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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.
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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.
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