Dream Catchers

I received this in my nursing news from the ANA so I wanted to share it.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/printer2/index.asp?ploc=t&refer=http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/352846_healthcare27.html

Senate backs overhaul bill that 'will save lives'

Last updated February 26, 2008 11:02 p.m. PT

By JUDY HOLLAND
P-I WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- In the first major overhaul of the Indian Health Service in more than a decade, Congress moved Tuesday toward bolstering health-care screening, illness prevention and mental health benefits for Native Americans.

The Senate-approved legislation would infuse $35 billion over 10 years into the Indian Health Service to improve tribal health care for 1.8 million American Indians and Alaska Natives on reservations. The lawmakers voted 83-10 in favor of the legislation.

In recent years, the Indian Health Service has been funded at about $3 billion annually.

The bill would bolster mental health programs and patient screening for cancer and diabetes, expand disease prevention programs and recruit nurses and doctors to serve American Indian populations. It would also modernize and build health clinics and increase tribal access to Medicare and Medicaid.

The House is expected to take up the measure later this year.

Seattle is home to the largest urban Indian health clinic in the country.

The Seattle Indian Health Board on 12th Avenue South provides a full range of medical, dental, lab and pharmacy services along with programs aimed at drug and alcohol abuse to about 7,000 Native Americans each year.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., hailed passage of the measure as "a major step, something that the Indian tribes have really been pushing."

"It updates the law so they can do the kind of preventive care the rest of America has," Murray said.

The Indian Health Care Improvement Act, which was last reauthorized in 1992 and expired in 2000, will focus on preventive care that can stave off illnesses prevalent on reservations such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease, Murray said.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, said the federal government has a responsibility to Native Americans after "we took their land, put them on reservations, signed treaties and made promises" we haven't kept, especially with regard to health care.

"This will save lives," Dorgan said.

Under treaties signed by the U.S. government and Indian tribes, the federal government is obligated to provide health care for Native Americans.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said improved health care for Indian tribes is long overdue.

"It's been a neglected part of our health care delivery system," Cantwell said.

The Senate also approved on a vote of 56-38 an amendment by Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., that would grant the Indian Health Service the authority to more evenly distribute funding for construction of its health facilities.

Smith complained about an "archaic formula" under which most of the funding for construction and modernization of tribal clinics goes to fewer than 10 states.

He said states that are not receiving construction dollars for Native American health facilities include New York, Texas, Michigan, California and Washington.

Cantwell said the Smith measure could benefit Northwestern tribes by steering more federal construction dollars their way.

"It's a positive step for a more adequate distribution of resources to the Northwest," Cantwell said.

The Senate also amended the bill to exclude most abortions at Indian health clinics and ban spending on programs that discourage gun ownership.

Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, applauded the anti-abortion provision, saying the majority of the Senate "has now shown they agree with most Americans that government funding of abortion is morally wrong."

A similar House bill is expected to come up in the Energy and Commerce Committee in the next few weeks, said Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., who heads the health subcommittee of the panel. It must clear the House Ways and Means panel before heading to the floor.

Pallone predicts the measure "will move fairly quickly" to approval in the House.

Pallone, vice chair of the Native American Caucus, said health care for American Indians is "far inferior to that of the average American."

He said hospitals and clinics on reservations are in disrepair and have difficulty finding specialized physicians, dentists and podiatrists.

"There is a huge disparity between the health care they get and that of average Americans," Pallone said.

$35 BILLION

Amount over 10 years that the Senate-approved legislation would put into the Indian Health Service to boost tribal care.

1.8 MILLION

Number of American Indians and Alaska Natives on reservations who would be affected by the legislation. HEALTH CARE

BY THE NUMBERS

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., cited these grim health-care statistics for Native Americans:

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/053107A.shtml

Minnesota Case Fits Pattern in US Attorneys Flap
    By Tom Hamburger
    The Los Angeles Times

    Thursday 31 May 2007

A prosecutor apparently targeted for firing had supported Native American voters' rights.

    Washington - For more than 15 years, clean-cut, square-jawed Tom Heffelfinger was the embodiment of a tough Republican prosecutor. Named U.S. attorney for Minnesota in 1991, he won a series of high-profile white-collar crime and gun and explosives cases. By the time Heffelfinger resigned last year, his office had collected a string of awards and commendations from the Justice Department.

    So it came as a surprise - and something of a mystery - when he turned up on a list of U.S. attorneys who had been targeted for firing.

    Part of the reason, government documents and other evidence suggest, is that he tried to protect voting rights for Native Americans.

