National Native News Special Features

Today's feature on National Native news. A look at one of the most popular native rock bands in Indian country. I'm Nelly Moore. A big promotional push has been under way for a pair of native artists from the Tallis Pueblo who call themselves the red thunder. The duo has toured all over Native America performing a kind of music they call native rock. They've also been trying to break into the mainstream with a music video and concert CD from our archives this profile by producer Mike West. It's good. But I know this is red thunder. Songwriter and guitar player Robbie Romero and traditional drummer but he told Concha Robbie says the pair got together by accident about four years ago and have been playing together ever since. And I called a friend of mine in Taos and I asked him to come in and bring some drums and we were going to this native rock thing and he sent the needle he can

come in. Leto arrived in blue and I knew each other and Benito arrived and the first time we played together was you know in front of 500000 people on the steps of the Capitol for Earth Day 1990. There's a lot of other people play and Richard Gere was a host in 10000 Maniacs was there and Bruce Hornsby and the Indigo Girls and so on. But that's really the beginning of of red thunder. The two artists seem like very different people but their differences complement each other creating a mix of contemporary and traditional sound. As a youngster Robbie was exposed to the Hollywood lifestyle and made friends with some of the biggest influencers in 70s rock. I grew up you know both in New Mexico and I spent a lot of time in Los Angeles. My mother and father both left New Mexico and went to L.A. and my mother was you know signed to MGM and she made a lot of films for me like 15 Elvis Presley movies. And I grew up around a lot of incredible musicians in contemporary music. You know I had the opportunity of meeting you know this and I had the opportunity meeting people that I really respect like Bob

Marley and I was very young you know and remember not a lot of that but their influence was was big on me while Robbie was in the big city writing the Hollywood Fastrack red thunders drummer Benito stay close to his home on the town where he is active in the religious and cultural ways of his people. He also developed into an expert drummer of traditional rhythms for me you know bringing in the traditional drum has been always something I've always wanted. Did American and non non Indian people do to dance too. And bring in the drum for which is the grandfather John the harpy Mother Earth that always just held a high significance for me when a child believes red thunders music has the power to move people. When you hear the drum. To me it's waking up waking up to Earth Making people have the blood run through their system wakes them up.

And so that makes them want to dance you know. Doesn't the drum does bring in the flutes. The flutes. Bring this. Intriguing. Mysterious sound. Just Hans and just mystifies them. For both Robbie and Benito red thunder offers a way to convey native teachings to a broad audience. Robbie says natives may be the only people who still maintain a connection with the earth. I understand the laws of nature and still live in harmony and balance he says through the music of red thunder. Others can learn these lessons too. I think it's that. Philosophy and that understanding is something we can help other people with you know. And something we should share and our gift happens to be music and it's something it's an outlet we can share that with because I really believe that the environmental nightmare that we're facing today is a spiritual crisis and that in that people have to reconnect to the earth.

Robbie and Benito say they hope to continue making music for many years but agree that no matter how big they get they'll never forget their native ways. We plan on taking it as far as we can take it. There's no stopping the new music. Our idea isn't there. Our momentum is very strong because we have our elders supporting us. Let them tell him this. What. What is important in life and what we need to do to direct this unknown state to help us along for National Native news on the Navajo reservation. I'm Mike West. National Native news features are made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts. International. Today's feature on National Native news a unique program aimed at creating a partnership between Western and traditional medicine. I'm Nelly more. Thousands of Native Americans across the country use traditional healing methods such as herbal

medicines manipulation and massage and sweat ceremonies. Since most Western doctors don't understand these practices and some even consider it quackery. Many Native Americans say they desperately need doctors who understand both their cultural beliefs and contemporary medicine. In Seattle the Indian Health Board residency program sponsored by the University of Washington and Providence Hospital intends to bridge the chasm between the two forms of medicine. Caroline Leary reports. Dr. Arnie venial listens intently as one of his Native American patients describes the pounding sensation she feels in her chest. Like all Western doctors 36 year old Benito takes her pulse checks her reflexes and blood pressure. But when he asks his patient whether she uses traditional herbs or practices any tribal remedies it becomes clear that he's not a typical Western M.D. veiny o a

