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.

Native Voices at the Autry’s World Premiere of Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light

Native Voices at the Autry’s World Premiere of
Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light by Joy Harjo

March 12 - 29, 2009

From musician, poet, and now playwright Joy Harjo (Mvskoke) comes a deeply compelling personal journey of struggle, displacement, self-discovery, and ultimately healing. Invoking spoken word, storytelling, and song, Harjo reflects on life stories, the tales and traditions of her people, and takes a few turns blowing a mean jazz saxophone. An allegorical work of tremendous power, Wings demonstrates how theater and art can bring life full circle.

Performances:

(Preview Shows — March 10 & 11)

Thursdays – March 12, 19, and 26 -- 8pm
Fridays – March 13, 20, and 27 – 8 pm
Saturdays – March 14, 21, and 28 – 2 and 8 pm
Sundays – March 15, 22, and 29 – 2 pm

Editorial - Justice for American Indians - NYTimes.com

Published: February 22, 2009
The federal government has a long history of cheating American Indians, and not all of this dirty dealing is in the distant past. On Monday, the Supreme Court hears arguments in a suit by the Navajo, who lost millions of dollars’ worth of coal royalties because the government helped a coal company underpay for their coal. A lower court ruled for the Navajo Nation. The Supreme Court should affirm that well-reasoned decision.

The Navajo’s huge reservation spreads across parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. The United States holds the lands in trust and manages their large coal deposits. Peabody Coal had a lease to mine on that land. The terms provided that in 1984, the interior secretary could make a reasonable adjustment in the royalty rates paid to the tribe.

That year the department increased the royalty rate to 20 percent of gross proceeds. After Peabody protested, the Reagan administration’s interior secretary met with a Peabody lobbyist, without informing the Navajo. The secretary then signed a memo blocking the increase and called for the Navajo to negotiate with Peabody. The tribe, already under severe economic pressure, ended up agreeing to a rate of just 12.5 percent. The Navajo eventually sued, arguing that the government violated its duty to look out for their interests, and that it cost them as much as $600 million in royalties.

They lost in the Supreme Court on one set of legal theories, but are now relying on other laws. The Washington-based United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled for the Navajo. In a unanimous ruling, the three-judge panel concluded that several federal laws impose the sort of fiduciary duty the Indians assert.

The appeals court also made clear that the government did not live up to this duty. The ruling found that the Interior Department met “secretly with parties having interests adverse to” the Navajo, adopted those parties’ “desired course of action in lieu of action favorable to” the Navajo, and misled the Navajo about its actions.

The government’s behavior was “indefensible,” according to four former interior secretaries, who submitted a friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court. The Obama administration, which has inherited the Bush administration’s position in the case, should not continue to stand up for these misdeeds.

Crow Tribal Chairman Carl Venne Dies at Age 62

HARDIN, Mont. (AP) -- Crow Tribal Chairman Carl Venne, praised by President Barack Obama as a leader who engaged in a ''fervent quest for a better life for his people,'' has died. He was 62.

Venne was found dead Sunday in his sister's home, according to the Big Horn County Sheriff's Office. He apparently died in his sleep of natural causes, the office said in a statement.

''I was honored to have worked with Chairman Venne, a strong tribal leader, who implored us to uphold treaties and honor Native ancestors,'' Obama said in a statement released by the White House.

Venne greeted Obama last summer during a campaign stop in Crow Agency. The Crow adopted Obama as a member of the Black Eagle family. Last month, Obama watched Venne lead Crow horsemen during the inaugural parade in Washington.

Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester of Montana issued statements praising Venne as a man dedicated to his people. Baucus said Venne was a progressive leader who ''always pushed the envelope when fighting for better health care and economic prosperity'' on the Crow reservation.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer said Venne was one of the great leaders of the Crow Nation.

Venne, a Vietnam veteran and former counselor at Little Big Horn Community College, became tribal chairman in 2002. The Crow Tribe has about 11,000 members.