    At a time when GOP activists wanted U.S. attorneys to concentrate on pursuing voter fraud cases, Heffelfinger's office was expressing deep concern about the effect of a state directive that could have the effect of discouraging Indians in Minnesota from casting ballots.

    Citing requirements in a new state election law, Republican Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer directed that tribal ID cards could not be used for voter identification by Native Americans living off reservations. Heffelfinger and his staff feared that the ruling could result in discrimination against Indian voters. Many do not have driver's licenses or forms of identification other than the tribes' photo IDs.

    Kiffmeyer said she was only following the law.

    The issue was politically sensitive because the Indian vote can be pivotal in close elections in Minnesota. The Minneapolis-St. Paul area has one of the largest urban Native American populations in the United States. Its members turn out in relatively large numbers and are predominantly Democratic.

    Heffelfinger resigned last year for personal reasons and says he had no idea he was being targeted for possible firing. But his stance fits a pattern that has emerged in the cases of several U.S. attorneys fired last year in states where Republicans wanted more vigorous efforts to legally challenge questionable voters.

    Politics have always played a role at Justice and other Cabinet-level departments. But, critics say, Bush administration strategists went beyond most of their predecessors - Democratic or Republican - in seeking ways to convert control of the federal government into advantages on election day.

    And the Heffelfinger episode has contributed to a backlash among some Minnesota Republicans. Sen. Norm Coleman, a Bush loyalist in the past who is facing reelection next year, has called on Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales to resign - largely as a result of the U.S. attorney firings and the revelations about Heffelfinger.

    A hint at why Heffelfinger's name was on termination lists that Justice Department officials and Bush political strategists put together emerged when Monica M. Goodling, the department's former White House liaison, testified last week before the House Judiciary Committee about the firings.

    Goodling said she had heard Heffelfinger criticized for "spending an excessive amount of time" on Native American issues.

    Her comment caused bewilderment and anger among the former U.S. attorney's supporters in Minnesota. And Heffelfinger said it was "shameful" if the time he spent on the problems of Native Americans had landed him in trouble with his superiors in Washington.

    But newly obtained documents and interviews with government officials suggest that what displeased some of his superiors and GOP politicians was narrower and more politically charged - his actions on Indian voting.

    About three months after Heffelfinger's office raised the issue of tribal ID cards and nonreservation Indians in an October 2004 memo, his name appeared on a list of U.S. attorneys singled out for possible firing.

    "I have come to the conclusion that his expressed concern for Indian voting rights is at least part of the reason that Tom Heffelfinger was placed on the list to be fired," said Joseph D. Rich, former head of the voting section of the Justice Department's civil rights division. Rich, who retired in 2005 after 37 years as a career department lawyer - 24 of them in Republican administrations - was closely involved in the Minnesota ID issue. He played no role in drafting the termination lists, which were prepared by political appointees.

    Justice Department officials refused Tuesday to confirm whether particular U.S. attorneys may or may not have been on one of the termination lists prepared by D. Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Gonzales. But Dean Boyd, a department spokesman, did say that "the Justice Department and the attorney general have been and remain committed to working on issues of importance to Native Americans."

    Boyd cited cases in which Justice Department lawyers have gone to court to uphold Indian voting rights.

    Suspicion of Indian voter fraud was strong among Republicans in the upper Midwest in advance of the 2004 election. The GOP blamed what it said was fraud on Indian reservations for the narrow victory of South Dakota Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson over Republican candidate John Thune in 2002.

    It was in this environment, Rich says, that he got an Oct. 19, 2004, e-mail from an assistant U.S. attorney in Minnesota named Rob Lewis, informing him about possible voter discrimination against Indians.

    Described as a matter of "deep concern" to Heffelfinger, the issue arose from Kiffmeyer's directive in the fall of 2004 that tribal ID cards could not be used for voter identification off reservations

    About 32,000 Indians live off-reservation in Minnesota, mostly in the Twin Cities.

    In the e-mail - which Rich described to The Times - Lewis wrote that Kiffmeyer's memo had sparked "concerns regarding possible disparate impact among the state's substantial Indian population."

    "Disparate impact" is a term used in civil rights litigation to describe a circumstantial case of discrimination.

    After reviewing the matter, Rich recommended opening an investigation.

    In response, he said, Bradley Schlozman, a political appointee in the department, told Rich "not to do anything without his approval" because of the "special sensitivity of this matter."

    Rich responded by suggesting that more information be gathered from voting officials in the Twin Cities area, which includes Minnesota's two most populous counties.

    A message came back from another Republican official in the department, Hans von Spakovsky, saying Rich should not contact the county officials but should instead deal only with the secretary of state's office.

