One day an old native American needed a loan for $500.
He went into the small town bank in and asked to borrow $500.
The banker pulled out the loan application and asked him “What are you going to do with the money old timer?”
The Lone Ranger and Tonto walked into a bar one day and sat down to drink a beer. After a few minutes, a big tall cowboy walked in and said, “Who owns the big white horse outside?” The Lone Ranger stood up, hitched his gunbelt, and said, “I do. Why?”
The north end of this national park bustles with roughly a million tourists a year who pull over to view and photograph the majestic canyons, spires and tables, hike the trails and learn about fossils.
The park’s mostly undeveloped and far less-traveled South Unit, which also boasts mile upon mile of moonscape-like vistas, lies within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In the 1940s, the federal government seized it from more than 800 American Indian families for a military bombing and gunnery range that was used until the 1960s.
In 1976, the land was returned to the Oglala Sioux Tribe, which has since co-managed it with the National Park Service.
Officials for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe believe their plans for a casino on the shore of Lake Oahe in central South Dakota will create jobs and generate essential revenue for programs on the financially strapped reservation.
The tribe is considering several casino locations, including one in Stanley County on the west side of the massive Missouri River reservoir. That location would be on tribal trust land outside of the reservation boundaries.
“It’s near the lake. It’s a beautiful location,” Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe administrative officer Harold Condon said Wednesday.
“What if a public commission were to begin to examine the American (and European) history of white supremacy - and, here, how that doctrine shaped the formation of Minnesota and its public and private institutions?
MinnPost photo by Mike Mosedale
Arthur “Archie” LaRose, chairman-elect of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe:
“I want to restore the work ethic in our people.”
CASS LAKE, MINN. — On a recent Monday afternoon, near the end of business hours, Arthur “Archie” LaRose made the tactical error of walking into the reception area outside his Cass Lake office. Everyone, it seemed, wanted something from LaRose, the 37 year-old chairman-elect of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.
One young mother, with two kids in tow and troubles with her food stamps, beseeched him for a gas voucher. A grandmother meekly asked for emergency assistance with an overdue light bill. A band member visiting from the Twin Cities said she needed some cash for transportation home.
Like a seasoned ward healer, LaRose fielded the requests diplomatically, urging each of his supplicants “fill out an app.” At the same time, he slowly maneuvered his way to the exit on his way to a meeting in Bemidji with two political allies.
Plans already under way for 2009 Denver March
by Carol Berry
DENVER - The big March pow wow held here annually may be over for 2008, but the work of 2009 is already under way.
Grace Gillette, Arikara and executive director of the Denver March Powwow (informally known as ”Denver March”), is busy tallying, recording and planning - generally carrying out the nuts and bolts of designing and executing a major yearly event.
Part of Gillette’s post-pow wow job every year is to crunch numbers, send out vendor applications and begin the process of head staff selection for the next year, among countless other chores.
This year, there was good news and less-than-good news, the latter due to increased costs.
The 34th annual pow wow itself was a success, drawing 952 registered dancers, 1,742 dancers at the main grand entry, 34 drum groups, more than 185 arts and crafts booths, and participants and attendees from 25 countries and 49 states. Held in early spring, it is generally recognized as the kickoff event for the pow wow season nationally.
”People ask why it has been successful,” she said, theorizing that the event may accommodate ”people who have cabin fever.”
But she fundamentally attributes the pow wow’s success to the strong traditional and Christian practices of those on the five-member board of directors.
By Thomas Dahlheimer
The Minnesota Sesquicentennial Commission has a web site with a
homepage link to a blog site that is guided by Sesquicentennial Advisory Committee for Native American Partnering (SACNAP).
Statements displayed on the MN Sesquicentennial Commission’s site:
“The Minnesota Sesquicentennial Commission is
committed to raising awareness and educating
Minnesotans about our past, recognizing the indigenous people of Minnesota, and learning from complex and diverse cultures that have come and continue to come to Minnesota.”
