Del Norte Schools Mascot Issue

A group of local Del Norte County, CA Alumni are pushing to bring back “the outdated and banned Indian Head Plains Style Mascot” to Del Norte County High School.  The faction wants to bring back the Indian Head with a plains style head dress despite the issue being resolved twelve years ago by a local committee comprised of a cross section of American Indians, students, staff, coaches, community members and alumni.  That group followed the national trend in its decision and determined that no ethic group should be used as a sports mascot or school logo, especially one that uses another tribe’s sacred items.   

To share your opinions on the use of Native Americans to the group lobbying for the return of the Del Norte Mascot please go to:

THIS ITEM IS RUMORED TO BE ON THE SCHOOL BOARD AGENDA TOMORROW NIGHT (AUGUST 9, 2012).  If you would like to contact the District Superintendent and school board please see below:

Del Norte County Unified School District
301 West Washington Blvd. 
Crescent City, CA 95531
707-464-6141

Don Olson
County and District Superintendent
(707) 464-0200

Frances Costello, Board President 

Jim Maready, Vice President/Clerk

Don McArthur, Board Member
 

Lori Cowan, Board Member

Jennifer England, Board Member 

Native Women In Science (profile)

From earth to sky, there’s no frontier Native American women haven’t crossed, from mapping the earth to flying through hurricanes to mastering animal science and promoting indigenous knowledge.

Lisa Lone Fight, enrolled in the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara (Sahnish) Nation, is the great-granddaughter of Buffalo Bird Woman, an expert in Native agricultural science whose gardening techniques have been the topic of conversations about sustainability and of at least one book, Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden, originally published as Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians: An Indian Interpretation by Gilbert Livingstone Wilson (University of Minnesota, 1917).

Lone Fight believes she’s carrying on Buffalo Bird Woman’s traditional knowledge of the earth through research on mapping and the commonalities of traditional knowledge, geospatial science and land change over time.

Read more:http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/06/14/native-women-tackle-science-and-win-118024 http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/06/14/native-women-tackle-science-and-win-118024#ixzz22oXfMKvH

Full Story At: http://bit.ly/NativeWomenInScience

Center Promotes Understanding (community)`

Mary Puthoff was born on the Rosebud Lakota Reservation in South Dakota and raised by a family in the Black Hills after being adopted at age 5. „One-third of Indians, nationally, haven‚t been raised by birth families,‰ Puthoff told the LivermorePatch. She‚s referring to the Indian Adoption Project, which lasted from 1958 through 1967, and placed 395 Native American children from 16 western states with white families in Illinois, Indiana, New York, Massachusetts, Missouri, and other states in the east and Midwest.

Native activists were against the project and fought for the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act, which was passed in 1978 and made it difficult for non-Native families to adopt Native children.

To keep culture alive for Native children, Puthoff now runs the Livermore American Indian Center in Livermore, California.

Full story at: http://bit.ly/NkxUXB

Tips From Former Smokers (health, opportunity)

Dear Colleague:

The CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health is in the process of recruiting individuals to feature in our next national tobacco education campaign. This campaign will be very similar to our highly successful Tips From Former Smokers campaign and enable us to highlight health conditions and population groups that we weren’t able to feature in the first Tips campaign. Like the first Tipscampaign, this campaign will feature real people who suffered severe health conditions caused directly by smoking or that were triggered by exposure to secondhand smoke.

As a partner with us in tobacco control, we would very much appreciate it if you would share this request for assistance as well as the enclosed flyer with your partners, members, and/or constituents. Additionally, should you know of any people whom you feel would be good candidates for this campaign, please feel free to forward their contact information to us. As with the first campaign, be assured that anyone you refer to us will be treated with respect and sensitivity.

 

We are seeking people across all ethnic and racial backgrounds, but particularly candidates who are veterans or American Indian/Alaska Natives—ideally age 55 or younger. All applicants must have been tobacco-free for at least 6 months. We are specifically seeking individuals:     

·                     Who have suffered a heart attack due to exposure to secondhand smoke (age 55 or younger) 

·                     Who have symptomatic COPD, including chronic bronchitis or emphysema (i.e., marked by restriction in activities or home oxygen), due to their own smoking (ages 30 through 50)

·                     Who have diabetes (either Type I or Type II) and who’ve suffered health problems as a result of their continued smoking; this could include amputation of limbs, kidney failure, vision impairment, or blindness (age 55 or younger)

·                     Who have had a serious asthma attack triggered by exposure to secondhand smoke (ages 18 through 30)

·                     Who have used proven strategies to successfully quit smoking (such as setting a quit date, working with their health care provider, removing ashtrays and cigarettes from their environment, or using an approved medication) and have a compelling story to tell about how they quit (age 50 or younger)

In order to qualify, participants must have been tobacco-free for at least 6 months, be able to travel for filming in October 2012, and be willing to have a doctor sign a legal statement saying tobacco caused and/or contributed to their health condition. Please see the attached recruitment flyer for additional information regarding qualifications. The compensation for participating in this campaign is $2,500 as well as paid travel expenses.

