Tulalip News

Arigon Starr Talks About Her Super Universe

By Toyacoyah Brown on March 5, 2014 powwows.com

You may remember we posted a story about Laguna Woman, a new character that was going to be featured in the Super Indian comics by Arigon Starr. Ms. Starr took some time out from her busy schedule to tell us how Super Indian started and what inspires her with all her projects.

One thing I would really like to promote is that “Super Indian” is more than a weekly webcomic. It started life as a comedy radio series in 2007, thanks to the Native Radio Theater Project and Native Voices at the Autry. The show was broadcast nationally through the Native Voice One radio network and American Indian Radio on Satellite. There were only ten five-minute episodes produced — but I had WAY more stories. That’s when I decided to do the comic book.

Because I finally had enough material, I released “Super Indian Volume One” in May 2012. The 64-page full-color book features “Super Indian” issues #2, 3 & 4, plus extras like features on Jim Thorpe and Maria Tall Chief (“Real Super Indians”). The book is available through Amazon, the Super Indian Comics Website (Paypal), plus for all digital devices (Kindle, Nook, etc.) from Amazon and ComiXology.

“Super Indian” led me to Lee Francis IV and the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. During a writing conference in Cherokee, NC, we joking talked about the old “Comics Code Authority” that used to police the comic book world back in the 60′s & 70′s. We thought, “Wouldn’t it be funny to have a logo that vetted Native American comic book stories? That way, people would know that the stories and art came from actual Native writers and artists.” That idea became the Indigenous Narratives Collective, which now has a bunch of Native comic book writers and artists from all over Indian Country involved. Our first group comic, “INC’s Universe #0″ had contributors Roy Boney, Michael Sheyahshe, Beth Dillon, Ryan Huna Smith, Theo Tso, myself — plus an introduction from comedian Charlie Hill. Charlie is a big fan of comic books and loves “Super Indian.”

Also — some folks might already know me from my music. I’m the artist behind the song, “Junior Frybread,” which was “Song of the Year” at the Native American Music Awards in 2002. Believe me, I STILL perform that song at every gig. I’ve released four music CDs since 1997. I’ve also had the pleasure of singing at Gathering of Nations (when they used to do shows in Pit), a bunch of colleges, universities, museums and in England and Australia.

I’m also a produced playwright and actor. My one-woman comedy with music, “The Red Road” was featured at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City and Washington, DC, the Gilcrease in Tulsa, the Youth Theater Festival in Adelaide, Australia after making a debut at the Autry National Center. I had a lot of fun working with the folks at Native Voices at the Autry and starred in many of their Equity Productions.

Believe me — with all of those activities, there is never a dull moment around here. I’ve got at least three more comic book projects in the works that I’m juggling right now. The Indigenous Narratives Collective will be releasing the first volume of “Tales of the Mighty Code Talkers,” which tell stories from all the tribes that participated in the military program. I’m writing about the Choctaw Code Talkers of World War I — and there will be other stories from Native writers & artists in the book. I’m also developing “The Saga of Henry Starr,” which is based on Robert J. Conley’s novel of a real Oklahoma outlaw. Yes, Henry is one of my ancestors….we have a lot of outlaws in my family! Mr. Conley is a renowned Cherokee historian and professor who’s written hundreds of westerns and novels based on Cherokee history.

As for Laguna Woman, she’s set to figure prominently in Issue #6 of “Super Indian.” Working with Shayai Lucero was a real treat. I had met her years ago when she was Miss Indian World and we kept in touch. FYI, Lee Francis IV from INC and Wordcraft is the son of legendary writer Lee Francis III. Lee III started Wordcraft over 25 years ago as an non-profit organization to help mentor Native writers. The Francis family is also from Laguna Pueblo and I really wanted to honor the work that Lee and his father have done for the community. That’s why Laguna Woman, aka Phoebe Francis, has that name. It was important to Shayai, Lee and me to make sure that Laguna Woman was not a stereotypical super-hero.

“Super Indian” will continue to keep the humor coming, plus the social commentary. I’m sure folks who look in at Pow-Wows.com know all about “blood quantum” and can see the humor in a vampire who wants to become a full-blood Indian by biting full-blood Indians. How else do you get a CDIB card these days? AAAY!

Hope that helps! This might actually be a good guest blog, ennit? AAAY!

Arigon

P.s. I’m a tribally enrolled with the Kicakpoo Tribe of Oklahoma. I’m Buffalo and Uskas Clan and my Indian name is Makedeothecua. My mom is an enrolled Muscogee Creek. Her mom was Cherokee and Seneca. When I grow up, I want to be a Pow-Wow announcer. AAAY!

