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Treasury issues tax guidance on per cap payments

Guidance Provides Significant Clarity, Incorporates Feedback from Tribal Nations

By US Treasury Media Release

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued interim guidance this week regarding per capita distributions made to members of Indian tribes from funds held in trust by the Secretary of the Interior. In response to feedback from tribal nations, the guidance clarifies that, generally, these per capita payments will not be subject to federal income tax.

Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy Mark J. Mazur will be speaking about the per capita guidance, tax-exempt bond options available to tribes, and other tribal tax initiatives during the National Congress of American Indians 2014 Executive Council Winter Session tomorrow.

“Today’s notice provides uniform, clear guidance regarding the tax treatment of per capita distributions of tribal trust assets,” said Assistant Secretary Mazur. “This announcement and our ongoing tribal consultation process underscore the Administration’s commitment to understanding and addressing the issues facing the Native American community.”

The Department of the Interior is responsible for holding in trust certain funds on behalf of federally recognized Indian tribes. Under the Per Capita Act of 1983, tribes are authorized to make per capita distributions from these trust accounts directly to tribal members subject to the approval of the Department of Interior. In September 2012, Treasury and the IRS released guidance on per capita distributions from specific settlements, and have since received requests to address the tax treatment of per capita payments more broadly.

While developing this guidance, Treasury convened listening sessions and other consultations to facilitate a government-to-government dialogue between the federal government and tribes, and to understand key tribal concerns.

Treasury and IRS are issuing this notice as interim guidance to allow Indian tribes time to review and provide feedback by September 17, 2014. Based on these comments, we will consider revisions before issuing a final notice.

For the Per Capita Distributions notice, click here.

Promised land: Chicago’s Native Americans wait on federal money pledged for social services

By Caroline Cataldo, Medill Reports Chicago

Dorene Wiese operates under the assumption that when she sees a community need, she fills it.

As director of the American Indian Association of Illinois, Wiese runs a youth tutoring program, a GED prep course, a museum and a college from the basement of a Rogers Park church. The children and adults who enter the doors are enrolled members of one of 566 Native American tribes — including Navajo, Lakota, Crow and Blackfoot — recognized by the U.S. government. Wiese, like the majority of Chicago’s Native Americans, belongs to the Ojibwe tribe (Northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, and Canada).

Wiese says problems of poverty, identity and cultural preservation for natives living in Chicago are no different than the difficulties seen on reservations. But, she explains, there is one major difference:

“When you don’t have a job on the reservation, you live with your extended family members,” Wiese says. “When you don’t have a job on Chicago, you are homeless, you live on the streets.”

In February, the federal government admitted neglecting to honor treaties to pay for native social service agencies for decades, leaving a $3 billion debt. As of this year, the government has pledged to honor its commitment going forward. Distributed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to cover education, health care and other social service programs, “contract support costs” historically were funneled to organizations on reservations. This year, the bureau asked for $231 million to pay for running these social service agencies..

But, even as an exclusively native, non-profit in an urban, off-reservation setting, the American Indian Association of Illinois, like others, does not see a penny. Calls to the bureau to explain funding discrepancies were not returned.

This lack of explanation is the problem, advocates say.

As a prominent member of the Chicago Native American community, Wiese wonders why, as enrolled tribal members, organizations like hers doesn’t benefit from this money. In fact, 99 percent of these social service dollars only serve 22 percent of Native Americans — who live on reservations. However, 78 percent of Native Americans in the U.S. live off reservation land, according to the 2010 Census.

“I’ve asked some of the best Indian legal minds in the country about what a tribe is if not the membership, and how is it the tribes do not have to serve their off-reservation citizens?” Wiese says.

No one seems to have an answer.

John Laukaitis, an education professor at North Park University, has spent the past few decades studying urban Native American education. He says, like most of the issues surrounding native populations on and off reservations today, this disparity must be understood through a progression of history.

In the early 1950s, the U.S. government began offering Native Americans living on reservations incentives to move to urban centers like Chicago, Laukaitis said. They were told jobs would be waiting for them, allowing them ways to escape the crushing poverty of reservation life. In Chicago, at least, the reality was much different than advertised. Jobs were few and far between. Many would return to the Bureau of Indian Affairs looking for the help they were promised.

