The Native American Press (Bemidji, Minnesota), 1992-05-01

              American Indian homeless proposal not funded even after MCT appealed
By Gary Blair
Acording to Gordon Thayer,
Housing Specialist for the BIA in
Minneapolis, one in 10 American
Indians could be homeless in
Minnesota, the 1990 census counted
Indians in Minnesota at 49,909.
Thayer, former tribal chairman of
the Lac Courte Oreilles Chippewa
Reservation in Wisconsin said the
problem is more acute in the Phillips
neighborhood because that
community has a large American
Indian population - an overall
population of 17,272, nearly 34
percent of which are American
Indians.
In a 1989 survey by the Amberst
H. Wilder Foundation only 87
American Indians were identified as
homeless in Minneapolis. According
to Thayer, there are approximately
1,200 homeless American Indians in
the city, including those who live
with their extended family's. "All
you have to do is walk down
Franklin or Cedar Avenues and
you'll see the problem is much
bigger than that," he said.
Thayer is chairman of the
American Indian Task Force on
Housing and Homeless (AITFHH),
an organization that formed in July
1991 to deal with the growing
problems of homeless American
Indians in Minnesota.
"The task force presented a
proposal on behalf of the Minnesota
Chippewa Tribe for funds available
under the Stewart B. McKinney
fund, created to help this country's
homeless." Thayer said.
The condition that feeds the
homeless problem among American
Indians was painfully spelled out in
the proposal: 'homelessness,
unemployment, and chemical
dependency are frequendy entwined.
In the Phillips neighborhood, where
Minnesota's largest concentration of
American Indians live, these
problems are most acute.'
AITFHH proposal was a
warmed-over version of the
successful City of St. Paul Project
Self-Suficiency. It emphasizes
vocational training, centered around
sobriety, and continues with "the
downward spiral."
Minnesota has wasted millions of
dollars by not examining the entire
path to sobriety and self-sufficiency.
Once an American Indian has entered
a treatment program, promises are
often made that a sober life will be a
better and more successful life.
In reality, after twenty-one days in
treatment, clients are discharged
from "a vacation in OZ" (as
described by a client) to the stark
reality of homelessness, joblessness,
and no access to resources to
maintain sobriety.
The client returns with the
expectation that he or she is
incapable of achieving a better life,
which tends to be true. Daily life
Happy Mothers Day
M May 10, 1992
I
Red Lake Candidates
Candidates had until April 20th to file for candidacy on the Red Lake
Reservation for the May 20th election. There are four district
representative postions open in Red lake, Redby, Little Rock and
Ponemah, all are four year terms. Due to the passing of Dan Raincloud,
Jr., Ponemah District Rpresentative, the regularly scheduled election
will include an election to fill the remaining two years of his term.
Candidates in the Ponemah District are Tom Stillday, Jr., incumbent, Jim
Cloud Sr., Clifford Hardy, Myron Kingbird, Jeffery Kingbird, and Melvin
Whitefeather.
In the Redby District George Jones is the incumbent. Candidates are;
Darrell Auginash, Larry Good, Bobby Head, Lorna Fairbanks, Marvin
Prentice, Clarence Stately, and Joe Thunder.
Red Lake District incumbent is Nickel Cook. Candidates are Willie
May, and Dick Hanson.
The incumbent in Little Rock District is Lawerence Bedeau, other
candidates are Harlan Bealieau, and Joe Dudley.
White Earth Candidates
Friday, April 24th marked the last day to file for candidacy in the June
9th tribal election on the White Earth Reservation.
Six people filed for the Chairman position, and eight filed for the
District III position, both being four-year terms of office.
Candidates for Chairman (Chairperson) are as follows: Darrell
'Chip' Wadena, incumbent, Naytahwaush; John B. Buckanga,
Ponsford; Lowell L. Bellanger; Judith Murray Toppings, Callaway;
Peter W. Charette, Waubun; and Jeremiah R. Watson, also of Waubun.
District III Representative candidates are: Paul (Poncho) Williams,
Ogema; Rena Henry Vizenor, Ponsford; Allen (Brad) Beaupre, Ogema;
Charles Joe Foster, Sr., White Earth; Francis R. Bellanger, White Earth;
Albert Basswood, Jr., Ponsford; Lyman C. Roberts, Ponford; and Mark
Smith, White Earth.
Bois Forte Candidates
The following candidates were certifiedApril 27th. Chairman: Eugene
Boshey, incumbent; Gary W. Donald, former chairman; Marvin Knott;
Harold Goodsky; Wendell Drift; and William Light. Ernie Drift, who is
a student at BSU in Bemidji, was not certified.
