Native American Press / Ojibwe News (Bemidji, Minnesota), 2000-12-01

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INDEX
News Around Indian Country 2
News Briefs 3
Commentary/Editorials/Voices 4
Smoke Signals of Upcoming Events 5
Classifieds 7
USD
Sioux nickname
issue at UND
progresses
toward decision
pg4
Fetal alcohol syndrome
takes toll in Indian
community
pg7
President to decide
Peltier clemency
case before leaving
office
pgi.4
High court to review
Navajo tax on hotel guests
pgi
Editorial
Proposed new federal tribal
recognition law won't solve
problem
pg4
Test scores rise
in Minneapolis
but gap between
races persists
Excerpted from Allie Shah
Star Tribune
The learning gap between some minority students and their white counterparts in the Minneapolis public
schools is widening, according to the
district's annual report on student
achievement.
The report, released at the Nov. 28
school board meeting, examines student performance on a battery of state
and national tests from the 1999-2000
school year.
While students in all racial groups
posted gains on most tests, black and
American Indian students continue to
lag far behind whites, Asians and Hispanics.
What's more, test results show that
black and Indian pupils aren't gaining
at the rate they need to in order to
meet state mandates for graduation.
The report also included a list of
low-performing schools that could be
overhauled ifthey don't improve in
tlie next two years. The list, new this
year, is a result of this spring's settlement ofthe Minneapolis NAACP's
lawsuit against the state. The NAACP
had argued that poor, minority students in Minneapolis were not getting
an adequate education.
The Nov. 28 assessment report
comes just days before the district offers tours to help parents of incoming
students choose their schools. The
school-selection season has been
moved up by six weeks in Minneapolis, also as a result ofthe NAACP
settlement.
Achievement is up overall for Minneapolis students on the state basic-
skills tests, the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments and the national
Northwest Achievement Level Tests
(NALTs), said David Heistad, director
of tlie district's Research, Evaluation
and Assessment Department. But he
acknowledged that school officials
have reason for some concern.
In addition, the report says tliat performance by most K-8 and middle
schools citywide has dipped, based on
a number of measures, after showing
progress last year.
The achievement report is produced
annually by tlie district's research, department to review student progress
on a number of measures, including
standardized tests. Those test results
are included in a set of 33 quality performance indicators used to assess
each school.
Other indicators measure school climate, attendance and suspension rates
and gifted/ talented programming.
Points are assigned to each indicator.
The average ofthe combined results
in a school's overall point total can
range from 1, the lowest, to 2, tlie average, to 5, the highest.
NALTs measure math skills for students in grades two through seven and
reading comprehension skills in
grades three through seven. Scores
range from 1 to 99, with 50 the national average.
Tuesday's report lists eight endangered schools: Andersen Elementary
School (2.0), Banneker Community
School (2.0), Broadway Community
School (2.0), Edison PPL (2.1),
Folwell Middle School (2.2), Hall
Community School, (2.1), Northeast
Middle School (2.2.) and Willard
Math/Science Technology School
(2.2.).
As part ofthe settlement, families
of children in those schools are guaranteed a transfer to one of three better-performing schools if their home
schools have not improved after two
years.
Forum looks at issues facing
American Indian in Minnesota
By Robby Robinson
Bemidji Pioneer
Many ofthe issues facing American Indians living in Bemidji are
similar to issues facing Indians in
larger metropolitan areas, said
Valerie Larsen ofthe Minnesota Urban Indian Advisory Council.
Larsen conducted a forum Nov. 3
at the Bemidji Public Library as part
ofa series of meetings held around
the state by the council - a subcommittee ofthe Minnesota Indian Affairs Council - to find out what
kinds of concerns need to be addressed by the state and refer them
to the appropriate state agency.
Similar forums have been held in
Duluth, St. Paul and Minneapolis.
