syəcəb
By Niki Cleary, Tulalip News
Although we’re hearing predictions of snow this weekend, if you look, there are signs of spring everywhere. Many people see cherry blossoms as one of the first signs, however, here at Tulalip we look for Indian Plum and other native plants. The above photo was taken in my back yard. Along with the lengthening day, these small bits of green tell us that spring is here.
Police are still processing what they called a horrific crime scene at Cedarville Rancheria tribal headquarters near Altura, California, after 44-year-old Sherie Rhoades gunned down her brother, niece and nephew at an eviction hearing.
Four people in all were killed, including the tribal leader, Rhoades’s brother, the Associated Press Reported. Two were critically wounded.
Altura police identified the deceased as Angel Moonstar Penn, 19; Glenn Phillip Calonico, 30; Shelia Lynn Russo, 47, and Rurik Daniel Davis, 50. Russo was not related to Rhoades, AP said.
The two wounded survivors were sisters, the Los Angeles Times reported, and they were flown to hospitals in Redding, about 130 miles away. Altura police said in an e-mailed statement that “as of this morning, one victim was still listed in critical condition and the second was alert and talking.”
Rhoades was taken into custody.
“There are no public safety concerns and we have no information indicating there was any other suspects involved at this time,” the police statement said. “Rhoades was being held at the Modoc County Jail on charges of homicide, attempted murder, child endangerment and brandishing a weapon. She has been moved to an undisclosed facility, for her safety.”
Nearby Alturas Indian Rancheria closed their tribal headquarters on Friday out of respect after the Thursday February 20 shooting.
The carnage began at about 3:30 p.m., according to police and witness accounts, when former tribal chairwoman Sherie Lash, also known as Sherie Rhoades, pulled out a 9-millimeter shotgun during a hearing about the potential eviction of her and her son from tribal lands.
A judge who had been remotely attending the hearing via phone could only listen, KTXL-TV reported.
A witness escaped from the offices and ran down the street, covered in blood, to summon police, KRCR-TV reported. When officers arrived they found the 44-year-old Rhoades outside the building, clutching the butcher knife she had grabbed from the kitchen when she ran out of ammunition.
Police said the investigation is ongoing and that the investigators from the California Department of Justice and the California Highway Patrol Multi-Disciplinary Accident Investigation Team are helping local police process the crime scene. The victims were scheduled to be autopsied on Friday, according to News-10.
“We’re trying to get this thing resolved as quick as possible,” Alturas Police Chief Ken Barnes told News10-TV. “So it’s, it’s a huge impact on our community.”
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/02/21/cedarville-rancheria-shooter-killed-brother-niece-nephew-police-153686
By Hansi Lo Wang, from NPR All Things Considered show
This Thursday, three Native American tribes are changing how they administer justice.
For almost four decades, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling has barred tribes from prosecuting non-American Indian defendants. But as part of last year’s re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, a new program now allows tribes to try some non-Indian defendants in domestic abuse cases.
It will be another year before the program expands to other eligible federally-recognized tribes around the country in March 2015. But the Department of Justice has selected three tribes to exercise this authority first, including the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon, and the Tulalip Tribes, located north of Seattle.
‘Going To War’
Deborah Parker serves as the Tulalip Tribes’ vice chair. For three years, she flew back and forth between Washington state and Washington, D.C., giving speeches and knocking on doors — an experience that she says felt like “going to war.”
“You got to go to battle,” Parker says, “and you have to convince a lot of people that native women are worth protecting,”
And that protection, Parker was convinced, had to come from Congress. So she pushed for legislation allowing American Indian tribes to prosecute non-Indian defendants in domestic violence cases.
About four out of every ten women of American Indian or Alaskan Native descent have “experienced rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s an alarming statistic that Parker knows all too well from growing up on the reservation.
“We didn’t have a strong police presence when I was younger. Even [if you called] the police, often they didn’t respond,” she says. “When they did, they would say, ‘Oh, it’s not our jurisdiction, sorry.’ [And] prosecutors wouldn’t show up.”
A Question Of Jurisdiction
Jurisdiction is the key word in this discussion.
In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe that tribal governments have no jurisdiction over crimes committed by non-Native Americans on tribal land.
Instead, tribes have to rely on federal prosecutors to take on such cases, and prosecutors have not always been able or willing to consistently pursue reports of domestic violence.
