Judge rules in favor of Indians in voting case
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — A federal judge on August 10 sided with American Indians and ordered Fremont County to elect county commissioners in five separate districts.
U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson's order rejected Fremont County's proposal to continue with at-large voting in most of the county.
Fremont County holds most of the Wind River Indian Reservation, the only reservation in Wyoming. Plaintiffs in the voting lawsuit include members of the both tribes there, the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone.
Johnson this spring ruled in favor of the Indian plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit against the county in 2005. Johnson agreed that the county's long-standing system of at-large voting system violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the Indian vote.
In response to Johnson's ruling, Fremont County had proposed two similar voting plans. Both the county's proposals called for designating a single commission district in which Native Americans would be the majority while continuing with forms of at-large voting in the rest of the county.
Johnson's order prohibits the county from using at-large voting to elect commissioners in the future. Instead, he adopted a plan proposed by the plaintiffs that divides the county into five districts of roughly equal population, including one district that will have mainly Indians in it.
Johnson ordered the county to use those districts for a special commissioner election this year and for regular elections after that.
“The plans proposed by defendants perpetuate the separation, isolation and racial polarization in the county, guaranteeing that the non-Indian majority continues to cancel out the voting strength of the minority,'' Johnson wrote.
“The (county's) plans appear to be devised solely for the purpose of segregating citizens into separate voting districts on the basis of race without sufficient justification, contrary to the defendants' assertions.''
Laughlin McDonald, head of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project in Atlanta, has represented the Indian plaintiffs together with Lander lawyers Andrew Baldwin and Berthenia Crocker.
“It's great for the plaintiffs,'' McDonald said Tuesday of Johnson's ruling. “And it's also, I think, great for all the voters in Fremont County, because it will allow everybody to participate.'' McDonald said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that courts should create single-member districts to address such violations of the Voting Rights Act unless there's some defensible reason not to do so.
McDonald said the high court has ruled that single-member districts decrease voter confusion and increase the opportunity for political participation. Douglas L. Thompson, chairman of the Fremont County Commission, said Tuesday he and other commissioners were greatly disappointed with Johnson's decision.
“We need to evaluate the decision and our options at this point,'' Thompson said.
The court-ordered plan is going to require a great deal of work by the County Clerk's Office before any election can be held, Thompson said. It may prove to be impossible to hold a special commission election in time to seat the new commissioners before current terms expire in early January, he said.
Chavez charged after infant daughter dies
RIVERTON, Wyo. (AP) — A Fremont County woman is facing criminal charges for allegedly passing out on top of her infant daughter and smothering her at a women's shelter.
Court documents filed this week say the one-month-old baby was found dead Jan. 12 in the county's Family Violence Center in Riverton.
Thirty-five-year-old Theresa Chavez, of Fort Washakie, has been charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
Investigators say she had a substantial amount of alcohol in her system.
According to court documents, Chavez was picked up in Lander and taken to the shelter the night before the baby was found dead. The baby was alive when they arrived.
Chavez's court-appointed lawyer was not immediately available for comment Friday.
Federal money will cover flood damage at Rocky Boy Reservation
GREAT FALLS, Mont. (AP) — The federal government has announced that costs to repair damage from severe storms and flooding in June at Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation will be covered 100 percent with federal money.
The White House on Friday said that the severity and magnitude of the damage warrants the decision.
President Barack Obama on July 10 declared the reservation and Hill County in north-central Montana a disaster area, making federal money available.
That money is usually available under a cost-sharing agreement where only 75 percent is paid by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“We were trying to figure out how to come up with 25 percent because we didn't have it,'' said State Rep. Tony Belcourt, a Democrat who lives on the reservation.
The White House said the decision to fully pay for reservation repairs does not apply to areas that are not part of the reservation in Hill County, where cost-sharing remains in place.
Sens. Jon Tester and Max Baucus, and Gov. Brian Schweitzer, all Democrats, requested the declaration be changed to include full funding.
