Sorted by date Results 1026 - 1050 of 1096
HELENA, MT—Native women advocates in the United States are praising lawmakers for passage of an inclusive, bipartisan Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act that would afford protection to all women and victims of domestic violence. The bipartisan bill, S. 47, passed by the Senate in February 2013 and now by the House, 286 to 138, includes critical provisions to restore and strengthen tribal authority to protect Native women from violence in Indian Country. The hard-fought passage comes over 500 days after VAWA expired a...
For special meals like those on birthdays and Christmas, members of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians include hominy on the menu—but hominy, essentially dried corn kernels, is expensive to purchase. That’s why USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service is working to help the tribe grow and harvest hickory king corn and other heirloom white varieties and process them to make hominy. Hominy is a traditional food for Native Americans during the winter. To help resto...
WASHINGTON, DC—President Barack Obama will nominate Sally Jewell, the chief executive officer of Recreational Equipment Inc., to run the Interior Department, according to news reports. Jewell led REI in 2000. She also has 19 years of commercial banking experience and has worked for Mobil Oil Corporation in Oklahoma and Colorado. Jewell currently serves as a regent for the University of Washington. She was nominated twice to the post by tribal-friendly governors but o...
PRIOR LAKE, MN—A 15-week experiential, intensive beekeeping course will be offered this spring and summer by staff from Wozupi, the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community’s organic garden, orchard, honey, maple syrup, and organic egg producing enterprise. Open to the public, this course will be held Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to noon from April through October. The course will cover all phases of beekeeping, including extracting and bottling honey. The course is designed for tho...
WOUNDED KNEE, SD—Just recently, flyers were distributed across the Pine Ridge Reservation asking the residents to honor the “Liberation of Wounded Knee in February of 1973.” Those who would celebrate and hand out flyers have a delusional recollection of the past. Wounded Knee was a small village on the Pine Ridge Reservation. There were homes where approximately 35 families dwelled and there was a so-called Trading Post which was the only grocery store for miles to serve the r...
Throughout the autumn and winter of 1812-13 the residents of Akwesasne were being drawn into the war between Britain and the US. Since the controversial Seven Nations of Canada treaty of 1796 there had been restrictions on the movement of the Native people living on the “reservation” but the international border had not yet become internally divisive. Both English and American authorities recognized the importance of the St. Lawrence River as vital to the movement of tro...
PHOENIX, AZ—“Picture this!” It’s a fitting name for a fascinating visual tale as well as a new Heard Museum exhibit of weavings that tell stories, Picture This! Navajo Pictorial Textiles, which opened Saturday, February 16 and will be on display through September 2, 2013. The exhibit’s weavings tell stories that date to when dinosaurs were on Earth, even though the oldest of those to be displayed were created in the 19th century, according to Dr. Ann Marshall, the museum’s...
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL—A group of Indian activists in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is being threatened with eviction in order to make way for the 2016 Summer Olympics. The group consists of representatives of various tribes in Brazil. They have been living at the site of an abandoned Indian museum for years, the Associated Press reported. Police surrounded the site over the weekend. But they apparently did not have an eviction order and eventually left the scene. The government says it needs the site to build a new stadium for t...
Del Laverdure, a member of the Crow Tribe, is joining the Indian law and policy practice at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Laverdure has spent the last three-and-a-half years in leadership roles at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He’ll be bringing his management and policy expertise to his new job, where he will serve as a strategic advisor and will help tribes with tax, infrastructure, natural resource and other issues. “Akin Gump has a strong and growing American Indian law...
CAPE DORSET, NUNAVUT—World-renowned Inuk artist Kenojuak Ashevak died on January 8, 2013 at her home in Cape Dorset, Nunavut, at age 85. Ashevak is considered a pioneer of Inuit art. Her drawings, prints and sculptures have been bought and displayed around the world. Her work was featured on several Canada Post stamps over the years, including her most famous print,Enchanted Owl. Ashevak was born in 1927 in a camp on Baffin Island and lived the traditional nomadic life on t...
MISSION, SD—The Rosebud IHS Service Unit has achieved designation as a Baby-Friendly® Hospital, which makes it the first hospital to achieve this designation in the Indian Health Service and in the state of South Dakota. This prestigious award is given to facilities that practice the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding. Research shows that following the Ten Steps increases exclusive breastfeeding, and this helps to reduce obesity and diabetes in the population. Co...
NUNAVUT, NVT—Readers of Inuktitut can now read the Bible in their own language thanks to the Canadian Bible Society (CBS). The translation office in Kitchener, Ontario, worked with Anglican Church leaders from the Diocese of the Arctic for the past 30 years to produce the Inuktitut Bible. The New Testament translation, started in 1978 and finished in 1991, is now in its fifth printing. The full Bible, including the recently finished Old Testament, was dedicated in Nunavut i...
