Reclaiming Native Truth News Digest: February 16, 2017
The  Reclaiming Native Truth News Digest is a compilation of the latest news and opinion on Native awareness, perception and image issues across the United States and beyond. These are the stories shaping - and shaped by - the current narrative about Native Americans. 

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Project News
Red Lake Nation News, February 10, 2017
" The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community (SMSC) announced today a $100,000 donation to the Reclaiming Native Truth project that is co-managed by First Nations Development Institute and Echo Hawk Consulting, both based in Colorado ."
Native Narrative Change
Essence, February 10, 2017
"'From Tarzan to Tonto: Stereotypes as Obstacles to Progress Toward a More Perfect Union' was a joint program of three Smithsonian establishments: the National Museum of African Art, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the new National Museum of African American History and Culture."
 
Washington Examiner, February 6, 2017
"The South Dakota Republican first learned of the laws' persistence from staffers with Native American heritage who complained to him that it was long past time to scrub the books."
 
Religion News Service, January 31, 2017
"On Monday, Harsin posted the last of the three videos, apologizing for the church's role in oppressing Native Americans in the United States and First Nations in Canada. Other videos apologize to African-Americans and to the LGBT community."
 
KOSU-FM (Tulsa), January 26, 2017
"Struggles with misguided perceptions about their community persist, along with disparities in access to health care to address concerns like diabetes and mental health."
Discrimination / Stereotypes / Bias
National Public Radio, February 1, 2017
"Konkol says, in order to better know how pervasive such discrimination is, he wishes more Native Americans would file complaints."
 
New York Times, January 23, 2017
"The abysmal test scores are highlighted in a federal lawsuit filed this month against the government by members of the Havasupai Tribe on behalf of nine students."
Mascots
KLCC-FM (Eugene, OR), February 10, 2017
"While many staunch supporters of mascots are non-Indian, there are some tribes who don't mind... as long as the cultural and historical significance of native people are recognized."
 
FOX-17 TV (Grand Rapids, MI), February 9, 2017
"'There is no Indian head on our fields or courts, no chants or people dressed up as our mascots,' said board Vice President Aaron Mitchell at the meeting. 'You guys did zero homework in my eyes, that severely hurts your cause.'"

Delaware News Journal, February 8, 2017
"Following the school board's directive to select a mascot that would strengthen ties with local Native Americans, a 15-member, student-led committee requested and received feedback on the finalists from local tribes."
 
Tewksbury (Mass.) Town Crier, February 4, 2017
"The mascot debate thrust the town of Tewksbury into the national attention, and the outgoing superintendent took the moment in the spotlight to recommend that the school committee discontinue use of the Redmen name and develop a new mascot."
 
Indian Country Today, January 30, 2017
"HBO host claims liberals and celebrities are too sensitive regarding cultural appropriation."
Visibility / Invisibility
Time, January 27, 2017
"Do we stand behind movements that trample upon entire segments of the population, muting their views, beliefs and convictions?"
 
Filmmaker Magazine, February 5, 2017
"Trump's immigration hysteria aside, from an indigenous perspective we are all immigrants. Perhaps that's why no matter how gaseous or bombastic a U.S. presidential election grows, the one issue in national politics that is never, ever touched upon - as if radioactive - is the welfare and well-being of our fellow Native American citizens, who are not immigrants. They are instead simply invisible."
 
Wichita Falls Times Record News, January 18, 2017
"Part of the reason Heap of Birds said he travels to so many different places is 'to help people understand where they really are (where they live).' Oftentimes, he said, people are not familiar with the history of the place they live. 'It's kind of sad Americans don't understand much about where they are,' he said."
Cultural Appropriation
University of Pennsylvania, February 8, 2017
"Powell oversaw the digital repatriation of Native American material when he worked as the director of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at Philadelphia's American Philosophical Society, digitizing manuscripts to return to more than 150 indigenous communities across the Americas."
 
Hyperallergic.com, January 17, 2017
"Two simultaneous performance events on January 8 revealed the gulf that still exists between certain New York art institutions in their approach to genuine collaboration and the failure to be accountable to indigenous concerns."
Historical Memory and Trauma
Observer (Dunkirk, NY), February 13, 2017
"The student presenters stressed that their goal is not to idealize Native peoples or to demonize Europeans. They simply ask that the school recognize the past for what truly happened, and rename a calendar day to promote the education of all students on the richness and diversity of the peoples who called (still call) this continent home well before Europeans saw it."
People
Epoch Times, January 16, 2017
"The desire to preserve and pass on authentic teachings from America's indigenous people is embodied in Yvonne Wakim Dennis... Dennis started working in education in the 1970s, but it has been challenging to promote American Indian culture in a meaningful way in today's society and schools, she said."
Standing Rock / DAPL / Pipeline Protests
Inquisitr, February 13, 2017
"Paris Jackson isn't the only celebrity to bring attention to the disputed Dakota Access Pipeline in recent weeks. The weekend after her presidential pop left office, Malia Obama was sighted in Park City, Utah, protesting the DAPL during the Sundance Film Festival."
 
Reuters, February 8, 2017
"'Indian tribes are not opposed to infrastructure ... we need roads and bridges and schools and hospitals just like everyone else. But tribes need to be respected as governments, and the process for infrastructure has to take our rights and interests into account,' said National Congress of American Indians President Brian Cladoosby."
 
Washington Post, February 3, 2017
"'In these past few weeks at camp, I see no reflection of our earlier unity, and without unity we lose,' the tribe's chairman, David Archambault II, said in a statement."
 
