http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=38587

Blogger should learn lesson about Indian life

Dorreen Yellow Bird
Published Tuesday, May 22, 2007

In my travels around the country, the one place I always return to is White
Shield, N.D., my homeland. It is a placed reserved for the Sahnish
(Arikara) people after millions of acres around us were usurped by the
federal government. We have a special connection to this land not only
because of historic ownership, but also because it's the final resting
place of our ancestors.

I say this about reservations and homelands in response to the controversy
about blogger Rob Port of Minot and his essay, “The Appalling State of
North Dakota Indian Reservations” (“Blogger banned,” Page 1A, May 16).

Stop blogging, Rob Port, until you have some facts.

The 15 hours Port spent on the Turtle Mountain reservation gave him a
lopsided view of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa. Port gathered a whole group
of people into one bundle, tied a dirty, lazy knot around them and tossed
them into the national spotlight.

First (and as I'm sure Port will appreciate), the Turtle Mountain band does
have problems, and many of its members agree. But here is what Port failed
to see on the reservation.

In about the 1960s, American Indian people and especially those from Turtle
Mountain began coming to universities. The door was opened, and they were
encouraged to walk through.

They were pioneers. Some of them include Dr. Lionel Demontigny, the tribe's
first medical doctor and Dr. David Delorme, its first Ph.D. Today, the list
of medical doctors includes Laurie Gourneau, Lisa Erdrich, Rodney and
Richard Larson, Janice Wallette, Paula Bercier, Vernon Azure, Penny Wilkie
and Adrienne Lavendure. Others in the medical field include Darrell
Crissler, optometrist, and Danny Gooden, Allen Belgarde and Cheryl
Crissler, pharmacists.

Among the tribe's Ph.D. holders are Tammy Jollie-Trottier, Leigh Jeanotte,
Viola LaFontaine, Gerald “Carty” Monette, Loretta Delong, Shelly Peltier,
Ramona Klein, Denise Lajimodierre, Angie Azure-LaRocque, W. Larry Belgarde,
Duane Schindler, Jim Davis, Bill Gourneau, Heid Erdrich, Virginia Allery,
Paul Dauphinais, Donna Brown, Lavonne Fox, Betsy Laverdure, Jeff Hamley,
Joan LaFrance, Dwight Gourneau and Carol Davis.

Tribal members who are lawyers include Jerilyn DeCoteau, Roxanne LaVallie,
Richard Monette, Jeff Davis, Bernice Delorme, Eugene Delorme, Monique
Vondall and Jan Morley. Louise Erdrich and Duane Champaigne are nationally
known writers; there also are six engineers and one architect.

There are more than 400 people working on the reservation who have
bachelors degrees and about 200 with masters degrees, according to a survey
taken by the Turtle Mountain Community College.

Are tribal members able to handle money and business? Turtle Mountain has
one of the few tribally owned major grocery stores as well as LaDot's
convenience store and some hotels and businesses. Then there is James
Laducer, a tribal member whose Laducer & Associates Inc., of Mandan, N.D.,
employs 275 people, making it one of the biggest privately owned American
Indian businesses in the country.

In other words, when the floodgates open for the Chippewa people, they
jumped into the roaring water and swam upstream, bringing many of their
people along with them.

Those a few of the success stories at Turtle Mountain. These names were
assembled to suggest the growth of the Turtle Mountain people in the last
40 years. This growth that is staggering when you think of the historic
roadblocks that tribal members worked around and the current bigotry they
face.

Members return to the reservation, as one professional said, because they
feel safe from racism there and can practice their culture without worrying
what someone might say about them.

So, Indian people should be grateful for being given such opportunities,
Port might suggest. But remember: No one has given Indian people anything.
We paid - with our lives, the lives of tens of millions who were killed by
diseases brought over by Europeans and bilked out of a whole country. The
U.S. government supposedly compensated us, but did so with inferior
housing, health services and so on.

By the way, Port forgot to mention the farm payments mailed from Washington
to local farmers (most of them non-Indian), as well as the educational
grants that are given to college students - non-Indian and Indian college
students alike.

Yet, it wasn't so much the loss of land as it was the loss of our children,
who were taken and put in faraway boarding schools to be turned into white
people. Whites took the tribes' soul, language and culture.

Put the moccasin on the other foot, Rob Port. Wouldn't that make you a
little cranky, too?

Unfortunately, the issue that Port and the pundits now have latched onto is
the banishment, which has about as much teeth as a 99-year-old grandfather.
It's more of a symbolic move now. For hundreds of years, banishment was the
system that worked for Indian people. There were no long court hearings
where the richest person could get the best lawyer and the best deal.
Instead, it was an agreement - a consensus of the people and the wise
elders who ruled.

The tribe is violating his right to free speech and free press, Port
claims. But really, now. For someone with no voice, he is whining pretty
loud. The Herald, the Turtle Mountain Star, the Minot Daily News and the
tribal newspaper, the Turtle Mountain Times, are among the many newspapers
publishing his copy. He has had lots of Internet and talk-radio attention,
too.

With his blog on “Pause” and while consulting some resources about history,
Port should sit down and think about his backhanded bigotry. That way, next
time he could paint a more realistic portrait and not just draw a cartoon.