Make sure you check out Super Indian on their website and follow on their Facebook page.

Washington Redskins foundation loses another event sponsor

Erik Brady, USA TODAY Sports April 13, 2014

Courtesy NB3 FoundationNotah Begay III — Courtesy NB3 Foundation
Notah Begay III

The Notah Begay III Foundation pulled its support from this weekend’s Arizona golf tournament to benefit scholarships for Native American students when it learned the title sponsor was the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation.

“I find it underhanded and despicable that the Washington football team would co-opt this event,” Crystal Echo Hawk, NB3 foundation executive director, told USA TODAY Sports on Sunday. “As soon as we found out about their involvement we withdrew our support.”

Begay, a four-time PGA Tour winner and an analyst with the Golf Channel, is Navajo, Isleta Pueblo and San Felipe Pueblo. He is a longtime critic of the Washington team name, which he called “a very clear example of institutionalized degradation” on ESPN last year.

MORE: Nonprofit National Indian Gaming Association pulls support

Echo Hawk, who is Pawnee, said the NB3 Foundation was asked in February to donate silent auction items for a golf tournament to be held in Chandler, Ariz., this month; the foundation donated golf apparel.

When she found out Friday that Saturday’s event was sponsored by the NFL team’s foundation, she called the radio station that asked for the donation. Echo Hawk spoke to Tony Little, general manager of Arizona radio station KTNN, and demanded that NB3’s name be removed from the event officially called the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation (OAF) 1st Annual KTNN Celebrity Golf Tournament.

“The NB3 Foundation does not support the Redskins or its organization OAF,” NB3 said in a statement. “We are adamantly opposed to the team’s continued use of this derogatory name.”

Echo Hawk said she believed OAF came in as title sponsor very recently. She said she asked Little how much money the football team’s foundation paid for that but that he couldn’t talk about it.

The Washington football team did not immediately return a message asking for comment. KTNN’s Little also did not immediately return a message asking for comment.

The National Indian Gaming Association, a nonprofit that includes 184 Indian nations as members, pulled its sponsorship Friday after learning of the involvement of the football team’s foundation, as reported by USA TODAY Sports that day.

Ernest Stevens, chairman of the gaming association, said his organization finds the team name offensive and he criticized team owner Daniel Snyder for starting the foundation.

“It’s a blatant attempt to try to buy out the issue,” Stevens said.

Contributing: Brent Schrotenboer

New York Times Raises the Alarm on Redwood Poaching

AP Photo/Redwood National and State Parks, Laura DennHacking off redwood burls leaves the tree open to infection, and eliminates its main means of reproduction. — AP Photo/Redwood National and State Parks, Laura Denn
Hacking off redwood burls leaves the tree open to infection, and eliminates its main means of reproduction.

Indian Country Today Media Network

The New York Times is raising the alarm on redwood poaching.

Redwoods that have stood like sentinels for a thousand years or more are being brutalized by poachers, their burls hacked off and sold. There have been at least 18 known cases of burl poaching from redwoods in the past year, forcing the closing of one California state highway at night, with more to follow.

“It’s not just a property crime,” said Brett Silver, supervising ranger for Redwood National and State Parks in California, to The New York Times. “It’s a legacy, like hacking up a church.”

This the Yurok certainly feel, regarding redwoods as “sacred living beings” that “stand as guardians over our sacred places,” the tribe says on its website.

Burls range in size from small enough to be crafted into salt and pepper shakers, as The New York Times points out, to large enough to weigh hundreds of pounds and be fashioned into furniture. The slabs of raw wood that are used to make furniture can sell for hundreds or even thousands of dollars each, The New York Times said.

In March, the National Park Service announced it would close the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway at night to try and hamper the operations, which tend to be conducted under cover of darkness. While the poaching of wood in general is not new, a slow economy combined with an increase in methamphetamine use have made poachers bolder, the newspaper said.

“They have been targeting ever-bigger burls and using increasingly brazen tactics,” The New York Times reported. “Last year, a redwood estimated to be 400 years old was felled by thieves who wanted access to a 500-pound burl 60 feet up.”

Burls are essential to a redwood’s reproduction, the National Park Service said.

“Burl is a woody material full of un-sprouted bud tissue,” the NPS said in a leaflet about the trees. “It serves as a storage compartment for the genetic code of the parent tree. If the redwood falls or is damaged, the burl may sprout another redwood tree known as a clone.”

