Native American Press / Ojibwe News (Bemidji, Minnesota), 2007-08-15

              INDEX
NEWS AROUND INDIAN COUNTRY 2
NEWS BRIEFS 3
COMMENTARY/EDITORIALS 4
CLASSIFIEDS 7
Bighorn sheep return to
range along Rio Grande
page 3
How can I be an "Indian"
state American Indian
Youth
page 5
Fond du Lac
Reservations Housing
Fiasco
page 4
Justice in Indian
Country
page 4
Anishinabe! Elections
Approach: Take Up
Your Burden, Choose
Wisely
page 4
Bills to Amend the Public Health
Service Act Offered
Reauthorization a Priority for Finance Committee
By Jean Pagano
Senate Bill S.1494 and House
Bill H.R. 2762, amendments to
the Public Health Service Act to
reauthorize the Special Diabetes
Programs for Indians and the
Special Funding Program for
Type I diabetes research, are
making their way through
Congressional Committees.
The bills are sponsored by
Senator Pete Domenici (R-
NM), a member of the Senate
Indian Affairs Committee, and
Representative Diane DeGetta
(D-CO).
The diabetes program found
in the Public Health Service Act
(PHSA) is set to expire in 2008.
At stake are funds currently
allocated at $150 million for
tribes to fight a disease which
attacks more Native Americans
than any other population group.
The two bills would reauthorize
the current provisions in the
PHSA for an additional five years
and increase the annual funding
from the current $150 million to
$200 million.
Domenici attempted to add
this reauthorization to the State
Children's Health Insurance
Program which was passed
last week, but he withdraw the
amendment after Senator Max
Baucus (D-MT), chairman of
the Senate Finance Committee,
assured him that the passage
of this bill would be given
priority. Baucus stated that "I
am aware that these critical
programs expire in 2008; and
that the reauthorization of
these programs is a priority
for the Finance Committee."
Domenici and Baucus were joined
by Senators Charles Grassley (R-
IA) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) in
voicing support for S.1494.
Diabetes has a huge impact, not
only on Native communities, but
also on the economy. The direct
impact to the U.S. economy,
based on a 2002 study, shows that
the cost of this disease is $132
billion per year. This figure may
be broken down into both direct
medical costs and indirect costs,
such as work loss, disability, and
early death. Currently, one out
of every three Medicare dollars
is spent on diabetes treatment.
There are societal impacts
as well. Thirty-three percent
of children born in the year
2000 will contract diabetes in
their lifetime. Furthermore,
the Indian Health Service (IHS)
reported a 128% increase in
diabetes among young people
aged 15 to 19 and a 77% increase
in those younger than 15 during
the period stretching from 1990
through 2004.
The costs to diabetics are
also great. The average medical
expenses for those with diabetes
is $13,000 per year, as contrasted
to those without the disease, who
spend on average $2,600 per year,
a difference of 80%.
Federal funding, like that
found in this bill, has been
helpful in combating and treating
the disease. A new drug for Type
I diabetes, developed with the
help of federal dollars, has been
effective in not only stabilizing
the course of the disease, but
in some cases in reversing
it. Diabetes treatment and
prevention programs, federally
funded, have shown results in
Native communities. The mean
A1C levels (a measure of blood
sugar control) have fallen by
1% among Natives and this is
thought to be the result of federal
efforts to halt the progression of
the disease in Indian Country.
S.1494 has 29 co-sponsors in
the Senate; H.R. 2762 has 51
co-sponsors in the House. While
the bills are still in process, they
have attracted powerful sponsors
in both the Senate and House
of Representatives. S.1494 has
been referred to the Committee
on Health, Education, Labor, and
Pensions and H.R. 2762 has been
sent to the House Committee
on Energy and Research for
further review. Senator Norm
Coleman (R-MN) is the most
recent co-sponsor of S.1494, as
is Representative Keith Elision
(D-MN).
VOICE      OF      THE      PEOPLE
Appeals Court:
State trumps
tribe in sex
offender case
The Minnesota Appeals Court
has ruled that the state can
commit a sexual offender from
an Indian reservation.
