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About Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 7, 2011)
Page 8 September 7, 2011 Spilyay Tyrnoo, W^m Springs, Oregon Fires draw big response Sidwalter Flat area saw extensive burning. Even in high winds, the Chinook helicopter crew made water drops through the week. ELEMENTARY SCHOOL THANK YOU FIR EFIG H TER S Q 0 Y .Ï,CAMP At the main incident base at the Warm Springs industrial park by Fire Management. About 1,700 fire personnel were on the reservation in response to the fires. Some of them (right) used the new Sidwalter Fire Hall as a base station. ,» 1 » 49 IDS' Limited visibility due to smoke caused the closure of Highway 26 during the middle of last week. Spilyay staff photos. The school sign, at this time of year usually announcing the school start date, states community appreciation. News from Indian Country 2011 Indian Peace Treaty pageant may be last Eagle feathers in caskets MEDICINE LODGE, Kan. (AP) — A September tradition in southern Kansas that celebrates 300 years of the state’s history might become history itself af ter this year’s event because of a lack of money and volunteers, organizers said. The Medicine Lodge Indian Peace Treaty Pageant has drawn thousands o f people to the south central town where the pageant has been held every three to five years since it be gan in 1927. But it requires help from nearly all the town’s 2,300 resi dents and interest in participat ing has dropped in recent years. The pageant, held in a natu ral amphitheater, typically draws between 10,000 and 15,000 visi tors from Kansas and across the nation. This year’s will be the 23rd pageant. The focus is a re-enactment of the signing of an 1867 treaty that was supposed to make trav eling safer for those heading to frontier settlements in the West. It also one of the largest gath erings o f Plains Indians — 15,000 K iow a, C om anche, Arapaho, Apache and Cheyenne. “It is with great sadness that possibly this will be our last one,” said Robert Larson, one of the pageant’s board members. “It has become difficult to get community support and fi nancial assistance to continue this wonderful event, as you probably know once you lose something like this it is almost impossible for a small commu nity to get it back.” Sara Whelan, the president of the Medicine Lodge Peace T reaty P agean t, said board members voted to resign after this year’s Sept. 23-25 pageant. A community meeting will be held to determine the pageant's future. W helan said if new people volunteer to organize the festival, it will continue. “That’s what we are all hop ing for — but it has been diffi cult gettin g new people in volved,” Whelan said. The pageant focuses on 300 years of Kansas and American history — including the Spanish conquistadors who came to the area in the 1500s, frontiersmen, the Lewis and Clark expedition and Indians on horseback. It includes an 80-mile long horn cattle drive betw een Bucklin to Medicine Lodge in the days before the festival starts, a ranch rodeo, a muzzleloaders encam pm ent, a W estern art show and an Indian encamp ment. Dave Webb, assistant direc tor at the Kansas Heritage Cen ter in Dodge City, has been to the pageant several times and plans to attend this year to cel ebrate the 150th anniversary of Kansas. If the pageant ends, Webb said, “It would be the end of an era. It is a novel idea to take a lawn chair or blanket and sit out in the great outdoors and watch history happen where it hap pened.” The state has fewer major benefactors to support such events and younger people don’t have the same interests as their parents or grandparents, said Jay Price, director of the public his tory program at Wichita State University. “I think the whole idea of a pageant was a product of a par ticular time and era,” Price said. “We saw a lot of them at the turn of the 20th century. Main taining them has always been the challenge.” Navajos focus on Little Colorado River settlement CAMERON, Ariz. (AP) - The Navajo Nation, unwilling to settle its claims to the Colorado River without a pipeline to de liver much-needed water to its residents, now is focusing on rights to water from one of the river’s tributaries. Negotiators on a northern Arizona water rights settlement have removed from the deal a $515 million pipeline that would have delivered water to the Na vajo and H opi reservations. Even with the lower cost, how ever, it remains uncertain when the revised settlement might be introduced in Congress. Navajo lawmakers approved a version of the settlement last year. That version included the pipeline to send 11,000 acre-feet of Colorado River from Lake Powell to a handful of Navajo communities and about 4,000 acre-feet of water a year to the Hopi reservation. But Republican Arizona Sen. Jon Kyi, who has shepherded key A m erican Indian w ater rights deals through Congress, later said it was too costly and asked the negotiators