Native American Press / Ojibwe News (Bemidji, Minnesota), 1996-05-10

              Allegations persist of financial, electoral
misconduct on Leech Lake, White Earth
By Gary Blair
Allegations continue to . Reports
say tribal officials who were convicted
last month and now await sentencing
are receiving and spending tribal and
personal' funds—in spite of federal
judge Michael J. Davis' order
forbidding financial transactions of
over $5,000 of tribal funds without
prior government approval. Federal
investigators will soon be receiving
a report on such prohibited transfers
of funds by Finn from a witness to
the transactions.
Sources say drunken parties are
being thrown to buy votes for former
tribal chairman Alfred "Acorn"
Pemberton, one of the recently
convicted "Finngate" trio. Acorn,
who recently resigned his position
and then announced his candidacy for
tribal chairman, is reported to be
attending the parties with his
checkbook. Acorn, who helped state
senator Harold "Skip" Finn help
himself to more than one million
dollars from the Leech Lake people
in a phony insurance scheme, will
likely face a prison sentence.
Sources say White Earth vote fraud
defendant and Leech Lake enrollee
Peter Pequette is the person hosting
the drunken parties at his
Minneapolis home. Also said to be
attending the Pequette parties are
other Leech Lake Reservation
Business Committee members.
Reports say the money is coming
from the reservation's casinos and is
being funneled into Pemberton's
personal checking account to help
him pay for the votes.
With the Minnesota Chippewa
Tribe's (MCT) general elections
scheduled for June 11, Leech Lake
now has two candidates on the ballots
who were convicted of stealing from
the band. The second is District III
representative Myron Ellis, who
entered into an earlier plea agreement
for receiving money from the Finn
gang and was sentenced to 90 days
in federal prison. He then
misappropriated the same money he
paid back to the band as part of his
sentence.
On the White Earth Reservation,
the tribe has former MCT chairman
and reservation gang leader Darrell
"Chip" Wadena, who will be on the
ballot during his trial for theft.
Wadena already has his election fraud
queen Carley "Baby Doll" Jasken
ready to once again count his
fraudulent ballots.
Electoral cont'd on 6
Red Lake tribal election schuled for Wednesday,
May 15,1996
Leech Lake candidate forum scheduled for May 14th
7:00 p.m Bena Community Center (Old Housing)
Day of intern'l prayer for indigenous people/ pg 3
Voice ofthe People
1
Butcher launches fast to protest jailing
Anishinabe treaty fighter threatened with psychiatric detention
By Jeff Armstrong
An Anishinabe man jailed for
asserting his treaty hunting rights
says he will continue a protest fast,
despite threats to transfer him to a
psychiatric institution. "First they're
calling me a criminal because I
practice my culture. Nowthey're trying
to say I'm crazy because I believe in
it," said Leonard Butcher from his
Park Rapids, Minnesota cell.
Butcher's conviction stems from an
October 1994 incident in which the
Bemidji man was stopped by a DNR
agent for violating state game laws
while hunting deer on land within
White Earth's treaty reservation
boundaries.
Clad in traditional Native attire,
Butcher turned himself in at the order
of Sheriff Denny Trandem on May 6,
but vowed to resist what he described
as a threat to the cultural and physical
survival ofthe Anishinabe people.
"I'm not going to serve out my
sentence peacefully," said the 43 -year-
old Butcher. "I'm going to fast. I will
refuse to eat their poisoned food and
drink their poisoned water. This is a
time of sacrifice. If it has to be me, I'm
prepared to make that sacrifice so that
my people may live."
The White Earth enrollee said he
will end his hunger strike if he is
allowed to bring in traditional foods
such as deer meat and wild rice. After
two days of fasting, Butcher said he
has already been weakened by it. "My
stomachfeels like it's in my backbone,"
he said.
Butcher is serving a 10 day sentence
set by district judge Paul Rasmussen
at a March 4 hearing in Clearwater
County Court. Rasmussen also gave
Butcher a one-year suspended
sentence, which could be imposed if
Butcher is convicted on similar
Jail cont'd on 3
Native
Fifty Cents
Ojibwe
News
We Support Equal Opportunity Far AH People
Founded  in 19BB
Volume B   Issue 30
May lO, 1996
1
A weekly publication.
Copyright, Native American Press,  1996
Robert A. Fairbanks
Pemberton's candidacy is humiliation
for all Indian Country
Felon Alfred "Tig" Pemberton has
been certified as a candidate for
chairman of the Leech Lake
Reservation Tribal Council during the
upcoming tribal elections. This
occurrence is rather astonishing when
the "(c)onviction of a felony in . . .
Federal court while serving on the
Reservation Business Committee" is
a basis for removal from office and
Pemberton was so convicted just last
month.
