Brenda Child wins American Indian National Book Award
“My Grandfather’s Knocking Sticks:
Ojibwe Family Life and Labor on the Reservation” by Dr. Brenda J.
Child won the the seventh annual Labriola Center American Indian
National Book Award.
Child uses her family’s own powerful
stories to tell a different kind of history – one that puts her
reader’s feet on the reservation. She shows how Ojibwe men and
women on reservations around the Great Lakes sustained both their
families and their cultural identity in the face of extreme prejudice
and hardship.
Winners of the Labriola Center American
Indian National Book Award cross multiple disciplines or fields of
study, are relevant to contemporary North American Indian communities
and focus on American Indian Studies, modern tribal studies, modern
biographies, tribal governments or federal Indian policy.
Dedicated in 1993, the Labriola
National American Indian Data Center in the Arizona State University
(ASU) Libraries is one of the only repositories within a public
university library devoted to American Indian collections. The
Labriola Center holds both primary and secondary sources on American
Indians across North America. The Center’s primary purpose is to
promote a better understanding of American Indian language, culture,
social, political and economic issues. The Labriola National American
Indian Data Center has been endowed by Frank and Mary Labriola whose
wish has been that “the Labriola Center be a source of education
and pride for all Native Americans.”
“My Grandfather’s Knocking Sticks”
was also a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award.
Child is an associate professor of
American Studies and American Indian Studies at the University of
Minnesota and serves on the Board of Directors of The Circle News.
David Bice honored with 2015 Progress Minnesota Award
Finance & Commerce honored David
Bice, owner of Bald Eagle Erectors with the organization’s
Individual 2015 Progress Minnesota Award on April 9 at the Hyatt in
downtown Minneapolis.
Bice is a citizen of the White Earth
band of Ojibwe. He is a leader in the Native American community,
serving on the Boards of Directors for the Tiwahe Foundation as well
as The Circle News.
Bice joined the Marine Corps in 1977
and graduated from Honolulu High, serving three years in the Marines
and was honorably discharged as a corporal in 1980. He says that the
key turning point in career was the Marines, which he says gave him
direction and taught him to never give up.
During the past two decades, Dave Bice
has grown his Forest Lake-based Bald Eagle Erectors to $11.4 million
in annual revenue and 60 employees. The company has completed
ironwork on many noteworthy projects, including the Minneapolis
Central Library, the Guthrie Theater and Target Field Station.
Bice also landed a contract at the $1
billion Minnesota Vikings stadium project with the help of a $200,000
working capital loan designed for small minority-owned businesses.
Bice believes his company is the only Native American-owned steel
erector in Minnesota. He has 14 ironworkers at the Vikings stadium
project and is using the Minneapolis Foundation loan to help with
cash flow.
Bice, 57, attended Minneapolis South
High School before dropping out and joining the Marine Corps. He
comes from a family of ironworkers, so it seemed a natural fit to
launch his own company in 1994. His grandfather and his grandfather’s
three brothers were union ironworkers and he has extended family
members working in the industry.
It’s a priority for Bice to hire
Native Americans, other people of color and women. About one-third of
his employees are people of color. “We give a lot of people an
opportunity to become an ironworker,” he said.
Bice’s road to success hasn’t
always been easy. The recession took a toll on his company, but even
worse was a client failing to pay $363,000 and an employee embezzling
$100,000. Still, Bice has learned valuable lessons — especially
from the Marines — that helped him persevere. “The Marines teach
you, never give up,” he says. “In my career, there were a lot of
times when things were really bad and I just kept moving forward.
When I got ripped off for $363,000, people were just telling me to
give up, file bankruptcy and start over. I couldn’t do that.”
Sing Our Rivers
Red raises awareness of missing and murdered Indigenous women
By Clara Tsac, TC Daily Planet
The smell of roasting espresso and
justified indignation greeted visitors of the Pow Wow Coffee shop,
and adjoining All My Relations art gallery on Friday, April 10th. In
collaboration with the Sing Our Rivers Red (SORR) foundation, All My
Relations Arts and the Native American Community Development
Institute are asking people to donate earrings a part of the SORR
Traveling Earring Exhibition. SORR is a foundation dedicated to
raising awareness for missing Native American women in Canada and the
U.S. Event organizer Susan Horne detailed an example in the death of
“August Osage County” actress Misty Upham.
