NewsNight Minnesota; 5045; NewsNight Minnesota Episode from 11/17/1997; SD-Base

NEWSNIGHT Minnesota is a production of Katy CA with the stations of Minnesota Public Television. Tonight on NEWSNIGHT the lights Band of Ojibwe wins another round then there's only one more to go at most of the details. Then I'll bowl to the liquor by any other name would taste a lot sweeter to this gentleman. And it's gotten by the Supreme Court and voters is assisted suicide on its way to Minnesota. It's NEWSNIGHT for Monday November 17. Tonight's broadcast of NEWSNIGHT Minnesota is presented in part by Norwest banks contributing to the growth of the Twin Cities through support and community service and by Cargill supporting Minnesota's tradition of community service. Good evening and welcome to NEWSNIGHT. I'm Kathy wars are lots to get through tonight so write to Ken Stone for the latest on the appeals court ruling today on the ban of a Jew boy has one the next to the last round in its fight for treaty rights but the governor says he will go the distance and ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. The band along with seven other Minnesota and Wisconsin bands of the

jetway have been fighting to hunt and fish without state control and parts of twelve counties are roughly the area around like blacks. All right. They say it was guaranteed in an 1837 treaty. The state disagrees and has been arguing its case at just about every level of court possible today. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to hear the case letting stand a lower court ruling in favor of the Native Americans. The Supreme Court could also refuse to hear the case or take it up its record on treaty rights is so far mixed couple of other stories for regarding Native Americans in the news today as well. The Hudson dog track and whether or not it should have been turned into a casino is at the heart of a controversy that could lead U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to call for an independent counsel. Back in 1995 three Wisconsin Chippewa tribes asked for a license to open a gambling business right here but it was denied shortly thereafter about $400000 found its way to the Democratic National Committee donated by other

neighboring tribes which opposed a new casino. Bruce Babbitt secretary of the interior is at the heart of the probe. He says he did not kill the project because of pressure from the Clinton administration but others have testified he did. And for those of you who thought you heard the last of the stadium debate Don't be so sure. Even if supporters don't manage to resurrect a state funded ball park by the November 30th deadline set by the twins and state officials the stadium is likely to play a big role in political campaigns. Already Republicans in the Senate are blaming DFL As for rejecting what they say was the most palatable stadium funding option slot machines at Canterbury Park. Just up the top. About big money Indian casinos. That's what I hope they talk about a little bit because that's what the people wanted in the state of Minnesota was Canterbury. Nothing. Don't get me wrong that wasn't the majority of the people the majority of people wanted exactly what the House did. They didn't want this whole thing but if there was anything they wanted it was a Canterbury deal. And we're sitting there what a charade this is why it's nauseating. The taxpayers the

taxpayers of Minnesota should really start getting it feeling out here about the DFL Senate. I can't tell you how sad I am. That the Republican leader in the Senate. Is putting racial politics into the stadium issue. I think to divide people along racial lines. To demagogue that. It is the worst thing we can see in Minnesota politics. Minnesotans will repel that they will speak out against that. It is against the total fabric and fiber of the state. Now as for the stadium the governor says the only way he would call lawmakers to vote on it again is if more than 20 House members who opposed it changed their minds are courting the most capital insiders that's highly unlikely. The latest plan to make Minnesota schools more diverse is coming under fire during the first of several public hearings. The State Board of Education wants a diversity plan that includes changing classroom curriculum making it more reflective of different

cultures. The teachers would also undergo diversity training. Backers of the proposed rule hope such efforts were ultimately close gaps in test scores between racial groups. The state of Minnesota has an obligation to provide equal education for all of its children. If that were occurring there would be no need for diversity rule. In fact all children do not receive an equal education. Some children from the first day they walk through the school door are expected to fail. However those opposed to the rule say it's simply an exercise in political correctness and a waste of taxpayer money. What I'm interested in is seeing every child treated as an individual maybe even rolling back the education aspects of diversity they're in place now and giving kids a barebones good education requiring the families to back up that education. And

maybe there will be differences and maybe there won't but the and the individual be the will be the measure here. The public hearings before an administrative law judge continue tomorrow and tomorrow night on NEWSNIGHT we'll have more on the pros and cons of the diversity role. An update on a story we first reported several months ago while William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul has decided to let military recruiters back on campus. That's after almost 10 years of denying them access because of the school's nondiscrimination policy protecting gays and lesbian women. But the Pentagon had threatened to have the federal government withhold nearly $400000 in financial aid. The dean of the law school Harry Haynesworth says the school is not changing its nondiscrimination policy but it simply can't make up the money any other way. As we go on the air at seven o'clock here in the Twin Cities there is no doubt impassioned debate going on in Rochester. That's where the city council is holding a public hearing on whether to include sexual orientation in the city's human rights ordinance. Now it's largely a symbolic measure Sensa gays and lesbians are already covered by the state's

