Sights & Sounds

I am not alone

2005-03-16T17:30:00.000-08:00

While I was away, the paper ran an op-ed piece in support of tribal gaming as a means of economic development, and a story about a tribe's plans to develop a hotel and conference center (not a casino) near the freeway.

I think we're already doing pretty well.

The environmental reporter just told me he hopes to attend a tribal council meeting and write a column about it.

Just realized I'm not responsible for writing every single story on the list.

Window Rock

2005-03-11T19:06:00.000-08:00

On the bus, John Stearns, a fellow from Arizona Republic, told us about a current story involving native culture, economy and the environment.

Hopi Indians consider it an affront to use wastewater to make fake snow at a ski resort on forest service land. The resort has been around since the 1930s. As a skier, Stearns said, "It's a small mountain, but a challenging mountain."

Environmental officials say the fake snow won't hurt the environment. Environmental advocates say, if you can't make a living without fake snow, so be it. Ski somewhere else.

Stearns had a "come to Jesus" moment, he said, upon hearing that Indian sacred places should be treating like a Catholic church, and we wouldn't spray effluent all over a church.

Our half-day in the Navajo Nation should have been structured differently. Perhaps we could have started with a tour, instead of 2.5 hours with Navajo journalists. Granted they had interesting things to say, but we only spent an hour and a half on tribal law, and I felt shortchanged on the tour of the reservation. I'm thinking, an hour with the journalists, half-hour tour of the Navajo Times newsroom (which wasn't on the agenda), two hours touring and an hour or an hour and a half with the president of the tribe.

Last year, the weekly Navajo Times became independent from the tribal government. The paper has been around since the 1930s and has been a weekly most of that time. It was a daily in the 80s for a few years, until it was shut down by the tribal president, Peter McDonald, who was later imprisoned for misusing tribal money.

The paper reopened a few months later as a weekly.

When they covered controversial issues, staffers received bomb threats, warnings to back off, dummies were hung in effigy, tires were slashed and reporter Marley Shebala's dog was shot.

"We never backed off from covering the issues that we thought were important," editor and CEO Tom Arviso said.

When editor Duane Beyal goes to conferences, it's hard for him to apply anything he learns about the mainstream media to a tribal paper.

Now it has a paid circulation of 21,500.

The paper uses a lot of color, Arviso said."Navajo people are really visual. We incorporate that concept into our paper."

The staff of 20 is primarily Navajo, 98 percent. One correspondent is an Anglo from Kentucky and is better at getting information from the police than the natives.

The paper is in English, but they want to do a cultural page written entirely in Navajo. Navajo has never been a written language, however. Spelling isn't standardized.

Their best reporters get stolen. Some leave and come back.

Arviso said that the mainstream media only swoops in when there's a tragedy or to write a casino story.

"It's not consistent with what's happening in our daily lives, culture," he said.

Sounds to me like he wants Real Life, Real News.

The biggest problem in mainstream coverage, Shebala said, was a lack of understanding about federal trust responsibility.

The award-winning Time magazine piece on gaming was slanted, she said. New York Times' series on race didn't even mention American Indians. When she asked someone about that, they said they couldn't find any.

"Traditionally we were an open society," she said. "We talked about everything."

They have communal ceremonies about things like incest, rape and greed.

Marley advised us to be sensitive when natives don't want to share things with us. We should ask ourselves, "How important is this information to the story? Does it need to go in there? Does it help the story?"

She wanted to write a story about a spiritual occurrence involving medicine women. When she asked permission, a medicine woman asked how people treat the newspaper, physically. Do they put it away very carefully or is it seen blowing in the wind out there, or lining a pet's cage?

Shebala understood that to mean that she shouldn't write the story. So she didn't.

"I'm a native journalist. I have respect," she said. "What good would that story have done? For who?"

Housing

Home ownership is the key to building wealth, said Richard Kontz, executive director Navajo Partnership for Housing.

But Navajos don't tend to save for houses. And it is common for them to have bad credit, thanks to payday loans and credit cards.

The partnership helps with private mortgage lending and encourages using Navajo contractors and suppliers.

It also has a homebuyer education program and counseling to improve "financial literacy."

According to the 2000 census:
42.9 percent of people on the Navajo Reservation fall below poverty level, 35 times the rate of the U.S. population.
Unemployment is 11.2 percent, 3.1 times the U.S. rate
46 percent are living in substandard housing and 45 percent live in an overcrowded situation.
31.9 percent lack complete plumbing
28.1 percent lack complete kitchens
60 percent have no telephone service
69 percent live in owner-occupied homes, which includes the substandard housing and lease-to-own homes.

We drove through a planned community on fee simple land. Karigan Estates, where you own your land. Where the homes cost $163,000 to $225,000.

The cream colored stucco houses had red, blue and green roofs and gravel lawns separating them.

It also has a daycare center, which Kontz is very proud of because, "I'm the one who got the $2.5 million loan to build this thing."

Subdivisions are a challenge because many Indians want to keep their horses and cows with them, and therefore can't abide by homeowner covenants, Kontz said.

The Watchmans are Kontz' poster children for the housing partnership. When he met them she was asking to borrow money for groceries. They were both unemployed and deep in debt. They lived in a travel trailer, two adults and two children. Through the program, they got jobs, counseling, cleared up debt and bought a double wide stucco house.

NHP's goal: to get them out of the cycle of poverty. They have wealth and a reason to stay employed.

