Michael Kabotie - Leaving a vibrant legacy for the world

By BETSEY BRUNER
Arts, Culture & Community Editor
Sunday, November 01, 2009

When Michael Kabotie, 67, died Friday, Oct. 23, 2009, at Flagstaff Medical Center after battling the H1N1 flu and associated complications, he left a legacy of artistic visions that will live for generations.

Kabotie was from the village of Shungopavi, located on Second Mesa on the Hopi reservation, but had also lived many years in Flagstaff and New Mexico. He was a renowned and respected Hopi painter, silversmith and poet, a loving father and grandfather, and a dedicated partner.

"He was for so many people, both in Arizona and the world beyond, a great ambassador from Hopi to the rest of the world," said Robert Breunig, director of the Museum of Northern Arizona. "He was always willing to share insights and understanding about Hopi with other people, but he was also intensely curious about other cultures, so it was always a two-way street with Michael."

Breunig said that it was fitting it snowed lightly around the time that Kabotie died and four days after.

"In the Hopi way, when you go to the spirit world, you became a cloud person," he said. "You bring snow and rain to the living. I know Michael was out there somewhere making it snow."

A LONG CAREER

After high school, Michael attended the University of Arizona, where he studied engineering. After dropping out of college, his art career was launched when he had a one-man show at the Heard Museum, and his work was on the cover of Arizona Highways magazine.

Kabotie and his father, Fred Kabotie, were known as innovators in the Native American Fine Arts Movement, as they created paintings reflecting traditional Hopi life, but with a contemporary touch.

Fred Kabotie was one of the Hopi artists responsible for developing the trademark overlay methods used today by many Hopi silver and goldsmiths.

Through the years since 1966, Kabotie participated in many art exhibits, including at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, the American Indian Contemporary Arts Gallery in San Francisco, Tucson Art Festival, Los Angeles Natural History Museum, Museum of American Indian in New York City, Museum of Man in San Diego, many appearances at the annual SWAIA Indian Market in Santa Fe, as well as featured exhibits at both the Coconino Center for the Arts and the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff and at the Hopi Cultural Center Museum on Second Mesa.

At the time of his death, Kabotie was working on an exhibit and a book for the museum, called "Siitala: Life in Balance, World in Bloom."

"We'll be continuing to work on that," said Kelley Hays-Gilpin, curator of anthropology at MNA. "We planned the content of the exhibit. We just need to raise the money and design and build it."

Kabotie will also be honored as the featured artist at the Heard Indian Market in March of 2010.

FRIEND TO MANY

According to his Web site, Kabotie's painting reflects his Hopi mentors, the pre-European Awatovi kiva mural painters and the Sikyatki pottery painters.

In 1973, he was a founding member of Artist Hopid, a group of five painters who worked together for more than five years, experimenting in fresh interpretations of traditional Hopi art forms.

Kabotie created many beautiful works of art, among them murals at Sunset Crater Visitors Center, a large mural in the Kiva Gallery at the Museum of Northern Arizona, which he painted with his friend Delbridge Honanie, and a gate he designed to look like a piece of overlay jewelry at the Heard Museum in Phoenix.

Breunig, who was a friend for almost 35 years, was present at a well-attended memorial service for Kabotie on Sunday, Oct. 25, at the Colton House of the Museum of Northern Arizona

He said the service was "just fabulous" and went for two hours. It was on the lawn, looking up at the San Francisco Peaks.

"He was an artist, he was a poet, he was a jeweler, and most of all, he was a wonderful friend," Breunig said. "Oh, and he was a trickster and a clown, too. He was always teasing me, reminding us all that we need to stay humble and grounded. He was just a delight to be with, so much fun."

Michael Kabotie Obituary

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Michael Kabotie, 67, died Friday, Oct. 23, 2009, at Flagstaff Medical Center after battling the H1N1 flu and associated complications.

Mr. Kabotie was from the village of Shungopavi, located on Second Mesa on the Hopi reservation, but had also lived many years in Flagstaff and New Mexico. He was a renowned and respected Hopi painter, silversmith and poet, a loving father and grandfather, and a dedicated partner.

Mr. Kabotie is survived by his older sister, Hattie Lomayesva; his children, Paul Kabotie, Wendell Sakiestewa, Claire Chavarria, Ed Kabotie, Meg Adakai and Max Kabotie; his partner, Ruth Ann Border; his ex-wife, Frances Fayssoux Kabotie; 14 grandchildren; one great-grandchild; his Hopi clan and blood relatives; and his many friends from all over the world.

He truly touched the hearts of many.

Mr. Kabotie created many beautiful works of art, among them murals at Sunset Crater and the Museum of Northern Arizona, and a gate he designed to look like a piece of overlay jewelry at the Heard Museum in Phoenix.

He will also be honored as the featured artist at the Heard Indian Market in March of 2010.

A memorial service will be Sunday at 11 a.m. at the Colton House of the Museum of Northern Arizona.

The Kabotie family would like to extend their gratitude to the medical staff at FMC.

Health Care for American Indians - Slate Magazine

By Christopher Beam
Posted Friday, Sept. 18, 2009, at 11:20 AM ET

The health care plan released by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus on Wednesday includes a requirement that every nonsenior American either buy insurance or pay a fine. There are exceptions, however, for anyone below the poverty line, people who face extreme hardship, and American Indians. Why are American Indians exempt?

Because they have their own health care system. The Indian Health Service, which operates under the Department of Health and Human Services and whose funding comes out of the federal government's annual budget, provides care to any person who is a member or descendant of one of the 560 federally recognized tribes. Because they're covered by IHS, Indians don't need to purchase private insurance. (Many do anyway—more on that later.)

