challenge. All that weight is expensive, but they hope to send it in a month or so.
When asked what’s driving them, Steve Matthews replied, “We couldn’t tell our kids we didn’t try.”
The Dakotan sky is starting to blacken: “Something bad is coming this way; that wind came out of nowhere; something’s wrong, something’s very wrong,” a voice behind me warns. It’s almost midnight at the Rosebud Sioux Tribe’s “Spirit Camp” and the winds in the middle of the Great Plains are gusting alarmingly fast. “Are we OK out here?,” I shout above the flapping tents and flying debris, suddenly concerned that five teepees won’t give much shelter against the oncoming storm. The reassurance I am looking for is not forthcoming: “A prayer wouldn’t go amiss.”
In the Sioux’s Lakota mythology, Taku Skanskan, master of the four winds, is the herald of change (and of chaos). And on the first anniversary of this camp, built in opposition to the planned Keystone XL oil pipeline, its future is up in the air. Quite literally: by morning four of the five tents will lie shredded on the ground, and one camp member will be in hospital.
The proposed pipeline, or “Black Snake” as the Sioux call it, creeps ever closer. To Transcanada, the corporation behind it, these 1,179 miles of pipeline offer the most efficient method of connecting Canadian tar sands with oil refineries on the Gulf Coast. In Washington, it has become a political football, with Barack Obama vetoing a bill authorising the project in January. But big oil interests haven’t given up. Neither have Republicans, who have made building the pipeline a priority since taking control of Congress in last Autumn’s midterm elections. The assumption is that at some point it will be built.
“We’re protecting the future; for the people who can’t speak for themselves” – Gary Dorr, from the Nez Perce Tribe, Idaho.
Some suggest that its construction will make little difference to either job-creation, or to the overall extent of tar sands exploitation. For those who live in the pipeline’s path, however, it could change everything. None more so than the Native American tribes in South Dakota: perhaps America’s most downtrodden and overridden community.
To the Rosebud Sioux, the pipeline’s threat strikes deep. Its route, they argue, poses an untenable risk to their water supply. The lack of consultation from Transcanada is an affront to their ancient rights. Its exploitation of tar sands is an environmental curse on us all. In the words of their spiritual leader, Leonard Crow Dog (“God-Worcs”), such a pipeline would not just pollute the earth but risk leaving an entire generation “sterilised in their minds and in the conscience of their souls”.
For the last year therefore, a dedicated group of tribes-people have taken part in a continuous stakeout. Nestled within the sweeping Dakotan plains, at one of the few points where the pipeline would run near Indian land, lies a small circle of five white teepees. Only in America would the nearest named location to somewhere so remote be a place called “Ideal”. But to many anti-pipeline activists across the region – and the world – this unlikely camp has become just that: the ideal emblem of their fight.
It’s a responsibility that that weighs heavily on one of the spirit camp’s founders, Russell Eagle Bear (pictured above). After 365 days of ensuring that the camp stayed occupied – through wind, and cold, and heat, and spiders (“Oh my God the spiders!”) – he seems tired out. With furrowed brow and slow words, he explains the personal cost of keeping up the battle:
“There were times when we only had one person sitting out here… and now we’re at a time when I would like to think that we need a breather because it’s been an ongoing struggle I tell you; I get criticised all the time, I get threatened all the time.”
Some say he should personally have spent more time at the camp. Others that the camp should be taking the fight more literally:
“There are many, many people that come here who want us to pick up guns; y’know the pipeline hasn’t even started and yet they want me to sit out here with guns and things!”
Sometimes he feels as if he’s dealing with “big babies”. Yet he is also the first to acknowledge the personal transformations the camp has brought about for many from the community. Leota Eastman-Ironcloud describes her experience as nothing short of a “re-birth”. “She was here from day one,” Eagle Bear says with a fatherly pride. “Of course she has to go home and wash clothes and take care of business but she was constantly out here. And for a Lakota woman to stand up and defend us on our tribal land, that’s awesome; that’s so awesome it’s beyond words.”
Leota’s life has not been an easy one. Like many on the reservation where she was born and raised her three children, she has been touched by the hardship which characterizes Rosebud life. Located in the nation’s second poorest county, unemployment here hovers near 80 per cent and life expectancy is around 30 years lower than the American average. It’s a situation in which drug abuse, diabetes and alcoholism are rife, and suicide is epidemic. At breakfast one teenager turns up fresh from a night in the reservation’s jail. He’d been caught driving before the term of his drink-driving ban had ended. But he’s surprisingly buoyant: today marks a year of staying sober – a resolution made the day the tents went up.
This kind of reaction was an ambition for the camp’s founders from the start. From the outset, the Rosebuds’ response to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline has been resolutely spiritual. “[Our elders] say that with prayer you can stop this thing,” Eagle Bear explains. It’s a decision that seems to have worked on a number of levels. One member even believes it has helped keep the anti-terrorism agencies at arm’s length, though says she can still “hear them click on and off when I call my grandmother”.