"People drive by and ask how we got the house," said Jennifer Watchman.

It took them about 3 years to get the house, they had a lot of debt to pay off.

They didn't have to pay a down payment because Kontz got them a grant. Their monthly payment is $450.

Joe Shirley, Jr. President of Navajo Nation

Someone told him, and he doesn't know how this was calculated, that the Navajo Nation is 31 years behind the times.

There may only be 4 million Indians, but they'd still like their stories told, Shirley said.

Has very strong feelings about the decision to allow the ski resort to make artificial snow on Sacred Peaks, which is a cathedral to his people. He likened it to genocide, which seemed to me to be a little extreme.

Shirley criticized the U.S. government for caring more about protecting Sunni and Shi'ite religious rights in Iraq than about protecting religious freedoms of Native Americans. And reporters are more prone to cover than that cover Indian country.

Independence is key. "We need to stand on our own," he said. "Using our own resources."

The U.S. government never kept their word, regarding treaties. Pretty much everyone who spoke to us this week thought the government had violated the treaties.

McCain said a casino would fail in Navajo Nation, but Shirley said they're working hard to put one into play. Our Navajo fellow, Andy, challenged Shirley on his claim that the people voted to have a casino. Andy said the people voted against it twice, and the tribal government said they were going to do it anyway, but put it to a vote again, worded in a way that "even if you voted no, you were voting yes," Andy said. And it passed.

City in the sky

2005-03-10T22:49:00.000-08:00

The other night at the Pueblo Cultural Center, Conroy Chino told us he grew up on the Acoma reservation. Acomas boast that Sky City is the oldest continuously occupied village in the United States. It's the spiritual home of the pueblo and the people there are drenched in spirituality, Chino said. They survived the Spanish conquistadors.

At Sky City, our tour guide Orlando Antonio recited facts about his 365,000-acre reservation and the 70-acre city atop a mesa. Sky City has no electricity or running water and they like it that way. They use candles and kerosene lamps and bring spring water from afar. It's by choice, he said.

"It's bad enough we ruined our image by using modern building materials."

The Acoma are a matriarchal society: "What women want, women get."

In its heyday, 1,600 people lived in Sky City, around the year 1540. 75 percent of the people still speak the native language. 30 people live in the city full-time, Antonio said. 17 adults and 13 children.

Hilary Clinton is backing an effort to restore the San Esteban del Rey church. The pueblo maintains the church -- although they practice a native religion, not Catholicism -- to teach tourists and children that it is wrong to force something on anyone, Antonio said.

The interior looks like a children's bedroom. Rainbows are painted along the walls, which have a wide pink stripe along the bottom. Candy cane posts twist up the walls of the altar.

The wooden ceiling was redone in the 1970s.

The foundation is sandstone, which was heavy to carry up the hill, so women brought in clay-like dirt, mixed it with water and straw, and laid the adobe floors.

Antonio digressed from his script and told us stories that he asked us not to write down. "It's part of our oral history," he explained.

When he talked, he pounded his chest with his left hand each time he referred to his native language.

When he was growing up in the 1950s, being an Indian was something to be ashamed of, he said. He had trouble making friends in college until a public speaking class gave him a venue to tell his stories.

Now, "youth are doing this," he said, stomping his foot, pounding his chest and saluting with a straight arm. "I'm proud to be Native American."

Acomas didn't mix with Spaniards, he said, but did with the Mexicans. Pointing to his mustache, he said he blamed it on his great-great-grandmother fraternizing with Mexicans.

The adobe fortification walls around the cemetery are topped with little mounds. A small hole in the wall is meant to allow children to return after being taken to Mexico.

The cemetery is 40 feet deep and a shrine has be created for the unknown bodies buried beneath. Acoma don't use the word bury, they say "replant," he said.

It's windy in Sky City, which explains why the Acomas are all a little on the heavy side, Antonia said. So they don't blow away.

It wasn't windy when we were there, only breezy, and warm and sunny. The skies were cloudless and I snapped enough digital pictures to make the $10 camera fee worthwhile.

Crafters (or salespeople) set up tables outside their homes and we browsed the pottery and some jewelry while Antonio walked us around the village.

We all seemed to want more time in Sky City, to listen to Antonio, shop at the craft tables and take pictures.

But it was off to the Acoma Canoncito Laguna heath clinic, where CEO Bill Thorne gave us more information that I could handle that late in the day.

Health care

The clinic's services are customer friendly and culturally sensitive, Thorne said.

Every day they have an Indian come in here with the expectation that Uncle Sam is going to do something for them, and they've just had a meeting where services have been cut.

The clinic has a traditional healing room, which is circular with a fire pit in the middle of the room. Although tribal members lobbied for it, the healing room has been used just a handful of times. People don't want to go to a clinic for their private spiritual ceremonies, Thorne pointed out. They come there to see doctors, and have places at home for traditional healing.

Fellow Brian observed later that "Just because a physical structure exists doesn't mean it's accepted or used." There's an interesting contrast between the Catholic church and the healing room. The Acoma allowed the church to be built, but refused to accept the religion. They use the structure, but not for the purpose for which it was built. The Acoma, Canoncito and Laguna apparently wanted the healing room to preserve their traditions, but didn't end up using it, depending instead on the "modern" medical services at the clinic.

A very small percent of patients have private insurance, less than 20 percent. Most women of childbearing age are Medicaid eligible.

