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News from Indian Country Pqge13 Spilyay Tymoo May 26, 2005 Montana's CROW AGF.NCY, Mont. (AP) - Montana's governor be came a member of the Crow Inilian Tribe Thursday. Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who has publicly pursued a friend ship with Montana's American Indian tribes, was adopted into the Crow nation in front of hundreds of people who gave him a standing ovation. "It's a great day in Crow country," said tribal chairman Carl Venne. Venne said Schweitzer is mak ing good on campaign promises to welcome tribal members into his I Ielena office. "No more will you have to Sitting Bull's MOBRIDGE,S.D.(AP) High on a bluff across the Missouri River from this South Dakota town sits a bust of Sitting Bull, marking the famous American Indian leader's burial site. The memorial is in sorry shape - the nose is. chipped, perhaps from potshots or souvenir seekers, as is the in scription that reads, "Tatanka Iyotake, Sitting Bull, 1831 1890." Broken beer bottles are strewn about the monument's concrete base. But that's about to change, according to two South Da kota men who recently pur chased the site and plan to clean it up and provide 24 hour security by summer. "This is a site that deserves national and international at tention. It is being used as a dumping grounds," said Rhett Albers, who bought the 40-acre property in April with Bryan Defender. "We've "al Indians protest against being dropped from rolls TEMECULA, Calif. (AP) - More than 100 American Indians ousted from their casino-owning tribes joined hands last Saturday to protest what they called money grabs by tribal leaders through disenrollment. It was the first such large scale organized gathering for people who contend they have been excised from tribal rolls by leaders seeking a larger share of gambling profits. As tribal gambling grows into a f 17 billion industry, dis putes over disenrollment have flared nationwide. More than 1,000 people are fight ing their ouster in California alone. "There needs to be a heal ing in Indian country and we're going to start it," said John Gomez Jr., who was re moved from the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians, which has a casino near this city about 85 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Gomez was joined at a public park by former mem bers of 16 tribes from Cali fornia, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma and New York. They planned an other meeting in Nevada and said they are asking Congress to hold hearings on disenrollments. Many noted the growing political power and formidable finances of the tribes that ousted them. Bob Foreman, 68, was ousted from the Redding Rancheria tribe in Northern California in January 2004, along with 65 members of his family. He said tribal leaders refused to reinstate him even governor inducted into walk through the back door," Venne said he was told at the Capitol. "Come through the front door." The Democratic governor vowed to work closely with the tribe, especially in the develop ment of wind, coal and gas en ergy resources on the southeast ern Montana reservation. "We are embarking on a new time for the Crow people," said Schweitzer, who traded his boots for mocassins and other gifts and then danced and played with a drum group. "Thank you for inviting mc into your family," he said. Schweitzer arrived at the gravesite to be ways thought that something needed to be done." Sitting Bull rose to promi nence as a leader of Indian re sistance against the US. Army in the 1 870s, which culminated in the 1876 Batde of Little Big horn. He and some of his Sioux followers fled to Canada after the battle, but he returned after five years and surrendered. He was killed in 1890 on the Stand ing Rock Indian Reservation while being arrested by Indian police. Albers and Defender bought the site from James Heupel, who said his father traveled to Fort Yates, N.D., in 1953 and helped retrieve Sitting Bull's remains for reburial on land he owned on the Standing Rock reservation. For decades, a dispute has raged in the Dakotas over those remains. South Dakotans insist he was exhumed and reburied by Heupel's group at the request of Sitting Bull's descendants. North Dakotans maintain that after he exhumed the bodies of his grandmother and mother to collect DNA evi dence. "I don't think I could for give or forget," said Foreman, who had served several terms as tribal chairman and had received about $2,500 a month in casino revenues before he was ousted. "Sov ereignty - it's given tribes the power to do anything they want. It's greed." Vicky Schenandoah, 43, a former member of the Oneida Nation of New York, led