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President Joe Biden is back spending time with his Irish cousins Friday as part of his week-long trip to the Emerald Isle.
Thursday was a full day of pomp and circumstance with Irish politicians in the Republic’s capital, as Seo McPolin reports from Dublin.
U.S. President Joe Biden and Ireland’s poet-president Michael D. Higgins rang a peace bell at Áras an Uachtaráin.
The head of state’s official residence was originally built in 1751 and was a summer place for the British viceroy in the Kingdom of Ireland.
Most of Dublin’s city center – including the zoo – was shutdown Thursday amid tight security.
There were concerns of violence by critics of the Good Friday Agreement, which deferred a United Ireland in the name of peace 25 years ago this week.
The White House denied the President is ‘anti-British’ after a former leader of Northern Ireland’s right-wing loyalist party said President Biden ‘hates the UK.’
His love for Ireland was on full display including his entry into President Higgin’s guest book, quoting an old Irish saying “your feet will bring you to where your heart is … and it’s an honor to return and to come home to the home of my ancestors.”
Postal Service honors Chief Standing Bear, who fought for Native American 14th Amendment Rights.
Chief Standing Bear is being honored by the U.S. Postal Service.
His portrait is featured on a Forever stamp.
The leader is well-known for fighting for Native rights.
In 1877, the U.S. Army forcibly relocated some 700 Ponca people to Indian Territory, what’s now Oklahoma, after the federal government took the tribe’s homeland in an area that’s now in northeastern Nebraska.
When trying to return home, Standing Bear along with 29 other Ponca people were arrested.
Standing Bear sued the federal government for his freedom in a landmark civil rights case, which he won.
A ceremony will be held in Lincoln, NE on May 12 to rollout the stamp.
Freda Dan’s four kids are all grown-up, but she continues to organize an Alaska Native language spelling bee every year in Anchorage, which now includes Yup’ik and Inupiat language speakers, as Rhonda McBride from our flagship station KNBA reports.
Dan (Yup’ik) grew up in the Western Alaska village of Stebbins.
She now lives in Anchorage, where she started the spelling bee when her kids were small, to help them keep their connection to their language.
After twelve years, with one year off for the pandemic, Dan is holding her 11th statewide spelling bee in Anchorage. She says it’s the students who keep her going.
“I do catch their exuberance and happiness, that they accomplished something.”
Before students get to the competition, they have a lot of work to do.
They’re given a long list of words to learn – 26 pages for Yup’ik spellers and 14 for Inupiaq.
“It includes the word with its definition, a sample of its usage and a lot of them have difficulty with Q and K and R and G.”
Dan says those letters represent different sounds than in English.
Understanding those spelling conventions, she says, also helps students learn to read in their Native language and improve their vocabulary.
Four schools are taking part in the Yup’ik spelling bee – Nunam Iqua on the Bering Sea coast, as well as two Kuskokwim River communities, Akiak and Akiachak.
Brevig Mission, which is north of Nome, is the only Iñupiaq school in this year’s competition.
The statewide spelling bee will be held at the Central Lutheran Church in downtown Anchorage on Saturday.
Indigenous chef Sean Sherman (Oglala Lakota) has made Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world list for 2023.
Sherman is a leader in the movement to revitalize Indigenous food systems, and is also a founder of the non-profit North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems.
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