In a challenge to white people to champion minority issues, a group in Oregon representing minorities will offer scholarships to white students, according to this story in the Oregonian of Portland.

The Oregon League of Minority voters will offer the small scholarships – perhaps a total of just $2,000 – over five years.

The idea is to address what reporter Janie Har terms “the stubborn lack of color in power.”

Nicole Maher, Native American Youth Family Center

Nichole Maher, executive director of the Native American Youth Family Center in Portland, welcomes any move to get whites involved in matters usually relegated to minorities.

She rejects the idea that Oregon lacks qualified people of color to lead committees, serve in office or otherwise shape public policy. Members of minority groups need to lead discussions on poverty, discrimination and schools, she said.

“[The] group should not just focus on whites being good allies but ensuring those people use their power and influence to give up their spot for a person of color,” she said.

“The most courageous thing a white ally can do is truly share power.”

One in five people in Oregon is a person of color. Portland’s population breaks down this way: Latinos, 9 percent, Asians, 7 percent, African Americans, 6 percent and Native Americans and mixed race people, 4 percent.

And, writes Har, nearly half of the students in Portland Public Schools are Latino, Native American, African American or Asian American.

“Nobody will acknowledge there’s racism here, and all of the data will tell you there is,” Maher says.

Gwen Florio

Nati

Tags: buffalo post, Native American news, Native American Youth Family Center, Oregon League of Minority Voters, Portland Public Schools, racism

Canadian Inuit dogs pull a sled using traditional harnesses in Iqaluit on Baffin Island. The G-7 finance ministers met in Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, this past weekend. (AP photo/Ron Gillies)

Giulio Tremonti, Italian Minister of Economy and Finance, left, rides a dogsled on the outskirts of the northern Canadian Arctic community of Iqaluit, Nunavut over the weekend. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Fred Chartrand)

But Inuit folk singer Lucie Idlout’s music comes with a serious message — and a challenge. Her song, “Lovely Irene,” inspired Iqaluit Mayor Elisapee Sheutiapik to launch a campaign to stamp out domestic violence in Nunavut, Canada’s most northern territory.

Iqaluit, Nunavut’s capital with just 7,000 people, has the highest rate of domestic violence per capita for any city in Canada — a fact that Sheutiapik is determined to change. She has renamed a street in the town that houses the only women’s shelter in the territory “Angel Street” and is now taking her campaign global.

She’s challenging finance ministers from the Group of Seven to create an “Angel Street” of their own in their countries in solidarity with her cause.

Sheutiapik argues that tackling an issue that was taboo in her childhood — “I used to see women with black eyes and I wasn’t supposed to talk about it” — is just as vital to economic development in Nunavut and the world as addressing big bank failures.

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Sheutiapik also has another message for potentially squeamish G-7 ministers — “You won’t know if you like it unless you try it.”

The promotion of seal meat products on the sidelines of the meeting here is sending a message to the world after the European Union banned the import of seal products on humane grounds.

Canada argues that seal-hunting is humane and provides income for isolated communities like Iqaluit. Sheutiapik points out that seal meat is still a staple for many families in this isolated outpost.

“If there was no seal, I wouldn’t be standing here,” she said. “That’s what my grandfather survived on. There was no beef here.”

Canada’s governor general Michaelle Jean caused an international stir last year by gutting a seal and swallowing a raw slice of the mammal’s heart.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and British Treasury chief Alistair Darling are among the officials sidestepping any potential controversy by skipping an Inuit “community feast,” which will feature seal meat, planned for after the close of talks on Saturday night.

“That’s unfortunate,” said Sheutiapik, who doesn’t buy the excuse that they are busy men who must return to world affairs: “They have to eat.”

Tags: buffalo post, Canadian Arctic, Elisapee Sheutiapik, G-7, Inuit, Iqaluit, Lucie Idlout, Native American news, Nunavut, seal meat

Illustration from National Geographic article on Iroquois Longhouse community, Richard Schlect.

