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Date Posted: 09:33:22 06/27/01 Wed
Author: Anonymous
Subject: NEWS AND ISSUES

Native American community accuses Canadian Govt. of neglect

The chief of a small native American community in Canada, which has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, has accused the Federal government of failing to meet its responsibilities towards his people.

The Pikangikum nation in western Ontario lacks many basic services including clean water and a local school.

The BBC reports living conditions in Pikangikum have deteriorated to levels which would be unacceptable elsewhere in Canada.

Water is undrinkable after the treatment plant broke down last October.

Many houses need major repairs and the school shut a year ago because of a fuel spill, and now the water problems.

Fresh food is scarce and the remoteness makes it pricey.

Milk is five times more expensive than elsewhere in the country.

These conditions are fuelling a social crisis.

Eleven children and young people have killed themselves in the last year; three in the last few weeks.


Kenai man sues Safeway, says he was fired because of ponytail
CODE: Grocery chain says men's hair can only be collar length.

By Ben Spiess
Anchorage Daily News

(Published June 23, 2001)
A Kenai Peninsula man who says his ponytail cost him his job at a Safeway Oaken Keg liquor store has sued the company, charging that firing him for long hair is a violation of his freedom of speech, right to privacy and amounts to discrimination against Alaska Natives.

Soldotna resident Frank Miller, 57, is an Athabaskan Indian with a ponytail that reaches to the middle of his back. He brushes and washes his hair daily. He trims it every two weeks. He has worn his hair long his entire life except for a stint in the Navy during the Vietnam War, according to court documents filed June 11.

So when a Safeway manager told him to cut his hair above his shoulders, Miller refused, according to court filing. When Safeway bought the Oaken Keg chain as part of its 1999 takeover of rival Carr Gottstein Foods Co., Miller was not offered a job, he said. He had worked for Oaken Keg since 1997.

"I don't think Safeway has the power to impose a code like this," said John Havelock, an Anchorage attorney who filed Miller's lawsuit in Kenai. Not only is the ban a violation of freedom of speech and Miller's privacy, Havelock said, long hair is an expression of Miller's religion as Athabaskan.

Safeway's hair code requires men's hair be collar length and prohibits goatees and beards, said Richard Near, the former head of Safeway in Alaska, in a 1999 interview. At the time, Near called the policy an "industrywide" standard. Health issues are the primary reason for the policy, he said.

Cherie Myers, Safeway spokeswoman in Seattle, declined to comment about the Miller case.

"We believe that you should look professional and that men should have clean-cut hair," Myers said. "I'm sure people can look professional in other fields with hair past their shoulders. If you are in rock 'n' roll maybe you want your hair standing up. For a retail grocery that means short hair."

After Safeway took over Carrs, which was the state's biggest retailer, it put in place several changes, from new checkout stands to different brands to new employee policies, such as hair length.

In general, Alaska law offers a broad protection of privacy, said Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the Alaska Civil Liberties Union, citing a 1972 Supreme Court ruling that said students may wear hair any length.

If hair is an expression of religious belief, a company could be in violation of the employee's civil rights, said Paula Haley, director of the State Commission for Human Rights.

Havelock said that Safeway's policy is unreasonable. As a liquor store clerk, the hair poses no health or safety risk. Havelock scoffed at the suggestion that Miller's long hair could drive away customers.

"When people buy a bottle of booze they don't care what the clerk's hair looks like," Havelock said. "I've been around Alaska long enough to know that."

Reporter Ben Spiess can be reached at bspiess@adn.com.


Jesse Jackson calls Vieques bombings 'arrogant' acts of colonialism



By IAN JAMES, Associated Press




VIEQUES, Puerto Rico (June 23, 12:21 p.m. PDT) - Calling the Navy's bombing of its Vieques firing range the "arrogant" act of a colonizer, the Rev. Jesse Jackson denounced the bombings Saturday and said the treatment of detained protesters is an effort to break their spirit.

Jackson said Saturday that he was lobbying Attorney General John Ashcroft for a meeting to air complaints that the U.S. government is trying to intimidate detainees, including his wife, Jacqueline, with excessive jail terms, fines and cruel treatment.

"It's gratifying to be here on Vieques, in Puerto Rico, where the people have met the challenge of those who try to break their spirit and have not given up," Jackson said when he arrived for a day on the outlying island of this Spanish-speaking U.S. Caribbean territory.

"To bomb Vieques is a colonial act," he said, and "arrogant."

The Jacksons are the latest celebrities to embroil themselves in protests to force an immediate end to six decades of bombing exercises that activists say have harmed the environment and islanders' health.

Jackson charged that the bombing "has resulted in a high incidence of cancer, in a high incidence of asthma." Later he visited the Lujar neighborhood, said to have the highest cancer and asthma rates on Vieques.

The Navy says health studies on the island have been biased and unscientific.

Decades of subdued resentment exploded into island-wide protests after two stray bombs killed a civilian security guard on the range in 1999, which forced the Navy to stop using live bombs.