By Joy Powell, Star Tribune
Minnesota appellate judges on
Tuesday ruled that state law can
be used to commit a dangerous
sexual offender - even if he is
a member of an Indian tribe or
band living on a reservation,
where the state typically has no
jurisdiction.
A three-judge panel found that
the state's interest in protecting
the public, and in treating
dangerous sex offenders, trumps
all.
The U.S. Supreme Court has
long recognized that Indian
tribes keep attributes of
sovereignty over their members
and territory.
The question over who has
jurisdiction in such a case came
before a Minnesota Court of
Appeals panel recently after a
Beltrami County judge threw
out the state commitment order
against John Beaulieu III. He's
been a convicted sexual offender
since youth.
In 1999, when Beaulieu was
14 or 15, he was found to be
delinquent in federal court
for aggravated sexual abuse of
a child. He spent nearly two
years at a treatment program in
Huron, S.D.
After being discharged from
that, Beaulieu was admitted to
the Leo Hoffman Center in St.
Peter, Minn., where he stayed
from May 2002 to November
2003. But there, court papers say,
he threatened two female staff
members and eventually pleaded
guilty to terroristic threats.
At both places, Beaulieu
COURT to page 5
Senators to IHS: Ask for
more money
By Becky Shay
Of The Gazette Staff
CROW AGENCY - Two U.S.
senators chastised national Indian
Health Service leaders for not
seeking needed funding and
"rationing" health care in Indian
Country.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D,
chairman of the Senate Indian
Affairs Committee, led the hearing
at the multipurpose building.
About 200 people attended the
hearing, including national IHS
leaders. The hearing was recorded
into the Congressional Record.
Dorgan said it is scandalous
that at funding time IHS leaders
say "things are pretty good" while
budgeting for about 60 percent of
the need in Indian Country.
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont, who
is on the committee, said he is
"outraged" by the Indian Country
tenet of "don't get sick after June"
because there won't be money
to pay for services that are not a
threat to life or limb.
The government made legal
treaties years ago that are in effect
and must be upheld, Tester said.
"Those treaties promised that in
exchange for millions of acres of
land and vast amounts of natural
resources, our government would
use some of the money it earns
from those lands to provide
American Indians with adequate
health care, housing, education
and economic development
necessary to sustain quality lives,"
Tester said.
"Everybody in this room knows
that over the past several hundred
years, the government has failed
to tell the truth to Indians,
cheated Indians and failed to
fulfill the promises it made many
years ago."
Crow Tribal Chairman Carl
Venne encouraged IHS employees
and tribal leaders to call for more
funding. The Pryor Mountain
wild horses receive more annual
funding than the Crow-Northern
Cheyenne Hospital, he said.
"We are the poorest of the
poorest in the United States of all
ethnic groups," Venne said. "We're
not begging the U.S. government;
they made promises."
Both senators said they
believe IHS has dedicated and
compassionate employees.
"We have to get IHS to stop
saying things are pretty good
and start telling us exactly what
is going on," Dorgan said.
"I'm not saying you don't do
all you can do," he said. "My
point is, we don't have anybody
in the system that comes to us
and pounds on the table and says,
'This isn't right'"
Tester said he does not believe
the agency wastes money. Its
leaders just don't aggressively
seek enough funding, he said.
"I think the budget is just flat
not adequate," he said.
The senators co-sponsored the
Indian Health Care Improvement
Act, which has not been
reauthorized since 1999. The
hearing was to draw testimony on
immediate health care needs in
Indian Country, recruitment and
pay for health care professionals
and the improvement of the
reimbursement process. Written,
faxed and e-mailed testimony
will be received for the next two
weeks, Dorgan said.
Before beginning testimony,
Dorgan called a 3-year-old Crow
girl to the head table because he
said she represented the issues
the adults would be talking about
during the hearing.
Dressed in regalia and topped
by the yellow-beaded tiara of
Little Miss Tiny Tot Crow Fair
2007, Kailyn Old Crow was lifted
up by Dorgan to stand before the
crowd.
"I can't think of a more beautiful
symbol of our future than this
young lady," Dorgan said.
Kailyn grinned for the crowd,
MONEY to page 5
Canadian asks high court to hear AIM slaying case
Associated Press
RAPID CITY, S.D. - The
Canadian man fighting
extradition to South Dakota
for the 1975 slaying of an
American Indian Movement
activist wants his country's
Supreme Court to hear his
case.
