The Ojibwe News (Bemidji, Minnesota), 1988-10-26

              STATE:
BIA audit team at
Minneapolis Area Office
page 2
NATIONAL:
Michigan Indian gambling
gets partial exemption
page 3
AIDS SPECIAL:
Ojibwe woman with AIDS
refuses award, plus more
stories on AIDS
page
6
News Briefs
Minnesota's
unemployment
rate down
St. Paul, Minn. (AP) -
Minnesota's unemployment
rate dropped to 3.4 percent
in Sept., down from 3.6
percent in Aug., the state
Department of Jobs and
Training reported Friday.
Jobs and Training Commissioner Joe Samargia
attributed the slight decline
to a typical seasonal
fluctuation. A similar
decline has occurred
between Aug. and Sept.
since 1980, he said.
The national unemployment rate also decreased
by 0.2 of a percentage
point, but it remained 2
points higher than
Minnesota's rate in Sept.,
the agency reported.
The number of jobs in
the state totaled nearly
2.25 million, a $ain of
83,000, or 3.8 percent,
from'Sept. 1987, the
agency said.
NAIAD sponsors
fund-raising
dinner and dance
f
The anit-discrimination
roup, Native American
ndians Against
Discrimination will be
holding a fund-raising
dinner and dance Nov. 4 at
the Bemidji VFW post.
The walleye dinner is
scheduled to begin at 6
p.m. and a dance, with
music by 'Niji,' will follow at
8:30 p.m.
Tickets cost $10 per
couple and $7 per person
for the dinner and dance.
Tickets to only the dance
are $3 per person;
Memebers of NAIAD wilt be
in the area selling tickets.
Joe Sayers, one of the
group's organizers, said the
money raised will go toward
supporting the group's
effort to fight discrimination.
Attorneys ask
for damages
St. Paul, Minn. (AP) -
Attorneys for seven
families whose children;
were taken from their
homes during the 1983
child sex abuse investigations in Scott County
asked an appeals court
Thursday to overturn a
federal judge's decision
that denies their clients
damages.
The court took the case
under advisement.
The families are seeking
millions of dollars from
Scott County, the county
Department of Human Services and seven individual
social workers.
"Children needed
protection, and they didn't
get it while in the custody
of the state," attorney
Marc Kurzman told' a
three-judge panel of the
8th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals. Kurzman represents two of the families
appealing U.S. District
Judge Harry MacLaughlin's
judgment m favor of the
county and its employees.
Attorneys representing
Scott County and the
social workers urged the
Appeals Court to dismiss
the appeal and end the
legal battles that have
been going on for the last
four years in the wake of
the ill-fated child sex
abuse cases.
The
Oji bwe
News
"News by and for the Ojibwe Nation"
Copyright Ojibwe News, 1988
Founded at Bemidji, Minnesota in 1988
Volume 1 Issue 23
 FIFTY CENTS
Wednesday, October 26,1988 |
A Weekly Publication
Bemidji, Minnesota 56601
Artist-in-residence teaches
at the Circle of Life School
By Mark Boswell
Assistant Editor
The Circle of Life School in
White Earth might be the last
place you'd expect to find a
Minneapolis artist who
specializes in giant metal
sculpture, but she seems very
much at home in this environment.
Marcia McEachron will be
completing an 11 day artist-
in-residence project at the
school this week; the
residency, which included
teaching projects for every
grade level, was funded by
the Minnesota State Arts
Board under an Artists in
Education School Support
Grant.
Described in the project
proposal as a program
designed for "using a variety
of visual media, we will give
students in K-12 understanding, skills, and closure in
both individual and group
projects. Content will focus on
animals, birds, and fish
indigenous to the White Earth
Reservation and the Ojibwe
culture."
The evidence of this was all
around the loft above the;
gymnasium at the school.
Everywhere there was some
project that a student had
created, the objects ranged
from drawings of various
animals and people to a finely
sculpted bear and several
small clay pots.
McEachron has been
working with Native American
projects for ten years, her
work has been shown
throughout the state including
exhibitions at the Native
American Center and the
Institute of Art, both in
Minneapolis.
McEachron works on
projects such as the one in
white Earth when she's not
creating some of the giant
Terri Jackson of Ponsford and artist-in-residence Marcia McEachron
of Minneapolis making clay pots.
welded metal sculpture
projects that can be found
around the twin cities. Some
of her projects measure 30
Photo by Mark Boswell
feet across. Asked where
she keeps these other huge
projects, one day last weeK,
she replied, "wherever I can."
