The Ojibwe News (Bemidji, Minnesota), 1994-09-23

              Feds uncovering maze of criminal activity at
White Earth
By Gary Blair
Reports say federal officials are uncovering massive corruption on the
White Earth resenation that also involves non-Indians. This investigation is being conducted by a federal
task force made-up of agents from the
FBI, the U.S. Inspector General's
Office/ Department of Interior and the
IRS.
PRESS sources say since the investigation was initiated nearly a year
ago, reservation chairman Chip
Wadena has lost his light-hearted demeanor. They say he's been wearing a
frown even when at his favorite pastime — playing the high price slot
machines at the resenation's casino,
located in Mahnomen.
Part ofthe government's probe of
White Earth now invokes election
fraud and on Tuesday of this week
they brought their first witness before
a federal grand jury in Minneapolis.
It'snotknown at this timewhat Carley
"Baby Doll" Jaskins told that jury,
but. sources say federal authorities,
plan to invite her back, just in case she
forgot to tell them everything.
Sources also say Jaskins, who received her subpoena last Wednesday,
is only the first of many who will be
ordered to appear for questioning.
Jaskins has sened as the resenation' s
general election judge for many years
and was appointed by Wadena. She is
suspected of helping Wadena and
secretary/treasurer Jerry Rawley win
their elections. Wadena has held office as chairman for over 25 vears and
Rawley for nearly 13 years.
Allegations that election fraud was
being committed at White Earth have
been rumored for more than ten years.
The latest election protest revealed
that names of deceased enrollees, some
having died as long as 15 years ago,
had ballots submitted in their names
voting for Rawley.
Many of those ballots were sent
through the U.S. mail which, if prosecuted, could bring penalties of a
$ 1000 fine and five years in prison/or
each count. Federal authorities turned
their interest toward election fraud
when this information was made public. (It's not against the law to commit
election fraud on Indian resenations,
except if the U.S. mail is used to
Maze cont'd on pg 3
Deer: BIA exempt from federal staff reductions
By Bunty Anquoe
Indian Country Today
Washington Bureau
Washington - The BIA will be
exempt from further staff reductions
under the Clinton, administration's
plans to streamline the federal
workforce, according to Ada Deer,
Interior Department assistant
secretary for Indian affairs.
The bureau, which oversees federal
programs for 547 federally recognized
tribes, is required to trim its staff by
612 full-time positions from its
headquarter and area office staff in
fiscal year 1995.
But, Ms. Deer assured tribal leaders,
the Interior Department will absorb
the staff cuts the agency would have
had to take from 1996 to 1999, and
she announced that 75 percent of the
savings      achieved      through
streamlining measures would be
shifted to the tribe-agency level. The
remaining 25 percent will be
reinvested in retraining BIA staff and
developing information technology,
she said.
"I've heard you, loud and clear." she
told members of the BIA's
reorganization task force at an August
meeting in Mexcalero, N.M. "You
are not satisfied with many of the
services from the BIA. Big
improvements are needed and you
have ideas about how to fix things."
Four years ago, the group of tribal
leaders and federal officials was
charged with finding ways to revamp
the much-maligned agency. The task
force and many other tribal leaders
have said that savings accumulated
under President Clinton's effort to
streamline the federal government
The administration is aiming to
reduce the federal deficit by cutting
costs and by downsizing the federal
workforceby 252,000employees over'
the next four years.
The reorganization task force's fi nal
report to Congress on how to
restructure the BIA would shift federal
program responsibility to tribe-agency
level, reform the BIA budgeting
system to provide tribal influence over
' 95 percent of the funds appropriated
for Indian affairs and recommends
equitable distribution of any savings
generated by federal streamlining to
the tribal level.
The task force, in its final meeting,
resolved that "resultant savings from
BIA reorganization or streamlining
initiative be divided by a "one-
fourteenth" formula between the 12
area tribes, the small tribes and the
should go to the tribes, and not into   Q | A   _„.,. __ _ _ __ 0
Tr™„, nenartn^nt coffer, ° 'A COnt d On  page 3
Treasury Department coffers.
Ho-Chunk Casino in parking lot scuffle with
ex-managers
By Scot Carlson
St. Paul Pioneer Press
Rising antogonism between the
Winnebago Indians of Wisconsin and
the former operator ofthe tribe's Ho-
Chunk Casino broke out in an unlikely.
place this week: a parking lot near the
Wisconsin Dells-area casino.