“These folks have been through a nightmare, and we've got to keep working together with partners on all levels to see them pull through,'' Baucus said. ``I'm happy FEMA responded to our requests to grant these folks an extra boost when they need it the most.''
“This is the right decision from FEMA and the administration because it will help get the recovery money to the ground faster,'' said Tester.
“This is a positive step for the families and farms that are putting their lives back together,'' said U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont.
Information from: Great Falls Tribune, http://www.greatfallstribune.com
16 graduate from UO Native teacher training program
EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — The University of Oregon College of Education graduated 16 new teachers Saturday but to their own students, they intend also to be family.
As a condition of acceptance into the UO's Sapsik'wala Project master's program for American Indians, the new graduates will give back to their communities by working for at least one year in schools with a majority Indian population or in teaching programs that benefit Indian people.
They'll bring with them a depth of understanding that many white teachers lack, Tom Ball, assistant vice president of institutional equity and diversity, told a crowd of about 100 in an afternoon ceremony outside the Many Nations Longhouse. “You'll be that teacher that crosses that reservation line and knows those families,'' said Ball, a member of the Modoc and Klamath tribes.
“You'll never be just a teacher. You'll be an Indian teacher. An aunt. An uncle. A grandfather. A mother and father to some of those students.''
That ethos resonates with 25-year-old Jacinthia Stanley, whose dream is to open a charter school on a reservation — ideally her own Navajo reservation in Arizona, where virtually all her classmates in school were Indian but almost none of her teachers were.
“I think that plays a big role in student self-esteem,'' said Stanley, who earned her undergraduate degree at Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas. “I don't want kids out there that don't have supportive families, like I did, to feel like they don't have a place.''
The lack of Indian representation among teachers holds true across the United States and in Oregon, where Indians make up just 0.4 percent of the teaching force compared with 2 percent of students.
Stanley earned her UO degree in secondary social studies — a subject area she believes sorely needs more minority and women teachers. Too often, she said, the teaching of history suffers from a lack of multiple perspectives and even downright misrepresentation of the facts.
Boosting the ranks of American Indian teachers is one of the primary aims of the Sapsik'wala Project, which started in 2002 with a $1 million grant and has received at least five additional grants of similar size since.
“If you look at the dropout rates, American Indian and Alaskan Native students probably have one of the highest dropout rates,'' director Alison Ball said. “The thought is if they had more Native teachers teaching in Native communities, it would offer modeling and mentoring.''
The intensive, five-term program, for students who have already earned bachelor's degrees, offers recipients full tuition and fees, a monthly stipend and a book allowance. One of only a handful of Indian master's programs in the nation, it grew from a partnership between the UO and a consortium of Oregon's nine federally recognized tribes, and was initially open only to students affiliated with those tribes. But last year it began admitting students from any tribe in the country and more than half of Saturday's graduates came from other states, including Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Alaska, said Alison Ball, who is married to Tom Ball.
The Sapsik'wala (a Sahaptian word meaning “teacher'') Project has graduated 54 students in its eight years, including this year's class, which was one of the largest. Though students take different classes depending on which endorsement area they're focusing on, they meet formally at least weekly to share stories or concerns.
But Roshelle Nieto, a Klamath tribe member who also earned her bachelor's degree at the UO, said the close-knit group socialized all the time.
“There's not very many Indian students at the UO,'' said Nieto, 28, who also led the university's Native American Student Union. “We really just kind of made our own family.''
Nieto, who returned to her hometown of Klamath Falls to do her student teaching spring term at Chiloquin High School, made gifts of traditional dentillian shells for all her classmates — earrings for the women, necklaces for the men — and handed them out near the end of the three-hour ceremony and lunch.
Like many of her classmates, she said the dream of a master's degree would have been out of reach were it not for the program's generous scholarship.
Speakers at the ceremony, which followed the UO's regular summer commencement, included UO President Richard Lariviere; College of Education dean Michael Bullis and professor Jerry Rosiek; and Yakama tribal member Patricia Whitefoot, president of the National Indian Education Association.
Many of the students said they want to teach in Indian communities in the long term, even though their “payback,'' as Alison Ball referred to it, is only a year.
