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About Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current | View Entire Issue (June 15, 2011)
More News from Indian Country Pgge 11 Spilydy Tymoo june 15, 2011 Scientist fights for research at Idaho caves ±1UJJ grant IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) — A few miles west of Idaho Falls lie three caves and an ar chaeological legacy that Suzann Henrikson can’t let go. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management archaeologist has dedicated years of her life to convincing others that digging in the caves for clues o f the Snake River Plain’s earliest in habitants is worth the money. “It’s too important to ignore,” she said. “We need to investi gate human history because we keep making the same mistakes over and over again.” Henrikson and her peers say the Wasden caves, named for the first white owner of the land, make up the oldest archaeologi cal site in Idaho. Excavators have found bones from all types of animals in the caves, as small as mice and large as a mammoth, as well as prehistoric spear and arrow points and fragments of pottery. Henrikson suspects Native American tribes - the ances tors o f to d a y ’s S h o sh o n e- Bannock Tribes - sometimes used the caves to trap and kill large game such as bison and mammoths as many as 11,000 years ago. As the theory goes, hunters would drive herds of bison from the area north of the caves up a slope and into the gaping holes formed in col lapsed lava tubes. The holes w eren ’t deep enough to kill many of the ani mals, so they didn't qualify as the kind of buffalo jumps other plains tribes used to harvest game. But they did trap large num bers of the bison in a confined area where the hunters - could easily dispatch them. Henrikson said bison kills at the Wasden site could date back as far as 9,000 years. If those kills were the result of inten tional drives by hunters, they'd mark the oldest such site in North America, she said. Of course, that’s just theory at this point. No serious exca vation has taken place at the Wasden site since the 1970s, and archaeologists need to examine the caves more thoroughly to confirm - or debunk - their theories. To dig, they need money — about $10,000 per cu bic yard, Henrikson said. She said excavators will need about $100,000 just to stabi lize the W asden site against erosion. Henrikson would love noth ing more than to develop the dig, to finally unlock its mysteries. But she knows that’s an uphill battle in a time when federal, state and local governments are slashing every budget item they can find. “Money is, basically, almost nonexistent in universities nowa days,” she said. Henrikson said she’s trying to rebuild momentum for develop ing the Wasden dig, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. She said her most recent push is to encourage the site’s listing as a national landmark, a designation that would free up some money to restart excavation. She knows it won’t be easy to attract enough money for a full excavation of the site, but she doesn’t plan on giving up. “W hat’s amazing about out here is I could work until I’m 90 and I would never run out of stuff to research,” she said o f the Snake R iver P lain. “T h ere’s just too much out here.” Archives show birth of Code Talkers FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) - You can tell a lot about a per son by the papers they leave behind. Case in point: The papers in the Philip Johnston Collection in the Special Collections & Ar chives at NAU's Cline Library. Johnston is best known as the man who pushed successfully for the adoption of the Navajo language for secure m ilitary communications in the hands o f the Navajo Code Talkers during World War II. The three acid-free, card board boxes in the library hold a variety of paper materials, in cluding tissue-thin, hand-typed letters from the 1920s, '30s and '40s, yellowing copies of maga zine articles, colorful maps, tick ets and brochures from Mexico, transcripts o f oral histories, Code Talker reunion programs and thick m an u scrip ts o f Johnston's writings, including various articles on the South west. A gap in correspondence from 1942 through '45 may reflect the top-secret nature of the Navajo Code Talkers and their work. However, some of the more yellowing letters, sent from Los Angeles, are from just after the war and deal with Johnston's efforts to help the N avajo people. “If you have been on the Navajo reservation you will re alize how terribly unprovided for the area is in terms of roads and p u b lic services g en erally,” Johnston w rote in a Nov. 4, 1946, letter to William Brophy, the com m issioner o f Indian Affairs, Department of the In terior. The Johnston Collection pro- Delay on NY cigarette tax BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) - New York state is under another