Chippewa and rolled with the white earth reservation and is one of two new doctors participating in the residency program at the Seattle Indian Health Board a clinic which treats mostly Native Americans from hundreds of different tribes. Pena says the program is designed to give doctors the training they need to address the specific medical and cultural needs of native people. Pena says after his residency he plans to go back home to his reservation to be a family practitioner. And he says his training here will allow him to give his patients the kind of care they deserve. There's a lot more to healing than giving medications and and doing tests. Traditional healing consists of healing. The spirit I mean is a physical there's a mantle and there's kind of a spiritual side to everything and at least for me it's the right way to do medicine. The director of the residency program Dr. JONATHAN SUGARMAN is quick to point out that the focus here is Western medicine. But he says doctors need to know about traditional healing methods because so many Native Americans practice them. If doctors

treating natives don't understand their patients traditional beliefs Sugarman says they're neglecting something that can impact their patients life in many Indian cultures. There's not a clear demarcation point as there is in hours between medicine and other parts of life like religion or just living. Many Indian cultures are very holistic and so it's hard to actually point out what's medicine and what's religion and what's just a way of life. So it's important for physicians to understand that and to know how traditional medicine interacts with Western medicine. Dr. Sugarman stresses that residents here are not taught how to become medicine people. They do however learn to recognize when a patient might be better off seeking some traditional form of healing. But as resident Shannon we can assume Chippewa from Montana explains they do not administer it themselves. It's more to work with traditional medicine so. That if I

have somebody that I think will benefit from a more traditional approach I would feel comfortable calling up and saying you know this guy I really think he needs to talk to you because there are some issues greater than just his sore throat. Those traditional practitioners and myself we should be when they need to find a traditional medicine person to assist them. Residents here visit Carl and q as the program's liaison and Q's job is to connect the resident doctors and their patients with the appropriate traditional healers. And he says for many Native Americans traditional healing can work better than anything else. To prove his point he tells the story of a native woman who was told by Western doctors that she had six months to live but she decided she wanted a second opinion. She went to see traditional practitioners from her tribe of the tribe and she lived 14 years past that. I think that the Western physicians said the oncologist told her she was born.

And a lot of this we feel was the fact because the fact that she was using a traditional practitioners program coordinators say it's still too early to tell where the residency program will go from here. But they say the long term goal is twofold to give Native American patients better health care and to break down the walls that separate traditional and western medicine for National Native news. I'm Caroline Leary in Seattle. National Native news features are made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts. International. Today's feature on National Native news. Part one in a three part series about U.S. military trainings impact on native reservations. I'm Diane Hamilton. As military bases closed down at home and abroad the Department of Defense has been expanding dozens of areas around the United States where soldiers practice for

battle as Malcolm Howard reports Native American reservations may absorb much of the increase in military training. 40 miles from the nearest road the Waihi river is a narrow green oasis in the blistering high desert plains of southwestern Idaho. Big horn sheep roam freely in the narrow switchback gorges and the silence is sometimes deafening. Lindsay Manning says he'd like to keep it that way. This area because of its physical characteristics. Has not permitted people to come in there. You know the rules are terrible the canyons are deep you know there's only a few crossings. And because of that it's been protected still in its pristine state. Manning is chairman of the Duck Valley Indian reservation which lies just east of the canyon lands Manning says the rugged terrain keeps all but the most hardy ranchers hunters and hikers away from the canyons duck valleys Natural Resources Director Terry Gibson says that in turn protects many areas

sacred to the Piutes and Shoshone. We call it the mother of our religion because that's where our gathering place is and we gather while potatoes onions Bitterroot and several different matter medicinal plants. There's also burials in that area but the same features that protect the canyons make them prime real estate for military maneuvers. Because jet combat training is dangerous it's done in remote areas and that's one reason the Air Force wants to build two bombing ranges along to you why he canyons. Colonel Jerry Callan is vice commander of the elite fighter wing that would use the new Idaho training range. Calen says pilots already have one bombing range called sailor creek to the north. But he says that's not enough to keep Mountain Home Air Force bases elite fighter group well trained.

