Image provided by: The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs; Warm Springs, OR
About Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 13, 2005)
t Spilyay Tytnoo, Warm SpKngs, Oregon October 13, 2005 Page 7 Indian seat belt use below national average (AP) - Barely half of the nation's American Indian motor ists buckle up on the road, a fig ure that falls well below the na tional average. About 55 percent wear scat belts, and the use rate varies widely among tribes, according to the study Thursday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs. The national average is 82 percent. Motor vehicle injuries are the leading cause of death for American Indians in the conti nental United States, the govern ment said, and about three fourths of those killed in crashes were not wearing seat belts. "We must find a way to help Native American leaders bridge large gaps in safety belt use and, ultimately, save lives," said Jacqueline Glassman, NHTSA's deputy administrator. The study, the first of its kind, found that belt use ranged from 8.8 percent to 84.8 per cent among sampled reserva tions. Researchers did not re lease belt use rates for individual reservations surveyed. Among 560 federally recog nized tribes, 180 reservations can set and enforce their own safety belt laws, the government said. Reservations with primary seat belt laws, which allow po lice to stop motorists who fail to use seat belts, had a 68 per cent use rate. The rate was 53.2 percent on reservations with secondary laws, in which police can issue a seat belt violation only if a driver is stopped for another infraction. Only about a quarter of motorists were belted on reser vations with no seat belt laws. Women were more likely to wear seat belts, with 60.3 per cent using the belts compared with 52.3 percent for men. Dennis King, the health and human services coordinator for the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, said his tribe has tried to stress the importance of scat belts through road signs and by airing a public safety radio pro gram on Tuesday mornings. Unemployment is 80 percent on the reservation, so a $50 ticket for not wearing a seat belt leaves its mark. "It's a hefty fine on the reservation," King said. Data was collected from 16 tribal reservations between Sep tember 2004 and November 2004 and in February 2005 on one reservation. Researchers sought to con duct part of the study in the Navajo Nation, which spans parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, but the tribe declined to participate. Despite the lack of data from the nation's larg est reservation, Nl ITSA spokes man Rae Tyson said the agency believes the data is representa tive of belt use among Ameri can Indians. I 11 J j I KK$W UZ $W 5rfi swt Madras OK. 9771 r 1T Erasing 'squaw names proceeds slowly (AP) - After five years of work, only about 10 of the places in Oregon containing the word "squaw" have been changed, with far more to go. The number of changed names could triple this month when the Oregon Geographic Names Board meets to consider new names for 18 more land features. The word, derived from the Algonquin word for "woman," is now considered a derogatory way to refer to an American Indian woman - and Oregon tribes have pushed to have the word changed. Under a state law passed in 2001, all of the roughly 150 peaks, rivers, buttes, meadows and other land formations in Oregon containing the woxd weife meant to be rechristenedi-- by this year. But even if all 18 of the most recent recommendations are accepted by the Oregon board and then approved by a national board, less than 20 percent of the names will have been changed by the law's deadline. One of the most prominent is Squaw Creek, which flows through the town of Sisters -in land ceded by the Confeder ated Tribes of Warm Springs to white settlers. The US. Forest Service has proposed to call the creek "Whychus," a word derived from the Sahaptin language, meaning "the place we cross the water." Sahaptin is one of the three languages spoken by the Warm Springs tribes. In 1855, a government sur veyor recorded.'Whychus',' as . fh? . jfeek's .original m&iZS The state board is expected to approve Whychus and the other new names, then forward them to the U.S. Board on Geo graphic Names for figal ap proval, said Lewis L McArthur, a member of the Oregon Geo graphic Names Board and au thor of "Oregon Geographic Names." He blames the slow progress on the fact that the tribes them selves could not come to an agreement on the word to re place squaw and also on the fact that lawmakers set aside no money for the work. "The Legislature says it should be changed, and that is reasonable enough," he said, but "they can't expect this stuff to happen overnight." Oregon is the sixth state to pass ft law banning the word ... from geographical feawres. f Juniper is gobbling up Oregon wilderness (AP) - Seventy-five years ago, about 1.5 million acres of Oregon's wilderness was covered in Western juniper. Now it has grown to 6.5 million acres, or about 10 percent of the state's surface - and the plant is spreading fast. A new survey by the U.S. Forest Service shows that juni per is taking over grassland, alarming biologists who see it as a threat to native habitats. "Some juniper is a good thing," said Rick Miller, a pro fessor at Oregon State Univer sity. "But you can have too much of a good thing." Junipers send their roots deep beneath the surface, soaking up water before it reaches any other plants. "Eventually as they dominate, then you lose the shrubs, the grass and then you get bare ground," Miller said. Water runs off, gullying the landscape. Too little food or open range remains to support much wildlife. Ranchers talk of springs run ning dry when junipers take root. "After you cut it, springs start running," said Steve Lent, a former fire management officer with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. "If you burn it, water starts showing up every where. All of a sudden you see grass growing" Usually, the presence of hu mans puts strain on the natural world, causing species like the salmon and the spotted owl to veer toward extinction. But in the case of the juniper, people helped it spread by fighting wild fires that otherwise would have controlled juniper overgrowth. Scientists also say that grow ing levels of carbon dioxide in the air may be helping junipers spread, acting as an invisible fer tilizer, said Miller. The recent Forest Service survey found that many smaller junipers had been overlooked in earlier surveys, which relied on aerial photos. About 800,000 acres showing only scattered ju nipers turned out to be thick forest, said Dave Azuma, who led the project. The recent survey classified areas covered with juniper as either a forest, with dense growth, or a savanna, contain ing smaller and fewer junipers. The survey detected about 3.3 million acres of juniper for est and 3.2 million acres of sa vanna, which together cover more than 10 percent of the state's total area. e: teOutrat Your bargain Connection 5 15, 717 S.W. 5th St Madras Or Just in at the Outpost! sabreM Gaps $5.00 V 17 2(0) off all tools! http:www.theoutpoststore.fcom RVArl!(.nI.iiv-.(CWiilli(ji(ni!r.NCilir: J EAGLE-TEGM m Eagle-Tech Systems now offers cost effective on-site business PC and Network Services in the Warm Springs and Madras area. 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