 

We really appreciate your assistance in this endeavor. Should you have any questions or concerns related to the campaign, please contact Kari Sapsis, Campaign Development Team Lead, atksapsis@cdc.gov. For questions about the recruitment process and to recommend good candidates for the campaign, please call or email one of the following representatives from Mimi Webb Miller Casting, a national casting and research company.

 

Mimi Webb Miller                               Leslie Rhoades

mwmcasting@yahoo.com                   allrhoadescasting@yahoo.com

(310) 452-0863                                   (310) 968-6409

 

 

 

Sincerely,
 

 

 


Timothy McAfee, MD, MPH

Director, Office on Smoking and Health

National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention

  and Health Promotion

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Women who are Victims of DV and Substance Abuse (event)

Working with Women who are Victims of DV and Substance Abuse
  Join us for a Webinar on August 15
   
Working with Women who are Victims of DV and Substance Abuse
The intersection of Domestic Violence and Alcohol and substance abuse is a complex and multi-faceted situation which poses unique challenges to advocates working with women and children.  While there are many similarities such as they both involve power and control dynamics, they both impact entire families, they both thrive in silence and isolation and carry great society stigma and shame and they both involve denial systems including minimizing and rationalizing, domestic violence and substance abuse are very different problems requiring different safety interventions.  Join for us for this important webinar to learn more about creating safety for women who are victims of domestic violence and substance abuse and multi-abuse trauma.

Presented by Brenda Hill, Native Co-Director, SD Coalition Ending Domestic & Sexual Violence and Facilitated by Gwendolyn Packard, NIWRC Program Specialist
Title: Working with Women who are Victims of DV and Substance Abuse
Date: Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Time: 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM MDT
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.
System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server
Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer
Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/521097342

Yurok Salmon Festival (event)

The Klamath Salmon Festival is Saturday August 18.

The Yurok Tribe has already begun work on the 50th Klamath Salmon Festival, a
gift the Tribe gives the community every year.

"We are pulling out all the stops for the 50th festival," said Matt Mais, the
event's organizer. "The Yurok Tribe is working hard to make this family event
better than ever before."

Attendees of the all-day event will have an opportunity to learn more about
Yurok culture, dance to live music, shop for authentic handmade gifts form more
than 100 vendors and enjoy a delicious traditionally cooked salmon feast.

There will also be a highly competitive Stick Game Tournament. The Stick Game
is played by local tribes and is a full-contact sport that resembles lacrosse
with a wrestling element. The game is heavy on action.

A traditional Indian Card Games Tournament and a number of cultural
demonstrations will be on hand. The Tribe is also putting on a 5k Ney-Puy Run.
The run is free to enter and will start at 8a.m.

Automobile enthusiasts from throughout the region will be showing off their
vehicles at the "Classic Car Show". Yurok tribal member and vintage vehicle
owner George Smoker is organizing this event, which is sure to be a hit with car
buffs.

For non-runners the Salmon Festival starts with the Veteran's breakfast, put on
by the Klamath Chamber of Commerce at 8 a.m. at the Klamath Community Center on
Salmon Blvd. The breakfast will be followed by a parade at 10 am. The famously
delicious salmon lunch will start at 11:00 a.m.

For more information see the following links:

http://www.yuroktribe.org/salmonfestival.htm

http://www.delnorte.org/event/klamath-salmon-festival/

NAGPRA Grants (news)

Local tribes receiving Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act grants

The National Park Service is awarding $462,063 in grants to five local Native American tribes to assist them in implementing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which helps return human remains and cultural objects to their native people.

Projects funded by the grant program include consultations to identify and affiliate individuals and cultural items, training for both museum and tribal staff on the act, digitizing collection records for consultation and consultations regarding culturally significant unaffiliated individuals, as well as the preparation and transport of items back to their native people, according to a press release.

