Native Village News Articles For Grandmother Agnes baker pilgrim

[Below are several articles selected from Native Village News publications housed in our archives. The Grandmothers say that in the Spirit World, all time exists at once. To remind us of this, each article's publication date is omitted.] 
For more information about these and other news articles, please visit: News Archives.]

Indian Group Blasts Meteorite Sale
Oregon: The Williamette Meteorite is sacred to the Clackamas Indians. The tribe holds an annual religious ceremony with the meteorite, named Tomanowas, in its home at the American Museum of Natural History. The meteorite -- the largest ever discovered in America -- was given in ancient times to the Clackamas people by the Sky People. Now a 30-pound chunk of the 10,000-year-old meteorite is up for auction, and the tribe is denouncing its sale. "We are deeply saddened that any individual or organization would be so insensitive to Native American spirituality and culture as to traffic in the sale of a sacred and historic artifact," said Siobahn Taylor of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.  Darryl Pitt, who is selling the chunk, recognizes the Grand Ronde's concerns. "While I regret the Grand Ronde has taken offense, the bottom line is that a portion of the meteorite is simply changing hands," he said. Tomanowas was discovered in 1902 in the Willamette Valley by an Oregon miner who removed it from the land.  Today, the small chunk of the meteor will be auctioned at Bonhams Auction House in NYC on October 28.  Its pre-sale estimate is between $1,100,000 - $1,300,000.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/14/AR2007091400412.html

Artifacts attest to Indian game’s antiquity
Washington: A 14,000-year-old set of 13 sla-hal bones were displayed on the Lummi Reservation. Pacific Northwest tribes who have played sla-hal since “time immemorial” continue the game today and are fiercely competitive.  Sla-hal  combines songs, spirituality, intense competition and guesswork and links today’s tribal members with their ancestors.  "We are still the same people we were 14,000 years ago and we’re playing the same game, ” said Michelle Kempf.  “Our elders, when we bring this out, they cry.  It is so deep inside of them.”  The story of sla-hal began when animals and humans were fighting it out and running out of food.  The Creator gave humans and animals a game to play — sla-hal — and said that whoever won the game could eat the other from then on. But humans were losing, down to their last stick, and begged the Creator to take pity on them.  So the spirit let humans win the game and gave them four laws to follow: turn away from greed, lust, hate and jealousy. “The spirit gave us a gift, to show the people who we are,” said Kempf. 
Play Sla-hal: http://cjtm.icaap.org/content/2/v2art2.html
Billy Frank, Jr. A warrior with wisdom and an elder with courage
"I always thought Billy was the model for Billy Jack - the solitary guy who is everywhere protecting the people and their rights. You can’t begin to count the times he had been beaten and thrown in jail. Yet, in the end, he has become a senior statesman of the state of Washington, respected and admired by people all over the state who once called for his scalp. He shows what a few people can do when they stand up for principles."  Vine Deloria, Jr., Standing Rock Sioux, author, historian, and Billy's friend. Billy Frank, Jr., Nisqually, is being awarded Indian Country Today’s first Visionary Award. Chair of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission for 25 years, Frank is a strong advocate, negotiator and peacemaker. He fought to unite many groups in efforts to preserve and protect salmon, shellfish, trees, endangered species and entire ecosystems. And he is equally successful within his family and community. "Billy is great with adults, but he’s even better with children," said Hank Adams, Assiniboine and Sioux. "He talks to a lot of students, from pre-school to college, and of all races. And for 50 years in a large family of relatives, he’s missed very few celebrations of birthdays for each of their children."  Billy had a comment for Adams. "That’s it," he said. "That’s our vision, educating ourselves, making our own people strong. They’re there, our Indian kids. Our little guys are talking their own language and teaching it to their parents. These younger kids are waking up and getting ready to take our place."

Mitsitam Café features regional Native foods
WASHINGTON - The cuisine at the National Museum of the American Indian’s Mitsitam Café (it means "Let’s Eat" in Piscataway) presents large selections of Native foods. Available at five permanent buffets are foods from South American, Mesoamerican, Northern Woodlands, Northwest Coast and Great Plains. That means quinoa and wild rice salads, buffalo chili, juniper salmon, tortilla and pumpkin soups, corn tamales, tacos, turkey and cranberry, blue cornbread and quahog clam chowder The café is also an opportunity for many Native food suppliers, including the Intertribal Bison Cooperative. ITBC’s Fred Dubray said the organization has a contract with the museum to provide approximately 5,000 pounds of buffalo meat every month, a considerable market for the ITBC member tribes.