a prayer in which the crowd held hands in a circle, representing the continuity of life. "We could have peace. We will all be happy in our minds," she said in the Oneida language. It has been 10 years since she was denied tribal status after protesting what she called the tribe's secret deal to build a casino. Following the protest, she said she was labeled a terrorist and arson ist. "This is not about money for me. It's about integrity," Schenandoah said. She filed a federal lawsuit against the Oneida Nation in 1996, but judges have thrown it out, rul ing they lacked jurisdiction. Former members of the Pechanga Band have had more success in state court in California. A Superior Court judge last year ruled that their lawsuit can proceed and that courts have author ity over legal matters that arise from tribal disputes. The case is currendy before an appellate court tribe's headquarters town with other state and federal officials who gave more than $13 mil lion to the Crow tribe. The payments include $9 million as part of i settlement over water rights and coal taxes reached in 1999. Schweitzer also signed a bill for a tobacco tax on the reservation that will provide an estimated $986,000 for Iitde Big Horn College next year. He said he stands by his promises to work with tribes "government to government" and that the front door to the Capitol is "welcome to the first Montanans." cleaned up the expedition missed some or all of Sitting Bull's bones and that his remains still lie in Fort Yates. 'The standard North Dakota tourism posi tion is that indeed there was an attempt to steal Sitting Bull's bones and take them to South Dakota, but they missed. They got the wrong bones," said Tracy Potter of the Fort Abraham Lincoln Foundation in North Dakota. However, according to the definitive source on the reburial, Robb DeWall's book "The Saga of Situng Bull's Bones," the Heupel group was meticulous in sifting the soil from the grave site for the bones. And a subsequent attempt to find bones the ex pedidon might have missed turned up nothing. Albers said he believes Sit ting Bull's remains are under neath the monument. But ei ther way, he said, "Sitting Bull deserves to be honored." Civic Plaza PHOENIX (AP) - Jerome Sangster introduced his office with a wave of his hand. 'That's my desk over there," he said, pointing to the steel skel eton rising at the Phoenix Civic Plaza construction site. Sangster, an ironworker, is as comfortable chatting while standing on the solid concrete floor as he is walking across a narrow steel beam 150 feet above the ground. At 5 feet 10 and 165 pounds, the 24-year-old Navajo looks as sturdy as the steel girders he has helped raise across the horizon. The path that brought him to this proud workplace declara tion is one that took root more than a century ago. Ironwork has been a calling to young Native Americans like Sangster, and his younger brother Edmund, for generations. The brothers were drawn in by their ironworking uncles, who introduced them to members at the union hall in Albuquerque. "They'd come back from work, they'd say 'I built this building,' "Jerome said. Native Americans account for a third of the 66 ironwork ers building Phoenix's new downtown convention center. Most of them are Navajo, but others represent the Mohawk, Sioux and Apache tribes. There is a saying, "the Iroquois built the East Coast, the Navajo built the West Coast," said Jaynie Parrish, an American Indian Affairs liaison at Arizona State University. The Mohawks of Canada and New York are legendary for walking steel and erecting such monuments as the Empire State and Chrysler buildings and Rockefeller Center. Mohawks helped build the World Trade Center's twin tow ers, and in the fall of 2001, a Crow tribe Last Thursday's event in cluded a parade, songs, colorful dancing and a ceremony in which Schweitzer was adopted into the family of Joe and Rena Pickett, whose late son Emerson was a friend of Schweitzer. During the ceremony, Schweitzer was given the Crow name "My Friend." "When you come to Crow, any home is yours," said Robert "Corky" Old I lorn, announcer at the event. "That is Crow cus tom." Earlier in the week, the Crow tribe signed a lease agreement with a company to look for oil and gas on the reservation. Oklahoma tribe now says professor's membership based on genealogy BOULDER, Colo. (AP) -The Oklahoma Indian tribe that said an embattled University of Colorado professor could not prove any Cherokee ancestry now says his associated member ship was based pardy on genea logical information provided by him. Ward Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies who could lose his job over allega tions that he lied about his an