Challenged by a fellow about how many more years the United States government needs to make reparations to the Indians, Thorne said his family was marched from Georgia to Oklahoma and on the way, all of them died except his grandmother. If the U.S. offered a million dollars to end the relationship, however, he'd say Thank You.

The vegetarians had to special order at dinner. Everyone else raved about the enchiladas, rice and beans, but apparently they were all made with animal fat. I had a quesadilla. No alcohol was served, anywhere at the hotel, because the reservation is dry.

After we ate, Lee Marmon, a Pueblo Laguna photographer and author of "The Pueblo Imagination," showed power point slides of many of his black and white portraits. There were a few landscapes as well, and color photos of celebrities toward the end of his presentation, when he rushed through them.

Most of the portraits were of elders, and their faces were so expressive. News photographers usually scoff at having to shoot portraits, but these were so simple -- folks just standing there -- but said so much about the subjects.

Many of the subjects didn't want their pictures taken, but he managed to get the shots."In the beginning I was pretty reluctant to ask anybody," he said. But then children started asking him to shoot their grandparents.

Marmon said that a hardcover version of his daughter's book "Ceremony," which has one of his photos on the cover, is worth $600 or $700 in good shape.

He shot all 31 Indian colleges and used 600 rolls of film. It would have been a lot cheaper to use digital, but so many shots would have been thrown away. The photos showed crowding at the colleges, so many of them needed fixing.

Like so many others, Marmon said the U.S. government failed to honor the treaties, especially in regards to education and health care.

"That's a real black mark on history," he said.

"Why is the federal government so reluctant to come up with the money to take care of these things?"

His Aunt Suzy lived to be almost 111. He is turning 80 this year. On the reservation, it was survival of the fittest, he said. "The weak ones died off and the strong ones stayed."

Pueblos are the only tribes in the entire country who are in the same place as they were when the white man came.

Bus to Acoma

2005-03-10T13:20:00.000-08:00

Am starting to feel overwhelmed. We had sessions on education and tribal law this morning and I'm wondering how I'm ever going to be able to recall any of this information when it comes time to write about it. It's not like I'm going to write sweeping pieces about U.S. tribal relations. The things I need to know apply specifically to Washington tribes, so it would help if I already knew something about the tribes in my area.

Some of the fellows are full-time tribes reporters. They don't have to write a story or two every day. I can't even imagine having enough time to do a good, in-depth tribal story every month, with all the other things I have to do. And is that what the news organization wants from me anyway? If tribes make up 2 percent of the population, does that mean I should spend 2 percent of my time writing about them? Or more because the kinds of stories I want to write are interesting to everyone (or at least people other than the subject).

I was looking forward to the session on the education and miseducation of Indians. With a catchy name like that, I was hoping to hear more specifics. Unfortunately, the opening act gave us a review of tribal sovereignty. While the printed version of her power point is quite useful, it seemed a waste of our limited seminar time.

Tell me about tribal schools. How many kids are in a class? Can non-tribal students attend? (I'm guessing no) How are their days divided up? We've heard a lot of generalities like tribal schools blend cultural learning with academics. Give me an example. Do the word problems deal with salmon and smokehouses?

No Child Left Behind has been good and bad for Indians, said Melody McCoy, staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund. Good, because tribes are not very good at holding states accountable for education, so it helps to have the feds do it. The downside is that it implies that "one size fits all." A lot of Indians have trouble with standardized tests. Native language teachers don't necessarily meet the qualifications of "high quality" teachers.

There are 110 tribal school programs. Pueblo Laguna's is one. The Pueblo Laguna has an elementary school with 300 students and middle school with 200, said Gilbert Sanchez. They have the option of attending those, or public schools. The students then go to a public high school.

What I wanted to ask, but didn't because I'd used up my question with how many students do you have, was How do the non-Indian students treat them when they get to high school? If only 2 percent of the tribe's children go to the public school, then non-Indian students wouldn't have much exposure to them, would they? They haven't learned a thing about tribal sovereignty, so their knowledge about them would be limited to what they see in movies, at the casino or what their parents say. Does it do a disservice to both groups of students to have them segregated during the early years of school? Probably the benefits outweigh the negatives. The pueblo was unusual in that it allowed the school directors to manage their own money and personnel, he said.

"I was thinking, 'Man, did we sneak one past them or what?' "

"The last 15 years has been about how to manage our resources, funds. We made mistakes along the way."

For example, they discovered that the lowest paid employees were the ones handling early childhood education. "We should have the most educated person working with kids," he said.

They have 12 people finishing AA degrees, 8 more in the fall, people working on bachelor's degrees.

"They're real professional now," he said. "We used to get calls, 'My child's not being treated right.' "

Growing their own schools is really meaningful to them, he said.

Challenges:
1. Recruiting and retaining high quality teachers. They used to get people for 3-5 years, now it's less than 3 years. It's a rural community and can be pretty desolate area, 90 miles from nearest town. Pay is competitive now. Didn't used to be, when the BIA paid department of defense salaries.
2. Meeting federal, state mandated requirements for No Child Left Behind. "We got left behind from the start," he said. "We never caught up." You have to literally fail before you get more money. Or, are feds going to take over schools? What are they going to do with it?
3. Construction, repair. So many buildings are outdated and in disrepair.
4. Integration of culture and language in curriculum. If children learn about it in literature and math, it's motivational, builds self-esteem, as students get older, they'll talk about it and want to know more. 90 percent of people don't speak the language anymore. It's an oral language and there's debate about whether to write it down. They teach oral language in early education program. "At least we're getting closer."
5. Raising student achievement levels. Great that a report came out that Indian children are failing, he said. We knew that. They're trying to enlist community and parent support, partnerships. It's tough to get kids to stay in school when there's unemployment, alcoholism and domestic violence at home. "If we can even affect parents' getting child ready for school," he said. "What we can do to get students ready to learn."