Healthy Living - Native super foods and healing ways
Arizona: - A new book on ''superfoods'' encourages eating 14 foods to revolutionize a person's health, including traditional Native foods like beans, pumpkin and salmon.
The book, ''Superfoods Rx: Fourteen Foods That Will Change Your Life,'' recommends a diet packed with beans, blueberries, broccoli, oats, oranges, pumpkin, wild salmon, soy, spinach, tea, tomatoes, turkey, walnuts and yogurt.
 

Salmon Actions Indicate Shift
Oregon: The Bush administration has proposed a steep reduction in the miles of rivers and streams set aside for Pacific salmon. Bush also flatly rejected the possibility of demolishing Snake River hydropower dams to help restore salmon runs. Together, the actions warn of far-reaching changes in federal enforcement of the Endangered Species Act.  Conservation and fishing groups, including Native American tribes with treaty rights to salmon, are extremely concerned. "The tribes made treaties 150 years ago to carry on a way of life that depends on salmon," said Olney Patt Jr. of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.  "Now we see the federal government is turning its back on that obligation."
H-Amindian Listserv

Grand Ronde woodsman works on longhouses and master's degree
Oregon:  At the University of Oregon, Don Day is working on his master's thesis which includes building a traditional cedar longhouse using primitive technologies."... my ancestors - the Kalapuya people, a band that were here in the Willamette Valley - that's what they used for their houses, Western red cedar,''  said Day, a  member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. There's a regretful tone in Day's voice when he speaks of how he learned primitive wood and stone technologies. ''A white person had to teach me,'' Day said. ''I'm sorry that there's not an elder in my tribe that knows how to do this.'' But things are changing as he and other elders educate themselves about ancient arts. ''Over the past 10 to 15 years, we've been progressing more toward identification. Now people are saying things like 'oh these Native people, they lived here 11,000 years in harmony with the salmon as their mainstay.'''
Clatsop Longhouse: www.voyageur.drake.edu/.../ clatsop_longhouse.jpg
american_indians_news_source_tulanappes_list@yahoogroups.com

New Slide May Help Salmon Cross Dam

Washington: A removable spillway weir has been created  to help in the recovery of Pacific salmon. The steel device, which weighs 1,700,000 pounds, creates a slick waterside for endangered salmon. Government scientists and officials say the weir technology holds great hope for easing more fish safely through dams. The weir essentially creates a hole in the dam. The fish do not have to dive over the dam because the hole and the water flow are at about the same water level as the fish.  But getting fish to find the water hole is another challenge.  Many critics say that only blowing up the dams can save the salmon which are central to the lives and cultures of Northwest Indian tribes. "We see this as just more gold-plating to buy time to allow them to continue on with their operations," said Olney Patt, Jr., of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. "Somebody is benefiting, and it isn't the fish." The weirs are part of a $6,000,000,000 salmon recovery plan by the federal government that includes installing weirs or similar technology at all eight dams on the Snake and the Columbia Rivers. The plan has touched off bitter opposition from environmentalists, Indians, sports fishermen, and former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who is one of the nation's loudest proponents of dam removal on the Lower Snake.
New York Times

Stocks of wild salmon retain legal protection
The Bush administration intends to continue protecting wild salmon under the Endangered Species Act.  25 of the 26 salmon and steelhead stocks currently protected under the law will continue to be guarded. The 26th species -- steelhead that spawn in the mid-Columbia River -- still is being reconsidered for protection.

