Here is a summary of Native American-related news around the U.S. this week:
White House: We Should Listen to Native Americans on Mascots
President Joe Biden welcomed the Atlanta Braves baseball team to the White House Monday, where he praised them for an “unstoppable, joyful” win in the 2021 World Series. The president made no mention of the longstanding controversy over the team’s name.
Under pressure from Native American groups, the football team formerly known as the “Washington Redskins” changed its name to the Commanders, and other professional, collegiate and secondary school teams have followed suit.
But the Atlanta Braves have said their brand, which includes a tomahawk logo on their jerseys, will remain. So, too, will the so-called “tomahawk chop,” in which spectators hack at the air and sing a “war chant” rooted in a 1950s children’s cartoon show that stereotyped Indians.
Later Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden believed all people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
“We should listen to Native American and Indigenous people who are most impacted by this,” she said.
Her remarks drew criticism from the Washington Examiner newspaper.
“Teams named themselves after American Indians because of their bravery and nobility,” the commentator wrote. “Ironically, the liberal idea of treating Native Americans with ‘dignity and respect’ on this issue is to ignore them and erase them from our culture entirely.”
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland speaks at the 30th annual Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration, on Saturday, Sept. 17, 2022, in Macon, Ga.
Haaland: Slur Denied Humanity of Generations of Native Women
“Words matter,” U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland wrote in The Washington Post Wednesday, explaining the erasure of a derogatory term for Indigenous women from the names of nearly 650 federal locations and land features.
“The word is squaw — a term so offensive that I have never used it except in issuing the order to make the name change, and beyond this sentence I will not repeat it here or anywhere,” she wrote.
“It was stolen from the word for ‘woman’ in one specific Indigenous language, I believe Algonquian. The word was then perverted — as so many Indigenous words and customs were — turning it into a broad racial slur, a caricature that removed individual identity and dignity from all women of Native American heritage.
“The insidious result was to deny the humanity of generations of Native wives, daughters and mothers, as if using cheap slang would make the victims somehow deserving of assault — even to this day.”
Haaland cited disproportionate rates of violence against Native women as evidence that persecution of Indigenous women continues.
“The search for justice for these crimes has been underfunded for decades, leaving many — including me — to believe that these crimes are somehow tragically seen as less worthy of investigation.”
Changing geographic names, she said, was one way to affirm the value of Indigenous women and ensure that public lands and waters are “accessible and welcoming.”
Photo of Lissa Yellowbird-Chase at the Oceti Sakowin camp during Standing Rock pipeline protests, January, 2017. Courtesy photo by Tonita Cervantes.
Prominent MMIW Justice Seeker Sues Federal Government Alleging BIA Police Abuses
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in North Dakota this week filed a lawsuit against the federal government, alleging that Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) police on the Standing Rock Reservation “assaulted, humiliated and dehumanized” a well-known champion of justice for missing and murdered Indigenous men and women.
As VOA reported in 2019, the plaintiff, Lissa Yellowbird-Chase, is an enrolled member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation who in 2015 founded the Sahnish Scouts, a citizen-led group that works to locate the missing, find remains, and give support to victims’ families.
Yellowbird-Chase alleges that in February 2021, while driving a rescued trafficking victim to safety, county law enforcement stopped her for speeding. Because she possessed a quantity of marijuana, they turned her over to BIA officers, who handcuffed her and transported her to the Standing Rock Detention Center. There, the lawsuit states, male officers forced her to strip to her underwear publicly, then privately performed a body cavity search and subjected her to lewd comments. The suit also alleges that BIA officers robbed Yellowbird-Chase of more than $800 and her prescription medication.
The BIA-OJS Corrections Handbook states:
“…The arrestee(s) … will be un-cuffed and directed to a designated private area, where a strip search will be conducted by a staff member of the same gender, if possible. In the case of female arrestees, a staff member of the same gender is required. If a female staff member is not available, the female arrestee will be returned to the admissions area and placed in a holding cell. A female trained in conducting strip searches will be summoned and upon arrival the female arrestee will be processed.”
In September 2021, Yellowbird-Chase filed a Federal Tort claim against the Interior Department; in May 2022, the Interior Department denied her claim.
The U.S. Federal Tort Claims Act allows individuals to sue the federal government and seek monetary damages.
