It’s been more than three decades, but in all that time, no one in Montana has managed to do what Marvin Camel did: Win a world boxing title.

Camel fought in the 1970s and ’80s as a cruiserweight, a class between light heavyweight and heavyweight. Things were different then. Famed boxing promoter Don King saw no problem with letting out an on-mic war whoop when Camel – who is Salish, from Montana’s Flathead Indian Reservation – entered the ring in one of his title bouts, Missoulian reporter Vince Devlin writes here.

Thirty years later, Camel still revels in his accomplishments – even if few in the state remember them.

“Anybody can do what I’ve done,” Camel says, “but in reality, nobody has. I often ask myself, ‘Why me? Why was I chosen to be the first cruiserweight champion of the world?’ I come from a town of 1,500 people, Ronan, Montana, and I’ve won two world titles. There are towns, there are states, there are countries with millions of people that have never won a world championship.”

He wants to share his love of the sport with people in his home. Although Camel has retired to Florida, his brother Ken, also a former professional boxer, wants to start a youth boxing club on the reservation.

Marvin Camel wants to help him with that goal.

“Kenny can give them the ups and downs, the ins and outs,” Camel says, “but there’s one little step he’s got to take that he hasn’t, and I have. He can’t teach them to become a world champion, but I can.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Flathead Indian Reservation, International Boxing Federation Cruiserweight Championship, Ken Camel, Marvin Camel, Native American news, World Boxing Council, World Cruiserweight Champion

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Council has chosen a new leader, replacing longtime tribal chairman James Steele Jr. with E.T. “Bud” Moran.

“Any member of the council, if they feel up to it, can make a run for it,” Moran, a Vietnam veteran who is halfway through his council term, told Vince Devlin of the Missoulian (Mont.) here. “I felt James is a good man who I have nothing against. I just wanted a chance to serve as chairman.”

Moran says his priorities will include energy and water rights issues.

Meanwhile, Devlin has also learned that Luana K. Ross will head Salish Kootenai College, taking over from Joe McDonald, who built the school from a small satellite institution offering a few junior college credits in borrowed high school classrooms into the most successful tribal college in America.

She’ll take over July 1, he reports here.

Ross, an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, is currently associate professor of Indian studies at the University of Washington in Seattle.
BOCK

She is also co-director of UW’s Native Voices, a graduate program where students, faculty and independent producers create documentaries about indigenous peoples, and author of “Inventing the Savage: The Social Construction of Native American Criminality.”

In the forward to the 1998 book, which investigated the high rates of imprisonment of American Indians, Ross recalls growing up across the street from the old tribal jail near Dixon in the 1950s, and how almost every family had seen one or more of its members jailed at some point.

“People from my reservation simply seemed to vanish and magically return,” she wrote, including her godfather, a “wonderfully brilliant man” who had trained to be a Jesuit priest, yet had been imprisoned four times in his life.

“How could this possibly happen to a well-educated, spiritual person?” Ross asked.

Gwen Florio

Tags: "Inventing the Savage: The Social Construction of Native American Criminality.", buffalo post, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, E.T. "Bud" Moran, Flathead Indian Reservation, James Steele Jr., Luana K. Ross, Native American news, Native Voices, University of Wahington

At the invitation of the White House, Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribal Chairman James Steele Jr. will be part of a panel discussion tomorrow in Copenhagen as part of the International Climate Change conference.

Steele will join Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, U.S. Rep. Kate Knuth of Minnesota and Alice Madden, an adviser in the Colorado governor’s office for the talk, the Missoulian’s Vince Devlin reports here.

The National Wildlife Federation and the National Tribal Environmental Council joined the White House in issuing the invitation to the discussion titled “Leadership and Innovation by States and Tribes in the United States.”

“Our home reservation features pristine wilderness, waters and animal life,” Steele says. “This didn’t happen by chance or luck. We’ve worked very hard to maintain our natural areas and we’re also reclaiming lands. Each day seems to bring a new threat to our lands. I welcome this chance to tell our story.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: Alice Madden, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Gov. Jim Doyle, International Climate Change Conference, James Steele Jr., National Tribal Environmental Council, National Wildlife Federation, U.S. Rep. Kate Knuth, White House

That was the message yesterday with the kickoff of the 2010 Census. Federal dollars are doled out based on census counts. When people in a tribe or a state are under-counted, the amount of money – the money we pay as taxes, that comes back to us in the form of services – to that region drops

At a presentation in the Census’ Missoula, Mont., office, Steve Lozar of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, emphasized that information will be kept private.

“One of the great things we have is cultural pride – that our word or anything said in private, stays private,” Lozar says, according to this story by the Missoulian’s Betsy Cohen.

That presentation underscored the Census’ commitment to accurately counting tribes with a presentation by tradition dancers Ariel Rodgriguez, Summel Weasel, Jalene Weasel and Matthew Weasel, all students in Missoula’s public schools.

Census questionnaires will be delivered to households in February and March and will contain 10 questions.

Gwen Florio

Tags: 2010 Census, buffalo post, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Native American news, U.S. Census Bureau

Margo Gray-Proctor believes she has the cure for social ills on Indian reservations – economic development and job creation.

Those things must come from – and remain – within, she says.

Gray-Proctor spoke yesterday at the Indian Business Development Expo sponsored by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, the Missoulian’s Vince Devlin reports here.

