Page 8
September 7, 2011
Spilyay Tyrnoo, W^m Springs, Oregon
Fires draw big response
Sidwalter Flat area saw extensive burning.
Even in high winds, the Chinook helicopter
crew made water drops through the week.
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
THANK YOU
FIR EFIG H TER S
Q 0 Y .Ï,CAMP
At the main incident base at the Warm Springs industrial park by Fire Management.
About 1,700 fire
personnel were on the
reservation in
response to the fires.
Some of them (right)
used the new
Sidwalter Fire Hall as
a base station.
,» 1 »
49
IDS'
Limited visibility due to smoke caused the
closure of Highway 26 during the middle of
last week.
Spilyay staff photos.
The school sign, at this time of year
usually announcing the school start date,
states community appreciation.
News from Indian Country
2011 Indian Peace Treaty pageant may be last Eagle feathers in caskets
MEDICINE LODGE, Kan.
(AP) — A September tradition in
southern Kansas that celebrates
300 years of the state’s history
might become history itself af
ter this year’s event because of
a lack of money and volunteers,
organizers said.
The Medicine Lodge Indian
Peace Treaty Pageant has drawn
thousands o f people to the
south central town where the
pageant has been held every
three to five years since it be
gan in 1927.
But it requires help from
nearly all the town’s 2,300 resi
dents and interest in participat
ing has dropped in recent years.
The pageant, held in a natu
ral amphitheater, typically draws
between 10,000 and 15,000 visi
tors from Kansas and across the
nation. This year’s will be the
23rd pageant.
The focus is a re-enactment
of the signing of an 1867 treaty
that was supposed to make trav
eling safer for those heading to
frontier settlements in the West.
It also one of the largest gath
erings o f Plains Indians —
15,000 K iow a, C om anche,
Arapaho, Apache and Cheyenne.
“It is with great sadness that
possibly this will be our last one,”
said Robert Larson, one of the
pageant’s board members.
“It has become difficult to
get community support and fi
nancial assistance to continue
this wonderful event, as you
probably know once you lose
something like this it is almost
impossible for a small commu
nity to get it back.”
Sara Whelan, the president
of the Medicine Lodge Peace
T reaty P agean t, said board
members voted to resign after
this year’s Sept. 23-25 pageant.
A community meeting will be
held to determine the pageant's
future. W helan said if new
people volunteer to organize the
festival, it will continue.
“That’s what we are all hop
ing for — but it has been diffi
cult gettin g new people in
volved,” Whelan said.
The pageant focuses on 300
years of Kansas and American
history — including the Spanish
conquistadors who came to the
area in the 1500s, frontiersmen,
the Lewis and Clark expedition
and Indians on horseback.
It includes an 80-mile long
horn cattle drive betw een
Bucklin to Medicine Lodge in
the days before the festival starts,
a ranch rodeo, a muzzleloaders
encam pm ent, a W estern art
show and an Indian encamp
ment.
Dave Webb, assistant direc
tor at the Kansas Heritage Cen
ter in Dodge City, has been to
the pageant several times and
plans to attend this year to cel
ebrate the 150th anniversary of
Kansas.
If the pageant ends, Webb
said, “It would be the end of an
era. It is a novel idea to take a
lawn chair or blanket and sit out
in the great outdoors and watch
history happen where it hap
pened.”
The state has fewer major
benefactors to support such
events and younger people don’t
have the same interests as their
parents or grandparents, said Jay
Price, director of the public his
tory program at Wichita State
University.
“I think the whole idea of a
pageant was a product of a par
ticular time and era,” Price said.
“We saw a lot of them at the
turn of the 20th century. Main
taining them has always been the
challenge.”
Navajos focus on Little Colorado River settlement
CAMERON, Ariz. (AP) -
The Navajo Nation, unwilling to
settle its claims to the Colorado
River without a pipeline to de
liver much-needed water to its
residents, now is focusing on
rights to water from one of the
river’s tributaries.
Negotiators on a northern
Arizona water rights settlement
have removed from the deal a
$515 million pipeline that would
have delivered water to the Na
vajo and H opi reservations.
Even with the lower cost, how
ever, it remains uncertain when
the revised settlement might be
introduced in Congress.
Navajo lawmakers approved
a version of the settlement last
year. That version included the
pipeline to send 11,000 acre-feet
of Colorado River from Lake
Powell to a handful of Navajo
communities and about 4,000
acre-feet of water a year to the
Hopi reservation.
But Republican Arizona Sen.
