No honor in Boise Braves mascot

I traveled to aboriginal homelands last week to watch the Idaho State Girls Basketball Championships and was astounded to run into blatant, stereotypical Indian images.
It was the first day no less when I seen a girl coming down the Idaho Center steps with a turkey feather warbonnet on her head. She and another girl also had little short fringed leather dresses on. My first thought was how disgusting and is this for real?
So I would have been negligent to just sit there and let it go, so after the Highland/Eagle game I went to find out who they were. Turns out it was the Boise Braves so I sought out a school administrator.
I found the principal Ken Anderson so I asked him if he realized their school was promoting stereotypical “Hollywood” Indian images. He seemed shocked that I was asking and informed me the school, a number of years back, got permission from a North American Indian tribe to use the mascot. I asked him which one but he couldn’t recall.
So I proceeded to tell him how offensive the image was to me and that’s not how my (and many other tribal members) ancestors looked who were marched by the cavalry out of the Boise Valley. I told him I was insulted and my ancestors would have been insulted especially since technically we still own the Boise Valley as we’ve never sold title to it. Nor has the Indian Claims Commission or any court resolved our ownership claims.
I went over and asked the mascot and the girl in the fringed dress with a little plume in her hair if I could take their photo and they said yeah. I then asked if they realized how ridiculous they looked but they didn’t respond.
It is 2010 and there are still people out there saying they are honoring us with these crazy images. The principal told me to take it to the State Board of Education so I intend to hopefully with some support from the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes.
I also hope other Boise Valley Shoshone descendents from other reservations step up and provide some cultural education to the misinformed school.
Lori Edmo-Suppah, editor

Indian Country and Health Care Reform
The best health care in the world (if you’re a Canadian premier)
By Mark Trahant
I didn’t figure the Indian health system would be a huge agenda item at the Blair House bipartisan meeting last week. On paper, at least, the Indian Health Care Improvement Act is one of ten titles in the president’s proposal. So ideally Title 10 would have rated a mention.
It would have been even better to hear a debate about the merits of reauthorizing the 1976 law at the summit with the Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress. Some of the Republicans at the Blair House have complained many times that the Indian Health Service represents the worst of government-run care. So, we ought to ask, “why not fully fund the IHS and give it the resources to be successful?”
No such question was asked. Then no tribal leaders were in the room and the only American Indian representative in Congress wasn’t there … so it was easy for the subject to never come up.
I watched the meeting on the Internet and updated short items on Twitter (a “live tweet” with my 140-word commentary about the meeting). I wrote: Can we agree US health care system finest in the world? No. Another point of diff. WHO ranks France first (we're not top 10, 20 or 30) #hcr
The context for this tweet was when Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso said: “I do believe we have the best health care system in the world. That’s why the premier of one of the Canadian provinces came here just last week to have his heart operated on. He said, ‘It’s my heart, it’s my life. I want to go where it’s the best.’ And he came to the United States. It’s where a member of parliament – a Canadian member of parliament with cancer came to the United States for her care. They all have coverage there, but what they want is care.”
If you believe the U.S. health care system is the best in the world, why change a thing?
As I wrote in my Tweet, the World Health Organization has a different take on our “best” health care. We rank 37th overall. If you compare the United States to other industrial nations, we’re last. We’re 39th in infant mortality; 3rd for adult female mortality; 42nd for adult male mortality; and 36th for life expectancy. But we do have a number one spot: We spend more per person than any other country in the world.
The president responded to Dr. Barrasso by saying most Americans are “not premiers of any place. They’re not sultans from wherever. They don’t fly in to Mayo and suddenly, you know, decide they’re going to spend a couple million on the absolute best health care. They’re folks who are left out.”
And I thought the Indian health system wasn’t on the agenda?
We need more conversation about health care, wealth, poverty and how we define what makes the “best” health care system in the world.
No system is at its best when a Canadian premier can fly in for advanced surgery while a patient at a federally-run Indian Health Service facility is told too bad that procedure will have to wait because there’s just not enough money in the pot called “contract health.” Or what does it say about the “best” when the government’s own auditors describe the Indian Health system as too poorly funded to qualify as basic insurance?
But at least the Indian health system affords basic coverage for its patients. Across the country the situation for those without insurance is even bleaker. In Idaho, for example, the state next door to Barrasso’s Wyoming, the number of people on employer-based plans fell to 56 percent last year from 82 percent in 2002.
This is the moral divide. We can pretend our system is best in the world. Or we can try to make that ideal so. Everyone one of us should be able to say, “It’s my heart, it’s my life, too.” Mark Trahant is a Kaiser Media Fellow examining the Indian Health Service and its relevance to the national health care reform debate. He is a member of Idaho’s Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. Comment at www.marktrahant.com