    Von Spakovsky indicated, Rich said, that working with Kiffmeyer's office reduced the likelihood of a leak to the news media.

    The orders from Schlozman and Von Spakovsky, who wielded unusual power in the civil rights division, effectively ended any department inquiry, Rich said.

    "It was apparent to me that because of these extremely tight and unusual restrictions on the investigation that this matter had political implications," Rich said in an interview.

    Rich is now working for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which was formed at the request of President Kennedy in 1963 to combat discrimination.

    Schlozman, who served briefly as U.S. attorney in Missouri and brought a voting fraud case shortly before election day last year, was not available for comment, Justice Department officials said. Von Spakovsky, now at the Federal Election Commission, said through a spokesman that he could not comment.

    Kiffmeyer also did not respond to requests for comment.

    With the Justice Department inquiry going nowhere, lawyers for the Indians asked the federal courts to intervene. A few days before the November 2004 election, federal District Judge James Rosenbaum ordered that tribal identification cards be accepted at the polls.

    After Heffelfinger resigned, the Justice Department replaced him with someone more attuned to the administration's views.

    On his way out, Heffelfinger recommended that Joan Humes, the No. 2 person in the office, be named interim U.S. attorney. But Humes was rejected by the Justice Department - in part, Goodling testified, because she was known to be a "liberal."

    The job went to a conservative Justice Department employee, Rachel Paulose. She had Ivy League credentials, brief experience as a prosecutor, and as a private lawyer had helped bring election lawsuits on behalf of the Minnesota GOP. She declined to comment for this article.

    One of Paulose's first acts in office was to remove Lewis, who had written the 2004 e-mails to Washington expressing concern about Native American voting rights in Minnesota, from overseeing voting rights cases.

    For his part, Heffelfinger said, he took Goodling at her word and believed that he was on the termination lists for his zeal in confronting problems facing Indian country. But Heffelfinger said he did not know whether voting rights in particular affected his standing with Washington.

    "I was just flagging an issue and giving an opinion," he said. "I think that's the kind of analysis a U.S. attorney is supposed to do."

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    Monday 18 February 2008

    Across Indian country, two things are never in short supply: rich natural resources and endemic poverty. That paradox is driving a longstanding battle between indigenous people and the government trust that holds money generated from their lands.

    The class-action lawsuit, Cobell v. Kempthorne, targets a federal trust fund that handles revenues from activities like oil drilling and logging on land owned by individual Indians and tribes. The trust's financial operations-covering more than 56 million acres and dating back for more than a century-have left a spectacularly messy paper trail. Many beneficiaries say they are in the dark about how much has been paid out and what is still owed, and charge that the system has drained wealth from Indian communities.

    "We know that the government collected our money, but it hasn't been paid to us as individual Indian beneficiaries," says Elouise Cobell, a Blackfeet Nation member who initiated the suit in 1996 on behalf of several hundred thousand account holders.

    The battle is finally drawing to a close. On Jan. 30, U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled that the trust's finances are beyond salvaging. Calling for a settlement, he denounced the Interior Department's "unrepaired, and irreparable, breach of its fiduciary duty over the last century."

    The decision builds on a 1999 ruling that ordered a management overhaul and a complete accounting-to comply with the trust's orignal mandate and federal reforms enacted in 1994. As In These Times went to press, the Interior had not issued a formal legal response to the decision.

    The department has spent years retooling its accounting systems, but various court reviews found the trust in chronic disarray. Not only are financial records inaccurate or missing, critics say, but many landowners have little information on their lands and lease activities, or even the value of their assets, aside from sporadic checks issued by the government.

    The system disbursed about $300 million to individuals and $500 million to tribes last fiscal year, and holds hundreds of millions in individual-account funds.

    Whatever the exact amount that has been unpaid, Cobell says, evidence of a swindle is strewn across Blackfeet territory. Though the earth is replete with oil, timber and other resources, she says, "there is poverty all over the place."

    Around the turn of the 20th century, the government established the trust system to manage lands on behalf of Indians, based on the presumption that natives lacked the competency to control their resources. Today, the government says the trust functions primarily as an institutional conduit for land-based revenues, produced under agreements between landowners and business interests.

    But the trust looks different from Jay Dusty Bull's spread, which spans about 8,500 acres near Browning, Mont. To the 23-year-old Blackfeet member, his family's grazing leases provide a financial boost but hardly compensate for the theft his ancestors suffered.

    "A hundred years ago, were our Indians - who didn't speak English, who couldn't read or write - given that same opportunity?" he says. "No. 'Sign an X here. Here's $40.' Billions of dollars could have been taken off of our land a hundred years ago, and we don't know."