Gray-Proctor is secretary-treasurer of the Horizon Cos. in Tulsa, Okla., and chairwoman of the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development. A member of Oklahoma’s Osage Tribe, she’s sometimes called the “Indian Oprah” because of the success she’s had in the business world, Devlin writes.

Horizon, the company she and Cannizzaro founded, offers civil engineering consulting and design for gaming developments, hotels, hospitals, airports and more. It’s expanded since its inception, recognizing opportunities and meeting other needs, such as a drug, alcohol and background screening company that offers its services to tribally owned casinos and others.

“You want that dollar to bounce around eight to 10 times in the community before it leaves,” Gray-Proctor says. Cutting a check to a company that isn’t on the reservation for goods and services, she said, means the money’s gone in 30 minutes. She suggests that Native business owners form associations, and work with tribal governments to keep the money circulating locally.

And, she offers perhaps the most important advice:

“Don’t be afraid to take that risk,” she said. “Don’t be afraid to get in the game.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: American Indian Business Association, buffalo post, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Horizon Cos., Margo Gray-Proctor, National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development, Native American news, Osage Tribe

It’s a pretty simple equation: Kids who read – or are read to – early and often do better in school. But that can be hard to achieve in far-flung tribal communities, where poverty and geography conspire against it.

Enter – at least in Montana – the StoryMakers program, which puts children’s books in the hands of families in both reservations and rural communities.

“Buying books for your children in today’s economy, when people are struggling to keep the lights on, their houses warm, buy food … this gives them the opportunity to have something they can share with their child,” says Jeanne Christopher, director of Early Childhood Services for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes on Montana’s Flathead Indian Reservation.

As the Missoulian’s Vince Devlin tells it, here, Christopher is part of several “citizen teams” StoryMakers use to get a new slew of books in the hands of an average of 6,000 children in Montana every six months.

For more information on the StoryMakers program on the Flathead Indian Reservation, contact Jeanne Christopher or Malissa Morigeau at (406) 676-4509.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Education, Flathead Indian Reservation, Hopa Mountain, Native American news, StoryMakers

Today, we honor veterans with this story about the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Veterans Warrior Society. The Missoulian’s (Mont.) Vince Devlin tells it better than we ever could:

By VINCE DEVLIN of the Missoulian

RONAN, Mont. – No ethnic group in the nation comes close to the per-capita service record of American Indians to their country

“They say it’s in the blood,” says Mike Couture, who joined the U.S. Navy four days after graduating in 1989 from Ronan High School, and just retired over the summer. “It’s always been instilled in us to protect ourselves, our people, our way of life.”

“This is our tradition,” adds Steven Spooner, a veteran of the Vietnam War. “This is our country. This is our homeland, and we fight for it.”

Besides, Spooner says, in Indian culture, “If you wanted to be around women, you had to be a warrior.”
Like most all American vets, they come home – if they come home – to a civilian world that cannot understand the things they have seen or been through, to a world where the benefits they’ve earned through their service may be a mountain of confusing paperwork away.

And so it was that, in 1992 on the Flathead Indian Reservation, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Veterans Warrior Society was founded.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: buffalo post, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Veterans Warrior Society, Native American news, Native American veterans

This post seems to demand an honor song. This one is from the Little Otter Singers during June’s Honor The Earth Pow wow on the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Reservation of Northern Wisconsin.

Buck Richardson, the minority program coordinator with the Rocky Mountain Healthcare Network, says that for too many years, Native American veterans missed out on services because of the disconnect between agencies. “A lot of Indian vets didn’t know what their benefits were,” Richardson says.

Tomorrow, Richardson and Kevin Howlett, who directs Tribal Health for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in Montana, will travel to Washington, D.C., to testify about the issue before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs.

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., a member of the VA committee and author of the Rural Veterans Health Care Improvement Act, requested the hearing last month, reports Martin Kidston of the Helena (Mont.) Independent Record, here.

“With this hearing, we’ll be able to dig deeper into the challenges facing Montana’s Indian veterans and how we can better get them the care they’ve earned,” Tester says.

Kidston reports that more than 4,500 Native Americans are enrolled in the VA. The actual number of Indian vets in the state, however, is believed to be much higher. Per capita, Montana has one of the nation’s highest veteran populations in the country.

The hearing will look at Montana as a model. The state has nine tribal veteran representatives. Nationwide, there are now more than 227 such representatives who serve in other states such as Alaska, Alabama, New Mexico and Oklahoma.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Indian Health Service, Native American news, Native American veterans, Rocky Mountain Healthcare Network, Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, Veterans Administration

Clover Anaquod was shopping for Halloween with her son this week when he gasped and pointed to a display.

Headdresses. Tomahawks. Peace pipes.

Anaquod, who is Assiniboine Sioux from the Fort Peck Reservation in northeastern Montana, tells the Missoulian that she was taken aback.

“Native American regalia is not a costume,” said Anaquod. “I took it personal.”

As for 10-year-old Matthew, “he was shocked. It hurt his feelings to see these.

Confederated Salish and Kootenai elder Tony Incashola says Indian costumes on Halloween make people view Native Americans “more as a display than humans.”

On the plus side, said Incashola, it seems as though fewer people these days tend to sashay out on Halloween in feathers and paint.

“They feel it’s time to move on, that those days are gone,” he said. “Gradually, more and more people are starting to understand the feeling.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: Assiniboine Sioux, buffalo post, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Halloween costumes, Native American news, racism