What Cedar Creek does for us is very much like Dallas shooting for a basketball player. We can go to Sailor creek and practice our foul shooting but we can't go to say the creek. In practice the scrimmage games the competitive nature. Recent decisions by the courts and by the Clinton administration have put the plan on hold but because the armed services are pushing ahead with dozens of other training expansions around the country need of Americans in several states have joined forces with ranchers environmentalists and hunting groups who also oppose additional military operation areas. Or am I always. Lindsay Manning that's an issue across the United States right now because a lot of tribes are either in an animal way or right next to impact area of a bomb and range and they just did this unilaterally and came in and said This is a national security interest you know we need this. Granted that may have been a few years ago but right now. They have they have several places across the West that they could use now that's already been torn up and ravaged and there's no need

for this expansion. But Native leaders aren't just fighting the military in many cases they're competing against the lure of jobs around military bases in Nevada for example a Navy plan to increase flight training at Fallon Naval Air Station is enthusiastically supported by local townspeople in the northwest Nevada town of Fallon. But Martinez says the Walker River Paiute reservation which lies next to a Navy bombing range south of Fallon will be Daewoo DGD with noisy jet overflights of course Fallon wanted this so bad. Bring in millions and millions of dollars to their economy. But what do they have to say what are they bringing to the reservation. They bring in bombs bombing our land. That's what they're bringing to us now bringing us any jobs or any money. For many native groups it all boils down to sovereignty. While the Federal Aviation Administration says it controls the skies over all U.S. territory tribes in New Mexico Alaska Montana end of Adha have passed resolutions declaring military

flights as intrusions into their airspace. Many native groups support a strong defense. After all a high percentage of Native Americans have served in the U.S. wars from World War 2 to the Persian Gulf. But as training increases some say Native Americans are again paying a disproportionate price for security at a time when the global threat is diminishing. For National Native News I'm Malcolm Howard. National Native news features are made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts. Today's feature on National Native news part two of our series on U.S. military trainings impact on reservations. I'm Nelly Moore. The wide open spaces of the West have long been considered the best areas for military training because things like artillery practice are both loud and dangerous. They're done where people are few and far between. But as Western states fill with people plans to expand training are becoming increasingly

controversial. Producer Malcolm Howard looks at two tribes in eastern Washington state confronting an army plan to expand the training area for tanks and troops because the want of them people don't have a history of battling white settlers. They never sign treaties ceding land to the United States as a result. Want to claim Aboriginal rights to a vast area of land in eastern Washington where the army is now expanding a training area for tanks and troops. One of them Richard buck steers his four wheeler along the western bank of the Columbia River where the Army wants to add sixty three thousand acres to the two hundred thirty thousand acre Yakima training center. Bucks says he fights for free access to the training range in order to protect secret areas where Juanna poems have gathered food and medicine for centuries. So we're trying to do is. Make sure we're here tomorrow. Make sure. All of our generations come will

be able to to witness the same things that we have witnessed. And that they will be able to go their roots getting food and medicine that they to allow So be able to witness how loud silence can be. But as bases close at home and in Europe at the sound of tanks and guns will only increase at the Yakima training center because the Army plans to relocate two armored brigades to nearby Fort Lewis in Tacoma training here will increase dramatically. Fort Lewis is a public affairs officer George Pollitz says these armored units need additional room in order to square off in mock combat. That is what is driving the expansion of the training center. The fact that we will have a heavy force here and by heavy what we mean is it will contain mechanized and armored vehicles and they will have to in order to train train as they will fight.

The Army says the added room allows range officers to rotate operations giving fragile sagebrush communities time to recover. But Eric Hansen still fears the plan will destroy one of Washington's last tracks of undisturbed desert. A wildlife biologist for the Yakima Indian Nation Hansen says sage takes 50 to 75 years to recover. The army plan is allowing three to five years and to Hanson. There are other concerns. A survey of approximately 14 percent of the landscape has yielded evidence of more than 500 archaeological sites that are considered quote significant in quote under the National Historic Preservation Act. Arguably that entire landscape is sacred to the people. And in addition to the cultural archaeological sites there are numerous sagebrush habitat related wildlife species that are at risk under this training scenario.

