A.J. Longsoldier, who led his Hays-Lodge Pole (Mont.) high school basketball team to the 2007 Class C championship, was pronounced dead yesterday after being taken to a hospital from the Hill County Jail.

I was devastated,” Charlie Ereaux, who coached Long Soldier at Hays-Lodge Pole, told the Havre Daily News, here. “I couldn’t believe it.”

LongSoldier, 18, was pronounced dead at Northern Montana Hospital several hours after being brought there from the Hill County Jail, Sheriff Don Brostrom tells the News’ Alice Campbell.

“I didn’t even know he was in jail,” his mother Dayna Bear says, here. “I loved him.”

County Attorney Donald Ranstrom says LongSoldier was arrested in Blaine County on a warrant for a charge of violation of court order, and went into the jail Thursday. Ranstrom said he could not supply details because it involved a juvenile case.

An autopsy yesterday revealed no apparent cause of death, but a coroner’s inquest will be held, authorities say.

“I loved that kid,” Ereaux said. But he says that after LongSoldier transferred to Harlem in his junior year, “it kind of fell apart for him,” Ereaux said. “He really loved basketball, and he wanted to play bad – he did – it’s just he had a rough life growing up.” Still, he says, many Division I schools were “drooling” over LongSoldier.

Ereaux tells Campbell that LongSoldier completed a treatment program last year. He was enrolled as a freshman at Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas but withdrew last month, Campbell reports.

“A.J. will be missed, but he will not be forgotten,” Ereaux says. There’s a lot of hurt people around here. He made a lot of hope for a lot of people.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: A.J. LongSoldier, buffalo post, Fort Belknap Reservation, Hays-Lodge Pole High School, Native American news

The Coeur d’Alene Tribal Council didn’t mince words when it passed a resolution that
“condemns the purveyors of these new age programs that exploit Native American religious traditions without any knowledge, experience or understanding of the meaning or significance of these traditions and market Native American ceremonies and traditions for their own personal gain.”

The council’s action comes in response to the deaths last month in Arizona at a $9,000 “Spirit Warrior” camp run by New Age guru James Arthur Ray. Three people died as a result of a so-called sweat ceremony during the week.

The council’s resolution expresses sympathy to their family members and “hopes that this senseless tragedy will promote a better understanding of Native American history and foster respect and deference to Native American ceremonies and spiritual traditions,” Indian Country Today reports here.

Tribal Council Vice Chairman Ernie Stensgar says the resolution seeks to draw awareness to the fact that sweats are not to be taken lightly and certainly not to be exploited.

“As I read that story I thought about my grand uncle who was a medicine man and some of the other people that taught us the way of the sweat,” he says. “Those people would turn over in their graves if they heard that the sweat lodge ceremony was being exploited and being commercialized. That’s what offended me and a lot of people here on the reservation – that people would try to make money off that ceremony that has been so helpful to so many people.”

Now – if only people would pay attention.

Gwen Florio

Tags: "Sweat lodge" deaths, buffalo post, Coeur d'Alene Tribe, James Arthur Ray, Native American news

A South Dakota judge says he’s worried that if he lowers bail for a woman charged in three-decade old slaying of American Indian Movement activist Annie Mae Aquash, he’s afraid she’ll run to a reservation and couldn’t be extradited to stand charges.

Thelma Rios, 64, has been in jail since Sept. 9 on charges of felony murder committed during a kidnapping and premeditated murder, all charges that carry mandatory life sentences upon conviction, reports the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal here.

Rios is Native American but not an enrolled tribal member.

Yesterday, she told Judge Jack Delaney that “I’ve never ran from anything in my life. If they laid a golden carpet for me to go to the reservation … I would not go.”

About 25 Rios supporters – including her 2-year-old granddaughter Alicia Jenkins, who wore a sign saying “I love my grandma” – gathered outside the courthouse to urge her release.

Rios’ trial has been tentatively set for March 1. Journal reporter Heidi Bell Gease writes that Delaney says he’ll ecide by Dec. 31 whether Rios’ trial will be severed from co-defendant John Graham, who is in federal custody but has not been formally charged in state court.

Gwen Florio

Tags: American Indian Movement, Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, buffalo post, Native American news, Pine Ridge Indian Reserva, Thelma Rios