Throughout his chairmanship, he supported programs against use of methamphetamine and encouraged a healthful way of life on the reservation. He was instrumental in the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee's selection of Crow Agency as the place for a 2007 hearing on Indian health care.>

Mystery of Ancient Pueblo Jars Is Solved

By MICHAEL HAEDERLE
Published: February 3, 2009
ALBUQUERQUE — For years Patricia Crown puzzled over the cylindrical clay jars found in the ruins at Chaco Canyon, the great complex of multistory masonry dwellings set amid the arid mesas of northwestern New Mexico. They were utterly unlike other pots and pitchers she had seen.

Some scholars believed that Chaco’s inhabitants, ancestors of the modern Pueblo people of the Southwest, had stretched skins across the cylinders and used them for drums, while others thought they held sacred objects.

But the answer is simpler, though no less intriguing, Ms. Crown asserts in a paper published Tuesday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: the jars were used for drinking liquid chocolate. Her findings offer the first proof of chocolate use in North America north of the Mexican border.

How did the ancient Pueblos come to have cacao beans in the desert, more than 1,200 miles from the nearest cacao trees? Ms. Crown, a University of New Mexico anthropologist, noted that maize, beans and corn spread to the Southwest after being domesticated in southern Mexico. Earlier excavations at Pueblo Bonito, the largest structure in the Chaco complex, had found scarlet macaws and other imported items.

Dorie Reents-Budet, a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and a Smithsonian Institution research associate specializing in Mayan cylinder vases, said that a sophisticated Mesoamerican trade network extended to Chaco in the north and as far south as Ecuador and Colombia.

The Mayan vessels, decorated with court scenes and hieroglyphics, were used to ceremonially consume chocolate at sumptuous feasts, Ms. Reents-Budet said. An expensive luxury, the cacao beans were fermented, roasted and ground up, then mixed with water and flavorings before being whipped into froth. It made sense to present the beverage in a special vessel, she said.

“It’s as if you were having a dinner party and serving Champagne,” said Ms. Reents-Budet. “You serve Champagne in really nice glasses.”

After an exchange with Ms. Reents-Budet in October 2007 about the resemblances between the Chacoan and Mayan earthenware, Ms. Crown said she thought about having the Chacoan cylinders checked for cacao residue.

Ms. Crown turned to W. Jeffrey Hurst, a senior bioanalytical chemist for the Hershey Company, the giant chocolate maker, whose bosses have been allowing him to test Mesoamerican ceramics for cacao for two decades. In 2002, he co-published a paper in Nature showing that early Maya were using cacao by 600 B.C., pushing back the earliest chemical evidence for their cacao use by 1,000 years.

Ms. Crown submitted five fragmentary shards to Mr. Hurst’s laboratory, which subjected the samples to high performance liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry testing, which confirmed the presence of theobromine — a bio marker for cacao — in three shards.

“The results were unequivocal,” said Mr. Hurst, who wrote the new paper with Ms. Crown.

The shards were among 200,000 artifacts excavated from trash heaps next to the 800-room Pueblo Bonito. They date from 1000 to 1125, when Chaco civilization was at its height.

An earlier expedition had uncovered 111 cylinder jars beneath a room in Pueblo Bonito. The jars, of native clay, are about 10 inches high with black geometric designs over a white background, said Ms. Crown, an expert on Pueblo ceramics.

Ms. Crown speculated that the Chacoans might well have followed Mayan ritualized chocolate drinking practices, given the similarity of the drinking vessels.

“It’s likely that this was not something everybody consumed,” she said. “It’s likely it was intended for only this one segment of society.”

She next plans to look for implements that might have been used in the ritual preparation of the beverage and determine whether it was enjoyed elsewhere in the Southwest. For now, she is gratified to have added to the store of knowledge about Chaco’s long-ago residents.

“Most of what we do in archaeology is interpretive, and the interpretations can change,” she said. “It’s rare that you get to find anything this definite and answer a question. It felt great.”

Bolivians Vote on a New Constitution

MOROCOLLO, Bolivia (AP) -- Bolivian Indians on Sunday threw their support behind a new constitution aimed at increasing their strength while allowing leftist President Evo Morales a shot at staying in power through 2014.

Voters were expected to easily approve the measure in a country whose Indian majority has been long oppressed.

But opposition from Bolivia's white and mestizo populations and disputes over the document's wording foreshadowed yet more political turmoil in a divided nation where tensions over race and class have recently turned deadly.