The IHS provides two types of service. One is direct care through one of its 48 hospitals and 230 clinics across the country, most of which are located on or near a reservation. For anyone covered by IHS, treatment at these facilities is free. The other service is so-called "contract health services," or CHS. If an IHS hospital doesn't have the treatment or procedure you need—say you have to visit a cardiac specialist for a rare condition—they will refer you to a non-IHS facility. The visit is then paid for with federal money designated for CHS. Not every American Indian, however, qualifies for CHS. To qualify, you have to live either on a reservation or in a "contract health services delivery area," which usually abuts a reservation. If you don't, you're on your own. (As a result, there is a strong incentive for American Indians who don't have employer coverage to live on or near a reservation.) Nor is CHS coverage guaranteed for those who technically qualify. Congress allocates a limited amount of money every year—about $600 million—so emergency care takes priority. When that money runs out, some patients are out of luck.

Can American Indians get other insurance, too? Of course. Of the 1.4 million American Indians covered by IHS, nearly 60 percent have some other type of coverage as well: 20 percent get private insurance, 8 percent have Medicare, and 30 percent are covered under Medicaid. Private insurance especially makes sense for Indians who live far from the nearest IHS facility. In fact, the tribes encourage private coverage, since third-party payers—private insurance and Medicare and Medicaid—are required to pay for your care before IHS does. If, for example, you're an American Indian over 65, your health care bill goes to Medicare first—even if you get treatment at an IHS facility. (Third-party revenue accounts for almost 50 percent of IHS hospital operating budgets.) Only if Medicare refuses to cover the procedure is IHS required to pay.

Government health care for American Indians is rooted in the Constitution, which states in Article I that Congress may regulate commerce with Indian tribes and was first implemented through various treaties signed by the federal government and individual tribes. The Snyder Act of 1921 provided funds "for the benefit, care and assistance" of Indians, who were then granted U.S. citizenship. In 1954, the Indian Health Service was established and took over administering health care from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But it wasn't until 1975 that the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act integrated American Indians into Medicare and Medicaid and put tribes in charge of their own care—for example, they can build a new clinic and get reimbursed by Uncle Sam rather than waiting around for the government to build one. The system still has its issues: Whereas the U.S. health care system spends about $6,000 per American, IHS spends only $2,100. American Indians are less healthy on the whole than other Americans. And CHS, whose money sometimes dries up midyear, is chronically underfunded. Hence the oft-quoted aphorism, "Don't get sick after June."

Tribe That Runs Foxwoods Facing 'Dire' Finances

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) -- The chairman of the tribe that runs Foxwoods Resort Casino is warning of ''dire financial times'' that he says threaten the tribe's living standards.

Michael J. Thomas, chairman of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, sent a letter to tribal members last week noting earnings ''are down considerably'' in the recession with no signs of immediate improvement. He also noted the likely legalization of gambling in Massachusetts and New York will eat away at profits and market share.

''These are dire financial times for our tribe,'' Thomas wrote in the letter, obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday. ''The situation is serious and threatens our tribe.''

The tribe is on the brink of default and is trying to restructure $2.3 billion in debt, the New London Day reported Wednesday, citing an adviser to the tribe who spoke on condition of anonymity. The debt is $1 billion more than the tribe can sustain, and it is at risk of defaulting Monday on a $700 million line of credit with lenders, the newspaper reported.

Telephone messages were left Wednesday with tribal officials for comment on the report, which also cited a plan by an investment bank to continue operating the casino while the debt is restructured.

The tribe opened Foxwoods in 1992 and the casino has become one of the world's largest. Foxwoods last year opened the $700 million MGM Grand, a 30-story, 2-million-square-foot property that includes a new casino, hotel, a 4,000-seat performing arts theater, restaurants, luxury stores, the largest ballroom in the Northeast and new convention space to accommodate thousands.

Thomas alluded to the troubles in his letter, saying he intended to introduce a resolution to put the tribe's money in a ''lock box'' only to be used for government and incentive payments to tribal members.

''Regardless of what may happen, I have made it clear that we will not accept Wall street mandates for cuts to tribal government or the incentive,'' Thomas wrote. ''Anyone who puts the interests of consultants, bankers and bond holders ahead of our tribal community will have to answer to me.''

Foxwoods has laid off 800 casino workers since last summer as a result of declining slot revenue because of the poor economy.

Mohegan Sun, Connecticut's other tribal casino, has cut more than 500 jobs through attrition and delayed an expansion project. But Mohegan Sun, operated by the Mohegan Tribe, said in a statement Wednesday that the casino is financially healthy.

The casinos turn over 25 percent of their slot profits to the state under an operating agreement.

Paul Young, executive director of the Connecticut Division of Special Revenue, said his agency has not been notified of a plan to restructure Foxwoods' debt.

Young said he would expect the tribe to continue operating and making its payments to the state.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell said Wednesday Foxwoods' financial woes were a concern.

''We know that they have been experiencing financial difficulty for some time and I think that they're working to try to address it with their lenders and hopefully they can,'' Rell said. ''Obviously, it's a concern to us. It's a revenue to the state.''

Connecticut officials said Wednesday the two tribes will pay the state $25 million in slot revenues to compensate for promotions that allowed gamblers to use slots for free.

------

Associated Press writer Susan Haigh contributed to this story.

Cleaning of Puget Sound Brings Tribes Full Circle

By WILLIAM YARDLEY
Published: August 24, 2009
SEATTLE — When contractors were bidding for federal stimulus money designated to help clean up Puget Sound, a few skeptical competitors asked Jeff Choke how much experience his dive team had in addressing pollution here.

“I’d say, ‘We’ve been doing it since the day the settlers first showed up,’ ” Mr. Choke said as he steered an aluminum skiff out of Shilshole Bay on an overcast afternoon recently.

