Native American Press / Ojibwe News (Bemidji, Minnesota), 2002-10-11

              INDEX
Concerned about
First group of historical
A plea to native
LaRose urges
NEWS AROUND INDIAN COUNTRY
2
Tribal Court
accounting statements
people
"VoteToday,"
NEWS BRIEFS
3
injustice?
mailed to individual Indian
October 11th
COMMENTARY/EDITORIALS
4
money account holders in
Arizona
CLASSIFIEDS
5-7
page 8
page 5
page 4
page 4
Mille Lacs: Courteau
responds to Boyd
page 4
Leech Lake recall election set for today, October 11th
Federal investigation of tribal finances underway
By Bill Lawrence
Today, October 11th, Leech Lake
tribal voters will decide whether
chairman Eli Hunt should be removed from office. Hunt and the
four other members of the Leech
Lake RTC agreed to the recall election about midway through a hearing held at the Leech Lake Palace
Casino on September 13th.
Hunt was elected to the office of
chairman on a platform of "accountability and reform" in June of
1996 and is currently serving the final two years of his second four-
year term.
527 eligible Leech Lake resident
voters signed a petition for recall,
requiring the Leech Lake RTC to
conduct the recall hearing to determine whether there was sufficient
evidence to either remove Hunt
from office by a tribal council vote
or give the responsibility for Hunt's
removal to the Leech Lake voters.
The recall petition charged Hunt
with seventeen specific charges, in
addition to three violations ofthe
Minnesota Chippewa Tribe Constitution: malfeasance in the handling
of tribal affairs, dereliction or neglect of duty, and refusal to comply
with provisions ofthe Constitution
and Bylaws of the Tribe.
After a four-hour session hearing
about half of the evidence presented at the September 13* special
meeting in front of over 300 tribal
members, Hunt and the tribal council agreed to hold the recall election. Hunt waived his right to hear
the rest of the evidence.
In order for Hunt to be recalled,
a majority of the people voting in
today's election must vote "Yes. He
should be removed." Leech Lakers
will be able to vote at the Damiano
Center in Duluth and at the Minneapolis American Indian Center, as
well as at eleven district polling
places on the reservation.
The month preceding the recall
election has been characterized by
vigorous politicking, including a
newsletter personally attacking
LaRose and other petitioners, published at tribal expense. Press/ON
is not, however, aware of any effort
by Hunt to respond to the actual
charges made against him.
Several members ofthe Leech
Lake Band informed Press/ON that
they have been recently interviewed by Special Agents of the Inspector General's office of the U.S.
Department of the Interior regarding alleged misuse of tribal funds.
Recent events have also included
the termination of tribal accountant
Diane White. White was terminated via a memorandum signed by
chairman Hunt on October 8th, despite a personnel "Policies and Procedures" circular from Hunt in July
explaining that "an individual
Tribal Council member has neither
the authority to change policy or
procedure nor the authority to hire,
fire, promote, or transfer employees." White is reportedly being terminated for allegedly releasing accounting documents documenting
misuse of tribal funds. She was terminated "effective immediately,"
without a hearing.
Sources have also told Press/ON
that the financial situation at Leech
Lake has become so critical that the
band is reportedly having trouble
meeting its payroll.
Leech Lake has recently completed a new $30 million Northern
Lights casino near Walker, and a
motel - convention center complex
reportedly costing $40 million is
currently under construction near
the casino. There have reportedly
been financing problems with the
mega-projects.
"The election is a historical
event," Leech Lake secretary-treasurer Archie LaRose told Press/
ON, "it has the power to change the
way things are done on the reservation. If we are successful, this is
going to snowball. It is a historic
movement of the people for tribal
government accountability and responsibility."
Details of Bemidji murder-suicide
emerge
Associated Press
BEMIDJI, Minn. —Authorities officially ruled Tuesday that a
man distraught over the breakup
of his relationship killed his
former girlfriend before killing
himself.