Deborah Parker and other advocates pushed to address this issue — and some lawmakers in Congress pushed back.
One of the most vocal opponents of the new program was Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa. He voiced his concerns about the constitutionality of the program during a Senate debate last February, weeks before the Violence Against Women Act was reauthorized.
“The key stumbling block to enacting a bill at this time is the provision concerning Indian tribal courts,” Grassley said, referring to a provision that allows American Indian tribal courts to have jurisdiction over non-Indians accused of domestic violence.
Stepping Towards A Solution
But Fred Urbina, chief prosecutor for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, says the provision that passed is fairly complicated and narrow. “This basically helped it pass through Congress and get approval, so everybody’s describing this as a first step,” he says.
The “special domestic violence criminal jurisdiction” program is limited to certain domestic violence cases involving non-Native American defendants who are in existing relationships with Native Americans and living or working on the reservation. In Alaska, it only applies to the Metlakatla Indian Community of Annette Islands Reserve.
Still, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe’s Attorney General Amanda Sampson Lomayesva says the program will offer a new route for justice.
“It is a ray of hope,” she says “Maybe we can start protecting people and having the tribal members who live here on the reservation feel like something will be done.”
Brent Leonhard, an attorney for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, also sees the program as a partial solution to “a mess created both by a Supreme Court decision and by federal law and policy.”
“This is a step towards trying to improve that,” he says.
Parker acknowledges that the program “doesn’t answer all the questions” about how tribal governments can play a more direct role in addressing crime by non-Native Americans.
“But it allows us to exert jurisdiction and arrest those who violate protection orders [and commit] dating violence [or] domestic violence,” says Parker, who adds that she hopes the program will give a stronger voice to more Native American women
Four people are dead, two are critically injured and a woman is in custody after a shooting at the Cedarville Rancheria Tribal Office and Community Center in Alturas, California.
Police say the 44-year-old woman, known as Sherie Lash, or as Sherie Rhoades, opened fire during an eviction hearing at about 3:30 p.m. Pacific time on February 20, Reuters reported. Two women, aged 19 and 45, and two men, 30 and 50, died, and two others were airlifted to hospitals in critical condition. Police told ABC affiliate KRCR-TV that one of the deceased was the current tribal leader.
Rhoades, a former chairwoman of the 35-member federally recognized tribe, was attending a hearing about her potential eviction from tribal lands, the Redding, California, Record Searchlight reported. After shooting the five people, Rhoades allegedly went after a sixth with a butcher knife, police said.
Cedarville is about 15 miles east of Alturas, in northeastern California near the Oregon border.
Check back for updates from ICTMN.
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/02/21/shooting-cedarville-rancheria-tribal-office-leaves-4-dead-2-critically-injured-153670
Source: Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
The Stillaguamish and Tulalip tribes have partnered with the state Department of Natural Resources and three private timber companies to map forestlands in the Stillaguamish and Skykomish basins.
LIDAR, which stands for Light Distance and Ranging, uses an airborne laser to survey topography.
“The laser pulses from the plane are reflected back to record billions of points of light that measure elevation,” said Derek Marks, Timber/Fish/Wildlife biologist for Tulalip.
Elevation data was collected on working forestlands and a large area of Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. The result is a high-resolution model that enables natural resources managers to identify resources and potential risks, such as landslides.
“We can save many hours with high-resolution models,” Marks said. “We don’t have to walk the hillside; a forester would have to traverse the area to know where the streams are.”
The new LIDAR surveys covered an area that previously had not been mapped, where the forest canopy covers streams. The models will guide environmental permit reviews for logging and road proposals.
“We’re also reflying the entire North Fork Stillaguamish corridor to compare the data with LIDAR from 2003, to see what’s changed in a 10-year period,” said Scott Rockwell, Timber/Fish/Wildlife biologist for Stillaguamish. Those surveys will cover tribal restoration projects on the North Fork.
“It streamlines management and risk assessment for private industry and state lands,” Rockwell said. “It allows tribes to prioritize and scope restoration projects where we can see obvious habitat potential.”
The surveys were coordinated by the Puget Sound LIDAR Consortium, an informal group of federal and local agencies that acts as a clearinghouse for the high-resolution topographic models, making the data available to the public.
By Andrew Gobin, Tulalip News
The Tulalip Heritage Hawks continue to blaze through the district championships undefeated. Tonight’s intense game was an exhilarating win as the Hawks triumphed over the Shorewood Christian Lions 86-55, advancing on to the Tri-District Championship game next week.
