Workers uncover parallel stripes in the earth. Archaeologists recognize the stripes as evidence of wooden planks—building materials for the traditional dwellings of the Chinook Indians. The park construction is halted so that the site can be fully excavated. Archaeologists will soon find the remains of what the Chinook called Middle Village. In addition to plank houses, they will recover human remains and about 10,000 artifacts documenting the Chinook’s early trade with non-Indians. Among the objects found will be musket balls, metal nails, and beads made in eastern Europe.
Hamilton College cancels speech by Ward Churchill amidst controversy.
Officials at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, announce the cancellation of a lecture by University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill on American Indian activism. The college maintains it cannot ensure security at the event after receiving
6,000 emails, many of which threatened violence if Churchill were allowed to speak. The outrage was sparked by controversial remarks Churchill wrote in an earlier essay that claimed the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center held some responsibility for the act because of American sanctions on Iraq. He wrote, “If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it.” Days earlier, Churchill stepped down from his post as the chairman of the ethnic studies program at Colorado, and the university’s board of regents decided to consider his dismissal.
A Chinook village is discovered at park site.
While constructing a new Lewis and Clark National Historical Park along the Columbia River,
Appeals court rules the Navajo Nation can be named in discrimination suit.
In a suit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Peabody Coal, which operates two coal mines in the Navajo Nation, is accused of employment discrimination. Two Hopi and one Otoe applied for work in the mine but were turned down because Peabody agreed, in its lease agreement with the tribe, to show Navajo (Dineh) preference in hiring. The Navajo object to being named as a codefendant in the suit, stating that their sovereignty renders them immune. The 9 th Circuit Court of Appeals disagrees and maintains that the Navajo can be sued by a federal agency.
The General Services Administration agrees to review Indian murals.
Addressing complaints from American Indian employees of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the General Services Administration undertakes a review of six murals in the EPA’s Ariol Rios Building. Critics of the murals call their stereotyped images of Indians offensive. The murals, painted in the 1930s, depict Indian men scalping white women and murdering white men. Elizabeth Kronk, a Chippewa attorney advocating the murals’ removal, says “to have to be faced with these depictions every day is horrible.” In 2000, the murals were covered (see entry for NOVEMBER 2000), but the curtains were removed at the beginning of the Bush administration.
Student shooter kills nine people and himself on the Red Lake Indian Reservation.
Jeff Weise, a 17-year-old student at Red Lake High School in Minnesota, enters the school armed with several guns. In a shooting spree, he kills a security guard, a teacher, and five students. Weise then exchanges gunfire with the police, backs into a classroom, and fatally shoots himself. Authorities later discover that, before arriving at the school, Weise had killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s partner. The incident is the deadliest school shooting since 15 people were murdered at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999.
Pallbearers carry the coffin of security guard Derrick Brun, one of seven people shot by student Jeff Weise at the high school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation. (AP/Wide World Photos)
Floyd Jourdain, chairman of the Red Lake Ojibwa Nation, says “Our community is devastated by this event. We have never seen anything like this in the history of our tribe.” The next week, his teenage son Louis will be arrested for conspiring with Weise. In November 2005, Louis Jourdain will plead guilty of threatening interstate communications; in exchange, the court will drop two more serious charges against him.
World History