Local recipients of consultation grants include the Bear River Band of Rohnerville Rancheria with a $89,990 grant, the Karuk Tribe with a $88,673 grant, the Smith River Rancheria with a $90,000 grant, the Wiyot Tribe with a $90,000 grant and the Yurok Tribe with a $90,000 grant. The Karuk Tribe is also slated to receive a $13,400 repatriation grant, which will help return items to the tribe.

http://www.times-standard.com/rss/ci_21226298?source=rss

American Indian Sign Language Conference (event)

Announcing: American Indian Sign Language Conference, (August 31 – September 2, 2012) 
Blackfeet [Amskapi Pikuni] Reservation, Blackfeet Community College, and Museum of the Plains Indian, Browning, MT. In collaboration with Friends of the Museum of the Plains Indian and The University of Tennessee with support from The National Science Foundation’s Documenting Endangered Languages Program, Division of Linguistics (id #1160604). 

The 2012 Labor Day Weekend Conference will focus on contemporary use of Indian signed language and commemoration of the 1930 Plains Indian Sign Language Conference held in Browning, MT (see http://pislresearch.com/). The Conference will feature sign language presentations and workshops; formal sign language documentation activities; as well as ceremonial and educational activities for all ages. We are inviting signers and others interested in participating in the signing activities from beginners to advanced signers and participants interested in signing/talking with members of tribes in the US and Canada. The 2012 Conference will be one of the first occasions since the 1930s that American Indians from different nations will convene to share their American Indian Sign Language (AISL) skills and stories.[1]

We are hoping to identify and involve individuals who know sign language from Indian nations of the US and Canada to share their knowledge of history, geography, and culture through signed and spoken languages from among N. Cheyenne, Blackfeet, Crow, Assiniboine, Nakoda, Lakȟóta, and other Indian Nations. The chief objective is to involve signers of all ages and generations who are learning and using sign language today, to involve Native community members in language documentation and revitalization, and to give back to these communities the conference proceedings and documentary materials produced during the Conference. Thank you for sharing this announcement and the flyer attached. Please email Jeffrey Davis and see the Conference website for more details. http://pislresearch.webfactional.com/new/aisl-conference-2012/

California Tribal Consultation Session (event)
 
 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
OFFICE OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION * OFFICE OF INDIAN EDUCATION

AUGUST 30, 2012

 

PALA, CALIFORNIA

Tribal Consultation Session

The U.S. Department of Education held listening and learning sessions in urban Indian communities in 2011, and plans to conduct more in 2012. Information gathered from these sessions will continue to inform Federal education programs that impact urban communities. These listening and learning sessions are a follow-up to a series of tribal consultations held in 2010.

In accordance with the Department of Education's commitment to engage in regular and meaningful consultation and collaboration with Indian tribes and Indian education stakeholders, these sessions are designed to provide you with an opportunity to voice your thoughts and engage in dialogue with White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education leadership as well senior officials. The sessions will provide an opportunity to voice feedback on the strategies and objectives of Executive Order 13592, Improving American Indian Education and Alaska Native Educational Opportunities and Strengthening Tribal Colleges and Universities, as it relates to urban Native American student issues. Together, tribal and community leaders, education stakeholders and the Department of Education will move forward in creating a more effective and responsive education policy that positively impact our Native youth.

For registration and more information, please go to www.edtribalconsultations.org/unels  

Venue
Pala Band of Mission Indians

Pala Tribal Government Center

12196 Pala Mission Road

Pala, California 92059

Time: 8:30 am - 3:30 pm

Diabetes News (health)

By Battle Diabetes, Thu, July 26, 2012

An analysis of fossilized Native American feces shows that our ancestors ate up to sixteen times the fiber that we do today, but our stomachs didn’t evolve to fit our changing diets.

The findings come from analysis of fossilized feces dating from A.D 1123 and earlier. They reveal that the ancient Native Americans lived on a heavily fibrous diet of prickly pear, yucca, and seeds, with low impact on blood sugar.

The native people of Arizona ate foods with traditionally very low glycemic indexes, but are now more susceptible to type 2 diabetes than Caucasians, for their bodies do not produce enough insulin to break down the sugar in modern foods. The Native populations were extremely efficient in their calorie intake, but the arrival of Europeans caused their diet to change faster than their bodies could keep up with, and their digestive systems didn’t evolve to handle foods with a high glycemic index.

Modern humans of all ethnicities have suffered from this dietary change.

Full  Story at:http://bit.ly/M6L5zm