New America Media - Indigenous

Power Struggles at Interior Department Impact Indian Affairs

2013-06-18T17:23:48Z

When Kevin Washburn became Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs in September 2012, he had some work to do. Not just the typical demands of running a complex subsection of a large federal agency, but also the complicated work of regaining a portfolio that had been siphoned off by overeager Obama administration officials.

Tribal officials and Indian insiders nationwide saw firsthand the shift in power away from the assistant secretary’s office in the early days of this administration, when Larry Echo Hawk, Washburn’s predecessor, was forced to recuse himself in several important Indian issues due to family ties and other possible conflicts of interest.

Concurrently, David Hayes, retiring Deputy Secretary of the department, began taking credit for progress in Indian affairs, including the Cobell settlement, water and other tribal trust settlements, while shifting any blame for problems in Indian affairs to others. Hayes, in perhaps his last leadership action on Indian affairs before exiting the department, has scheduled a June 18 teleconference on the latest aspects of the Cobell settlement land consolidation tribal trust land buyback plan. Washburn is scheduled to join him on the call.

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/06/18/power-struggles-interior-department-impact-indian-affairs-149960

Indian Country’s Data Scandal: Invisibility

2013-06-11T08:30:00Z

The 21st century is a world where data -- bits of information about what we do, what we say, and how we spend money -- has become as important as the story narrative. It’s hard to make any kind of case with a story alone. You need facts to back up your account. You need details. You need numbers.

Right now, of course, big data is a hot story all by itself. The Guardian newspaper broke the story about how the National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for collecting and analyzing billions of bits of information. The newspaper cited an NSA fact sheet saying this is a tool that “allows users to select a country on a map and view the metadata volume and select details about the collections against that country."

In this map, countries with scant data are green and countries where lots of electronic spying is occurring, such as Iran, are red.

The collection of private communication is a serious issue, one that in a democracy requires a vigorous debate. But the second I saw this map, I was reminded yet again that Indian Country has a different kind of data problem. There is too little reliable, timely information.

If Indian Country were to show up on the NSA’s data heat map we would be the brightest green zone on the planet.

In an era of austerity this lack of data has serious consequences. Quick: What’s the unemployment rate in Indian Country? Has it gone up or down since the sequester? What’s the actual number for furloughs? How about our spending patterns? I could go on and on.

The honest answer to every one of these questions has to be a “don’t know.” A year ago the Bureau of Indian Affairs reported that it would not release a 2010 Indian Population and Labor Force Report because “of methodology inconsistencies.” Donald E. Laverdure, acting Assistant Secretary -- Indian Affairs, wrote July 2, 2012, that the “collected data from those 2010 methods did not adequately meet the standards of quality and reliability that are required of Federal agencies in reporting official statistics.”

In a rare data driven document, the Economic Policy Institute released its picture of American Indian and Alaska Native unemployment finding that the national unemployment rate did jump during the recession from 2007 to the first half of 2010, and increased 7.7 percentage points to 15.2%. That same year EPI reported the “unemployment rate for Alaska Natives jumped 6.3 percentage points to 21.3, the highest regional unemployment rate for American Indians.”

But that was another time. Another recession. Before the sequester. We don’t know what happened after; We only know it’s bad.

The lack of near real time, transparent, data is not just limited to unemployment rates. In a few weeks, for example, more provisions of the Affordable Care Act will begin and will open up more Medicaid funding sources for the Indian health system. So a study about the Medicaid expansion to low-income communities of color would be ideal, right?

The Kaiser Family Foundation’s Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured used detailed Census data from all 50 states to produce such a report. “While the Medicaid expansion will increase coverage options for all low-income Americans, it will disproportionately impact low-income people of color,” Kaiser said. Indeed the report looked at the impact of Medicaid expansion on Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Pacific Islanders. But there was not a word about American Indians and Alaska Natives.

But this is not to single out Kaiser (and, a note of disclosure, I was a Kaiser Media Fellow in 2010). My point is you could go down the list, think tank by think tank, and Indian Country’s data invisibility is glaring.

Data invisibility matters because policy decisions are often based on what has been measured (I say often because the premise of austerity itself is contradicted by data, but that’s another story). We need to know what programs work, what’s effective. We need hard information to know how American Indians and Alaska Natives are faring during this decade of austerity.

Mark Trahant is a writer, speaker and Twitter poet. He lives in Fort Hall, Idaho, and is a member of The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. Join the discussion about austerity. A Facebook page is open at:
https://www.facebook.com/IndianCountryAusterity

Every Child Left Behind: Sequester Guts Indian Education

2013-06-01T09:05:00Z

Image: Catawba Indian Nation Head Start children attend a Dental Hygiene Awareness Program meant to educate them on the importance of keeping their teeth healthy. Courtesy of Catawba Indian Nation Head Start. This is pt. 1 of a two part series. Click here to read pt. 2.