Dr. Kathy Annette
Indian Health Services prepare for AIDS epidemic
By Mark Boswell
Assistant Editor
The problem of AIDS in
America might seem a distant
and unimportant phenomena
to those of us in the Indian
communities of Minnesota but,
according to Dr. Kathy
Annette of the Minnesota
Indian AIDS Task Force, it is
an extremely important and
deadly problem that must be
dealt with now.
Dr. Annette, a familiy
practitioner for Cass Lake's
Indian Health Service, has
been working with various
agencies throughout the state
in order to prepara-Tor the
eventual problemsthat AIDS
will bring to the reservation.
"We're going to have friends
and relatives with this
disease," said Dr. Annette in
an interview, "eventually we
will all know someone
personally who has the
disease. And I don't think that
the reality of this deadly
disease will hit us until then."
Regardless of the how the
general populations in the
various Indian communities
feel about the disease and it's
consequences, Dr. Annette
and the IHS projects around
the state have been working
together to prepare for the
future. For her, this is a
complex and often difficult
process.
"In IHS we only get a set
amount of money every year
to operate under," stated Dr.
Annette, "and we, as
physicians, decide how to
spend that money. Most of us,
try as we can, have to budget
carefully.
"Now, a person that comes
to us with AIDS and is put on
AZT (a drug used in the
treatment of AIDS) and we're
talking a lot of money just for
the drug."
The extra costs for treating
an AIDS patient will be very
high in comparison to the
costs associated with other
diseases. According to Dr.
Annette,
"You don't die from the AIDS
virus itself." Dr. Annette
continued, "you die from other
diseases that the AIDS virus
brings on by killing the white
blood cells and disrupting your
immune system." ,
AIDS, known in the medical
community as human
immunodeficiency virus (HIV)
lies dormant in the blood
stream sometimes for many
years before becoming
apparent through the appearance of immune deficiency
problems.
The virus can be detected
now through testing for the
anti-bodies in the bloodstream
that try to combat the AIDS
virus as quickly as six weeks
after contracting the disease.
"In other words it takes up to
i
six weeks for detectable
amounts of the anti-bodies
that are fighting the virus to
show up, not for the virus
itself, " Dr Annette explained.
This testing is available now
through the local IHS projects
around the state and is free of
charge. "Actually, " said Dr.
Annette, "there are two tests
that are given to confirm an
AIDS case. The first test is
called ELISA (for enzyme-
linked immunosorbent assay),
is a screening test. It picks up
lots of different types of
viruses. The second, a
confirmatory test, is called
Western Blot."
According to Dr. Annette, if
you test positive for AIDS, it
would be only the beginning of
the complex treatment for
slowing the progress of the
incurable disease. "Not only
are the drugs expensive but,
you're put in the hospital for
all of these other infections,
that's going to wipe out a lot
of money."
"What scares me is," Dr.
Annette continued, "especially
with Indian people, you see
the results not only with the
person with AIDS, but with the
whole family. Everybody gets
involved with the problem
because we have such
extended families.
"So grandpa, who hasn't
been drinking for twenty years
suddenly falls of the wagon..
You wonder what's going on
when the whole family
situation back home falls
apart. This is what we, in the
health profession have to
watch for, the far reaching
effects that his has at home.
"What we have to watch, as
Indian people, is that our
people who get AIDS want to
come home to die," said Dr.
Annette, "and what we have
to\do is to try to get our
communities set up for that."
Also, unfounded rears of the
disease have resulted in
problems for AIDS victims on
the reservations.
"What has happened on
some reservations, " said Dr.
Annette, "not in our area but,
in other places, is that once a
person is diagnosed as having
the disease, it becomes public
knowledge, and by that
afternoon that person has lost
their job.
"That's fear, that's
ignorance, that's hysteria It's
pretty hard to catch the AIDS
virus. You have to practice
those high risk behaviors; if
you shoot up and share your
needle or if you have anal sex
you're susceptible to the
disease."
Dr. Annette believes that
support for the treatment of
AIDS in the Native American
populations has been
hampered by the lumping
together of Indian people with
other minority groups in the
United States and Minnesota
"One of the problems is, until
recently, Indian people didn't
even have a separate
category in the minority
statistics, she said. This may
be shrouding the real statistics
of AIDS in the Indian
community.
"We're a highly mobile
culture, we've got people
moving back ana forth from
the city to the reservation and
we've go to keep that in
mind," explained Dr. Annette.
The programs being
developed by the IHS together
with the Minnesota Indian Aids
Task Force are tied to the BIA
and the various reservation
school systems.