Untold stories:
1. partnerships, community mindedness.
2. curriculum development. How can we align curriculum among all these schools. They have memos of understanding with other districts.
3. Staff development.
4. youth leadership. We always talk about starting early. A lot of those youth are going to be on tribal councils soon. Should have that education in school, not learn it on the job.

Story idea: Do my tribes have their own schools?

Tribal justice

Every time a tribe exercises sovereignty, they might get sued, McCoy said. The Supreme Court takes a lot of tribal cases. To prevent those cases from creating bad law, the Tribal Supreme Court Project was born.

Allowing states to tax motor fuel sales on reservations to non tribal members is "a huge intrusion on tribal sovereignty," McCoy said. "No other government has to act as a tax collector."

"We're only 30 years into the tribal self-determination act."

Hopi court judge Pat Sekaquaptewa, also director of the Native Nations Law and Policy Center at UCLA, said the Hopi court hears 3,000 cases. A large number are criminal, traffic and child-related (and associated with alcohol.)

Problems:
1. No separation of powers. Some tribes the whole adult population is council and courts.
2. Governments based on boilerplate given to tribes during reorganization era. "The BIA gave us a faulty model and then they shoved it down the throats of tribes."
3. Internal enforcement.

Once again, the fellows again challenged the speakers on transparency. Sekaquaptewa pointed out that the US govt doesn't give information relating to homeland security (which we don't think is right, either)."

Because tribes can be snuffed out at the drop of a hat, everything is national security," she said.

"Transparency can be deadly."

"That's setting us up for failure," a fellow said.
"It's taking the tools out of our box," added another. "I would argue that lack of transparency can be deadly."

"When you say transparency, they hear attack on sovereignty, culture and identity," Sekaquaptewa said.

Our leader, Vikki, pointed out that this line of questioning isn’t going to take us anywhere different than it did last night. The solution is to gain access through building relationships. The US government isn't always transparent either.

Story Ideas: Where do people go after convicted in tribal courts? Which of my tribes have police forces, jails, courts? Drugs, alcohol, domestic violence programs.

Writing on my laptop on the bus. The landscape is lovely.

In Albuquerque, the freeways are painted in sandy and salmon hues. Now it's just short mesas and shrubs, adding sage to the color scheme. And sky. Gorgeous sunny day.

A little while ago we drove past the Laguna Pueblo's Route 66 Casino.

We're traveling in a luxury bus painted gold with an enormous roulette wheel painted on the side. Not sure that's the image we should be conveying. Just drove by Laguna's second casino, Dancing Eagle. Sanchez said the tribe is just getting into the casino biz and haven't perfected the model yet. Dancing Eagle looked like it belonged in the desert, more so than Vegas casinos. Even had a Arabian teardrop sized shape to it.

Next to the dancing Eagle Kwiki-mart or whatever it was, a sign read, "Future home of Laguna High School."

Fellowship of the Blog

2005-03-09T22:00:00.000-08:00

BWI Airport -- We had quite a spirited conversation about blogging this morning. Some seasoned journalists, understandably, are reluctant to write anything in the first person, let alone interject opinions or anything personal into their work.

At least one person, however, is vehemently against the whole art form, it seems. He said blogs (he may have meant our blog in particular) should be limited to expressions of expertise, accounts of first-hand witnesses and celebrity diaries. Nothing else is interesting or useful to anyone, he said.

I piped in that I value day-in-the-life blogs just as I value a good novel and that my news organization emphasizes the readers' point of view and stories of real people. He said that's all well and good, but it's not news. I guess I don't disagree. I don't consider blogs to be journalism, either.

What it comes down to is that some of us have to write. The blog dissenter said he doesn't feel like doing any more writing at the end of a day spent writing. Sometimes I don't wanna, either, but I still have things I want to say.

I did start to worry that blogcasting my opinions could come back to haunt me one day. I've worried this before and it hasn't stopped me.

Rose said she's been keeping a blog for years. She suggested that the dissenter write his blog contribution to our Official Blog as though it were an e-mail to a friend, and really that's how I look at it too.

I left off last time with John McCain. It was a gorgeous, warm sunny day as we walked from the Russell Senate Building to our shuttle, which took us back to the museum. There, Patricia Zell, who just left her job after 24 years as Democratic staff director and chief counsel to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

She gave an overview of American history to explain what sovereignty is and why Indians have it. To be honest, I could barely follow it. Not in small part, I'm sure, because it was late in the day and I was mentally composing a blog about earlier events.

The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs doesn't divide along party lines. "It's a dynamic that doesn't exist in any other committee," she said.

Other highlights that did make it into my notebook:
1. Indians had inherent sovereignty. The treaties didn't give it to them.
2. They did give up rights such as the ability to declare war or have armies.
3. Treaties vested some authority to tribal governments.
4. A clause in the constitution discusses commerce with states, foreign nations and tribes, which indicates that the thinking at the time was that tribal governments were on the same level with the others.

The policy toward Indians evolved over the years, as tribes were relocated, exterminated, allotted land, reorganized and terminated.