Human rights ordinance which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation. However activists on both sides of the issue in Rochester want the city council to make a statement. The city council could vote on the matter tonight right after the hearing or vote at a later meeting. The Twin Cities loss is the rest of the state's gain a survey shows Minneapolis and St. Paul losing almost two thousand manufacturing jobs over the past year. But manufacturing jobs in Minnesota as a whole increasing by virtually the same number. Manufacturing news Incorporated says Minneapolis lost about eighteen hundred manufacturing jobs this past year out of more than 80000 jobs a St. Paul lost only 62 manufacturing jobs out of more than 38000. But when you look at the entire state the number of manufacturing jobs was up by almost 2000 jobs to almost 400 90000. The company which put together the report says the trend of manufacturing jobs moving out of the city is found in most major American cities not just in Minnesota. One way to keep those jobs in the city St. Paul thinks it

knows. City leaders have announced plans to build a new industrial park near Como in many haha. It's the site of what used to house Maxon steel a site that's now polluted and deserted. The 40 million dollar project will presumably bring in some good paying jobs to the area however it does not come without some controversy some existing businesses nearby would have to move. They call it an execution. City officials say it's thinking big. And those are the day's headlines next. Kathy and the Crazy Horse malt liquor debate at the U.S. Court of Appeals today. My grandfather gave me his big roll. The other way would be credited with. South Big Crow says it was a family tradition not to talk about their relationship to Crazy Horse. But he broke with that tradition when Crazy Horse malt liquor came on the market in 1902. He says the company that makes it is exploiting something very sacred worth of corn quite large enough to get off.

Her right up in the real world out. There not a report or. What we have left on the floor of the booth hoped they would buy them to make to generate money. Some say the person in this photo is crazy whores but no one is sure he stated often that he didn't want anyone capturing his likeness. His life. Was Wacom it was mysterious it was had spiritual aspects to it that people respected understood. And well he died. And they see this use of his name commercialization of his name. As as outrageous and also as as interrupting his spirit journey. It's a battle that's been brewing for about six years now. Can a beverage makers sell malt liquor using Crazy Horse's name and image. The Native American leader was a spiritual man as you say who was also reported to be a very strong teetotaller. Well today the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments on both

sides of the case but not about the right to use the name Crazy Horse necessarily. Now the debate is actually over whether this case should be in federal court or in tribal court on the Rosebud Sioux reservation itself Dakota. Robert GOF is the attorney for the estate of Crazy Horse we invited attorneys for the horn L. Brewing Company on the company which owns the Crazy Horse brand. They had to fly back to New York in Boston earlier this afternoon. But Bob are glad that you're with us here. How much of this case is about the legalities the jurisdictional issues and how much is it about property rights in just in just plain and simple. Having this be imported is this morning's hearing was largely about jurisdiction whether or not the tribal court has the authority to hear a case involving non Indians who are acting on property belonging to Indian people and the courts seem pretty clear clearly understanding that this is a property rights issue. But it's an intellectual property rights issue. Who owns who controls the right to the use of a name

and the name like Crazy Horse in particular one of the most revered Lakota revered Indian leaders in this country is very sacred to Indian people and is also recognised under law as as a property right. Belonging to his descendant family his his his descendants his estate. Given the jurisdictional issues for just a moment here you know I have talked in the past we've done stories about this obviously at that time we had talked about it just as you mentioned an affront to Indian people using Crazyhorse on a brand of malt liquor just that poor taste issue. When did this go into the realm of jurisdictional issues versus federal court versus travel courts. Because I know you've lost on First Amendment issues in the past on this. There were past issues that were either the federal government to Congress passing laws prohibiting the use of the name alcohol or the state of Minnesota's legislation protecting the names of all Indian leaders from being falsely

used on alcohol products. Both of those were state government activities trying to regulate. An area deemed commercial speech by the courts and therefore protected under the First Amendment. We are have always been from the moment we filed in the tribal court almost four and a half years ago have indicated that the family owns the right to control the use of the name either let alone say under the Code of our Lakota lot Well that's the only law. It's been settled in this country that you get your right to control the Your name of an ancestor from your local jurisdiction. We were in Wisconsin two weeks ago. Wisconsin has a state law of for statute for privacy. Everyone thinks that I control my name and I would control no one would use my grandpa's name without permission. Well in Wisconsin for example the moment you die you lose every right to control the commercial use of your picture or your name in commerce. And most people don't realize that

we've understood that and most people's names aren't going to be used in commerce. But when you have someone who's as famous and as historic as Crazy Horse Sometimes people will start using that and assume that they can just take it without permission. And I've also seen ads for coke or something like that where they use images of dead movie stars to say with permission from the state is that you're kind of asking for here to to get some profit for this stupid crazy horse. The for the first issue is the control of the name and not to have it used in ways that are not respectful. And we certainly have no desire to license this to the beer company. It's coming off the beer there's no question about that. But it is exactly what you say. Non-Indian people enjoy this property right. And they get it from their jurisdictions through their courts. We are asking simply that tribal courts be allowed to. Offer that same right to Indian people within their within their jurisdictions.