Read Poachers Attack Beloved Elders of California, Its Redwoods in The New York Times.

Alternate route to Darrington scenic, slow

By Bill Sheets, The Herald

For someone who wants to drive from Darrington to Everett, each of the two available options takes about two hours.

One of them, however, is probably a lot easier on the car. There also are places to eat, talk on the phone and go to the bathroom.

Since the disastrous March 22 landslide that blocked Highway 530 east of Oso, most drivers have been using Highway 20 to get from Darrington to the I-5 corridor. This is the route recommended by the state Department of Transportation.

Four days after the slide, to create another option for drivers, the Mountain Loop Highway from Granite Falls to Darrington was opened for the season. The road is administered by Snohomish County.

Part of the Mountain Loop stretch was built on the former right-of-way of the Everett and Monte Cristo Railway, built in 1892 to haul gold copper, lead, and iron ores to smelters in Everett, according to HistoryLink.org. The tracks of the railroad were removed in 1932.

One section of the Mountain Loop Highway is a 14-mile, one-lane, gravel logging road. This stretch receives heavy snow and is closed every winter. The road was entirely shut down for four years, from 2003 to 2007, after it washed out in several places during a storm.

After the Oso slide, the state supplied snowblowers to open the road early for the year, county officials said.

The drive of 54 miles from Darrington to Granite Falls takes an hour and 40 minutes, according to the state. Add 20-plus minutes to Everett and it’s a little over two hours.

“Four-wheel drive or high-clearance vehicles are strongly recommended,” according to a description of the road on a U.S. Forest Service website. It has a 5-ton weight limit and is considered unsuitable for commercial trucks or freight.

Don Beavon, of Tulalip, drove the Mountain Loop Highway in his 1992 Honda Civic the day it opened. He said he made it from downtown Marysville to Darrington in an hour and 45 minutes.

He used quote marks around the word “highway” in an email about his experience.

“It was very muddy with potholes and temporary 25-mile per hour speed limit signs posted all along the way,” Beavon wrote. “I bottomed out a couple of times but numerous double-long dump trucks full of gravel were heading in to make improvements, as was a heavy-duty roller.”

The smoother route takes drivers from Darrington north to Rockport on Highway 530, west to Burlington on Highway 20 and south to Everett via I-5.

This route is 94 miles, compared to 70 from Darrington to Everett via Mountain Loop, but drivers can cover the distance in roughly the same amount of time. There are no gas stations or other services on the Mountain Loop, according to the state.

The Fading and Enduring Native American Imagery, Caricatures in Corporate America

By Susanna Kim, ABC News

Criticism over the NFL’s Washington Redskins’ logo reached an apex after owner Dan Snyder decided to continue using the name and created the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation, the most recent controversy in a long line of spats over Native America names and images.

Such names and images have been part of the American culture for more than 100 years, and many prominent corporations and even the government use Native American names on everything from weapons (the Tomahawk Missile) to butter (Land O’ Lakes and its Native American mascot.) You can even insure your life with Mutual of Omaha, which uses an “Indian head” logo.

The Redskins are sticking with their team and foundation name after the NFL team owner Snyder said he and his staff traveled to 26 Tribal reservations across 20 states to listen “with a perspective about our Washington Redskins name.” A spokesman for the team declined to comment further to ABCNews.com.

Here are some corporate logos that have phased out Native American images and names and others that continue to be marketed today.

The radiator shell of all Pontiac cars through 1928 pictured Chief Pontiac and the original slogan, “Chief of the Sixes,” according to GM archives; other logos were used through the years, including a Pontiac car circling a globe and silhouettes of Chief Pontiac as a “warrior and statesman.”

GM executive Bunkie Knudsen phased out Pontiac’s “Indian Head” hood ornament in 1957, to be replaced by the stylized red “arrowhead” logo, according to a company history timeline from 2001. Pontiac was shut down as a brand in 2010.

James Keyser/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Hornell Brewing’s Crazy Horse malt liquor is seen in this undated file image.

Back in 2001, the descendants of the Lakota Oglala leader Crazy Horse (or Tasunke Witko in Lakota) settled a defamation lawsuit involving Crazy Horse malt liquor, Minnesota Public Radio reported.

“Crazy Horse’s descendants filed suit eight years ago, trying to stop beer makers from using the chief’s name on an alcohol product that was distributed to 32 states,” MPR reported. “The opposition to Crazy Horse malt liquor came in part, because Crazy Horse had denounced the introduction of alcohol to American Indians.”