Bolivia's first Indian president, Morales says the charter will ''decolonize'' South America's poorest country by recovering indigenous values lost under centuries of oppression dating back to the Spanish conquest.

The proposed document, for example, would create a new Congress with seats reserved for Bolivia's smaller indigenous groups and eliminates any mention of The Roman Catholic Church, instead recognizing and honoring the Pachamama, an Andean earth deity.

''Here, we're all voting yes,'' said Pascual Choque, 64, an Aymara Indian who left home on foot before dawn to vote in the tiny town of Morocollo, on the shores of Lake Titicaca.

''There's not a single 'no' here. No mestizos, no white faces -- all 'yes,''' he said, drawing a chuckle from fellow Aymaras lined up in a schoolyard to cast their ballots.

Opposition forces worry the president's proposal ignores the country's growing urban population, which mixes both Indian blood and tradition with a new Western identity.

''The constitution's idea is to make the indigenous no longer invisible,'' said Bolivian historian Fernando Cajias, himself a mestizo. ''But it creates a whole new invisible world'' of mixed-heritage Bolivians.

The proposed charter calls for a general election in December in which Morales could run for a second, consecutive five-year term. The current constitution permits two terms, but not consecutive.

One of the key features of the proposed constitution is a provision granting autonomy for 36 indigenous ''nations'' and several opposition-controlled eastern states. But both are given a vaguely defined ''equal rank'' that fails to resolve their rival claims over Bolivia's fertile eastern lowlands and open land that sits atop Bolivia's natural gas reserves. The development of those reserves drives much of the country's economy.

With an eye to redistributing territory in the region, the constitution also would limit future land holdings to either 12,000 or 24,000 acres (5,000 or 10,000 hectares), depending which voters choose. Current landholders are exempt from the cap -- a nod to the east's powerful cattle and soy industries, which fiercely oppose the proposal.

Morales, an Aymara Indian, has married his mission to improve life for Bolivia's indigenous with what ally and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez calls ''21st century socialism.''

Elected in 2005 on a promise to nationalize Bolivia's natural gas industry, Morales has increased the state's presence throughout the economy and expanded benefits for the poor.

Morales also booted Bolivia's U.S. ambassador and several federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents after claiming they had conspired against his government last year. The U.S. government has denied the allegations.

Morales' reforms remain widely popular, winning him 67 percent support in an August recall election. But his biggest project nearly failed in 2006, when an assembly convened to rewrite the constitution broke apart along largely racial lines.

The constitutional dispute has erupted in violence on several occasions: Three college students were killed in anti-government riots in 2007, and 13 mostly indigenous Morales supporters were killed in a remote jungle clash in September when rioters seized government buildings to prevent a draft constitution from going to a vote.

In an October deal, Congress approved holding the referendum only after Morales agreed to seek one more term instead of two.

Return of the Natives - Timothy Egan Blog

January 14, 2009, 10:00 PM
Return of the Natives
SALT RIVER INDIAN RESERVATION, Ariz. — Nearly 50 years ago, a Pima native took a Greyhound bus from this sun-roasted redoubt of Indian land to the winter chill of Washington, D.C.,to witness the first day of a young American president.

“When he came home, my father was so excited because John Kennedy stood up for him when he walked by him in the parade,” said Diane Enos. “The president stood up for an Indian! He couldn’t stop talking about that.”

Next week, Diane Enos will make the same trip, along with hundreds of other American Indians who hope that Barack Obama’s inauguration will bring the wind of possiblity to Indian Country.

In less than a week’s time, the Great White Father will be black. Amidst the euphoria and stirring of fresh ideas, there remains some suspicion.

“He’s still a politician and I’m still an Indian,” said Sherman Alexie, the National Book Award-winning writer, a Spokane and Coeur d’Alene native.

“They all look like treaty-makers to me,” said Alexie, paraphrasing the native musician, John Trudell. “I guess that’s the puzzling and I suppose lovely thing about Indians’ love of Obama. Many have suspended their natural suspicion of politicians for him.”

So often, they are invisible, these first Americans, or frozen in iconic images of the past. We see them in Curtis prints and Remington poses, or hear something attributed to them in New Age spiritual circles. Cool, Indians.

And then a new casino opens off the interstate or a pottery exhibit is unveiled, and we realize: ah yes, they’re with us still.