Educators in Indian country are working feverishly and creatively to deal with the cuts to federally funded preschool-to-grade 12 programs mandated by the so-called “sequester.”

The sequester, a series of automatic federal spending cuts totaling $85 billion in 2013 and copy09 billion for each year from 2014 to 2021 for a total over copy.2 trillion, was authorized by the Budget Control Act of 2011. It went into effect in March because Congress could not agree on a budget that would reduce deficit spending by $2.4 trillion over the next decade as part of the effort to deal with the country’s nearly copy7-trillion debt.

Head Start, intended to promote school readiness in children from birth to five years old from low-income families by supporting their cognitive, social and emotional development, serves 1 million children a year nationwide. The program was developed in the mid-1960s as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. Sequestration is expected to knock out five percent of Head Start funding across the board, even though most Head Start programs cannot currently accommodate all families who apply, according to the Health & Human Services Department’s Administration for Children & Families, under which Head Start operates.

Approximately 70,000 children are expected to lose access to the program because of these cuts.

In 2013, Head Start programs nationwide will take a $406-million hit as a result of the sequester. Of that amount, nearly copy2 million will come from Indian Head Start, according to the National Indian Education Association. Melissa Harris, director of the Catawba Indian Nation Head Start in South Carolina, is proud of her program, which serves 80 children, most of them from the tribe, at one center on the reservation, for the full year. She says the sequester is devastating her program. “Right now, we’re downsizing from five days of service to four days for the summer.”

Not only will this reduction affect the children’s preparation for school but, Harris adds, “we’re concerned about meals. We serve two meals a day. On Fridays, will the children have a meal? Will they be watched by siblings or adults? Every weekend this summer will be a three-day weekend and we’re not sure the children’s basic health and safety needs will be met.

“We recognize the responsibility to get the U.S. budget in order, but this is not where you start, at the foundation of our children’s lives.”

Of the copy2 million in cuts Indian Head Start must deal with, more than one-tenth, or copy.4 million, will come from the Navajo Nation’s program, which serves 2,115 children in Early Head Start and Head Start and through home-based education activities. Director Sharon Singer notes that it costs more to serve rural areas, which often do not have accessible services and where transportation is always a challenge. “We’re looking for ways to cut costs and still serve our children and families,” she says.

The Navajo Nation began restructuring its Head Start program in November 2012 to build a high-quality program. That initiative will help cope with the funding cuts. “As part of the restructuring program,” says Singer, “we expect to reduce employees by 30 percent. We’ll combine positions and hire highly qualified teachers who can each be responsible for more children. And we’ll streamline our program, cutting out middle management and offering direct services to children and families.”

For now, says Singer, the Head Start program will be able to continue serving the same number of children, but further funding cuts will affect services. “Head Start provides a continuous program from Early Head Start to Head Start to kindergarten, which is so critical now that Common Core standards require that children be able to read by third grade or not be promoted. Our job is so important. It provides the foundation in learning and literacy for our children.”

The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians of Oregon’s Head Start program will take a much smaller cut—$48,000, but its program is smaller and the impact will be serious. DeAnn Brown, director of the program, says they will close one week early this year and start two days later next, and they will need to cut supplies to classrooms and teacher training dollars.

Brown says her program serves 112 children and about the same number of families. It is a center-based Head Start program with seven classrooms. The program operates 3.5 hours a day, 4 days a week during the school years and serves both breakfast and lunch. “The cuts will be felt by everyone,” she says. “It’s only a week, but families are still dependent on Head Start for childcare. They’ll have to make other arrangements for that week. A week’s worth of childcare is a lot for our families.” Another concern, again, is nutrition. “Children rely on Head Start for two-thirds of their nutritional needs four days a week. Some kids might not get the nutrition they count on when Head Start is not operating for those days.

“We hope there are no further cuts. As it is, we still don’t serve all the kids we could. Further cuts would impact our enrollment. We hope there aren’t any.”

The copy2 million in cuts to American Indian Head Start programs is not just a matter of consequence for the nation’s tribes. National Indian Education Association President Heather Shotton says, “When the federal government does well by our Native children, it does well by everyone’s children…. When budget cuts hurt the education of Native children, they harm education for everyone’s children.”

A Coach as Darth Vader? Director Unveils Cast of Navajo 'Star Wars'

2013-05-30T07:45:00Z

The Force proved to be strong with this group of Navajos as they earned the seven primary roles in the upcoming Navajo-language version of "Star Wars."

Terry Teller, of Lukachukai, Ariz. will be the voice of Luke Skywalker.

"It is pretty pretty awesome," Teller said happily, adding that he enjoyed the audition because it required him to really act. "Since it was going to be the first movie in Navajo I wanted it to be the best," he said. "I challenged myself to play the role, as it needs to be. It was hard because I have never done anything like that before."