The Indian Affairs Council is one
of four state councils that deal with
minority affairs, acting as an advisory board to the legislature. The
HTV/AIDS pose threat to American
Indian, Alaska Native communities
Associated Press
ST. PAUL, Minn.— American Indians and Alaska Natives are experiencing an increasing rate of HIV/
AIDS that, if left unchecked, poses a
serious health threat that could devastate Native American communities
in the United States, a U.S. government official said Nov. 15.
"The number of American Indian
and Alaska Native (AI/AN) persons
living with AIDS continues to grow,
" said Assistant Secretary for Health
and Surgeon General David Satcher.
"Often, the total number of AIDS
cases in the AI/AN communities appears small and insignificant but
these cases continue to increase.
Therefore, we must support prevention efforts."
Office of HIV/AIDS Policy
(OHAP) Director Dr. Eric Goosby
said, "hen you combine the increasing case numbers with other health
factors in Native communities, HIV/
AIDS poses an explosive health
threat."
Goosby, principal AIDS advisor to
the Office ofthe Surgeon General
and the White House's Acting-
Deputy Director for the Office of
National AIDS Policy, made his remarks Nov. 15 at a news conference
during the 57th Annual Session of
the National Congress of American
Indians (NCAI), the oldest and the
largest organization of tribal governments in the United States.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
data, as of December 1999, more
than 2,000 American Indians/Alaska
Natives from all states and territories
HIV to pg. 7
President to decide Peltier
clemency case before leaving office
Associated Press
Washington, D.C. -The White
House says President Clinton will review pending requests for executive
clemency before he leaves office in
January, including that of Leonard
Peltier, the American
Indian activist convicted of murdering
two FBI agents in
South Dakota.
The president "will
focus on as many
clemency cases as he
can after the election
and that will be one of
them," White House
spokesman Daniel
Cmise said Nov. 26.
He added that it was unlikely the president would be able to review any clemency requests made late in the year.
Also Sunday, the White House released the transcript of Clinton's Nov.
7 interview with radio station WBA1-
FM in New York City in which the
president was asked about the Peltier
case.
Clinton said then that he would review all clemency applications "and
see what the merits dictate ... based on
the evidence."
Asked specifically about Peltier,
Clinton said he has "never had time actually to sit down myself and review
that case."
"I know it's very important to a lot
Leonard Peltier
DNA evidence points to link between wild rice, Asia
Associated Press
St. Paul, Minn. - As it rums out, wild
rice may be every bit as Minnesotan as the
Great Wall of
China.
Conventional wisdom
about the
state's most famous native
food would
have it tliat
wild rice isn't
really rice. It's
Zizania
paliistris L. North America's native
aquatic grain.
But scientists at the University of
Minnesota who are mapping the genetic
makeup of wild rice say that, to their
surprise, it is indeed remarkably similar
to rice.
"It's not rice, but that's the species it's
most closely related to," said Ronald
Phillips, director ofthe Center for Microbial and Plant Genomics. "This indicates (hat it originated from rice, so it
would have to have come from Asia to
the United States."
Wild rice
The discovery raises intriguing questions about how wild rice got to North
America, where it became central to
American Indian lore.
Although Minnesota considers itself
the cradle of wild rice - one Minnesota
county, Mahnomen, takes its name from
the Ojibwe word for wild rice - the plant
once grew as far south as Florida and
north into Ontario and Quebec.
If wild rice originated in Asia, it almost surely traveled to North America
before humans walked North American
soils, said Ervin Oelke, an agronomist
who worked with wild rice for three decades before his retirement this year
from the University ofMinnesota.
Oelke isn't ready to abandon the belief that wild rice's origin is purely
American, but he did acknowledge that
Phillips' research opens "a good possibility that it came from Asia."
Scientists have no idea how seeds of
the grass family, which includes wild
rice, hitchhiked from one point on the
globe to another, said Elizabeth
Kellogg, a professor of botanical studies
at the University of Missouri-St. Louis,
and a leading authority on the evolution
of tlie grass family.
Rice doesn't survive well in saltwater, so it isn't likely to have surfed ocean
waves, she said. But seeds have moved
incredible distances by air. And they've
hitched many a ride from birds and animals.
