The AmeriCorps Hoopa Tribal Civilian Community Corps traveled for four days and spent two weeks helping a Sioux family get a new home in South Dakota.

The eight-person team helped the Nature’s Compassion group from July 13 to 26 to build an Eco-Dome, or earthen home, on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation using sand bags, barbed wire and the area’s earth, said Viola Long, project manager for TCCC.

This was the first Eco-Dome the TCCC had helped build and was a test for future projects.

‚ÄùThey’re going to try this out, and if the idea works, they’ll try and build more homes in that area,‚Äù Long said.

TCCC spent two weeks helping Nature’s Compassion build the Eco-Dome before having to return to Hoopa for other planned projects, Long said. Nature’s Compassion plans to finish the structure before winter begins and present it to a Sioux family that needs a new home, Long said.

The future owners of the Eco-Dome are excited and have been helping during the construction, she said.

According to Nature’s Compassion Web site, 60 percent of the homes on the Pine Ridge reservation need to be destroyed because of black mold infestation.

The Eco-Domes resemble mounds and are considered sustainable because they need no heating or air conditioning, Long said. The materials keep the structure cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

‚ÄùYou don’t have to have any insulation,‚Äù she said.

ODANAH ‚Äî A hushed crowd listened spellbound Wednesday as Tom Maulson recounted the bad old days during the “Walleye Wars” of the late 1980s and early 1990s, as Native American spear fishers attempted to exercise their treaty rights at lakes across the northern third of Wisconsin that makes up territory ceded by Lake Superior Chippewa Indians.

By treaty, Native Americans retained the right to take fish by the traditional method of spearing, rights that had been upheld in court, but widespread and vehement opposition to those rights sometimes led to violent confrontation between Indians and whites at boat landings on lakes where spear fishing took place.

Maulson, a member and former tribal judge and chairman of the Lac du Flambeau tribe, speaking at a Bad River Casino meeting room during the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission‚Äôs (GLIFWC) 25th anniversary symposium, was frequently choked up at the memory and took long pauses as he considered his words. 

“I’m sorry,” he told the crowd at length. “This is very hard.”

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It was an event that would forever change life for many people on the Navajo Nation.

The immediate outcome of the July 20, 1989, riot was the death of two MacDonald supporters – Arnold Begay of Red Mesa, Ariz., and Jimmy Dixon of Indian Wells, Ariz. – and injuries to a number of other demonstrators and police officers.

Some two and a half years later, on Nov. 11, 1992, former Chairman Peter MacDonald Sr. and nine of his supporters would be sentenced to federal prison terms of anywhere from 41 months to 14 years for their involvement in that riot.

MacDonald got the biggest sentence but he would serve just over eight years and was released in January 2001 when his sentence was commuted by then President Bill Clinton on his last day in office.

There was talk by MacDonald just after the riot that this event would be remembered for all time by the Navajo people.

They placed a small memorial at the site where the two MacDonald supporters died and said that there would be an annual event remembering the sacrifices they made that day for the Navajo people.

A 16-year-old boy with a red-and-black-checked bandana knotted around his neck leaned over a notebook and penned rap lyrics.

“I went to over 10 funerals in 1 year people had O.D.,” Kyle Moses wrote. “Running around getting keyed/Are they thinking it’s going to be better for them/80 bucks for 1 pill …”

Around him, other American Indian teens sat on a porch overlooking Port Susan Bay and wrote their own lyrics about prescription drug abuse and problem gambling.

“It’s really easy to rap about because I’ve seen a lot of it,” said Moses, a Muckleshoot. “I usually rap about the truth. I think it helps me because I like putting it out there and having other people see how it is.”

He spent the last week at Warm Beach Camp, attending a music academy for Indian teens that focused on ending prescription drug abuse and problem gambling. Around 50 teens participated, including a few from the Tulalip Tribes. They recorded their own CDs in a bunk-room-turned-recording-studio, helped create music videos about gambling and drugs, and bounced lyrics and poems off each other.

The camp, called the Tribal Youth Music Academy, was organized by the Evergreen Council on Problem Gambling with grants from the state Attorney General’s Office and the state Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse, along with support from several Northwest tribes.

“What we want to do is train young people, so they themselves live the model of being clean and sober and avoiding addictive behaviors,” Attorney General Rob McKenna said. “They can go out and credibly present that to other young people.”

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CORPUS CHRISTI ‚Äî A sculpture honoring Native Americans soon will be at the Hans & Pat Suter Wildlife Refuge.

The park on Ennis Joslin sits on land where archaeologists and researchers have found artifacts and human remains that make it the second largest Native American burial ground in the state, officials said.

“The reason that I picked this particular monument was because it bridges a gap of all native people,” said Larry Running Turtle Salazar, spokesman for the Gulf Coast Indian Confederation. “(The monument) will depict all that have occupied this land at one time or another.”

The 30-foot-tall bronze sculpture will depict a Native American man sitting on a horse and making an offering to the sky.

No one chief, tribe or person will be represented in the art because the intention is to portray all history of the land, Salazar said.

Artist Dave McGary, who specializes in Native American art, will build the sculpture, Project Director Ray McMurrey said. Construction will begin in October and is expected to be completed in two years, he added.

