8 FEBRUARY 1, 2003
Smoke Signals
Tribes To Ask Delay Of The Ken ne wick Man Study
Four Northwest Tribes are ask
ing the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals to delay a study of the
Kennewick Man skeleton until the
court can hear the case.
Attorneys for the Collville, Nez
Perce, Umatilla and Yakama Tribes
have filed a motion saying that the
study would "irreparably harm the
Tribes' ownership and property in
terest in the remains" and would
result in destruction of the ancient
bones "in both the physical and
spiritual senses."
Earlier this month U.S. Magis
trate John Jelderks in Portland re
jected the Tribes' request to delay
a study until the appeals court
could hear the dispute. Last year,
Jelderks ruled that eight anthro
pologists who sued the federal gov
ernment could study the 9,3000
year-old remains.
The anthropologists sued the gov
ernment six years ago after the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers re
jected their request to study
Kennewick Man. They argued
that the oldest, most complete skel
eton found in the Northwest can
provide information about the peo
pling of the Americas. The scien
tist have given the Corps and the
U.S. Interior Department a list of
tests they want to conduct.
The Tribes want to bury the col
lection of about 380 bones and bone
fragments. They asked the court to
expedite a decision on the motion
because they say an initial study
might be conducted as early as Feb
ruary. " No study is imminent," said
Alan Schneider, a Portland attorney
representing the scientists. "We still
have a lot of details to work out."
The remains were found in July
1996 along the banks of the Colum
bia River in Kennewick Washing
ton. They are being stored in the
Burke Museum in Seattle.
l
Fighting Whites Raise $100,000 For Scholarships
DENVER, CO What started
out as an attempt to shame a local
high school into dropping a mascot
name viewed as racist has raised
at least 100,000 for scholarships for
American Indian college students.
The effort began last winter when
a group of American Indian stu
dents at the University of North
ern Colorado asked officials at
nearby Eaton High School to
change their "Fighting Reds" name
because it was offensive.
The school refused, so members
of the UNC intramural basketball
team made up of American Indians
and whites decided to do something.
They named themselves the "Fight
ing Whites" and began wearing t
shirts bearing the name. After get
ting national media attention, they
began selling the shirts, which also
bear the slogan "Everything is going
to be all white," from their website.
More than 15,000 shirts and hats
have been sold raising at least
100,000.
Jeff VanI warden, a team member
who helped manage the T-shirt cam
paign, said the amount of money avail
able for scholarships would depend on
an application for tax-exempt status.
A 10,000 endowment already had been
set up for one scholarship at UNC start
ing next year.
The money collected could have
been used to help campaign against
the use of American Indian names
as mascots, but most of the team
members felt more would be gained
by helping American Indian stu
dents, he said.
Vanlwarden said he wasn't wor
ried that the T-shirts might "be a
form of white pride."
"We can't regulate who does or
does not buy them. We do have
their money," he said.
" " ' ... ,w. .,-
Certificates To Allow Teaching Of Native Languages
MuSr
OLYMPIA, WA. (AP) Faced
with a dwindling number of Ameri
can Indians fluent in their Tribes'
Native languages, the state Board
of Education recently agreed to
grant special teaching certificates
that would allow speakers of the an
cient languages to teach in public
schools.
Tribal linguists cheered the board's
unanimous decision, saying it will
help them keep their languages from
slipping into extinction.
"It's more than just the language
or the culture it's a way of being
in the world," said Martina
Whelshula of Spokane, a member
of the Colville Confederated Tribes.
Her people's language,
Okanogan, is a flowing language
punctuated with tiny pauses. It's
hard for non-Native speakers to tell
where one word ends and the next
begins.
"Through our history, it's the
thing that has kept us together as
a people," said Margie Hutchinson,
a member of the Collville Tribes'
Business Council. "And it's being
forgotten."
Under the special certification pi
lot program, beginning in Febru
ary and continuing through the
2005-06 school year, teachers of
Indian languages would still face
background checks and some other
routine training.
But they won't have to go to col
lege to earn a teaching credential
before being hired by local school
districts, as most teachers do.
Some state education board mem
bers voiced concerns about a poten
tial conflict with federal "No Child
Left Behind" legislation, designed
to ensure that teachers are quali
fied. But Debbie May, President of
the Board, said she's confident those
hurdles can be overcome.
Speaking Native languages was
officially discouraged in govern
ment and church schools for Ameri
can Indians during much of the past
century.
Hutchinson's mother spoke the
Native language, but Hutchinson
was taken to Catholic boarding
school 30 miles away when she was
7 years old.
"We weren't allowed to speak it
there, so no one did," said
Hutchinson.
In 1995, the Tribes on the
Collville Indian Reservation sur
veyed their people, and tallied up
281 fluent speakers. By last April,
Elder deaths had pared that num
ber to 51. Now it's 43.
In northwest Washington, the
Lummi have just one person left
who grew up speaking their lan
guage. She's 85 years old. The
Makah lost their oldest member flu
ent in the Tribal language, 100-year-old
Ruth Emily Claplanhoo, in
August.
Sindic Jimmy, the last Nooksack
Indian who was a fluent speaker of
the Tribe's original language, spent
many of his final days dictating
hundreds of hours of the ancient
language. He died in 1977. His
tape recordings, recordings made by
another Tribal member dating back
to the 1950s and field notes linguists
made decades ago are all that's left
to guide Nooksack teachers and stu
dents. There are about 27,000 American
Indian students in public schools
statewide. With only a handful of
Indian-language classes in the
state's public schools and commu
nity colleges, Tribal members say it's
hard to get Indian children to learn
their Native languages.
"I see it as teaching the other half
of the child," said 72-year-old
Pauline Hillaire, a Lummi. "The
kids are going to school all these
generations and learning only to be
white. But the whole child needs to
be taught."
After the vote, Hillaire thanked
the board five times and sang a song
of gratitude in her Native language,
adding, "I hope it echoes in your ears
for a while."