Mr. Choke is a member of the Nisqually Indian tribe, one of many tribes that fished for salmon in Puget Sound for centuries before Europeans arrived and began aggressively fishing with large commercial nets that depleted populations of Chinook, sockeye and other kinds of salmon. Now the Nisqually tribe has a dive team that is part of a $4.6 million stimulus-financed effort to remove fishing nets that were lost or discarded decades ago but can still kill fish, birds and other animals.

Mr. Choke said that although having Indians get involved in the project might make for compelling symbolism given the longstanding tensions over how their way of life was altered by settlers, what the project really offers is a chance for the storyline to move beyond old debates.

“We want to diversify,” Mr. Choke said, referring to the tribe’s expanding business interests, which include casino gambling and the harvesting of geoduck clams in the sound, a pursuit that first led the tribe to start its dive team.

“Everyone has had a part in this,” Mr. Choke said, “and to clean this up, it takes both sides.”

The net-removal project is being organized by the Northwest Straits Initiative, a conservation agency authorized by Congress. The project is being held up by its supporters as an example of environmental restoration that creates jobs — about 40 in the next 18 months, many of them for divers — and has a measurable impact.

Before being awarded the stimulus money, the initiative had spent seven years piecing together small grants to slowly remove nets that were lost to rocky seafloors or artificial structures in the area’s historic fishing grounds.

“In many cases, it’s layer upon layer of net,” said Ginny Broadhurst, the director of the initiative.

With more than 3,000 nets believed to be underwater, the project was expected to take many more years to complete. Now, however, Ms. Broadhurst said the group is getting four boats up and running at sites like the San Juan Islands in the north of the sound to tribal fishing grounds in the south. The work should be finished by the end of next year.

“The ocean faces lots of problems, from acidification, the ocean becoming more acidic, to the water temperature rising and a slew of other problems, but marine debris is something that we can do something about,” said Nir Barnea, a manager in the marine debris program for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency that distributed the stimulus money. “This project, for example, we can complete the removal of just about all nets in Puget Sound.”

The project follows earlier net removal efforts in Alaska, Hawaii and other states.

In Puget Sound, the removal of the nets follows major changes; fish populations have declined, restrictions have increased and the fishing industry is a small fraction of what it was in the 1970s and 1980s.

Because the fishery is much smaller, Ms. Broadhurst said, the number of nets that will be lost in the future “is going to be really minimal as compared with that historic high.”

Her group has spent years surveying the sound to identify lost nets for removal. Jeff June, a field manager for the project, said the group has a database containing 584 locations of lost nets, with some locations containing several nets. Divers have found skeletons of harbor seals and porpoises tangled in nets; more often they encounter countless crabs, starfish and small fish trapped in the monofilament, which became more common in the 1970s. Those nets do not degrade the way older nets of hemp and other materials do.

When the nets are lost, said Mr. Barnea of the federal agency, “they keep on doing what they were designed to do.”

Steve Sigo owns the boat that the Nisqually tribe’s dive team has been using for its recent dives off Point Jefferson on the Kitsap Peninsula, across Puget Sound from Shilshole Bay in Seattle. Mr. Sigo, a member of the Squaxin Island tribe, said if he were not helping to remove nets he would probably be fishing for salmon, particularly given the strong runs reported this year. But Mr. Sigo, joined by his 12-year-old son, Andrew, said he planned to stick with the net-removal project as long as he could.

“My first year was ’74 fishing commercially, and so I’ve lost nets,” Mr. Sigo said. “I’ve fished up in this area, fished the San Juans, fished everything, so it’s kind of nice to be on the cleanup end of it instead of the losing-the-net end of it. It’s kind of neat because it’s kind of full circle to get this opportunity.”

Uranium Contamination Haunts Navajo Country

TEEC NOS POS, Ariz. — It was one year ago that the environmental scientist showed up at Fred Slowman’s door, deep in the heart of Navajo country, and warned that it was unsafe for him to stay there.

“There were a lot of things people weren’t told about the plight of Navajos and uranium mining,” Stephen B. Etsitty said.
The Slowman home, the same one-level cinderblock structure his family had lived in for nearly a half-century, was contaminated with potentially dangerous levels of uranium from the days of the cold war, when hundreds of uranium mines dotted the vast tribal land known as the Navajo Nation. The scientist advised Mr. Slowman, his wife and their two sons to move out until their home could be rebuilt.

“I was angry,” Mr. Slowman said. “I guess it was here all this time, and we never knew.”

The legacy wrought from decades of uranium mining is long and painful here on the expansive reservation. Over the years, Navajo miners extracted some four million tons of uranium ore from the ground, much of it used by the United States government to make weapons.

Many miners died from radiation-related illnesses, and some, unaware of harmful health effects, hauled contaminated rocks and tailings from local mines and mills to build homes for their families.

Now, those homes are being demolished and rebuilt under a new government program that seeks to identify what are very likely dozens of uranium-contaminated structures still standing on Navajo land and to temporarily relocate people living in them until the homes can be torn down and rebuilt.

Stephen B. Etsitty, executive director of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, and other tribal officials have been grappling for years with the environmental fallout from uranium mining.

“There were a lot of things people weren’t told about the plight of Navajos and uranium mining,” Mr. Etsitty said. “These legacy issues are impacting generations. At some point people are saying, ‘It’s got to end.’ ”

After a Congressional hearing in 2007, a cross-section of federal agencies committed to addressing the environmental and health impacts of uranium mining on the reservation. As part of that commitment, the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Navajo Nation began working together to assess uranium levels in 500 structures through a five-year plan set to end in 2012.

Using old lists of potentially contaminated structures, federal and Navajo scientists have fanned out to rural reaches of the 27,000 square mile reservation — which includes swaths of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah — to measure levels of radium, a decay product of uranium that can cause lung cancer. Of 113 structures assessed so far, 27 contained radiation levels that were above normal.

“In these situations, you have contamination in somebody’s yard or in their house,” said Harry Allen, the E.P.A.’s section chief for emergency response in San Francisco who is helping lead the government’s efforts. “To us, that is somewhat urgent.”