Anderson Kee of Cottonwood, Ariz. will be the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Kee said the way the Obi-Wan Kenobi talks about the Force in the movie reminds him of a Navajo medicine man, especially when he says the words in Navajo.

"It was a new experience for me," he said.

Clarissa Yazzie of Rock Point, Ariz. will be the voice of Princess Leia.

Yazzie said she enjoys Princess Leia's sarcastic and dominating personality because she feels that her personality closely resembles Leia's.

"I was excited to just be a part of the whole experience," she said.

James Junes of Farmington, N.M. is the voice of Han Solo - and one of the very few experienced actors to win a part. Junes is part of the comedy team James and Ernie, and has had roles in low-budget films on the Navajo Nation.

Marvin Yellowhair of N.M. is the voice of Darth Vader.

Yellowhair said he wanted to be Darth Vader because he is the main character he remembers from Star Wars, mostly due to the fact that the villain is always in control and he is a leader. He said it related to him as a coach at Rock Point High.

"It felt so good being involved with this project," he said.

James Bilagody of Ariz., another experienced performer, is the voice of General Tarkin.

The Navajo voice of C-3PO is a "surprise," said director Ellyn Stern Epcar. "It will be unveiled on July third."

"All the people that were cast fit the voice perfectly and they gave awesome performances," said Manuelito Wheeler, Navajo Nation Museum director. "The directors, they chose the right people."

Epcar is from Epcar Entertainment, a company based out of Los Angeles, Calif. She was hired under Deluxe Entertainment to direct the dubbed film. She said she has been doing this type of work for over 30 years.

"This isn't a film this is about saving a language, this is about preserving a language," said Epcar of the Navajo-dubbed Star Wars. "This takes on more importance of anything I've ever done. I feel profoundly humbled to be a part of this."

New Rules to Address Fracking on Indian lands

2013-05-28T18:01:05Z

Hydraulic fracturing on Indian land may become more difficult under new rules proposed by the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management.

The Interior Department on May 16 issued new draft rules for hydraulic fracturing on public and Indian lands.

Fracturing, or "fracking," is the process of drilling and injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into the ground at high pressure to crack shale formations and unlock oil and gas.

The process is controversial because fracking releases methane gas and other toxic chemicals, which can contaminate nearby groundwater. This can be especially dangerous on the 56 million acres of Indian land in the country. On the more isolated reservations like the Navajo Nation, people and livestock depend on well water for drinking, cooking and washing.

Approximately 500,000 oil and gas wells are active in the United States. That includes 92,000 on public and tribal land, where about 13 percent of the nation's natural gas and 5 percent of its oil are produced, according to statistics from the Interior Department.

Ninety percent of wells drilled on federal and Indian lands use fracking. Yet the BLM's current regulations governing fracking on public and tribal lands are more than 30 years old and were not designed to address modern fracking technology. The revised rules would modernize management of the industry and help establish baseline safeguards to help protect the environment and reduce the human risk.

Read more here.

Indian Tribes Mobilize for Oklahoma Relief Efforts

2013-05-25T07:05:00Z

As it emerged that the homes of 20 American Indian families had been destroyed in Moore, Oklahoma, earlier this week, tribes across Oklahoma and the nation began gathering resources in support of disaster relief efforts in Moore and the surrounding communities.

At the close of a week that began with one of the worst tornado disasters in U.S. history—an E5 that reduced a 17-mile-long, two-mile-wide swathe of the Oklahoma City suburb to rubble—dozens of other families were also displaced and forced to find emergency shelter as the cleanup effort began.

Read more

President Obama to Oklahoma: Every Resource Is at Your Disposal

2013-05-21T20:03:00Z

As responders, including at least 250 National Guardsmen, sifted through debris looking for tornado survivors, President Barack Obama on Tuesday morning told Oklahamans that they did not walk their path of grief alone.

“Our prayers are with the people of Oklahoma today,” Obama said, flanked by Vice President Joseph Biden and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. “Our gratitude is with teachers, first responders and with all of those who searched to find the survivors through the night.”

He summarized the devastation and acknowledged the educators who had saved their charges’ lives at two devastated elementary schools. He said he had already spoken to Oklahoma’s top officials and assured them that “they would have all the resources that they need at their disposal,” he said.

“In an instant, neighborhoods were decimated,” he said. “Among the victims were young children who tried to take shelter in the safest place they knew, their school.”

At least seven children were killed at the Plaza Towers School when a wall collapsed on them during the storm, according to numerous media reports. Nine children in total were among the dead, including those seven. Many others were still missing. The death toll of 51 was revised downward overnight, to 24, as it emerged that some victims may have been counted twice

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/05/21/president-obama-oklahoma-every-resource-your-disposal-149441

Navajo Families Help Create Five-Year Uranium Cleanup Plan

2013-05-15T18:12:29Z

Back in 2006, various tribal and federal agencies dealing with remediating uranium mining on the reservation got together to set goals. The first five-year plan ended in 2012 with only some of these goals met and now the agencies are meeting again, this time with Navajo families involved, to set goals for a second five-year plan.

Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly opened up the workshop on Tuesday with a statement that the agencies "still have a long way ahead" to deal with a variety of problems stemming from the uranium mining on the reservation in the 1940s, 50s and 60s.

The tribe still doesn't know, he said, how these mining operations and uranium milling operations affected the underground water systems, or the homes of Navajo families who lived within a quarter mile of these mills.

Hundreds of Navajo families also built their homes using material from the mining and mill operations. The tribe and the federal government are still in the process of tearing these homes down and relocating Navajo families into safer homes.

Federal and tribal agencies need to continue to clear up the site of the Church Rock, N.M. mill site as well as the Tuba City, Ariz. dump. Read more here.

Montana Governor Vetoes Three Anti-Bison Bills

2013-05-13T16:20:53Z

Despite vociferous protest from tribes, Montana’s state legislature has processed no fewer than four bills related to bison this year.

One of them passed into law, and Montana Governor Steve Bullock vetoed the other three, the last two on May 6, as reported by the Missoulian. Together the four pieces of legislation, all introduced by Republicans, constituted “another attack on Buffalo Country,” said Indian law expert Ryan D. Dreveskracht in a recent interview with Indian Country Today Media Network.

Bullock signed HB 328, introduced by Representative Ted Washburn, which permits state officials to identify "the actual physical location" of buffalo to hunters, according to the bill’s text. He vetoed HB 396, introduced by Representative Mike Lang, which would have given county commissioners veto power over bison restoration plans within their counties, including tribal lands and federal public lands. HB 396 also allows bison to be sold by the state Department of Livestock to pay for capturing, testing, quarantining and vaccinating wild bison. Essentially the bill gives county commissioners veto power over tribal lands in relation to bison restoration.

Read more at Indian Country Today Media Network

Wounded Knee Sale Deadline Looms

2013-04-30T20:18:40Z

As the May 1 deadline approaches for the Oglala Sioux Tribe to purchase the historic site of Wounded Knee for millions of dollars, the tribe has made no statement that they plan to buy the land. The owner of the 40-acre parcel, James Czywczynski, has told the press he has several interested parties.

Tribal officials have consistently denied purchasing the land for Czywczynski’s asking price of over $3 million because the 40-acre parcel of land has an appraised value in the thousands, not millions.

The Rapid City Journal reported that there are five parties who want to purchase the land: Two California investment groups, an overseas investor, an American who offered copy million cash, and a group in Wall, South Dakota that wants to raise grant money to buy the land and gift it to the Lakota.

Read more at Indian Country Today Media Network

Fiscal Austerity and Indian-Treaty Termination--Twin Ideologies

2013-04-25T08:10:00Z

Photo: Native American Rights, housing at Pine Ridge Reservation

FORT HALL, Idaho--If you look at the failed history of Indian treaty terminations -- the idea of ending the federal-treaty relationship with tribal governments -- there were two distinct motives. Some believed it was the next logical step for Indian progress, an economic integration. Meanwhhile, others hated government and used termination as a method to shrink and attack government.

National Congress of American Indians President Joseph Garry, a member of Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene Tribe, said at the 1958 convention that Congress adopted the termination resolution in good faith, “believing it would be good for Indian people,” even though it was clearly dangerous and a disaster. That’s why nearly everyone, friends and foe alike, were at least partial supporters of termination policy.

Utah Republican Arthur Watkins, a U.S. Senator until 1959, was from the shrink-and-attack government camp.

He was zealous about termination, badgering tribal witnesses when they came to Capitol Hill, refusing to even consider alternatives. He dismissed treaty obligations outright. Indians, he said, “want all the benefits of the things we have – highways, schools, hospitals, everything that civilization furnished – but they don’t want to help pay their share of it.”

Paul Ryan and Debunked Paper

This story should have a familiar ring to it. The same forces are at play when it comes to fiscal austerity. One camp sees the problem -- the country’s demographic imbalance -- and opts for austerity (cuts in spending mainly) as a solution or at least a partial solution. The other camp hates government and sees austerity as a tool to shrink and attack. Arthur Watkins would be at home in a Tea Party crowd.

The practical problem with austerity, however, is that it does not lead to growth, especially over a short period of time. But from those who hate government, there was evidence that too much debt also made it harder for an economy to grow.

A pair of economists, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, published a paper in 2010, arguing that public debt slows growth when it reaches or exceeds 90 percent of a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

This work became the intellectual rallying cry for austerity. As House Budget Committee Chairman and former GOP vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan, D-Wis., put it: “Economists who have studied sovereign debt tell us that letting total debt rise above 90 percent of GDP creates a drag on economic growth and intensifies the risk of a debt-fueled economic crisis.”

