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About Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 17, 2006)
News from In4ian Country 3 First Native woman to run for tribal presidency W INDOW ROCK, Ariz. (AP) - For the first time, a woman will be one of two can didates facing off in the No vember general election for the chance to lead the country’s larg est American Indian reserva tion. Tens of thousands of Na vajo voters turned out at the polls Tuesday to cast their bal lots. With the results in from all but one of the tribe’s 110 chap ters, current President Joe Shirleyjr. finished first, followed by Lynda Lovejoy of Crownpoint, N.M., and Frank Dayish Jr., who is currently the tribe’s vice president. Shirley received 27.9 percent of the vote in unofficial results, followed by Lovejoy at 22.37 percent and Dayish at 17.26 percent. The results must be certified by tribal elections officials within the next 30 days, but Lovejoy said she had a feeling she would be one of the top finishers in the presidential primary. “The results show people want a change in the way our government is functioning,” said Lovejoy, who is a member of the New Mexico Public Regula tion Commission. With Shirley and Dayish gen erating the most attention in the race, election observers hadn’t predicted that Lovejoy would separate the two. “They thought she would do good but not as good as she’s doing,” said Edison Wauneka, director of the Navajo Elections Administration. Former tribal council delegate Ernest Harry Begay of Rock Point, Ariz., finished fourth and Vern Lee, a heavy diesel me chanic from Fruitland, N.M., was fifth. The others candidates were far behind after collecting few votes in many chapters. The results announced to the crowd late Tuesday at the Win dow Rock Sports Center were unofficial, but that didn’t stop those who were wearing yellow Lovejoy T-shirts from chanting “Joe’s got to go.” Meanwhile, Shirley’s camp repeated “Four more years.” Shirley said he was surprised by the results. “I don’t think anybody could have predicted it,” he said, re ferring to Lovejoy making it past the primary. Lovejoy said her compassion and honesty helped her reach Navajo voters along with her belief “about responsibility and accountability for the people.” Tribal officials had predicted that more than half of the 96,582 eligible Navajos would vote. The results showed the turnout was nearly 48 percent. Mary S. Johnson, 87, of Records from missions chronicle Indian life in California SAN MARINO, Calif. (AP) — Researchers at the Hunting- ton Library unveiled an immense data bank that chronicles the his tory and challenges faced by more than 100,000 Indians who lived in California’s Spanish mis sions during the 18th and 19th centuries. The records, made public Monday, include data from handwritten records of bap tisms, marriages and deaths at 21 Catholic missions and two other sites between 1769 and 1850. The information reveals an extraordinarily high mortality rate as Indians became exposed to European diseases such as measles, influenza and smallpox. Also detailed are the hazards of living in the early West, where many people died in earthquakes and from snake bites, bear attacks and influenza. Researchers behind the Early California Population Project hope it will provide a look at the lives of the Indians and their Spanish counterparts that has proven largely elusive until now. “It’s a history that emerges from a deep native past and a deep Spanish past and shows how the two came together for better or worse,” said the project’s general editor, historian Steven W Hackel. The project, which cost $650,000, focused on records of Indians who lived in the coastal regions from what is now San Diego to Marin County. Although there are some gaps, the Franciscan priests were good record-keepers. They as signed numbers to each baptism and carefully noted parents and godparents, village of origin, ethnic background and trades. A nthony M orales, tribal chairman and chief of the Gabrieleno/Tongva Band of Mission Indians of San Gabriel, said he thought some people would search for evidence of brutality in the mission system, while others would try to dis cover what happened to their ancestors after they were con verted to Catholicism. In all, statistics were gleaned on an estimated 120,000 people, including some with incomplete records and some mentioned just once as a parent. Included are about 101,000 baptisms, 28,000 marriages and 71,000 burials at all 21 missions and from i the Los Angeles Plaza Church and the Santa Barbara Presidio. The boy was one of six teenagers - three boys, three girls — who had gone to float the river, came across others playing on the rope swing and stopped to use it. The boy was found in about eight feet of water, roughly 50 feet downstream from where he was last seen, Combs said. He was the sev enth drowning victim recov ered from the Deschutes in just over a year _ three in the Bend area, three rafters on the lower Deschutes and a man on the Warm Springs Indian Res ervation. — ------------------------------- August 17, 2006 Great Falls Native gets Emmy nomination GREAT FALLS (AP) - A former Great Falls resident has been nominated for an Emmy for work casting ac tors in last year’s mini-series “Into the West.” Rene Haynes, a Burbank- based casting director, was nominated for her work on the Turner Television Net work 12-hour project, which was produced by TNT, Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks Television. Haynes, one of three pri mary casting directors on the project, said she was thrilled by the nomination. “We