Police Capt. Daryle Russell declared the case closed. He said
the autopsy showed that Quentin
Roy, 37, of Red Lake, died of a
single gunshot, while Franchesca
Gonzalez, 31, of Bemidji, died of
multiple shots. The report didn't
give a number for her wounds.
The woman's mother, Judith
Gonzalez, called police from a
neighbor's house just after 1 p.m.
Sunday. The first officer on the
scene, Sgt. Robert Lehmann,
found her covered in blood. Two
children, ages 9 and 10, were
with her.
Judith Gonzalez told Lehmann
that Roy had shot her daughter.
She said she tried to wrestle the
gun away from him and was
slightly injured in the attempt.
Officers found Roy slumped
over the steering wheel of his car.
When an officer opened the door,
the man fell out on the driveway.
He had shot himself with a .22-
caliber rifle.
They found Franchesca
Gonzalez's body in a pool of
blood in the bedroom of the
house. Russell said he counted
four bullet wounds. Officers also
found bloody footprints and
splatters on the walls and carpets
in several rooms.
Another 10-year-old was in the
house at the time. None ofthe
children were injured.
The police report said the'
semiautomatic rifle had been disabled so it could handle only one
round at a time.
"After each shot, Roy would
have to physically reload the gun
to fire another round," Lehmann
wrote.
Leech Lake band feels vindication
in EPA report on Superfund site
By Renee Roble
Associated Press
CASS LAKE, Minn. — Shirley
Nordrum had just started a part-
time job for the Leech Lake Band
of Ojibwe when, bored one night,
she picked up an old report on a
nearby wood treatment plant that
had shut down.
What Nordrum found in the report sidetracked her plans to go to
medical school and began an 11-
year battle between her American
Indian band, the government and
an international paper company
over the health of die land.
Today, Nordrum and Leech
Lake leaders believe they have
proof that the St. Regis Corp. plant
contaminated their reservation,
their fish and maybe even their
children: a long-sought Environmental Protection Agency report
released last month that found dioxins, furans and other compounds
left behind from the wood treatment process.
Although EPA officials say it's
premature to conclude the site is
dangerously polluted, band members whose children swam in the
site's holding ponds or played in
piles of treated wood are suddenly
questioning health problems in
their families.
"When you have an entire little
community sit down and everybody starts talking about this person who died of cancer and that
person who died of cancer, you re-
SUPERFUND to page 5
Governor says
he's willing to deal
over tribal pacts
By Melissa Trujillo
Associated Press
KENOSHA, Wis. — Gov. Scott
McCallum said he's willing to negotiate longer gambling agreements with Wisconsin's Indian
tribes in exchange for an additional
$50 million he wants them to pay
to help close the state's budget deficit.
"I'm willing to give longer compacts and do more things for the
tribes, but in exchange, as the revenues go up, I would expect that
they would share with the state,"
the Republican governor said
Wednesday during a visit to the
DaimlerChry sler factory in
Kenosha.
The state GOP, meanwhile,
charged Wednesday that Attorney
General Jim Doyle, Democratic
nominee for governor, was accompanied by employees of his Justice
Department at campaign-related
events at least 19 times in 1999 and
2001. The GOP previously made
similar allegations of campaigning
on state time regarding events in
2000. As with those charges, the
Doyle campaign denied there was
any illegal campaigning.
During the Kenosha visit,
McCallum said he would be willing to negotiate the length of the
compacts and the introduction of
dice games, not currently allowed
in Wisconsin casinos. The governor opposes expanding the number
of casinos.
Under federal law, tribes must
have agreements, called compacts,
with the state to operate Las Vegas-
style casinos on their reservations.
Wisconsin has 11 of them — one
for each tribe for 17 casinos in all.
Every compact will expire between
August 2003 and September 2004,
according to the Legislative Fiscal
Bureau.
PACTS to page 5
Leonard Peltier's
attorneys seek his
freedom
Associated Press
ST. PAUL, Minn. —An attorney for imprisoned American Indian activist Leonard Peltier asked
a federal appeals court Tuesday to
reduce his sentence for the 1975
murders of two FBI agents and let
him go free on parole.