The following candidates were certified for the position of District I
Committeeman: Marcella Connor, Roger Whiteman, Sr., Jerome
Whiteman, and Gordon Adams, Jr.
Grand Portage Candidates
The following candidates were certified April 27th for the positions of
Chairman, Secretary-Treasurer, and Councilman.
Chairman candidates: Norman W. Deschampe, Gordon D. LeGarde
Jr., and Andrew Lester Day. The current Tribal Chairman, James
Hendrickson, is not seeking reelection.
Secretary-Treasurer candidates: Dick Hoagland, Cheryl Kauppi (Sherer),
William S. Corcoran, Dennis Morrison, Joseph Porter, and Gilbert Caribou.
Councilman candidates: Duane "Speedy" Porter, incumbent, Curtis
Gagnon, and Barb Dahmen. This position is a four year term.
Leech Lake Candidates
Candidates were certified April 27th. The following persons are
seeking the position of Chairman: Daniel Brown, incumbent, James
Cloud, Jr., Josie L. Lee, Raymond "Skip" Lyons, AI "Tig" Pemberton,
Walter Francis Reese, Richard 'Dick' Tanner, Hartley White Sr.. Alfred
Pemberton is a former Secretary-Treasurer.
District II Representative candidates: Kenneth Lee Brown, Arnold
"Butch" Dahl, Jon "Harry" Greene, Virginia "Ginger" Greene, Jack
Seelye, and Benny F. White. The current District II Representative,
Gladys Drouillard, is not seeking reelection.
District III Representative Candidates are: Myron F. Ellis, incumbent,
Gloria (Allen) Dudley, Donald "Mick" Finn, Simon Howard, Doris
Jones, Richard Robinson, Jr., and Dean Wind.
Fond Du Lac Candidates
The following persons were certified April 27 for the positions of
Chairman: Robert "Sonny" Peacock, incumbent, Vincent "Butch"
Martineau, Ferdinand Martineau, Jr., Edward "Skip" Pellerin, and
Clarence "Chuck" Smith.
Candidates for District III Councilman are: George Dupuis, incumbent,
Theresa LaPrairie, Kevin Olsen, Napolean Ross, and Louella Diver.
District I Councilman candidates are: Clifton Rabideaux, incumbent,
Sandra 'Sandi' Savage, LaVern 'Koon' Shotley, Harvey DeFoe, Roger
Smith, Leonard 'Mickey' Houle, and Carla Houle.
Mille Lacs Candidates
Thirteen candidates have filed for the four tribal council positions at
Mille Lacs. They were certified on April 27th. The following are
seeking the position of Chairperson: Marge Anderson, incumbent,
Reginald Garbow, Arvella Kegg, George V. LaFave, Sr., and
Mushkooub. Incumbent David G. Matrious's position as
Secretory-Treasurer is being challenged by Raymond Kegg. District I
Representative candidates are: Myron V. Garbow, incumbent, Bonita
Nayquonabe, David 'Mosay' Sam, and Kenneth G. Weyaus. Incumbent
Bernida Churchill's District III Representative position is being
challenged by Valerie LaFave.
tasks faced by a newly recovering
person are simply overhwleming
even to normal people."
Winnifred Jourdain added to the
project's narrative, "Our people
seem very discouraged. They've
been denied so mch for so long,
pushed aside and not listened to, all
their lives. Everybody always did
our thinking for us."
"The proposal was not funded,
even after the Tribe appealed the
Labor Department's decision,"
Thayer reported. Thayer who was
recntly in Washington, D.C, was
told that the chances for an
American Indian Housing Authority
for Minneapolis are very slim
because, "If we do it for one, we'll
have to do it for all."
AITFHH got few letters of
support, and Katie Fournier, from
the Minneapolis Mayor's office,
said, "there's so many factions in the
Indian community it's hard to do
anything," thus explaining why even
the city of Minneapolis did not
submit a letter supporting the
proposal. Thayer explained that
Minneapolis doesn't even have an
American Indian on their own
homeless task force.
By and for the Piative American Community
free
The
native
American
Press
We Support Equal Opportunity For All People
Copyright The native American Press, 1992
Founded in 1991
Volume 1 Issue 17
May 1,1992
Ojibwe medicine man Jimmy Jackson dies Apr. 19
By Susan Stanich
Renowned Ojibwe medicine man
James "Jimmy" Jackson Sr. died
April 19th in Grand Rapids,
following an illness.
Mr. Jackson, 78, Cohasset, spent
five decades in service to Indian
people throughout the United States
and Canada. He was "probably the
best known Ojibwe in this century,"
said a Ojibwe spiritual leader who
preferred to remain unnamed.
"We're really going to miss him,"
said Roger Jourdain, former
chairman of the Red Lake
Reservation and a longtime friend.