Jon Kyi, who has shepherded
key A m erican Indian w ater
rights deals through Congress,
later said it was too costly and
asked the negotiators to revise
it.
Kyi’s office declined to com
ment on the revised settlement
that negotiators sent him in June
because it’s not final. But in a
letter to the Arizona Depart
ment of Water Resources, Kyi
said the rev ised docum ent
marks only the next phase of
conversation and that “it is pos
sible that those costs will have
to be further reduced.”
"Because of the estimated
cost associated with a main-stem
settlement, the parties pulled
back and focused simply on a
Little Colorado River settle
ment,” said Tom Whitmer, a wa
ter resource manager and tribal
liaison for the state water de
partm ent.
“The
federal
government’s budget is not in
the most healthy state. When-
ever you start talking about
settlements, it’s also about the
cost of the infrastructure to get
the w ater to the area it ’s
needed.”
Under the revised settlement,
the Navajo Nation still would get
any unclaimed flows from the
Little Colorado River and nearly
unlimited access to two aquifers
beneath the reservation. It also
would settle claims from the Hopi
Tribe, which did not follow the
Navajos’ footsteps in approving
the settlement last year.
“I think we’ve gotten some
things in there we feel good
about,” said Hopi Chairman Le
Roy Shingoitewa. “Whether or
not they remain is really some
thing the parties all have to agree
to.”
Both the Navajo and Hopi
are party to a case to adjudicate
rights to the Little Colorado
River, which has been on hold
to allow for settlement discus
sions. Aside from Zuni Pueblo,
no other Arizona tribe has ac
quired righ ts to the riv er,
Whitmer said.
The revised settlement was
revealed in a separate federal
court case earlier this month in
which the Navajo Nation sued
to assert its rights to the Colo
rado River. The negotiators said
in a status report that they did
not expect any settlement to be
approved by Congress until late
next year.
They also outlined further
concerns by Kyi, including the
future of the Navajo Generat
ing Station that provides power
to deliver water through a se
ries of canals to 80 percent of
the state’s population and en
sures that American Indian wa
ter rights settlements are met.
Kyi had asked negotiators for
the tribes and 30 other entities to
try to lower the $800 million cost
of the settlement so that he could
introduce legislation well ahead of
his planned retirement.
o f officers were legal
RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) - An
American Indian group is upset
that eagle feathers were buried
with two Rapid City police of
ficers who were killed in the line
of duty. The U.S. attorney for
South Dakota says no laws were
broken.
Native American law offic
ers honored slain O fficers J.
Ryan M cCandless and N ick
A rm strong by putting eagle
feathers in their caskets. Repre
sentatives o f the Black Hills
Sioux Nation Treaty Council say
it’s illegal for anyone who isn't
an enrolled member o f a fed
erally recognized tribe to pos
sess an eagle feather.
A council delegate asked
Rapid City Police Chief Steve
A llender to return the eagle
feathers. Allender turned to U.S.
Attorney Brendan Johnson.
Johnson said the Indian of
ficers who provided the feath
ers had the legal right to do so.
N M exhibition highlights
Native American artists
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) -
More than two dozen new lay
ered digital images, collages and
black-and-white portraits are lin
ing the walls at the New Mexico
Museum of Art.
Native American artists from
across the U.S. and Canada com
peted to win a spot in the exhi
bition “New Native Photogra
phy, 2011.”
The show runs through Oct.
2. It’s a collaboration between
the museum and the Southwest
ern Association of Indian Arts
for its annual Indian Market.
Photographers have docu
mented Native American life
for more than a century, but this
show features native artists who
are using photography to con
vey their perspectives on every
thing from mixed ancestry and
the environment to stereotypes
and tribal sovereignty.
While not in the shape of tra
ditional Indian art, some of the
artists say their work is part of
“ the u n iv ersal lan gu age o f
storytelling.”
Cheyenne River reservation
celebrates new hospital
EAGLE BUTTE, S.D. (AP)
- Residents o f the Cheyenne
River Indian Reservation cel
ebrated the dedication of a new
hospital in August.
More than $80 m illion of
stimulus money went into the
project.
The building holds tribal and
federal health services and is
more than three times the size
of the old one.
The Indian Health Service
had tagged the old facility as
vastly undersized and under
staffed.
State Tribal Relations Secre
tary LeRoy LaPlante Jr. says the
opening is a promise that the
Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe’s
best days are ahead.
Indian Health Service direc
tor Yvette Roubideaux and Sen.
Tim Johnson attended the cer
emony.
Johnson says it’s a proud day,
but there’s much more work to
do.