New York Times, January 31, 2017
"After weeks at the Standing Rock camp with minimal tribal support, the young people decided that they needed to carry out some sort of public action. 'It was important to make the adults see that if you're going to sit there and argue, we're gonna go wake up our brothers and sisters.'"
 
Iowa State Daily, January 26, 2017
"'The issue is that we live on a continent where one culture with its own interpretation of the landscape has been superimposed over another culture that was already on the landscape'... With the continued construction of major oil pipelines in America, Native Americans' sacred sites are being threatened with little to no concern."
Film and Television
We Got This Covered, February 1, 2017
"Based on Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera's acclaimed graphic novel series of the same name, Scalped remained in various stages of development for years and only recently started to come together. It follows a power struggle fought by the Native American community, led by Chief Lincoln Red Crow... It also fits well into WGN America's recent gritty, dark and somewhat based on true events brand of late."
 
Entertainment Weekly, February 9, 2017
"[Blair] Redford will play Sam, 'the strong-headed Native American leader of the underground network.' The drama will focus on two ordinary parents who discover their children possess mutant powers. Forced to go on the run from a hostile government, the family joins up with an underground network of mutants and must fight to survive."
 
Globe and Mail (Toronto), January 23, 2017
"The documentary explores the often-unheralded contributions of Native Americans in shaping popular song. Wray was a Shawnee Native American but few people were aware of his background. Like him, many of the musicians profiled in Rumble either kept their heritage secret or played it down, fearing racist backlash."
Books
Yakima Herald, February 3, 2017
"Much had been written about leaders such as Sitting Bull and Chief Joseph, but there wasn't nearly so much about Kamiakin... a revered leader, one who signed the Treaty of 1855 with the U.S. government and then headed the resistance to tribal lands being siphoned off for settlement."
 
New York Times, January 13, 2017
"Sheinkin's... stories center on heroic actors without short-selling the abhorrent circumstances that forced them into heroism in the first place."
Canadian Reconciliation / First Nations Narrative Change
CBC News, February 10, 2017
"Trudeau had suggested that most of the Indigenous youth he talked to wanted 'a place to store their canoes and paddles so they can connect back out on the land.'... The comments have been labelled as patronizing by many First Nations observers."
 
CBC News, February 7, 2017
"Indigenous artists view the sesquicentennial with mixed feelings, with some using it as a platform to tell their peoples' side of the story, and others opting to boycott the celebrations altogether."
 
Manitoba CBC News, January 27, 2017
"'While Indigenous kids in residential schools were taught that they were savage and they were heathens and they were violent, Canadians were taught the exact same thing and they were taught to feel superior, and that they had a sort of duty to control Indigenous people in every way... The words of the premier is really in the vein of that history.'"
 
Nova Scotia CBC News, January 15, 2017
"McCue points to photos 'perpetuating stereotypes and tropes of feathered and beaded Indians' as problematic.  It's no wonder, McCue said, that when reporters enter a First Nations community and begin to ask 'really tough questions about awful things' that 'we get doors slammed in our face.'"
Indigenous Narrative Change Worldwide
NITV (Australia), February 13, 2017
"Kevin Rudd's apology is not the end of the matters of the Stolen Generations. An apology and acknowledgement for the Stolen Generations was one fifth of one recommendation from the total 54 recommendations included in The Bringing Them Home report. Rudd was meant to fulfilling a step in a guided process of reparation against human rights, not persuading Indigenous people to, 'Get over it', 'Move on', 'Let it go' or 'Forgive and Forget.'"
 
Daily Mail (Australia), February 8, 2017
"Reconciliation Australia chief executive Justin Mohamed said the survey results showed more need to be done to tackle racism. 'This is holding all Australians back from having positive relationships with each other... We aren't addressing racism at an institutional level.'"
 
The Guardian (UK), February 5, 2017
"The [Australian] medical profession is full of bigots and people who might not consider themselves racist, but have preconceived ideas on race and hold outdated beliefs in racial stereotypes."
Non-Native Narrative Change
Bloomberg BusinessWeek, February 8, 2017
"A new study trashes most of the conventional explanations-and solutions-for the wealth gap. It's called The Asset Value of Whiteness: Understanding the Racial Wealth Gap... 'Bottom line, for people of color, working ourselves to the bone and doing all the right things is getting us nowhere.'"
 
The Root, February 6, 2017
"Crack babies, welfare queens, superpredators, thugs. That's what they call us; those are the lies they tell about us... One cannot discuss black history in its entirety without discussing the war on drugs-and dismantling that war will shape our future."
 
Second Wave Media, January 26, 2017
"One day of talk didn't cure racism. No one expected it to. But Kalamazoo's Day of Healing event, Jan. 17 at the Epic Center, brought out a capacity crowd of a variety of citizens willing to talk about the curse - and that was a good sign, event speakers and organizers say. The National Day of Racial Healing was sparked by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Initiative."
 
Washington Post, January 24, 2017
"Despite assumptions to the contrary, this development most likely isn't a direct response to public awareness efforts such as the #OscarsSoWhite Twitter campaign or efforts by the academy's president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, to recruit a more inclusive membership."
 
Rafu Shimpo (Los Angeles), January 30, 2017
"To date, no major film studio has agreed to regularly provide data on their released films regarding diversity in executive leadership, casting, writing, producing and directing, and no head of studio has engaged in conversations with the coalition about urgently needed improvements."