Native American Press / Ojibwe News (Bemidji, Minnesota), 2005-12-16

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INDEX
NEWS AROUND INDIAN COUNTRY 2
NEWS BRIEFS 3
COMMENTARY/EDITORIALS 4
CLASSIFIEDS 7
A cut, run policy [for
Iraq] is the ultimate
act of immorality
page 4
MCT People's Right
to Know
page 5-6
We Have the Power to
make a difference
page 4
Sesson's Greetings
from Grinch Goggleye,
Ebenezer Wilson,
Srewdge Finn
page 4
Student testing
- viable option
or not?
page 4
MCT Members: Right To Know
By Frank Bibeau
Tribal members' election concerns.
The more tribal members examine the BIA Secretarial Election for
the MCT last November 22nd, the
more questions and concerns grow
about the way the MCT Constitutional Amending process happened. Most concerns expressed
by tribal leaders and members are
that the constitutional protections
and rights of the MCT voters
were ignored, eliminated and/or
unknowingly waived, as well as
how the election process created
unexpected barriers to challenging
the election.
Last week Fond du Lac Chairman Defoe sent a letter to MCT
President Deschampe regarding
the "Constitutionality of the Secretarial Election held on November
22, 2005." (Copy printed in last
week's edition). In an unexpected
response dated December 9th,
Chairman Goggleye of Leech
Lake Reservation jumped in accusing Chairman Defoe of "slanderous conduct" for questioning
several aspects of election. (See
letter attached). Chairman Goggleye 's letter argues that the LLRBC
"specifically authorized Representative Finn ... to vote on behalf
ofthe Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe
on February 17,2005." (See letter
attached). Goggleye attached LL
Res. No. 05-26 which appears to
be expressly internal to LLR by
providing for "the authority to
execute necessary documents on
behalf of the [LL] Band." (See
Resolution 05-26 attached).
Goggleye then directs Chairman Defoe to Article X, Section
1 ofthe MCT Constitution, which
provides that "any vacancy in the
Tribal Executive Committee shall
be filled by the Indians from the
Reservation on which the vacancy
occurs by election under rules
prescribed by the Tribal Executive
Committee. During the interim,
the Reservation Business Committee shall be empowered to select a temporary Tribal Executive
Committee member to represent
the Reservation until such time
as the election herein provided for
has been held and the successful
candidate elected and seated."
Some TEC members argue that LL
Res. 05-26 does not "specifically
authorize" or designate Finn as the
Indian from the LL reservation to
be a temporary TEC member.
"They should have passed a
resolution specifically authorizing or designating which Indian
person from our reservation was
to serve on the TEC" explained
duly elected Secretary-Treasurer
Archie LaRose. "They never did
that, there was never a swearing
in or anything officially making
Mick anything on the TEC" added
LaRose.
Another concern expressed by
Fond du Lac members was the
appointment of MCT employees
to the Secretarial Election Board.
Gary Frazer, Executive Director
of the MCT and two other employees Travis Annette and Deb
Chase were designated by the TEC
Legislative Subcommittee in a 5-0
vote to be on the Election Board.
(See Subcommittee minutes attached). However, the same TEC
members believe proper protocol
is that the subcommittee can only
bring the recommendation to the
full TEC to call for a motion and
decide by official vote.
Election Waivers.
Many tribal members expected that an MCT Constitutional
Amendment process would be
MCT to page 4
In Piss They Trust
Will the debut of student drug testing in Minnesota stem the troubles of a violent town?
by Mike Mosedale City Pages
By most conceivable measures,
it has been a horrifying year for
the northern Minnesota city of
Cass Lake. With fewer than 900
residents, the Utile reservation town
has long been plagued by problems
of violence and poverty. Its troubles
have been the subject of countless
newspaper articles, community forums, and emotional expressions of
resolve from politicians and tribal
leaders to end the cycle.
But even for a town that has
suffered so much, the month-long
spate of violence that erupted in
Cass Lake this fall was something
new. In less than two months, four
area residents—three between the
ages of 17 and 23—were murdered in separate incidents. The
grim tally of premature deaths
was further boosted by a suicide
and then a drunken-driving fatality. And no one, it seems, was
immune—even the mayor's son
was shot and wounded.