But last week another paper found Excel spread-sheet errors in the Reinhart and Rogoff paper (which was based on the work of a graduate student). The new analysis concluded that, contrary to the view of Reinhart and Rogoff, the “average GDP growth at public debt/GDP ratios over 90 percent is not dramatically different than when debt/GDP ratios are lower.”

Of course we all make mistakes. But you would think that this is enough information to at least raise questions about austerity measures (or at the very least, the speed of the execution of austerity reductions in public programs). But that’s hardly the case.

Indeed, actual data does not matter to austerity’s zealots. Ryan’s budget calls for balancing the budget in a decade, requiring a dramatic shrinking of government -- a sort of termination policy for all.

Spend Now to Stimulate Growth

There are many who buy into austerity because they believe it to be good for people. The idea of limiting federal deficits is certainly appealing and over the long haul important.

But what’s missing from that debate is that federal spending must also get more people working and there must be a real investment in the next generation. In other words, spend money now.

We cannot be successful with the long-term challenges -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, pension deficits -- unless we do something about the first problem first. The U.S. actually has an incredible opportunity here because of the current low interest rates.

Borrowing money—something governments routinely do to cover current needs--at this moment is extraordinarily cheap. So the United States has a decade, at least, to solve the first set of problems before resolving the longer-range financing issues.

The United States sharply cut government spending after World War II when debt levels exceeded 120 percent of GDP. Indian Country remembers that era well because it paralleled the termination era. Severe austerity and termination are related ideologies.

Mark Trahant is a writer, speaker and Twitter poet. He lives in Fort Hall, Idaho, and is a member of The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. Join the discussion about austerity on his new Facebook page.

Star Wars Saga to be Translated into Navajo Language

2013-04-23T08:00:00Z

Coming as a surprise to everyone, especially members of the Navajo Tribe, Obi-Wan Kenobi will soon say, "May the Force be with you" in the Diné language.

Navajo members will soon be able to hear the beloved character from the Star Wars Saga say this and more as the Navajo Nation Museum, Navajo Parks and Recreation, and Lucasfilm, Ltd. have joined forces to dub Episode IV of the classic space fantasy film, Star Wars into the Diné language. This marks the first time that a mainstream movie will be dubbed into the Navajo language.

Manuelito Wheeler, the director of the Navajo Nation Museum, said he's been working on the idea of getting a popular film dubbed into Navajo for more than three years as a way to preserve the Navajo language.

"By preserving the Navajo language and encouraging Navajo youth to learn their language, we will also be preserving Navajo culture," Wheeler said.

He said when he approached Lucasfilm officials with the idea, he found that they were excited about the project.

"Since its inception, the Star Wars Saga has been experienced and shared all over the world. Its timeless themes of good versus evil have resonated with cultures far and wide. The movies have been translated across multiple languages and Lucasfilm Ltd. is proud to have Navajo as its most recent addition."

The first hurdle, Wheeler said, was to come up with the funding it would take to do the dubbing but with the generous help of the Navajo Parks and Recreation Department that has finally been done.

"Navajo Parks and Recreation Department is proud and honored to be a part of this innovative and entertaining approach to helping preserve our Navajo language," said Martin Begaye, department director.

The Navajo Nation Museum is now working with Deluxe Studio and plans are underway to dub the movie into the Navajo language using a group of Navajo-speaking members, who will be going over each spoken word in the movie and translating it into the Diné language.

Shana Priesz, senior director of Localization at Deluxe said, "While we have dubbed many films in the past into a variety of languages, this project ranks among the most significant. Every time we dub a film, we recognize the fact that we are helping to bridge cultural and communications gaps among societies. In this case, however, we have the unique privilege of contributing to the preservation of a storied and noble culture, the Navajo.

Who Says There Was No Genocide? -- Guatemala Dictator on Trial

2013-04-18T20:30:00Z

Español

GUATEMALA CITY - When the judge called his name, 70-year-old Tiburcio Utuy, wearing a yellow nylon jacket and looking determined, entered through tall wooden doors to face former Guatemala strongman Gen. José Efraín Rios Montt, charged with genocide. On a global scale the process is historic, the first time a former head of state stands trial for the flagrant crime in the national courts where events took place, not an international tribunal. On the scale of the life of Tiburcio Utuy, Maya corn farmer, the day was a reckoning so long in coming he talked non-stop for an hour.

“Who says there was no genocide?” asked Utuy of the tribunal. He was referring to the often cited assessment of the Rios Montt years by Pres. Otto Perez, who served as a base commander at the time in the mountainous area known as the Ixil Triangle, home to indigenous Maya where prosecutors say the genocide took place. Still hours by road from the capital, the region was considered home of an “internal enemy” according to one military planning paper, Maya supporting leftist guerrillas.