WASHINGTON, DC—U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) chaired what was likely his last Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing on November 29, 2012. Akaka took over the committee at the start of the 112th Congress in 2011. He was the first Native Hawaiian in the post. “It has been a great honor for me to serve with you as vice chairman on this committee,” said Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyoming). “You have been a great friend and a great teacher to so many of us who have had the...
QUANTICO, VA—Pride is a natural trait woven into the fabric of Phyllis Hurlock’s life. As a civilian program analyst working for Marine Corps Systems Command (MCSC) at Quantico, Hurlock takes pride in her job. She is also a proud member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, a federally recognized tribe of Potawatomi people headquartered in Shawnee, Oklahoma. If asked, she will answer to Wabnokwe, which is Potawatomi for Eastern Light Woman. Such entreaties are more common in Nov...
OTTAWA, ON—On January 8, 2013, Canada’s Federal Court ruled that 200,000 Métis and 400,000 non-status Indians in Canada are indeed “Indians” under the Constitution Act, and fall under federal jurisdiction. “Today’s decision will mark a new relationship with the government of Canada,” says Betty Ann Lavallée, National Chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples. “The recognition of Métis and non-status Indian as Indians under section 91(24) should accord a further level of respect and reconciliation by removing the const...
WASHINGTON, DC—Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Kevin K. Washburn issued a statement on the passing of Chickasaw Nation Ambassador Charles Blackwell. It stated: “Today, Indian Country lost a distinguished leader whose eloquence and diplomacy in promoting self-determination for the Chickasaw Nation and all tribes was legendary. As the Chickasaw Nation’s ambassador to the United States, Charles W. Blackwell personified the nation-to-nation relationship, giving his peopl...
FORT TROTTEN, ND—American Indian male enrollment at tribal colleges and universities has risen 19 percent in the past six years, according to the American Indian Higher Education Consortium. That translates into 5,807 male students out of a total tribal enrollment of some 18,400, according to AIHEC data. “In the settings among indigenous people where you have to consider the cultural significance we serve, it is important to help male members,” says Dr. Elmer Guy, presi...
BILLINGS, MT—The Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana will be focusing once again on federal recognition, the new chairman said. The tribe was denied federal recognition by the Bureau of Indian Affairs but is appealing. The tribe is also seeking recognition through an act of Congress. “We’re starting to operate as a tribe once again,” Chairman Gerald Gray, who was just elected to a four-year term, told the Associated Press. The tribe recently opened a cultura...
SWARTZ CREEK MI (ANS)—One of the great Sunday pages of the Peanuts comic strip by Charles Schulz shows Linus walking outside while it is snowing. He looks up, he catches snowflakes on his hand...and goes wild when he sees that two are identical. He rushes to show them off, but before his sister Lucy, or Charlie Brown, or anyone else, can see them, the snowflakes have melted. Good grief. What would have made that discovery special, of course, is that we are told that no two s...
TAHLEQUAH, OK—Google just announced that it has added Cherokee as Gmail’s 57th supported language. While Google has continuously expanded its language support for Gmail and its other services, this marks the first time that Google has added a Native American tribal language to its repertoire. Google, of course, isn’t doing this because of the large number of Cherokee-speaking Gmail users who are demanding support for their language. Indeed, the company points toward a 2002...
“...Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.” The Chief Shepherd (Jesus) said “Come to Me, all of you who work and have heavy loads. I will give you rest. Follow My teachings and learn from Me. I am gentle and do not have pride. You will have rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28-29 NLB)....
TORONTO, ON—On Thursday, November 15, 2012, Tyndale University College & Seminary and the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies (NAIITS) signed a Memorandum of Agreement to offer a Master of Theological Studies—Indigenous Studies. Dr. Terry LeBlanc, Director and CEO of NAIITS and Dr. Gary V. Nelson, President and Vice Chancellor of Tyndale signed the agreement at a public signing ceremony and celebration at Tyndale’s Bayview campus. NAIITS and Tynda...
NEW TOWN, ND—A twelve-year-old born on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota survived a deadly shooting by faking his death as he lay under his slain brother’s body. Christian Schuster told the Rev. Grant Patterson that “he laid there and played dead until the shooter left the house.” The pastor of the Bethel Lutheran Church in New Town said that he spoke with Christian about an hour after the killings. Also killed in the shootings were his grandmother and three o...
On December 19, 2009, the United States apologized to its Native Peoples—but no one heard it. Over 300 million U.S. citizens were apologized for, and don’t know it. Nearly five million Native Americans were apologized to, yet only a handful are aware of it. December 19, 2012 marked the third anniversary of an “Apology to Native Peoples of the United States” signed by President Obama on December 19, 2009. Among the ironies of this apology, is the fact that it was buried...
VICTORIA ISLAND, ON—The Christmas festivities took on an unusual tone with flash mobs, a rail blockade and continued social media campaigns that have swept across Canada and don’t show signs of letting up. Coinciding with this is a hunger strike by Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence whose fast is aimed at gaining a meeting with Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper together with First Nations leaders and a member of the Crown. According to those close to the chief, Spenc...