The event hearkens back to a time when the Iroquois, as the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle’s Sean Dobbins writes, here, “would relax a little bit, gathering in their longhouses to listen to tales from their traveling storytellers.”

“The blanket of snow is putting mother earth to sleep, so it’s the time when the storytellers come out,” said Jeanette Miller, executive director of the Friends of Ganondagan. “They would go village to village.”…

The event, which has been running for five years, drew several hundred people to the Ganondagan Historic Site in Victor. When attendees weren’t warming up in the longhouse during storytelling, they were out braving the cold, participating in snowshoe races, watching demonstrations of toboggan making and maple sugaring, and playing snow snake, a traditional Iroquois game that involves sliding a thin spear down a ramp made of snow.

“Everything has to do with the life of the Seneca people,” said Miller, a member of the Mohawk Nation, which along with the Seneca Nation make up two of six Iroquois tribes that lived throughout upstate New York. “People can come up and have a good time and learn at the same time.”

The whole idea, says Perry Ground, president of the board of Friends of Ganondagan, is to give non-tribal people a chance to learn about what life was – and, to some extent, remains – for the Iroquois. The group holds events throughout the year.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Ganondagan Native American Winter Games & Sports, Iroquois, Native American news

Eroding Alaskan village to pursue climate change case
The fast-eroding village of Kivalina, Alaska, is trying to revive its lawsuit claiming greenhouses gases from oil, power and coal companies are causing the climate change that endangers the community. The suit was dismissed in federal court last year but Kivalina is appealing, with the opening brief due next month, according to the Associated Press, here.

First Nations chiefs likely to light Olympic torch?
So says Charlie Smith, of the Straight.com Olympics blog from Vancouver, here. Betting is hot and heavy – and the lobbying for favorites even more so (think Wayne Gretzky) – over who will light the torch, but Smith’s virtual money is on all four chiefs of the Four Host First Nations. We’ll know this week!

New Louise Erdrich novel both familiar and very different
Louise Erdrich’s new book “Shadow Tag” is unlike any of her others, the New York Times Book Review declares, here. Native themes permeate, but the novel focuses on a couple who works closely together, and about the dissolution of their marriage, and has parallels to Erdrich’s marriage to Michael Dorris.

S.D. tribes part of Justice Department session on Indian Country crime
Representatives of tribes living in South Dakota have been invited to the first of several listening sessions the U.S. Justice Department intends to hold on crime in Indian Country, Wayne Ortman of the Associated Press writes here. It’s part of an Obama administration push to deal with the problem, particularly as it pertains to violence against women and children.

Gwen Florio

Tags: "Shadow Tag", Alaska Natives, buffalo post, climate change, First Nations, Four Host First Nations, Kivalina, Louise Erdrich, Michael Dorris, Native American news, Olympic torch, U.S. Justice Department, Vancouver Olympics, Wayne Gretzky

Chef Andrew George didn’t think twice when he put his bison burger trio on the menu at a First Nations food pavilion at the Winter Games that begin next week in Vancouver.

Apparently he should have.

Corporate giant – and Olympics sponsor – McDonald’s swooped down upon George and demanded that he call the bison patties anything other than burgers, Suzanne Fournier of the CanWest News Service reports. As George told her, here:

“So we’re serving these three little bison patties that now we’re calling sliders, or bannockwiches, with sauteed wild mushrooms and Saltspring Island goat cheese between bannock rounds.”…

The Lil’wat, Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, who share the traditional territory on which the Olympics are being held, entered a protocol agreement in 2004 to abide by all Olympic rules.

McDonald’s spokesman Chris Stannell says the company has been in contact with the Four Host First Nations of the Olympics about the issue.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Four Host First Nations, McDonald's, Native American news, Vancouver Olympics

“The Indians’ Lee Iacocca” was a term also applied to Phillip Martin, who – as the Wall Street Journal reports – led the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians from poverty to prosperity. Martin died Thursday night after a massive stroke. The Journal’s Stephen Miller writes here:

Philip Martin (AP photo)

Mr. Martin led his tribe into printing and manufacturing of auto parts and electronics at the Mississippi reservation once called “the worst poverty pocket in the poorest state of the Union.”