cestry and plagiarized others' work, said Thursday that the tribe's statement should put the issue to rest. In a statement on its Web site, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians said Churchill had genealogical infor mation regarding his "alleged ancestry." In addition, based on "his willingness to assist the UKB in promoting the tribe and its causes, he was awarded an 'As ironworkers younger generation of Mohawks returned to help clear the twisted metal from the site. Their history with ironwork dates back to the 1880s when Iroquois men were hired to build a railroad bridge in ex change for permission to include a piece of that bridge on their reservation. From that point on, generations of Mohawk iron workers followed one another to the urban areas to earn a good wage at a trade that held a sense of pride. "We were so good at climb ing around," said Richard Glazer-Danay, a retired Mohawk ironworker. "From mams 30 off 9 GCue wGuoIg fiiOButih We now have Speed Queen washers & dryers m Museum construction set OKLAI IOMA Cm (AP) - Construction of a $135 mil lion American Indian Cultural Center in Oklahoma City is scheduled to begin Nov. 1. "We're going to break ground on this cultural center. We've set a date," Chickasaw Nation Gov. Bill Anoatubby, chair man of the Native American Cultural and Educational Au thority, announced Wednesday evening. Volesky wants to lead BIA SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) - A Huron County Commission member is asking President Bush to appoint him as director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Ron Volesky, a lawyer and former state lawmaker, wrote a let ter to the White I louse Friday saying he's proud of his heritage as a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and would be hon ored to serve in the position. Volesky said in the letter that he is a realist and understands he's a Democrat asking a Republican presi dent for a political appointment. sociate Membership' as an honor," according to the state ment. "I lowcver, Mr. Churchill may possess eligibility status for Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, since he claims 116 Cherokee." I lowever, the tribe said it had no legal record of Churchill being a federally recognized American Indian. The tribe said associate memberships, which afford no voting rights or ben efits, were issued from 1991 to 1994 during former Chief John Ross' tenure. "Receiving an Associate Membership is akin to receiv ing an honorary doctorate, and then claiming to have received eight years worth of university education," the statement said. In an interview with The As sociated Press, Churchill said the tribe has never alleged fraud or that his membership was re scinded. He said the tribe's state follow proud tradition there on, we did ironwork. "You grow up with it, it's good pay, you go to the union hall with your dad. It's a family tradition, a tribal tradition. "Everybody docs it." As a young ironworker, Glazer-Danay, now 63, helped raise the Vcrrazano-Narrows Bridge that connects Brooklyn and Staten Island in New York City. Two of his uncles were among the ironworkers photo graphed in the early 1930s lunching atop a beam, with the city far below, during construc tion of Rockefeller Center. That famous photograph re u f l r SO mmrni U r Ralph's TV & 475-2578 ment clearly confirms that ge nealogy was used. "Just leave us alone," Churchill said, adding that the confusion has arisen from re peated inquiries that has over whelmed the tribe's small staff. Churchill said he planned to file a grievance against the uni versity for questioning his an cestry. Churchill touched off a firestorm when he wrote an es say comparing some World Trade Center victims to Adolf Eichmann, one of the Nazis who orchestrated the Holocaust. CU leaders said he couldn't be fired over the statements be cause of First Amendment pro tections, but they ordered a fac ulty panel to review the allega tions of plagiarism and that he falsely claimed to be an Indian to give his research more credibility. mains an iconic image for iron workers across the country. "I heard all those stories that we're not afraid of heights," Glazer-Danay said, who is now American Indian studies chair at California State University at Long Beach. "I was more afraid of my uncles than I was of heights. They said I was going to work -1 went to work." What started with Glazer Danay's tribe in Canada and New York spread among Ameri can Indians from Boston to Philadelphia to Chicago and then to the West as a way to earn a good wage and as a source of pride. m v of May Open regular hours during remodeling 9-6 Mon-Frl 9-3 Sat. Furniture 525S.E.5thSt. Madras OR 97741