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The former chairman of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe has announced a bid for the Wyoming House.
Wyoming Public Radio’s Chris Clements reports that, if he wins in November, he’ll be the only Native American representative in the state legislature.
Ivan Posey is running as a conservative Democrat against State Rep. Sarah Penn (R-WY) for House District 33, which encompasses part of the Wind River Reservation.
Posey says, if elected, his priorities include allowing traditional Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho beliefs and teaching methods to be a bigger part of school curricula on Wind River.
“Whether that’s through bead work, or setting up a teepee, or, you know, just our hand games, some of our cultural things that help students succeed in those areas.”
Posey added that he’d also like to secure more healthcare funding for tribal members on the reservation.
State Sen. Affie Ellis (Navajo/R-WY) is currently the only Native politician in Cheyenne.
She recently announced that she’ll retire from the Legislature in 2025.
Currently, the Wyoming Legislature is overwhelmingly white, male, and Republican, with only a handful of Native American officials elected since 1980.
Parts of three families pictured here were forced to abandon their homes in Burt Lake, prodded by the armed deputies of Cheboygan County in 1900. (Courtesy Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians)
The Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians have preserved the tribe’s history in northern Michigan with a new book.
That history includes the violent colonization of Band’s village in the year 1900 and the legal battles that persist to this day.
Interlochen Public Radio’s Michael Livingston was shown around what used to be “Indian Village” and spoke with the tribes’ historian who helped compile the book, A Cloud Over the Land.
On the top of a hill, overlooking an icy Burt Lake, Ken Parkie walks through a small cemetery filled with a few dozen white crosses.
He scans the land, looking for signs of an old settlement.
“I was always told it was down in that area. Right down in there. Yeah, about where that valley is, back that way. That’s where I was always told it was at.”
The historic St. Mary’s Cemetery is located off of Chickagami Trail in Brutus, not far from where the Burt Lake Band’s village stood before the 1900 burnout. (Courtesy IPR)
Several of Parkie’s ancestors are buried here. Some lived in that original settlement that stood here more than a century ago.
Back then, the village had log cabins made with lumber from a nearby sawmill and was a thriving community.
Then came October 15, 1900, when a group of men including a sheriff and land speculator burned the village down with kerosene.
The book A Cloud Over the Land tells the story about how the Burt Lake Band lost their land, but also about the fight to get it back.
Even now, the band is trying to obtain federal reaffirmation, which would return the label of sovereign nation to the Northwest Peninsula on Burt Lake.
Tribal historian Deborah Richmond says she hopes the book will remind the region and the country that the Band still remains.
“Only now when we can tell our own story, and when people can hear our story, are we allowed to start healing. We would like to focus on the good parts of our culture. But it very much is a cloud over our families and over our history because we want to right the wrongs that happened to our ancestors.”
A Cloud Over the Land is available to purchase on the Burt Lake Band website.
Richmond says the book has already sold over 500 copies.
The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office in Kansas released a statement Wednesday saying they do not suspect foul play in the death of Cole Brings Plenty.
The Haskell Indian Nations University student and actor went missing from Lawrence on March 31.
He was found deceased on April 5 in Johnson County.
His disappearance and death hit the Haskell community and the greater Kansas City Native community hard.
People across Indian Country also showed support to his family and friends.
Funeral services are being held this weekend on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, where Brings Plenty is from.
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