Native Village
Youth and Education News
November 1, 2006 Issue 173 Volume 1
"[Sovereignty
is] the nearest and dearest, No. 1 issue in Indian Country. It's not something that was given to us. As
tribes, we see sovereignty as something we've always had."
Jacqueline Johnson, National Congress of American Indians
l
The future of tribal sovereignty
North Dakota: According to traditional Native elders, tribal sovereignty was
given to Indian nations by the Creator. Yet today, that sovereignty must be
constantly protected from the United States government and internal forces.
Among the insights by Native leaders:
''We have to have a sustained national sovereignty effort. We must rekindle
the [National Congress of American Indians'] effort to reaffirm sovereignty,''
said Tex Hall, former NCAI president.
Melanie Benjamin, chairman of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, says the current
trend is to pit the tribes against state and federal governments in court. ''Ever
since Indian self-determination and the Reagan administration, states' rights
have taken priority. Now, with the Bush administration, there is more power
going to the states. In the future, we may find ourselves in more
courts.''
Ken Davis,chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, says
that to expand sovereignty, the land base has to be expanded. ''To
purchase land only from tribal members doesn't expand sovereignty. We have to
come to grasp with it and accommodate growth on the reservations ... We are not
as isolated and uneducated as we once were. We have lawyers; we have political
rights and a special political status. No longer do we allow encroachment within
our own boundaries.''
Ron His Horse is Thunder, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, agreed with
Davis. ''The treaties are the recognition of tribal rights, not gifts.''
He also says that the federally blood quantums for tribal membership will lead
to tribal extermination. "It's not blood but culture and language which
determines a tribe's sovereignty. 'Without the language you can't know 100
percent of the culture - in the language is the culture. Every sovereignty
is recognized by its language, government, membership and established
boundaries. Who ceases to have any one of these will find termination.''
His Horse is Thunder also warned members that citizens must have faith in the
tribal government. "There is an internal attack - Indian against Indian. If
we don't protect sovereignty, we will see termination.''
WORLD
COUNCIL OF INDIGENOUS PEOples declaration of principles
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096413721&na=730
Passamaquoddy Tribe Acquires Historic
Petroglyph Site
Maine: The
Passamaquoddies have a long history -- perhaps 12,000 years -- in eastern Maine
and in New Brunswick, Canada. Recently, the tribe acquired a land parcel that
contains rock carvings from thousands of years ago. The 5.5-acre parcel was
given to the Passamaquoddy Tribe by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust in exchange
for a conservation, no-development easement on 300 acres of land. Called
Picture Rocks, the carvings include hunters, moose, caribou, shaman and other
characters that tell stories about tribal life and the history of what is now
Maine. Among the largest petroglyphs is a large sailing ship moving through
water, believed to be a recording of explorer Samuel de Champlain's arrival in
1604. Picture Rocks is perhaps the most important petroglyph site in Maine,
said Mark Hedden from the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.
The Associated Press State &Local Wire
Tribe to regain Macon mound
North Carolina: The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians will buy 71 acres in Macon
County that include an undisturbed, ancient Indian mound. The mound was owned
by generations of the Hall family before being transferred to the late James
Porter. “It was James’ desire to see the mound return to Cherokee ownership,”
said a member of the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee. Chief Michell Hicks
of the Eastern Cherokee said the mound is one of the tribe’s most important
historical sites and that it won’t be developed commercially. “We’re very
excited about getting it back,” Hicks said. The land will be transferred to the
tribe early next year.
http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200661024095
18th –Century Treasures Recovered from
Church Remains
Missouri: Archaeologists have uncovered almost 10,000 artifacts in the remains
from a Catholic church in Florissant, a town settled by the French in the
1760s. The 1789 St. Ferdinand Catholic Church was one of the oldest in the
Midwest. An old rectory was recently discovered below 6 inches of dirt at
Spanish Land Grant Park. The recovered remains include fish bones and fragments
from plates, cups, bowls, pipes, wine bottles, bullets, silver coins, Indian
jewelry items and coffins. The artifacts likely will be stored at the University
of Missouri-Columbia and eventually be available for public display.
H-Amindian Listserve
Fort Armistead Revealed
Tennessee: Two centuries ago. Fort Armistead was built near Coker Creek to
protect Cherokee gold mines from marauding white settlers. During the Cherokee
removal in the 1830s, the site then became a camp for Cherokees being taken from
Murphy, N.C, to travel the Trail of Tears. Since then, the remnants of the site
have been hidden by briars, weeds and rhododendron plants. Now, thanks to the
current landowners and the U.S. Forest Service, Fort Armistead will be cleaned
up and open to the public. Historian Russ Townsend said the site is along the
Unicoi Trail, the American Indians' main road through the mountains for
thousands of years before European invasion. Cherokee National Forest spokesman
Terry McDonald said the site will be preserved and made available for visitors
to experience the trail and its history.
