File this one in the dog-bites-man category: There’s yet another delay in the quest for recognition by the Little Shell Band of Chippewa who live in and around Great Falls, Montana.

The Associated Press reports that the decision, expected today, has been delayed at least one more day. The tibe’s The 4,300 members first formally petitioned the Bureau of Indian Affairs for recognition back in 1978, but its original quest dates to the late 1860s, when Chief Little Shell and his band were excluded from a federal treaty signed with related tribes.

In other news from Indian Country, David Beaulieu, who once headed the Center for Indian Education at Arizona State, moves into a similar position at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he’s already a professor in the School of Education.

Here’s the entire text of the AP story:

MILWAUKEE (AP) – The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is establishing an institute for American Indian education.

It’s named for a Stockbridge Mohican woman Electa Quinney, who is also a Wisconsin educator.
David Beaulieu is a professor of educational policy and community studies in UW-Milwaukee’s School of Education. He will head The Electa Quinney American Indian Education and Policy Studies Institute, which is still in the planning stages.

He has previously served as president of the National Indian Education Association. He was also the director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Indian Education from 1997 to 2001.

In a news release, he says the institute’s research, service and learning opportunities will focus on American Indians and on non-Indians interested in working with tribal communities.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Arizona State University, buffalo post, David Beaulieu, Education, Little Shell Chippewa, Native American news, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

A few tore it apart. Many came together to rebuild it.

Each year in Scituate, Rhode Island, for nearly two decades now, schoolchildren add to two villages that aim to reproduce the ways Native American people and Pilgrims lived centuries ago. The sizeable project at Clayville Elementary School now covers an area more than half the size of a football field.

But this year, someone – two someones, according to authorities – decided it would be fun to undo that work. (See background here.)

School administrators described the damage, and its emotional impact, as “devastating.”

Now, the people of Scituate and surrounding communities have provided a counterweight to those discouraging moments. More than 100 volunteers are helping to rebuild the villages, trying to get them ready in time for next month’s Harvest Festival.

“It was amazing,” fourth-grade teacher Cindy Gould tells the Providence Journal, here. “Absolutely amazing, and so heartfelt.”

The wetus, or wigwams, in the Native American village will take some time to rebuild, the Journal reports. The volunteers rebuilt one of five wetus and got started on two more, and they also rebuilt the frame of the corn platform, where children in the village would have stood above the gardens to chase the crows away. The sweat lodge also awaits work.

Given the persistence of the volunteers, there’s no doubt the work will be accomplished.

They were just so diligent,” Gould says. “We actually had to chase some families out of the village. ‘We’ll stay until midnight,’ they said.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Clayville Elementary School, Education, Native American news, R.I., Scituate

Students on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota celebrated the long-awaited upgrade to their high school with celebration and ceremony yesterday, with a flag song and a ribbon-cutting, smudgings and drums.

The $2.5 million addition and renovation to Red Cloud High School is part of a five-year plan for the school that includes increased graduation standards and an eventual overhaul and expansion of the Lakota language curriculum, according to this story in the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal.

Its centerpiece is a spacious student commons with an oversized stained-glass artwork by Angela Babby called “The Return of the White Buffalo Calf Woman.” The artwork was commissioned for the commons and celebrates White Buffalo Calf Woman, who the Lakota say brought them the sacred pipe and taught them many of their traditional ways.

As students cross from one section of the building into another, they walk under the painted words Woyuonihan – the Lakota phrase for “finding God in all things,” the story says. Less permanent reminders of the school’s Catholic and Lakota foundation show up in laminated neon sheets of paper translating common English words – the exit sign, bathrooms, doors – into the Lakota language to help students learn.

Norma Tibbitts, the chairwoman of the board of directors for the school, spoke directly to the hundreds of students and family members at yesterday’s ceremony.

“What an inspiration you are to me and my family and the thousands of people across the Black Hills and nation who hear the stories of success coming out of this school,” she said. “Do not take education for granted.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Education, Lakota, Native American news, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Red Cloud Indian School

The Washington Post’s education columnist, Jay Mathews, takes a look here at Oakland, Calif.’s American Indian Public Charter School and its controversial principal, Ben Chavis.

Controversial because of his tough-talking demeanor that one teacher likened, in this Oakland Tribune story, to that of basketball coach Bobby Knight. (That same story about Chavis was headlined, “Madman, Genius, or Both?”)

Here’s the thing about Chavis, who is Lumbee from North Carolina: He gets results. By one measure, the American Indian School’s middle school grades rank fifth among all of California’s middle schools and first in Oakland. That’s tough to ignore.

Chavis credits a method that keeps kids with the same teacher through several grades, as opposed to the standard method of having different teachers for different grades and subjects. There’s a school of thought that the best teachers are ones with expertise in their fields.

But the experience at the American Indian Charter School would seem to belie that. What do you think?

Oh, and if you want to know more, Chavis has a new book, “Crazy Like A Fox: One Principal’s Triumph in the Inner City,” written with Carey Blakely, the teacher who helped him start the school.

Gwen Florio

Tags: American Indian Public Charter School, Ben Chavis, buffalo post, Education, Lumbee, Native American news, “Crazy Like A Fox: One Principal’s Triumph in the Inner City”

Art Begay says his initial impression of the University of Montana was hardly welcoming.

“I felt like a number on a file somewhere,” he tells the Missoulian’s Chelsi Moy, here.

That was before he went through UM’s orientation program for Native students, which offers the school’s 500 Native students one consistent message:

“You have support and you are welcome here,” says Fredricka Hunter, director of American Indian Student Services. The program began with a prayer from Joe Pablo of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes , followed by welcoming remarks by UM President George Dennison and other school administrators.

The idea is to increase the university’s retention rate from Native students, many of whom come from extremely rural areas to the university in Montana’s second-largest city. Andrea Alstrom, a Yupik from Alaska, points out that her village of 800 people is less than one-tenth the size of Missoula. Luckily, she says, her boyfriend, Bryan Okakok, moved to Missoula with her and even came to the university orientation for support.

Both listened as Dennison spoke. “We want you to succeed,” the college president told them, “because then we succeed.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: American Indian Student Services, buffalo post, Education, Native American news, University of Montana

I was not aware, until I read this story in today’s Missoulian here on the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ 23rd annual River Honoring, that in the 1970s and 1980s, several dams were planned for the Lower Flathead.

One of those proposed dams, right on the edge of the Flathead Reservation, would have flooded miles upstream. The tribes and other groups fought that dam and at least four others in the 1970s; as well as one proposed in the Buffalo Rapids area in the 1980s. Other reservations faced similar dilemmas. In Arizona, the Fort McDowell-Yavapai Nation successfully opposed the Orme Dam planned at the confluence of the Salt and Verde rivers in the 1970s. It would have supplied water to Phoenix, but flooded much of the Fort McDowell Reservation. As in Montana, an annual celebration on the reservation marks that project’s defeat. (See the tribe’s Web page on Orme here.

Other tribes were not so lucky. Tourism sites tout Lake Sakakawea as a recreation area, but few people boating and fishing on it realize the 1950s-era Garrison Dam that created the lake flooded more than 200 miles of tribal lands, driving people from their homes. It’s a terrible thing to think about, and all the more reason to be grateful for the efforts along the Lower Flathead and to celebrate along with the tribes. “We don’t like to turn away anyone that wants to come,” says Germaine White, education and information specialist with the CSKT Natural Resources Department. In recent years, they’ve centered the River Honoring around schoolchildren, the idea being that it’s never too early to begin honoring our waters.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Education, Native American news