Golden Nickel Casinos, an affiliate
of Minneapolis-based Gaming Corp.
of America, which until July managed
the casino for the tribe, on Monday
morning started charging $5 for
customer parking on a 40-acre parcel
it owns next to the Ho-Chunk Casino
said it still has more than 500 free
parking places on its land and is
providing free parking at an auxiliary
parking lot.
Sheldon Fleck, Gaming Corp. chief
executive officer, on Wednesday was
baffled by the tribe's action.
"We would think it would be more
convenient to have that land available
for parking," he said. "I think it is a
reaction designed to hurt their own
customers."
Tom Krajewski, a public affairs
consultant for the Winnebagos,
disagreed. Allowing Golden Nickel
to charge for parking while the casino
Hemispheric Native Studies
By Jack D. Forbes
NA Studies Univ. Cal. Davis
Native American Studies at the
University of California Davis began
with one faculty member in the fall of
1969. Today, it is an independent
department, perhaps the only one in
the Untied States, with six permanent
faculty and several part-time teachers,
visiting Fellows, and research
assistants.
When the Davis program began in
1969 it, like most other Native Studies
units, was forced to be part of a larger
department. Likewise, its focus was
largely upon the United States with
some attention to other areas when
dealing with American origins, with
theplains tribes, or with the Southwest
region. By the mid- 1970'sabitmore
attention was being paid to Canada
and an experimental course was taught
on "Native Peoples of Mexico and
Central America." The small size of
the faculty7 prevented the development
of a hemispheric approach at that
time.
Native American Studies faculty
also confront the power of European
intellectual colonialism which had
almost always sought to "package"
indigenous Americans as "Canadian
Indians," "Alaskan Eskimos,"
Mexican Indians," "Guatemalan
continues free parking could cause
misunderstandings, he said.
"We have never charged customers
for parking and don't intend to start,"
he said.
Meanwhile, Krajewski contended,
"The dispute is not really about
parking but about the licensing of
Golden Nickel. I'm sure if they had a
license, they wouldn't have done this."
In July, the Wisconsin Winnebago
Gaming Commission revoked
management licenses held by Golden
Nickel and Gaming Corp., contending
Casino cont'd on pg 3
Indians," etc. In other words,
intellectual colonialism sought to
force upon Native Peoples a colonial
mentality, an acceptance of being
placed in little separate boxes by the
processes of Euro (Yuro) conquest
and administrative subordination. Of
course, the Yuros attempted to develop
colonial administrative systems in
each "nation state" so that the
"Indians' would be dominated by a
particular bureaucracy controlled by
a specific state. D'arcy McNichle
was one of our early Native writers
who began to break this colonial
pattern by including the history of
Native con'td on pg 3
Minority AIDS fight must be stepped up
says HHS Secretary Shalala
By Marcy Gordon
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Four young
men chanted and beat a large drum
somberly as incense curled to the
ceiling of the hotel ballroom. Two
Native American women sang a prayer
and an "honor song" for people who
have died of AIDS, officially opening
a national conference on the disease's
impact on minorities.
AIDS "continues to stalk all
communities of color" and new cases
are showing up "at an alarming rate"
in racial and ethnic minorities, Health
and Human Senices Secretary Donna
Shalala said Friday in a speech to a
national conference on AIDS among
racial and ethnic minorities.
The four-day conference, which
continues through Sunday, includes
more than 700 community leaders,
senice providers and researchers from
American Indian, Alaskan Native,
Asian-American, Hispanic and black
communities. It is sponsored by the
Public Health Senice and its parent
agency, the Department of Health
and Human Senices.
Last year, Shalala said, 55 percent
ofthe 106,949 AIDS cases reported
nationwide were among minorities,
who represent about 26 percent ofthe
U.S. population.
She said the AIDS crisis is made up
of "hundreds of local epidemics."
The AID S rate is especially dramatic
among minority young people,
government statistics show.
Minorities represent 80 percent ofthe
AID S cases reported in children under
age 13. AIDS is the leading cause of
death for blacks aged 25 to 44 and the
second-ranked killer for Hispanics in
that age group, after motor vehicle
accidents.