They were on their own.

Living off-reservation, Laukaitis said, Native Americans in cities no longer fell under federal trust treaties that required the U.S. government to pay for tribal education and health care. Around this time there was also a “resurgence of individualism and individual self-determination,” he said.

“There was a collective belief in America at that time everyone could make it on his or her own,” Laukaitis says. “There was an animosity toward anyone who wanted to continue this federal trust status.”

But, unlike many immigrant groups trying to find their way out of poverty in Chicago in the 1950s and ’60s, Laukaitis said it is unfair to think of service contracts as a government handout.

“A guarantee of education, a guarantee of health care, a guarantee of all of these services are from a treaty, and historically they were the exchange of land and peace,” Laukaitis said. “So it is really not the same to look at the trust status and the money going toward reservations as welfare.”

The problems facing Native Americans in Chicago today come from this rocky foundation. As less than 1 percent of the population in the area, Laukaitis said Native Americans have little to no political voice in the city, as well as on the reservation.

The American Indian Association of Illinois is one of the few exclusively native cultural centers in the city, catering to the needs of Chicago’s first people, and it is run primarily from donations. When money is low, which Wiese says is pretty typical, the burden falls on her to buy food, pens, paper and crayons to keep the center running.

The harsh reality is Wiese’s programs are struggling to survive. The Native Scholars after-school tutoring program can only operate one day a week. Medicine Shield College, which helps adults earn college degrees, is struggling to meet the criteria that will allow it to go on.

Urban-dwelling Native Americans, in fact, are the poorest people in America, Wiese said. And no one is being held accountable for their welfare in the city.

“We don’t want to take anything away from the reservations,” Wiese said. “But something has got to change for us, too.”

TCC convention speaker blasts governments’ treatment of Natives

By Jeff Richardson, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

FAIRBANKS — A colonial attitude and lack of tribal sovereignty are contributing to an “unconscionable” record for Alaska Native justice, the head of the Indian Law and Order Commission told a Fairbanks audience on Tuesday.

Attendees watch on a television in the hallway as Keynote speaker Troy A. Eid, Chairman of the Indian Law and Order Commission, speaks at the Tanana Chiefs Conference Annual Delegate and Full Board of Directors Meeting Tuesday, March 11, 2014 at the Westmark Hotel.

In a fiery speech at the Tanana Chiefs Conference convention, Troy Eid blasted the state and federal governments for treating Alaska Natives like second-class citizens. The result, he said, has been an ineffective and unequal system for the state’s indigenous people.

“You are not stakeholders,” Eid told TCC delegates at the Westmark Hotel. “You are members of sovereign governments.”

Eid received a standing ovation following his remarks, which were the keynote speech for a conference with the theme “The time is now.” Eid’s independent commission was created in 2010 to review the justice system for American Indians and Alaska Natives and report its findings to President Obama and Congress.

The report, which was released last November, gave a dismal review of Alaska’s system.

Eid, a former U.S Attorney for Colorado, called the status of Alaska Natives a “civil rights crisis.” A fourth of Alaska Native youth suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, he said, the same rate as military veterans returning from Afghanistan. Suicide rates in Alaska rival those in Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world.

Alaska has domestic violence rates 10 times higher than the national average, and 12 times higher against women, Eid said.

He said lawmakers in Juneau and Washington could help change that.

The first step, he said, is to stop excluding Alaska Natives from federal legislation that protects Native Americans in other parts of the country. Eid dismissed the argument that the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act requires that Alaska Natives be treated differently than their counterparts in the Lower 48.

“They’re laws Congress made and Congress can revisit it. … It’s not as if these are immutable, unchangeable laws,” he said.

Eid also criticized the state for battling against tribes who want local courts and police, saying that local efforts to combat crime often prove more effective. Tribal courts are now limited to family issues, such as child custody and adoption.

“It is time for the state of Alaska to stop fighting against Alaska Natives,” he said.

Following the remarks, Fort Yukon Chief Steve Ginnis asked delegates to consider a resolution that would ask the federal government to treat Alaska Natives under the same civil rights legislation as other Native Americans.

President Jerry Isaac echoed the comments.