With Obama’s rise, Indians have allowed themselves to dream — some, even to fall in love. He was adopted into an Indian family in Montana last May, given the name “Barack Black Eagle” by the Crow Nation.

When asked about immigration concerns in New Mexico, Obama pointed to a handful of elderly natives in the front row of a high school gym.

“He said, ‘The only real native people in this country are sitting right in front of me,’ ” recalled Joe Garcia, who is president of the National Congress of American Indians. “You should have heard the applause.”

The epic struggle for natives has been to avoid getting washed away by the flood of dominant culture, where Indians make up less than 2 percent of more than 300 million Americans.

That, and the physical toll that losing this big land has taken on them. Indians die younger than most other Americans, suffer from higher rates of suicide, alcoholism, debilitating dietary problems.

The Pimas, who hold to this 52,000-acre homeland amidst the predatory sprawl of 4.2 million people here in the Phoenix metro area, have one of the world’s highest rates of type 2 diabetes — a consequence of the rough adjustment from their world to one handed down by Europeans.

Presidents come and go. They promise to uphold treaty rights and appoint somebody to oversee Indian affairs who understands that history did not end when Custer fell to his hubris. It’s ho-hum, usually, with a mournful shrug on the reservations.

But on the most recent Election Day, on the Navajo Rez, which spills into three states and is the size of West Virginia, high school kids held up Obama signs at intersections in the town of Window Rock, and cheered themselves hoarse as returns came in.

“I feel very elated,” said Joe Shirley, Jr., president of the Navajo Nation. “All of Navajo Country came out strong for Obama.”

Shirley says nearly half of Navajo families heat their homes with wood they cut themselves, drink water hauled into their homes in barrels and light their rooms with kerosene lamps.

Talk about stimulus: a billion dollars, one-seven-hundredth of what taxpayers are giving the financial institutions that caused the Crash of 2008, could bring much of Navajo land into the modern age, Shirley said.

But beyond the desire for urgent, fundamental infrastructure help, Indians look to Obama as a powerful narrative. People who were subjugated, with near-genocidal brutality, feel a kinship with people who were first brought here in chains, even though Obama is an immigrant’s son.

“There’s a bond there,” said Shirley. “Birds of a feather flock together. We try to teach that there are no impossibilities to Navajo people. His election speaks to the young especially.”

Cynicism is the poison of so many young people. In Indian Country, where despair is often woven into the landscape, it takes hold even earlier.

So when Diane Enos, who is president of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, arrives in the festive capital next week she will have a teenage tribal leader with her.

“Obama’s life has been a journey to find identity,” she said. “That’s the Indian stuggle. And it starts with children.”

On Inauguration Day, the capital will host the likes of Ludacris and Chaka Khan, corporate titans and political giants, and balls too numerous to count.

Among the sea of Americans ushering in the president will be a small contingent of people who have clung to this continent longer than any other. And for once — if only for a January moment — they will feel like they belong.

Violet Taq Se Blu (Anderson) Hilbert - Upper Skagit Elder

July 24, 1918-Dec. 19, 2008

Violet was preceded in death by parents, Louis Jimmy and Charlie Anderson; husband, Henry Don Hilbert; sons, Denny Woodcock and Ron Hilbert-Coy.
She is survived by daughter, Lois Schluter and her husband, Walter; grandson, Jay Samson and wife, Bedelia; granddaughter, Jill La Pointe and husband, John; great-grandchildren, Sasha, Beau, Shain and Stacy La Pointe, Jermaine Wade, Damas and Lillian Samson; great-great-grandchildren, Oryian, Skyler and Shawn La Pointe. She is also survived by countless friends, colleagues and adopted relations. Taq Se Blu was a world renowned story-teller and language teacher.
A wake will be held at 6 p.m., Friday, December 26, 2008, at the Upper Skagit Gym, and the Funeral Service will be at 10 a.m., Saturday, December 27, 2008, at the Upper Skagit Gym. Arrangements are under the care of Hawthorne Funeral Home, 1825 E College Way, Mount Vernon.

Ex-Tribal Head in Mass. To Plead Guilty to Fraud - NYTimes.com

BOSTON (AP) -- The former chairman of a Massachusetts tribe agreed to plead guilty to violating campaign finance laws while working with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the U.S. attorney's office said Monday.