Paula Antoine, chair person of the Oyate Wahacanka Woecun – Shielding the People, a project of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.
Yet the camp’s symbolic power is turning in a new direction. Pipeline opponents across the country are increasingly being drawn into lengthy legal challenges – the Rosebud included. ‘We’re here to pray and we’ll continue doing that,” Eagle Bear assures the audience at the anniversary celebrations, “but we have to take that next step and deal with it in a legal way; using their courts, their laws and their courtrooms… We have the ability to do that as tribal people because this is our aboriginal land; this is our treaty land; this is our reservation boundary land”.
At a hearing commencing on 27 July, alongside three neighbouring tribal nations as well as the Dakota Rural Action and Bold Nebraska activist groups, the Rosebud will challenge TransCanada’s attempt to renew its state permit for the pipeline’s construction. Their argument focuses on what they deem to be an unacceptable threat to the region’s water supply. In particular, they cite the risk a spill would pose to the tribes’ own Mni Wiconi water pipeline, as well as to the vast Ogallala Aquifer (an underground system that currently supplies around two million people with clean water).
If this challenge fails, however, the tribes are readying themselves for an even bigger fight. This could involve a lawsuit against Transcanada and, if needed, the federal government itself. Gary Dorr of the Nez Perce Tribe in Idaho, explains that the threat to the water pipeline is “an infringement” of the tribes’ historic rights. Jen Baker, a Colorado-based lawyer who works with the Oglala Sioux Tribe, agrees: “It would be a violation of the federal trust responsibility to tribes for the federal government to allow that.”
Such a lawsuit would demand recognition of something called “treaty rights”. According to Dallas Goldtooth from the Indigenous Environmental Network, these rights “represent the acknowledgment that our tribal nations are more than just a ethnic minority; that we have inalienable rights to determine not only what happens to our people but also to mother earth”.
Under a peace treaty with the federal government in 1868, Sioux lands were defined in a vast swathe stretching from the Missouri River in Montana to Big Horn in Nebraska. Certain Native American rights to that land were enshrined in this treaty. Events of the twentieth century saw this territory increasingly divided into smaller, separate, reservations – with the land in between becoming the property of the state. Many argue, however, that native rights over this vacated land were not included in the transfer. Thus, although Transcanada has tried its best to route the pipeline around today’s reservations, it still passes directly over land said to be held “in trust”, on behalf of the Native American peoples.
Spiritual leader Leonard Crow Dog prepares for prayer.
There are many within the Rosebud community who know too well how far this trust has been abused over the years. Forty years ago, 76-year-old Leonard Crow Dog found himself sentenced for his political involvement with the American Indian Movement: “I fought for Indian rights and I went to penitentiary. I was sentenced for 23 years: scary,” he reminisces. The glee that the new understanding of Treaty Rights gives him, however, is tangible: “Lot of us didn’t know we owned all this land – we thought we owned Rosebud right there – now we have [rights across] millions of acres!”
Getting these rights recognized in court will be far from easy. Already the Rosebud are pressed to meet their legal defence needs and bring in expert witnesses. Just the other week it was ruled that testimony on tar-sand exploitation’s impact on climate change will not be allowed during the scheduled hearing next month, removing that element of their challenge.
There is some precedent for success though. In the early 1980s, the United States government acknowledged that the seizure of Black Hills territory violated the 1868 treaty. “They offered a money settlement to the tribal nations”, Goldtooth explains, but the tribes refused to take it: ‘“No we’re not going to take your blood money” they say, “We want the Black Hills back’’’.
Whether their challenge to Keystone XL stands or falls, arguments for a greater recognition of treaty rights look set to stay. From opposition to uranium mining and fracking to challenging the “unnecessary” placement of Native American children with white American foster families, many see the pipeline as “just the start” of a much wider battle.
It is one that could forge alliances not just across tribes, but countries. “We as native peoples have to get together now,” Eagle Bear exclaims. “Half a million native Mexicans up here with us – now wouldn’t that be something!”
Keith Fielder, Rosebud Sioux Tribe archeological monitor, surveys the wreckage after the storm.
Back at the camp, work is underway to rebuild after the storm. Despite the growing pressure the legal fight will put on people’s time and funds, the decision has been taken to keep the camp in operation, and to keep spirituality central to their cause.
During the day’s speeches, I admit I’d found the emphasis on prayer a little heavy. Yet lying in the dark that night, winds screaming above me, that scepticism thinned out. By the time I was helping clear up the debris the next morning it had gone. For many in this region the spirits, like the camp and the great Ogallala reservoir, are a connection that binds. “Even today, when you get that little soft wind, that’s the spirits responding, showing themselves; they’re coming through here,” Eagle Bear tells me. “It is a powerful time.” Taking on the power of Big Oil in America is no mean feat. The answer, perhaps, really is blowing in the wind.
