Tribal Leader education Roundtable (event/education)

On Dec. 2, 2011, during the Third Annual White House Tribal Nation's Conference, President Obama signed Executive Order 13592 establishing the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education (Initiative). The mission of the Initiative is to help expand educational opportunities and improve educational outcomes for all American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) students, including opportunities to learn their Native languages, cultures, and histories and receive complete and competitive educations that prepare them for college, careers, and productive and satisfying lives.

A series of Tribal leader Education Roundtables has been set:

1/20/12 Rapid City (Past)

1/23/12 Norman, OK (Past)

1/25/12 Albuquerque

2/16/12 Seattle/Tacoma

To register please go to: http://triballeader-roundtables.indianeducation.org/

Washington DC Internship (opportunity)

FYI

Subject: Washington DC internship

1.    Native American Congressional Internship<http://udall.gov/OurPrograms/NACInternship/NACInternship.aspx>

Application Deadline:  January 31st

This ten-week summer internship in Washington, DC is for Native American and Alaska Native students who wish to learn more about the federal government and issues affecting Indian Country. The internship is fully funded: the Foundation provides round-trip airfare, housing, per diem for food and incidentals, and a stipend at the close of the program. For application information, click here<http://www.udall.gov/OurPrograms/NACInternship/ApplicationMaterials.aspx>.

Time for a Beer Summit Between Coburn And Mikkanen - Andrew Cohen - Politics - The Atlantic

via theatlantic.com

I have consistently railed against Republican senators who hold up President Barack Obama's judicial nominees for no good reason. For example, I haven't shut up about the lingering candidacy of a worthy man named Arvo Mikkanen, whose nomination in Tulsa has been held up, without explanation, by Tom Coburn, one of Oklahoma's Republican senators.

Full story at: http://bit.ly/ArvoMikkanen

USDA Funding in California (community)

For the first time in California the United States Department of Agriculture will provide funds to meet the differing conservation needs of American Indian tribes. The department’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NCRS) is making $1 million available to tribal farmers and ranchers for tradition-based tribal conservation practices.

“NCRS has a regular environmental quality incentives program to do conservation,” Reina Rogers, the service’s American Indian Liaison for California, said.

“This year what we’re trying to do is set up tribal specifics. We’ve been working with tribes on and off for years and what we’ve found is that a lot of our practices don’t really fit on tribal lands. The conventional agricultural programs for farmers and ranchers just didn’t fit. It was like trying to pound that square peg into the round hole. In talking with tribes that had trouble getting into the program because it just wasn’t fitting well, is how we built this tribal initiative.

“The priorities are now a lot more similar with the traditional practices that the tribes want to do,” Rogers added.

Asked for a specific example of how the new program might work Rogers cited the Hoopa Tribe in California’s Humboldt County.
“The Hoopa tribe’s agriculture is on a smaller scale, more sustainable than the conventional agriculture going on in Humboldt County. Under the conventional environmental quality incentives programs their practices would be similar to other farmers. But what they’re interested in is smaller, more sustainable farming. Say they want to do more acorn management, for food. Say they have native plants they want to rehabilitate for basketry fiber.”

This new program would address those tribal interests, she added. This is the first time in California that a federal government allocation has been made for tribal-specific conservation practices. “A lot of this will be forestry management practices addressed to eliminating excess fuels and managing the woodlands.”

“Tribes often have different conservation priorities than other state producers and frequently have culturally based priorities, such as the management of Traditional Native American Food Plants that are not priorities for mainstream producers,” Juan Armand, President of the Klamath Trinity Resource Conservation District, said in a news release announcing the program. “This targeted funding will provide enhanced opportunities for California Tribes to remain major players in conservation issues in the state, ranging from water usage to fire management.”
Applications from tribes wanting to participate in the new program will be accepted through February 3, 2012.

Budget Cuts Proposed for Indian Education

House Releases Draft Legislation to Reform the ESEA

U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce Chairman John Kline (R-MN) today released two pieces of draft legislation to reform current elementary and secondary education law, known as No Child Left Behind. The two bills, the Student Success Act and the Encouraging Innovation and Effective Act, would dramatically reduce the federal role in education.

To read a summary of the Student Success Act, click here. To read the draft legislation, click here.

To read a summary of the Encouraging Innovation and Effective Teachers Act, click here. To read the draft legislation, click here.

