Native American Press / Ojibwe News (Bemidji, Minnesota), 1999-09-17

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Commentary:
Response to
White Earth
Chairman
Buckanaga
Pg3
Leech Lake Tribal
College awarded
$1.1 million grant
for expansion
pgl
Anishanabe
Center finds
permanent home
in Detroit Lakes
pg-l
White Earth
holding public
meetings
Pg3
Commentary:
State Court/Tribal
Court Joint
Committee
divided
pg-4
Pair arrested in
drive-by shooting
inNaytahwaush
pg-1
Pair arrested in drive-by shooting in
Nay tah waii sh
By CATHY ONSTAD
Bemidji Pioneer
Two men have been arrested for
their part in a drive-by shooting that
occurred early morning Sept. 9 in
Naytahwaush, according to the
Mahnomen County Sheriffs
Department.
Michael Gene Weaver, 29, of
White Earth, was arrested after a
Mahnomen County Sheriffs deputy
allegedly observed a passenger in
Weaver's vehicle get out and fire a
shot gun four times toward a group
of partygoers.
The deputy then pursued the
vehicle for two blocks until it
stopped at the residence of the
alleged shooter Randy Lee Bellanger,
26, of Naytahwaush.
Bellanger ran into a wooded area
and alluded deputies until Sept. 14
when he was arrested at his residence after a search warrant was
executed, according to a news
release from the Mahnomen County
Sheriffs Department. Bellanger was
found hiding in the house's attic.
According to authorities, the two
were having a "disagreement" with
the people they allegedly shot at.
A shotgun allegedly used in the
crime had been stolen from a
residence in Becker County in
October 1994.
Weaver was arrested Saturday
morning and faces charges of
accomplice to a drive-by shooting,
reckless discharge of a weapon in a
public housing zone and gross
misdemeanor DWI.
Bellanger was arraigned Wednesday in Mahnomen County District
Court and charged with two felony
counts of reckless discharge of a fire
arm and one count of felony
possession of a firearm.
They are both being held at the
Mahnomen County Jail.
Leech Lake Tribal College awarded $1.1
million grant for expansion
By DEVLYN BROOKS
Bemidji Pioneer
Leech Lake Tribal College Interim
President John Morrow announced
Sept. 15 the school has been
awarded at least a $1.1 million grant
to expand, renovate or build a new
school.
Morrow said American Indian
College Fund Executive Director Rick
Williams visited the college Sept. 9
to tell school officials about the
award. An official announcement,
however, won't be made until
October.
"Our tribal college has been
growing by leaps and bounds since
it opened in a one-room log house in
1990," Morrow said. "We're certainly
in a space crunch at this time. We're
using nooks and crannies for faculty
and staff.
.. .[T]he final grant amount could
total as much as $4 million.
The grant money is a portion of
what the American Indian College
Fund has raised in a nationwide
capital funds campaign. AICF is
trying to raise $ 120 million to
upgrade the 32 tribal colleges
nationwide. If it reaches that goal,
Morrow said AICF will award Leech
Lake Tribal CoIlege$4 million.
"And the possibility is very strong
they will reach their goals," he said.
The college is now forming a
committee to decide how to use the
money.. .buy the current building -
the former Cass Lake-Bena High
School - in which the college
resides, or build a new school on
another site.
Presently, the school occupies the
building with the Cass Lake-Bena
School District administrative
offices, early childhood programs
and the district's Area Learning
Center. LLTC also uses a former
house and church across the street
from the former high school building.
Morrow said no options have been
ruled out. For instance, he said the
college might decide to raise
additional funds to combine with the
AICF grant to build a new school.
He did say a large number ofpeople
would like to see a new college built
on the shores of a lake that is
centrally located on the Leech Lake
Reservation.
"Nothing is locked in," he said.
Morrow said the money is important
to the college because tribal colleges
receive only one-seventh the amount
of funding mainstream colleges and
universities receive.
The AICF raises funds nationally
from private sources to aid American
Indian students attending tribal
colleges, similar to how the American
Negro College Fund raises funds for
black students and colleges.
Leech Lake Tribal College, which
opened in 1990, has a current
enrollment of about 170 students for
fall semester. A normal semester's
attendance is about 250 students.
About 30-40 graduate annually.
[Press/ON editor's note: figures of
how many students and graduates
are Native American have not been
made-available.]
TRIBAL COLLEGE to pg. 8
Baby's skull turns out to be 7,500
years old
ARCADIA, La. (AP) - A baby's
skull found by three 13-year-old
boys turned up the oldest sign of
human settlement in Louisiana.
