Category Archives: Contemporary Native Issues

Our Native calendar – Our own passage of time

As the new calendar year starts, I am reminded of all the ways that people keep track of the passing of time and when we look hopefully toward what the future brings. The calendars for indigenous people are as varied as we are, some mark the passing of each day, some are based on the […]

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Celebrating Christ and Being Native

Each year during the time surrounding the Christian days of the birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ, I find myself thinking about how I became a person who still goes to church. My father’s family is deeply immersed in Lakota religion and his grandparents became Episcopalians who had baptisms at their home. My great grandfather […]

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Another Step: Accreditation as an Indigenous Process

On the 16th day of December, a working group of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) took a leap forward in the development of our own independent accrediting agency. In the U.S. higher education institutions generally participate with what is known as regional accreditation, with agencies that are federally recognized and which are comprised […]

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Native languages and TCU technologies

On Thursday, December 15, the anniversary of the tragic and untimely death of Hunkpapa leader, Tatanka Iyotake, Sitting Bull and several of his tribal people in a confrontation with tribal police, the citizens of many Plains tribes gathered in the sacred He Sapa, Black Hills. The night we arrived from the Northwest the cold north […]

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Collecting Indian stories about DC

Our elected tribal leaders and many of our community and traditional leaders spent last week in Washington, DC visiting the Great White Father and the Halls of Congress. President Obama is generously in support of us – perhaps tied to his own experiences as a mixed race African/European American, perhaps because he really believes in […]

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Thoughts of Giving Thanks

As the thanksgiving holiday weekend draws to a close and I reflect on the swirl of public commentary among Natives and non-Natives about what a Thanksgiving celebration looks like to Indians and and what is there to give thanks for, I thought I would share some of my memories and what this holiday might mean […]

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Indigenous People and Our Declarations

The last several weeks, I’ve been traveling to Indian conferences and on work-related trips to Port Gamble, Muckleshoot amd Nez Perce. During the National Congress of American Indians convention, I listened to keynote presenters discussing where we are at with the implementation of the U.N. Declaration on Rights of Indigenous People and I wondered how […]

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