I wonder if the Leech Lake Ojibwe
people are puzzled by this anomalous
situation?
By joining a criminal conspiracy to
steal over $1 million of reservation
funds, Pemberton committed a
heinous crime against the Leech Lake
Ojibwe people while serving in a
position of trust, nonetheless, he has
the effrontery to become a candidate
for an ensuing term.
By doing so, Pemberton
acknowledges to the world that he
believes the Leech Lake people are
stupid enough to elect him again. Or,
Pemberton believes he owns and
controls enough people, and their
votes, to be reelected in spite of his
criminality. Only time will reveal
whether he is correct.
How can it be that Pemberton is
subject to removal from tribal office
when found guilty of a felony in
federal court, but still be allowed to
run for the same office after
conviction?
This contemporary political
spectacle, along with my observations
for the past fifty years ofthe ineptitude
and improbity of Leech Lake tribal
government, has given me increased
insight into why normative people,
and their local, state and federal
governments, hold the Ojibwe people
in such low regard.
I now understand why they snicker
at our proclamations of tribal
sovereignty, claims to hunting and
fishing treaty rights and demands for
self-determination.
Amid the maelstrom of retaining
established criminals in tribal office
and permitting them to become   By Robert Franklin
Candidacy cont'd on 3 m™****" mbune
Over 300 dancers participated in BSU's Council of Indian Students annual celebration.       NAP s1affPho,os
Rash of Indian artifact thefts raises security
COn CemS    How museums can protect American heritage ?
Bill would downsize BIA, transfer
authority to tribes
By Tracey A. Reeves
Staff Writer, St Paul Pioneer Press
The Bureau of Indian Affairs,
accused of mishandling American
Indian trust money and hindering
tribal progress, is in line for what
could be the biggest overhaul of a
federal agency in recent years.
In what some are calling the plan
that finally could shake the BIA's
faded image, Sen. John McCain, R-
Ariz., has proposed a bill stripping the
BIA of most of its functions and
transferring them directly to the
nations 551 tribes.
The Clinton administration has
raised serious objections to the
proposal. But virtually all tribes
support the concept, as do a growing
number    of    Republican    and
Democratic lawmakers, making
passage ofthe bill and a dramatically
downsized BIA a strong possibility in
the next year or so.
"I see the new BIA as a support
system for tribes," said McCain,
chairman of the Indian Affairs
Committee, in an interview this week.
"The real authority would no longer
lie in the BIA's hands."
That's welcome news to the nation's
nearly 2 million American Indians,
who have sat by for decades and
watched the 172-year-old BIA become
the butt of jokes and the epitome of
government waste.
Jaclyn Davis, a member of the
Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribal
council in North Dakota, said people
have poked fun at the BIA for as long
as she can remember.
"They used to call it this huge
bureaucracy where one person needs
so-and-so's approval, to get so-and-
so's approval," she said. "It's just
seemed like a place where nothing
ever got done."
The BIA with a $ 1.7 billion budget,
is primarily a clearinghouse for
federal money. It manages Indian trust
funds, which are accounts set up by
the government to handle receipts of
tribal income from land claims,
timber, minerals and water. The
agency also disburses federal money
to tribes to run their governments and
fund education, social services, law
enforcement and construction
projects.
Under McCain's bill, three-quarters
of the 10,000 BIA emplpyees would
be fired. Most duties, including
BIA cont'd on 3
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) _ They
usually come during business hours.
They know what they're looking for.
They know weaknesses in security
systems. And they walk out in broad
daylight with thousands of dollars
worth of American Indian artifacts.
Across Indian country, from
Minnesota to Montana to Utah,
thieves have stolen irreplaceable
clothing, moccasins, pipe bags and
other artifacts from dozens of ill-
protected nonprofit museums, mostly
in smaller communities. Some
speculate that the artifacts are helping
to feed a culture craze abroad or are
stolen-to-order for U.S. collectors.
There's no central place to report the
thefts, but they have attracted the
attention ofthe FBI and Interpol, the
international police organization.
The thefts laise questions about how
financially strapped museums can
protect American heritage. And some
Indian groups are asking whether the
museums should be the caretakers of
that heritage.
" Who's taking the items is really up
for question," said David Nystuen,
field services coordinator for the
MinnesotaHistorical Society. "I don't
think a lot of them are probably going
to Europe or Japan, but who knows?"
In southwestern Minnesota,
someone slipped unseen from the
Pipestone County Museum in October
carrying a hair-pipe breastplate made
of carved bones and decorated with
beads of dark red and cobalt blue.
"It's like the guy's invisible or
something," said director David
Rambow. He and an assistant were
Thefts cont'd on 8
Federal funds can aid archaeological site
Question being raised about DNR-Lac du
Flambeau deal
By Robert Imrie
The deal negotiated between the
state and Chippewa spearfishers to
trade money for walleyes is a "non-
aggression pact" that ignores
problems of a dwindling fishery and
could split tribal bands, one critic
says.
