Next time you think you’re having a bad day, consider the case of Christina Martinez and Carl Boneshirt, whose trailer home on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation was destroyed by a violent storm as Martinez was going into premature labor.

It gets worse – that was last month, and the family, which now includes little Tawrence, still doesn’t have a place to live. That’s because housing is the rarest of commodities on Pine Ridge, where there are already too many shortages of too many things.

Jomay Steen of the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal, writes here that:

Carl Bone Shirt, Jr. works on the transmission of his broken-down van parked at his home in Kyle. The house has been condemned. (Kristina Barker/Rapid City Journal)

Although the couple has received help from the American Red Cross, the Oglala Sioux Tribe and South Dakota Department of Social Services, the destitute couple is at the mercy of family and friends because housing remains in short supply on the reservation.

None of their relatives or friends has enough room to take in all of the family, so the homeless couple has had to divide their household between Potato Creek and Kyle because there are no emergency shelters or housing for them to live in.

“There’s no shelters or emergency housing here. They have people lined up for housing for years,” Martinez said.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” she said.

For now, Martinez and the baby are staying with her mom, whose home already has 15 people living in it. Boneshirt is bunking with friends in Kyle.

Jomay’s very fine story about the family’s plight makes us wonder if there’s a way to help out. It doesn’t list specific contact information. Our best bet would be to contact the Oglala Sioux Tribe, PO Box 2070, Pine Ridge, S.D. 57770; (605) 867-8000.

Suggestions?

Gwen Florio

Tags: American Red Cross, buffalo post, Gwen Florio, Native American news, Oglala Sioux Tribe, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota Department of Social Services

Earlier today, we posted about the Arlee Celebration and Powwow held this past weekend on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana. This coming weekend brings a new event, the Crow Skills and Trade Fair in the southeastern part of the state. Lorna Thackeray of the Billings Gazette uses this story, on one family’s beading tradition, as a preview.

Each row of tiny beads that Angela Hill painstakingly stitches onto leather carries a piece of her heart.

Generations from now, her children’s children and their grandchildren will marvel at the intricate patterns and precise lines of hundreds of thousands of beads she has lovingly fashioned into traditional Crow regalia for her family.

“My mother, Mary Bear Cloud, taught me,” Hill said at her Billings home as she sewed beads the size of the head of a pin onto a pipe bag for a relative participating in a Sun Dance later this month.

“All my family are beaders,” she said. “My mother is 80 and she still beads for her grandson.”

And Hill wants her 16-year-old daughter, Elonna Stewart, to carry the tradition forward.

“I don’t think she’s very interested yet,” Hill said, shrugging. “I want her to help me make her outfit. She has a jingle dress, moccasins and leggings. She wants fully beaded leggings now. We’re going to do that, too.”

She’s not pushing the pretty teenager too hard. Hill didn’t take up the art until she was in her mid-20s. Now she is one of the premier beaders in a tribe known for its skilled artisans.

That is why she is among the artists and craftsmen who have been asked to participate July 9-10 in the first Crow Skills and Trade Fair at Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area headquarters in Lovell, Wyo.

For more of the stories and also more photos about the Hills, as well as the fair schedule, click here.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Arlee Celebration and Powwow, Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area, buffalo post, Crow Skill and Trades Fair, Crow Tribe, Flathead Indian Reservation, Gwen Florio, Native American culture and tradition, Native American news

Here’s how Keila Szpaller of the Missoulian tells the tale, via Johnny Arlee:

When the Salish people first saw horses, they weren’t sure what they were seeing, said Johnny Arlee, a spiritual and cultural leader of the Flathead Reservation: “They thought they were monsters, half human and half animal.”

The Shoshone Tribe had raided a Salish hunting party, and the survivors returned to camp and formed a group to retaliate. Instead of descending on the Shoshone right away, though, the Salish observed them.

They noticed their enemies tending horses and leading them to water. Arlee, vice chairman of the 2010 Arlee Celebration Committee, said a plan for revenge emerged: “Instead of wiping them out, let’s go steal what they like.”

The Salish did, and on their way walking back to camp, someone suggested the group could get away from the Shoshone faster if people rode the horses, as they had witnessed.

Scouts at home saw the men astride the horses and at first mistook them for monsters. Salish people at camp nearly fled until the riders signaled their identity, said Arlee, who told the story. Then, the Shoshone arrived in pursuit of their animals.

“The Shoshone came and begged for their horses back,” Arlee said.

The Salish said no and explained they had taken the horses to retaliate for the deaths of their own people. Eventually, though, the parties came to an agreement, and the tribes became allies. The bond had formed over the horses.

Want to read more? Click here, where you can see a video, too. And enjoy!

Gwen Florio

Tags: Arlee Celebration, Arlee Powwow, buffalo post, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Flathead Indian Reservation, Gwen Florio, Johnny Arlee, Native American news, Powwow, Salish, Shoshone