John Graham, a Yukon native,
was taken into custody in June
after a British Columbia judge
denied his appeal of an order
that he be sent to the United
States to stand trial.
Graham had been under
house arrest since he was
charged in December 2003
with first-degree murder in
the killing Anna Mae Pictou
Aquash on the Pine Ridge
Indian Reservation in late
1975. Her body was found
Feb. 24,1976. The Nova Scotia
native had been shot in the
head.
Aquash's murder came
amid a series of clashes in the
mid-1970s between federal
agents and members of the
American Indian Movement.
Aquash, a member of Mi'kmaq
Tribe of Canada, was among
Indian militants who occupied
Wounded Knee, S.D., for 71
days in 1973.
Prosecutors have said AIM
leaders ordered Aquash's killing
because they suspected she
was a government informant.
AIM leaders have denied that
assertion.
The other man charged
with killing Aquash, Fritz Arlo
Looking Cloud, received a
mandatory life sentence in 2004
after a federal jury in Rapid City
convicted him of first-degree
murder committed in the
perpetration of a kidnapping.
A federal appeals court upheld
the conviction.
Witnesses at Looking Cloud's
trial testified that Graham shot
Aquash, whose family exhumed
her body in 2004 from her
grave in Oglala and reburied it
in Nova Scotia.
Graham has said he's
innocent, but the Canadian
judge who issued the written
ruling in June disagreed.
Graham filed an application
seeking leave to appeal the
court's order that he be
extradited.
He has until Sept. 25 to
submit written arguments and
documents showing he should
be allowed to appeal to the
Supreme Court, said Deborah
Strachan, a prosecuting
attorney acting for the Attorney
General of Canada on behalf of
the United States.
The government then has
30 days to respond. A panel of
three Canadian Supreme Court
judges will then decide whether
Graham will be allowed to
appeal, which usually takes
about three months.
If the panel denies Graham's
request to appeal, he could be
extradited as early next year. If
Graham is allowed to appeal to
Canada's Supreme Court, the
case would likely continue for
another year, Strachan said.
web page: www.press-on.net
Native
American
We Support Equal Opportunity For All People
A weekly publication.  Copyright, Native American Press, 2007
Founded in 1988
Volume 19 Issue 35
August 15, 2007
Mushkooub & his wife Winnie,& School teacher
Demonic Codes of Silence, Gossip at Mille Lacs
By Vincent Hill
Since my return here to my
home reservation at Mille Lacs,
it is most troubling to find
codes of silence and gossip still
in play socially, and pervasively
so in governmental circles,
not excluding the hallways
and byways of our gambling
casinos. The old traditional
Ojibwe way of life in my growing
up years in the late 1930's and
1940's still had democratic
principles, that applied to social
and governmental behavior. Not
so today! It is equally troubling
to see "gross ignorance" in near
comic Wenabozho( Ojibwe
Man-God, like Christ but, often,
a gross trickster) form in both,
the uneducated and educated.
The Mille Lacs Ojibwe
reservation is beset once
again with a housing funded
scandal! Everyone in the Mille
Lacs government is scurrying
around. I'm told the local Mille
Lacs Messenger carried a story
about this, which I have not
read. Housing funded scandals
are not new here, nor on other
Ojibwe reservations in the State,
past and present. Housing
funded grant projects, under
community development, or
whatever, on American Indian
reservations in the nation is
further internal-genocide. Like
tangling cheese before a rat(s)!
Our past tribal chairman, Art
Gahbow, had been involved
in a big HUD housing one in
the early 1980's. He went to a
Mille Lacs urban meeting in
Minneapolis where discussion
was on how to remove him from
office; another tribal council
member had made tracks to parts
unknown, such as California,
leaving "poor Art" holding the
bag. The FBI did not want to do
anything to Art, or anyone else
involved at the time. Of course
Art was elated. He burst into
this urban meeting and declared
in triumph, "I ripped-off the
government out of one million
dollars! And what are you going
to do about it" he told the Mille
Lacs urban anishinabeg. (today,
the activists that had tried to
nail Art, are now well heeled
on this reservation. Know what
I mean?)