Carbon found with the child's
other bones was 7,500 years old -
two millennia older than the site that
displaced Poverty Point as the oldest mound complex in North
America.
"It is one ofthe most important
sites in the state of Louisiana in
terms of research potential," said
Thomas H. Eubanks, head ofthe
state Division of Archaeology.
There are no mounds at this site in
Bienville Parish. But it has what the
other two don't: human bones.
It is among a half-dozen sites
around the country with burials dating that far back, said Jeff Girard, the
regional state archaeologist excavating the site.
Eubanks said the site is significant
because it shows signs of repeated
settlement, dates from about the
same period as mounds north and
south of Monroe, and is just a few
days walk from those mounds. That
could indicate the people who lived
there built the mounds, Eubanks
said.
The single mounds found around
Monroe are about 500 to 1,000 years
younger than the latest find, but
that's close in archeological terms,
he said.
The earliest human remains previously found in Louisiana were from
Tchefuncte, located on the north
shore ot Lake Pontchartrain. Those
sites date from 600 BC to 200 AD,
Eubanks said.
Girard said the new site will be the
subject of intense national study,
not only for the human remains, but
for the light it will cast on an era that
is only dimly understood even by
researchers, let alone the general
public.
"Seven thousand years ago, the
climate was warmer and drier than it
is now," Girard said. "There was different vegetation, different animals.
But we had no windows into that
time here, until now."
In other ways, folks then were not
much different from people living
today, discoveries at the site show.
They hunted deer and loved their
dogs so much they were buried with
them.
BABY to pg. 6
Agua Caliente tribe signs
gambling compact with governor
ByDOUGWBXIS
Associated Press Writer
SACRAMENTO (AP) - The wealthy
Agua Caliente tribe, which owns a
lucrative 1,200-slot machine casino,
belatedly joined dozens of other Indian tribes Tuesday and signed a
pact with the governor that would
increase casino-style gambling on
California reservations.
The Agua Caliente, which earlier
declined to join the 57 other tribes
that approved the pacts last Friday,
signed the agreement in Gov. Gray
Davis' office in a five-minute ceremony attended by the governor,
tribal leaders and state officials.
"In the 11th hour of the 20th century, we have sought to make right
with the first Americans," Davis said
with the tribe's chairman, Richard
Milanovich, at his side.
"We have gone over a lot of
documents in the past, and we have
been bitten," Milanovich said, explaining his delay in signing'. He
added that he is confident that the
compact with Davis is "an equitable
plan."
The Palm Springs tribe is a major
participant in California's tribal gambling movement and had considered
bankrolling a ballot initiative next
March aimed at reinstating a 1998
initiative overturned by the California Supreme Court.
That measure would have allowed
a nearly unlimited increase in casino-
style gambling on Indian reservations, while the pact with Davis allows expansion from the current
18,000 slots to about 43,000.
Davis said he believes the compacts are true to his campaign promises to support "a modest, not excessive, increase" in tribal gambling in
California.
Although not part ofthe written
compact, Milanovich and Davis said
the tribe agreed that it would not
seek a new ballot initiative next year.
The Agua Caliente tribe had collected more than a million signatures
for a ballot measure next March to
allow virtually unrestricted tribal
gambling, as provided in the measure
overturned last month by the court.
The agreement with the Agua
Caliente tribe also includes a critical
provision allowing union organizing
at the casinos, an issue that had
been raised by organized labor and
strongly backed by Davis and key
state legislators.
Milanovich's tribe is the first one
to agree to the union provision,
which Milanovich said he accepted
after concluding that it "doesn't infringe on tribal sovereignty."
Other changes from the pacts
signed last week with other tribes
allow Agua Caliente to renegotiate
terms of sharing revenues with the
state if a court in the future overturns the portion ofthe proposal
giving the tribes the exclusive right
to operate video slot machines in
California.
Davis said that provision was
added as a matter of fairness to the
tribes because their revenues would
obviously decline ifthey lost the
exclusive right to those games. He
also said that other tribes could
amend their agreements to include
similar provisions contained in the
Agua Caliente compact.
The agreements ward off a U.S.
Justice Department threat to enforce
a federal court order that would have
shut down the tribes' slots and low-
stakes blackjack games in mid-October. Even before that ruling, a federal
judge in Los Angeles had ordered
some casinos closed.