For Dan Ninham, the highly
regarded coach of the boys' basketball team at Cass Lake-Bena
High School, the escalating, drug-
fueled violence was just too much.
Ninham, who has coached at the
school for 10 years, knew one ofthe
victims ofthe recent murder spree,
a 20-year-old man named Michael
Littlewolf. Ninham knew Littlewolf
as a JV basketball player, whom he
delicately recalls as "an outstanding
athlete who went down a different
road." Ninham also knew the boys
involved in one of Cass Lake's
most notorious killings, the random
bludgeoning of a blind man who
was walking his dog on a downtown
street one night in 2002.
"It's just made me wonder what
I could do—as a coach, as a parent,
as a member of the community,"
Ninham says. A self-described
"idea man," the coach didn't take
long to setde on a solution: Institute
a policy of random drug testing for
all middle and high school students
who are involved in extracurricular
activities in the Cass Lake-Bena
school district. Nationwide, such
policies have become increasingly
popular over the past decade. According to the National School
Boards Association, an estimated
13 percent of school districts engage in some form of drug testing.
Minnesota remains a curious exception. So far, not a single district in
the state has instituted a drug testing
policy for students.
Nonetheless, Ninham drummed
up considerable support for his
proposal, garnering backing from
district superintendent Todd Chess-
more, along with an array of exasperated teachers, parents, students,
politicians, and tribal leaders.
The backing of the tribal band
is especially significant, because
Leech Lake Gaming agreed to pay
for and administer the program,
effectively eliminating one of the
perennial criticisms of school drug
testing—that it's simply too expensive. (Drug-testing programs have
proved to be very expensive; in
Dublin, Ohio, for instance, school
administrators discontinued their
program after realizing that they
spent nearly $3,200 for each positive test result.)
Locally, Ninham says he has
yet to hear much in the way of
criticisms. He expects the school
board to vote on a formal testing
proposal as early as January, and
is optimistic about its chances.
But if there isn't much controversy in Cass Lake, elsewhere the
drug testing of students has been
fiercely contested. In a series of
legal challenges, the federal courts
have ruled that the testing does not
violate students' constitutionally
protected rights, provided that the
tested students are engaged in a
voluntary, extracurricular activity.
But Graham Boyd, a lawyer
who serves as the director for the
American Civil Liberties Union's
Drug Reform Project, says there
are plenty of reasons besides
DRUG TEST to page 3
VOICE      OF      THE      PEOPLE
Federal jury convicts four on drug charges in
gang-related crime
Associated Press
MADISON, Wis. - A federal
jury has convicted four men of a
gang-related, years-long conspiracy to distribute cocaine and other
drugs on a northern Wisconsin
American Indian reservation.
The latest convictions bring
to 36 the number of people sent
to prison in an investigation into
drug trafficking on and around the
Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake
Superior Chippewa Reservation
near Hayward, Assistant U.S.
Attorney John Vaudreuil said.
A jury deliberated about five
hours Tuesday following a six-
day trial and found the four men
_ Pedro Zamora, 23, of Hayward;
Jorge Barragan, 25, of Milwaukee; Ernesto Estrada III, 38, of
Milwaukee; and Florentino Castillo, 27, of Milwaukee _ guilty of
conspiring to distribute cocaine
and crack cocaine on and around
the reservation between 1999 and
2003, Vaudreuil said.
Prosecutors said the defendants
conspired to transport the drugs
from Milwaukee and Minneapolis
to the reservation, selling some
of them to individuals and some
to the Latin King Nation gang
operating on the reservation.
Zamora also was convicted on
stemming from the operation of a
crack house on the reservation for
several months in 2002, prosecutors said.
U.S. District Judge Barbara
Crabb was scheduled to sentence
the men March 6 and 7. The defendants each face a mandatory
minimum penalty of 10 years in
prison. The maximum punishment is life in prison.
Most of those convicted earlier
pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a joint probe into reservation drug crime by the FBI,
the state Department of Justice's
narcotics bureau and the Sawyer
County Sheriff's Department,
authorities said.