“I'd like to teach young single Navajo mothers,'' said 35-year-old Eliot Bryant, who, like Stanley, went to Haskell.
Bryant, who was joined at the ceremony by nearly a dozen relatives and friends who traveled from out of state, did his student teaching stint at Prairie Mountain School, teaching seventh-grade math and science. Like other aspects of the program, he found it challenging but rewarding, and he praised the UO.
“This institution really believes in understanding different points of view from different cultures,'' he said.
He might have had a different impression four years ago, when concerns about racism and discrimination in the College of Education prompted complaints and a rally. Among the most vocal were students involved in the Sapsik'wala Project, recalled
Rosiek, who told Saturday's audience he happened to be on campus for his job interview the day of the protest.
Rosiek said the university listened and has since made great strides, retooling curriculum and hiring new faculty though more work needs to be done.
Frank Summers, a 2007 Sapsik'wala alumnus who teaches at Chiloquin High, his alma mater, said the program was excellent when he went through but is even better now.
“It was so amazing for me,'' said Summers, 38, who was raised mostly by his sister and brother-in-law and struggled hard in school. “Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine attending the University of Oregon growing up.''
Information from: The Register-Guard, http://www.registerguard.com
Osage Nation says it’s appealing to Supreme Court taxation ruling
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The Osage Nation plans to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court its lawsuit that seeks to exempt tribal members who live and work in Osage County from state income taxes.
According to the tribe's website, Chief John Red Eagle said the Osage Nation will file the appeal before Oct. 22. Both a U.S. District Court judge and the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have ruled against the tribe so far in its 9-year-old lawsuit against the Oklahoma Tax Commission.
The Pawhuska-based tribe claims Congress never affirmatively disestablished its 1.5 million-acre reservation in northeastern Oklahoma and that federal law exempts tribal members who live and work there from paying state income taxes.
Red Eagle replaced Jim Gray on Aug. 4 as the tribe's chief. Neither Red Eagle nor other tribal officials immediately returned phone and e-mail messages left Wednesday afternoon.
Tax Commission spokeswoman Paula Ross said that agency “had anticipated that the Nation would appeal and we will take appropriate action when we receive a copy of that appeal.''
In his ruling in January 2009, U.S. District Court Judge James Payne concluded the tribe's reservation no longer exists. He said the state of Oklahoma had governed Osage County for more than 100 years and noted the tribe had “not sought to re-establish their claimed reservation or to challenge the state's taxation until recently.''
Payne also said ruling in favor of the tribe “would have significant practical consequences not only for income taxation but potentially for civil, criminal and regulatory jurisdiction in Osage County.''
Payne cited three federal laws — one from 1890 and two from 1906, one year before Oklahoma became a state — that he said reflected Congress' intent to “disestablish and terminate Osage County's reservation status'' and subject the tribe, its members and its lands to Oklahoma law.
After the appeals court in May denied the tribe a rehearing of the case, the tribe was given an Aug. 23 deadline to file an appeal to the Supreme Court. Because of a scheduled tribal election, the tribe asked that the deadline be extended and that request was granted.
If the tribe ultimately loses the case, it could place the operation of three of its casinos — in Tulsa, Skiatook and Ponca City — in jeopardy, because those casinos are not located on land held in trust by the federal government, which is required in Oklahoma. The casinos have operated under a 2005 decision by the National Indian Gaming Commission that said the Osage reservation still existed.
Gray has said the tribe would begin the process of placing the land on which the casinos sit into trust. That can be a years-long process, one the tribe apparently is trying to kick-start with help from the state.
Gov. Brad Henry sent a letter on Monday to U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, asking that the agency “assist the Osage Nation in completing the process of taking those properties into federal trust as promptly as possible to avoid any possibility of closure of those facilities.''
Henry said in the letter that if the casinos closed, it “would result in the unfortunate loss of many jobs and great hardship on many Oklahoma families. There can be no doubt that the success of our tribal economies has a significant impact on the health of our state economy.''