court order preventing it from taxing cigarettes sold by Seneca Indian Nation retailers to the general public at reservation stores. The western New York tribe is the biggest seller of cigarettes among the state’s Indian Na tions. The appellate division of state Supreme Court granted its request for a temporary restrain ing order Thursday. The order bars collection of the $4.35-per-pack tax on Sen eca N ation-bound cigarettes until June 20. vides a fascinating view into the mind of a man whose brilliant code concept undoubtedly aided the Allied victory in the war. “Here is someone with obvi ous regional and local interest,” commented Sean Evans, an ar chivist at Cline. “W hen you think historically about anything, there is so m uch stu ff that people just throw away because they don't think it's important.” Online through Cline Library, there are also more than 2,000 black and white photographs that Johnston took, many of them with N ative A m erican themes, including scouting trips on the reservation. There is also a 1940 photo of the old El Pueblo Motor Inn in Flagstaff, which Johnston built in 1937, working with contrac tor R.E. Goble.* D escrib ed in a 1936 Coconino Sun article as an “auto court,” the court was described as h avin g “a five-room caretaker's hom e and three double camp cottages. They will be of Spanish design, stuccoed outside and plastered inside.” Johnston had moved back to northern Arizona with his wife Bernice, and they had decided to make this location their per manent home. They purchased a site 3 miles east of downtown Flagstaff for the motel. They also built a private resi dence behind the motel. Today, the facility, now called the El Pueblo Motel, still stands on east Route 66 and is the old est motel remaining along Route 66 outside of the downtown area. It was from the motel that Johnston engineered the recruit ment of Navajos to serve in the Marines as Code Talkers. The property itself is eligible for listing on the National Reg ister of Historic Places as a na tional landmark because it ex emplifies the motor court build ing type and it is associated with an individual who made signifi cant contributions to American and world history. “The preservation of heri tage resources is how we con nect to and learn from the past, and importantly, it’s how we implement the Regional Plan and preserve the character of our cqm m unity,” said K arl Eberhard, historic preservation officer for the city of Flagstaff. The El Pueblo Motor Inn is one of 27 remaining motels, out of 50 in 1960, from Chicago to Los Angeles that contribute to the National Historic District of Route 66. Johnston was born on Sept. 17, 1892, in Topeka, Kan., and died on Sept. 11, 1978, in San Diego, Calif. His love of things Native American began in his child hood. The son of a m issionary, Johnston came in 1896 with his family to Flagstaff, from where his father, William Johnston, was to serve Navajos residing on the western part of the Navajo Res ervation. On the reservation, young Philip learned to speak Navajo while playing with Navajo chil dren and was one of perhaps 30 non-natives who understood the complex and subde Navajo expressions. In 1902 he traveled with his father to Washington, D.C., with his father and local Navajo lead ers when they spoke to the Presi dent Theodore Roosevelt to persuade him to add more land to the Navajo Reservation via an Executive Order. In fact, the youth was trans lator between the local Navajo leaders and the president. In the early 1900s, Johnston attended and graduated from the Northern Arizona Normal School, which is now NAU. In March 1918, he enlisted in the U.S. Army 319th Engi neers, where he received a re serve commission, before ship ping to France to participate in the Great War. It was here that he may have learned about Comanches being used as code talkers by U.S. Army units. As a veteran, Johnston at tended the University of South ern California, Los A ngeles, where he earned his graduate civil engineering degree in 1925. Afterward, he took a job with Grassland office closed temporarily (AP) - The Crooked River National Grassland office has been temporarily closed in Ma dras until the federal govern m ent can hire another staff worker. There were two people stationed at the district office, but one of them works after noons in the field, which would have left the other employee alone. Federal officials say policy is to have two people at the office for security reasons. the city of Los Angeles water department before returning to Flagstaff a dozen years later. Johnston never forgot the usefulness of Native American languages for secure communi cations during World War I. After Pearl Harbor was at tacked and America entered the war, Johnston wrote a “Pro posed Plan for Recruiting Indian Signal Corps Personnel,” which he submitted in February 1942 to M ajpr General Clayton