McGary, who will be onhand at a news conference at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Art Center of Corpus Christi, was commissioned to build the monument because of his talent and mastery of the sculpting craft, Salazar said.

“I’m personally excited about this project because I’m really endeared to the Native American culture,” McGary said. “I’ve done work commemorating or honoring Native Americans for the past 30 years.”

“Chief Washakie,” a piece McGary sculpted in 2000, is located in the US Capitol National Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C. He has studios in Ruidoso, N.M., Scottsdale, Ariz., and Sun Valley, Idaho.

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BRANDON –Armed with newly discovered archival documents from the 18th century, three Dakota First Nations bands in Manitoba filed a comprehensive claim against the Canadian government Friday to prove they were never refugees.

The claim alleges that Canada misrepresented the Dakota people as “American refugees” in the 1870s, a label they believe was used to deny them aboriginal rights, land compensation, funding and recognition as Canadian aboriginal people under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“Historically, unlike other First Nations that entered into treaties — which involve surrender provisions — the Dakota have never entered into any such treaty,” the Dakotas’ attorney Bruce Slusar said.

“Their relationship with the British Crown was one of peace, friendship, economic affiliation or trade and military support. They have never surrendered any interest in their lands or territory.”

Slusar filed the claim in Saskatoon federal court late Friday afternoon on behalf of Canupawakpa Dakota Chief Frank Brown, Sioux Valley Chief Donna Elk, and Dakota Plains Chief Orville Smoke.

For nearly 140 years, successive Canadian governments have classified the Dakota people — the largest division of the Sioux nation — as refugees who fled the United States cavalry into Canada following the Minnesota Sioux War of 1862 and the battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876.

The court claim comes two years after the Canadian government offered a $67-million settlement to the nine Dakota and the Lakota bands of Saskatchewan and Manitoba — all of them non-treaty bands. The other six bands are not involved in the new claim.

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Read more:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/25/MNQT18S49U.DTL#ixzz0Mni8RMOO

You may have missed it, but New York got a brand-new Indian reservation this month — consisting entirely of two Upstate convenience stores.

A state appellate court ruled that the outlets, owned and operated by the Cayuga Indian tribe on nonreservation land, count as a “qualified reservation” for taxing purposes, thus voiding local efforts to halt the Cayugas’ illicit tobacco trade.

The tribe claims its “sovereignty” as a separate “nation” exempts it from paying state taxes on the cigarettes it sells.

Absurd? You bet.

Never mind that New York’s supposedly “sovereign nations” subsist on all manner of federal and state handouts.

The very notion of tribal sovereignty now serves in no small way as a cover for illicit commercial enterprises — and actively undermines the rule of law.

Longstanding treaties, to be sure, grant Indians the right to tax-free tobacco for their own use.

But New York’s tribes have parlayed that right — plus the state’s sky-high cigarette taxes — into a booming statewide trade in tax-free smokes illegally sold to non-Indians.

HOGANSBURG — The much-dreamed-about Diabetes Center for Excellence is one large step closer to becoming a reality for residents of the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation.

The Akwesasne Housing Authority is donating more than $1 million to the Let’s Get Healthy program, a division of the tribe’s Health Services Department that works with diabetes patients on the reservation. The donations come in part from the Housing Authority’s 25th anniversary celebration, which also was a fundraiser for the proposed Diabetes Center. Health Services still needs to raise about $5 million to make the center a reality.

“We were proud to do this event,” said Retha M. Herne, executive director of the Housing Authority. “I think we reached our goal of spreading awareness about the disease of diabetes.”

The celebration, a black-tie event with performances by professional dancing troupes, attracted 300 people and raised more than $15,000 to go to Let’s Get Healthy for the proposed diabetes treatment facility.

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He has one of the best locations in downtown Modesto.

Standing near 10th and I streets, he is on the forefront of Courthouse Park, facing west into the sunset.

If he were alive, he could see the freight trains rumbling through town. He could observe the crowds of theatergoers gathered at the Gallo Center for the Arts and watch the activity around the courthouse.

But he isn’t alive. He is a handsome bronze statue, created by local sculptor Betty Saletta. His name is Estanislao.

The muscular statue represents the man Thorne Gray, in his book “Stanislaus Indian Wars,” called “one of the most formidable Indian chiefs in American history.” Gray ranked Estanislao historically on a par with some of the most famous Indian warriors: Tecumseh, King Phillip, Pontiac and Geronimo.

In the history of California, the Indians were here first, for thousands of years.

Christopher Columbus gave them their name. When he landed on the island of San Salvador in 1492, he mistakenly thought he was in the East Indies and decided that he had discovered a new race of people. He called them Indians.

Early explorers Columbus, Cortez, Drake and Portola all found Indians along their routes. Those in our Central Valley were called Yokuts, derived from the word “yokoch,” meaning “people.”

For years, historians have written about the famous Indian Estanislao, who fought for freedom from mission and Mexican control.

He was born near the Stanislaus River about 1793. At the Mission San Jose, he received a general education, as well as religious training. The padres soon recognized his above-average intelligence and made him an alcalde, or leader, over the other Indians.

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