 Native
American Village News
By The Associated Press
Bureau of Indian Affairs rejects 2 La. tribes
The Associated Press
Jun 12 09:13
HOUMA, La. (AP) - Two Native American
tribes in southern Louisiana have been told they don't meet federal
requirements for recognition.
But leaders of the Pointe-au-Chien
Indian Tribe and the Biloxi-Chitimacha Confederation of Muskogees said
they now know how to focus their requests to the Bureau of Indian
Affairs to achieve federal recognition, which can bring money, education
grants, housing opportunities and other government aid.
"Today is a good day. We have been
waiting 12 years for direction from the BIA on what we should be
focusing on, and now we have it,'' Pointe-au-Chien tribal elder Arline
Naquin said Wednesday.
Randy Verdun, principal chief of the
Biloxi-Chitimacha Confederation, agreed.
Both groups have members in
Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes.
Responses to the BIA's proposed
findings must be filed by Nov. 26.
The BIA said both groups failed to
prove that they were distinct communities before 1830, with political
influence or authority over their members. It says they also failed to
provide proof that they acted as single, independent political entities.
In addition, the Biloxi tribe failed
to furnish a copy of its present governing document, including
membership criteria, BIA said. Verdun said the bureau was sent that
information in 1997, and it will be submitted again.
The Biloxi Chitimacha council must
also certify its rolls, which show 2,545 members.
Brenda Dardar-Robichaux, principal
chief of the United Houma Nation -- which contends that the other two
groups are splinter factions of the United Houma -- said the proposed
findings are unfortunate.
The BIA's 1994 rejection of the
Houmas' petition for recognition implied that smaller groups had a
better chance of recognition, she said. The Pointe-au-Chien and Biloxi
Chitimacha organized after that.
"It's unfortunate that the BIA
planted that seed,'' Dardar-Robichaux said. "They've split families,
communities and friends. ... It's a shame. We both want the same thing,
but we're just going about it in two different directions.''
Leaders of the three groups say they
now plan to meet with federal officials to learn what can be done to
prove ancestry.
On the Net:
Bureau of Indian Affairs: www.doi.gov/bia/ofa
Information from: The Courier,
http://www.houmatoday.com
Student can wear ceremonial eagle feathers during
graduation
The Associated Press
Jun 12 00:32
LUMBERTON, N.C. (AP) - An agreement
has been reached to allow an American Indian student at a North Carolina
high school student to wear two ceremonial eagle feathers during
graduation.
The Fayetteville Observer reported an
agreement was reached Wednesday between attorneys for the Robeson County
school board and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Corey Bird had asked to wear the
feathers to honor his mother and grandfather, who are dead.
The school board has a policy against
students being allowed to wear messages, signs, markings, stringers and
ribbons on caps and gowns at graduation.
The ACLU and the school board are
still negotiating about where Bird will be able to display the feathers.
Katherine Parker with the ACLU says
Bird's cousin, Olivia Bird, also will be allowed to wear eagle feathers
to honor her grandparents.
Information from: The Fayetteville
Observer,
http://www.fayobserver.com
Museum returns ancestral remains to Canadian tribe
By DEEPTI HAJELA
Associated Press Writer
Jun 11 04:38
NEW YORK (AP) - For this tribe's
members, the history they found at the museum was their own.
Members of the Tseycum First Nation
were in New York this week to visit the American Museum of Natural
History, where they reclaimed the remains of ancestors, which had been
taken from their land about a century ago and ended up as part of the
museum's vast holdings.
The group is expected to head back to
Vancouver Island in Canada's British Columbia late Wednesday, taking the
remains with them. A reinterment is planned for Friday, Chief Vern Jacks
said.
"Our people don't belong in boxes in
a museum,'' he said. "This is our life, we still respect our dead.''
The quest started years ago, when
Jacks' wife, Cora, was going through some papers and came across a
reference to an archeologist who had traveled in the area and taken from
graves bones that ended up in museum collections.
"I realized how important it was to
determine where those remains were,'' she said. Further search led to
the realization that some were in New York, at the museum.
The tribe reached out to the museum,
and was pleased with its reaction.
"They were amazing,'' Cora Jacks
said. "They were extremely helpful from the first time we contacted
them.''
Charles McLean, senior vice president
for communications and marketing at the museum, said a process was
already in place to address repatriation issues. He said there had been
at least one other occasion where the museum had returned remains.
"The museum is certainly willing to
consider requests from legitimate sources for the repatriation of
remains,'' he said, though he noted that remains make up a tiny portion
of the 30 million items in the collection.
Members of the tribe came to the
museum Monday. They held a ceremony, singing and praying over the boxes
containing their ancestors' remains.
"I think everybody here at the museum
was very gratified at the outcome,'' McLean said. "It was a very moving
ceremony.''
