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About Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 9, 2011)
r i Spi lygy Tym February 9, 2011 '.oyote News, est. 1976 Acquisition Dept./Serials Knight Library 1299 University of Oregon Eugene OR 97403-1205 U.S. Postage PRSRTSTD Warm Springs, OR 97761 Voi. 36, N o. 0 3 February - A ’A’mi-Ushátch - Winter- Anm 5 0 cents Temporary casino possible at Plaza Cobell notices delivered Tribal Council meeting this week with KNT board By Duran Bobb Spilyay Tymoo By Duran Bobb Spilyay Tymoo This week the Kah-Nee-Ta board of directors is planning to recommend to Tribal Council a two-pronged approach to dealing with the Cascade Locks Ca sino. The recommendation is to build a temporary casino on either side of the Plaza on Highway 26, while continuing to actively pursue federal approval of the Cascade Locks project. The temporary casino would help generate additional revenue to assist in the Cascade Locks effort and support tribal government operations. The facility would be located well outside the known flood-plain, on trib- ally-owned land. K ah -N ee-T a bo ard m em bers Deepak Sehgal, Carlos Smith, Elizabeth Purse, Priscilla Frank, and Governor Vic Atiyeh met last week when a mo tion was made “to continue working towards a permanent casino at Cascade Locks.” This would mean continue working with the Department of Interior to ap prove the Cascade Locks Casino. Duran Bobb graphic using Google Earth. This graphic shows the recommended possible locations (in red) of a temporary casino by the Plaza. “This may require a period of time,” the board agreed. “We need to gener ate additional financing to continue to work on the project and to fund much needed renovation at Kah-Nee-Ta Re sort... “We could build this temporary ca sino, and we could be generating rev enue to somehow recover some of the money spent so far on the Cascade Locks casino.” Meanwhile, the temporary casino, Plaza, museum, and a possible restau rant would all function together to at tract customers from the highway. Once the Cascade Locks land is brought into trust, and the Bridge of the Gods Casino opens, the temporary casino could easily be converted into a grocery store or other busi ness, board members agreed. The recom m endation follows Tribal C ouncil’s action late last month to explore the possibility of establishing a tem porary casino along H ighway 26. The court-ordered process of noti fying individual class members of their right to participate in the Cobell Indian Trust Settlement is underway. Notices will be sent to an estimated 500,000 affected class members. This is a necessary step in the pro cess that precedes the court’s formal review and approval of the settlement. Notices began arriving in Warm Springs mail boxes last week, leaving some confused as to what steps should be completed next. You may be part of this settlement if you are an IIM account holder, have ownership interest in trust or restricted status, or are the heir to a deceased IIM account holder or landowner. The court-ordered legal notice from the Indian Trust Settlement contains the actual claim forms for class members, heirs, trust land holders and deceased individuals. The notice also contains an information packet which explains the settlement in detail. The historic class action settlement concerns Individual Indian Money ac counts and land held in trust by the federal government. See COBELL on page 11 Teleco fiber-optic cable going in A work crew this month installed some of the fiber optic cable that will be used as part of the Warm Springs Telecommunications Company system. The cable will be underground in some areas, but mostly will be carried • on an above-ground line. The main office of the company will be at the industrial park, which will be the ter minus of the fiber optic line. The adm inistration building and Kah-Nee-Ta will be the first to have service communication service pro vided by the Warm Springs Telecom munications Company, which is tribally owned and funded through a federal grant and loan. Marsha Spellman, company market ing and regulatory director, provided the following “Teleco Corner” update regarding the Warm Springs Telecom munications Company: There are two simple answers to this question. First, we are building a state of the art network that will combine fiber optic cable and fixed wireless technologies. This new network will enable us to offer services that Qwest cannot presently provide. For instance, we will offer voice mail and other new calling features that can be controlled through your laptop computer. Second, we are comm itted to providing service to everyone on the reservation. Presently, many people do not have access to basic telephone service. Eventually, this new network will be built out to serve everyone. Building a phone company takes a long time, but we are committed to providing service to all. One new service that everyone w ill be able to purchase is high speed Internet, or “broadband.” Teleco corner We are often asked what are the main benefits to the tribes of the new Warm Springs Telephone Company? diversity of schools. W arm S p rin gs E lem en tary School, for instance, is unique, serv ing almost exclusively Native Ameri can children of the reservation. Warm Springs residents tend to have a unique kind of speech pat tern that the children grow up hear ing. This can be a barrier when it comes to a standardized test. There may be words or ideas in a standardized test question that are unfamiliar to the student. As an ex ample, a math test question asks: See WSE on page 11 See MOU on page 11 See W.S. Teleco on 10 Unique circumstances at elementary school By Dave McMechan Spilyay Tymoo Anyone fam iliar with the Warm Springs Elementary School knows it is a great school. The students are well behaved, and motivated to study and learn. The staff is excellent, starting with principal Dawn Smith. Which is why it was hard to under stand the recent talk about the school “failing” and Smith possibly stepping down as principal. li ii i The confusing circumstances begin with the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which set performance standards that apply to all schools. Students at all the schools take a standardized test, and schools that do not meet certain standards after three years are eligible for grant money. However, before awarding the grant money, the law requires the school dis trict to choose one of four options: Fire the principal; replace half of the teachers; close the school; or hire a private company to run the school. The problem at Warm Springs El t A » ementary School is that none of the options would improve the school. In fact, any one of them would be very detrimental, if not disastrous. So the plan for now is to apply for the School Improvement Grant (SIG) money while not choosing any of the four options: An explanation to the SIG grant administrators of the circum stances at Warm Springs Elementary School could be enough for the district to receive the SIG money. As Smith explained, the No Child Left Behind test standards apply to all schools in the country, despite the great I' -4 By Terri Harber Spilyay Tymoo The Memorandum of Understand ing among the Warm Springs Tribes, the Jefferson County 509-J school dis trict and the Bureau of Indian Affairs is being updated. It was last revised in 1985 and was created more than 50 years ago. This rewrite is expected to be much more extensive than the last one, said Superintendent Rick Molitor. “It was drafted when the BIA still operated the boarding school,” he said. A nd changes in the fed eral government’s approach to education before 1985 weren’t nearly as signifi cant as they were after that, such as creation o f No Child Left Behind, Molitor also said. T he idea has been to “start from ground one,” he said of creating the new MOU. “The old MOU uses words, such as ‘assimilate,’ that don’t apply anymore,” Molitor said. “That’s not what’s needed. But there’s a value to understanding.” Ensuring that students being cultur ally educated on the reservation likely will be highlighted within the new docu ment because of its importance. Working on updating the document is a group o f educators in clu d in g M olitor; Dawn Sm ith, principal o f Warm Springs Elementary School; J.R Patt, a member of the Tribal Council; Brad Holliday, school board chair; Laurie Danzuka, school board vice chair (and a tribal member); Bureau of Indian Affairs representatives, and le gal counsel. They will take information from others who specialize in various areas of education as they work on the new document. Dave McMechan/Spilyay Workers install cable near the industrial park Redefining educational relationships ( ¥/ ¡é) A
