Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Health Literacy Teen Challenge Video Contest (opportunity)

The ¡VIVA! Peer Tutors of the South Texas Independent School District are conducting a nationwide health literacy challenge. Students enrolled in U.S. schools in grades 6-12 can submit a video promoting the web site MedlinePlus.gov. Video submission will open February 1, 2012 and will close March 23, 2012. Winners will be announced on the ¡VIVA! web site and Facebook page on April 16, 2012, and winning videos will be posted on the ¡VIVA! web site. For complete details about the video contest please visit the ¡VIVA! web site at:

http://bla.stisd.net/viva.html

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NCAI Education Newsletter(edu/information)

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NCAI Education Newsletter
January 23, 2012
Edition 4

Table of Contents

First in Series of Four Tribal Leader Education Roundtables Held Last Friday in Rapid City, SD

Over 150 tribal leaders, educators, and community members met in Rapid City, South Dakota, last Friday, January 20, to attend the first in a series of four tribal leader education roundtables hosted by the Departments of the Interior and Education. While comments covered a number of issues, the most frequently topics addressed fell into three broad areas: 

1.       Increasing support for language programs;
2.       Inadequate funding of all Bureau of Indian Education programs; and
3.       More direct involvement of tribes in the decision making process.

Please find more detailed notes on what was discussed at the roundtable attached to this email.

Also please find attached testimony submitted by the Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association.

Click here to read the Rapid City Journal’s news coverage of the event.

Next Three Tribal Leader Education Roundtables to be Held in Norman, OK; Albuquerque, NM; and Seattle, WA

Call for Notes and Comments

If you will be attending any of the upcoming Tribal Leader Roundtables, NCAI would greatly appreciate if you would share your notes and comments with us so we can distribute the information to tribal leaders and other stakeholders. Please email your notes to Katie Jones at kjones@ncai.org.

Other Information

At the Rapid City Tribal Leader Roundtable, there were many questions and comments about the Bureau of Indian Education’s administrative expenses. If you would like to raise this issue on behalf of your tribe and would like more information, please click here for the Department of the Interior's Budget Justifications and Performance Information for FY 2011.

Dates and Locations of the Upcoming Roundtables

  • January 23, 2012: Norman, OK - Embassy Suites
  • January 25, 2012: Albuquerque, NM - Sheraton Uptown
  • February 16, 2012: Seattle, WA – TBD

These one day events are open to the public and scheduled opportunities for in-person and teleconference public testimony will be made available. Participants will also be able to submit their testimony via mail or email. The roundtables will also be webcasted.

There is no registration fee for the event. To receive teleconference and webcast information, you may register immediately online at  MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "r20.rs6.net" claiming to be http://triballeader-roundtables.indianeducation.org/. You will also find on the website the Executive Order 13592, lodging and travel information, and additional reports.

Click here to download the "Save the Date" announcement.

For additional information, contact Ahniwake Rose, Human Resources Policy Director, at arose@ncai.org or 202-466-7767.

Bureau of Indian Education Begins Search for Green Ribbon Schools

Bureau of Indian Education (BIE)-funded schools can now apply for the U.S. Department of Education’s Green Ribbon School program (ED-GRS), which provides national recognition for schools using outstanding environmental programs and techniques.

Interested schools can access the online application on the BIE Green Ribbon School website at: http://www.bie.edu/greenribbonschools/index.htm. Applications are due by February 24, 2012. The BIE will review and select up to four nominees to the ED-GRS. Awardees will be announced in April 2012 and are expected to receive their awards in May 2012.

The BIE joined the recently launched national Green Ribbon School program and launched a nationwide search across Indian Country to find outstanding environmental schools that meet its standards. Many BIE schools are actively saving energy, reducing costs, promoting environmental literacy and providing healthy environments for students, faculty and staff. Those schools will now have the opportunity to be recognized nationally.

States and other education agencies have also been invited to participate in the Green Ribbon Schools program, which is patterned after the long running Blue Ribbon School Program. The new federal program encourages schools to:

·         Implement energy conservation measures that pave the way for reduced environmental impact, cost savings, and job creation;
·         Undertake environmental and behavioral changes in schools that ensure the health, wellness, and productivity of students, teachers, and staff, and;
·         Promote environmental education that supports students’ strong civic skills, environmental stewardship, and workforce preparedness.

As part of this effort to promote a comprehensive approach to creating a healthier school environment in all BIE-funded schools, the Bureau committed to the Let’s Move! in Indian Country (LMIC) initiative in 2010 and encouraged all BIE-funded schools to sign up to become Team Nutrition Schools. The LMIC website (http://www.letsmove.gov/indiancountry) includes information about resources, grants and programs available to assist schools in becoming healthier places of learning.

Click here to download:
GPTCA Education Paper.doc (81 KB)
(download)

Click here to download:
Notes from Education Roundtable Held in Rapid City.docx (15 KB)
(download)

Tribal Leader education Roundtable (event/education)

On Dec. 2, 2011, during the Third Annual White House Tribal Nation's Conference, President Obama signed Executive Order 13592 establishing the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education (Initiative). The mission of the Initiative is to help expand educational opportunities and improve educational outcomes for all American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) students, including opportunities to learn their Native languages, cultures, and histories and receive complete and competitive educations that prepare them for college, careers, and productive and satisfying lives.