Other ceremonies will be held Friday
in Canada to return the remains to their resting places, Cora Jacks
said. "It's important they be able to come home and rest in peace.''
She said the repatriation was
important for the tribe's young people. "It gives the young people a
sense of how to correct something,'' she said.
The quest isn't entirely over yet.
The tribe says there are other remains at the Field Museum in Chicago,
and it plans to start the repatriation process with that institution.
The museum didn't return a call seeking comment.
Cora Jacks said the tribe would then
turn its attention to Europe, where it believes some remains are as
well.
Prime minister apologizes to native Canadians
By ROB GILLIES
Associated Press Writer
Jun 11 16:03
OTTAWA (AP) - Prime Minister Stephen
Harper publicly apologized to native Canadians on Wednesday for the
longtime government policy of taking aboriginal children away from their
families and cultures.
In his historic speech, Harper said
the treatment of children at the schools, where they often suffered from
physical and sexual abuse, was a sad chapter in the country's history.
"We now recognize that it was wrong
to separate children from rich and vibrant cultures and traditions, and
that it created a void in many lives and communities and we apologize,''
he said in an address to Parliament televised live across Canada.
From the 19th century until the
1970s, more than 150,000 aboriginal children were required to attend
state-funded Christian schools as part of a program to strip them of
their native culture and assimilate them into Canadian society.
"These institutions gave rise to
abuse or neglect and were inadequately controlled and we apologize for
failing to protect you,'' Harper said.
Hundreds of former students were
invited to Ottawa to witness what native leaders say is a pivotal moment
for Canada's more than 1 million aboriginals, who today remain the
country's poorest and most disadvantaged group.
There are more than 80,000 surviving
students of the schools.
Eleven aboriginal leaders watched the
apology from the floor of the House of Commons and hundreds watched from
the public gallery and from the front lawn of Parliament.
The apology came just months after
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a similar gesture to the
so-called Stolen Generations -- thousands of the continent's Aborigines
who were forcibly taken from their families as children under
assimilation policies that lasted from 1910 to 1970.
On the Net:
Assembly of First Nations: http://www.afn.ca
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada:
http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca
Truth and Reconciliation Commission:
www.trc-cvr.ca
Multiracial Americans see US attitudes evolving
By TODD LEWAN
AP National Writer
Jun 14 2008, 00:02:59
Rachel Lerman is the embodiment of
melting-pot citizenry: Born in 1967 in Boston to a blonde, blue-eyed,
Roman Catholic white woman and a black man from Nigeria, she was placed
in foster care and shortly thereafter adopted by a white couple and
raised Jewish.
After college, she met Alex Diaz-Asper,
a Catholic born in Miami of immigrant parents from Spain and Cuba. At
33, she married him, then settled down in Washington, D.C., in Adams
Morgan, a "multi-culti'' neighborhood where folks can find Ghana on a
map or, at the very least, a Ghanaian eatery around the corner.
Three years ago, the couple had
twins: Alejandro, a brown-eyed, curly haired boy, caramel-colored from
head to toe -- "People say he looks like a kid in a Gap ad: very 'ambi-ethnic.'''
-- and Miguel, a tot with straight, blonde hair, ice-blue eyes, and the
ruddy cheeks of a windburned Irishman.
Their momma, who is brown-skinned and
curly haired herself, couldn't be prouder. And yet, when she and the
boys are at the playground or the grocery store, she still draws puzzled
looks, curious stares and the questions ...
"Are you the nanny?''
"Is Miguel adopted?''
"What are you?''
Even today, at a time when
immigration and changing social attitudes are helping to swell the
numbers of multiracial Americans at 10 times the rate of white
population growth, multiethnic people are still struggling to avoid
being labeled and marginalized by a society they say is far from
entering a "post-race'' era.
Clearly, the presidential candidacy
of Barack Obama, son of a black man and a white woman, has revived a
national conversation on racial attitudes. Likewise, it has drawn new
attention to the unique perspectives and experiences of the roughly 5
million multiethnic people living in America.
Ask multiracial Americans and their
family members whether things are changing, and you're likely to hear
there's more outward acceptance now than in decades past for biracial
couples, adopted children who don't share the ethnicity of either
parent, and so-called "non-mixed'' members of multiracial families.
Still, activists who campaign to
raise understanding of multiracial people say that acceptance is uneven,
varying widely across regions, social classes and generations.
"Appearance is still how people judge
you, categorize you,'' says Heather Tarleton, 28, a biology professor at
the University of California, Los Angeles, and president of the
Interracial Family Circle, a support group founded by her mother, who is
black, and her father, who is white.
"You spend most of your life trying
to explain to people 'what you are.' And then, once they know what you
are, you still are identified with the race you look most like ... So,
it's never so much that you're one complete individual with multiple
sides, but a fraction of a person that society selects.''