Weak Salmon Run Shuts the Northwest's Fisheries
Washington: Tens of thousands of adult Chinook salmon expected to swim up the Columbia River this spring are missing. The numbers are so bad that Idaho, Oregon and Washington have ended commercial fishing, and the four Indian tribes with treaty rights to harvest the salmon did the same. Though tribal fishermen can still sell a limited catch to other tribe members, their subsistence fish harvest has been sharply curtailed. Most environmentalists are convinced that federal dams are causing the problem. The slow-moving, sometimes overheated reservoirs behind the dams confuse the salmon, who breed in fast, cold currents.  The dam machinery can also be lethal, particularly to outbound juvenile fish. "We need to figure out what happened," said Charles Hudson of the intertribal commission.  "But there is no question that year in and year out, the hydro system is the biggest killer of fish."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/11/national/11salmon.html?pagewanted=all

Judge Orders Heavy Spills For Salmon 
Oregon: U.S. District Judge James Redden has ordered the government to release heavy amounts of river water over four Columbia basin dams this summer. Redden called U.S.  efforts to protect salmon an exercise "more in cynicism than in sincerity."  The federal dams provide relatively low-cost electricity, irrigation water, and barge transportation across Oregon, Washington and Idaho. However, the big federal dams kill and injure federally protected fish, now comprising 13 populations.  Water spilled over dams to help juvenile salmon migrate to sea bypasses turbines and so can't be used to generate electricity. Bob Lohn from the National Marine Fisheries Service believes the government will appeal the court order.
The Oregonian

Youth awarded for environmental work
Seven activists, aged 15 to 21, have received Brower Awards for 2005.  This annual national award recognizes young people for their outstanding activism and achievements in the fields of environmental and social justice advocacy. Each winner is awarded $3000 in cash and flown out for the award night and a Yosemite camping trip.  Among this year's award winners are two Native youth: Erika Chase and Kayla Carpenter.  Kayla is a Yurok tribal member, and Erika is a Hoopa Valley tribal member. To them, tribal culture is an important component in their lives and drives them to help others. After the 2002 catastrophic fish kill in the lower Klamath basin that killed over 64,000 salmon, the girls knew something had to be done or a major part of their cultural lifestyles would disappear. In 2003, the girls started an annual 39-mile Salmon Relay Run to help promote awareness about their communities' water and fish issues.  "On a personal level, our environment has always been a priority in the minds of my people; therefore, I have established the philosophy that it is the youth of my generation who must take on this responsibility of ensuring the future," said Erika. 
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9608323/

Hank Adams: American Indian Visionary
New York: The 2006 American Indian Visionary Award from  Indian Country Today will be given to Hank Adams.  Adams was born in 1943 on the Fort Peck reservation in Montana.  His mother later married a Quinault man and moved to Washington State, where Adams grew up. Adams, who is Assiniboine-Sioux,  is a lifelong activist and has helped negotiate peaceful ends to dangerous standoffs in modern Indian history.   He's been a crucial figure in the militant Indian revival of the last four decades.  Among his activities:
He began the long-range planning for preserving salmon and steelhead, leading to the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission;
Indian Country Today

 Innovators of Our Time
Every genius, said Danish writer Isak Dinesen, is doomed. She meant that geniuses, or those touched with a spark of it, had very little choice in life. Each one, she said, was powerless "in the face of his own powers," compelled to follow a certain path and to do a particular thing with instinctive flair and originality. The Smithsonian Magazine recently chose 35 innovators who make a difference, a contribution, and inspire.  Included on that list Is artist and architect Maya Lin is best known for her Vietnam Memorial. That accomplishment alone gave her a ticket for fame and a career of designing monuments with high price tags. Instead, she followed her heart. "People ask, 'If you’d never won the Vietnam Memorial award, where would you be?'" she says. "I reply that I'd be making things, same as I am now." Currently, Lin is working on the Confluence Project—a series of artworks that honor the timeline and explorations of the Lewis and Clark journey. But the monuments' text will not say: "Then the great explorers passed through the wilds of what is now Idaho."  Instead, she will name the Native American tribes who lived in the places the explorers passed: Nez Percé, Chinook, Shoshone, Sioux, Cheyenne, Mandan and others. She reminds us of a forgotten truth: this land was not unexplored. It was their land. At her monument along the Washington shoreline, Lin describes a visitor's point of view—that of a fisherman. "You're not coming here to see what I've done," she says. "You're coming here because you've always come here. You're coming here because you've just caught a king salmon that's two and a half feet long and you're going to cut your fish here. And then, maybe, you're going to start reading this and you’re going to say, 'What is going on here?' And maybe you'll get a hint that this was the sacred grounds of the Chinook tribe."