In the 1970s, Richard Nixon developed the policy we have now: self-determination and self-government.

The book "Proud Nations," tells the story of several tribes with successful self-governments.

Although the tribes wanted to self-govern, they still wanted the feds to manage their lands in trust.

Tribal Recognition and Identity

The tribes of Virginia are barely recognized, said Cristina Azocar of the Upper Mattaponni Tribe of the Pohatan Nation, and the director of the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism and adjunct journalism professor at San Francisco State. She was thrilled to have been invited to the table.

Indians are the only ethnic group that have to carry a card to prove their identity, she said.
Indianness is a part of her identity that is racial, cultural and political, but doesn't have anything to do with blood quantum.
In her journalism class on covering race and ethnicity, she has to explain her Indianness to her students.

She also has to undo the work of 17th century stereotypes.

Identity is a personal concept. It's difficult to report.
Journalists should not ask inappropriate questions, like "How Indian are you." My colleague responded with this blog.
Never question somebody's Indian identity, Azocar said. It's not anybody's right to play Indian cop. When identifying herself, she describes who her parents and grandparents are. That is who she is.

R. Lee Flemming, the director of the Office of Federal Acknowledgment for the BIA, gave us a lot of detailed information and handouts. Some of which will be very useful when I want to write about the Washington Tribes that have not been recognized.

My teammate Angie asked, "How can you be Indian and not be a member of a tribe?"

Flemming explained that sometimes Indians separate from their tribes of origin and lose membership that way. Does that make them, like, Ronin Indians?

Azocar's uncle, Kenneth Adams, is chief of the Upper Mattaponni tribe, which has sought recognition since 1979 (so obviously this is not a ploy to get rich on casino profits). While one the one hand, it's strange that the government would take so long to recognize them, I think perhaps the tribe has taken a while to submit all its documentation, proving it meets the following 7 requirements:
1. Has been identified as an American tribe on a substantially continuous basis since 1900.
2. A predominant portion of the group is a distinct community and have existed as a community from historical times to the present.
3. Tribal government has maintained political influence over its members as autonomous entity.
4. Has a written governing document or can provide documentation describing membership criteria and procedures.
5. Membership consists of individuals descended from a historic Indian tribe that functioned as single autonomous political entirety.
6. Membership is composed principally of members not belonging to any other tribe
7. Members are not subject of congressional legislation expressly terminating or forbidding the federal relationship.

We spent yesterday in the hotel conference room, debunking Indian stereotypes and discussing untold stories while snow swirled outside the windows. It came down slanted, sideways and upside down it seemed.

Mary Ann Weston, associate professor and associate dean at Medill, and author of "Native Americans in the News," discussed the three stereotypes of Indians that have pervaded the news media and pop culture since the 1800s: the Bad Indian, the Good Indian and the Degraded Indian.

"Images tell us more about Europeans than Indians," she said. "Defining 'the other' is an exercise in power."

Her tips:
1. Understand the variety of native peoples and complexities of their cultures.
2. Hang out, listen respectfully, build sources in many areas of the community.
3. Make room for context in every story.
4. News judgment and framing help determine accuracy. Be conscious of choices and how they shape the story.

Frybread

I have had such a rude awakening about frybread. I said earlier that I associate it with tribal meals because it was so prevalent at Swinomish events. The first time I had it was at the Earth Day celebration. I wasn't even there as a reporter. (I so rarely eat when reporting anyway, because it's hard to eat and write -- or talk). The reporter from the Channel Town Press asked if I'd ever had it and that it was good. I was surprised to see so many people pile more than one piece on their plates. I could see that it was basically a donut that wasn't sweet. It was quite good.

But since the first day of the seminar, when I so joyfully ate the frybread at the National Museum of the American Indian, not a day has gone by that someone hasn't mentioned frybread. What I've learned is that it is not part of the traditional diet, but rather a byproduct of colonizing Indians and giving them nothing but flour and lard.

One of our speakers, Suzanne Shown Harjo, wrote about getting rid of frybread in this article, and it caused such a stir, several other speakers referred to it.

Harjo was one of a small group, which included Fellow Brian, who told us about some of the untold stories.

Dennis McAuliffe of Reznetnews.org said all Indian stories are very complex, you have to invest a lot of time in them.

"We're now going to doom you to a life of frustration," he said. "What I hope is that you will become passionate aboiut Indian stories. Invest time and energy into learning about these things."

He shared Bill Claiborne's tips:
1. Above all do be absolutely straight. They've already heard all the bullshit there is
2. Know subject
3. Do homework
4. Don't be patronizing
5. Don't try to curry favor with sympathy or righteous indignation.
6. They can spot a phony liberal
7. Don't promise something you can't deliver. Sometimes a long interview winds up as a paragraph (or cut altogether)

Fellow Michelle offered the technique of saying, help me understand, I'm not going to quote you.

Harjo suggested telling editors how we've been getting it wrong all this time.

What's all this about Fractured Airship?

Our speakers talked about it at length before I realized that the word was heirship. Fractionated heirship. It's when Indians die and their trust land gets divided up among the heirs, who sometimes don't know they own the land, but have BIA accounts with a couple of cents or more in them.

Ross Swimmer, Special Trustee for American Indians, explained the trust situation and the implications of the Cobell case. Aura Kanegis of the First Nations Development Corp. said the feds grossly mismanaged Indian trust money. Swimmer said there's no evidence to support that, but that clearly something went awry.