“It’s undoubtedly a long struggle with the tribes in Alaska to be recognized in a place that they deserve,” he said.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who spoke by videoconference with TCC delegates, was asked if she would pledge to support such a resolution. She said ANCSA has set up a system which creates a special distinction for Alaska Natives, and that identical legislation for Alaskans and those in the Lower 48 isn’t always possible.

However, Congress needs to make sure the end result shouldn’t be unequal treatment for Alaskans, she said.

“We need to be sure that Alaska Natives are treated justly and fairly, as are all Natives,” Murkowski said.

Spring Nettle harvesting at Tulalip

Spring Nettle harvesting Photos by Francesca Hillary

Tulalip News Facebook, March 12, 2014

TULALIP, WA – Inez Bill, coordinator of Rediscovery programs at the Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve, took a few helpers to harvest early spring Nettle on Bluff Road in Tulalip.

She was joined by Tulalip tribal members Derek Houle and Lauw-YA Spencer. Lauw-YA, a summer youth worker in the Rediscovery program in 2012, discovered she loves to be in the forest helping to gather cultural items.

Nettles are rich in vitamins A, C, iron, potassium, manganese, and calcium and Inez uses them in recipes such as the famous “Hibulb bread” and even in a Fettuccini pasta dish, using nettles which she calls “nesto” instead of pesto.

Facebook’s ‘Two Spirit’ Gender-ID Term a Positive Step for LGBT Natives

Sheena Louise Roetman, ICTMN

On February 13, Facebook added more than 45 custom gender-identifying terms, allowing users to choose from more than just “male” or “female” in order to identify themselves. Indigenous communities all over Turtle Island were pleasantly surprised to find that among those terms was “Two-Spirit.”

“When you come to Facebook to connect with the people, causes and organizations you care about, we want you to feel comfortable being your true, authentic self,” Facebook’s press office said in a statement to ICTMN. “An important part of this is the expression of gender, especially when it extends beyond the definitions of just ‘male’ or ‘female.’”

Additionally, Facebook has added the ability to select a preferred pronoun – male, female or neutral (they/their/them) – as well as allowing people to specify who sees the gender and pronoun they’ve chosen.

“We recognize that some people face challenges sharing their true gender identity with others, and this setting gives people the ability to express themselves in an authentic way,” Facebook said.

Facebook credited our Network of Support, a group of leading LGBT advocacy organizations as collaborators for determining which terms to include in the list. Some other terms included are agender, trans, intersex, gender fluid, gender questioning and CIS, among others.

Many Indigenous people who identify as Two Spirit were excited to see the changes.

“When Facebook added new gender options, I felt that it was an amazing step, one that was in the right direction,” said Gina Metallic, of Mig’maq First Nation, a Two Spirit community and Aboriginal youth protection activist. “I use the term Two Spirited because it is a hybrid of my culture and sexuality. It acknowledges both important pieces of my identity, being queer and being Indigenous. It’s also allowing people to see that there’s more than male and female, and that it’s okay and normal.”

Daugherty dies; lead archaeologist of ‘Pompeii of America’

In this undated photo, WSU archaeologist Richard Daugherty looks at the effigy of a whale fin found among thousands of artifacts at the Ozette site on the Olympic Peninsula.

By Eric Sorensen, WSU News, February 28, 2014

PULLMAN, Wash. – Richard Daugherty, a Washington State University archaeologist who led the excavation of the Ozette village site, “the Pompeii of America,” and numerous other key Northwest finds, died Saturday of bone cancer. He was 91.

Starting in the 1970s, Daugherty worked closely with the Makah tribe during the 11-year Ozette excavation on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, setting a new standard for native and archaeological cooperation, said Allyson Brooks, state historic preservation officer.

“He really set the path for archaeologists and Native Americans to work together instead of in opposition,” she said. “That’s a big deal.”

“The way he involved elders in helping identify artifacts was very progressive,” said Janine Ledford, executive director of the Makah Cultural and Research Center, which houses 55,000 Ozette artifacts, all of which date from before Europeans arrived on the continent.

“Doc” Daugherty, as he was known to the Makah, had already surveyed the Ozette site and some 50 others along the coast when a winter storm in 1970 eroded a bank near Cape Alava, revealing five longhouses buried by a landslide, possibly from the magnitude 9 earthquake of 1700. The site had been occupied continuously for at least 2,000 years before it was abandoned in the 1920s when the federal government forced the last remaining inhabitants to move 20 miles to Neah Bay so their children could attend school.