What happened to Yellowbird-Chase is “shameful and reprehensible,” said Stephanie Amiotte, ACLU of North Dakota legal director. “The emotional and physical distress these officers inflicted upon Lissa is severe, traumatizing and could only be born out of a fundamental disregard for her humanity and abuse of power by law enforcement officers. Our government should not treat people this way.”
VOA reached out to the BIA for comment.
“The Bureau of Indian Affairs does not comment on ongoing litigation," a spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
Graphic of a Justice Department Tribal Access Program kiosk workstation, which gives tribal governments access to national crime databases.
Additional Tribes Given Access to Crime Information Sharing Systems
Sixteen federally recognized Native American Tribes have been added to the U.S. Justice Department’s Tribal Access Program (TAP), gaining access to national crime information databases.
TAP will provide and train tribes to use kiosk workstations to take fingerprints and mugshots and search and submit information to the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division.
“The Department is committed to strengthening our government-to-government partnership with tribal nations, including providing critical access to criminal databases through the Tribal Access Program,” U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco said Tuesday. “With today’s announcement, 16 additional participating tribes will be able to register sex offenders, protect victims of domestic violence, prevent prohibited persons from obtaining firearms, and help locate missing people.”
Lack of access to federal databases has been blamed, in part, for a high number of unsolved missing and murder cases in Indian Country. The Justice Department in 2015 engaged nine tribes in a two-year pilot study, adding members incrementally ever since.
Tuesday’s announcement means a total of 123 tribes, comprising 450 tribal government agencies, are now able to access and share nationwide information on missing persons, sex offenders, criminals and fugitives; conduct background and fingerprint checks including those unrelated to crime, such as screening prospective employees or child care workers.
Empty desk at the Oregon Department of Transportation during the height COVID-19 pandemic.
Telework Not an Option for Many Native Americans
The COVID-19 pandemic set off a radical shift in the way most Americans go to work. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that as of July 2022, about one quarter of all employed Americans worked from home at least one day a week because of COVID-19.
A 2020 study by the Brookings Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, showed that telework “can help employers afford the cost of hiring high-skill labor, and keep these workers connected to the office and each other no matter where they’re based. Telework also allows employers access to a larger group of potential workers and, in turn, allows workers access to more job options.
Rob Maxim, a researcher at the Brookings Institution and a citizen of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe in Massachusetts, teamed up with Matt Gregg, an economist for the Center for Indian Country Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, to analyze census data from IPUMS USA.
They found that working from home is less of an option for Native Americans than for other racial and ethnic groups in the U.S.
At the height of the COVID-19 economic crisis of 2020, Native Americans teleworked at a rate 8 percentage points lower than white workers. That gap closed somewhat as workers began returning to the office in 2021 and 2022, but by early summer 2022, Native Americans were teleworking at a rate 2 percentage points lower than white workers.
The study blames, in part, gaps in education and employment opportunities. Previous studies have shown that one-third of all Native American workers are employed in front-line industries such as health care, education, or grocery or convenience stores, where teleworking is not an option.
Housing conditions and restricted access to the internet and other necessary technology also impedes Native Americans from joining the telework “revolution.”
“For Native nations, remote work has the potential to bring new economic opportunity,” the authors write. “This matters, because Native nations differ from many other communities in that out-migration not only has economic impacts but is also a threat to cultural well-being.”
The study suggests the federal government should step up economic development and education on tribal lands; it should also work to give “urban Indians” access to the kinds of jobs that are more likely to offer telework as an option.
Traditional double-wall baskets woven by artist David Cornsilk, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.
Cherokee Leader Looks to Boost Support of Cherokee Artists
Acknowledging the devastating economic impact that COVID-19 has had on Cherokee artists, Cherokee Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. has proposed a program like President Franklin Roosevelt’s Federal Art Project of the 1930s and 1940s, through which the government helped painters, sculptors and other visual artists recover from the devastating financial impacts of the Great Depression.
“From time immemorial, artistic expression by Cherokees reflects who we are as a distinct people, our connection to the spiritual world, our deepest concerns and our highest aspirations,” Hoskin Jr. wrote in a guest opinion for Native News Online. “To ensure that Cherokee culture remains strong and vibrant far into the future, we need to get behind our artists today.”
If approved, the Cherokee Artist Recovery Act would allot $3 million to the Cherokee art community over three years to purchase works of art, fund art education, upgrade arts facilities and help artists market their work.