all worked really, re ally hard on that project,” she told the Great Falls Tribune. Spielberg was directly in volved, with final say on ma jor casting roles. Haynes has been a cast ing director for more than a decade, specializing in casting American Indians in Holly wood films, television mini series and other productions. “She’s worked very hard,” said her mother, Jane Haynes of Great Falls. Rene Haynes got her start in the 1980s when “War Party” producers hired her to visit Montana’s reservations to find actors for that film. Haynes earlier worked in the Montana production office of “The Untouchables.” Since then, Haynes has cast American Indians in films including “Dances With Wolves,” which won the 1990 Best Picture Oscar; a series of TN T films including “Lakota W oman,” “G eronim o” and “Crazy Horse;” and last year’s well- regarded “The New World,” directed by Terrence Malick. For “The New World,” Haynes auditioned more than 4,000 girls for the cov eted role of Pocahontas. She chose Q ’Orianka Kilcher, who went on to win the Na tional Board of Review’s 2005 award for “Best Break through Performance by an Actress.” Haynes will be among those competing for Emmy Awards in Creative Arts, to be handed out at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles Aug. 19. She is Qne of six nominated for an Emmy for casting in a mini-series, movie or special. Primetime Emmys will be given away to actors and others during a live TV broadcast on Sunday, Aug. 27. The nominations were an nounced last month. PacifiCorps could agree to removing five dams Teenager drowns in Deschutes BEND (AP) - A 15-year-old Gresham boy drowned after swinging into the Deschutes River from a rope, authorities said. Divers recovered the body late Wednesday. The boy’s name was being withheld until relatives were notified. Witnesses said the teenager had been swinging from a rope that was placed in a tree, about 15 to 20 feet above the riverbank, according to Sgt. Marvin Combs of the county’s search and rescue unit. The boy rose to the surface after hitting the water face-first. He then sank, Combs said. Black Rock, cast her ballot mid- afternoon at the Fort Defiance chapter house. She wouldn’t re veal who she voted for but said she hoped neither Shirley nor Dayish wins. “There’s no help at the local chapter houses,” Johnson said of the current administration. “It’s almost like the government is lacking in the local communi ties.” Tents were set up outside some voting places early Tues day and fry bread and other re freshments were offered to vot ers, some of whom traveled dozens of miles to cast ballots. Shirley’s campaign stationed supporters at each chapter houses to outline the president’s platform. The incumbent has touted economic development as a solution to poverty and unemployment on the reserva tion, which extends into parts of New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. But he said, “Our demise is that there’s really nothing to en tice big business to come to Navajo land. Even small busi nesses have a hard time because of lack of infrastructure.” Lovejoy spent weeks on the campaign trail, and Dayish held rallies before the primary to drum up support. Dayish, a former Marine and businessman who also is sup portive of economic develop ment on the reservation, said that to move the Navajo Nation forward, federal funding needs to be supplemented by big busi nesses that can generate eco nomic activity. “The two com bined, I strongly believe, will be adequate to start addressing some of the basic needs we have on the res ervation,” he said. Those basic needs such as electricity, telephone service and water, are what some of the other candidates say the current administration has ignored. “My people are in dire need of water,” Lee said. “They have to go to border towns and haul water back to their residents to feed their animals and to have drinking water. There’s nothing really happening in that area to improve the quality of life.” The other candidates on Tuesday’s ballot were Calvin H. Tsosie Sr., a medicine man from Yah-Ta-Hey, N.M.; Harrison Todacheene of Shiprock, N.M., who ran for Navajo president in 2002; former Arizona state Sen. James Henderson Jr. of Window Rock; Hoskie Bryant, a pastor from Sheepsprings, N.M.; and Wilbur Nelson Jr., an Albuquerque-based business man from Window Rock. Jon C. Reeves of Kirtland, N.M., dropped out of the race, but his name remained on the ballot. Spily^y Tymoo --- - .................- GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — The new president of PacifiCorp’s power generat ing division says the utility could agree to removing five dams from the Klamath River to help restore salmon if customers don’t have to pay more for electricity. “We have heard the tribes’ concerns,” PacifiCorp En ergy President Bill Fehrman said in a statement posted Wednesday on the utility’s Web site. “We are not op posed to dam removal or other settlement opportuni ties as long as our customers are not harmed and our prop erty rights are respected.” The company said the statement reflected its posi tion all along in talks over a new 50-year license to oper ate the dams, but Indian tribes characterized it as an encouraging move toward restoring salmon to 350 miles of rivers blocked by the dams for nearly 100 years. “The company is behav ing differently under the new management,” Craig Tucker, coordinator of the dam re moval campaign for the Karuk Tribe, said from Port land. “Certainly when we first started, they said there was no way they were going to consider dam removal. This is the first time they’ve released a media statement with us saying, ‘Dam removal is OK by us.’ They just don’t want to stick it to (their) ratepayers.” PacifiCorp posted the state m ent at the request of the Yurok, Karuk, Klamath and other tribes, in conjunction with the rally they were holding in Portland to bring attention to their campaign to remove the dams. “By working with us on this visionary restoration effort, PacifiCorp could become a model for corporate responsi bility,” Allen Foreman, chairman of the Klamath Tribes, said in a statement. The tribes will be looking to the states of Oregon and Cali fornia to develop a package of grants and tax incentives to help PacifiCorp remove the dams, Tucker said. The cost of that package will become more clear as the relicensing process continues and PacifiCorp sees what it will have to spend to continue op erating the dams, he added. PacifiCorp created PacifiCorp Energy and hired Fehrm an from a N ebraska power cooperative as part of a reorganization after being taken over this year by MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., based in Des Moines, Iowa, and con trolled by billionaire Warren Buffett. Fehrman has taken an active role in settlement talks, and spo ken with tribal leaders, since becoming president, said com pany spokesman Dave Kvamme. * “We would far prefer reach ing a settlement agreeable to all parties than to work through the standard licensing process to its conclusion because we think there’s more room for a creative outcome through settlement than there is through standard licensing process,” Kvamme said. Once the third-largest pro ducer of salmon on the West Coast, the Klamath River has produced only a fraction of its historic runs since the five dams — the Keno, J.C. Boyle, Copco 1 and 2, and Iron Gate — were built between 1917 and 1962. Spring chinook are a remnant of former runs. Fall chinook are struggling. And coho salmon are listed as a threatened species. To protect the Klamath’s strug- Work could resume at Lewis and Clark Park ASTORIA (AP) - The new Station Camp park on the Washington shores of the Columbia River was to be a showcase attraction of the bi state Lewis and Clark Na tional Historic Park. Work had begun there a year ago, with great fanfare. But barely a week later, it screeched to a halt. Workers had uncovered human bones, remains that were later linked to a historic Chinook Indian village that once occupied the site. The human remains were reburied where they were found, and the $5.6 million project has sat in limbo ever since. But representatives from the various agencies involved --------- - — ------------------ continue to meet in an effort to keep the project alive, and one official is even optimistic that construction could begin as early as next summer. Dave Nicandri, executive di rector of the Washington State Historical Society, said he thinks his agency can reach an agree ment with the Chinook tribe on a plan that protects the site of the remains while allowing the park project to proceed, if on a smaller scale. The park was designed to commemorate the spot where Lewis and Clark’s party declared their westward journey complete and took its historic vote on where to spend the winter. The Station Camp site, about two miles west of the Astoria Bridge, was among several lo- cations added when Fort Clatsop National Memorial became the new, expanded Lewis and Clark N ational Historical Park in 2004. The project was planned in conjunction with a realignment of a section of U.S. Highway 101 away from the river, free ing up nine acres of waterfront property for the park. But in January, Chinook tribal members voted overwhelmingly to oppose any plan that routed the highway over the burial site. So engineers with the Wash ington State D epartm ent of Transportation have a new plan for the highway realignment, shifting the proposed roadway a few feet from the original de sign to move it away from the location of the tribal remains. gling fall runs of wild chinook, federal fisheries managers this year cut off most of the com mercial salmon fishing along 700 miles of the California and Or egon coastline. The Bush admin istration is considering an eco nomic disaster declaration to make possible millions of dollars in aid for salmon fishermen. The dams produce about 150 megawatts, enough to power about 75,000 homes in Califor nia. The power represents 1.7 percent of PacifiCorp’s total output for 1.6 million custom ers in six Western states. The Federal Energy Regula tory Commission is expected to issue an environmental impact statement later this year on PacifiCorp’s application for a new license to operate the dams. As part of the licensing pro cess, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has said it wants to see fish ladders built over all the dams and fish screens installed on the turbines so salmon can return to the upper Klamath Basin. In the past that would have been m andatory, but changes this year to federal en ergy law give PacifiCorp a chance to challenge it. An ad ministrative law judge will hear the case starting Aug. 21. New bar owner says all is fine STURGIS, S.D. (AP) - The man behind a new campground and concert area for bikers attending the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally says everything has gone smoothly so far. Jay Allen’s cam p ground has angered American Indians who consider nearby Bear Butte to be sacred. O pponents of in creased commercial de velopment in the area around the m ountain complain the husde and bustle of the annual rally are wrecking the spiritual solitude and solemnity of Bear Butte.