While NCAI is still in the process of thoroughly reviewing the legislation, one item is of immediate concern. The bills would eliminate both the Alaska Native Education Equity program and the Hawaiian Education Act program. NCAI will be opposing the elimination. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on the bills, and we will share more information about them next week.

In The Land of The Grasshopper Song

It has been reissued with a forward by yours truly and an afterword by my brother Terry Supahan.

In 1908 easterners Mary Ellicott Arnold and Mabel Reed accepted appointments as field matrons in Karuk tribal communities in the Klamath and Salmon River country of northern California. In doing so, they joined a handful of white women in a rugged region that retained the frontier mentality of the gold rush some fifty years earlier. Hired to promote the federal government’s assimilation of American Indians, Arnold and Reed instead found themselves adapting to the world they entered, a complex and contentious territory of Anglo miners and Karuk families.

In the Land of the Grasshopper Song, Arnold and Reed’s account of their experiences, shows their irreverence towards Victorian ideals of womanhood, recounts their respect toward and friendship with Karuks, and offers a rare portrait of women’s western experiences in this era. Writing with self-deprecating humor, the women recall their misadventures as women “in a white man’s country” and as whites in Indian country. A story about crossing cultural divides, In the Land of the Grasshopper Song also documents Karuk resilience despite seemingly insurmountable odds.

New material by Susan Bernardin, André Cramblit, and Terry Supahan provides rich biographical, cultural, and historical contexts for understanding the continuing importance of this story for Karuk people and other readers.



Summer Business Institute (opportunity)

Deadline: January 9, 2012

LEAD Summer Business Institute
for Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian
High School Juniors

 

Dartmouth College
Duke University
Stanford University
University of Pennsylvania

The LEAD Summer Business Institute is a dynamic summer program open to Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian high school students in their junior year. Students spend 3-4 weeks on a college campus learning about exciting careers in business and finance. Students take finance, business, accounting and marketing classes with world-renowned professors and converse with executives during corporate site visits at companies such as Google and Apple. Tribal leaders and Native American professionals share with students exciting business developments and help them to understand how a financial career can benefit tribal communities. Students also participate in field trips to amusement parks and sporting events.  

 

Cost and Scholarships: The cost of the program is $1,250 plus round trip airfare. Significant full and partial scholarships are available through NAFOA. Last year, 98% of students received financial aid.

 

Download an Application at: www.nafoa.org

 

NAFOA Scholarship Program
For Tribal College, Undergraduate and Graduate Students

 

NAFOA is dedicated to supporting Native people pursuing their education. We are pleased to offer merit-based scholarships to Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students.
Eligible majors include: Accounting, Business Administration, Economics or Finance. Awards are based upon academic merit, demonstrated involvement within the Native American community and demonstrated commitment to improving indigenous communities through a career in finance.
Deadline: January 6, 2012
Download an Application at: www.nafoa.org
is a dynamic summer program open to Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian high school students in their junior year. Students spend 3-4 weeks on a college campus learning about exciting careers in business and finance. Students take finance, business, accounting and marketing classes with world-renowned professors and converse with executives during corporate site visits at companies such as Google and Apple. Tribal leaders and Native American professionals share with students exciting business developments and help them to understand how a financial career can benefit tribal communities. Students also participate in field trips to amusement parks and sporting events.  

 

Cost and Scholarships: The cost of the program is $1,250 plus round trip airfare. Significant full and partial scholarships are available through NAFOA. Last year, 98% of students received financial aid.

 

Download an Application at: www.nafoa.org

 

Preserving Ojibwemowin is Erdrich Sisters' Mission (language)

“Thank you for helping to save the world.”

That’s how Ojibwe language teacher Dan Jones greeted his beginners class after explaining that some believe an end to the language means the end of all things. By learning Ojibwemowin and keeping it alive, the Fond du Lac Tribal & Community College instructor said, his students could take credit for helping to save the Earth.

In this regard, the mission of Wiigwaas Press and the Birchbark House Fund is a big one.

In 2008, Heid and Louise Erdrich, both authors and sisters from the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, founded the Birchbark House Fund “to support the work of indigenous language scholars and authors,” Heid Erdrich told Indian Country Today Media Network. In 2010 the two created Wiigwaas Press to publish books solely in the Ojibwe language. Heid oversees the day-to-day operations.Wiigwaas, or birch bark, seemed an appropriate name; the durable bark once served as the medium for delivering messages.
Read more: indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com