When Congress authorized the expansion in 1991 the army planned to bring one light infantry brigade to the range with little hope of stopping the army. The Yakima reluctantly cooperated but they pulled back support last year after the Army announced it would bring in the two mechanized brigades. That change means the number of miles traveled by tanks in jeeps during training will increase 18 fold. Still Army environmentalist Steve Krueger says the army can protect both the ranges environment and sacred sites. Well first of all what we do in archaeological sites is we go ahead and we locate because many of them as possible we do that through surveys and those that are found to be significant. Those are marked off both on the ground and also they're briefed to our soldiers that are training so that we don't go in and train right on top of those but I think the bigger question is is that one of the major purposes for the expansion of the installation was to give us some more training ground so we kind of spread out to keep from. Putting all of our impacts on a

smaller area. Still both tribes would like a greater say in how the army manages the training center but so far the army has resisted for National Native news on the Yakama Training Center in Washington state. This is Malcolm Howard National Native news features are made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts. Radio International. Today's feature on National Native news. The final segment in our three part series about military trainings impact on reservations. I'm Diane Hamilton. Leaders at the Walker River Paiute reservation in Nevada went to United States Navy to either clean up or compensate the tribe for reservation land that Navy pilots have mistakenly bombed since the 1950s. Malcolm Howard reports historically a high percentage of Native Americans serve in the U.S. Armed Forces manual McLeod and Vernon Bob for example both served the Navy in World War Two and both believe in a strong defense.

You got to have protection no matter what you know. And we didn't have that they could just move right in and out now. The two old friends are elders at the Walker River Paiute reservation and they're full of war stories. Their most harrowing tales however are not about overseas combat. Rather they're set right on the reservation which borders a Navy bombing range. Once the two are fixing the fence between the reservation and the bombing range a bomb exploded so close by shrapnel flew over their heads and then there was a time they were staking out a mining claim and found a mother load of small unexploded bombs scattered out there. Who is picking them up. Run driver over the pickup got me then when I pick them up. So I made it home for nearly a decade now at the Walker River Paiute have tried to get the Navy to clean up fifty six hundred acres still littered with unexploded bombs and bits of shrapnel. Tribal administrator Anita

Collins wants the Navy to clean up the mess or compensate the tribe. First of all we'd like them to acknowledge that they are trespassing. They are destroying our name and some of the bombs have gone as deep as 40 feet. They've encumbered like 5000 acres and as a result of their bombing the water wells and tanks they've cut us off from even more land. That's a normal use for cattle grazing. You know where Negri culture tribe and it's very important to our people to have a grazing land. Fallon Naval Air Station which manages the bombing range initiated a one time cleanup sweep in 1909 code named Operation ugly baby. The sweep turned up more than a million pieces of shrapnel and unexploded shells. Still the area is considered dangerous sign Steere passers by away in large craters pockmarked the desert in some areas. The fins of bombs can be seen sticking out of the sand.

About a quarter mile from the reservation's border with the bombing range the tribe's water conservation officer Martinez walks across a dry desert lake bit. She stops before a ten foot pile of mangled metal. It probably was a big holding tank that was about 15 feet in diameter held water at one time but now it's all crushed and there's bullet holes in it. And of course just laying in the desert. Minutes later a lone jet flies directly overhead as it begins a series of low approaches into the bombing range so close to the fence line and Bravo 19 and you can see how easy it would be for them to you know be off target. Who knows how old these militant these guys are how much training they have. That's why they're here in Fallon to get training. The Navy would not comment for this story but a few weeks ago the Navy's adjutant

general offered the tribe a $50000 in compensation. In return the pirates would have absolved the navy of any responsibility for the contaminated area. The pirates refused the offer. They say $50000 is not enough to repair the damage. Tribal administrator Anita Collins feels betrayed Indian people are among the most patriotic of people in this little town of a thousand we had seven boys in the Persian Gulf. We've gone. To every war. You know country. My son was in Panama he was at the Persian Gulf. So it's a lack of total lack of respect for people and in a culture. Why do I care so much about this 50 600 acres for a tribe that once roamed Nevada and beyond their small reservation is the only thing they have left. And so tribal leaders say every inch is worth protecting for National

Native news insures Nevada. I'm Malcolm Howard.