The traditional card games drew the biggest crowds a couple of Fridays ago during this year’s Sovereign Day celebration on the Hoopa Valley Tribe’s reservation. The drumming and singing would befuddle a non-stalwart — how can a person make a good decision with all those tricky spirits messing with your head? That’s the idea, at […]
Indian Country
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Native Poet Laureate
From the Paradise Post — over yonder by Chico — we learn that the woman who is “the poet of the Hupa Tribe” is also now the poet laureate for all of the California Native American tribes. She’s 85-year-old Arline Beryl Lawrence, and the Post says she was honored at the recent Ishi Celebration in […]
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Your Miss Indian World!
Ladies and gentleman — Brooke Grant of Hoopa, your 2009-2010 Miss Indian World ! Grant, a Hupa/Yurok/Karuk/Chippewa, was crowned at the massive Gathering of Nations Powow that took place last month in New Mexico. Lots of info at the link above, plus a cool Miss Indian World slideshow right here . Congratulations, Brooke! UPDATE: Thanks […]
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Some Old-Time Hate Speech
(Bakersfield). OK, so members of the New 49’ers, a recreational mining club based in Happy Camp, want to suction dredge for shiny gold nibblets in the Klamath River. And the Karuk Tribe — which has made its home along the river for thousands of years — wants there to be more checks on the miners’ […]
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Avast, Ye Miners!
Aye, ye gravel grovelers, ye watery wastrels, ye ramblin’ rogues of the deep! I’ll sink yer dredges and steal yer gold, ye dirty river rats! Ye say yer dredges don’t hurt the fishes? Excuse me, but I think yer arguments are bullshit! Aaarghhh! And thus spake Sen. Pat Wiggins, although it’s true that we may […]
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Bomb Humboldt?
Oh, that British humour. A columnist with the 72-year-old U.K. Labour magazine Tribune — incidentally in the shaky midst of being sold — ponders the implications of President-elect Barack Obama’s Christmas message and predicts possible widespread retributions. Chris Proctor writes: Our great English king and crusader, the Lionhearted Richard, felt the need to explain to […]
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Dredge Fight
You can almost smell the whiff of burnt palm as gold bugs everywhere rub their hands together with ever-more-gleeful vigor. That’s because some predictions have it that gold will soar to yet higher heights this year, maybe $1,500 an ounce. Did it last year, in March, hitting an historic $1,023 an ounce. (Then it crashed, […]
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Condor big time
Used to be, California condors sailed the western skies from Baja to Canada. Now just 148 hunker down in captivity and another 136 exist tenuously in the wild — 63 of them in California, mostly in Southern California although some live up around Hollister at Pinnacles National Monument. But someday we may see the […]
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Sovereign Immunity: More Blue Lake Rancheria Blues
Yes, the Blue Lake Rancheria is using its sovereign immunity to defend itself again, this time from an angry California resident who sued the construction company that had done shoddy work when building her home, only to realize that the homebuilder had been sold to the tribe. And once again the Rancheria doesn’t seem to […]
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Will America Ever Say Sorry?
Why is it that the world’s greatest democracy has yet to elect a female president? Why was it three decades behind Britain in abolishing slavery? And when, if ever, will it offer a formal apology to its Native American population? Australia’s recently elected prime minister Kevin Rudd — who also happens to speak Chinese (when […]
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Klamaty? NEC Gives Restoration Agreement the Thumbs Down
The Northcoast Environmental Center has rejected the Klamath River Restoration Agreement because it doesn’t provide adequate water flows for fish, according to Executive Director Greg King. It’s the same thing the Hoopa Tribe said when the agreement was unveiled last month. In a press release sent out Sunday, the NEC wrote: “The decision not to […]