By the 1990s, the Mississippi Choctaws had moved so far up the wage scale that they moved some of their lower-paid industrial jobs to Mexico. Instead, they concentrated on higher-margin businesses, including golf courses, a water park and two gambling casinos. Revenue from the tribe’s various businesses was spent on medical care, housing and primary education. Tribe members were granted scholarships to attend any U.S. university.

“Chief Martin is often positioned as someone whose eye was on economic development but not cultural preservation, said Tom Mould, an anthropology professor at Elon University who has written two books on Choctaw culture. But “Chief Martin was fond of saying that Choctaw culture includes washing machines and basketball, just as much as hominy and [Choctaw] stickball.”

The tribe resisted federal efforts to move Indians west, and did not receive federal recognition until 1945. It’s now one of the largest employers in Mississippi, with assets of more than $1 billon.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Chief Philip Martin, Elon University, Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, Native American news

Ben Margolit's Facebook photo

Fair enough.

It’s how Margolit expressed that enthusiasm that’s kicked up a controversy, the Denver Post’s Monte Whaley reports here.

Margolit put up a Facebook post suggesting CSU fans to dress like Indians. His Facebook photo shows him shirtless and in “war paint.”

Critics called that racist, and about 50 students held a protest rally on Wednesday. School administrators scheduled a meeting today to discuss the matter with students.

“We just want to start some sort of dialogue with people who don’t understand why this is so offensive to us,” Tiffani Kelly, president of CSU’s American Indian Science and Engineering Society, tells Whaley.

Margolit has apologized. “I just wanted students to have a good time,” he tells Whaley, “and I never wanted to hurt anybody.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: American Indian Science and Engineering Society, buffalo post, Colorado State University, Facebook, Native American news, University of Wyoming

Keith Iron (family photo, CBC)

People packed his funeral in the school gym, but among the mourners who will miss him most is his older brother, CBC reports here.

Sonny has difficulty communicated, says teacher Dorothy Laliberte, and Keith served as his caretaker.

“[Sonny] made sounds and [Keith] understood him, what he was saying,” she says.

“And if I couldn’t understand Sonny, Keith would get in and explain to me what was going on. It was like 100 per cent total care from a younger brother.”

Keith’s parents say their tragedy serves to underscore the need to deal with roaming dogs on reserves.

“Somebody needs to do something,” says his mother, Angie Checkosis. “And by that I mean the chief and council.”

Canoe Lake Chief Guy Lariviere has already said, here, that he and Canoe Lake leadership feel responsible.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Canoe Lake First Nation, Chief Guy Lariviere, First Nations, Keith Iron, Native American news, wild dogs

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The 1,000-year-old drum used by the Chief Cliff Singers is going to have one more story to tell, the Missoulian’s Vince Devlin writes here.

The Kootenai group announced yesterday that its 12 members – along with their ancient drum – are heading to the Winter Games in Vancouver that start next week:

The Chief Cliff Singers will perform on Friday, Feb. 19, at the 2010 Aboriginal Pavilion – also known at the Chiefs’ House – in the center of Olympic activity in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia.

They’ll be singing and drumming for dancers from Canada’s Ktunaxa Tribe at the pavilion, which will feature Indigenous performers daily throughout the Games’ Feb. 12-28 run. Singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie, born on the Piapot Cree Indian Reserve in Saskatchewan, kicks off the Chiefs’ House performances for the Four Host First Nations, sponsors of the pavilion.

“They’ve invited us up many more times, but it’s hard. All these guys have jobs and it’s tough to schedule,” says Cliff leader Mike Kenmille. “But the Olympic Games? I didn’t hesitate, I jumped when they invited us to do it live with them.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: 2010 Aboriginal Pavilion, buffalo post, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Chief Cliff Singers, Flathead Indian Reservation, Four Host First Nations, Ktunaxa Tribe, Native American news, Piapot Cree Indian Reserve, Vancouver Olympics