Kniffin: Grateful with support during event
The Fort Hall Recreation department would like to thank all the people that help make the dinner Saturday, February 20 for our visiting teams from Owyhee, Nevada —especially the frybread making crew.
It was a fun time by all the teams that participated in the games and I was very proud of our community for helping out. I hope that we can do a few more of these events with other reservations.
Thank you. Eddy Kniffin

Lipovac appreciates opportunity to serve on Blackfoot School Board
Dear Fort Hall Community Members,
Thank you for the opportunity to represent you on the Blackfoot School District Board of Trustees.
The night I took office, I presented a speech that outlined some of your interests and concerns. A number of you were at the meeting to hear my talk and I appreciate very much your support and involvement in these matters. At the time I mentioned several items that may deserve special attention and consideration.
While there are many areas that we would all like to address, here are a couple of goals which are emerging at the top of the list:
First, we should explore the possibility of creating a magnet or a charter school at the Fort Hall Elementary School. This transformation would be based on the idea that not only Native students, but all students, learn faster and better in such a school program. A magnet or charter school program would allow extensive use of the performing arts as instructional tools and as ways to get the students and their families more interested and involved in the total school programs.
These programs would include dance, stage productions (drama), music and singing, arts and painting etc. and, of course, all with a major emphasis on Indian forms and styles, both traditional and contemporary. Experience tells us that Native students learn well through “active, visual and hands on " classroom and school experiences. All students team many of the needed skills and competencies through expanding the curriculum this way. In fact, it has been demonstrated that students involved in similar programs have achieved higher performance levels in all areas and as a result develop better confidence levels in self-expression and performance.
Second, many of you have expressed to me the need to begin to incorporate the teaching of Shoshoni and Bannock languages in the schools. While we need to initiate language classes at all levels in all the schools, the Fort Hall Elementary School is an appropriate setting to further develop the needed language programs. We could even begin to develop a language immersion program in the early grades. Other Native communities are doing this. Why not here at Fort Hall?
Surely you will have questions about Fort Hall Elementary becoming a charter or magnet school and, as we investigate and discuss the possibilities, I hope that each and every question would be answered. At this time, no decisions have been made in this matter. However, we need to put our minds to the possibility and see what we can come up with together to better educate our children.
Third, at each and every School Board meeting I have stressed the need to expand the District's efforts to recruit more Native (and Hispanic) staff — at every level. For many of you, this has been a concern for many years. I believe that we can begin to show progress in this matter by committing to an active recruitment program to seek out qualified and interested persons to come here and fill positions as they become available. Further, another possible course of action is to work with universities and other institutions to encourage local Native youth to pursue careers in education.
Fourth, we all know that Idaho state funding for schools is suffering a great deal. For this and other reasons, we must be creative in exploring ways to find money, especially as we may want to make some program changes in the schools. One possible way would be to hire a grant writer for the district. Of course, this will not automatically solve all of the funding issues, but it could be an important part of a greater solution.
Finally, other areas that call for attention and more involvement by the tribe include reviewing the textbooks which are used in the classrooms. Many of them, in my opinion, are not accurate nor fair with regard to American Indian historical issues and do not adequately convey the contributions which American Indians have made to society —even to the formation of the United States government.
I have also received community concerns about the need for speed bumps in front of the Fort Hall School and the desire to have the grassy area there enlarged and irrigated to provide an improved playing area for the kids. Hopefully, we will be able to make progress in with these matters too.
As I have discussed these and other matters with folks in the community and the elected leaders, I have found a lot of support and a sincere interest in improving the quality of education of the public school students. I am gratified by the desire to work together and support each other as we move ahead. I continue to solicit your ideas and involvement and look forward to what we can do together. Thank you.
Pete Lipovac