    Defending its ongoing accounting work, the Interior argued that a "statistical sampling" of records for several thousand transactions had uncovered only a small percentage of errors, and that "additional work would neither produce a better result nor be cost effective."

    But official probes haven't be so reassuring. In 2002, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth held then-Secretary Gale Norton in contempt for failing to initiate the historical accounting process years after Congress had mandated it. The Interior Department, he wrote, had "indisputably proven ... it is either unwilling or unable to administer [the trust] competently."

    Court-appointed Special Master Alan Balaran reported similarly dismal findings. Inspecting a Dallas branch of the Minerals Management Office in 2003, he noted the "chaotic" disorganization of financial documents, along with the "unexplained presence of an industrial shredder" - before office staff forced him to leave.

    Outside the courtroom, advocates have pressed Congress for legislation to completely overhaul the trust's management and accounting systems. For many landowners, balancing the government's books would be one small, overdue counterweight against a legacy of injustice.

    "We need to have a much fairer process," Dusty Bull says. "[We need to] make sure that our children, our grandchildren, our generations to come, do not have to go through the same process."

  -------

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TV bounty hunter Duane `Dog' Chapman apologizes for using racial slur in phone call - AOL News

Our country remains with the American Native at the bottom of the list, worthy of insults with no fluff.  Either way, I have turned it over to the grandmothers and grandfathers and they have dealt with him as they see fit.

TV bounty hunter Duane `Dog' Chapman apologizes for using racial slur in phone call

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To all my sisters, brothers, fathers and mothers, to all my grandmothers and grandfathers here to be and those who were, I lay this outrage before you as I have copied from my sisters site "Native American Moments" and ask that the Great Spirit and Mother Earth let this man now reap what he has so foolishly sownd

To the Spirits of the East, I honor you. To the spirits of the North, I honor you. To the spirits of the south I honor you. And to the spirits of the west, I honor you and ask that the sun may not set and the full moon rise and pass again that Dogs transgressions be avenged in your own way, in your own time.

To Father Sky and Mother Earth I honor you and to the wind that bnrings the breath of life or the winds of destruction, and to the water springs that bring the force of all life, I give this man and his transgressions to you.

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http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgdxt_espoir-visions-de-plume-blanche

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Rabbit shoots the Sun

It was the height of summer, the time of year called Hadotso, the Great Heat. All day long, from a blue and cloudless sky, the blazing sun beat down upon the earth. No rain had fallen for many days and there was not the slightest breath of wind to cool the stifling air. Everything was hot and dry. Even the rose-red cliffs of the canyons and mesas seemed to take on a more brilliant color than before.

The animals drooped with misery. They were parched and hungry, for it was too hot to hunt for food and, panting heavily, they sough what shade they could under the rocks and bushes.

Rabbit was the unhappiest of all. Twice that day the shimmering heat had tempted him across the baked earth towards visions of water and cool, shady trees. He had exhausted himself in his desperate attempts to reach tem, only to find the mirages dissolve before him, receding further and further into the distance.

Now, tired and wretched, he dragged himself into the shadow of an overhanging rock and crouched there listlessly. His soft fur was caked with the red dust of the desert. His head swam and his eyes ached from the sun's glare.

'Why does it have to be so hot?' he groaned. 'What have we done to deserve such torment?' He squinted up at the sun and shouted furiously, 'Go away! You are making everything too hot!'

Sun took no notice at all and continued to pour down his fiery beams, forcing Rabbit to retreat once more into the shade of the rock. 'Sun needs to be taught a lesson,' grumbled Rabbit. 'I have a good mind to go and fight him. If he refuses to stop shining, I will kill him!'

His determination to punish Sun made him forget his weariness and, in spite of the oppressive heat, he set off at a run towards the eastern edge of the world where the Sun came up each morning.

As he ran, he practiced with his bow and arrows and, to make himself brave and strong, he fought with everything, which crossed his path. He fought with the gophers and the lizards. He hurled his throwing stick at beetles, ants and dragonflies. He shot at the yucca and the giant cactus. He became a very fierce rabbit indeed.

By the time he reached the edge of the world, Sun had left the sky and was nowhere to be seen.

'The coward!' sneered Rabbit. 'He is afraid to fight, but he will not escape me so easily,' and he settled to wait behind a clump of bushes.

In those days, Sun did not appear slowly as he does now. Instead he rushed up over the horizon and into the heavens with one mighty bound. Rabbit knew that he would have to act quickly in order to ambush him and he fixed his eyes intently on the spot where the Sun usually appeared.