Many structures that showed high levels of radiation were vacant; some families had already moved out after hearing stories of contamination in their homes. But eight homes still had people living in them, and the E.P.A. and Navajo officials have worked to convince residents that it would be unsafe to stay.

“People had been told they were living in contaminated structures, but nobody ever did anything about it,” said Will Duncan, an environmental scientist who has been the E.P.A.’s main representative on the reservation. “They would tell us, ‘We don’t believe you are going to follow through.’ ”

But with a budget of nearly $8 million, the E.P.A. has demolished all 27 contaminated structures and has begun building ones to replace those that had been occupied. Typically, the agency pays a Navajo contracting company to construct a log cabin or a traditional hogan in the structure’s stead, depending on the wishes of the occupants. Mr. Allen said the cost, including temporarily relocating residents, ran approximately $260,000 per dwelling and took about eight months.

The agency also offers $50,000 to those who choose not to have an old home rebuilt.

Lillie Lane, a public information officer with the Navajo Nation E.P.A. who has acted as a liaison between the federal government and tribal members, said the program held practical and symbolic importance given the history of uranium mining here.

Ms. Lane also described the difficulty of watching families, particularly elders, leaving homes they had lived in for years. She told of coming upon two old miners who died before their contaminated homes could be rebuilt.

“In Navajo, a home is considered sacred,” Ms. Lane said. “But if the foundation or the rocks are not safe, we have to do this work.”

Some families, Ms. Lane said, complained that their children were suffering from health problems and had wondered if radiation were to blame.

The E.P.A. has started sifting through records and interviewing family members to figure out whether mining companies that once operated on the reservation are liable for any damages, Mr. Allen said.

On a recent summer day, Fred and Clara Slowman proudly surveyed their new home, a one-level log cabin that sits in the quiet shadows of Black Rock Point, miles away from the bustle of Farmington, N.M., where the family has been living in a hotel.

Mr. Slowman said he suspected that waste materials from a nearby abandoned mine somehow seeped into his house. The family plans on having a traditional Navajo medicine man bless their dwelling before they move in next month.

“In our traditional way, a house is like your mom,” Mr. Slowman said. “It’s where you eat, sleep, where you’re taken care of.

“And when you come back from the city, you come back to your mom. It makes you feel real good.”

Appeals Court Demands Accounting for Indian Trusts

Published: July 24, 2009
Filed at 12:21 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Interior Department must account for century-old land royalties owed to American Indians, reversing a lower court's ruling that the task is impossible.

A 2008 decision by U.S. District Judge James Robertson said Interior had unreasonably delayed an accounting but added that the complicated task was ultimately impossible. He later ruled the Indian plaintiffs are entitled to $455 million, a fraction of the $47 billion or more they have said they are owed.

The appeals court said Friday that that court erred in freeing the government from the accounting burden. Chief Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said the decision essentially allowed the Interior Department ''to throw up its hands and stop the accounting.''

''Without an accounting, it is impossible to know who is owed what,'' Sentelle wrote. ''The best any trust beneficiary could hope for would be a government check in an arbitrary amount.''

The long-running suit, first filed 13 years ago, claims the Indians were swindled out of royalties overseen by the Interior Department since 1887 for things like oil, gas, grazing and timber.

The three-judge panel acknowledged that the task is a complicated one and said the Interior Department should focus on the ''low-hanging fruit'' and not muddy the process by spending time and money to account for closed accounts or those in probate, for example.

''We must not allow the theoretically perfect to render impossible the achievable good,'' Sentelle wrote.

Indian plaintiffs, led by Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe from Montana, have argued that the government has for a long time improperly accounted for the money and should pay it back with some form of interest.

The government appeal contended that the court does not have the jurisdiction to award money at all, pointing to the ruling that the accounting was ultimately impossible. They also pointed to Robertson's comments that Congress has not given the Interior Department enough money to do a full accounting.

In 1994, Congress demanded that the department fulfill an obligation to account for money received and distributed. Two years later, when account statements still had not been reconciled, Cobell joined with others in suing.

Because many of the records have been lost, it has since been up to the court to decide how to best estimate how much individual should be paid, or how the money should be accounted for. Many of them are nearing the end of their lives.

Robertson originally intended to begin a new phase of the trial that would determine how and to whom the government should award the money. But he allowed the two parties to take the case immediately to the appeals court so the process would not be delayed further.

The class-action suit deals with individual Indians' lands and covers about 500,000 Indians and their heirs. Several tribes have sued separately, claiming mismanagement of their lands.

Op-Ed Contributor - Evil Spirits

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Evil Spirits

By JAMES ABOUREZK
Published: July 15, 2009
Sioux Falls, S.D.

SINCE taking office, President Obama has overturned several of George W. Bush’s executive orders. I would like to recommend he also overturn one of Theodore Roosevelt’s.

Fourteen years after the Great Sioux Reservation was established in western South Dakota in 1868, President Chester Arthur issued an executive order creating a 50-square-mile buffer zone on its southern edge, in Nebraska. This was meant to prevent renegade whites from selling guns, knives and alcohol to Indians living on the reservation.

The buffer zone was ratified as law when Congress divided the Great Sioux Reservation into smaller units in 1889. But when Roosevelt became president, the liquor industry convinced him that the buffer zone should be abolished, which he did through an executive order in 1904. This move was, however, illegitimate from the start, because an act of Congress cannot legally be reversed by an executive order.

Today, the tiny Nebraska hamlet of Whiteclay has four liquor stores, ostensibly to serve its population of 24, but really more for the bootleggers and alcoholics living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, just across the border. The result has been murders, spouse beatings, child abuse, thefts and other undesirable consequences of the free flow of alcohol into the reservation.