Activist and intellectual
Mushkooub, also known as,
Steve Aubid, from the Mille
Lacs band's East Lake district,
a few miles south of McGregor,
Minnesota, blew the whistle
on the start of "irregularities"
going on in Mille Lacs band
Community Development,
which specifically had to do
with egregiously shabby house
construction work at his new
home: there had been stalling
and no completion of housing
contracts over a span of years.
He does not have kinds words
for Mille Lacs tribal council
members, and leeches sucking
up to them for personal gain.
GOSSIP to page 6
Indians criticize Top Winnebago corporation
No Child Left execs placed on paid leave
Behind
Associated Press
SANTA FE - The No Child Left
Behind law fails to recognize
native cultures and languages,
American Indian officials and
educators told a U.S. Senate
committee.
The law also restricts the
ways schools can use native
cultures and languages in their
curriculums, the committee
was told Friday.
""I've come across nothing
that would enable me to be a
proponent of the act," said San
Ildefonso Pueblo Gov. James
Mountain.
The Senate Health,
Education, Labor and Pensions
Committee held the hearing to
seek public input on renewal
of the law and how it affects
American Indian students.
The law requires annual
math and reading tests in
grades three through eight and
once in high school. Schools
that miss progress goals face
consequences, such as having
to offer tutoring or fire their
principals.
Mountain said he has heard
from teachers in the Pojoaque
school district that the act does
not take into account cultural
differences and has forced
schools to focus on English,
leaving no room for native
languages.
"Once we lose our language,
we lose our culture," Mountain
said.
Maggie Benally, principal of
the Navajo Immersion School
in Fort Defiance, Ariz., said her
school is an example of what
can happen when schools use
native language as a tool.
Students in grades K-2
CHILD to page 5
By Anna Jo Bratton
Associated Press
OMAHA, Neb. - The two top
executives of a $100 million
American Indian business were
placed on paid administrative
leave, a spokeswoman said.
CEO Lance Morgan said the
Ho-Chunk Inc. board of directors
asked him to do something, and
he asked for clarification of the
request.
"They said I should basically
do what I was told, and that's
not my specialty," Morgan said
Thursday.
Morgan wouldn't provide
further details, and messages
left for various board members
weren't immediately returned.
Also placed on leave was
Annette Hamilton, Ho-Chunk's
chief operating officer.
Spokeswoman Janice Jessen
said board member Matthew
Pilcher, chairman of the
Winnebago Tribe, was serving
as acting CEO of Ho-Chunk.
She also said the board members
were in meetings and that she
could not comment further.
Ho-Chunk, situated on the
Winnebago reservation in
northeastern Nebraska, is the
economic development arm
of the tribe, remarkable in
the world of American Indian
LEAVE to page 6
Coburn: Congress should force
Cherokees' decision
Associated Press
TULSA, OK - Congress should
get involved in the Cherokee
Nation's freedmen issue to
force the tribe "to honor their
commitment" to descendants
of slaves, according to Sen. Tom
Coburn.
Coburn, R-Okla., serves on the
Senate Indian Affairs Committee
and his comment could be a
major setback for efforts by
others to have lawmakers back
off and give the legal process
more time.
During a special election in
March, members of the tribe
voted overwhelmingly to take
away tribal citizenship from
about 2,800 descendants of
tribal slaves, who are commonly
known as freedmen.
In May, a tribal court issued a
temporary injunction allowing
the freedmen to maintain their
citizenship while they appeal the
constitutionality of the March
election.
One of the tribe's more vocal
congressional critics, Rep.
Diane Watson, D-Calif., has
scheduled a trip next week to
Oklahoma, where she may meet
with Cherokee Nation Principal
Chief Chad Smith.
Watson also is expected to meet
with the NAACP and members of
the Oklahoma Legislative Black
Caucus.
Coburn discussed the
issue with the Tulsa World's
Washington bureau several
days after a House committee
approved a provision to block
the tribe from participating in a
loan program to force it to drop
efforts to strip certain freedmen
descendants from its rolls.
A bill with that provision
could be on the House floor next
month.
""I'm supportive of the
freedmen," Coburn said. ""It
is part of their deal, and it is
COBURN to page 6