Peltier's attorney, Eric Seitz, said
the consecutive life sentences are
unjust because important evidence
was suppressed during Peltier's
1977 trial. The sentences also
should have been imposed concurrently, which would have made
Peltier ehgible for parole 10 years
ago, Seitz argued.
"Judge (Lloyd). Benson believed
that (Peltier) fired the fatal shot,"
Seitz said. "Later, it was found out
that that was not reliable."
He said that if Benson, the federal district judge who presided
over Peltier's original trial, knew
that Peltier couldn't be directly
linked to the shootings, he would
have given Peltier a concurrent instead of consecutive sentences.
In his 8-minute argument, Seitz
said that Peltier is automatically entitled to a resentencing hearing because he filed within the allotted
time, and that the court can reduce
the sentence if it sees fit.
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photo: Clara NiiSka
Leonard Peltier defense attorneys Bruce Ellison and Eric Seitz addressed demonstrators and the press outside the Federal Building after an October 8m hearing in St. Paul. Peltier's attorneys argued against the lower court's dismissal of
his November 2001 motion for sentence reduction. Peltier was sentenced to two
consecutive life sentences. "Leonard Peltier never received a fair trial," said
Ellison, 'Today we hope to achieve a technical correction to Mr. Peltier's sentence, to move us closer to resolution of this blight on the U.S. justice system."
But former Assistant U.S. Attorney Lynn Crooks, who came out of
retirement to argue against a resentencing, said Peltier's defense team
is raising issues that already have
been rejected in previous hearings.
And, he said, Peltier missed his
deadline to appeal. His bid for a resentencing hearing was rejected in
1979.
Crooks said that unless Peltier's
attorney can show that there's been
some change, the law says the sentence should remain.
Seitz said ballistics test results
obtained by Peltier's defense team
in 1981 revealed that the government could not link to the crime
scene the rifle alleged to have been
used by Peltier.
Crooks said this had been discussed in an appeals motion in
1993. It's "water that's been under
the dam since 1985," he said.
"They've had those two substantive
appeals, and this is really nothing
more than a repeat of what they argued in 1993."
During the hearing, the courtroom was packed with supporters
PELTIER to page 3
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Volume 15 Issue 19
October 11,2002
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v
The Struggle
for Mount
Graham:
Ethics and
Religion vs.
Science
By Maxine V. Eidsvig
Dr. Elizabeth Brandt, Professor
of Anthropology at Arizona State
University who has worked with
the Western Apaches since 1978,
was the speaker at a lecture on
Wednesday, October 9,2002 on the
subject of the Mount Graham telescope. The event was held at the
McNamara Alumni Center on the
campus ofthe University of Minnesota.
This was just one of a series of
events scheduled to protest the
University's recommendation of interim President Robert Bruininks to
enter into a contract to use the controversial Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) at Arizona's Mount
Graham International Observatory.
According to Dr. Brandt, in her
opening remarks, the Finance Committee ofthe Board of Regents was
to meet on Thursday, October 10th
and the full Board of Regents was
to meet on Friday, October 11"', to
go forward with plans to use a $5
million donation from the Hubbard
Broadcasting to purchase a 5%
share—nine viewing nights per year
on the LBT and eight nights on
other project telescopes.
Dr. Brandt presented an interesting slide overview ofthe Western
Apache, who are the people most
affected by the LBT. There are 2
large reservations in West Central
Arizona, the San Carlos tribe and
White Mountain Apache Tribe, with
enrolled members of 10,834 and
12,634 respectively. There is also
one small reservation, the Tonto
Apache with 111 members.
Dzil Nehaa Si an, Apache for
"Big Seated Mountain," was lost by
executive order in 1873 and subsequently incorporated into a national
forest.
Photo: Maxine Eidsvig
Initially, a form letter was sent to
San Carlos asking if there were any
tribal concerns about the project, to
which the tribe for some reason, did
not respond. The traditional people
became aware of the project in
1989 and formed the Apache Survival Coalition.