A series of Tribal leader Education Roundtables has been set:

1/20/12 Rapid City (Past)

1/23/12 Norman, OK (Past)

1/25/12 Albuquerque

2/16/12 Seattle/Tacoma

To register please go to: http://triballeader-roundtables.indianeducation.org/

Washington DC Internship (opportunity)

FYI

Subject: Washington DC internship

1.    Native American Congressional Internship<http://udall.gov/OurPrograms/NACInternship/NACInternship.aspx>

Application Deadline:  January 31st

This ten-week summer internship in Washington, DC is for Native American and Alaska Native students who wish to learn more about the federal government and issues affecting Indian Country. The internship is fully funded: the Foundation provides round-trip airfare, housing, per diem for food and incidentals, and a stipend at the close of the program. For application information, click here<http://www.udall.gov/OurPrograms/NACInternship/ApplicationMaterials.aspx>.

Time for a Beer Summit Between Coburn And Mikkanen - Andrew Cohen - Politics - The Atlantic

Media_httpcdntheatlan_eejea
via theatlantic.com

I have consistently railed against Republican senators who hold up President Barack Obama's judicial nominees for no good reason. For example, I haven't shut up about the lingering candidacy of a worthy man named Arvo Mikkanen, whose nomination in Tulsa has been held up, without explanation, by Tom Coburn, one of Oklahoma's Republican senators.

Full story at: http://bit.ly/ArvoMikkanen

USDA Funding in California (community)

For the first time in California the United States Department of Agriculture will provide funds to meet the differing conservation needs of American Indian tribes. The department’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NCRS) is making $1 million available to tribal farmers and ranchers for tradition-based tribal conservation practices.

“NCRS has a regular environmental quality incentives program to do conservation,” Reina Rogers, the service’s American Indian Liaison for California, said.

“This year what we’re trying to do is set up tribal specifics. We’ve been working with tribes on and off for years and what we’ve found is that a lot of our practices don’t really fit on tribal lands. The conventional agricultural programs for farmers and ranchers just didn’t fit. It was like trying to pound that square peg into the round hole. In talking with tribes that had trouble getting into the program because it just wasn’t fitting well, is how we built this tribal initiative.

“The priorities are now a lot more similar with the traditional practices that the tribes want to do,” Rogers added.

Asked for a specific example of how the new program might work Rogers cited the Hoopa Tribe in California’s Humboldt County.
“The Hoopa tribe’s agriculture is on a smaller scale, more sustainable than the conventional agriculture going on in Humboldt County. Under the conventional environmental quality incentives programs their practices would be similar to other farmers. But what they’re interested in is smaller, more sustainable farming. Say they want to do more acorn management, for food. Say they have native plants they want to rehabilitate for basketry fiber.”

This new program would address those tribal interests, she added. This is the first time in California that a federal government allocation has been made for tribal-specific conservation practices. “A lot of this will be forestry management practices addressed to eliminating excess fuels and managing the woodlands.”

“Tribes often have different conservation priorities than other state producers and frequently have culturally based priorities, such as the management of Traditional Native American Food Plants that are not priorities for mainstream producers,” Juan Armand, President of the Klamath Trinity Resource Conservation District, said in a news release announcing the program. “This targeted funding will provide enhanced opportunities for California Tribes to remain major players in conservation issues in the state, ranging from water usage to fire management.”
Applications from tribes wanting to participate in the new program will be accepted through February 3, 2012.

Budget Cuts Proposed for Indian Education

House Releases Draft Legislation to Reform the ESEA

U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce Chairman John Kline (R-MN) today released two pieces of draft legislation to reform current elementary and secondary education law, known as No Child Left Behind. The two bills, the Student Success Act and the Encouraging Innovation and Effective Act, would dramatically reduce the federal role in education.

To read a summary of the Student Success Act, click here. To read the draft legislation, click here.

To read a summary of the Encouraging Innovation and Effective Teachers Act, click here. To read the draft legislation, click here.

While NCAI is still in the process of thoroughly reviewing the legislation, one item is of immediate concern. The bills would eliminate both the Alaska Native Education Equity program and the Hawaiian Education Act program. NCAI will be opposing the elimination. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on the bills, and we will share more information about them next week.

In The Land of The Grasshopper Song

It has been reissued with a forward by yours truly and an afterword by my brother Terry Supahan.

In 1908 easterners Mary Ellicott Arnold and Mabel Reed accepted appointments as field matrons in Karuk tribal communities in the Klamath and Salmon River country of northern California. In doing so, they joined a handful of white women in a rugged region that retained the frontier mentality of the gold rush some fifty years earlier. Hired to promote the federal government’s assimilation of American Indians, Arnold and Reed instead found themselves adapting to the world they entered, a complex and contentious territory of Anglo miners and Karuk families.

In the Land of the Grasshopper Song, Arnold and Reed’s account of their experiences, shows their irreverence towards Victorian ideals of womanhood, recounts their respect toward and friendship with Karuks, and offers a rare portrait of women’s western experiences in this era. Writing with self-deprecating humor, the women recall their misadventures as women “in a white man’s country” and as whites in Indian country. A story about crossing cultural divides, In the Land of the Grasshopper Song also documents Karuk resilience despite seemingly insurmountable odds.

New material by Susan Bernardin, André Cramblit, and Terry Supahan provides rich biographical, cultural, and historical contexts for understanding the continuing importance of this story for Karuk people and other readers.

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