Huffman re-introduces Lytton Rancheria tribal land legislation
By Heather Bailey, Times Editor, heather@sonomawest.com
Mar 7, 2019 Updated Mar 7, 2019

Changes to previous bill would eliminate all gaming by the tribe in Sonoma County
Congressman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) has reintroduced the Lytton Rancheria Homelands Act, a bill to take lands owned by the Lytton Rancheria in Sonoma County into trust for housing and other purposes as part of the tribe’s reservation.
The act also permanently prohibits the tribe from using those lands or other land in Sonoma County for casino gaming, a change from a previous version which kept gaming out of the county for 22 years and kept it out of everywhere north of Highway 12 in perpetuity.
The bill also upholds the memorandum of agreement between the tribe and county. 
“The bill I introduced today reflects and strengthens the extensive stakeholder meetings and negotiations between the Lytton Tribe, Sonoma County and local agencies,” Huffman said in a statement. “This legislation would allow the Lytton Tribe to return to their homeland while upholding locally negotiated agreements, including the Memorandum of Agreement that reflects strong opposition to new casinos in Sonoma County.”
In 1958, the Lytton Rancheria, a federally-recognized Pomo Indian tribe, lost its homeland when its legal relationship with the federal government was terminated. That termination was later found to be unlawful, and in 1991 the tribe was restored to federally-recognized status. However, the stipulated judgment in the case did not include restoring the tribe’s reservation on its ancestral homeland. 
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Native American voting assistance passes Legislature
Sun., March 10, 2019, 5 a.m.
By Ryan BlakeThe Spokesman-Review

OLYMPIA – Some unique challenges tribal members face in voting could be removed under a bill that received final approval in the Legislature on Friday.
If signed by Gov. Jay Inslee, the Native American Voting Rights Act would allow tribal members to request voter registration services be provided at state and tribal facilities on reservations. Voters could register using those buildings’ address as well, or register using nontraditional addresses. They could register online with valid tribal identification cards, and tribes could request additional ballot drop boxes and determine their placement.
This is about equality, said Rep. Debra Lekanoff, D-Bow.
“There is nothing more fundamental than democracy. All of us as Americans are meant to have an equal voice,” Lekanoff, a member of the Swinomish tribe, said during the House debate this week.
Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen, called it a simple and reasonable way to ensure people with nontraditional addresses can participate in the voting process.
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Mary Annette Pember: My mother died while surviving civilization
Friday, March 8, 2019

Independent journalist Mary Annette Pember discusses the traumatic legacy of boarding schools in her debut piece in The Atlantic. Her mother was a survivor:
My mother died while surviving civilization. Although she outlived a traumatic childhood immersed in its teachings, she carried the pain of those lessons for her entire life. Like most Native American peoples, our family’s story is touched by the legacy of boarding schools, institutions created to destroy and vilify Native culture, language, family, and spirituality. My mother, Bernice, was a survivor of Saint Mary’s Catholic Indian Boarding School on the Ojibwe reservation in Odanah, Wisconsin. She called it the “Sister School,” a world ruled by nuns clad in long black robes.
Two hundred years ago, on March 3, 1819, the Civilization Fund Act ushered in an era of assimilationist policies, leading to the Indian boarding-school era, which lasted from 1860 to 1978. The act directly spurred the creation of the schools by putting forward the notion that Native culture and language were to blame for what was deemed the country’s “Indian problem.”
Native families were coerced by the federal government and Catholic Church officials into sending their children to live and attend classes at boarding schools. (About one-third of the 357 known Indian boarding schools were managed by various Christian denominations.) According to the Act’s text, Christian missionaries and other “persons of good moral character” were charged with introducing Native children to “the habits and arts of civilization” while encouraging them to abandon their traditional languages, cultures, and practices.
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Seasonal complaint: 'Missionaries are on our reservation!'
Proselytizing and charity without permission in the Oglala Lakota Nation
By Mary Annette Pember
Indian Country Today
Monday, March 11, 2019

Davidica Little Spotted Horse has handed out flyers on the Pine Ridge reservation since 2014. It's a seasonal thing. The weather is warmer and there's another influx of Christian missionaries and charity groups.
The flyer warns tribal citizens about their rights to access information about charities and missionaries’ names, their intentions as well the how to report mistreatment or problems experienced during their evangelizing.
As Little Spotted Horse notes in her flyer, every year there is a another wave of missionaries, voluntourists and charity workers that descend on the Oglala Lakota Nation, also known as the Oglala Sioux Tribe.
Spotted Horse and others who asked for anonymity for fear of reprisals from church supporters described incidents of aggressive proselytizing and demeaning treatment of Lakota spirituality and language, baptizing children without parental permission, use of humiliating poverty porn to fundraise, and of forwarding a colonial agenda that privileges non-Native values and goals. Some members have made allegations of sexual abuse and financial misdeeds and point to the failure of most organizations to conduct background searches for their workers and volunteers.
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