When all else fails, botanists often resort to "tlie muddy duck hypothesis."
That holds that ducks stomped in the
muck, scooped up seeds on their
webbed feet, took flight, and later
dropped tlie payload in some distant
marsh, where other ducks might have
relayed it further.
However wild rice and rice broke
away from each other, Kellogg guesses
it happened at least 1 million years ago.
Efforts to cultivate wild rice started
centuries ago when American Indians
mixed wild rice seed with clay, rolled
the material into balls and dropped them
into lakes and rivers, according to
Oelke's study.
Early European explorers collected
wild rice seed and took it home for planting. But they failed because it wasn't
easy to mimic conditions in the mucky
waters where the natural crop thrived It
wasn't until the 1950s that farmers and
researchers in Minnesota began successfully domesticating wild rice. By the
1990s, tlie commercial crop grown
mainly in California and Minnesota was
worth more than S20 million a year.
Voice     o
t he     People
others are the councils of affairs of
Chicano/Latino People, Asian Pacific Minnesotans and Black Minnesotans.
About a dozen people from the
community appeared at the forum
and Larsen said it would seem appropriate that a representative from
the city become a permanent member of the Urban Indian Advisory
Council.
"As we go around the state we find
that there are some large Indian
communities in both Duluth and
Bemidji and it seems appropriate
that they both be represented at the
state level," said Larsen. Duluth is
already represented on the urban issue council.
Some ofthe concerns discussed
include a lack of affordable housing
in Bemidji, homelessness and the
FORUM to pg. 7
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ofpeople, maybe on both sides ofthe
issue," he said. "And I think I owe it to
them to give it an honest look-see."
On June 26, 1975, FBI agents
Ronald A. Williams and Jack R. Coler
pursued a robbery suspect into the Pine
Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. A
shootout
erupted with
activists from
the American
Indian Movement.
Two suspects were acquitted and a
third freed for
lack of evidence.
Peltier, after fleeing to Canada and
being extradited to the United States,
was convicted and sentenced to consecutive life terms in 1977, despite defense claims that evidence against him
had been falsified.
Peltier, 56, is serving the terms at the
U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth,
Kan. He has suffered from health problems in recent years.
In June, a parole examiner recommended that Peltier's sentences be continued until his next full parole hearing
in 2008.
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
http://www. freepeltier.org
No Parole Peltier Association http://
www.noparolepeltier.com
Food and4oys for Christmas
Photo by Division of Indian Works
Volunteers at the Department of Indian Works in Minneapolis help prepare grocery bags of food for
distribution to those in need. Services to low income families increase during holiday season.
By Judy Archibald
Christmas will be merrier for
American Indian families living in
the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis thanks to the Division of
Indian Work's Holiday program.
Holiday Appeal will provide toys
and grocery bags filled with food,
including a gift certificate for
meat. However to take part in the
program, each family must be pre-
registered by Dec. 1 l.To register,
call Jean Rogers at the Division of
Indian Work - 612-722-8722, ext.
343.
To qualify, each family must:
Live in the Phillips neighborhood
(present verification of address),
present tribal ID or enrollment
number, and present social security number.
Holiday gifts will be distributed
Dec. 19, 20 and 21 to families
who have pre-qualified.
During Thanksgiving and
Christmas of 1999, the Holiday Appeal Program provided meals and
toys to nearly 500 families in the
Phillips neighborhood. "This major
effort requires the cooperation of individuals, churches, civic groups and
businesses who start collecting thousands of pounds of food and gifts in
October," said Noya Woodrich, Associate Executive Director ofthe Division oflndian Work. "Then, volunteers spend hundreds of hours
more to sort and package the items."
Holiday Appeal is just one ofthe
programs offered through the Division oflndian Work in partnership
with the Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches. The mission ofthe
Division oflndian Work (DIW) is to
empower American Indian people
through culturally based advocacy,
education, counseling, and leadership development.