In 2000, I asked the Clinton administration to overturn Roosevelt’s illegal order, but was unable to get anyone’s attention. In 2001, I asked Vice President Dick Cheney to do the same, but he referred the matter to the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, who decided that bringing back the buffer zone would, as he wrote me in a letter, take land away from white landowners. In fact, overturning the Roosevelt order would not transfer any land titles, but would merely give jurisdiction over the buffer zone to the Oglala Sioux tribe, automatically making alcohol sales illegal.

President Obama could right a century of wrongs by re-establishing the buffer zone. It would alleviate the overwhelming social ills that result from easy access to alcohol, and help end the violence tribal members too often visit on each other and on their families.

James Abourezk, a former Democratic senator from South Dakota, was the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs from 1977 to 1979.

This Land - A Rising but Doubted Dream on a Reservation

By DAN BARRY
Published: July 12, 2009
EAGLE BUTTE, S.D.

John Hunt, a tribal member, works for the contractor developing the site of the health center, which will be three times as large as the one it will replace, left.
At the edge of the remote prairie town called Eagle Butte, just past a fireworks stand, there is construction. Where winter wheat once grew, workers in hard hats now pour the foundations that will cement buildings to dusty earth.

Perhaps somewhere else this might be just another construction site. But here on the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation, in what may be the poorest county in the country, people sometimes stand at the edge and watch, as if to convince themselves of at least this promise being kept.

They come to witness the rising of a health center triple the size of the one it will replace: a tired building whose very bricks, mortared in place long ago by the Army Corps of Engineers, recall displacement and loss. The site will also include dozens of houses to accommodate all the nurses and doctors the reservation expects — or hopes — will come.

“This right here is your entryway,” a tribal member named John Hunt says with pride, pointing to some churned-up soil. And here, the expanded dental clinic. And here, the traditional healing room, where those mourning a death will be able to burn sage in a ritual of assisting passage to the next life.

Mr. Hunt’s thick body is built to take a fall; he spent years as a rodeo cowboy, saddling broncos, before giving it up to work first for the tribal government and then for the contractor developing the site. He understands what this construction represents:

Better health care. More jobs. The culmination of years of determined advocacy by tribal leaders. And the concrete manifestation of that abstract concept known as federal stimulus money, coming from the even more abstract American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Even now, with the water tower built and the basement dug, some people here are so accustomed to disappointment that they don’t have much trust in the project. “A lot of disbelief,” says Mr. Hunt, 37. “A lot of — ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’ ”

If a place can be reduced to topographical and statistical details, then this is the Cheyenne River Reservation: a 2.9-million-acre swath of plains and prairie, nearly treeless and beautiful in its starkness; home to about 15,000 people, most of them tribal members, and most of them poor.

The tribe has endured many indignities over the centuries, including one still fresh in the collective memory. In the 1940s and 1950s, the federal government built the Oahe Dam as one way to harness the powerful Missouri River. In doing so, it inundated more than 100,000 acres of fertile tribal land, washing out a way of life and forcing many families to be moved 60 miles west, to here: an arid railroad outpost soon to lose its railroad.

The Corps of Engineers built a health center to serve this grassy sprawl of distant towns and often-rutted roads, but as the only one of any size on the reservation, the center could not keep up with the growing population. The tribe began working on a plan for a better, larger operation that would also make it eligible for more money to improve services.

It clearly had the need, with higher rates of births and deaths, including infant deaths, than the region’s non-Indian population. The birthing unit had been closed because of quality-of-care concerns, the bathrooms could not accommodate wheelchairs, and recruiting efforts often died as soon as, say, a nurse from out of town saw the drab efficiency apartments set aside for the staff.

And there was the familiar matter of location, location. When tribal members require anything more than modest medical attention, they must be taken by ambulance or plane to hospitals far from the reservation — in Rapid City, S.D., or maybe Bismarck, N.D., both about 180 miles away.

A few years ago, Mr. Hunt fell off a ladder while holding a nail gun and accidentally shot a nail into his knee. His injury earned him a three-hour ambulance ride to a Rapid City hospital.

Some people gradually developed a distrust of the health center, and not only because its brick facade recalled the time of forced relocation. It was understaffed, it had become a patchwork of renovations and additions, and there was nothing native about the place beyond the staff. “It has no flow,” Mr. Hunt said.

Finally, in 2002, the Indian Health Service, the federal agency responsible for providing health care to American Indians and Alaska Natives, approved the proposal for an “alternative rural hospital,” with more attractive housing. Architects were soon traveling around the reservation to hear what people wanted, meeting in the bingo halls and community rooms of remote places like Bear Creek and White Horse and Thunder Butte. They especially listened to the elders.

“This was not going to be just a brick building,” Mr. Hunt said.

Now there was just the small matter of finding the money to pay for it all. So tribal leaders hit the road. For years.

They divided themselves into teams and took turns visiting the Indian Health Service’s headquarters in Rockville, Md., and paying calls to members of Congress in Washington, where they were helped by their senators, Tim Johnson and John Thune. They testified at any hearing anywhere that concerned the health care of Native Americans.

Along the way, they met tribal leaders from other reservations who were seeking the same financing for the same problem: the woeful inadequacy of the health care promised to American Indians long ago. “We all have the same disparities,” said Sharon Lee, the tribal vice chairwoman.

The tribal leaders made their case effectively, but in Indian Country, progress comes in phases, when money is available. The Indian Health Service works with 562 federally recognized tribes, a great many of them in need, so the project on that old wheat field in Eagle Butte took shape in fits and starts.

Then, two months ago, there came one of those news releases that seem to belch out incessantly from Washington, often incremental, often self-congratulatory. But this one said the Indian Health Service had allocated $500 million in stimulus funds for Indian health care, including $227 million for two “shovel ready” projects: a hospital in Nome, Alaska, and a health center in a place called Eagle Butte, S.D.