Chattanooga Times Free Press
Lakota reclaims stolen regalia
California:
Last month, a red suitcase belonging to Delmarina One Feather, 17, was stolen
from a pick- up truck in a motel parking lot. The suitcase contained her
hand-beaded regalia, eagle feathers, a chief's blanket, and her 10-page essay on
"What is success?" The regalia, valued at $10,000, had been worn by the champion
pow-wow dancer when she performed the Lakota Woman's Northern Buckskin dance at
the Morongo Tribal Powwow. Detective Nelson Figueroa of the Palm Springs
police thought the chance of recovering the blue, red and yellow beaded regalia
was "slim." "It rarely happens that we recover stuff like this," he said.
Figueroa praised Arkamez Blankenship, director for Morongo tribe, for locating
the suspect and negotiating the regalia's return. One Feather was featured in
the "Pow Wow: Portraits of Native Americans" 2006 calendar and was named Miss
Denver March PowWow Princess in 2004. She hopes to attend Arizona State
University or Creighton University to study psychology and perhaps teaching.
Delmarina lives on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota
http://www.thedesertsun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061016/NEWS06/610160312/1006
Yup'ik diva dances once more
Alaska: The Egan Center was packed for the drumming and dance showcase during
the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention. Many -- perhaps hundreds -- were
turned away at the door. Performers representing Alutiiq, Inupiat, Yup'ik and
Southeast Indian traditions took their turns, and then a surprise: 87-year-old
Mary Ann Sundown planned to dance. As the beloved "Dance Diva" from the
Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta hobbled onto the stage, bent and slow, cheers and whistles
from a thousand or more fans shook the roof. She donned her fur headpiece and
gripped her dance fans, sitting in a chair to perform. Mary Ann's
coordination, grace, charm, and humor showed through, and at the end of each
song, she struggled to her feet for the final choruses. Her performance
included two comic numbers associated with Sundown: the "Mosquito Song," which
includes hilarious swatting and itching pantomimes; and the "Cigarette Song," in
which the performers try to imitate the elegant puffing of movie stars and wind
up coughing. Sundown's set closed with a tribute piece to her grandchildren,
her trademark laugh and an expression of wondering love as she looked back at
her family -- some in diapers -- in front of the stage. Before leaving, Mary Ann
told the crowd in Yup'ik, through a translator, how happy she was to be here.
How she had lost her ability to walk for a while but it had returned. How she
had fallen off a four-wheeler while berry-picking but been unharmed. "She says
someone's looking out for her," the interpreter said, "and that's God."
Slideshow of 87-year old Yupik elder, Mary Ann Sundown, dancing at AFN
Convention.
http://www.adn.com/photos/multimedia/afn
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/afn/story/8348845p-8243555c.html
Native American activist remembered
California: Humboldt State University has dedicated a room to Vine Deloria Jr.,
a Native American scholar, author, teacher and activist. Mr. Deloria has
written more than 20 books including "Custer Died for Your Sins," which made
him a national figure in the Native American Rights Movement. He has been
described as “the most eloquent and prolific writer in Indian voice opposing
U.S. colonial policies in the 20th century.” Time Magazine also named him as
one of the “10 most influential theologians of the 20th century.” “He’s like
the Martin Luther King for Native Americans,” said HSU Native American studies
Professor Joseph Giovannetti. Mr. Deloria's room is located in Haskell's
Multicultural Center
Accountability
and Sovereignty in American Indian Education by Vine Deloria
http://www.eurekareporter.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?ArticleID=15912
Stone Slab Bears Earliest Writing in
Americas
Mexico:
Sometime before 1999, villagers in Veracruz discovered a stone tablet while
quarrying an ancient Olmec mound. Inscriptions on the green stone lab include
insects, ears of corn, fish and unknown symbols. "We are dealing with the first,
clear evidence of writing in the New World," said anthropologist Stephen
Houston. The ancient Olmec probably produced the faintly etched symbols around
900 B.C. The text contains 28 distinct glyphs or symbols, some of which are
repeated 3-4 times. The text is arranged in rows across the block's face, which
is about the size of a standard legal pad. The face is smooth and slightly
concave, which suggests it may have worn down as it was inscribed and erased
multiple times. At 5 inches thick and 26 pounds, the tablet is heavy, but still
portable. The small size of the block and the faint inscriptions imply the text
was meant for personal reading and not a public document. This find bolsters
the early importance of the Olmecs, who flourished from 1200 B.C. - 400 B.C.,
before the Maya and Aztec. The Olmecs are best known for the massive heads they
carved from stone. The village where the block was found is close to a site
called San Lorenzo, believed to be the center of the Olmec world.