“The shoes, the belts were piled two meters high and wide, you could see the traces of people who had been killed there,” Utuy said, describing a room alongside the Catholic church in the town of Sacapulas, appropriated by soldiers for a torture chamber and body dump, where Utuy said he was held in 1982. “They tied me up and left me sitting in blood.”

After four weeks of testimony, on April 18 a judge in a separate court granted the request of the defense to annul the trial in a judgement based on a technicality. An appeal is expected. "You are mocking the witnesses," said a prosecution attorney in a small, crowded meeting room amid a crush of press and the under the eyes of silent Maya, some elderly.

"The victims are the accused," said the defense.

The decision muddies the immediate prosecution of the genocide crime, but there is no taking back the information that has flooded the country. A dozen forensic anthropologists have reported on exhumations indicating violent deaths of children, mass beheadings. A geographer testified to the unraveling of Maya Ixil culture among thousands who fled from the army into wildlands, who ate grass and watched their elderly starve, or straggled into refugee camps in Mexico. Expert witnesses testified on military plans, the history of racism in Guatemala, the statistical analysis used to arrive at numbers of dead.

It has been the testimony of witnesses like Tiburcio Utuy, however, that has reverberated through every other hour of the trial. Prosecutors must prove Rios intended to eliminate people because of their membership in a particular group, Ixil Maya, in order to bring in a guilty verdict. However, refrain of suffering and brutality created by more than a hundred voices is likely to resound in the public memory no matter what the decision on the genocide charge against the general and his co-defendant, intelligence chief Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez.

“They caught up to the woman and they struck her in the head with a machete and dragged her like a dog,” said Utuy of a scene he said he saw while hiding from soldiers. Experts have testified that racism toward the majority indigenous was key to slaughter in Maya villages, which occurred in the context of counterinsurgency against leftist rebels relatively small in number. Many recalled experience in terms referring to animals. “"Just as chicks run from hawks, that's what they did to us. Why? If we are human beings?” said witness Maria Cedillo.

Ten women who testified to sexual violence were allowed to drape their heads, partially obscuring their identity. They used traditional woven stoles to hide faces, recalling biblical images of lepers.
Some two hundred thousand persons died in Guatemala’s thirty-six years of conflict that ended in 1996, mostly civilians at government hands according to a U.N.-sponsored Truth Commission. The United States government supported Rios Montt with military aid and the personal approbation of Pres. Ronald Reagan, who publicly admired Rios’ declared anti-Communism and visited Guatemala City to declare the general was getting “a bum rap.”

“I tell you judges, I’m not lying,” Utuy said. “What guilt did the baby have still in the womb of the mother?” Witnesses testified that soldiers attacked pregnant women. “I saw this,” Utuy said. Soldiers regularly burned houses, an apparent attempt to erase standing patterns of settlement. When a clay house in his village resisted destruction by fire, Utuy said, soldiers killed those inside, piling clothes, bags and blankets on the dead and set the heap alight.

At one moment in the generally somber proceedings, Utuy surprised onlookers by rising to his feet. ‘I’m not lying, look, here are my scars,” he said, lifting his shirt and lowering his belt.

Judges, two women and a man, stared down from the dias. Soldiers had tied Utuy’s feet and head together to expose his stomach, he said, during torture.

"’Ay, what pain!’ I said. What suffering I felt at that moment when my intestines fell to the floor,” he said. He replaced them with his hands, he said.

Some witnesses have been unable to relate their experience without faltering voices, others respond briefly. Tiburcio Utuy was not exuberant, but he would not let his day in court slip by with less than fulsome expression.

“What I experienced, the suffering I felt, what the military did to me, I am telling this to the whole world,” he said.

Mary Jo McConahay has reported from Central America for numerous publications. She is the author of "Maya Roads, One Woman's Journey Among the People of the Rainforest."

The Indian Holocaust and the Hopi Nation

2013-04-11T08:35:00Z

Néret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou, a Parisian auction house that I’m sure perceives itself as catering to only the “best people,” is about to auction off cultural patrimony looted from the Hopi Nation.

Auctioneer Gilles Néret-Minet dismissed Hopi claims because “they rely on an article of the Hopi constitution which is not recognized in France because it is not a State." While the indecency of this sale is recognized by many less sophisticated than French art dealers, I am personally inflamed by the swell-headed arrogance of not recognizing the Hopi Nation combined with ignorance of the scientific consensus that the Hopi have inhabited what is now the Four Corners area of the United States since 500 B.C.E.

Plenty of American Indians have oral traditions that place them on their land from time immemorial, but I am talking about white people, archaeologists and historians, doing what they do by the standards of their academic trades.

The Hopi people have occupied their mesas though the entradas of the Spanish gold seekers. In the 17th Century, they joined with other peaceful farmers in the Pueblo Rebellion, which ran the Spaniards out of Pueblo lands over numerous instances of theft, homicide, rape, and kidnapping. Some call the Pueblo Rebellion a rejection of “civilization.” I’m a retired criminal justice professor, so I always saw it as a crackdown on crime.