Interesting we'll see what happens. Bob thank you so much appreciate the time. Thank you. Ken back over to you. Two years ago it appeared that Congress was leaning towards zeroing out public funding for public TV. Now that didn't happen. In fact Congress just increased funding for PBS for the next few years. One of the people responsible for Congress's change of heart is PBS president Ervin Duggan. As in the Twin Cities this week we thought a good opportunity for you and for us to ask the man in charge a few questions about the future of public TV. I like to say that we are not in the television business we're in the business of education culture and citizenship and we happen to use television as one of our distribution media. But that's very different from the world of. Commercial television we're driven by a mission and not by the need to deliver eyeballs to an advertising agency. Do you ever worry about the size of the PBS audience at any given hour maybe five percent of the TV set turned on or turned to PBS does that mean we're in a world of cable.

It would be foolish to worry about that at any given moment the PBS audience nationwide is twice the audience of CNN. It is twice or more the audience of the Discovery Channel. That is an advantage in a world of niche audiences and narrow casting we are broadcasting we have reached 100 percent of homes. So no I don't worry about it one rating point is larger than the daily circulation of The New York Times. If the New York Times can become a world journalistic force with a smaller audience each day than what we have it would be foolish to worry what we worry about is the quality of what we do. We believe that what we do is good. The audience will come. Technology is turning this industry on its head and we're not that far away from the time that somebody will be able to punch a couple of numbers into their computer modem and download the latest Nova or for that matter a Masterpiece Theater from 20 years ago. People are starting to wonder do you really

need local TV stations because technology is bypassing the stations. Well I don't think technology can bypass a station that is truly doing vital local service. Again we don't look at what our local member stations and PBS as television stations. We look upon them as local institutions of education and culture. They establish vital relationships with arts and cultural institutions and educational institutions in their neighborhoods. They do outreach to educators to parents if they're doing that work well. There's no way that they can but be bypassed by technology. What they will do is find new technological ways to express that mission. So we should embrace technology rather than fearing a lot of the smaller stations that are particular Duluth. The other small stations around the country are a little bit worried about being bypassed particularly when it's so expensive to do local production when it's so expensive to carry the national. The programming schedule to them

any assurances you can give to those smaller communities. There is always it seems to me a vital role for any public television station. If it's not inexpensive local and national production there is still that creation of a web of relationships with educators with parents with the community that makes you a vital local institution. So I say again if if a local station finds that vital way to be in local service it can never be bypassed. Do you have any idea where this industry's going to be 20 years from now though. That's what makes it so exciting. No one could have guessed and at the dawn of television that it would become. Certainly that public television would become what it has become. Off the screen off the primetime screen we deliver by satellite to two thirds of the nation's colleges and universities. Distance Learning tele courses and in any given moment more than 400000 students are involved in degree programs using those courses who could have imagined that that would be

one of the missions that we would undertake. I think that mission is going to grow rather than shrink. But I think it will grow in unpredictable ways that we can't imagine and that's what makes this such an exciting business to be in. That interview earlier today. Duggan is in town to help publicize Katie CA's production of Liberty a documentary about the American Revolution. Three part series hits the nation's airwaves starting this Sunday. It survived a Supreme Court challenge and a voter repeal effort could be headed here to Minnesota soon. The right to a physician assisted suicide is the

topic for tonight's panel on medical ethics. Dr. Steven Miles is a geriatric specialist and head of the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics and he's assisted suicide opponent Professor Martin Gunderson teaches philosophy at McAllister college in St. Paul he agrees with the hemlock society's stand on the issue. That being each person should be able to choose when to end their life. Professor Carroll tower is with us. She's with the College of St. Catherine. She leans probably more toward Dr. Weil's position. I'm a star a doctor miles as a matter of fact the Oregon decision is is a very interesting case clearly. I'm wondering when you talk about physician physician assisted suicide what is the role of the doctor in that. Unlike euthanasia where the doctor directly administers the drug into a patient's Faine in physician assisted suicide it's proposed that a doctor write a prescription for a lethal combination of drugs that the patient and then would go off and take by himself

or herself perhaps in the company of friends so that the patient is committing suicide with a prescription that is known to be lethal. She's Professor Granderson though doctors of course take the Hippocratic Oath. You're a healer not one to. Assist in a suicide. You know that's what I meant by what is the role really. Well it seems to me that the role of the physician toward the end of life especially is to bring comfort and also to enable the patient to carry out his or her will regarding the dying process. And I think physician assisted suicide can be appropriate. As far as the Hippocratic Oath is concerned. It's changed quite a bit over the past 2000 or so years. There are versions of the Hippocratic Oath that forbid abortion or even surgery. Maybe time for it to change again. Do you think Professor. Well I think that first we have to look at the moral aspects and I think that to think about taking a person's life to think about