to revise it. Kyi’s office declined to com ment on the revised settlement that negotiators sent him in June because it’s not final. But in a letter to the Arizona Depart ment of Water Resources, Kyi said the rev ised docum ent marks only the next phase of conversation and that “it is pos sible that those costs will have to be further reduced.” "Because of the estimated cost associated with a main-stem settlement, the parties pulled back and focused simply on a Little Colorado River settle ment,” said Tom Whitmer, a wa ter resource manager and tribal liaison for the state water de partm ent. “The federal government’s budget is not in the most healthy state. When- ever you start talking about settlements, it’s also about the cost of the infrastructure to get the w ater to the area it ’s needed.” Under the revised settlement, the Navajo Nation still would get any unclaimed flows from the Little Colorado River and nearly unlimited access to two aquifers beneath the reservation. It also would settle claims from the Hopi Tribe, which did not follow the Navajos’ footsteps in approving the settlement last year. “I think we’ve gotten some things in there we feel good about,” said Hopi Chairman Le Roy Shingoitewa. “Whether or not they remain is really some thing the parties all have to agree to.” Both the Navajo and Hopi are party to a case to adjudicate rights to the Little Colorado River, which has been on hold to allow for settlement discus sions. Aside from Zuni Pueblo, no other Arizona tribe has ac quired righ ts to the riv er, Whitmer said. The revised settlement was revealed in a separate federal court case earlier this month in which the Navajo Nation sued to assert its rights to the Colo rado River. The negotiators said in a status report that they did not expect any settlement to be approved by Congress until late next year. They also outlined further concerns by Kyi, including the future of the Navajo Generat ing Station that provides power to deliver water through a se ries of canals to 80 percent of the state’s population and en sures that American Indian wa ter rights settlements are met. Kyi had asked negotiators for the tribes and 30 other entities to try to lower the $800 million cost of the settlement so that he could introduce legislation well ahead of his planned retirement. o f officers were legal RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) - An American Indian group is upset that eagle feathers were buried with two Rapid City police of ficers who were killed in the line of duty. The U.S. attorney for South Dakota says no laws were broken. Native American law offic ers honored slain O fficers J. Ryan M cCandless and N ick A rm strong by putting eagle feathers in their caskets. Repre sentatives o f the Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council say it’s illegal for anyone who isn't an enrolled member o f a fed erally recognized tribe to pos sess an eagle feather. A council delegate asked Rapid City Police Chief Steve A llender to return the eagle feathers. Allender turned to U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson. Johnson said the Indian of ficers who provided the feath ers had the legal right to do so. N M exhibition highlights Native American artists SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - More than two dozen new lay ered digital images, collages and black-and-white portraits are lin ing the walls at the New Mexico Museum of Art. Native American artists from across the U.S. and Canada com peted to win a spot in the exhi bition “New Native Photogra phy, 2011.” The show runs through Oct. 2. It’s a collaboration between the museum and the Southwest ern Association of Indian Arts for its annual Indian Market. Photographers have docu mented Native American life for more than a century, but this show features native artists who are using photography to con vey their perspectives on every thing from mixed ancestry and the environment to stereotypes and tribal sovereignty. While not in the shape of tra ditional Indian art, some of the artists say their work is part of “ the u n iv ersal lan gu age o f storytelling.” Cheyenne River reservation celebrates new hospital EAGLE BUTTE, S.D. (AP) - Residents o f the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation cel ebrated the dedication of a new hospital in August. More than $80 m illion of stimulus money went into the project. The building holds tribal and federal health services and is more than three times the size of the old one. The Indian Health Service had tagged the old facility as vastly undersized and under staffed. State Tribal Relations Secre tary LeRoy LaPlante Jr. says the opening is a promise that the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe’s best days are ahead. Indian Health Service direc tor Yvette Roubideaux and Sen. Tim Johnson attended the cer emony. Johnson says it’s a proud day, but there’s much more work to do.