Author: Kate E. Fort

Sports Mascots–Lenawee County Schools

Kate Fort

This is an older article from the Tecumseh Herald (I attended Tecumseh Elementary and Junior High–Tecumseh’s sports teams were called the Indians, and still are.):

Petition drive looks to Eliminate Redskins
By Tecumseh Herald
Created 10/08/2008 – 5:11pm

By MICKEY ALVARADO

A petition to change Clinton High School’s Redskins mascot has been issued to the school superintendent, Dave Pray, by Elspeth and Kylista Geiger. In a letter to the editor in the Clinton Local last week, the two Clinton residents claimed that,“The use of the mascot produces derogatory images of people that arede-humanizing to entire nations of people within this country. The redskins as a mascot is a kin to celebrating the marginalization of American Indians and promoting the belief that they are not real people but characters for our amusement.”

Both the Michigan Civil Rights Commission (2002) and the Michigan State Board of Education (2003) passed resolutions to eliminate the use of a person’s race or culture as a school’s mascot, logo and nickname. Michigan’s State Board of Education unanimously passed a resolution “strongly recommending the elimination of American Indian nicknames, mascots or logos, fight songs, insignias, antics and team descriptors by Michigan public schools.”

Continue reading →

Spring Speakers Series Finalized

Kate Fort

The final dates and speakers for our Spring Speakers Series has been finalized.  The Indigenous Law and Policy Center at MSU College of Law will be hosting four events this spring, and all of the details can be found at our Spring Speakers Series, 2009 page.

Saginaw Chippewa Tribe’s Stop the Violence Campaign

Kate Fort1 Comment

From The Morning Sun:

Purple Painted for a Cause
Friday, October 24, 2008 5:44 AM EDT
BY PATRICIA ECKER
Sun Staff Writer

In the same spirit that the color pink is used as to signify breast cancer awareness, the color purple has been the catalyst for education, discussion and unity on the Isabella Reservation.

“Paint the Rez purple” was simply an idea thrown out to the community by the members of the Domestic Violence Awareness program of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe’s Domestic as a way to show support for October’s Domestic Violence Awareness month.

Continue reading →

Pigeon Family in Documentary about Basket Weaving

Kate Fort

From the Grand Rapids press via mLive, by Rick Wilson:

Students help weave film featuring Potawatomi family, basket-making

by Rick Wilson | The Grand Rapids Press

Monday September 29, 2008, 8:26 AM
Press photo / Dave Raczkowski
Connor Zautke, 11, weaves a black ash basket as Kitt Pigeon, left, offers instruction and a cameraman documents the moment.

ADA TOWNSHIP — Rachel Swem conceded it’s pretty cool to be in a movie. But she also understands she’s part of a larger picture.

The 11-year-old sixth-grader and schoolmates at Forest Hills Goodwillie Environmental School spent much of last week as a backdrop for a documentary video conceived to provide a window into the struggles of West Michigan American Indian families trying to find their place in a society dominated by people of European descent.

Press photo / Dave Raczkowski
Steve Pigeon demonstrates basket-weaving techniques at the Goodwillie Environmental School in Ada Township.

The documentary centers on the Potawatomi family of Steve and Kitt Pigeon and the ancient tradition of basket-weaving that has been kept alive in their family for generations. Continue reading →

Sherman Alexie in the Classroom

Kate Fort

Turtle Talk favorite Sherman Alexie is in the news again, this time as the focus of a textbook for high school English teachers.  From Jodi Rave at the Missoulian.  H/T Indianz.

Native insight: Textbook guides teachers on author’s racial messages

It ain’t easy being Indian. So says one of America’s premier Native writers of contemporary Indian life.

To help explain the racial complexities that permeate Sherman Alexie’s work, a textbook for teachers, “Sherman Alexie in the Classroom,” was recently published to help educators explore Native Americana in modern times, stories often told by Alexie with an acerbic twist.

To wit, says Alexie: “I rooted for John Wayne even though I knew he was going to kill his niece because she had been ‘soiled’ by the Indians. Hell, I rooted for John Wayne because I understood why he wanted to kill his niece. I hated those Indians just as much as John Wayne did.”

So why would an Indian hate Indians?

English literature professors and teachers Heather Bruce, Anna Baldwin and Christabel Umphrey explain this paradox in “Sherman Alexie in the Classroom,” a high school literature series published by the National Council of Teachers of English. The text examines Alexie’s provocative body of work, ranging from poetry and novels to film scripts.

Chronicle of Higher Education: Diversity in Hiring

Kate Fort

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Whatever Happened to All Those Plans to Hire More Minority Professors?
Results often fall short of ambitions, but nobody’s giving up

By BEN GOSE

Back in the early 1990s, when colleges throughout the United States were desperately trying to recruit more minority professors, Duke University came up with a particularly ambitious plan. It announced that it would double the number of its black professors within a decade.

Did Duke succeed?

Anyone seeking to answer that question — at Duke and at other universities that launched aggressive recruiting plans — should be prepared to do some ferocious number crunching, and to understand that the outcome can depend a lot on who’s doing the counting.

And:

Wisconsin’s record with Hispanic and American Indian faculty members has been stronger. The university had 77 Hispanic professors in 2007, up from 53 in 1998, and 13 American Indian professors, up from four in 1998.

The growth of American Indian studies — in a state that is home to several Indian tribes — has helped attract new American Indian professors to the campus, Mr. Farrell says. “Professors who visit say, ‘OK, here’s a place where people from our background can thrive, fit in, and have success.'”

Gov. Carcieri’s Spending on SCOTUS Case Part of Large State Budget Deficit

Kate Fort

Gov. Carcieri spent $200,000 on the Carcieri v. Kempthorn case, which contributed to overspending in the Governor’s office and leaving the state in a deficit.  While a small part of the larger $33 million deficit, it is the first time the state has had “an end of year deficit in modern history attributable to overspending.  From The Providence Journal by Katherine Gregg (h/t Indianz):

Asked more specifically to list the expenses that resulted in the $184,152 deficit in the governor’s office accounts, she cited two. She said the administration planned to sublet to Guam an empty office the state has maintained in Washington for years at a cost of $2,000 a month, but the paperwork took longer than expected to go through. She also cited Carcieri’s hiring of former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson — the lawyer who successfully argued the case that put George W. Bush in the White House — to help the state in its fight to keep control of 31 acres owned by the Narragansett Indian tribe. Continue reading →

2009 Speaker Series

Kate Fort

We’ve added our 2009 Speaker Series page to the blog.  Speakers this year include Justin Richland, Stuart Banner and Robert Dale Parker.  Click here for more information abou the speakers, their books and the tentative dates of the events.

Sherman Alexie in The Stranger

Kate Fort2 Comments

An interview with Sherman Alexie, by Paul Constant in The Stranger:

H/T Indianz.com

It’s difficult to imagine Sherman Alexie as a tiny infant, fragile and vulnerable on the operating table in the shadow of a dire prognosis, although that’s where his life story began. He was born with hydrocephalus—water on the brain—and after a complex and risky brain operation at 6 months old, doctors believed he wouldn’t survive. Four decades later, nothing about him seems weak. He is tall and broad and seems made of denser material than everybody else. And he’s loud. When he laughs, he throws his head back and you can almost see the happy noise emanating outward in concentric circles. Continue reading →

Indigenous Certificate Recipient/MSU Law Grad Passes Bar

Kate Fort

Nova Wilson, MSU Law 2008, just passed the New Mexico Bar.  She is currently employed at NCAI in Washington, DC.

If anyone has other Certificate Alum announcements for the blog, please feel free to post a comment or email us directly.