Protesters have taken to invading Navy land to prevent sorties to drop inert bombs of up to 1,000 pounds. More than 100 protesters were arrested in the last exercises in April and May. Since exercises resumed Monday, at least 55 trespassers have been arrested, including Jacqueline Jackson.

Mrs. Jackson, 57, was jailed Tuesday when she refused to pay $3,000 bail. On Thursday, her husband said, she was put into solitary confinement for refusing to submit to a strip search.

A Federal Bureau of Prisons incidence report, supplied by the Jacksons' Rainbow/Push Coalition, quotes a prison officer as saying Mrs. Jackson stripped and complied until "I asked her to bend over and spread her buttocks. Inmate Jackson just stood facing me and told me 'No.' "

Protests have continued despite President Bush's announcement this month that the Navy must withdraw from Vieques in two years.

Bush's decision was largely interpreted here as a move to win Latino votes and avoid embarrassment if Vieques islanders reject the exercises at a federally organized referendum scheduled for November. The referendum would give residents the opportunity to vote for the Navy to remain and resume use of live ammunition, or leave in 2003.

Puerto Rico's Gov. Sila Calderon is organizing a local referendum in July that offers the additional option of voting for an immediate withdrawal of the Navy, a position she reiterated Friday at her first meeting with U.S. Navy Secretary Gordon England. England, who flew to San Juan unannounced, repeated his position that the Navy was ready to withdraw, but only in 2003, Calderon said.

Meanwhile, England has said the Navy will search for alternative sites, though the Navy has repeatedly said there is none to match Vieques, where it can practice amphibious landings and aerial and sea bombardments simultaneously in an area unhampered by much commercial air and sea traffic.


Isabell Ides, matriarch of Makah and a link to old ways, dies at 101
Saturday, June 23, 2001

By PAUL SHUKOVSKY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Isabell Ides, one of the last living links to old Indian ways on the Northwest Coast, died Wednesday on the Makah reservation. She was 101.

Known by everyone in the small fishing village of Neah Bay simply as Isabell, this eldest of elders had more than 100 direct descendants. In this tribe that is so focused on authentically living their ancient culture, Isabell served as the matriarch of the Makah.


Isabell Ides, who was the oldest living Makah, died Wednesday. / Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Click for larger photo
She was one of just a few people left who grew up speaking the Makah language. Isabell did not learn English until her teenage years, when she was sent away to a boarding school in Tacoma, said her nephew Ed Claplanhoo. There, like thousands of other native children of the time, she was punished if she was found speaking her native tongue.

But the language and culture have endured and even prospered since then, in part because of Isabell's lifelong commitment to teach what it means to be Makah, say many at Neah Bay.

"She taught literally hundreds of people language and basketry," said Janine Bowechop of the Makah Museum and Cultural Center. "Those were the formal things she was known for as far as cultural preservation goes. But she was probably loved by more people than anyone I've ever known."

"She taught me who I was," said her grandson Gordon Smith. "She emphasized how you should act, how you should be, how to participate in culture."

When a fierce storm in the 1960s unearthed a centuries-old Makah village at Ozette, Isabell and other tribal elders were called upon to identify perfectly preserved artifacts that were a mystery to archaeologists.

"When they were growing up at the turn of the century, they still had some of the kind of toys that they had, had for centuries," said Clapanhoo. The toys, he said, were a reflection that the culture was still alive.

Isabell also taught numerous outsiders what it meant to be Makah as a kind of informal ambassador for the tribe.

In the summers, Isabell would move from the village to her home on a dirt road along Tsoo-yes Beach. It is the last house, on the last road in the farthest Northwest tip of the United States. Hikers on the way to the Olympic National Park's wilderness beaches would park in her yard and put a few dollars in the milk box on her porch. The lucky ones might spend a few minutes with her, or buy one of the baskets for which she was famous.

"She had baskets all over the world that she sold to tourists," said Smith, who is vice chairman of the tribe.

College students would come with their professors to visit Isabell and spend the day weaving baskets while she told them Makah legends.

Isabell credited her longevity to her strong Christian faith. She was a Sunday school teacher and member of the Assembly of God church, said Claplanhoo. While she sustained her spirit in the church, she sustained her body with a more native diet than most people consume, said Bowechop.

"She kept up with eating a more traditional diet for so long," said Bowechop. "And she taught so many people how to cut and smoke fish."

Tribal member Bobbi Rose tells the story about the first time she tried her hand in the smokehouse. When she took the fish to Isabell, the old woman ate some and said: "Take me to your smokehouse. Your wood is too dry -- it makes the fish bitter."

Rose said that when they got to the smokehouse, "the alder was bone dry. She knew just by the taste."

When the people converge this afternoon on the Neah Bay High School gymnasium for Isabell's memorial service, six generations spanning a century will be present.

There will be her 2-year-old great, great, great grandson and her 99-year-old sister Ruth Claplanhoo, Ed's mother.



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