Dorgan returns donations after AP report
By John Solomon
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The top
Democrat on the Senate committee investigating Jack Abramoff's
Indian lobbying is returning
$67,000 in donations in response
to Associated Press reports that he
collected tribal money around the
time he took actions favorable to
those of Abramoff clients.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.,
said Tuesday that while he never
met Abramoff and didn't take any
actions at the lobbyist's behest, he
nonetheless wants to return the
money to avoid any appearances
that tribal money was directed to
him by the controversial lobbyist.
"Even though those contributions were legal and fully reported
as required by law, I will not
knowingly keep even one dollar
in contributions if there is even a
remote possibility that they could
have been the result of any action
Mr. Abramoff might have taken,"
the senator said.
Dorgan is the senior Democrat
on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee that has spent more than a
year investigating alleged fraud
in Abramoff's representation of
Indian tribes, which were charged
tens of millions of dollars in lobbying fees between 2001 and 2004.
AP reported in three stories
over the last month that Dorgan
did not disclose during the probe
that he took actions favorable to
Abramoff's tribal clients, often
around the time he collected donations from Abramoff's firm or
clients. For instance, Dorgan:
Used Abramoff's arena skybox
in March 2001 to raise money,
letting one of Abramoff's tribes
foot the bill for using the box.
The senator says he didn't know
at the time that Abramoff leased
the box. He's recently reimbursed
that money.
Got Congress in the fall 2003
to press government regulators
to decide, after decades of delay,
whether the Mashpee Wampanoag
tribe of Massachusetts deserved
federal recognition. Dorgan met
with the tribe's representatives and
collected at least $ 11,500 in political donations from the Abramoff
partner representing the Mashpee
around the time ofthe help.
Collected $20,000 from
Abramoff's firm and tribes in the
period around when he wrote a
letter in 2002 urging the Senate
Appropriations Committee to fund
a school construction program
that Abramoff's clients and other
tribes wanted. The letter mentioned one of Abramoff's tribes.
The Coushatta tribe of Louisiana told AP they were directed
by Abramoff to make a $5,000
donation to Dorgan's leadership
political action committee just a
few weeks after the 2002 letter
was sent. Dorgan specifically
cited that report as the reason he
was returning all the donations.
"Because of that report, I have
returned all contributions to my
campaign committee and my
leadership political action committee from tribes represented by
Mr. Abramoff's law firm and from
individuals employed by his law
firm during the time he was at the
firm," he said.
As of Sept. 30, Dorgan's campaign fund had $660,920 in cash
on hand, Federal Election Commission filings show. The Great
Plains Leadership Fund, a political action committee that Dorgan
controls, had $43,909 on hand as
of June 30, the most recent period
covered by FEC filings.
The return of the money was
first reported in Tuesday editions
of The Forum in Fargo, N.D.
I
web page: www.press-on.net
We Support Equal Opportunity For All People
A weekly publication.  Copyright, Native American Press, 2005
Founded in 1988
Volume 18' Issue 26 December ijl 2005
Cape Disappointment, Wash., is seen Friday, Nov. 18, 2005. This is near the first of seven Columbia
River projects planned by Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The project is a
cohesive effort to commemorate the coming together of rivers, the joining of the Columbia River to the
Pacific and the interaction of Lewis and Clark with Native Americans. See article on page 3.
Roxanne Struthers, 53, had a
Ph.D. in nursing
By Ben Cohen
Star Tribune
Roxanne Struthers,
who grew up a poor
farm girl in Sugar
BushTownship on the
White Earth Reservation, knew early on
that she wanted to be
a nurse.
Struthers worked in
a senior citizens home
as a teenager, became
a nurse's aide, and
eventually was one of only
14 American Indians to hold
doctorates in nursing. "She
had a dream that she was
supposed to be a healer," said
her daughter, Julie Marson of
Marysville, Wash.
The University of Minnesota
School of Nursing professor
died of leukemia in St. Paul on
Saturday. She was 53.
Struthers melded the healing
aspects of her culture with her
skills in medicine. During her
career as a registered nurse she
worked on Indian reservations.
Struthers earned her Ph.D.