"It is a real Band-Aid. It is more
covering up the real wound than
anything else," said Walt Bresette, a
member ofthe Red Cliff band of Lake
Superior Chippewa and longtime
treaty and environmental activist. "It
appeases a small segment of the
population while the fish in the lakes
are not being addressed."
Bresette, who coauthored "Walleye
Warriors," a book about the history of
the Chippewa spearfishing
controversy in Wisconsin, said the
Lac du Flambeau band, "in trading
their rights for value," may have
overstepped their authority.
"This separate peace could undo
band-wide rights and harmony," he
said, referring to five other Chippewa
bands that spear walleyes in northern
lakes each spring.
John Wilmer, chairman ofthe Bad
River band, said he hasn't even read
the agreement and refused to
characterize it as good or bad.
"It is the strong feeling by our tribe
and our council that our treaty rights
are nonnegotiable," he said. "It is up
us to show responsibility in exercising
those treaty rights. I think our tribe
has done a good job at that."
The agreement announced last
month by the Department of Natural
Resources and the Lac du Flambeau
resolved a situation that developed
this spring when the Lac du Flambeau
band declared intentions to spear all
ofthe so-called safe harvest of walleye
from 64 off-reservation lakes.
That move forced the DNR to say
the lakes would be closed to rod-and-
reel fishing for the summer under a
complicated formula it uses to make
sure the reproductive capacity of each
lake is not harmed.
The DNR threatened to take the
tribe to court, leading to negotiations
and the agreement, which called for
the tribe to revamp its spearfishing
Deal cont'd on 6
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) _ Some
federal money has been earmarked to
buy about 200 acres of the site of a
300-year-old Indian village known as
Blood Run in extreme eastern South
Dakota, Gov. Bill Janklow said.
The land is on the Iowa border 10
miles southeast of Sioux Falls.
"It will preserve the core part of
Blood Run on the South Dakota side,
which really includes a tremendous
amount of history and Indian
archaeological significance," Janklow
said. "It's our only chance to preserve
ancient history."
Janklow did not divulge the specific
location or indicate how much is being
spent. The federal money that'sbeing
set aside can be used to buy land for
preservation.
Part ofthe Blood Run site is along
the Big Sioux River. A golf course is
on a portion of it, and residential
development continues around it.
Eight years ago, the state of Iowa
bought 620 acres of Blood Run in
Lyon County.
Dennis McFarland, a Sioux Falls
lawyer working to raise matching
funds for the South Dakota site, said
Blood Run has the highest designation
by the National Park Service for an
archaeological site.
"It's probably one of the most
undeveloped archaeological sites in
the country," he said.
None of the Sioux Indians in the
area have ancestors traced back to the
Oneota, Ioway and other tribes that
lived at the site, McFarland said.
The name came from a legendary
battle between tribes that made the
water in a nearby creek run red.
Historians say the area once was a
thriving Indian village and trading
center.
Steve Ohrn of the State Historical
Society of Iowa said his state would
like to work with South Dakota to
preserve history and develop the area
into a tourist attraction.
"We're not planning to do any
disruptive archaeological digging,"
he said. "We need, in South Dakota or
Iowa, an interpretive centerthat would
be a museum, which would attempt to
communicate what is known and put
k in terms the public can understand."
Zunis ban Gallup Independent personnel
ZUNI, N.M. (AP) _ The Zuni Indian
tribe has banned Gallup Independent
personnel from its reservation,
alleging the newspaper
sensationalized gossip that disgraced
Zuni citizens and policies.
The pueblo issued a statement
Thursday from Gov. Donald Eriacho,
telling the newspaper its personnel
would be escorted off the reservation
if they tried to cross Zuni boundaries.
"When there is worthwhile news to
report, we will contactyou and give you
permission to print various articles of
information," Eriacho said.
However, Independent managing
editor Ted Rushton said Monday that
a reporter and photographer have each
been on the reservation twice since
the ban, and no tribal officials
challenged them. Tribal police have
said they would take no action until
officially notified by the tribal council,
Rushton said.
Eriacho's letter did not specify what
Independent reports were at issue,
and the tribe did not return repeated
telephone calls from The Associated
Press on Friday and Monday seeking
comment.
Independent publisher Robert
Zollinger said Eriacho's letter "did
not cite a single factual error" and
that "instead it merely expressed the
rage of a few politicians who object to
having their misdeeds, official or
unofficial, exposed to public
knowledge."
Zollinger said Independent stories
on the pueblo are well documented.
He sought to assure Eriacho that "we
will always welcome comments from
him and all other Zuni officials and
citizens for publication in the
Independent."
m