According to Dr. Annette, it
has been relatively easy to get
ciriculum into the various
reservation school systems
because they are not affiliated
with the public schools. Some
laws have hampered the
introduction of such materials
in the public school system in
Minnesota
Recently, a fellow practitioner
in the medical field and an
AIDS victim, has made
headlines by refusing to accept
a national award for her efforts
in educating Americans about
the disease because of what
she felt were "patronizing"
comments made by Surgeon
General C. Everett Koop in
reference to Native healing
practices.
Carole LaFavor, of
Minneapolis is a friend of Dr.
Annette, and recently spoke at
a conference on AIDS in Cass
Lake. "She emphasizes that
we have to reach back to our
cultural roots," said Dr.
Annette, "because there is
more acceptance there for
people that are different. She
says that she has found more
support among traditional
Indians than among non-
traditional Indians."
That support stems from the
cultural heritage that binds us
all together, explained Dr.
Annette. "What you try to do is
get a program set up that's
specific for your tribe. Because
of the way that Sioux, or
Navaho, or Chippewa
approach a problem, we have
to be cultural specific in
dealing with the AIDS
epidemic."
"About 1.5 million people in
the United States have tested
positive for the AIDS virus,"
said Dr. Annette, "and if you
think about it in the whole
United States there are 1.5
million Indians."
(See page 6 for
more on AIDS)
Diabetes becomes major
health problem among Indians
IHS and BSU sponsor diabetes
education and screening day
By James Johnson
Editor
Diabetes has become one
of the biggest health
problems facing American
Indians today, second only,
perhaps, to alcoholism.
According to Indian Health
Services, as many as 29
percent of the adult population, over age 35, on the
Leech Lake reservation has
diabetes, and 32 percent on
the Red Lake resevervation.
However, the problem is not
only restricted to Minnesota
Indians. The Pima reservation in Arizona has a
diabetes rate of about 50
percent among its adult
population.
Diabetes is the result of
too much sugar in the blood.
Most of the food we eat and
drink is converted into
glucose (a special form of
sugar) and is used by the
body for energy. In order to
utilize this sugar your
pancreas produces insulin. In
a person with diabetes, the
pancreas isn't producing
enough insulin or the insulin
it is producing is ineffective
in converting the sugar to
usable energy.
There are two types of
diabetes. Type 1 diabetes, or
insulin-dependent, occurs
when the pancreas doesn't
make enough insulin.
Although this type can occur
at any age, it is most
prevelant among children
and teenagers. According to
IHS, only 1 percent of Indian
people suffer from this type
of diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes, or
non-insulin dependent, occurs
when the pancreas is making
enough insulin but the body
cells become resistant to it.
Again, this type can occur at
any age but is more common
among adults. IHS says that
99 percent of Indian diabetics
have Type 2 diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes can be
controlled by changing diet,
getting more exercise, and
losing weight. According to
IHS, 8 out of 10 adults with
diabetes are overweight and
losing as little as 10 to 15
pounds can make a major
improvement. Also, some
diabetics may need to take
oral medication or insulin
injections to regulate blood
sugar levels.
People who are overweight,
have a high fat and carbohydrate diet and have
relatives with diabetes are at
a greater risk of being
diabetic.
People with diabetes are
more likely to suffer other
complications, such as heart
attacks, strokes, hardening of
the arteries, kidney disease,
blindness, nerve damage,
impotence and slow wound
healing, if the disease is left
untreated.
Some of the symptoms of
diabetes include frequent
urination, increased thrist and
hunger, rapid weight change,
weakness  or  fatigue,
irritability, blurred vision and
slow healing of cuts and
scratches.
Diabetes has not always
been a problem among the
Indians. Before 1940,
diabetes was uncommon
among all tribes. Because of
the Indian diet and lifestyle,
obesity was rare. A diet of
foods high in fiber and low in
fat and carbohydrates, plus
rigorous exercise related to
lifestyle, resulted in very few
cases of diabetes.
However, since the 1950s,
diabetes has become almost
an epidemic among Indians.
The reasons for this are
many, all are related to some
degree.
Changes toward a higher
fat diet and an increasingly
sedentary lifestyle have
resulted in more obesity and
therefore more diabetes,
according to research by Dr.
Frederick Ness of IHS in
Cass Lake.
Some of the contributors to
this, according to Ness,
include unemployment, and
commercial and commodity
foods which are high in fat
and carbohydrates.
If you are interested in
learning more about diabetes
and want to know if you may
have diabetes, there will be
an American Indian Diabetes
and Screening at Bemidji
State University on
Thursday, Oct. 27 from 11
a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Viking
Room of the lower Hobson
Union.
The event is sponsored by
IHS, BSU Community Health
Students and Native
Americans Into Medicine,
and there is no charge.