ANADARKO OK
By S.E. Ruckman, Native Times Correspondent 5/22/2008
The Tonkawa Hills officially belong to the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma.
A ribbon-cutting and grand opening ceremony drew over 300 onlookers to the top of Indian City Hill in Caddo County [MAP] Saturday as tribal officials from both the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux and the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma dedicated the 197-acre tourist attraction.
A $1 million philanthropic grant from the Minnesota Sioux community facilitated the purchase of the privately owned site by
Stealing The Sacred Black Hills
written by cwolfr
Here we are in 2008 and once again through fakery and manipulation they are trying to steal the Sacred Black Hills from my Lakota brethren. Just as centuries ago when they fooled leaders and elders with worthless treaties again here comes the whiteman and the government to try again to take the sacred Indian land for a handful of beeds. Please read the article that was forwarded to me .My heart is sick over this.
Mission, SD (Rosebud Reservation) ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! NOTICE ! ! ! ! ! ! !
Jana Hollingsworth Duluth News Tribune
Published Sunday, May 25, 2008
Though poverty is still an issue on American Indian reservations, tribes today are in a better position to address the problem than ever before.
Casino revenue, though not as plentiful as many believe, has given tribes the ability to pour resources into communities, said Duane Champagne, a sociology and American Indian studies professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“Gaming communities have gyms, health benefits and access to education,” he said. “Those are things people have been deprived of for a long time.”
NIGC Reports Successful Government-to-Government Consultations—However One Defines “Success”
During last week’s Great Plains/Midwest Indian Gaming Conference and Trade Show at the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community’s Mystic Lake Casino Hotel near Minneapolis-St. Paul, the National Indian Gaming Commission conducted government-to-government consultations with tribal leaders from the region. According to NIGC Chair Phil Hogen, the consultations allowed “ample time” for tribal delegations to discuss “anything on their minds.”
Her face black with soot, Victoria Ranua strides across a Minnesota hillside, painting it with fire. What begins as a low thin strip of yellow, ignited by her torch, leaps behind her at once into a huge hedge of dancing flames, racing across dry prairie grasses.
The process, Ms. Ranua said, helps the native plants survive against invasive species brought by Europeans. Ms. Ranua works for the casino-enriched Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. In an area southwest of Minneapolis, the group is recovering land its ancestors once lost to European settlers and returning it to age-old looks and uses.
In the west metro area, offerings range from the sugary delights of the Hopkins Raspberry Festival to the wild west celebration of the Hamel Rodeo and Bull Riding Bonanza.
Some other highlights from around the metro area include:
A Minnesota Indian tribe buys up land to restore prairie
PRIOR LAKE, Minn. (AP) An American Indian tribe has purchased 125 acres of land in the Twin Cities suburbs and returned it to the way it used to look.
By the end of the year, the Shakopee Mdewakanton (SHOCK-ah-pee mid-ah-WAHK-tun) Sioux tribe hopes to begin restoring 450 more acres near the Twin Cities. Most of it is land that has been farmed since at least the 1880s.
Tribal vice chairman Glynn Crooks says the tribe holds the land in high regard and thinks it’s important to return some of it to the way it was years ago. The tribe, which has grown prosperous on the strength of Mystic Lake casino in Prior Lake, won’t disclose how much it is paying for the land.
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A 30-acre field where corn and soybeans were once grown is now covered with Canada wild rye, big bluestem, Golden Alexander and compass plant — the same grasses and flowers the pioneers saw as they pushed westward across the American prairie in the 1800s.
Video’s of the Dakota’s Wakan/”Rum” River Watershed traditional/ancestral homeland
(1.) The mouth of the Wakan/”Rum” River.
This sacred Dakota river flows out of Wakan/”Mille Lacs” Lake. The Dakota call this river by the sacred name for their lake [Wakan], which translated means Spirit or Great Spirit. The Dakota had a village located at this sacred site. Around the year 1750 French “settlers”/invaders tricked a newly arrived band of Ojibwe to violently forced the Dakota from this sacred site of theirs. However, the Dakota are beginning to return to reclaim this sacred site. The Dakota name for the sacred land surrounding the mouth of this river is Mdo-te-mini-wakan, pronounced Bdoh-Tay-Mni-Wah kahn, and translated as Mouth (of river) + Water + Spirit.