He never actually explained what was supposed to happen with the money individual tribal members were to receive from lease land, but he did say that the system should be overhauled.
"I believe there needs to be a whole new paradigm," he said. "We need to start over."

The BIA could buy out the fractionated land for $3.9 million, for example.

Education

Victoria Vasques, assistant deputy secretary of education for the office of Indian Education at the Department of Education (as opposed to the BIA), briefed us on programs under the Bush administration and how No Child Left Behind legislation is a tremendous success.

"In Washington (DC), when both sides attack you it means you're doing something right," she said.

Yeah. Same with journalists.

She was a breath of fresh air really, after being cooped up in the hotel all day. Very passionate about education and seems to really believe in the cause.

Economic power is determined by the level of citizens' education, she said. Educate the children and they can give back to the community by growing up to be doctors and educators.

Indians can be highly sought after if they're qualified, but so often they're not.

92 percent of Indians are in public schools. No Child Left Behind programs aim to ensure they graduate, and with skills.

Indians are disproportionately affected by poverty. Dropouts are high.

Tribal leaders need to become engaged and make education a priority. We should be asking them regularly, "What are you doing for education?"

She'd love to see them have the enthusiasm for education that they have for gaming.

Remediation is the No. 1 concern for tribal colleges.

The government has a billion dollars for Indian programs, she said. Academic learning can be blended with cultural learning.

In the last 30 years programs have never been at level they are now, she said, in the department of ed (not BIA). BIA deals with BIA schools, department of ed does public schools.

"We don't operate schools, we don't want to," she said.

It's very difficult to talk about education, health care, housing without the overriding issue of Cobell hanging over their heads.

Kids in immersion language programs in K-3 do better in 3-6, when learning is all in English.

Washington State tribal leaders do very well for their schools, they care, they give me great support, she said

"Because of No Child Left Behind, people are talking about us."

When Rose pressed her with questions about people protesting NCLB, calling it unconstitutional, an unfunded mandate, Vasques didn't want to hear it. It's old news, she said, they've been hearing that for 4 years. When are we going to cover the good things that have been happening.

Housing

Michael Liu, assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development's public and Indian housing told us about some very exciting new programs where the feds guarantee home loans for any one belonging to a recognized tribe.

Their names are 184 and Title 6 and since they've been implemented, tribal mortgages have increased three-fold. Close to 300 tribes have signed up.

The average mortgage is $100,000.

"It's clearly in line with administration policy to expand home ownership" especially among low-income people.

The next horizon is to work with tribes and financial market to leverage dollars.

"We think right now that tribes have all the incentive in the world," he said. "They do want to be responsive to their people's needs."

''Although I'm excited about home ownership, I'm realistic that home ownership is not for everyone," he said. You need a down payment and have to make payemnts.

A colleague from Denver asked why they'd want to buy homes on land they can't sell.

Andy, our Navajo fellow, said, "Being native, that's where you want to live."

"The rez is the only place you can have nice home and your neighbors have the crappiest home," he said.

Today we flew to Albuquerque and headed straight for the Pueblo Cultural Center. The smallish museum had exhibits documenting the history of the 19 pueblos. There were separate displays for each pueblo, with a description of its traditions and sample crafts such as pottery, beadwork, carved alabaster, wedding vases, drums, moccasins.

We were welcomed to New Mexico by some native journalists: Patty Talahongva, host of Native America Calling; Mary Bowannie, a lecturer at the University of New Mexico; Conroy Chino, the state secretary of labor and Ron Solimon, president and CEO of the cultural center.

Patty said everything tends to lead back to diabetes with Native Americans. They were doing a piece on feet and couldn't find a Native American podiatrist, but otherwise they like to have native guests on the radio show.

Native America Calling's primary audience is on the rez.

We did a whole show on frybread, she said. Suzanne Harjo was a guest.

Frybread has killed more of my people than the U.S. government.

Their most controversial show was about what makes an Indian

Talahognva said, If you're mother is Hopi, you're Hopi.
What about fathers?
"Nope, we're matriarchal," she said.

But Pat Sekaquaptewa's father is Hopi and she disagrees…

Bowannie has a master's in journalism and teaches Indian studies. They examine coverage of the National Museum of the American Indian.

"Were there in depth stories there or was it just beads and feathers?" she asked.

She gets a lot of journalists calling from all over the country looking for experts.

"What really frustrates me is when I get all these calls is that they haven't done their homework," she said. Reporters ask Indian 101 questions.

My fellow fellows and I mused later that we didn't think we'd want to call someone who thought our questions were so stupid. Generally, we call universities looking for experts when we need something explained to us.

The Indian students are all very media savvy she said, they get a lot of info off the internet. They don't want to find a place in the mainstream, they want to teach in their communities or tell Indian stories. (why not tell the stories to white people, I wonder.)

Time magazine story on gaming got it wrong, Talahognva said. It was the wrong perspective.
US News and World report did a good piece on urban Indians.

A few members of our group challenged the speakers on journalists' access to tribal information.

It's bullshit if they want to be taken seriously as governments, one said.
It makes it hard for us to really cover the issues, another added.

The speakers were mostly defensive.

"It's not an excuse," Mary said. "Don't make the assumption you have access."

"Not all tribes can be described as democratic," Chino said. "Most can be described as theocratic."

Ron Solimon, the CEO of the cultural center, said the Lagunas are more democratic than they need to be. Tribal leaders go to each village regularly to report on every meeting and decision.

"In the eyes of many tribes, that's just way overkill," he said.