Called to the site by Ed Claplanhoo, a Makah tribal leader and WSU graduate, Daugherty saw the first artifacts of an enormous trove preserved in the oxygen-free environment of wet clay: a canoe paddle, wooden halibut hooks, a harpoon shaft, wooden house planks. A village soon emerged as dozens of scientists, students and locals focused on three longhouses that yielded 1,424 arrow shafts, 103 bows, 110 harpoon shafts, 1,000 baskets, 13 looms, perfectly preserved cedar rope, whale bones and more.

It became the largest, most complex archaeological site in the Pacific Northwest.

“Anyone who takes a college class in archaeology covers the Ozette site,” said Ledford.

The site yielded numerous insights into Makah culture. The people had long been whalers, for example, and whale bones were everywhere in the dig. But the Makah also ate fur seal, sea lion, halibut, waterfowl and various berries. Many insights came in consultation with elders as the archaeologists tapped them to identify the meaning and uses of mysterious objects.

“If you work in partnership, you can’t have a better way of gaining the cultural side, because they”—the natives—“are the experts on the cultural side,” said Dale Croes, WSU adjunct faculty member and president of Pacific Northwest Archaeological Services. As part of the archaeologists’ partnership with the Makah, Croes had to learn basket weaving from the elders.

“I probably learned more in that semester than any graduate class here,” Croes said. His doctoral dissertation is one of nine produced from the site.

Daugherty was born and raised in Aberdeen, Wash. During World War II, he piloted blimps out of Lakehurst, N.J., to look for enemy ships and submarines off the East Coast.

He earned a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Washington in 1946 and spent four years as a WSU anthropology instructor until 1954 when he finished his Ph.D. in ethnography at UW and became a WSU assistant professor.

At various times over nearly 30 years, he served as department chair, director of the WSU Laboratory of Archaeology and History and director of the Washington Archaeological Research Center. Many of his graduate students were women, with “Daugherty’s Daughters” going on to serve in the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service and private archaeological services.

In addition to the Ozette site, he directed excavation of the Marmes rockshelter before it was inundated by waters behind the Snake River’s Lower Monumental Dam. The state’s only archaeological national historic landmark, it had the oldest set of human remains in North America when it was investigated.

Daugherty also was the principal investigator of a burial site at the mouth of the Palouse River where a Jefferson “peace medal” was found. The medal was one of fewer than 90 carried by Lewis and Clark on their journey to the Northwest in 1805. In 1971, at the request of the Nez Perce tribe and on Daugherty’s recommendation, WSU gave the medal to the tribe.

In 1977, Daugherty was co-investigator with Carl Gustafson of a hand-hewn projectile point in a mastodon bone found near Sequim, Wash. The artifacts turned back the clock on North American settlement as subsequent new research determined they were 13,800 years old, 800 years older than the Clovis people long regarded as the New World’s oldest culture.

Daugherty also left a legacy in how future archaeological research is done, working with Washington senators Warren G. Magnuson and Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson to bolster passage of the National Historic Preservation Act. The act requires federal agencies to consider the impacts of federally funded or permitted operations on archaeological sites and historic structures.

Daugherty is preceded in death by his first wife, Phyllis. He is survived by his wife, Ruth Kirk, whom he married in the replica of an Ozette village longhouse at Neah Bay in 2007. Other survivors include Melinda Beasley of Pullman, Carol Ewen of Pendleton, Ore., Rick Daugherty of Ellensburg, Wash., five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

The family is planning a gathering of friends, family and colleagues in the spring. Memorial donations may be made to the Phyllis and Richard Daugherty Scholarship for Graduate Student Excellence in Anthropology at WSU and the Makah Cultural and Research Center.

Animals see power lines as glowing, flashing bands, research reveals

UV vision help reindeers find plants in snow cover, but in the depths of winter their wide irises and sensitive eyes means the power lines appear particularly bright. Photo: Mark Bryan Makela/Corbis

By Damian Carrington, March 11, 2014. Source: The Guardian

Power lines are seen as glowing and flashing bands across the sky by many animals, research has revealed.