Spanish jurisdiction, assuming it ever existed, ended with the Treaty of Córdoba in 1821, although Spain never ratified Córdoba and vainly asserted sovereignty until 1836. The US fought a war of conquest against Mexico that ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848, and these people who had never been Spanish and never been Mexican became not Americans. American Indians were not recognized as US citizens until 1924.

Even though the Hopis were not Americans, the US attempted to impose its culture in a manner not seen since the Spanish. Hopi Chief Lomahongyoma and 18 others served hard time in Alcatraz from January 3rd to August 7, 1895, because of their resistance to forced acculturation.

The Hopi Nation endured, the Hopi ceremonial cycle—which involves the use of the masks that the French barbarians claim the right to sell—endures, and the French ratification of the looting of Hopiland for “artwork” is a striking bit of ignorance in a people who claim sophistication far beyond the ken of Americans, let alone American Indians.

There is a similar and more recent looting that has disturbed the traditional customs of every art dealer in Europe. Not everybody knows that the word “genocide” is new to the human vocabulary, but most people know the events that led to it, the death of approximately six million Jews because Adolf Hitler, an ideological racist, conflated a religion with a race. Jewish people call it Shoah, related to the English words “calamity” or “catastrophe”; the rest of us refer to The Holocaust.

The horror of the mass killings somewhat trivializes the concomitant looting, a looting that was coextensive with Hitler’s racial fantasies. A scholar writing about Eastern Europe observed, “Because the Slavs were considered an inferior race, the Germans looted and pillaged private homes, state museums, and churches. They took all the ‘Germanic art’ that they could find and destroyed what they did not take.” The Nazis held bonfires of “degenerate art.”

This would be a familiar scenario to American Indians. To this day, the best cultural artifacts of the Aztec Empire can be seen in the Prado and the Museum of the Americas, Madrid, Spain.

The Mayan Codices, which would have been the best evidence of a literate and scientifically based civilization, were destroyed by order of Bishop Diego de Landa, who wrote: "We found a large number of books in these (Mayan) characters and, as they contained nothing not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they (the Maya) regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction." As this is written, the only Mayan books preserved to the present are named for their locations: the Madrid Codex, the Dresden Codex and the Paris Codex.

Paris brings us back to what the French should know about looting based on racism. About a fourth of French Jews went to the death camps, but many others turned their property over to the French government for safekeeping from the Nazis.

Michelle I. Turner, writing in the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, pointed out: “In the case of Nazi-looted art, there is, today at least, a great deal of information available about what happened during World War II, and there is a great awareness even among the general public of the danger that an artwork may have been looted. It is highly unlikely, therefore, that an art buyer who purchases a looted artwork today can later claim to have been completely innocent.”

The question becomes whether the urbane and sophisticated French can similarly understand the American Indian holocaust and the looting that accompanied it? Hiding behind non-recognition of the Hopi government ignores the French government’s ratification of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which provides in Article 11: “States shall provide redress through effective mechanisms, which may include restitution, developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples, with respect to their cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their free, prior and informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions and customs.”

Failing to halt this convocation of thieves ignores a plea from the government that has ordered life on the Three Mesas for longer than white people have walked on this land. If this represents civilization, I’m content as a heathen.

Steve Russell, Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is a Texas trial court judge by assignment and associate professor emeritus of criminal justice at Indiana University-Bloomington. He lives in Georgetown, Texas.

Patients Teach Doctor How to Heal at the End of Life

2013-04-03T08:45:00Z

Photo: Dr. V.J. Periyakoil is shown with one of her patients, Daniel Shaine. (Courtesy of the VA Palo Alto Health Care System)

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- How does a doctor specializing in saving lives turn into one of the nation's leading experts -- and medical educators -- on end-of-life care?

Dr. Vyjeyanthi "V.J." Periyakoil says her 25-year journey from medical school in her native India to directing Stanford University's palliative-care fellowship program taught her that the art of healing lies in listening to her patients. What she heard wasn't always in the medical textbooks.

What they told her led Periyakoil to becoming a leading voice in the movement to reconceptualize end-of-life care from limited hospice treatment in the last six months of life to comprehensive treatment for profoundly ill people .

"Much of my work had been on the importance of dignity in health care," Periyakoil recalls.

What People Want
at Life’s End

Stanford University palliative care expert, Dr. Vyjeyanthi “V.J.” Periyakoil believes that contrary to conventional wisdom, most patients don’t simply want every medical intervention that may or may not prolong their lives.

Overall people want appropriate care sensitive to their quality of life and, enabling them to experience their final days as fully as possible with minimal stress for their families.