Washington, D.C.

2005-03-07T22:21:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Super Shuttle, I was the last of the fellows to arrive last night. I was pretty sure a dinner that started at 6:30 would have drinks and mingling first, but no. They were all sitting at round tables with place cards. Dinner was a multi-course affair and we were scolded today for not meeting the minimum cost to get the best discount. Apparently our bar tab was less than expected.

Okay, this was supposed to be a professional blog.

We were divided into teams of five. Despite my late arrival, I was elected team leader and we've named ourselves Team Name (which I stole from another team at trivia night in Olympia). It was either that or Team Nut Graf. (Hey, real life has no nut graf.)

We spent today at the National Museum of the American Indian. It was a long day with a lot of information, but I'm determined to write about it while it's still fresh.

The museum opened in September and aims to be a "living cultural museum, looking at a vibrant people." It's not an art museum and it's not an object museum. Although both of those things are there.

A colleague from San Francisco, lets call her Rose, because that's her name, mentioned that some Indians protested the museum because it didn't represent genocide or the Indian wars. It was like having a Jewish museum without mentioning the Holocaust, or an African-American museum and leaving out slavery. She called the curators on that at the morning session, but that was before we'd seen any exhibits.

Helen Maynor Scheirbeck, assistant director for public programs, said she did think that stuff was there, but in some ways it's subtle.

"It's not going to hit you in the face," she said.

What's important is that the stories were told from the tribe's point of view, "not having an outsider tell the story."

To that end, curators like Emil Her Many Horses met with members of tribes over a period of years, collecting artifacts and planning the exhibits on tribal Universes (or philosophies), History and Lives (identity). In each section 600 square feet was devoted to eight different tribes, meaning the museum had exhibits for 24 tribes out of all the tribes in the Western Hemisphere.

Scheirbeck listed five issues she'd like to see us cover:
1. Tribal infrastructure. Only during the last 15 years have tribes bee exercising their sovereignty and developing their own building codes.
2. Saving languages. The nation's largest tribe, the Navajo could lose theirs by 2040. Back in the day, boarding schools cut tribal children's hair, put them in suits in an attempt to "cut the Indian out of them." They were forbidden to use their languages. Scheirbeck hopes the museum's public programs will help tribes retain the 159 languages that are still alive.
3. Repatriation. The return of sacred human remains, which are sometimes sold on the black market. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 gives tribes the right to protect their sacred sites.
4. Cultural development, enhancement and maintenance. Sharing the work of storytellers, writers, artists and poets with the public at large. More young people are writing about their experience, she said, but Canada is way ahead of the US in terms of drama.
5. Education. The museum is working with Scholastic to reach out to native schools.

Before we toured the museum, Marty Kreipe de Montano, manager of the museum's resource center, showed off the virtual tour, a website made possible by fourth graders. Montano had students from various tribes come to Washington, D.C., and photograph artifacts to put online in 360-degree displays. In some ways, you get a better view than you would looking at it through the glass.

The students also wrote captions for the photos, which are online. One girl photographed a plate made by her grandmother (or was it her aunt) who makes pottery in airports, using dirt and water.

Montano worked with teenagers as well, and recalled a couple of kids who were too cool for it all. Their parents made them come. After sharing a beverage in the cafeteria, Montano convinced them to take a few pictures and showed them how to put them together for the 360-degree view. They were so enthralled with the technology, they got sucked into learning about their culture, she said.

Other kids performed a traditional song using dance fans decorated with caribou fur and feathers. A video clip is on the virtual tour. In some ways, it's more effective because the kids are in street clothes. Other urban Indians could see it and relate more to those teens than if they were in traditional costumes, Montano said.

During breaks between sessions, I listened jealously to the chatter of students on field trips in the museum, but I had to wait until after lunch for our tour.

Video screens on either side of the hallway leading to our meeting room showed life sized people alongside you as you walked past. A sign read something to the effect of, "Anywhere you walk in the Americas, you could be walking with a 21st century Native American."

The Museum of the American Indian has the best cafeteria of any museum I've been to. Especially since we had vouchers good for an entrée, two side dishes, soup and a fountain beverage. More food than I would have gotten if I'd been paying.

The café is divided into geographical regions. Because I identify frybread with traditional Indian meals, I sought that out and found it in the Great Plains section. It was labeled as a side dish. I got a quinoa salad from South America, pumpkin soup from the Northern Woodlands and pinto bean and corn enchiladas from Meso America. I skipped the Northwest Coast, because I don't eat salmon anyway.

The checkout girl wasn't prepared for a group like ours and I think misunderstood our vouchers because she accused me of having too much food. I would have paid her the $2 for the frybread, but I continued to argue with her because the voucher clearly listed all that food and frybread was too listed under side dishes. When she waved me away, irritated, I felt like a jerk, because yeah, it was more food than I needed and after I walked away, I heard her snipe, "These people are trying to take more than they're supposed to."

I asked Her Many Horses if there were any Northwest tribes among the 24 tribes in the museum and was disappointed when he said Yakama was the only one from Washington.

However, my tour guide, as it turned out, was from the Lummi Nation. And while they're not exactly in my coverage area, I am well acquainted with that part of the state, since I spend every weekend there.

Phillip Hillaire moved to DC last summer to work in the museum. He was robbed within a month. His mother attended an Indian boarding school and his grandfather was given the name Hillaire by French missionaries who thought he was hilarious.