http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/stone-slab-bears-earliest-writing-in/20060914145609990007?ncid=NWS00010000000001
Linguists Find the Words, and Pocahontas
Speaks Again
Virginia: A growing number of linguists and anthropologists are recreating dead
or dying Indian languages. Their field, called "language revitalization," is
the science of reconstructing lost languages. One benefit of these studies is
the Virginia Algonquian dialogue spoken in "The New World," a movie about
Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America (1607).
Virginia Algonquian had not been spoken for more than two centuries. Only two
modern accounts -- one by Captain John Smith and the other by the Jamestown
colony secretary, William Strachey -- preserved some Virginia Algonquian words.
So, when movie director Terrence Malick decided that Powhatan should speak in
his own language, he called in Dr. Blair Rudes, a linguist involved with many
Algonquian language projects. The first challenge for Dr. Rudes was the
limited vocabulary. Smith set down just 50 Indian words, and Strachey compiled
600. The lists were written phonetically by Englishmen whose spelling and
pronunciation differed, making it difficult to determine the actual Indian word.
For instance Strachey set down words for walnut, shoes and two kinds of beast,
"paukauns:"
paka-ni (meaning large nut),
"mawhcasuns:"
maxkesen (shoe)
"aroughcoune
:"
i árehkan (raccoon)
"Opposum:"
wápahshum
Dr. Rudes had to apply techniques of historical linguistics to rebuilding a
language from these sketchy, unreliable word lists. To discover the language,
Rudes depended upon several elements:
Each Algonquin language is different, but as closely related. Comparing the
related Algonquin languages reveals common elements of grammar and sentence
structure and many similarities in vocabulary.
Proto-Algonquian is an early language common to all Algonquian speech. A list
complied by linguists contains 4,000 words from the surviving tongues and
documentation of the extinct ones. He compared this list to Strachey's words.
A translation of the Bible into Munsee Delaware, an Algonquin language once
spoken by Massachusetts Indians, offered Dr. Rudes insights. He adapted some
of those words for Virginia Algonquian.
100-year-old recordings of the last Munsee Delaware speakers were a valuable
guide to pronunciations.
Facts:
The related Algonquian languages were among the first in America to die out. No
one is known to have spoken Virginia Algonquian since 1785. Like many other
Indians, Algonquian speakers had no writing system, and their grammar and most
of their vocabulary were lost.
Of the more than 15 original Algonquian languages in eastern North America, the
two still spoken are Passamaquoddy-Malecite in Maine and Mikmaq in New
Brunswick.
Like most of the 800 or more indigenous languages in North America, Virginia
Algowhen became extinct as Indians declined in number, dispersed and lost their
cultural identity due to European Invasion.
At least half the world's estimated 6,000 languages have so few remaining
speakers that they are threatened with extinction. By 2100, it's believed less
than 3,000 languages will survive.
Phil Konstatin's October 2006 Newsletterl-
William Bright, 78, Expert in Indigenous
Languages, Is Dead
Colorado: William Bright spent more than 50 years studying the vanishing
languages of indigenous people. In 1949, Bright received a bachelor’s degree
in linguistics from UC Berkeley. He then began his fieldwork among the Karuk,
whose languages spoken by just a handful of elders. Since encounters with
Europeans had rarely ended well for the Karuk, the community had little reason
to welcome an outsider. But Bill Bright was deferential, curious and, at 21,
scarcely more than a boy. He was also visibly homesick. The Karuk grandmothers
took him in, baking him cookies and cakes and sharing their language. They named
him Uhyanapatanvaanich, “little word-asker.” Shortly before his death, he was
made an honorary member of the Karuk tribe, the first outsider to be so
honored. Mr. Bright’s approach to studying language was to learn it within its
cultural context, which might include songs, poetry, stories and everyday
conversation. And so, lugging unwieldy recording devices, he continued to make
forays into traditional communities around the world, sitting down with native
speakers and eliciting words, phrases and sentences. Among the languages on
which he worked were Nahuatl, an Aztec language of Mexico; Cakchiquel, of
Guatemala; Luiseño, Ute, Wishram and Yurok, languages of the Western United
States; and Lushai, Kannada, Tamil and Tulu, languages of the Indian
subcontinent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/23/books/23bright.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
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