“She went missing, and the police
questioned her personal state of mind more than they spent time
actually looking for her. When the coroner finally released the
report, it was ruled a homicide due to blunt force to the back of the
head.
“Since then, they haven’t covered
that it was a homicide, that she was ultimately killed. And it’s
stuff like that… this is a Native American woman, 32 years old,
goes missing, nothing is accounted for. This isn’t just Native
American women, this is happening everywhere.” said Horne.
Over 3,406 earrings were donated from
over 400 people, organizations and entities from 6 provinces in
Canada and 45 states in the United States. Each earring symbolizes
recognition of the cause and a unique mourning.
“The one-sided earring effort is
because as Native women, we love our earrings, it’s our adornment,
and when you give something of yourself for something, it’s a
representation of feeling that loss,” said Horne.
All My Relations Gallery is hosting The
Traveling Earring Exhibition on April 17th, 2015 from 6-8pm. The
exhibition will be on the wall for 4 weeks, and there will be a
ribbon-tying ceremony and an informational documentary.
For more information about the exhibit:
www.allmyrelationsarts.com.
Tiwahe Foundation completes McKnight Match
The Tiwahe Foundation is announced the
successful completion of the McKnight Foundation Endowment Challenge
match.
In 2014, Tiwahe received a $400,000
investment in American Indian philanthropy from The McKnight
Foundation. $300,000 was leveraged as a two-to-one endowment matching
grant for the foundation’s $6 million Seventh Generation Endowment
Campaign.
The Tiwahe Foundation thanks the The
McKnight Foundation for its support. Tiwahe Foundation reports that
it is now closer to creating a community foundation that will
continue to support Native Americans and create long-term equity in
Native philanthropy.
The Seventh Generation Endowment
Campaign will secure the grant-making of our American Indian Family
Empowerment Program (AIFEP) Fund, ensure operating support,
leadership development programming and organizational development and
capacity building.
Fond du Lac helps restore Lake Sturgeon population
Cloquet, MN – Namawag or Lake
Sturgeon are considered to be one of the most unique fish on the
Great Lakes.
"They are very prehistoric,"
said Jay Walker, operations director at the Great Lake’s Aquarium.
"They have been around since the time of the dinosaurs."
However, the "King Fish" as
it’s referred to in Longfellow’s epic poem, became almost nonexistent
in the 1970s, for there was virtually no sign they existed besides
some large fish tales told by elders.
To help turn the trend around, the Fond
du Lac band set a plan into motion in 1998 called the River Sturgeon
Restoration Project. "Lake sturgeon are considered threatened,
not endangered," Thomas Howes, Natural Resources Program Manager
for the Fond du Lac band said. "If you have the habitat
available, you should do that work to restore them."
Part of the band’s efforts has
included tracking sturgeon’s spawning patters. Female sturgeon don’t
reproduce until they are 25 years old and only spawn every 3 to 5
years. "Reproductive uniqueness is one of the reasons if you
take one of the large adults out of the population, why they
decline," Howes said.
Another thing that’s interfering with
the sturgeon’s spawning patterns are hydro-power dams along the
rivers. "These fish largely spend their time in the Great Lakes
and then migrate up rivers to reproduce, and if they are blocked
that’s the end of that cycle," Howes said.
Members of the Fond du Lac band have
re-started the cycle of life by stocking the streams with 237,000
eggs, and another 400 advanced stage fingerlings. It took 16 years,
but researchers are finally seeing signs of success.
"There is a successful
reintroduction in the lower part of the St. Louis River, in the
estuary, and we want to connect the dots and bring them into the
upper part of the River along the Fond du Lac reservation,"
Howes said.
White Earth Nation promotes tribal citizens in casino positions
WHITE EARTH, MN – The White Earth
Nation of Minnesota has promoted two casino executives.
John “Bomber” Clark, a tribal
member, is the new human resources director at Shooting Star Casino.
He’s worked for the facility since 2008.
Gary Litzau, also a tribal member, was
promoted to marketing director. He has worked at the casino since
1999.