Had heard all Rabbit's threats and had watched him fighting. He knew that he was lying in wait among the bushes. He was not at all afraid of this puny creature and he thought that he might have some amusement at his expense.

He rolled some distance away from his usual place and swept up into the sky before Rabbit knew what was happening. By the time Rabbit had gathered his startled wits and released his bowstring, Sun was already high above him and out of range.

Rabbit stamped and shouted with rage and vexation. Sun laughed and laughed and shone even more fiercely than before.

Although almost dead from heat, Rabbit would not give up. Next morning he tried again, but this time Sun came up in a different place and evaded him once more.

Day after day the same thing happened. Sometimes Sun sprang up on Rabbit's right, sometimes on his left and sometimes straight in front of him, but always where Rabbit least expected him.

One morning, however, Sun grew careless. He rose more leisurely than usual, and this time, Rabbit was ready. Swiftly he drew his bow. His arrow whizzed through the air and buried itself deep in Sun's side.

Rabbit was jubilant! At last he had shot his enemy! Wild with joy, he leaped up and down. He rolled on the ground, hugging himself. He turned somersaults. He looked at Sun again - and stopped short.

Where his arrow had pierce Sun, there was a gaping wound and, from that wound, there gushed a stream of liquid fire. Suddenly it seemed as if the whole world had been set ablaze. Flames shot up and rushed towards Rabbit, crackling and roaring.

Rabbit paused not a moment longer. He took to his heels in panic and ran as fast as he could away from the fire. He spied a lone cottonwood tree and scuttled towards it. 'Everything is burning!' he cried. 'Will you shelter me?'

The cottonwood shook its slender branches mournfully. 'What can I do?' it asked. 'I will be burned to the ground.'

Rabbit ran on. Behind him, the flames were coming closer. He could feel their breath on his back. A greasewood tree lay in his path.

'Hide me! Hide me!' Rabbit gasped. 'The fire is coming.'

'I cannot help you,' answered the greasewood tree. 'I will be burned up roots and branches.'

Terrified and almost out of breath, Rabbit continued to run, but his strength was failing. He could feel the fire licking at his heels and his fur was beginning to singe. Suddenly he heard a voice calling to him.

'Quickly, come under me!' The fire will pass over me so swiftly that it will only scorch my top.'

It was the voice of a small green bush with flowers like bunches of cotton capping its thin branches. Gratefully, Rabbit dived below it and lay there quivering, his eyes tightly shut, his ears flat against his body.

With a thunderous roar, the sheet of flame leaped overhead. The little bush crackled and sizzled. Then, gradually, the noise receded and everything grew quiet once more.

Rabbit raised his head cautiously and looked around. Everywhere the earth lay black and smoking, but the fire had passed on. He was safe!

The little bush which had sheltered him was no longer green. Burned and scorched by the fire, it had turned a golden yellow. People now call it the desert yellow brush, for, although it first grows green, it always turns yellow when it feels the heat of the sun.

Rabbit never recovered from his fright. To this day, he bears brown spots where the fire scorched the back of his neck. He is no longer fierce and quarrelsome, but runs and hides at the slightest noise.

As for Sun, he too was never quite the same. He now makes himself so bright that no one can look at him long enough to sight an arrow and he always peers very warily over the horizon before he brings his full body into view.

From the Archives of Blue Panther

from the site:

http://web.telia.com/~u15508742/animals.htm

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The eagle is a great sacred bird. Our favorite is the golden or war eagle,
which we call "pretty-feathered eagle", because of his beautiful tail
feathers, white, tipped with black, which we use for decorative and
ceremonial purposes. A single tail feather was often rated as equal in value
to a horse.

In time passed, the killing of an eagle was something that concerned the
whole town. This could only be done by a professional eagle killer, chosen
for the purpose on account of his knowledge of the prescribed forms and
prayers to be said afterwards in order to obtain pardon for the necessary
sacrilege, and thus ward off vengeance from our tribe.

The eagle must be killed only in winter or late fall after the crops were
gathered and snakes retired to their dens. If killed in summertime a frost
would destroy the corn, while the songs of the Eagle dance, when the
feathers were brought home, would so anger the snakes that they would become
doubly dangerous. That is why the Eagle songs were never sung until the
snakes had gone to sleep in the winter.

It is told that one man deliberately killed an eagle in defiance of the
ordinances and the he was constantly haunted by dreams of fierce eagles
swooping down upon him in his nightmares,

From the Archives of Blue Panther

from the site:

http://web.telia.com/~u15508742/animals.htm

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