Some untimely departures, a groundswell of anti-pipeline support, and a museum’s mea culpa were among the stories circulating through Indian country during The Week That Was, March 19, 2017.
IN THE LINE OF DUTY: The Navajo Nation is mourning police officer Houston James Largo, 27, who was critically wounded during a domestic violence call. The case is still being investigated.
RISING AND UPRISING: The Native Nations Rise March continued to gather steam even after it was over. In a powerful, emotional uprising for indigenous rights, a good 5,000 Natives and their allies marched through the streets of the U.S. capital to support indigenous treaty and environmental rights against the routing of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) alongside the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. While inspiring, the event at the same time showcased a cross-section of human emotions and foibles. In answer to critics, Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II issued a Q&A-style statement to clarify the record on the tribe’s stance and its actions during the ending of the water protector camps. Meanwhile, the court fight continued as a judge denied the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe’s request for an emergency injunction on a judge’s religious freedom ruling in a bid to preserve the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe’s religious rights pending appeal. DAPL has also sparked a slew of backlash against the First Amendment right to free assembly and free speech, with anti-protest bills passed in several states. Also feeding into that debate was an incident after the march when indigenous people wearing water protector jackets and patches were denied entry into, of all places, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) until they had taken off the “offending” apparel—a move the NMAI later said was done in error. The divestment move continued apace, with San Francisco taking steps to extract $1.2 billion from bank funding the pipeline.
FROM NEGLECT TO DISRESPECT: Steve Russell discussed the new version of the so-called Affordable Care Act and its relationship to the federally imposed “state of tutelage” under which Indian nations are forced to operate, along with its potential ramifications in Indian country. Mark Trahant noted that the revisions don’t touch the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. Congressional Democrats urged President Donald Trump to meet with the White House Council on Native American Affairs lest this valuable relationship with Indian country languish. Trump, for his part, sent a perhaps inadvertent message to tribes by laying a wreath on Andrew Jackson’s grave in honor of the seventh President’s birthday—either not knowing, or not caring that he is considered the absolute worst president for Indians of all time, orchestrating as he did the Trail of Tears, among other atrocities. The whole spectacle, noted Harlan McKosato, has more the air of a reality TV show than a presidency—and it feeds Trump’s ego.
MALHEUR MALFEASANCE: The second round of jury verdicts in the armed takeover of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge has come in and created a stark contrast with the first round, in which seven defendants were acquitted of conspiracy and weapons charges. This time, as Steve Russell reported, four defendants were convicted.
NO SMALL FEAT: For accomplishing the Herculean task of cleaning up their ancestral waters, which had been filled with toxic mining waste, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe received a 2017 Watershed Hero Award from the Sierra Club’s Washington State Chapter for its work on the lake of the same name.
WORD BY WORD: Throughout Indian country, place names are being changed to acknowledge Native history or erase racial barriers. Now it’s Phoenix’s turn, as the debate heats up over whether to change the name of Squaw Peak Drive, which contains a word considered derogatory.
MILITARY IMPLICATED: With the Honduran military firmly implicated in the March 2016 murder of indigenous activist and Goldman Prize winner Berta Caceres, a U.S. senator called for an investigation into her death.
BEFORE HIS TIME: Acclaimed writer Richard Wagamese, a onetime ICMN contributor and the author of many novels about intergenerational trauma, walked on at his home at age 61. The Ojibwe storyteller, of Wabaseemoong First Nation in northwestern Ontario, wrote Indian Horse, which was being made into a movie at the time of his death, and Medicine Walk, among many other works. Writing about the pain inflicted by the residential school system and the Sixties Scoop (he was taken from his own parents and put into foster care under the latter program) was considered a mentor by many in Indian country and beyond. No cause of death was given.
A LIFE WELL LIVED: Cocopah’s oldest traditional Indian woman, Rose Wilson, walked on at age 104. Considered the last of the truly traditional Indian people, she was fluent in Cocopah, Quechan, Kumeyaay and other Hulkan tribal languages.