B. Vogel and his staff to convince them of the value of the Na vajo language as code. “Because of the fact that a com plete u n d erstan d in g o f words and terms comprising the various Indian languages could be had only by those whose ears had been highly trained in them, these dialects would be ideally suited to communication in vari ous branches o f our arm ed forces,” he wrote. Johnston recommended re cruitm ent from the N avajo tribe, because at 49,338 mem ber, it was the largest tribe in the U.S., according to his re search in 1942. In an article in the Cline Li b rary archives by A.E. Mortensen, “A Typical Arizonian at War,” Johnston is described as a “human dynamo” and a true patriot. “Philip Johnston was flying the true colors of a real Ameri can,” M ortensen wrote. “On O ctober 2nd, 1942, P hilip Johnston now 50 years of age, voluntarily gave up all civilian ties and entered the M arine Corps with rank of Staff Ser geant.” The first assignm en t for Johnston was a recruiting tour through A rizona and N ew Mexico, based out of the mo tel, and “then back to Camp Elliott to take over the actual schoo ling o f the N avajos,” Mortensen continued. N ot m uch is know n o f Johnston after World War II, although letters in the archives show that he remained very ac tive in his work to help Native Americans, including creating a nonprofit organization to raise money to send them to college during the 1950s. This year, there were seven Navajo Code Talkers, each with a companion, entered in the Armed Forces Day Parade on May 21 in Flagstaff: Sidney B edoni, P eter M acDonald, A lfred Peaches, G eorge W illie , D an A kee, Samuel Sandoval and Samuel Tsosie. L V / L / • !■ S « tribe targets job skills SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) _ A federal grant to a South Dakota Indian tribe is ear marked to help residents of public housing find jobs. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban awarded $240,000 to O glala Sioux Tribal Partnership for Hous ing on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Officials said caseworkers will help occu pants make the most of their knowledge, skills and abilities to find work. HUD said it aw ard ed $31 m illion nationally for p ro g ra m s th a t im p ro v e em ploym ent prospects or lin k the eld e rly and d is abled to support services so they can m aintain in d e pendent living. HUD S ecretary Shaun Donovan said in a statement that public housing should of fer services that help resi dents be self-sufficient. Group wants American Indian casino in Lansing LANSING, Mich. (AP) - A group is moving ahead with its effort to bring an American In dian casino to Lansing. Ted O 'D ell, chairm an o f Lansing Jobs Coalition, said that he’ll ask City Council members to approve his request before trying a ballot issue. He wants to gather enough signatures to get it on the city’s November bal lot. O'Dell’s group did not sub mit the number of signatures needed to put the issue on the August ballot. In April, a group aiming to build casinos in Lansing and six other Michigan cities launched a process that could put the measure before state voters this fall. “Michigan is Yours” needs more than 300,000 signatures from registered voters across the state. The effort failed to make the 2010 state ballot. Flooding costs force Crow tribe to lay off 150 BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) - The costs of dealing with severe flooding on the Crow Indian Reservation have forced the tribe to lay off 150 workers. Crow p erso n n el d irecto r Kayle Howe tells the Billings Gazette that the tribe faced the unexpected costs o f paying people to help residents in iso lated areas and distributing food. He says those costs came on top of revenue shortfalls that had already caused the tribe to cut full-time employees to 32 hours a week. Howe says the tribe is trying to recover the money it paid for flood-rescue efforts, but it could take a while. Before Friday’s layoffs, the tribe employed approximately 815 people. Howe says most of those laid o ff w ere the m ost recen tly hired, and that at least some won't be eligible for unemploy ment payments. Alcatraz occupation anniversary SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Last Saturday marked the 40th anniversary of the ending of the occupation of Alcatraz Island by American Indian activists. The 19-month occupation came to an end on June 11, 1971 w hen fed eral officers evicted the remaining 15 pro testers. Activists had seized the island in San Francisco Bay in Novem- ber 1969 with the hopes of turn ing it into an Indian university or cultural center. With as many as 800 activ ists on the island at the height of the occupation, the protest received massive attention. After the occupation ended, the university or center was never built, but plans to sell the island to private developers were dropped.