This $111 million health center will have an American Indian feel; it will be theirs, and not someone else’s. It will have a larger emergency room, two beds set aside for births, new medical equipment, and such basic, almost-forgotten amenities as a staff break room. It will also have that healing room, specially ventilated; no longer will mourners have to clog the bottoms of doors with towels when they burn sage.

But again, this is Indian Country. There are some basic health services the center will not provide; a CT scanner, for example.

Thomas Sweeney, an Indian Health Service spokesman, said the decision not to include this equipment was based on a formula that takes into account several factors: staffing, workload and population size. The agency receives slightly more than half the financing it needs, he said, which means “there’s always tough decisions.”

One step at a time, said Mr. Hunt: the building first, and then more visits to Washington to fight for more improvements — a CT scanner among them.

Until then, it remains a three-hour ambulance ride to Rapid City.

Woods to Play Exhibition to Help Begay Charity

BETHESDA, Md. (AP) -- Tiger Woods is helping out longtime friend Notah Begay III, agreeing to play in his charity Skins Game at Turning Stone Resort next month to support Native American youth.

Begay declined to comment and kept his head down when asked if Woods was playing in his event, then stopped 20 yards later and said with a smile, ''I need to win some skins.''

Woods' agent at IMG confirmed he would be playing Aug. 24 in the Notah Begay III Foundation Challenge. The world's No. 1 player will join Stanford teammate Begay, former Masters champion Mike Weir and Camilo Villegas.

A year ago, the event raised $180,000 for Begay's foundation, which supports youth sports and wellness programs for Native Americans in New Mexico and other states.

Begay, a Navajo, is the only Native American on the PGA Tour. He has four PGA Tour victories, none since 2000, and earned his card for this year by returning to Q-school.

He and Woods have remained closed, however, and Begay received an exemption to the AT&T National, where he opened with rounds of 70-72 at Congressional.

Woods had planned to play in Begay's event a year ago until he was forced to miss the second half of the season with knee surgery.

Turning Stone Resort in upstate New York has held a Fall Series event on the PGA Tour the last two years, and its $6 million purse is larger than some regular-season events.

Woods is not expected to play in the PGA Tour event, as it follows the conclusion of the FedEx Cup. Begay's charity event is the Monday of The Barclays in New Jersey, the start of the PGA Tour Playoffs for the FedEx Cup. Woods has never played The Barclays since it became part of the playoffs.
Mark Steinberg, his agent at IMG, said Woods has not decided on his schedule for the playoffs.

Scientist Tries to Connect Migration Dots of Ancient Southwest

CASAS GRANDES, Mexico — From the sky, the Mound of the Cross at Paquimé, a 14th-century ruin in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, looks like a compass rose — the roundish emblem indicating the cardinal directions on a map. About 30 feet in diameter and molded from compacted earth and rock taken near the banks of the Casas Grandes River, the crisscross arms point to four circular platforms. They might as well be labeled N, S, E and W.

Steve Lekson, shown at Chimney Rock, Colo., has a theory tying Casas Grandes to Chaco Canyon and Aztec Ruins.
“It’s a hell of a long way from here to Chaco,” says Steve Lekson, an archaeologist from the University of Colorado, as he sights along the north-south spoke of the cross. Follow his gaze 400 miles north and you reach Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico, a major cultural center occupied from about A.D. 900 to A.D. 1150 by the pueblo people known as Anasazi. Despite the distance, Dr. Lekson believes the two sites were linked by an ancient pattern of migration and a common set of religious beliefs.

But don’t stop at Chaco. Continue about 60 miles northward along the same straight line and you come to another Anasazi center called Aztec Ruins. For Dr. Lekson the alignment must be more than a coincidence.

A decade ago in “The Chaco Meridian: Centers of Political Power in the Ancient Southwest,” he argued that for centuries the Anasazi leaders, reckoning by the stars, aligned their principal settlements along this north-south axis — the 108th meridian of longitude. In an article this year for Archaeology magazine, he added two older ruins to the trajectory: Shabik’eschee, south of Chaco, and Sacred Ridge, north of Aztec. Each in its time was the regional focus of economic and political power, and each lies along the meridian. As one site was abandoned, because of drought, violence, environmental degradation — the reasons are obscure — the leaders led an exodus to a new location: sometimes north, sometimes south, but hewing as closely as they could to the 108th meridian.

“I think the reason is ideological,” Dr. Lekson said on a recent visit to Paquimé. “The cultural response to something not working is to move north, and when that doesn’t work you move south. And then you move north again and then you move south again, and then you finally say the hell with it, I’m out of here, and you go down to Chihuahua.”

For many of Dr. Lekson’s colleagues that is an awfully big leap. With all the ambiguities involved in interpreting patterns of dirt and rock — the Anasazi left no written history — archaeologists have been more comfortable focusing on a particular culture or a particular ruin. Dr. Lekson is constantly reaching — some say overreaching — to make connections between isolated islands of thought. Scheduled for publication this summer, his new book, “A History of the Ancient Southwest,” will go even further, offering a kind of unified theory of the Native American population movements that have puzzled Southwest archaeologists for many years.

“Steve has definitely been the one who has dragged us kicking and screaming into ‘big picture’ archaeology,” said William D. Lipe, emeritus professor of archaeology at Washington State University. “In many ways, Steve’s ideas and publications have driven much of the intellectual agenda for Southwestern archaeology over the last 20 or more years.” That does not mean, Dr. Lipe added, that he buys the idea of the Chaco meridian.

On a walk around Paquimé, Dr. Lekson points out his evidence. Casas Grandes, the Spanish name for the ruins, means “big houses,” and the multistory structures remind him of the palatial “great houses” at Chaco and Aztec. Inside the structures, people moved from room to room through T-shaped passages like those at Anasazi sites. At the House of the Pillars, a row of three colonnades formed a grand entranceway. “No one around here had colonnades except at Chaco,” Dr. Lekson says. A coincidence or a connection?