Glenn Marshall, 59, of Mashpee, agreed to plead guilty to five counts including making illegal campaign contributions to members of Congress, embezzling tribal funds, filing false tax returns and fraudulently receiving Social Security disability benefits.

He is former chairman of the Cape Cod-based Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, members of which attended what is historically considered the first Thanksgiving. It sought and received federal recognition in 2007 and had been buying land and pushing plans to build a casino.

Among other charges, investigators alleged Marshall used individuals including members of his family and council members as ''straw contributors'' to make political contributions. They said he then reimbursed himself and them with money from an account funded by a company hoping for a stake in any casino the tribe might build.

Federal law prohibits corporations, including the tribal council, from making contributions to federal campaigns.

He also was accused of misusing $380,000 for personal expenses including groceries, vacations, tuition for his daughter, restaurant tabs, home repairs and jewelry.

Marshall stepped down in 2007, after it became public that he was a convicted rapist and had lied about his military past.

A call to Marshall's lawyer, Robert Craven, was not immediately returned Monday. Tribal Council spokeswoman Gayle Andrews said the tribe was ''deeply saddened'' by the news.

''For the past year and a half, the Tribal leadership has worked successfully to get the government up and running and will continue to work on behalf of its 1,600 members for benefits including health, education and other renumerations granted federally recognized tribes,'' Andrews said in a written statement.

Investigators said a Michigan company called AtMashpee LLC agreed in 1999 to underwrite the tribe's efforts at federal recognition and provided millions of dollars for operating and lobbying expenses. In return, the company hoped for a stake in any future casino.

AtMashpee also helped cover legal costs, including a lawsuit the tribe filed against the Department of the Interior to pressure it to act on the tribe's petition.

In 2003, Marshall turned to Abramoff, who allegedly told them the tribe needed to make big political contributions to certain members of Congress.

A political consultant and others hired by the tribe said they preferred to be paid directly by the tribal council rather than AtMashpee. To make the payments, Marshall allegedly arranged to have AtMashpee deposit money into the account of the Mashpee Fisherman's Association, a defunct corporation in which Marshall and another tribal officer were signatories.

Investigators said that between 2003 and 2007, AtMashpee paid about $4 million into the account and that Marshall failed to report the funds on the tribal council's federal tax returns.

Investigators said that the tribe hired lobbyists who consulted with Abramoff's team and suggested which state and federal officials should receive contributions -- and that Marshall used the Fisherman's Association's fund to make the donations.

Investigators said Marshall asked the ''straw contributors'' to make contributions and then promised to reimburse them. Between 2003 and 2007, Marshall reimbursed straw contributors a total of nearly $50,000 in political donations using the fund, investigators said.

Marshall faces 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for four of the charges and a 20-year prison sentence and a $1 million fine for the wire fraud charge.

Indian Chief Leads Fight to Keep Selling Cigarettes - NYTimes.com

By COREY KILGANNON
Published: December 13, 2008

MASTIC, N.Y. — Down by the lapping waters of Great South Bay, the Indian chief stared up at the trees swaying in the wind. Then he squinted: Was that a surveillance camera on top of that utility pole?


Probably not, but Harry Wallace, chief of the Unkechaug Nation, says he has good reason to be watching his back — and his tribe’s — closely.

He and several other owners of shops that sell cigarettes on the tiny Poospatuck reservation on the South Shore of Long Island, where the Unkechaugs are based, have been sued by the City of New York. The city claims that this Indian enclave — the closest reservation to New York City — has become a “tax evasion haven” and a drain on the city’s coffers.

The Bloomberg administration says the city and the state lose more than $1 billion a year in tax revenue because of what it calls bootleg cigarettes distributed on Indian reservations in New York. Of that amount, the administration contends, $195 million represents the city’s share, and officials blame the Unkechaug Nation reservation for most of that.

New York City officials say millions of cartons of untaxed cigarettes are sold every year by Poospatuck retailers to bootleggers who smuggle them into the city to resell for about $5 a pack, not the $8 or $9 charged by New York retailers who pay the state and city taxes of $4.25 a pack.