Roxanne Struthers
in nursing from the
University of Minnesota 1999, conducted research on
the health of Indians, especially in the
tribes of Minnesota
and the Northwest.
Her scholarly work
focused on tobacco
use, diabetes, and
traditional healing
and healers.
She worked to
record and preserve concepts of
Indian medicine and healing that
often existed only in oral form.
Tribal elders assured her that
putting it down on paper was appropriate and timely, wrote her
daughter Julie in a biography of
her mother.
Struthers made presentations
across the country and overseas,
taught nursing students at the
university and has written or cow-
ritten nearly a dozen publications
or works about to be published.
"What is so remarkable about
STRUTHERS to page 3
Burns will not return Abramoff
donations
By Mary Clare Jalonick
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Aides to
Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont.,
said Tuesday the senator will
not return donations from indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff
and his associates, because the
money has been spent.
Burns received about
$150,000 in donations from
Abramoff, his firm and his clients between 2001 and 2004.
North Dakota Sen. Byron
Dorgan, the top Democrat
on the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, said
Monday that he is returning
$67,000 in donations from the
controversial lobbyist and his
associates.
Burns is chairman of that
subcommittee, which oversees
spending for federal American Indian programs. Burns
and Dorgan wrote a letter in
2002 backing an Indian school
building program sought by
Abramoff's tribal clients, and
helped arrange congressional
funding for it.
Dorgan said Tuesday that
while he never met Abramoff
and did not take any actions at
the lobbyist's behest, he nonetheless wants to return the money to
avoid any appearances that tribal
money was directed to him by
Abramoff.
Dorgan is the top Democraf on
the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which is investigating
Abramoff's Indian lobbying.
Burns also has denied any connections between the donations
and his decisions.
The Associated Press has reported that, in 2001, the Montana
Republican and his staff met
Abramoff's lobbying team on at
least eight occasions and collected
$12,000 in donations around the
time that Burns took legislative
action favorable to Abramoff's
clients in the Northern Mariana
Islands.
The donations to Bums included
money directly from Abramoff
and a key garment company
executive in the Marianas. The
executive was part ofthe coalition
paying Abramoff's firm to fend off
stronger U.S. regulations on the
Pacific islands.
BURNS to page 3
Ojibwe artifacts
come home to
Bois Fort band
of Chippewa
Associated Press
MINNEAPOLIS - Three birch
bark rolls and six other sacred
Ojibwe artifacts have been returned to the Bois Forte Band of
Chippewa in Nett Lake, as the
federal government steps up efforts to repatriate newly claimed
cultural items from museums.
With chants and a pipe ceremony, tribal elders reclaimed
the objects from the American
Museum of Natural History in
New York last week.
"They should be looked at like
they were prisoners in those buildings," said Phyllis Boshey, 68, a
former tribal council member and
follower of Midewiwin, a secret
Ojibwe medicine society.
By last count, more than 31,000
human remains and 724,000 artifacts have been returned to Indian
tribes by 1,156 U.S. institutions,
including the Minnesota Historical Society, the Science Museum
in St. Paul and the Minneapolis
Instimte of Arts.
"It's the right thing to do," said
Joseph Horse Capture, a curator at
the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
Returning the items has been
difficult, partly because of too
much bureaucracy, too little money, and religious and cultural
issues that make it hard for tribal
members to even mention their
sacred customs.
The items returned to the Bois
Forte band are significant to the
practice of Midewiwin, a religion
once practiced widely in Minnesota. "We've lost a lot of our culture. A lot was taken from us," said
Boshey, who learned Midewiwin
from her parents. "These objects
are like spirits. They should not be
locked up."
The Native American Graves
Protection and Repatriation Act,
passed by Congress in 1990, is
allowing for the return of the
objects. Pressure has grown from
tribes eager to reclaim some ofthe
estimated 200,000 human remains
in museums and federal agencies.
"People started realizing that
people's ancestors were being kept
in boxes in museums all over the
country," said Vicky Raske, the
museum project coordinator for
northern Minnesota's Grand Portage Band of Chippewa Indians.
Her tribe has reclaimed nearly a
ARTIFACTS to page 3