“We certainly never intended to offend anybody. We are indeed, deeply sorry for any offense we caused the Rosebud Sioux or any other Native American people,” John Stroh III, then chairman of SBC Holdings, formerly Stroh’s Brewing Co., then said according to MPR.

The company stopped using “Crazy Horse” as a brand.

SBC was later sold to Pabst Brewing Company and Miller Brewing Company.

Pabst did not respond to a request for comment.

Joe Amon/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Land O’Lakes Inc. is a member-owned cooperative, the second largest in the country, the firm says, after outdoor gear retailer R.E.I.

The company, which also owns Purina pet food and WinField agricultural and chemical products, has an eponymous butter product that uses a drawing of what the company calls an “Indian maiden.”

The company website states that “the now-famous Indian maiden” began as a painting in 1928.

“Reflecting the Native American heritage of the Upper Midwest, it showed an Indian maiden facing the viewer and holding a butter carton and surrounded by lakes, pines, flowers and grazing cows. That painting inspired a new design for the butter carton, and remained until the spring of 1939, when it was simplified and modernized by Jess Betlach, a nationally recognized illustrator. Decades later, with only minor changes, this design continues to capture the goodness and quality of LAND O LAKES brand dairy products from butter to cheese, deli cheese to foodservice sauces, school-lunch macaroni and cheese to dairy ingredients for other food processors.”

One now closed Change.org petition criticized the image for using stereotypes to create and sell products, with a “traditional buckskin outfit, two braids for her hair, and a head dress/band with one feather present.”

Land O’Lakes Inc. did not respond to a request for comment.

A view of a 2014 Jeep Cherokee at Miami International Auto Show at the Miami Beach Convention Center in this Nov. 9, 2013, file photo.

Chrysler revived the Jeep Cherokee, which had retired more than 10 years ago, as a 2014 model name.

That didn’t sit very well with Amanda Clinton, a spokeswoman for the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma last summer.

“We are really opposed to stereotypes,” Clinton told the New York Times last June. “It would have been nice for them to have consulted us in the very least.”

In the same article, a spokesman for Chrysler explained to the Times that research showed an appeal for the name. “Our challenge was, as a brand, to link the past image to the present,” Jim Morrison, Jeep marketing director told the Times.

Chrysler did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Indian Motorcycles, a subsidiary of the publicly-traded Polaris Industries Inc., calls itself America’s first motorcycle company, founded in 1901, according to the company website. The company markets motorcycles such as the Indian Chieftan, with a stylized “Indian” headdress logo, starting at $22,999. The Indian Chief Vintage and Classic, $20,999 and $18,999, simply have the company cursive script as a logo.

Mother Earth is Drowning in Garbage

AP/5 GYRESIn this February 15, 2010 photo released by 5 Gyres, a coastal area of the Azores Islands in Portugal, is shown littered with plastic garbage. — AP/5 GYRES
In this February 15, 2010 photo released by 5 Gyres, a coastal area of the Azores Islands in Portugal, is shown littered with plastic garbage.

Alex Ewen, Indian Country Today Media Network

“Thus he learned that there are spirits in the water – that water is life.” – Wichita Legend of the Water Spirit

The tragedy of Malaysian flight 370, which disappeared en route to China, has brought attention to a distressing fact about our “civilized” society, that we are now drowning in our own garbage. For a full month, searchers have had to comb through an ocean full of waste, making an already extremely difficult task almost impossible. On March 8, the day after the plane was scheduled to land in Beijing, Vietnamese air force planes spotted two massive oil slicks, each between six and nine miles long, that were at first assumed to have been caused by the airliner, but when sampled turned out to be bunker oil for ships. The next day, the Vietnamese also spotted what they thought was a life raft and a door from the plane, but those items turned out to be floating junk.

Two days later, the Chinese reported that their satellites had spotted debris from the plane in the South China Sea, between Malaysia and Vietnam, but this too turned out to be more floating garbage. As the search shifted to the southern Indian Ocean, one of the most isolated and inhospitable regions on earth, satellites from several countries began to spot hundreds of objects, but all turned out to be floating waste. The amount of garbage in the oceans is so great and widespread that it was throwing off the search and rescue teams, and in the end they were forced to focus on analyzing the radar and electronic signals to narrow down the search area.