But federal prosecutors said that
if tribes and the state demonstrated a
good-faith effort to reach agreements, they would hold off enforcing
the order until voters could consider
a new constitutional amendment on
the ballot next March. That measure
AGUA CALIENTE to pg. 8
Voice of the People
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Native American horsemen travel east of Belle Fourche, S.D., following the old migratory routes ofthe bison
herds. The trek culminated at Yellowstone National Park. (AP Photo/Rapid City Journal, Dick Kettlewell)
Anishinabe Center finds permanent
home in Detroit Lakes
Center offers community activities, cultural focus
ByJEFFARMSTRONG     ■
StaffWriter
The Detroit Lakes Anishinabe Center
is homeless no more.
Executive Director Marvin
Manypenny said the city has at last
offered a solution to the problem it
created last year, when the city
council issued its first eviction
notice to the center. Complaints from
a handful of neighbors had prompted
the council to use its zoning
authority to force the center from the
only home it had been able to find in
Detroit Lakes—a renovated house in
a residential neighborhood.
Manypenny said city officials
blinked when faced with the
prospect of Native protests against
the city last April, as the final
deadline for relocation put the future
ofthe center in doubt.
The center was temporarily
housed in the spacious but aging
Boy's Club building, which gave the
staff enough time to obtain financing
from the Detroit Lakes Community
Development Authority before again
facing removal. This week, the center
moved into a 5,600 square foot
facilitypurchasedfor$145,000and
currently leased to the center.
Manypenny said the center's next
goal is to pay off the $200,000 loan
and own the facility outright within
two years.
"We're just over the first hurdle.
The next hurdle is can we raise the
money?" Manypenny said.
Still, Manypenny does not attempt
to contain his relief at being able to
move out of a survival mode.
"Now we can focus on something
besides where we're going to be next
month," said Manypenny. "We can
start addressing the needs of our
people."
While retaining a cultural focus,
the center will also seek to alleviate
some ofthe expected fallout from
implementation of welfare reform
laws establishing a five-year
deadline tor public assistance
recipients to find gainful
employment. Manypenny said he
hopes to establish a job bank for
temporary labor, develop a growing
market for Anishinabe artisans at the
center's arts and craft shop, extend
GED education classes, hold regular
ANISHINABE CENTER to pg. 6
Former Cherokee chief Wilma Mankiller
fighting battle against breast cancer
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. (AP) - Former
Cherokee ChiefWilmaMankiller said
Tuesday that she is getting on with
life despite waging her second battle
against cancer.
Mankiller, 53, who has undergone
two kidney transplants and treatment
for lymphoma, has been diagnosed
with breast cancer. Doctors removed
two lumps from her left breast, and
she is receiving radiation treatments.
Mankiller said she feels well, despite the weakening effect of radiation.
"I just don't dwell on it. I'm not
very self-absorbed. I don't spend a
lot of time thinking about why this is
happening," she said, her voice
cheerful during a telephone interview
from her eastern Oklahoma home.
Mankiller said doctors detected
the breast cancer in an early stage
because of regular checkups following her treatment for lymphoma, a
form of cancer, in 1996. She said she
quickly got over the shock ofthe
diagnosis, which came in June.
"After initial shock in assessing
the reality ofthe situation, I've just
decided to get on with my life," she
said.
Mankiller, who became chief of the
nation's second-largest Indian tribe
in 1985 and served for 10 years, said
she didn't immediately make the diagnosis public because she didn't
want to divert attention from the
Cherokee Nation elections, which
were held in July.
She supported Chad Smith, a
Cherokee attorney who defeated incumbent Joe Byrd after more than
two years of political strife within the
tribe.
Mankiller's life has been marked
by a series of severe health problems.
A 1979 car accident nearly claimed
her life and resulted in 17 operations.
She had her first kidney transplant in
1990. When the lymphoma diagnosis
came in 1996, she had to stop taking
medication that helped prevent rejection of the kidney.
In 1998, she had to have a second
kidney transplant.
Mankiller said the latest cancer
could be tied to the lymphoma treatment, a "rough regime" of chemotherapy that she said can lead to
susceptibility to secondary cancers.
She is two weeks into a seven-
week radiation treatment intended to
catch any lingering cancer cells. She
receives the 15-minute treatment at
Muskogee Regional Hospital.
Mankiller said the radiation does
not compare to the severity ofthe
chemotherapy and that she feels
fine. "I literally go swimming after the
treatment," she said.
Doctors told her that they are confident the cancer was removed
through surgery and that the radiation will target any stray cancer cells.
Mankiller said her prognosis is good.
"I feel very confident it's gone,"
she said.