"We have to reach these new
generations and we have to treat
complacency as our enemy," Shalala
said. She said the key elements are
AIDS prevention and education,
AIDS cont'd on pg 3
Feds uncovering maze of criminal activity at WE/ pg 1
'Women warriors' speak for rights, INW Conf/ pg 1
AIDS may be just getting started on reservations/ pg 3
Oral arguments in RL elec suit set for Oct. 14 at 1:00
Ojibwe high school students receive scholarships/ pg 8
Voice of the Anishinabeg (The People)
)
Fifty Cents
Ojibwe
JVews
We Support  Equal  Opportunity  For All  People
Founded   in 1988    Volume E    Issue 13     September 23, 1994
1
A weekly publication.
Copyright, The Ojibwe News,  1994
Staff Photo
Over two hundred women from through out the world gathered at Maplelag Resort, near Callaway, for
this year's Indigenous Women's Network conference. Pictured above are some of the participants.
'Women warriors' speak for rights
By Jamie Marks
Detriot Lakes Tribune
It was a call to battle.
"We are born to be guardians ofthe
sacred earth. That is why the creator
has put us here. Guardians of the
sacred earth don't just stand by the
rivers, and beat the drum, and say
their prayers."
Speaking at the Indigenous
Women's Network conference at
Maplelag, Millilani Trask summoned
"women warriors" to speak out for
the rights of America's tribal people.
Trask earned her stripes as head of
the Ka Lahaui Hawiai'i - the
traditional government of native
Hawaiians.
Native Hawaiians are an
unrecognized tribe, with no land, no
buildings, no federally recognized
tribal status.
"We can't go into federal court.
There's three classes of people in the
United States (who) can't get into the
federal court - children, retarded
adults and native Hawaiians," she
noted.
Trask and many others are working
to change that.
They wrote a tribal constitution,
were arrested in nonviolent protests
and marched 15,000 strong on 1993,
the centennial anniversary of the
overthrow of traditional government.
On Saturday, the Hawaiian women
dressed benignly in simple dresses,
sandals and traditional floral hair
wreaths.
But they spoke fighting words.
"Power," Trask said. "Something
that we need to acquire. Something
that we need to learn to utilize. Not
something that we need to run from or
cower from - because someone else is
imposing it - but power to be self-
directing."
Trask called upon the participants-
who hailed from various tribes across
the nation- to set their own political
agenda, and to view everything from
state programs to social issues as their
responsibility.
This may mean breaking away from
gender roles that do not include
women from discussions on self-
determination, she said.
"Women need to be concerned about
the political status of themselves and
their children."
With much of their land confiscated
and plant and animal species reduced,
Trask acknowledged it was difficult
for tribal people to live in the old
ways.
However, she believes it is possible
and necessary7 to sustain tribal identity
and culture by clinging to native
languages and traditions, and using
them as guides for living in the modern
day.
"We need to respond, 'What is
culturally appropriate? What is
healthy for ourselves?' Technology
in and of itself is not a bad thing."
Trask's keynote speech topped that
agenda ofthe conference's final day.
Other events included workshops
ranging form fund-raising to
preserving traditional practices and
addressing social issues.
Also included were several field
trips to sites where the White Earth
Land Recovery Project (WELRP) is
active in restoring land and traditional
practices on the White Earth Indian
Resen'ation.
Winona LaDuke, director of
WELRP, is chairperson of the
Indigenous Women's Network.
[Reprinted with the permission of
the Detroit Lakes Tribune.]
Patrick DesJarlait and The Ojibwe Tradition
Patrick DesJarlait has long been
considered one ofthe major artists in
the American Indian fine art
movement. Although his works are
in a number of public collections,
DesJarlait has never been the subject
of a museum retrospective. MMAA's
exhibition documents the artist's
development form his youth in
northern Minnesota, his artistic
traini ng before and during World War
II, and his professional career up to
his death in 1972.
The exhibition includes four
additional sections to place DesJarlait
in an art historical context. One
section includes examples of the
Southwest School of American Indian
art and the relationship of this
aesthetic approach to DesJarlait's
development. Another section
includes other unique American
Indian artists such as George Morrison
and Oscar Howe and the relationship
of their work to that of DesJarlait. A
third section documents the legacy of
DesJarlait, including works by artists
such as Carl Gawboy, David Bradley
and a number of DesJarlait family
members. Lastly, a sampling of
traditional Ojibwe crafts will provide
context to the life DesJarlait portrayed
in his art. More than 85 works of art
will be featured in this exhibition.
DesJarlait's style came to maturity
during the years following World War
II.    This exhibition highlights the
Ojibwe cont'd on pg 6
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