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After lighting a backfire during a prescribed burn on a prairie on Shakopee land Victoria Ranua, an environmental assessment specialist for the Shakopee, keeps an eye on the flames.
The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community is purchasing land in Scott County at a pace that’s worrying Shakopee city leaders.
Face black with soot, Victoria Ranua strides across a Scott County hillside, painting it with fire. What begins as a low thin strip of yellow, ignited by her torch, leaps behind her at once into a huge hedge of dancing flames, racing across dry prairie grasses.
The process, Ranua said, helps the native plants survive against invasive species.
“You know, Europeans didn’t just come here as people,” she said. “They brought their own plants and animals, and changed a lot of what was here.”
Overstaying One’s Welcome
Two Indians at Plymouth Rock watch a huge ship full of white people pulling into the harbor. The one looks at the other and asked “Do you think they’re going to stay overnight?”
What’s In A Name?:
A Native American has six beautiful children, and is very proud of his achievement. He is so proud of himself that he starts calling his wife “Mother of Six” which she hated, but, in spite of her objections he continued.
One night they went to a party. The man decides that it’s time to go home, and wants to find out if his wife is ready to leave as well. So he shouts at the top of his voice, “Shall we go home mother of six?” His wife irritated by 
her husbands lack of discretion, shouts back “Anytime you’re ready, father of four!”
The Great River
There were three Indians traveling through the woods when they came upon a great river.
Needing to get to the other side, they each in turn said a prayer;
The first Indian said “oh Great Father give me the strength to cross the great river”!
And he was given strong arms and legs so he could swim the distance with ease, which he did in a matter of hours.
The second Native prayed: “Oh great spirits, please give tools so that I can cross this river”!
To which he was given sharp rocks, stout sticks and lashing vines which he used to make a small canoe and paddled across the river, taking many hours.
The third and final Indian exclaimed “oh wise and powerful grandfather, please make me wise”!
To which the Grandfather turned the native into a woman, who crossed the river by using the bridge that was about 100 feet upriver and took her a couple minutes.
The Hitchhiker:
A native maiden was walking in the plains when she injured her foot. Luckily she was picked up by a lady in a buckboard wagon who offered to ride her all the way back to her people’s camp.
While they were riding along, the white woman noticed the Native woman kept glancing down at a bottle of whisky laying on the floor of the buckboard. Not wanting to have ill thoughts of her, the white woman explained “I got that for my husband!”. After they rode along in silence for a few more minutes, the native girl replied: “mmm, you made a good trade”
A Sioux Indian was traveling through San Francisco one day when he ended up in a strange little curio store deep in the heart of China Town.
While looking around in amazement at all the wonderful things the old Chinese man had to offer, his gaze fell on a small, bronze, rat.
“How much do you want for the rat” the Minnesotan asked the elderly shopkeeper.
“Only a humble $3 for that special rat, and $500 for the story that goes with it” said the shopkeeper.
“I’ll take it, said the bemused Native American, but just the rat, I don’t care about the story that goes with it.” he said.
After leaving with the rat in his pocket, the Surprised young Sioux discovered a couple of rats following him down the street.
He quickened his pace a bit but as he walked further, more and more rats started chasing him. By the time he got to the bay, there were thousands of rats chasing him. So he climbed up a pole, reached into his pocket, grabbed the bronze rat and threw it far out into the water where it hit with a splash and disappeared forever.
To his amazement, all the rats jumped into the water after it and quickly disappeared.
The Sioux man quickly returned to the mysterious little store and burst through the doors, slightly out of breath.
“Ahh” said the china man with an eerie chuckle; “so now you would like to hear the story of the bronze rat, eh?”
“No” said the Sioux quickly, “I just came back to see if you had any bronze white men!”
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