taking one's own life is probably the most serious moral decision anybody would ever make. We do consider certain kinds of taking a life permissible Excel for defense war but we require that the taking of life be a last resort. And I'm not ready to concede that we we are at the point where we need to move to physician assisted suicide as our last resort in the care of the dying because we have nothing else to offer people. I think there are areas where we need to improve our care. The control of pain and suffering people being able to make their own decisions about treatment empowering them to state what they want to their doctors trying to get people out of hospitals more to die in a hospice setting or at home to avoid technologically supported deaths. I think that we have so much more work to do before moving to physician assisted suicide which I would consider a last resort. Dr. Miles. She's absolutely right. Clearly doctors have not a good job with taking care of patients at the end of life. And I think there's an irony here

that we have the tremendous sunder use of pain control a tremendous under recognition of depression. Many doctors don't even know when patients are incontinent. And yet on the basis of that record of failing to even advocate properly for the care of chronic can disable ng diseases we're proposing all of a sudden that a physician is interested enough and engaged enough with a dying patient to serve as the patient's advocate in the process of physician assisted suicide. It doesn't make sense. Doctors too often flee from dying patients. It strikes me that you're right that we do need better pain control but at the same time there might be other reasons for choosing to end one's life. There may be worries about losing control over one's life. There may be worries about losing one's rationality and at the present time physicians really are involved in the process. Physicians are in many ways the only persons that patients can look to especially for drugs that make

suicide effective and painless. Physicians have virtually a monopoly on this. Well you know. I when I went to medical school I mean the courses I had on spirituality and religion and helping people with this kind of decision weren't part of medical school and they still art. One of the first proposals for legalizing assisted suicide was clergy assisted suicide because it said it's fundamentally a spiritual decision not a medical one. The drug issues strike me is as relatively trivial. Let's talk about this virtual issue for just a minute here. To someone really professor have a. Moral right to hasten his or her death. Well I think right now we do have means for hastening our deaths people can refuse treatments they don't want they can refuse life support. They certainly can be given whatever amount of morphine or pain control is needed in order to make them comfortable even if that would hasten their death. So that is a right that

people have right now in terms of directly taking one's own life. I agree with Steve that that's a very personal moral religious decision I don't think doctors have any particular expertise in this whatsoever. I've asked people you know you have a right to commit suicide. Now that's not illegal in the United States. Why do you want to get doctors involved. I realize there is the issue about drugs but I'm not sure doctors really know how to use drugs effectively to kill people. Well anyway I don't know that they learn that in medical school anyway. I think that the person has to make that decision on their own and has to take the responsibility of it and I've heard some people say well if doctors are involved then that will legitimated more and it won't be stigmatized by society. Well I don't think that's a good reason I think of there's a choice a person is making they should take the responsibility themselves. It strikes me that physicians may not be spiritual counselors but nonetheless they are in a position to judge such things as whether the patient is making a competent

choice. They're in a position to tell the patient about alternatives such as hospice care palliative care that might be available in the case of Oregon. Patients need to see two physicians before being given a prescription for a lethal drug I think I mean the Oregon law is interesting in that respect because one of the amazing provisions about in the Oregon law is if I'm going to you as my physician. The same time you're holding out a conversation with my spouse about my treatment I can direct that you not tell the spouse that you and I are planning for me to take my life. It's a bizarre set of circumstances to suggest that my relationship with to you is so intimate with regard to the terminations of my life that I can direct you to you've been severed my relationship with my family on the square 20 seconds here. Do you think this is going to show up in the state legislature sometime next summer time certainly it is.

I think actually that from the point of view of Minnesota it's probably a good thing that Oregon passed this because I think it has stimulated a lot of discussion in Minnesota and I think it will help people think about their own end of life. And I think it will help us improve end of life care in Minnesota. Well actually we got the discussion going thank you so much appreciate your time. Well they have about actually we have about 30 seconds left. So I'm here's the quick weather forecast for tomorrow anyway still unseasonably cold the entire state below freezing increasing cloud cover as the day goes on especially in the eastern half of Minnesota. But I'm told a warming trend is on the way. Thank you so much for watching and good night. NEWSNIGHT Minnesota is made possible by the contributors to the power of two campaigns program

fund with major grants from the London foundation. And the McKnight foundation. Tonight's broadcast of NEWSNIGHT Minnesota is presented in part by Norwest banks contributing to the growth of the Twin Cities through support and community service and by Cargill supporting Minnesota's tradition of community service.