Felice Pace

Last week I had the honor to meet in Bozeman with a group of people who might just manage to change the dominant realities of everyday life on the Indian reservations of Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming. It might surprise you that no political leaders were in attendance – at least not political leaders of the type we usually think about. The event was a gathering of reservation-based native non-governmental organizations (NGOs) formed and operated by individuals, couples, friends and relatives who are dedicated to serving the native youth of their far flung communities. They were brought together by another NGO that goes by the name Hopa Mountain. The focus was organizational development and the sessions were about writing grants, grassroots fundraising, governing board development, strategic planning and other similar topics.

Sounds pretty benign, right? So why do I make apparently grandiose claims about the potential impact of this group of youth workers?

To answer the question I must tell you something about the reservations of these three western states. If you are non-native you likely wouldn’t know that NGOs in general and social service NGOs in particular are, for the most part, a new phenomenon on these reservations where civil society institutions and structures are at best underdeveloped. That’s because since their founding those who control the reservations – first and always the federal Department of Interior and in recent decades the tribal governments - have been in charge of youth and other social services. With federal funding and institutionalized programs named after long-dead members of congress it has long been assumed that there was no need for non-governmental organizations to care for the reservations’ youth. But now community-based youth programs are sprouting on the reservations like cottonwoods after a flood. On the Pine Ridge Reservation alone there are at least 15 such programs which have begun operations over the course of the last five years and the spontaneous generation of more programs and services does not appear ready to abate anytime soon.

How can we explain this phenomenon? For the answer we need look no further than the federal agencies and tribal governments which were presumed to be providing all the services reservation youth could possibly need. The naked truth is that these government agencies with their dozens of programs and solid year-after-year funding are failing the reservation youth; there is a growing cadre of adults who are no longer willing to stand by and watch the debacle.

Many of the new youth programs are focused on traditional culture and language preservation. While tribal programs have long claimed to teach traditional culture and reservation schools all have native language programs, traditional values continue to erode and few younger people have become fluent in their native tongues. This erosion of tradition and language along with the epidemic of negative youth behaviors has prompted the folks who gathered in Bozeman last week to take matters into their own hands - undertaking the daunting task of establishing youth programs outside tribal government and education structures.

(Read on …)

Ernie Atencio

I just read Craig Childs’ excellent cover story in the current issue of HCN about the thin line between plundering archaeological sites and what we take to be legitimate archaeology. I can imagine archaeologists out there bristling at the suggestion that they are just glorified pot hunters. But it reminded me of something my daughter said many years ago.

She was three and we were wandering around a potsherd-littered landscape on the Colorado Plateau. They were irresistibly beautiful, big, polychrome pieces and she had collected an armload, but she knew the rules and understood she couldn’t keep them. “But I just want to hold them for a while,” she said. As she was reluctantly scattering them back where they came from, she said, “I wish someone would invent a new national park called Finders Keepers National Park.”

Yeah, that would be a popular one, but with the public’s obsession about collecting souvenirs it wouldn’t last long.

(Read on …)

Mary K. Bowannie

I was talking to Mario Atencio, one of my students in the Native American Studies program at the University of New Mexico, about the challenges of blogging. Putting one’s thoughts out there, keeping the word count tight, meeting the proverbial deadline, and addressing the issues from a personal (rather than a reporter) standpoint. Mario listened patiently as we sat outside on a very cold, windy day in Albuquerque, NM, waiting for The Longest Walk 2 event to start. When I finally stopped thinking out loud, he turned and looked at me and said, “Just let it flow.”

So here it goes.

The Longest Walk 2 event April 11 in Albuquerque was powerful and empowering. The local media coverage was mostly photo ops of the dancers, the colorful side of the event. Many folks heard the words of Dennis Banks and were reminded to keep fighting the fight. Banks feels not much has changed over the years.

While I respect Dennis Banks’ sacrifice and contributions, I have to disagree with his statement. Yes, some things haven’t changed: Indigenous lands and our sacred places are still being contaminated, endangered and raped. Tribes wrestle politically on a tribal, state and federal level to assert and exercise their sovereignty.

So what has changed?

(Read on …)

Evelyn Schlatter

I’m from rural Colorado, but I’ve lived in four urban areas, three of which are in the American West. I’ve traveled extensively as well, and something that always strikes me is the different “feel” of different places and how hard it can be to carve a place for yourself in an urban area, especially if you don’t know anybody. Or maybe you have cultural and ethnic roots that aren’t urban-based. It was hard for me–a white, middle-class woman–moving alone to cities where I didn’t know anyone. But what must that be like for people who come from, say, reservations, and from cultures that emphasize family ties that extend over generations?

The National Urban Indian Family Coalition just released a report titled “Urban Indian America: The Status of American and Alaska Native Children and Families Today.”

I’m particularly interested in how urbanization affects people whose historical and cultural roots may not be “cosmopolitan” and may not be “white.” As a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, I worked as an editor at the New Mexico Historical Review and one of my colleagues who worked there with me is Indian. She also worked at the Albuquerque Indian Center while she was going to school and raising a child.

Through her, I learned a bit about how cities can create a sense of isolation among Native peoples, and how indigenous history and culture is often rooted in landscape, rather than concrete. My colleague talked about how the Indian Center provided a focal point for Indian peoples in Albuquerque, and that it helped many retain a sense of identity in an often faceless urban environment. And she told me that the Center worked with other urban Indian centers, networking and trying to develop resources for a growing Native population in urban areas. So I read this recent study with interest, wanting to see what the NUIFC found and what it might propose to better connect urban to rural.

(Read on …)