By the end of the first quarter, the Hawks were already leading the Lions strong at 30-10, dominating the rest of the game staying ahead of the Lions by double the points. In the fourth quarter, the Lions started their assault on the Hawks, but could not get past their defense.
Dontae Jones – 4, Brandon Jones – 8, Bradley Fryberg – 9, Ayrik Miranda – 2, Trevor Fryberg – 3, Robert Miles Jr. – 19, Shawn Sanchey – 19, Keanu Hamilton – 20, Anthony McLean – 2.
Tulalip: 30, 22, 15, 19 Final 86
Shorewood: 10, 14, 14, 17 Final 55
The Tulalip Heritage Hawks will play Shorewood Christian Lions today at 3:00 p.m. at Mount Vernon Christian High School. This is the second tri-district game for district one 1B champions, the Heritage Hawks, who stand 23-1 for the season, undefeated in the post season, and are second seed for the 1B class ranking.
Catch live updates on Tulalip News Facebook page.
Dream Big for Kids
Billings Gazette Feb 19, 2014 • By Brett French
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes trucked 17 more Yellowstone National Park bison from the park’s Stephens Creek bison capture facility to a slaughter facility in Ronan on Wednesday.
The tribes pay a game warden to ride along with the shipment of animals to shoot them if there is an accident and the bison escape from the trailer, a requirement of the Montana Department of Livestock.
That requirement was unknown to the Inter Tribal Buffalo Council, which had agreed to take any bison not wanted by Yellowstone treaty tribes. Initially, the DOL offered to provide one of its employees to ride along at a cost of $350 a trip. When the council balked at the cost, Yellowstone on Wednesday agreed to pay, said Christian Mackay, executive officer for the DOL.
“It’s not an insurmountable problem by any means,” Mackay said. “We have some loads scheduled this week to go out.”
Jim Stone, executive director of the buffalo council, said such “annoying” issues are roadblocks to fulfilling agreements under the Interagency Bison Management Plan and he called into question the DOL’s role in the process.
To date, tribal and state hunters have killed 162 bison, said Tom McDonald of the confederated tribes’ natural resources office. The Nez Perce, Shoshone-Bannock and Umatilla tribes are still conducting hunts. Montana-licensed hunters took 29 bison this season.
Last week, the confederated tribes transported another 20 bison from Yellowstone to slaughter and five were transferred to the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service for research. According to a Park Service spokesman, about 70 to 75 bison are now in the Stephens Creek corral. The bison were not hazed into the facility. Another 50 to 70 bison have moved past the park’s northern boundary in the Gardiner Basin while about 400 have gathered in the park roughly between the towns of Gardiner and Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyo.
Yellowstone officials want to remove 300 to 600 bison in consecutive years to reduce the size of the park’s herds to meet the terms of an agreement with the state of Montana. Bison advocacy groups have decried the move, saying a target population of 3,000 to 3,500 bison in the park is not based on the carrying capacity of the range. This summer the park’s bison herd was estimated at 4,600 animals.
Bison advocates would like to see the animals given more room to roam outside Yellowstone and a quarantine process enacted to transfer live animals to existing tribal bison herds. Those efforts have been fought by the livestock industry since many of the bison carry brucellosis, which can cause pregnant cattle to abort.
Defenders of Wildlife said 56,000 people had emailed Gov. Steve Bullock asking him to intervene and halt the slaughter.
McDonald said confederated tribes are taking bison to slaughter for hunters who were unsuccessful in filling their bison hunting tags. The hunters pay for the cost of shipping, slaughtering and butchering of the bison.
“When it’s all said and done, people love bison meat and are willing to pay a premium,” McDonald said. “Ninety-seven percent of the people who return to eating bison find it exceptional.”
He added that the hunts have been “self-esteem builders” for the parties of hunters that travel to Yellowstone’s borders.
“It’s almost a healing kind of thing,” McDonald said.
Water 4fish
TAHOLAH, WA (2/18/14)— “I am extremely disappointed that the State Fish and Wildlife Commission has chosen to unilaterally develop a management policy for Grays Harbor salmon,” said Fawn Sharp, President of the Quinault Indian Nation. Her comment referred to a recent news release in which the Commission announced its February 8 approval of a new salmon-management policy to conserve wild salmon runs and clarify catch guidelines for sport and commercial fisheries in the bay.