As part of their legal challenge, city lawyers have asked a federal judge to block the smoke shops from selling untaxed cigarettes to non-Indians without collecting state and city taxes from them.

Answering these claims is the Unkechaug chief, Mr. Wallace, 55, who was born in Queens, went to Dartmouth and was a lawyer in private practice in Manhattan before moving to the reservation and opening the Poospatuck smoke shop.

But he has been outspoken in defending his tribe, arguing that cigarette sales are the only viable economic engine on the 55 acres of sovereign territory. He calls the city’s suit an attack on legitimate Indian livelihood, and the result of elected officials feeling the economic pinch and blaming budget woes on the smallest reservation in the state.

“They’re picking on us because they think we’re this little tribe with no means to defend ourselves,” he said. “Bloomberg needs a scapegoat, so he blames us for the city’s deficit, instead of criticizing the financial markets.”

Lawyers for the smoke shop owners have requested a dismissal of the suit, arguing that the court does not have jurisdiction in sovereign territory, Mr. Wallace said. He is not a defendant in the suit, though he was named in a similar suit that was filed in 2006 by the owner of the Gristedes supermarket chain.

Though Mr. Wallace grew up in the Bayside and Little Neck sections of Queens, his family nurtured his Indian identity, taking him often to visit his uncles on the reservation. He chose Dartmouth, he said, because it had as its founding mission the education of Indians, and he helped establish a group on campus called Native Americans at Dartmouth.

Later, at New York Law School in Manhattan, he helped found the Indian Law Committee and wrote a thesis on Indian land claims. In the 1980s, he worked as a lawyer concentrating on cases involving landlord-tenant disputes, real estate, personal injury and American Indian discrimination issues.

Mr. Wallace said he grew more interested in Indian issues after marrying Margo Thunderbird, a daughter of Chief Thunderbird of the Southampton-based Shinnecock Nation. The couple have two daughters. In 1991, he moved to a plot of land belonging to his mother on the Poospatuck reservation, nestled on the banks of the Mastic River. “It changed my life because I knew I was going to get into issues affecting the reservation,” he said.

Mr. Wallace opened the reservation’s first full-service smoke shop, to “show the community that we could develop an economy separate and distinct from the state and that it could be done the right way.”

Other reservation residents followed his lead and also opened shops, transforming cigarette sales into a booming business as state and local taxes have driven up the cost to smokers. Of the 450 Poospatuck tribe members, 275 live on the reservation, a network of narrow streets with small houses, tidy modular homes and ramshackle trailers.


On a recent weekday, the reservation looked like a bustling cigarette shopping outlet. Signs for smoke shops were posted everywhere, and discounted cartons were sold from drive-through windows. An employee held a huge sign and directed a line of traffic to parking spots.

According to state law, nontribe members who buy cigarettes on reservations are supposed to report and pay the taxes on those purchases. Legislators have been trying for years to force tribal smoke shops to collect taxes on sales to non-Indians, but the tribes have refused, citing their status as sovereign nations.

The State Department of Taxation and Finance says the Poospatuck cigarette trade grew to 11.3 million cartons in 2007, from 406,000 cartons in 1996.

Mr. Wallace calls the estimates by the city and state drastically inflated.

Mr. Wallace, who said the number of smoke shops on the reservation has increased to 14 from 6 in the past couple of years, said he could not provide specific sales and revenue figures for the shops because he does not monitor each store’s accounting.

Mr. Wallace said his own sales of untaxed cigarettes had declined in recent years, but would not provide specific numbers.

Eric Proshansky, the city’s lead lawyer on the lawsuit, said the city’s estimates were “absolutely solid.”

Mr. Wallace said he and the tribal council are working to establish ground rules to curb abuses, such as barring phone or Internet cigarette sales and prohibiting residents of the reservation from selling cigarettes unless they have a store. He has also proposed setting sales limits and monitoring sales volume by working with the cigarette wholesalers that sell to the reservation.

But in the end, he says, tribal leaders lack strong enforcement powers over the smoke shops, partly because they do not have their own police department.

While he has called the Suffolk County Police to help with lawbreakers on the reservation in the past, he said he is reluctant to do so now because of heightened tensions between the tribe and the county. “We can’t ask them help us enforce our council decisions, because now all they care about is tobacco and taxation — they just want to come in and shut everything down,” he said.