A main focus ofall programs is to
help connect urban American Indians to their history, families, spirit,
and the circle. Horizons Unlimited
helps unemployed American Indian
■ adults by providing work-skills
classes and on-the-job training.
The Teen Indian Parents Program
provides weekly parenting and nutrition classes to young mothers;
the Family Violence Program provides professional counseling and
advocacy for those impacted by
domestic violence, child abuse or
sexual abuse. The Youth Leadership Development Program helps
connect inner city youth with their
culture. In 1999, more than 800
youth participated in educational
activities, including designing life-
size tepees.
DI Ws annual 1.2 million dollar
budget is funded through FEMA;
local churches. United Way, corporations, foundations, Minnesota
Food Shelf Association and contributions from individuals.
Judge postpones trial on Indian
graves lawsuit
By Brian Witte
Associated Press
BISMARCK, N.D. — The trial
ofa tribal lawsuit over eroding
American Indian grave sites along
the Missouri River was postponed
Nov. 28 after lawyers for both sides
asked for more time to try reach a
settlement.
U.S. District Judge Charles
Konimann rescheduled the trial, set
to begin Nov. 29, in Aberdeen,
S.D., for Jan. 22.
" I view that as a positive sign, "
said Michael Swallow, an attorney
representing the Standing Rock
Sioux Tribe.
In the lawsuit against the Anny
Corps of Engineers, the tribe contends erosion from water releases
on the river has exposed as many as
100 American Indian graves.
Swallow said there have been "
extensive talks" about a settlement,
which he hoped could be reached
before the new trial date. He would
not elaborate on talks. Cheryl
Dupree, an attorney representing
the corps, declined to comment.
On Nov. 6, Kommann issued a
temporary restraining order requiring the Anny Corps of Engineers to
maintain the current water level at
Lake Oahe, one of South Dakota' s
key reservoirs on the Missouri.
To make up for lost hydroelectric
power at Lake Oahe, the corps released more water from Garrison
Dam in North Dakota.
The tribe filed the lawsuit in hopes
of protecting the buried descendants
of Chief Mad Bear, the leader ofa
band of Hunkpapa Lakota Indians.
In August, remains were discovered
near Wakpala, S.D., when water levels dropped in Lake Oahe.
Tribal members contend poor
management ofthe Missouri River
has led to human remains being exposed and left open to looters.
A similar discovery in December
1999 near the Fort Randall Dam led
. to a court fight between the corps
and the Yankton Sioux Tribe.
Earlier this month, the Yankton
tribe and the corps agreed to temporarily cover but not remove exposed
human remains found last year near
Fort Randall Dam.
In both cases, tribes have discovered remains from graves that were
supposedly moved more than 40
years ago, before the Missouri River
dams were built.
High court to
review Navajo
tax on hotel
guests
By Laurie Asseo
Associated Press
Washington, D.C. - The Supreme
Court agreed Nov. 27 to use a case involving a hotel on the Navajo Indian
reservation to clarify whether tribes can
impose taxes on nonmembers' activities
on non-Indian land within a reservation.
The court said it will hear a hotel
owner's argument that its guests who
are not tribal members should not have
to pay a hotel occupancy tax to the
tribe.
The New Mexico-based Atkinson
Trading Co. operates the Cameron
Trading Post on land it owns within the
Navajo reservation near Cameron, Ariz.,
in the north-central part ofthe state near
the Grand Canyon. The trading post
consists ofa hotel, restaurant, curio
shop and recreational-vehicle park.
In 1992, the Navajo Nation Council
enacted an 8 percent hotel occupancy
tax on guests, requiring hotels to collect
the tax and pay it to the tribe.
Atkinson Trading challenged the tax,
saying the tribe lacked authority to require the hotel's guests to pay the tax.
Tribal courts ruled agaiast tlie company,
and Atkinson Trading went to federal
court in New Mexico.
A federal judge ruled against the
company, as did the 10th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals.
NAVAJO to pg. 5