Paquimé also hints at other influences. Ball courts, used for ceremonial games, are typical of those found in southern Mexico and Central America. Effigy mounds, in which dirt was shaped to form birds and other figures, resemble those built long ago by Native Americans in the Ohio Valley. A long sinuous row of mud and stone called the Mound of the Serpent seems to undulate like a snake.

“This thing runs north and south,” Dr. Lekson says. “I love it.” He points toward a prominent hill on the horizon called Cerro de Moctezuma. Barely visible on its summit are the remains of a centuries-old stone watchtower. Nearby, he says, is another snakelike mound running north and south.

“It’s not as easy to see,” he says. “You have to believe it.”

Tension Roils Peru After Deadly Amazon Clashes

YURIMAGUAS, Peru (Reuters) - Indigenous protesters and Peru's army refused to back down and a truce looked distant on Saturday, after two battles in the Amazon jungle killed some 50 people in the worst crisis of President Alan Garcia's term.

Protesters said 30 of their own died and the government said 22 members of the security forces perished in two days of clashes over Garcia's drive to bring foreign companies to the rainforest to open mines and drill for oil.

The bloodshed has prompted widespread calls for Garcia's prime minister to quit, underscored divisions between elites in Lima and the rural poor and threatened to derail the government's push to further open Peru to foreign investors.

Garcia lashed out at the protesters, saying they had attacked their own country, acted like terrorists and may have been incited by foreigners. A fierce critic of leftist leaders elsewhere in Latin America, Garcia did not say who he meant.

The army imposed curfews, but thousands of Indians with wooden spears vowed to dig in at blockades along remote Amazon highways and keep protesting if government forces did not halt efforts to break up their demonstrations.

"We are fighting because we fear our land will be taken away," said Denis Tangoa 38, a protester at one blockade.

About 10 police officers kidnapped by protesters were killed and nearly two dozen were freed when troops moved in to end a hostage crisis, National Police Chief Miguel Hidalgo told Peru's RPP radio on Saturday. Several hostages were reported missing.

BATTLE AT 'DEVIL'S CURVE'

In a clash on Friday, 11 police died when they broke up a roadblock, about 870 miles north of Lima along a stretch of highway known as "Devil's Curve" the government said.

At least thirty protesters were killed, according to Champion Nonimgo from AIDESEP, Peru's leading indigenous rights group. "We are talking about more than 30 indigenous deaths so far," Nonimgo said.

The government put the number of protesters killed in Friday's clash at nine.

Garcia blamed leftist opponents for the violence and his office issued a statement saying protesters had "carefully planned an attack against Peru" and used "methods identical those of the Shining Path."

The Shining Path was a brutal insurgency that waged war against the state in the 1980s and 1990s, until
its leaders were caught and holdouts went into cocaine trafficking.

"Shame on those politicians who can't win elections so they get together irrational groups to do what they did," said Garcia.

Indigenous tribes, worried they will lose control over natural resources, have protested since April seeking to force Congress to repeal new laws that encourage foreign mining and energy companies to invest billions of dollars in the rain forest.

"We are not going to give up until they reverse these laws that will damage us. They want to take away our lands and forest and make our traditions disappear," said Luis Huansi, a leader of the Shawi tribe at a roadblock between the towns of Tarapoto and Yurimaguas.

Men, women and children from the subsistence farming region had occupied the highway. Some were dressed in long red tunics, wore headbands and carried wooden spears. Families have set up tents of plastic sheeting along the roadside.

DEVELOPMENT LAGS

Though Garcia is a favorite of investors, his approval rating is 30 percent and he is especially unpopular in the Amazon, where development has lagged.

Critics say he has not done enough to reduce the poverty rate from 36 percent and that economic boom times failed to reach the poor before the current downturn.

They also fault Garcia's policies favoring free markets and foreign investment as mainly benefiting urban elites.

Garcia claims he will cut poverty faster than a new wave of leftist presidents that he often trades barbs with: Bolivia's Evo Morales and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. But he has yet to win support from the poor.

Indigenous groups oppose laws passed last year as Garcia moved to bring Peru's regulatory framework into compliance with a free-trade agreement with the United States.

Tribes said Garcia's allies acted in bad faith when they blocked a motion in Congress on Thursday to open debate on a law they want overturned. Violence erupted the next day.

New Group Is Formed to Sponsor Native Arts

By ROBIN POGREBIN
Published: April 21, 2009

Even as arts groups around the country are cutting back because of declining endowments and donations, a new foundation to support the work of American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Alaska Native artists is being established with an initial $10 million from the Ford Foundation.

Called the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, the organization, formally opened on Tuesday, says it will be the first permanently endowed national foundation of its kind.

“We needed our own endowment for native arts and culture in this country in the coming century,” said Elizabeth Theobald Richards, the program officer at Ford who has overseen the project and is a Cherokee. “The indigenous peoples of this country have an incredible wealth of cultural heritage and cultural expression that very few people know about. And it’s also incredibly underfunded.”

The foundation has been in the works since 2007, when it obtained incorporation papers and established charity status. Only now has the organization hired a president and staff and begun the grant-making process.

The new foundation will provide direct grants to artists and arts organizations, support native arts leadership and team up with other native-led efforts to increase financial support for indigenous arts and cultures.

“Arts and culture and traditional languages and religions have been the glue that held Native Americans together — often in the face of great adversity,” said Walter Echo-Hawk, chairman and creator of the foundation, in a telephone interview.

“For many years the government policy was to assimilate native people into mainstream society and essentially stamp out attributes of native culture,” he added. “It’s a testament to the tenacity of our people that we have any native cultures or religions left in the United States. We are seeing a remarkable cultural renaissance in the tribal communities. But the support of the arts has been almost nil. It’s been very difficult for Indian tribes to also support their own arts and cultures.”