The work suggests that the pylons and wires that stretch across many landscapes are having a worldwide impact on wildlife.

Scientists knew many creatures avoid power lines but the reason why was mysterious as they are not impassable physical barriers. Now, a new understanding of just how many species can see the ultraviolet light – which is invisible to humans – has revealed the major visual impact of the power lines.

“It was a big surprise but we now think the majority of animals can see UV light,” said Professor Glen Jeffery, a vision expert at University College London. “There is no reason why this phenomenon is not occuring around the world.”

Dr Nicolas Tyler, an ecologist at UIT The Arctic University of Norway and another member of the research team, said: “The flashes occur at random in time and space, so the power lines are not grey and passive, but seen as lines of light flashing.”

He said the discovery has global significance: “The loss and fragmentation of habitat by infrastructure is the principle global threat to biodiversity – it is absolutely major. Roads have always got particular attention but this will push power lines right up the list of offenders.” The avoidance of power lines can interfere with migration routes, breeding grounds and grazing for both animals and birds.

Autopsies on dozens of mammals from zoos and abbatoirs showed their eyes were able to see UV, including cattle, cats, dogs, rats, bats, okapi, red pandas and hedgehogs. Also on the list were reindeer and further work published in the journal Conservation Biology showed these animals, whose eyes are specially adapted to the dark Arctic winters, are particularly sensitive to UV light. UV vision helps reindeer find plants in snow cover, but in the depths of winter their wide irises and sensitive eyes means the power lines appear particularly bright.

The avoidance of power lines had been explained in the past by the corridors cut through forests to accomodate them, where animals would be exposed in the open to predators.

But this explanation could not apply in the treeless tundra of northern Norway, where 220,000 reindeer are tended by 7,000 herders from the traditional Sami people. “Right now, there is a plan to build a 186-mile long power line in north Norway,” said Tyler. “This new work will encourage power companies to negotiate with herders about where they put the power lines.”

Around the world, Tyler said: “There are hundred of examples of animals avoiding power lines. Now we know that, not only do these clear-cut corridors mean exposure to predators, at the same time there is this damn thing flashing at you.”

Jeffery said burying all power cables would be unrealistically expensive but added that one idea would be to put a non-conducting shield around the cable to screen it from view. The UV light, which is caused by electricity ionising the air around cables, are a major source of inefficiency for electricity companies and also cause the hissing or crackling noises sometimes heard.

Power companies already use helicopter-mounted UV cameras to monitor power cables, because the flashes can be an early sign of conduction problems, but the cameras only record a very narrow range of UV. “Animals see across the range, so the intensity of light seen by them is much more than seen by the helicopter flights,” said Jeffery.

New McNary Dam Passage Gives High Hopes for Pacific Lamprey

U.S. Fish and Wildlife ServiceThe Pacific lamprey — U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The Pacific lamprey

Indian Country Today Media Network

The Pacific lamprey, culturally significant to the Umatilla and other tribes, now has a shot at making it past the McNary Dam to spawn.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is supplementing the fish ladder of the dam’s Oregon shore with an additional structure that offers water velocities more conducive to lamprey migration, the Union-Bulletin reported on March 8.

The structure would allow lampreys, which tend to move along the river bottom in water that flows more slowly than the upper levels preferred by spawning salmon and steelhead, to access the fish ladder and make it upstream, the Union-Bulletin said.

“We plan to conduct video monitoring to observe which velocity is preferred by migrating lampreys,” said Mark Smith, who managed the project for the Corps, to the newspaper. “We anticipate this prototype structure will help us learn quite a bit about what’s best for lamprey passage.”

Lampreys have been around for at least 450 million years, the oldest fish in the Columbia River system, according to the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC). Though not in danger of extinction, they have declined from a former high of millions 30 years ago to just about 4,000 returning to the Snake, Clearwater and Salmon river drainages where they once teemed, said Aaron Jackson, lamprey project leader for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, to the Union-Bulletin.

Tribes in the Pacific Northwest use the lamprey for food and medicine, and the fish plays a key role in regulating inland aquatic systems. They spend their first four to seven years of life acting as filters in freshwater sand and silt, then move to the ocean where they become parasites, latching onto various saltwater prey, the Union-Bulletin said. After two to three years of that they return to their freshwater origins to spawn.