As he spoke, Mr. Wallace moved aside a candle he lights to mask the smell of cigarettes. Though he himself is a smoker perpetually trying to quit, he explained that cigarettes are helping to breathe economic life back into his tribe. The tribal leaders require cigarette retailers to pay into a fund that goes to improve housing for tribal members and to provide money for college.

Mr. Wallace calls the challenges to cigarette sales the latest in the historical shortchanging of his tribe and its attempts at economic self-sufficiency. Though hundreds of acres of land has been taken from the Unkechaug Nation, he said, it has managed to retain a foothold because of longstanding political and cultural ties and strong trading and intertribal relationships.

As other commercial enterprises have fallen away, about the only things tribe members have left are their sovereignty and the right to conduct tax-free business, he said. “For Bloomberg, this is about his budget deficit, but for us, this is survival,” he said. “This is sovereign territory, and they are not going to collect a nickel without our consent.”

Audio: Tito Naranjo on the Pueblo world view — High Country News

Tito Naranjo, a lifelong member of the Santa Clara Pueblo, is a writer, hunting guide, sculptor, social worker, community activist and college teacher. He holds a bachelor's degree from New Mexico Highlands University in sociology and psychology, a master’s degree in social work from the University of Utah, and has served on the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center’s Native American Advisory Group. You can listen to an excerpt from the audio interview, and read a transcript of the full interview.

(You may hear the interview by following the link on the title to the original article.)

High Country News: When did you first become aware of archaeology?

Tito Naranjo: I grew up in Santa Clara Pueblo until my late teen years. We were dry-farming behind Puje Pueblo and the Pajarito Plateau, about seven miles north of Los Alamos as the crow flies. Santa Clara claims all the ruins around Puje, including Garcia Canyon, across from Santa Clara on the plateau, across the creek, and so I was always aware that was where our people lived. The planting fields were passed on from generation to generation, ever since our ancestors lived at Puje Pueblo. … I was always aware that those were the ruins of our grandfathers, great-great-grandfathers, the people who came before us. The whole landscape on the Pajarito Plateau is still known by the names that were given by the people who preceded us. …. I didn’t call it archaeology, but I knew that the whole place belonged to us. Because I knew the names of the mountains, the names of the landscape and canyons and so on, before I knew the word “archaeology.” The spirits of our ancestors still dwell there, even to this day. After I got an education, I learned about archaeology, and I was able to use both. I was able to use the Tewa perception of those places, including places clear up and down the Rio Grande, up to Mesa Verde and the Four Corners area. Because the stories of where we came from go right up there to the Four Corners area, I was aware we came from that place before we arrived on the Pajarito Plateau.

HCN: You chose to live outside the boundaries of tribal land. Why?

TN: The tribe, when I was growing up, had no economy, except for tribal jobs. And the Bureau of Indian Affairs during that time was funding all the tribal programs, and it was so limited that one couldn’t get a job on the reservation. So we were eligible for jobs off the reservation. … And so, you know, it was a natural pull. There was always a pull off the reservation because of the wage economy, and always a pull to go back to the reservation. So I was doing both – I was working off the reservation for the money it brought in to support a family, and also able to go back and participate in the life of the Pueblo, ceremonies and religious activities and so on.

HCN: About four years ago, you wrote an essay about the Taos Pueblo deer dance, and as a result you were banned from Taos Pueblo – they felt you had exposed private, sacred rites. What happened with that? Are you still banned?

TN: Well, I was there last Thursday; I drove into Taos Pueblo. Since I was banned in December of 2003, administrations have changed, and younger people have taken over. Many of the elders have died who initiated the action – they don’t have the same feelings toward me as those people about my age had when they banished me.

HCN: How do you walk that line between honoring what’s sacred to your people and illuminating that art and culture for other people?