The pollution of the oceans, and of all water, is a serious threat to our well-being, for water, as indigenous people know well, is the essence of life. Yet civilized society has an almost complete disregard for clean water. Cholera, a disease unknown in the Americas before European settlement, derives from contaminated water. As the pioneers traveled westward, using rivers, streams and lakes as toilets (while at the same time drinking from them), the now contaminated waters killed countless Indians and nearly wiped out entire tribes, such as the Comanche, Hidatsa and Choctaw. More than 150,000 Americans are also believed to have died in the pandemics of 1832 and 1849, including former President James Polk. Due to cholera, Chicago had one of the highest death rates in the world between 1885 and 1890, losing more than 12 percent of its population.

Nor has time made civilized society any wiser. Up until 1970s, with the advent of clean water legislation in the U.S., the average American city sewage treatment plant consisted of a long pipe into the ocean, or lacking a nearby ocean, a lake or a river. It was also common to dump household garbage in the oceans or lakes. New York City dumped more than a million tons of garbage a year in the New York Bight, creating the first ocean “garbage patch.” An article in Indian Country Today Media Network one year ago, entitled, “Lake Erie has a Garbage Patch That Rivals the Oceans,” found that much more needs to be done to preserve Americas water.

Despite some strides in America to maintain clean water, other countries have done little. More than 818 million people in India and 607 million people in China have no sewage facilities at all.

Much of the debris floating in the oceans is plastic, which degrades extremely slowly and eventually becomes toxic to marine life. A 2006 United Nations Environment report estimated that every square kilometer of world’s ocean has an average of 13,000 pieces of plastic litter floating on the surface. In the most polluted garbage patches, located in every ocean, the mass of plastic is greater than that of plankton, the algae upon which all oceanic life depends (the grass of the oceans), sometime by an order of five to six times. Experts believe that virtually every fish, sea turtle, or seabird now has plastic inside of it. Not only are the plastics toxic in themselves, they act like sponges, soaking up other toxins in the oceans. When devoured, the toxins work their way up the food chain, eventually impacting human health.

Parasitic diseases similar to cholera are now spreading to marine mammals such as killer whales, as the ocean waters become filled with human and animal excrement. Yet little is being done to combat this menace. The last international agreement concerning ocean dumping and pollution was a protocol signed in 1996, however it was not ratified by the U.S., nor has it been ratified by enough countries (there must be at least 26) to come into force. The last international marine debris conference, held 2011 in Honolulu, ended with no concrete program for international action.

It was long presumed that dumping in the ocean meant that pollution was out of sight, and thus could be ignored. But now the chickens, or their byproducts, are coming back to haunt our modern society. The search for Flight 370 may not have found the plane yet, but it may have discovered something far more important, and far more tragic.

Up Where She Belongs: Buffy Sainte-Marie Making First Album in 6 Years

Christie Goodwin'I don't think about calendars, deadlines or styles,' says Sainte-Marie. 'I just play and sing whatever I dream up.' — Christie Goodwin
‘I don’t think about calendars, deadlines or styles,’ says Sainte-Marie. ‘I just play and sing whatever I dream up.’

David P. Ball, Indian Country Today Media Network

Canadian-born Cree singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie is a living legend, famous for such Indigenous anthems as “Universal Soldier” and “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.” But few know that Sainte-Marie led the earliest charge into electronic music at the same time she was being celebrated worldwide as a “folk” artist. She’s now preparing to make her first album since the award-winning 2008 relase Running For the Drum. Speaking from her current home in Hawaii, Sainte-Marie gave ICTMN the lowdown on the directon she’ll be heading with her new music. This is the second of a three-part series; for the first, which focused on her thoughts about the environment, see Buffy Sainte-Marie on Tar Sands: “You’ve Got to Take This Seriously”.Do you know when your new album is due to come out? Is there a title?We haven’t decided. I just spent three weeks out on the road in Nashville, Toronto and L.A. auditioning producers, so I have not yet made my choices. I don’t know if I’ll work with several producers or just one. But I’m sure excited about the music. We’re choosing from about 30 different songs. It’s going to be fun. It’ll be done when it’s done!

Your last album, of course, got a Juno as well as an Aboriginal People’s Choice Award (and around that time you were inducted into the Canadian Country Music Association Hall of Fame) — in many ways, it was a departure from your other work in the immediacy of it.You think so? The songs, as always, were very diverse. I wasn’t worried about trying to make them all the same. Some of those songs I had in the can for a long time, and some were things I’d written over the years. I’d take something I’d written in my notebook in 1970 and I’ll add a second verse in 1980 and I’ll finish it last week. That’s always how it is for me – I have a kind of helicopter vision of life itself. I don’t think about calendars, deadlines or styles. I just play and sing whatever I dream up. Writing for me is just really, really natural. It’s the same as it was when I was a little kid. I hope I’m getting better though!