The Army Corps of Engineers work group that helped design and engineer the structure included tribal representatives, the newspaper said. Built by Marine Industrial Construction of Wilsonville, Oregon under a $336,542 contract, was completed in late February and is the first such installation in the mid-Columbia River, the Union-Bulletin said.

“We’re excited to see something like this put in the river,” Jackson said.

Three Years Later, Where Did Japanese Tsunami Debris Go?

File photo of a fishing skiff found on the Washington coast in May 2013. | credit: Eyewitness photo / Wash. Marine Debris Task Force

Tom Banse, Northwest News Network

It’s been exactly three years since a huge tsunami in March 2011 took thousands of lives in Japan and washed whole villages out to sea.

Suspected tsunami debris started arriving on our shores the following December, but it’s been less than feared.

Nir Barnea, the federal coordinator for marine debris in the Pacific Northwest, says we may never know for sure where the majority of the tsunami debris went.

“A lot of the debris was made of wood. If you look at the photos from early after the tsunami, you see a lot of wood out there. Some of it — maybe even most of it — has sunk. Other debris may not have reached us. It has dispersed and may never reach us.”

Barnea is awaiting confirmation from the Japanese consulate whether a derelict skiff that washed ashore near Westport, Washington in January can be traced to the 2011 tsunami.

One other skiff with Japanese writing on it was found on the British Columbia coast this winter.

The Oregon Emergency Management division and governor’s office are currently considering whether to shut down the Oregon Joint Tsunami Debris Task Force because it’s no longer needed. Washington shut down its marine debris hotline at the new year because so few people were calling.

If you find something on the beach that looks like tsunami debris, you can still report it by email to: DisasterDebris@noaa.gov.

This was first reported for the Northwest News Network.

Alaska Senate committee supports Native American veterans memorial

The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. will be the site of an American Indian Veterans Memorial. A resolution supporting the memorial cleared an Alaska Senate committee on Tuesday. (Photo by cayusa/Flickr Creative Commons)

By Casey Kelly, KTOO News

The Alaska Legislature could join the chorus of voices calling for an American Indian Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. An Alaska Senate committee on Tuesday passed a resolution supporting the project.

Native Americans have fought in every United States military conflict since the Revolutionary War, and have some of the highest per capita service rates of any ethnic group.

Since Alaska became a U.S. territory and later a state, Alaska Natives have served their country as well. During World War II, the Alaska Territorial Guard included more than 6,000 volunteer soldiers from more than 100 communities.

“American Indians have established a long and distinguished legacy of military service,” said Kalyssa Maile, an intern in the office of Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage. ”Senate Joint Resolution 19 affirms the Alaska Legislature’s support of Alaska Native and Native American veterans, and recognizes their great sacrifices for our country.”

Wielechowski sponsored SJR19, approved Tuesday by the Senate State Affairs Committee. He said the American Indian Veterans Memorial is supported by the Alaska Federation of Natives, the National Congress of American Indians and Vietnam Veterans of America, among other groups.

“There were several people that came up from Florida to attend AFN and push for this resolution,” Wielechowski said. “I attended the Vietnam Veterans of America national conference in Florida last year and they were there. I spoke with people there. They were urging us to do this as well.”

Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, sponsored Senate Joint Resolution 19, which supports construction of an American Indian Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Skip Gray/Gavel Alaska)

Congress approved the Native American Veterans’ Memorial Act in 1994, but the project didn’t go anywhere. Stephen Bowers, a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida and a Vietnam veteran, started lobbying Native American groups to support the memorial in 2011. Bowers says it’s long overdue.

“It’ll mean that finally someone is recognizing the fact that the American Indians fought for this country and against the European invaders back since 1492,” he said.

While Bowers says many supporters want the memorial to be built near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, President Obama late last year signed legislation to place it at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, two miles away. Bowers says the location isn’t as important as getting a memorial concept approved, a process he says will take several years.

“When they built the National Mall, they didn’t make it easy for organizations or for anyone to put a statue or a memorial on the mall,” said Bowers.

He expects the National Museum of the American Indian to sponsor a contest and form a committee to shepherd the project through the design phase.

Senate Joint Resolution 19 now heads to a vote on the floor of the Alaska Senate.