Reading List

What are we reading? We are creating a virtual library of the titles most assigned, read, and enjoyed in our department. This will take a while to complete, but you can go ahead and check us out at Library Thing and start searching our collection by author, title, and subject.

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Language: Keeper of Yakama Language Awarded Degree

From the Yakima Herald-Republic:

“When Virginia Beavert was just a teenager, she was appointed by the Yakama Tribal Council to work with an anthropologist studying the tribe’s culture on the reservation.

Beavert was the only tribal member then who could speak English and several dialects of the 14 different tribes that make up the Yakama Nation.

“I had to talk to the people in their own dialect,” 87-year-old Beavert recalled.

She had no idea that her translating skills would eventually lead her to helping the tribe preserve its language.

Now, after playing a key role in developing a 576-page dictionary of her native language, she has been awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Washington. ” Read more here.

SIAC: September 10, 2009 Hearing

From indianz.com: The Senate Indian Affairs Committee holds a business meeting and hearing this Thursday (September 10, 2009). The business meeting will focus on pending legislative business. An agenda has not yet been posted online.

The meeting will be followed by a hearing on S.1635, the 7th Generation Promise: Indian Youth Suicide Prevention Act of 2009. The bill establishes a telemental health demonstration project to improve mental health services for Indian youth. The meeting and hearing take place at 2:15pm in Room 628 of the Senate Dirksen Office Building.

Tribal Colleges & Universities and the U.S. White House

Nearly 30,000 students are enrolled in the 37 Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) located throughout and near our Tribal Nations. To help coordinate resources and information among the TCUs, the “Office of the White House Initiative on Tribal Colleges and Universities (WHITCU) leads the implementation of Executive Order 13270, ensuring that the nation’s Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCU) are more fully recognized and have full access to federal programs benefiting other higher education institutions.” Read more here.

Turtle Talk: Frank Pommersheim’s “Broken Landscapes”

From our friends at Turtle Talk: Frank Pommersheim, who teaches Indian Law at the University of South Dakota, has a new book released. Broken Landscapes is a “chronicle of Indian tribal sovereignty under the United States Constitution and the way that legal analysis and practice have interpreted and misinterpreted tribal sovereignty since the” founding of the United States. Read more here.

IAIS Faculty Member Publishes Novel

We want to do a quick plug for our colleague, Lucia Orth, whose first novel was published in 2008. Baby Jesus Pawn Shop is set in the Marcos-era Philippines.

Orth, who teaches our “Treaties and Agreements” class, has been an adjunct faculty member in our program since the Fall 2005. She is a wonderful instructor and her classes are essential to the success of our program. In between teaching, writing, speaking engagements, and advising and mentoring, Orth is working on her second novel.

Federal Appeals Court Affirms Yankton Sioux Reservation

The Court’s decision can be read here (.pdf).

Charlie Abourezk recently posted the following press release online:

PRESS RELEASE
August 26, 2009

FEDERAL APPEALS COURT AFFIRMS YANKTON SIOUX RESERVATION

In a unanimous opinion issued yesterday, a panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed the present day boundaries of the Yankton Sioux Reservation, resolving a case that has been in the United States Supreme Court twice, and in both the Eighth Circuit and US District Court in South Dakota three times.