Which leads multiracial people to ask
some questions of their own.
Is it possible, they wonder, that
this nation -- its history steeped in slavery, terrorism by groups such
as the Ku Klux Klan, and illicit eroticism between black and white -- is
ready to embrace not just white or black, but shades of brown?
Why is it, they ask, that multiracial
people, from the time they leave the stroller to time they go to their
graves, are verbally poked and prodded to choose their "primary''
ethnicity -- lest it be chosen for them by their peers, based on a
glance?
How is it that even today, when a
highway patrol trooper spots a motorist with European and African
heritage he sees a black man, not a white one?
At a more basic level, why are terms
such as "race'' and "mixed'' -- leftovers, sociologists say, from the
misguided "racial science'' of the 19th century -- still widely used to
describe genetic, cultural and social variations within our one human
race?
Why are concepts such as the
"one-drop rule'' -- the arbitrary, Jim Crow classification of anyone
with any African heritage as black -- still accepted by many blacks and
whites, even as they serve to deepen racial divisions?
Rachel Lerman contemplates such
questions, of course. Life as a biracial mother with a Spanish-speaking
spouse in 2008 America doesn't come with a laugh track as did the '70s
sitcom, "The Jeffersons.'' But she has two boys to raise, groceries to
buy, trips to the playground to make.
So, to avoid confusion when she's out
with her light-skinned son, she recently bought Miguel a T-shirt from a
site called "multiculticutie.com.''
It reads:
"She's my mommy, not my nanny.''
The year 1967 was particularly
memorable for multiracial America: Hollywood came out with the Sidney
Poitier film "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner,'' a comedy built around
white parents' acceptance of an interracial couple (a recent remake cast
the parents as black); and, the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down a
Virginia statute that barred whites from marrying nonwhites, a decision
that overturned bans in 15 other states.
Since then, the number of interracial
marriages has steadily risen, from 67,685 in 1970 to 440,150 in 2005,
comprising more than 7 percent of America's 59 million married couples,
according to the most recent census figures.
Likewise, attitudes toward
interraciality appear to be growing more tolerant.
In 1972, 39 percent of Americans said
marrying someone of a different race should be illegal; by 2002, only
9.9 percent felt the same way. In 2003, more than three-quarters of
adults said it was "all right for blacks and whites to date each
other,'' up from 48 percent who felt that way in 1987, according to the
Pew Research Center.
That's not to say everyone signs off
on interracial unions. Bob Jones University in South Carolina only
dropped its prohibition on interracial dating in 2000. The following
year, 40 percent of voters in Alabama objected when officials removed a
non-enforceable ban on interracial marriages in the state's
constitution.
And there are occasional incidents
involving taunts and threats. Last year in Cleveland, two men were
sentenced to prison for harassing an interracial couple by spreading
mercury around their house.
"I've interviewed people who've been
disowned by their parents for marrying somebody from a different group
-- people who haven't spoken to their parents in 30 years,'' says
Michael Rosenfeld, a professor of sociology at Stanford University.
Nonetheless, he adds, as interracial
unions increase, "there is a growing acceptance of this in American
society.''
One sign of this came in 2000, the
first year the Census Bureau allowed Americans to identify themselves as
multiracial by checking as many boxes about race as there were distinct
branches of their family tree. On the 1990 census, multiethnic people
could only identify themselves with one ancestry or put an "X'' in the
"OTHER'' box.
Some traditional civil rights
organizations such as the NAACP and the Asian American Legal Defense and
Education Fund opposed the change, fearing that fewer self-identified
black or Asian people would diminish their constituencies -- and thereby
make it more difficult to raise funds and monitor discrimination.
Those fears haven't panned out, as it
happens: As of July 1, 2007, the number of Americans who identified
themselves as being of "two or more races'' in the government's annual
Population Estimate shot up 3 percent from the previous year. That
matched the growth rates for Hispanics and Asians, and exceeded the
growth rate of the white population by 10 times, says Robert Burnstein,
a spokesman for the census bureau.
And although multiracial Americans
still only represent 1.6 percent of the nation's 302 million residents,
the intense media spotlight focused on celebrities such as Tiger Woods,
Halle Berry, Derek Jeter and Jessica Alba is a clue that corporate
sponsors and marketers sense a shift in attitudes toward multiethnicity.
(Woods once famously described himself as "Cablinasian,'' to acknowledge
the Caucasian, African, American Indian and Asian within him.)
Rather than being a drawback, racial
diversity is gradually being recognized by advertisers as intrinsically
admirable and appealing.