When I was new to the state, I liked calling Western Washington's northernmost county "What.com." I knew it was really an Indian word, but today I learned that Whatcom means "the sound of water."

In the Universes exhibit, Hillaire drew our attention to a Welcoming the Morning song, which he said he recognized when he started at the museum because it was a Northwest Coastal song by the Squamish Tribe.

Although I felt a connection with our tour guide, I felt rushed in the museum and wished we had some free time to look around more.

The sculptures were a highlight for me. A tall bronze one near a window depicted George Washington and some Oneida Indians "burying the hatchet," literally. A bear, wolf and turtle were represented as well. And a little Indian girl holding a doll stood behind them, looking up at a bird in the bronze tree.

I also enjoyed Allan Houser's sculptures in the Native Modernism section. After hearing that Houser was Apache, I thought, "Of course." The faces on his sculptures looked Apache. I don't even know what it means to look Apache, but something about the broad stalwart faces and long flowing hair looked different to me than representations I've seen of other tribes. Later in the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs meeting room, I admired a statue of an Indian aiming an arrow at the sky. (or lighting fixture, to be precise.) He looked Apache to me too, and no wonder, because it was a Houser as well.

The museum displayed a series called Mother and Child, in which the mothers clutched their children and hid them under clothing to protect them from soldiers. In most of them, the faces of mother and child were the only discernable features.

In the Lives exhibit, Hillaire pointed out a ceramic Lummi figurine from among dozens in a serpentine display case containing heads and figures made of clay, wood and stone. Next to them were gold pieces and ears of corn. Corn was more valuable to the Indians than gold, because it sustained the people, but the white man, of course, was more interested in the gold.

A group leader from New Jersey, who merged his teenage group with ours, mentioned that some of them would be visiting the Holocaust museum later. He seemed defensive, I thought, about complaints he must have heard about the lack of Indian Holocaust history at this museum. However, a Seminole display nearby documented several instances where the fight to remain in the Everglades cost tribal members their lives or dignity.

As we left that section, Hillaire showed us a wall where the names of the remaining Western Hemisphere tribes were projected in circular patterns. The names didn't seem to be in any order, and I couldn't actually any from my region. I think Klallam was the closest of the ones I read. But because I couldn't find the names I was looking for, I was forced to read a whole bunch of names I'd never seen before. They tricked me into learning something new.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

We were told to stand as McCain entered the meeting room in the Russell Senate Building. We did, although a few others balked, and it was odd. He was frank with us about Indian affairs, and I was impressed with my colleagues tenacity in asking questions.

On tribal casinos: "It's not gaming, it's gambling." Whenever money is the reward, there is a risk of corruption, he said. He worked on the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and never imagined how big it would get. We need to watch out for tribes seeking land for the purpose of a casino, since that runs counter to the purpose of the act.
Gaming needs supervision, regulation and transparency.

Arizona has complete access to tribal casinos' books, but in other states, tribes prevent regulators from entering the casino.

"If there turns out to be any corruption in Indian gaming, then we'll kill the goose that laid the golden egg."

On Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's claim that Indians are ripping California off: "I have great respect for the Terminator." But the federal government has no business getting in the middle of tribal-state relations. "If Gov. Schwarzenegger is unhappy, they should renegotiate."

The Cobell Trust issue: A resolution has to bring closure, seem fair to all parties and not cost $170 billion, as currently estimated. "No Congress would spend that on accounting."

Three cheers for the reporter who asked how much would be a reasonable price, and continuing to press when he couldn't answer (and apologized for not having a better answer.)

"Is it worth as much as the war on terror?" she asked.

Or for that matter social security or Medicare, McCain responded.

"How many Native Americans are going to die and not receive anything?"

But everything takes a backseat to the War on Terror, he said. His sources predict there will be another attack. And they're surprised there hasn't been one already.

In recent years, he's seen improved economies, health care and education, but tribes are still far below non-natives. He still sees abject poverty, drug abuse and glue sniffing.

There are still tribes where it's almost impossible to start a business. Tribal governments, which are socialist in nature, driving young people off reservations and inadvertently impede economic development.

Tribes also have a healthy mistrust of the federal government.

"The BIA is a convenient whipping boy," he said. "I never heard from anyone what the alternative to the BIA is."

On poverty and education: Minimum wage should be increased.

"Minimum wage is symptomatic, but education is the biggest challenge," he said. "It provides qualified workers that wouldn't have to worry about minimum wage."

"You wouldn't send your child to some schools on Indian reservations, I wouldn't."

If all tribes exercised complete self-governance, they could put the BIA out of business and "demand educational facilities at least at the level of East Timor."

Story ideas from today:
1. Native Tourism. Several Washington tribes mentioned in article in museum magazine.

2. Unrecognized tribes. Steilacoom still waiting to hear? Duwamish, Chinook and Snohomish denied?

Gold Dust

2005-03-04T12:10:00.000-08:00

I leave Sunday for a weeklong traveling seminar on Covering Indian Country. I wrote a lot about the tribes at my last paper, but haven't even scratched the surface at my current job. My hope, of course, is that this seminar will give me ideas and important background to write about the tribes in an informed, non-cliche way. It's difficult in a deadline environment, where I have several priorities ranked above tribal coverage, to spend the time it seems is necessary to understand a different culture. A weeklong immersion, even if it doesn't apply directly to northwest tribes, should help. I also hope to benefit from the expertise of other reporters on the trip, most of whom have much more experience writing about tribes than I do.