"There weren't many like him. I'm
feeling lonely now."
"I don't know of any other man in
Indian Country as loved and
respected as Jim Jackson," said
Larry Aitken of Cass Lake, a friend
and student of Mr. Jackson.
He was bom in Sawyer and raised
on the Fond du Lac and White Earth
reservations. He attended a federal
boarding school in Wahpeton, N.D.,
where he was ridiculed and
punished, and ran away at age 9.
When a school representative came
to bring him back, Mr. Jackson's
grandfather chased the official off
with a shotgun, said Aitken, who is
working on Mr. Jackson's
biography. The boy never returned
to the school.
Because Mr. Jackson was educated
by his grandfather and other elders,
he was uniquely able to follow his
calling as medicine man, Aitken said.
"He was one of the only unbroken
Indians," Aitken said. "He was
natural, he was free and he was
unbroken."
As a young man, Mr. Jackson
worker as a logger. But when he and
his wife, Ida, were raising their large
family, he began his life's work:
bringing health to Indian people
using traditional medicines and
prayer, psychology, love and humor.
He spoke at colleges and schools,
ministered to prison inmates and
worked to prevent alcohol and drug
abuse. Mr. Jackson also served on
the Minnesota Educational Task
Force.
Indian inmates in the state prison
at Stillwater, Minn., looked forward
to his visits, said George Cardinal of
L'Anse, Mich., a former Stillwater
inmate.
"These young guys - you know,
they're a tough lot. But they really
liked him. He didn't condemn them,
and he didn't preach down to them.
He would use lessons from his life
to show them the error of their ways.
A lot of them weren't that
traditional, but he spoke to them in a
traditional way they could
understand."
As his fame spread, people came
from all over the country to be treated
for physical maladies, emotional
distress and other problems. On
weekends, his homes in Brookston
and, later, in Cohasset would be filled
with visitors. He never charged for
his services and people left him gifts,
tobacco and money as they saw fit.
He sometimes joked that being a
medicine man kept him poor, except
in tobacco and telephone bills.
Mr. Jackson died of liver cancer at
Itasca Medical Center in Grand
Rapids on April 19th. Seven
daughters, Darlene, Donna, Tido,
Myrna, Mary Lou, Shirley and
James Jackson, Sr., at a Leech Lake Tribal College Storytelling at the
Woodrest Nursing Home in Walker last February. Photo by James Welch.
Maria Jackson, and a son, Melvin,
died previously.
Surviving are his wife, Ida; four
daughters, Doris Belgarde and
Wanda Jackson, both of Deer River,
and Eloise Bobrowski and Betty
Bobrowski, both of Grand Rapids;
four sons, James Jr., Dale, LaVern
and DeVern, all of Cohasset; three
adopted daughters, Marcella Howard
of Minneapolis, Linda Reese of Cass
Lake, and Dolly Jackson of Cloquet;
an adopted son, Ray Slick of
Shawnee, Okla.; 24 grand children;
six great-grand-children; and six
great-great-grandchildren.
Services were held last
Wednesday with burial in the Inger
Cemetery.
[Reprinted with permission from
the Duluth News-Tribune, April 21,
1992.]
Woman accuses Cloquet officer of assault
By Susan Stanich
A 34-year-old Duluth woman says
she was physically assaulted by a
Cloquet police officer after he and a
partner arrested her early Saturday.
The complainants who called the
police back her allegation.
Valerie Shingobe, a Mille Lacs
Chippewa, was treated for a broken
nose and lacerations at Cloquet
Community Memorial Hospital,
hospital records show.
"This wouldn't have happened if it
had been some cute white girl in the
back seat," she said from the Carlton
County Jail. "He (Officer Mark
Laine) just literally grabbed me by
the front of my jacket, pulled me out
of the police car, threw me face
down on the pavement, put his knee
in my back, grabbed me by the back
of the hair and rammed my face in
the pavement."
Laine's initial report says he and
three other officers, in two squad
cars, responded to a call that
Shingobe was threatening two
residents of the Fond du Lac
Reservation housing compound in
Cloquet. He said the complainants
claimed she had a gun and was trying
to back her car into them. Reports of
fights and drinking aren't uncommon
there, and there was at least one
serious shooting in recent years.
Laine wrote that Shingobe
appeared intoxicated. He said he
searched her for a gun, found none
and arrested her. He made no
mention of injuries. No gun was
found in her car, which was
impounded and searched. Public
Safety Director Ben Roginski said.
Geraldine DeFoe and Sheryl
Hague, the two compound residents
who called the police, said Shingobe
had no facial injuries before her
arrest. They said after she was put in
the squad car, they saw it pull away,
then stop suddenly; then the officers
were outside and Shingobe was on
the ground, they said.