Three lawsuits have been filed
by the Apache Survival Coalition.
Another group the Apaches for
Cultural Preservation joined in the
fight. Since the 1st Amendment
does not protect land-based religions, the lawsuits were not successful.
In addition to the University of
Minnesota's contribution, the University of Virginia will invest $4
million to help run the world's most
powerful telescope. Completion is
scheduled for 2004.
Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment Tests released:
Some Native students have little or no exposure to math
By Jean Pagano
The Minnesota Department of
Children, Families, and Learning
(CFL) recently released data on
grade 11 Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) math
tests. The results showed that students with a greater exposure to
math did markedly better on the
MCAs.
55,000 students took the test.
Students were grouped into three
categories: a) those with more exposure to math, including algebra;
b) those with some exposure to
math, not including algebra; and c)
those with little or no mathematics.
Not surprisingly, students in the
more math group did better than
those in the some math group, who
did better than those in the little to
no math group. The gross numbers
for more exposure to math were
about 36,000 students, some exposure consisted of 5,000, and little
or no exposure to math are 14,000.
Sadly, far too many students find
themselves in the latter group.
65% of students had at least
some exposure to algebra, whereas
9% had some exposure to math.
What remains most remarkable is
that 26% of students had little or
no exposure to mathematics. It is
hard to imagine that a student has
passed 11 years in the educational
system in the state of Minnesota
and had little or no exposure to
mathematics.
Average MCA math scores for
the three groups are as follows: the
more group averaged 35.6 points;
the some group averaged 28.1
points, and the little or no grouped
averaged 24.7 points.
Students in school districts with
Native populations had mixed results. In Bemidji, the percentages of
students inthe 'more' and 'less'
groups were less than the state average, whereas the 'some' group had a
higher percentage of students in it.
The 'more' math students performed better than the state average,
and 'some' and 'less' were slightly
lower than in the rest of Minnesota.
Duluth students had a higher representation in the 'more' and 'some'
categories and also fewer in the
'little or no' group. 11"' grades in the
'more' group scored higher than the
state average but 'some' and 'httle'
scored lower than the statewide totals.
Almost 90% ofthe students in the
Minneapolis 11th grade program
were in the 'little to no' category.
Children in the 'more' and 'some'
categories were much less representative ofthe state averages. The
score s ofthe students, however,
were fairly close to state averages in
all groups but the 'some' category,
which scored somewhat less that the
state average.
In the Red Lake, Mahnomen, and
Waubun school districts, almost all
of the student fall into the 'little to
no' math grouping. In Mahnomen,
the scores ofthe students in the
'little to no' group roughly approximated the average for the state in
this section. In Red Lake, while all
ofthe students were in the 'little to
no' group, their average scores of
approximately 18 were quite a bit
below the state average of 24.7. Finally, in Waubun, the majority ofthe
students were in the 'httle to no' category, these students still managed
to score better than the state average
for the same group.
All in all, there are too many students with little or no exposure to
mathematics in the state of Minnesota, and the number of Native children in this particular group is
shocking. That entire school districts
have whole grade 11 classes below
the bar should raise some serious
questions among those that evaluate
the progress of not only students, but
schools and their respective administrations.
Shakopee man kidnapped, beaten to
death in Federal Dam
Associated Press
WALKER, Minn.—A
Shakopee man who was aUegedly
kidnapped and beaten with a baseball bat in Cass County died Monday of his injuries, authorities said.
Brian E. Jenny, 21, was beaten
Saturday moming in the town of
Federal Dam, population about
120, which is located on the Leech
Lake Reservation in central Minnesota, according to the Cass County
Sheriff's Department.
A 19-year-old Bena woman and
a 16-year-old boy from Federal
Dam were being held in the death.
Jenny was aUegedly struck several times in the head with a base-
baU bat. He was airlifted to North
Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale,
where he died Monday moming.
An autopsy was planned.
No other. detaUs were immediately released.