The organization is to be based in Portland, Ore., and recently selected Tara Lulani Arquette, a Native Hawaiian, as its president and chief executive. With 20 years of experience leading organizations and advocating on behalf of native groups, Ms. Arquette has served for the last four years as chief executive and executive director of the Native Hawaiian Hospitality Association, a private, nonprofit organization that works with the tourism industry.

“In a sense, it’s part of our quest for self-determination and restoring our sovereignty,” Ms. Arquette said in an telephone interview.

She acknowledged the challenge of starting a new foundation in the current economic downturn. “The mission of the foundation can’t be accomplished in one year or even five years,” Ms. Arquette said. “But there is a sense of urgency. Our elders — our wisdom keepers — are passing away in large numbers.”

The foundation, which will start with an annual operating budget of $500,000 and a staff of four, hopes to provide about $4 million in grants and program services over the next five years.

In establishing the new organization, the Ford Foundation reached out across the Native American world.

A leadership circle was made up of four advisers from different tribes — Mr. Echo-Hawk (Pawnee), Joy Harjo (Creek Muskogee), Jayne Fawcett (Mohegan) and Elizabeth Woody (Navajo/Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama). All five members of the foundation’s board of directors are Native Americans.

The Ford Foundation made an initial $5 million contribution to endow the new foundation permanently, with an additional $5 million promised if new partners brought $3 million more to the table. The Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians, based near Sacramento, then made a grant of $1.5 million, while announcing a challenge to other tribal nations to match its gift. Once the challenge is met, Rumsey has promised an additional $1.5 million, which would bring the tribes’ contribution to $4.5 million.

The Ford Foundation has supported similar efforts to bolster native arts and culture in the past. “The community has the need,” Ms. Richards said. “But I really feel the country has the need.”

W. Richard West Jr., the founding director emeritus of the Smithsonian’s American Indian Museum and a Ford trustee, said: “There need to be agencies and institutions that support native contemporary art and artists. For the most part, those agencies and institutions don’t exist.”

“We never separate art and life,” added Mr. West, a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. “Art is part of our everyday life.”

The foundation hopes to begin making grants at the end of this year or early next year, Mr. Echo-Hawk said.

The foundation’s goal is to establish a permanent endowment of about $20 million over the next five years or so, he said, and to increase that figure over time.

“Culture, even though it is central to our identity, is the last to be nurtured,” Mr. Echo-Hawk said. “There is a need to inject resources into the perpetuation of these profound and beautiful art forms.”

Fired Colorado Professor Is Cross-Examined in Lawsuit

By DAN FROSCH
Published: March 24, 2009

DENVER — A former University of Colorado professor spent nearly six hours defending his scholarly work on Tuesday during cross-examination in his lawsuit contending that he was fired for an essay he wrote about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

After spending much of Monday explaining his political opinions, the former professor, Ward L. Churchill, faced extensive cross-examination by the university’s lawyer, Patrick O’Rourke.

A faculty committee concluded that Mr. Churchill had plagiarized and fabricated sections of his work on the persecution of American Indians, leading to his dismissal in July 2007, the university says.

But Mr. Churchill maintains that he was forced out because of the controversial essay, in which he characterized workers in the World Trade Center as “little Eichmanns.”

In a back-and-forth that was intermittently cutting and congenial, Mr. O’Rourke delved into the details of Mr. Churchill’s work, much of which focused on the spread of smallpox among Americans Indians and assorted aspects of law affecting Indian country.

Mr. O’Rourke said Mr. Churchill’s admission that he had ghostwritten works for other scholars and occasionally cited them to support his own theories clearly violated academic standards, as the faculty committee had concluded.

“The only evidence we’ve heard from anyone other than you about this scholarly practice is from 20 people tenured at C.U., all of whom say this is wrong,” Mr. O’Rourke said.

Mr. Churchill said the practice violated no academic standard at the university. And he argued that it was acceptable for one scholar to ghostwrite for another and then cite that work in other writings as long as the second scholar embraced the original premise.

Mr. O’Rourke acknowledged that the university and Mr. Churchill had drawn extensive criticism over the essay, with Mr. Churchill facing “half a million” accusations and the university under enormous pressure to discipline him.

But even after firing Mr. Churchill, the university allowed him to continue lecturing when invited by students — proof, Mr. O’Rourke said, that his dismissal had nothing to do with limiting his First Amendment rights to free speech.

“The same university that fired you for speaking out is the same university that let you come back and talk on any subject that you wanted, whenever you were asked to,” Mr. O’Rourke said.

Mr. Churchill responded, “I don’t see how the point you’re making actually changes the situation at all.”

Mr. Churchill conceded that parts of an essay written by Prof. Fay G. Cohen of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia on Indian fishing rights appeared without permission in a book he helped edit and write. But Mr. Churchill denied that he was responsible for lifting any part of the essay, which he had worked on with Ms. Cohen.

When asked by his lawyer, David Lane, what he hoped to gain from his lawsuit, Mr. Churchill said: “I want my job back. I want the university to acknowledge that the entire process by which I was terminated from the university was fraudulent.”

Throughout the day, Mr. Churchill argued that he had done nothing wrong and that he had been railroaded by the university.

Mr. O’Rourke questioned that premise. “All of these fully tenured faculty members went along with a fraudulent and fictional report just to get you out of the university?” he asked.

Mr. Churchill said he believed that outside influences had helped seal his fate. “It’s just wrong,” he said.

Mr. O’Rourke responded, “It’s just wrong to put somebody else’s name on your work and then to cite it.”

After Mr. Churchill’s testimony, a juror submitted a question, asking him if the accusations of academic misconduct would have arisen had it not been for his essay.

“I think the easy answer on that one is no, they would not,” Mr. Churchill replied.