There’s an immediacy to your sound that really speaks to today. But you’ve always had that along the way. A lot of people were a little bit surprised hearing me with electronic sounds, but that’s because they maybe hadn’t heard about me for a while – so it might have been new to them, but it wasn’t new to me. In 1965, I made the first-ever electronic quadraphonic (four-channel) vocal album, Illuminations.

Is there anything about your new album people should look out for, in terms of style or subjects you’re addressing? Any surprises? It depends. Most people don’t listen to me, so they’re always surprised! (Laughs) Especially if they think I’m a folk singer. But people who have been listening all along will be surprised, because the whole world continues to grow. And that includes me and you. So it will be different. “The Uranium War” is one song, another is “Look at the Facts,” “Your Link with Life” is another. There’ll be some remixes… It’s a really interesting album. There’s some love songs on it, and some Aboriginal things, but mostly it’s just solid songs that are good to dance to or fun to listen to, or whatever.

One of your most famous songs, ‘Up Where We Belong,’ has really been turned into a love anthem. But it has such a special meaning for many Indigenous people, who can read it in a completely different way from non-Indigenous people. What are your thoughts on that? It’s a beautiful love song, but from the perspective of history suddenly it gives you a chill down your spine. I’m glad that it got to be the main theme for the film An Officer and a Gentleman, that’s about the military. Because sometimes people are surprised to see how many veterans come to my concerts, and to find out that soldiers in Vietnam were carving “Universal Soldier” into their bunk beds. If you think pacifists and military people hate each other, it’s not true. That’s just not accurate at all. The fact that “Up Where We Belong” – a love song that does have a real double-entendre meaning – was heard by so many people who don’t ordinarily come to hear me — how good is that? We always have to remain open to the fact that audiences are going to interpret your songs personally for themselves. I think that’s the true power of songs. It’s wonderful… Music has always been a powerful medium, and now with the Internet it can reach so many more people.

To keep up with Buffy Sainte-Marie, follow her on Twitter @buffystemarie and at facebook.com/BuffySainteMarie.

2014 Allen/Quilceda Watershed Earth Day Celebration, April 12

5 Native American Communities Who Owned Enslaved Africans

April 9, 2014 | Posted by Barbara-Shae Jackson

The Atlanta Black Star

Stories about Black and Native American connections are rarely told within the narrow historical context shared in classrooms, history books and around family tables, but there are some details that reveal a more complete story of enslavement in the Americas.

In the 1830s, the enslavement of Blacks was established in the Indian Territory, the region that would become Oklahoma. By the late 19th century, when over half a million Africans were enslaved in the South, the southern Native American societies of that region had come to include both enslaved Blacks and small numbers of free Black people.

Though the harsh treatment of enslaved Africans largely paled in comparison to that of white slaveholders, Blacks still were treated as an underclass among Native Americas. The Five Civilized Tribes even established slave codes that protected owners’ property rights and restricted the rights of Blacks.

Here are the Five Civilized Tribes who held Black people as slaves.

Chickasaw

It is no surprise that the Native Americans knew the land well. Their knowledge became a lucrative business, especially for the Chickasaws who had keen navigation skills. They were hired by white slaveholders to traverse the terrain to capture Blacks who had escaped slavery.

The Chickasaw also held enslaved Africans of their own, and the system they established closely approximated that of white slaveholders on cotton plantations.

For rest of list please click here.

Tribal college poetry slam

By Monica Brown, Tulalip News

The tribal college poetry slam event in March of 2014, features a large collection of talented Native American poets speaking on different subjects from family to government. The video lasts and hour and a half with round two starting at the 58:00 mark. Among the poets is Jennifer Cordova-James of Northwest Indian College.

The 2014 tribal college poetry slam is a Tribal College Journal (TJC) and American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) event.

The AIHEC founded in 1972, represents 37 Tribal colleges and their mission is “to support the work of the tribal colleges and universities and the national movement for tribal self-determination.”

Supported by the AIHEC, is the TJC’s and states they are a “culture-based publication addresses subjects important to the future of American Indian and Alaska Native communities utilizing both journalistic and scholarly articles and has become a forum for college staff, faculty, administrators, and students to discuss their needs, successes, and evolving missions.”