On Navajo Reservation, a New Tool in the Fight Against Drugs

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. - The optimism generated by the Navajo Nation Tribal Council's vote to criminalize the sale, possession and manufacture of methamphetamine on the reservation here may be tempered by a lack of jail space to handle the expected increase in arrests, the authorities say.

Hope MacDonald-LoneTree, the chairwoman of the council's Public Safety Committee and sponsor of the methamphetamine legislation, said data showed that 40 percent to 90 percent of violent crime on the 25,000-square-mile Navajo Reservation involved the drug.

"We've seen users as young as 9 years old using meth," Ms. MacDonald-LoneTree said.

The authorities said gangs from Phoenix and the West Coast have organized the distribution of drugs on the reservation. Armed with the new law, officials said they expected an increase in arrests, which would further strain an overwhelmed justice system.

Native American College Shuts Down

DAVIS, Calif. — The state's only college run for and by Native Americans has been forced to close after it lost its accreditation and $1 million in federal funding less than a month into this spring's semester.

Officials at D-Q University shut down the community college, laid off more than two dozen faculty members and staff and sent 200 students home. And while a defiant group of students refused to leave, the beleaguered board of trustees split into two rival factions — with one firing the school's president.

"We're in mass chaos," said Cindy La Marr, chairwoman of one of the factions and executive director of Capitol Area Indian Resources Inc. in Sacramento. "I believe the founders of the school have lost their vision of what the school was for. They're dwelling on the past."

Incendiary in Academia May Now Find Himself Burned

BOULDER, Colo., Feb. 10 - Prof. Ward L. Churchill has made a career at the University of Colorado out of pushing people's buttons, colleagues and students say, clearly relishing his stance as radical provocateur and in-your-face critic.

Whether it is getting arrested by the Denver police for trying to disrupt Columbus Day, which Professor Churchill has described as a "celebration of genocide" because of the deaths of Indians that resulted from European colonization, or ruffling feathers in the faculty lounge, hyperbole and bombast have always been ready tools in the Churchill kit bag, people here say.

Now many of the offended are pushing back. The storm of controversy that has blown up around Professor Churchill over his essay about the Sept. 11 attacks, with its reference to the Nazi Adolf Eichmann - the "technocrats" at the World Trade Center were "little Eichmanns," Professor Churchill said - has turned the professor into a talking point and a political punch line. On conservative talk radio, on campuses across the country, and especially here in Boulder, debate about Professor Churchill means debate about freedom of speech, the solemnity of Sept. 11 and the supposed liberal bias of academia.

Blues & Gospel

Native musicians added today to the iTunes store are: Tracy Lee Nelson & the Native Blues Band, Bill Perry, Mary Youngblood, Robert Richmond and Glen Bonham. Have Fun.

Growing Meth Use on Navajo Land Brings Call for Tribal Action

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. - With no law on the books to criminalize the sale, possession or manufacture of methamphetamine on the Navajo reservation here, the largest reservation in the country, officials are fearing an explosion of the drug's use.

"We've seen more than a 100 percent increase in meth on the reservation in the past five years," said Greg Adair, a 26-year officer with the Navajo Nation police.

Under pressure from local and federal law enforcement officials, the Navajo Nation Tribal Council raised the issue of criminalizing methamphetamine during its summer meeting last year but was told that it needed to include other controlled substances.

New poet laureate for Sask. chosen

SASKATOON – An award-winning writer from Saskatoon has been named the province's new poet laureate.

Louise Bernice Halfe, who is also known as Sky Dancer, has written two books of poetry and has been published in anthologies and magazines.
Her first book, Bear Bones and Feathers, won the Milton Acorn Award in 1996.
Halfe was born in Two Hills, Alberta in 1953 and raised on the Saddle Lake First Nation in that province.

Professor Is Assailed by Legislature and Vandals

Colorado lawmakers yesterday denounced an embattled professor whose scheduled appearance at an upstate New York college was canceled amid protests over his writings on the Sept. 11 attacks, in which he compared the victims to Nazis.

The professor, Ward Churchill, meanwhile, rebuffed calls to resign and said yesterday that his truck had been painted with swastikas overnight as it sat in his driveway. The Boulder County Sheriff's Department said it was investigating.

Native Jazz and Swing

Today we added iTunes tracks from 2 classic Jazz & swing songbirds, both Native American, Mildred Bailey, Coeur d'Alene, and Keely Smith, Cherokee. Jazz and swing fans, enjoy!

College Cancels Event Amid Protests on Panelist's 9/11 Essay

The president of Hamilton College, citing "credible threats of violence," said today that she was canceling a campus forum whose panelists included a Colorado professor who had disparaged 9/11 victims as "little Eichmanns."

In a written statement, President Joan Hinde Stewart said that the college had done its best "to protect what we hold most dear, the right to speak, think and study freely," but that ensuring safety at the event scheduled for Thursday was "a higher responsibility."

Newly added to the iTunes Shop

The most recent additions to our iTunes shop are Rita Coolidge, Pura Fé, Lila Downs, Kinnie Starr, Link Wray, Paul Ortega, and Redbone. More good music!