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About Smoke signals. (Grand Ronde, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 2000)
NOVEMBER 1, 2000 5 Indian Tribes Reach Agreement on Native Remains DENVER, CO. (AP) The re mains of 350 unidentified Indians stored in the basement of the Colo rado History Museum for the past century will be returned to 12 Indian Tribes, including one in North Da kota, under an unusual agreement. Instead of waiting for state mu seum officials to sort out the identi ties, the Tribes are working together to return the remains to their proper homes, said Ute Mountain Ute Chair man Ernest House Sr. "In the Indian world, once the re mains are not turned back to the Earth where they came from, there is a soul that is still out there still wan dering out on the Plains," he said. The remains, ranging from skel etons to bone fragments, represent Peyote Raid Riles Church Leader Once Again SALT LAKE CITY, UT. (AP) - The leader of a self-described American Indian church in Spanish Fork said his church and home were raided by police wielding a search warrant. It's the second time in three months that police in Utah have seized peyote buttons from a high-ranking member of the church. Church leader James Mooney said up to 15 Utah County sheriff's depu ties searched the 6-acre Benjamin complex, home to the Oklevueha Earth Walks chapter of the Native American Church. Mooney was not arrested after the search. He said police confiscated a computer and about 12,000 buttons of peyote, or some 33 pounds, from a metal vault. Peyote is a hallucinogenic cactus plant grown in Texas and re garded as sacred by Indians who use the buttons during prayer rituals. According to a copy of the search warrant, deputies also took waiver forms for church ceremonies, church donation slips and a pipe, which Mooney claims was sacred. Mooney said "nine-tenths" of the building searched by police was the church where he and his members worship, which also serves as the liv ing quarters for Mooney, his wife and seven children. "This is the most incredible intru sion on the First Amendment," Mooney said. "I kept saying, 'Do you realize you're on church property?'" Officials with the Utah County Sheriffs Office refused comment. In August, police in Weber County raided the Ogden home of Nick Stark and confiscated $10,000 in cash and 3,500 peyote buttons. Stark is a medicine man who runs the Ogden chapter of the Oklevueha Church. Stark was charged with possessing peyote with the intent to distribute it, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. He is awaiting trial. Mooney claims Oklevueha has thousands of members. Federal Drug Enforcement Admin istration regulations state that peyote use is legal only in "bona fide" American Indian church ceremonies. bodies that were discovered during construction projects, erosion and farming since Colorado became a state in 1876, said Lt. Governor Joe Rogers, who helped broker the agree ment. The 1990 Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act re quires remains to be returned to Tribes, but it imposes strict require ments on those listed as culturally unidentifiable to make sure they are returned to the proper Tribe since Tribal customs vary. Museum officials have returned four sets of skeletal remains over the past 10 years to the Ute and Pawnee Tribes. They have several hundred more boxes of remains from Pueblo Indi- CHAMPAIGN, IL. (AP) Ameri can Indian activists demanding the University of Illinois do away with its Chief Illiniwek symbol and mas cot demonstrated outside Memorial Stadium recently, trying to persuade football fans filing in for the Home coming game against Iowa to join their cause. Some fans stopped to poke fun at the protesters while others tried to shout down their prayers. ' The protest came three days before the university's Board of Trustees ex pects to receive a report from a re tired judge hired to examine the con troversy surrounding the chief. American Indians, as well as some professors and students, consider the Chief Illiniwek character portrayed by a university student as racist and de meaning. They want the university to do away with both the character and the nickname Fighting Illini. Other students, alumni and top university officials maintain Chief Illiniwek honors the school's tradition and the state's Native residents. George Two Eagles drove 12 hours from Asheville, N.C., recently to dis- ans who lived hundreds of years ago in southwest Colorado that will not be covered by the agreement. Those will remain in a special vault in the museum basement. Other Tribes signing the agree ment included the Northern Utes, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, the Comanche Tribe of Oklahoma, the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, the Kiowa of Oklahoma, the North ern Cheyenne, the Northern Ute, the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, the Oglala Sioux, the Rosebud Sioux, and the Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota, the Mandan, Hidatsa and Ankara. All of the Tribes passed through Colorado at one time or an other. The Tribes hope to have a ceremony next spring to turn over the remains for burial, House said. They plan to identify all the re mains before burying them, a task that could be difficult since DNA test ing requires a distant relative, and the Tribes are not sure where to start. Nationwide, some 14,000 human remains have been returned to Tribes under the 1990 law out of 200,000 that had been identified nationally as of last year. On the Net: Museum: http:coloradohistory.orgcolorgdohistorymuseum Protest Outside University of Illinois Stadium pel that notion. He said UI's chief is the mos offensive of the American Indian mascots used by colleges. The young student, dressed in Na tive garb, dances across the football field at halftime. "The mascot is not the most serious issue facing us, but we've got to start with basic human dignity," George Two Eagles said. Jim Maasberg, a Columbia resident with two children studying at Illinois, said a recent demonstration was rude and inappropriate. "They're doing more detriment to their own good," Maasberg said. Asked whether he believed the chief was racist, Maasberg shook his head and said, "No, it's an honor." Vernon Bellecourt, Executive Direc tor of the National Coalition on Rac ism in Sports and Media, said Ameri can Indians get to decide what's an honor and what's an insult. Bellecourt's group, which led simi lar demonstrations against profes sional teams such as baseball's At lanta Braves and Cleveland Indians, organized the Homecoming prayer and pipe ceremony. "We're here to remind you that we're offended by racism in sports," Bellecourt said. "We refuse to have our culture degraded for your fun and games." The protesters have been here be fore, and the university is engaged in a yearlong discussion of the issue. The Board of Trustees hired retired Cook County Judge Louis Garippo to gather information and report back to them. The school also invited people on all sides to write or otherwise share their views regarding the chief. The judge is expected to deliver his report to the trustees this week and then to present it at a public meet ing next month. The report will be posted on UI's web site (http: www.uiuc.edu) as soon as trustees have received their copies. Garippo has said he will not offer recommendations, but the activists outside Memorial Stadium said they believe the report is another step to ward retiring the chief. Several people at the protest were wearing T-shifts suggesting a re placement team name and symbol the Illinois Prairie Fire. Virtual Gaming Could be the Wave of the Future Conference in Las Vegas, f '' C! f ' J1' '. , Nevada attracted people f i ' S ' 0 IT. from all over the globe "r '. ' " m'V , ira this year. People with J;') v (iJ , V . tsa an interest in gaming VH1- ,5 1 - ! ,:7I-V . mzn came from throughout - - m si i i" - - ac;a the United States, y I f I 111' - S Canada, Central and I II 'A if ul T oi South America, France, Vx ' C . J j J ' Austria, Monaco and f I V- 80 Japan ' r. i , , Pictured here is a j " virtual Blackjack game f i!i I f ' that was just one of Zr' '., the many new gaming fr-T options featured at v".,";., the conference. I ",-C2!lrp I photo by Brent Merrill