In fact, a 2012 report by the California Health Care Foundation affirmed Periyakoil’s understanding of what patients hope for. First and foremost, Californians in the study said they didn’t want their families burdened by the cost of their care, or by having to struggle with troubling decisions about their treatment.

Also, participants in the poll said they wanted to be comfortable without pain and hoped to be “at peace spiritually.” On the survey’s list of 12 “Most Important Factors at End of Life,” people placed the desire “to live as long as possible” down at number 10.

The survey does show difference among ethnic groups. Although more than half of Latinos (56 percent) rated prolonging life as their top choice, only 18 percent of Asians did so, followed by 25 percent of whites and 43 percent of African Americans.

Palliative care is such a growing national concern that the federal Institute of Medicine launched its new Committee on Transforming End-of-Life Care in February.

--Paul Kleyman

She found that patients "cared more about concrete things -- 'Treat my pain first, take care of me first -- then you can treat me with respect.' For patients, that meant good pain care and symptom management, which is good palliative care."

Periyakoil began her practice in the United States as a resident in the crowded wards of Stockton's San Joaquin General Hospital. Her patients were mainly "migrant farmworkers, people with no insurance, people who didn't want to give you too much information" because of their immigration status or their fear they couldn't afford the treatment being prescribed.

She felt especially awkward when the medical advice she offered proved irrelevant to her patients' lives. "There was a mother of young children who had two jobs. I would tell her, 'Why don't you put your feet up? Why don't you eat more protein?' She'd try to answer, 'Well, I have to get back to work,' and I'd just continue to give the same silly advice."

Sensing her frustration, it was the patients who tried to reassure her. "'Oh, yes, I'll do that, doctor...Don't worry about me,' they'd say."

Struck by how many of her Stockton patients were immigrants, like herself, Periyakoil worked hard to make herself understood while also sensitizing herself to cross-cultural issues.

"When I first came to the U.S., I could read and write English very well, but because of my accent, my patients couldn't understand what I was saying," she recalls. She focused on enunciating every English word clearly, and came to appreciate nonverbal forms of expression -- like a worried look that exposed a patient's unspoken concern. The better she was able to communicate, the more likely her patients were to follow her medical recommendations.

Later at Stanford Medical School, where Periyakoil studied geriatric medicine, shediscovered another gap in her knowledge from patients who were deemed to have only six months or less left to live. Admitted to hospice care, their cure-oriented medical treatment would often be stopped in favor of "comfort" care.

"I had a hard time giving up on these patients," she admits.

Her determination to improve the quality of their lives, no matter how much time they had left, led her to realize that palliative treatment should begin as soon as a patient is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. Care provided only when someone becomes eligible for terminal hospice coverage comes too late to fully help them.

So, for example, the average hospice stay in the United States is now only 19 days. But palliative medicine begun much earlier reduces the agony and stress of disease so well that many patients actually survive longer. And family caregivers, relieved of constant stress, have been shown to live longer following a loved one's death.

"Palliative care should be woven seamlessly into treatment," noted Periyakoil, who is also associate director of Palliative Care Services at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. "Patients shouldn't have to know the word 'palliative care.' It should be something that is given to you when and where you need it because it is the standard practice."

Periyakoil also discovered that patients who come from cultures that discourage, even prohibit, open acknowledgement of death and dying typically wind up having their referrals to hospice treatment delayed until it's too late for them to benefit from broader palliative care.

At Cultural Boundaries of Death

She learned that cultural boundaries around death could be violated in other ways. She recalls a home visit she made to see a young Chinese woman with late-stage cancer. "The husband opened the door silently, did not respond to my greeting and went into his wife's bedroom. She must have died moments earlier. When I squatted down next to her body to check her pulse and prepare an official death pronouncement, her husband gently shook his head."

Sensing she was intruding in a sacred moment, Periyakoil withdrew. At the door she wanted to offer her condolences but the husband once again shook his head and her words froze in her mouth.

"Later I learned that Chinese Buddhists believe the soul lingers in the body for some time after death. So they do not touch the body nor vocally express grief as this might disrupt the passage of the dying person's soul and prevent them from being reborn into a better life."

To help doctors become culturally fluent, Periyakoil is producing a free, online text series addressing the sensitivities of 13 distinct ethnic groups, among them African Americans, American Indians, South Asians and East Asians.

Also she is developing videos for an online series on the need for doctors and the public to share decision making, titled "Can We Talk: Conversations with multi-cultural Americans about end-of-life care." In the segments, professional actors depict scenes from common patient situations drawn from doctors' real-life experiences.

At Stanford's Palliative Care Education and Training Program, Periyakoil's fellows embrace her holistic approach. "Palliative care is one of the few fields of medicine where you deal with the whole person," says Thui Pham, an internist. "There are so many factors that impact life, not just the medical issues."

"Palliative care is not about the end of life," Periyakoil concurs. "It's about how a patient can get the most out of every day."