TN: Taos Pueblo has a different viewpoint than my own pueblo. I lived in Taos Pueblo, I lived around Taos Pueblo and spent some 54 years in Taos Pueblo, on the reservation, back in their mountains. I participated in their ceremonies, and I was accepted by the people there until I wrote the story of the Taos Pueblo deer dance. … And what I wrote about was what hundreds of thousands of people have seen happening in the Taos Pueblo deer dance, except that I understand it much deeper than outsiders do. What I wrote about was primarily secular, it wasn’t of a sacred nature. There’s very much more to the Taos Pueblo deer dance than what I wrote. ... I do realize that those people who believe in the power of the word, the power of the song and the power of the ceremony, are correct in their belief, because that’s how it’s been for hundreds and thousands of years. So I respect the people for their beliefs. … My father-in-law was the leader of one of the kivas, and so I understood from him that they considered everything that was written -- the written word -- killed the power of the spoken word. It relegates it to death. … The Bureau of Indian Affairs forbid Taos Pueblo people to practice their ceremonies, just like the Spaniards did to all of the pueblos along the Rio Grande. In 1921, the commissioner strode into Taos Pueblo and said, you can’t do a dance until we let you, until you ask permission and we give that permission. Well, that doesn’t work when you’re practicing religion. So that was one of the turning points in history, when people began to hide everything. Prior to that, the Deer Dance was painted and drawn, and numbers of sculptures done of the Deer Dance.

HCN: How do you think this will play out ultimately? Do you think the tribe will open up further, or do you think white people can ever understand the culture and history and appreciate it?

TN: Non-Indian, non-natives of a particular pueblo are not able to understand the rules and integrated culture and the history of any particular pueblo. That is impossible, because they don’t speak the language fluently, and they were also never raised from childhood in the pueblos. In order to know the worldview of a pueblo, you have to have lived within the context of (it). And each of the pueblos have different dialects. … Archaeologists and anthropologists cannot understand the worldview unless they grew up in the context of the pueblo. That’s absolutely clear in my mind.

HCN: How do you think the tensions between Native Americans and archaeologists and anthropologists will play out?

TN: In some cases, there’s no tension. I’ve visited Mesa Verde, and especially when the tour leaders are Native Americans, they allow Native Americans into the kiva, to pray in the kiva, because there’s a belief that the spirits of the people are still there in that particular place. And so we give them thanks for allowing us to visit that place. Some Navajo tour guides are also sensitive to that. Pueblo tour guides are very sensitive to that. Non-Indians aren’t so sensitive, and they won’t let you go to places that give the whole place meaning. So sometimes there’s tension and sometimes there’s no tension. I served on the board of Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, and Crow Canyon has a Native American Advisory Board, and Canyons of the Ancients advisory group, which has now done its work, were also good about inviting Native Americans onto the advisory board. When one knows about the methods they are using, it’s clear that there’s an underlying tension. … They never consider those places that are sacred to us, and bones on the surface of the ground that they never take care of -- they have no respect for that. I’ve seen it. All they want to know is, what’s the meaning of this? What’s the meaning of that? Native Americans have a lot to offer to both anthropologists and archaeologists, and archaeologists and anthropologists seemingly -- some do -- think that they always know better, because they’re literate in the anthropological and archaeological method, and they consider that research, while we don’t think in the same terms. There’s always that tension there, the underlying tension. For example, the Native American Advisory Board at Crow Canyon does not want sacred places to be excavated. But archaeology is coming up with new means (such as) radiology, that they can draw the outlines of a pueblo or outlines of an arroyo, whatever it might be. Noninvasive methods are quite acceptable.

HCN: So maybe that’s finally how it will be resolved, through new technologies that will allow noninvasive ways of discovery.

TN: If archaeologists and anthropologists give up their high-and-mighty status of doing scientific research and begin to understand that we’re not dead, you know? We haven’t gone away, we’re still here. I talk the same language. I could talk to my ancestors, although I’m sure the language has changed over the years -- many hundreds of thousands of years -- basically, the language is still the same. That’s very clear, in the example of the Hopi Tewa, when they come to visit their original homeland, over here in what they call the White Striped Place, where they lived, their sacred homeland. Well, now it’s owned by non-Indians. All the villages throughout the area belong to BLM.
Americans sometimes are just totally impervious to the knowledge of the Pueblo people, who still know of the history of their people, because they’ve kept their beliefs and their stories alive over the centuries. A lot of anthropologists and archaeologists disregard the knowledge of Pueblo people.

HCN: Thank you very much for speaking with us.

This transcript of the audio interview with Tito Naranjo was slightly edited for clarity.