"I said, 'Look, they're
manhandling her,'" DeFoe said. She
and Hague said Monday they're
considering withdrawing their
complaint.
Roginski said late Monday that the
officers' lengthier taped account
hadn't yet been transcribed, so he
didn't know details of their report.
Shingobe said that after the
officers put her in the back seat of
the car, the loosely-fastened
handcuffs came off, so she handed
them to an officer in the front seat -
a move that seemed to anger him,
she said.That's when he pulled her
from the car and pushed her face
into the pavement twice, she said.
The older police officer told the
younger man to stop, Shingobe said.
She was handcuffed again and taken
to jail, although she asked the police
to take her to the hospital. Carlton
County deputies took her to the
hospital about 16 hours later, records
show.
Laine's older partner that night
was Floyd "Buck" Fulton, observers
said.
Shingobee, a UMD student, said
she wasn't drunk and the officers
didn't read her her rights or ask her
to take a breath test.
According to hospital records,
Shingobe told the emergency room
physician that a police officer had
beaten her. Besides the broken nose,
she had black-and-blue eyes, scalp
and facial lacerations, a bruise on
her neck, and neck and back pain.
The doctor prescribed pain
medication and suggested she get a
CAT scan and eye exam in 10 days.
Shingobe's 7-year-old-son, left in
the care of a baby sitter, was taken to
a children's shelter, Shingobe said.
She made a formal complaint to a
Carlton County deputy. Roginski said
he'll have his staff look into her
complaint and will decide whether
discipline of an officer is in order. He
said such complaints are unusual, and
except for "an extraordinary case"
two years ago - when a veteran
Cloguet police officer was suspended
and later sentenced for assault - he
receives only about three non-serious
complaints per year.
It would be wonderful never to
have a complaint," he said. "But I
don't think that's possible. You
can't work with people 24 hours a
day without rubbing somebody's fur
wrong."
Roginski said that after he sees the
longer incident report, he'll turn it
over to the Carlton County Attorney,
who will decide whether to charge
Shingobe.
No charges were filed against her
by noon Tuesday, so state law
required that she be released.
[Reprinted with permission from
the Duluth News Tribune, April 28,
1992.J
Bremer Internships awarded to organizations
The Bremer Non-profit
Internship Program awarded
summer internships to four
organizations serving Native
Americans. The Plains Art
Museum of Fargo/Moorhead and
the Ojibwe Art Expo Committee of
Bemidji, Minnesota; The
Anishinabe Council of Job
Developers, Inc., the Great Lakes
Inter-Tribal Council, Inc., Lac Du
Flambeau, Wise, and the Leech
Lake Twin Cities Office, Mpls.,
Minnesota. Each organization will
receive a paid college intern for 10
weeks this summer.
The internship program has two
primary objectives: to provide
valuable job experience for
students and develop their interest
in the nonprofit sector; to benefit
the recipient organizations (and by
extension the community) from the
work performed by the students.
The Internship program is
sponsored by the Otto Bremer
Foundation and is administered by
the Minnesota Council of
Nonprofits.
The Plains Art Museum is a
repository for art collections which
form an artistic legacy of the
region. It provides facilities for
exhibitions, educational activities
in the arts, organizes special
exhibitions and programs, family
workshops, classes and other
services and events.
The Ojibwe Art Expo Committee
organizes the Ojibwe Art Expo, an
annual juried exhibition which
promotes and presents American
Indian artists, contemporary or
traditional, of the upper midwest.
The Museum and Ojibwe Art
Expo Committee are working
together on a special 20th
Commemorative Invitational
Exhibition. The Bremer intern
will create a complete written
documentation of this history of
this important exhibition,
including artist's resumes,
selected artists interviews, slides,
photographs and other appropriate
materials.
The exhibit is scheduled to open
this fall/winter of 1992-93 at the
museum and tour regionally, then
nationally for two years.
The Anishinabe Council of Job
Developer's plan a project to
research and develop a plan for a
temporary job placement service
focused on the American Indian
population.
The intern for the Great Lakes
Inter-Tribal Council will help to
plan, develop, and implement a
women's encampment as a
forum/opportunity for women of
all ages to share both
contemporary and traditional
health information in formal and
informal ways.
An elder's project of the Leech
Lake Twin Cities Office will
utilize elders in the teaching of
youth about the Ojiway language,
oral history, culture and customs
throught the arts and media.
A total of 30 internships were
awarded for 1992 in Minnesota,
Wisconsin, and North Dakota.
The sponsoring organizations
represent the diversity of the
nonprofit sector. The project
demonstrates that nonprofit
leaders continue to develop
innovative solutions or creative
ways to address community
needs.