"We're now at the point where we're
talking about mixed-race ads -- putting a black-and-white couple in an
ad,'' says Jerome D. Williams, a professor of advertising and African
American studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
Advertisers remain skittish about
potential backlash from consumers "who may feel that this is pushing the
envelope, in terms race relations,'' he says. Still, he's noticed more
"ethnically ambiguous'' models in TV commercials.
"They may have somewhat of an ethnic
look, but you can't tell ... You're trying to straddle the fence, to get
someone to appeal to an ethnic audience while at the same time making
sure you don't turn off a mainstream, white audience.''
One thing is apparent to Williams:
The younger you are, the more likely you are to know someone who is
multiracial -- and the more likely you are to accept people of different
ethnic and racial backgrounds. Opposition to multiraciality is aging
out.
Once a semester, he and his students
study a Valentine's Day ad that depicts a black man presenting flowers
to a white woman in a romantic setting. Most of his students don't see
anything wrong with it.
But "when I ask them to take it home
to show their parents and grandparents, the reaction I get is still,
'We're not quite ready for that yet.'''
It's not gone unnoticed among
America's multiethnic population that the mainstream media -- indeed, a
broad swath of Americans -- tend to refer to candidate Obama as the
first serious "black'' contender for the White House.
Jennifer Noble, 31, a psychology
professor at Pasadena College (and the daughter of a Sri Lankan woman
and an African-American father), says some may use this to pigeonhole
him as JUST black: "Whatever you look like to us, that's how we're going
to treat you.''
Obama himself has said: "I
self-identify as African-American -- that's how I'm treated and that's
how I'm viewed. I'm proud of it.''
Multiethnic Americans wrestle with
terms that others casually use to categorize them. They wonder whether
"mixed'' may have a negative, rather than neutral meaning to some people
(as in, "mixed up''). Is the term "African-American'' appropriate for
black immigrants from, say, Haiti?
Megan Hughes, 32, a white woman who
is raising a biracial daughter with her black husband in Washington,
confesses that, "We are still searching for a term that identifies our
relationship and our family. 'Blended' works for me but my husband
thinks that sounds like a smoothie.''
Others speak of the feeling of
sitting alone at the school cafeteria, or having to dismiss a chilly,
sideways glance at upscale malls, of walking a tightrope between groups
of friends on both sides of the racial divide.
Michael Cooley, 17, a high-school
senior in Raleigh, N.C., has a white mother from Minnesota, a black
father from North Carolina. At Wakefield High School, he has a group of
black buddies, and a group of white buddies.
They don't mingle much, he says.
"I'm the only intermixer. I'd say
it's like balancing time between them. Because if I hang out with one of
them, well, my black friends will say, 'I guess you got to hang out with
your white friends tonight, don't you?'''
At times, when he is in the company
of only whites, or only blacks, he overhears racially-tainted jokes, or
slurs, from both sides. "I think it's dumb; I just don't know what
they're thinking when they do that,'' he says.
Strong, open-minded parents must,
consequently, work to help their multiracial children embrace their
complete heritage, even as they feel pressure to "fit'' into
stereotypical "color boxes,'' says Nancy Brown, 55, a nurse and
psychotherapist in Los Angeles.
That's why Brown, a white woman of
Jewish and German heritage who married a black man and had two biracial
daughters, founded the support group Multiracial Americans of Southern
California in the 1980s.
"I saw that parents in interracial
marriages were getting more and more distressed when their children were
being forced to choose one identity over another, which, frankly, meant
choosing one parent over another,'' she says.
In recent years, multiracial advocacy
groups similar to Brown's have sprung up around the country, and people
of varied ancestries can now find themselves better reflected in books,
in college courses and on Web sites, the likes of antiracistparent.com.
The multiracial movement is
experiencing unprecedented growth, says Louie Gong, vice president for
the Mavin Foundation, a national advocacy group for multiethnic people,
based in Seattle.
"Barack Obama's candidacy has
energized the movement,'' says Gong, who has American Indian, Chinese
and European heritage. "It's forcing all Americans to really understand
the limitations of these political, racial categories and to understand
that race and cultural identity are something very different.''
The road to understanding may be full
of bumps and tricky balances, but at least multiethnic people are seen
less and less as anomalies, says Susan Eckert, 39, a Long Island, N.Y.,
writer.
Her ancestors included a Spanish
conquistador, an African slave, a Cherokee woman, and an Irish woman who
was disowned by her family for marrying a half-black, half-Blackfoot
man.
As a result, she says, "I am often
taken to be black or Indian -- depending on the individual's particular
lens -- and have been mistaken for Ethiopian, Indian, Pakistani,
Turkish, Sicilian, and others.''
Doesn't that get tiresome?
Not at all, she says.
"I'm open to learning about other
cultures, and I'm respected for that ... When you are racially
ambiguous, a wider pool of people want to associate with you, which is
actually quite a pleasant feeling.''
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