The Red Road Home program

Minn. program uses American Indian culture to target prison recidivism

By Tom RobertsonIn a purification ritual, eight men in a garage huddle around a drum, as a haze of burnt sage hangs in the air. The drummers, all of whom have done time in prison, sing a song that honors the pipe and tobacco used in traditional ceremonies.

The group is part of Red Road Home, a pilot program based in Bemidji that aims to help former inmates from the White Earth, Red Lake and Leech Lake reservations stay out of prison.

American Indians make up less than 2 percent of Minnesota's total population, but they account for more than 8 percent of adult offenders in the state's prison system. In January, 789 of 9,429 state inmates were American Indians. Indians are also more likely to reoffend and get sent back to prison.

The Red Road Home program in northern Minnesota aims to slow down the revolving door, through American Indian cultural and spiritual practices. There are early signs of success, but the program may soon run out of funding.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Prison "Medicine Man" Ad Canceled and Art Empowers Native Prisoners.

Below:  "Drummers sing a traditional song in a garage on the White Earth Indian Reservation in northwestern Minnesota. All of the men are ex-offenders participating in the Red Road home, a program designed to lower recidivism rates among American Indians. The program focuses on teaching traditional Indian values through culture and spiritual tradition." (MPR Photo/Tom Robertson)

Women inmates sew pink shawls

Inmates' Pink Shawls Help Cancer Survivors

By Zach BenoitTheir fingers working steadily, draping fine pink strings over the backs of chairs in a small room in the back of the Montana Women's Prison and then sewing them into shawls laid out on the tables in front of them, about a dozen women began the finishing touches on a special gift for local cancer survivors.

The women—all offenders serving time at the prison, and most of them of American Indian heritage—were putting fringe on shawls for the Pink Shawl Project, a nationwide event designed to increase cancer awareness, especially among American Indian women.Comment:  For a somewhat related subject, see Art Empowers Native Prisoners.

Below:  "Cancer survivor Mary Buckman shares a laugh while sewing pink shawls at the Montana Women's Prison in Billings, Mont." (Photo by Bob Zellar of the Billings Gazette)

Madoff participates in sweat lodge

Bernie 'Dying' In Jail

'20 Pills For Cancer'

By Rich Calder[A] bare-chested Bernie has been killing time at the prison participating in Native American religious purification ceremonies held at an on-grounds "sweat lodge," other sources said.

He accepted invitations from Native American inmates to join them at their weekly prayer services. The ceremonies involve praying, using heated rocks to induce sweat and smoking from a ceremonial pipe.

It is unclear whether the 71-year-old Madoff checked out the ceremony because of health reasons. For centuries, Native Americans have used sweat lodges to help detoxify the body mentally, spiritually and physically.

Inmates who participate are usually shirtless, and Madoff was no exception earlier this month during the first ceremony he attended, according to the prisoners.

Indians on the chain gang

Correspondent Melvin Martin continues his series of essays on racism in Rapid City:The Country's Most Racist Shithole:  My response to Newspaper Rock's Indians Stereotyped as Criminals

By Melvin Martin, Oglala Lakota Nation

Mr. Tim Giago is perfectly right regarding how Indian people, in the case of Pennington County jail inmates, are depicted on Rapid City, South Dakota's local television news stations (in Giago's opinion piece he does not identify the location of the town until the sixth paragraph, so I felt compelled to mention the location here in the first paragraph of my response).

Given my many, many travels over the years I do not know of anywhere else in these United States, even in jerkwater burgs like Rapid City, where jail birds of a specific ethnicity are purposely displayed in such an unusually frequent and highly graphic manner to local audiences.

In Rapid City, the television stations in question are continuously engaged in the active and aggressive dissemination of extremely negative imagery of Indian people by a daily depiction of Indians incarcerated downtown for mainly minor offenses. I myself was even shown on a few local stations one day in the winter of 1995 as I went to court charged with possession of a concealed weapon (PCW); which was a $2.00 Chinese-made, Kmart pocket knife with a three-inch blade that I used for my leatherwork. As I so vividly recall, I was picked up at two in the morning on a Sunday, the day before Monday's morning court session, as I walked home in the snow from my friend's house after helping him with his pet deer. Released after agreeing to pay court costs, I saw myself on TV that same night--I do not look very nice at all in a bright orange jumpsuit! Anyway, I digress....

At the Rapid City jail, after a breakfast that usually consists of powdered eggs mixed with garbage can-smelling potatoes with rotten onions, burnt-black toast and a plastic mug of sour milk, the inmates are shackled together with handcuffs that are attached to extra-thick chains wrapped around their waists that lead to chains on their ankles that are in turn connected to a communal chain of ten inmates. Then in a huge, unwieldy chain gang, the prisoners are led to their court hearings by non-Indian jail guards with shit-eating grins and stupid smirks on their faces where they all sit before the judge still chained to each other. If anyone has to urinate, the whole chain gang has to get up and go out in the hallway behind a black canvas curtain where plastic, hospital-type urinals are passed from person-to-person. (Note: I am recalling my own experiences here and I heard some years ago that the jail discontinued the use of the urinals after a crazed, probably very dehydrated, wino took a great big swig from one of the full containers.)

Before entering the courthouse, that is conveniently situated in the same building complex as the jail, the prisoner who is the focus of the news segment is always shown in an extreme close-up from a vantage point that is one story above ground level as he or she exits one door to enter another. The cameras then linger for several moments on other Indians as the narrator drones on anywhere from thirty seconds to one minute. Most of the time the cameras will continue to display footage of the inmates without any voice-over narration for perhaps ten more seconds or so. The Jack Caudill that Mr. Giago makes mention of always has a most peculiar smile and a wild gleam in his eye after each and every Indian inmate segment of his twice-daily news program.

Clearly, the intent here with this type of video footage is to cast Indian people in as bad a light as possible for local consumption. As for stories concerning Indians in the local newspaper, I have to conservatively estimate that 90% of all Indian-related stories are negative, but especially the thrice-weekly federal court docket for crimes committed on the reservations in western South Dakota.

I, for one, truly believe that these television stations and the main newspaper are working hand-in-hand behind-the scenes with the racist powers-that-be in Rapid City in the ongoing campaign to thoroughly demonize Indian people with the sole objective of rendering all Indians there as wholly undesirable and just not worthy of living in the community at all. So, what else there is new?
Comment:  For another of Martin's essays on the subject, see Melvin Martin:  More Truths About Race in Rapid City. For his previous postings on the subject in Newspaper Rock, see:

Denial ain't just a river in Africa
Racists lack self-esteem
"Gooks" assaulted with BBs, urine

Simmons in and out of prison

A prison documentary describes a journey from despair to reconciliationThe story of Jimi Simmons is a story of justice both denied and upheld. As a baby, the government dissolved his tribe and the state took him from his parents, but as an adult an all-white jury freed him from a murder charge and a possible death sentence.

The ordeal lived by Simmons, 56, of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community/Muckleshoot Tribe, was told in “Making the River,” a documentary that opened Denver’s 5th Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival Oct. 7-13.

“I wanted to show people that anybody could change their life,” he said of the making of the film. “Now I want our communities to work toward being a positive asset for people when they get out of prison.”Comment:  For more on the subject, see Native Documentaries and News.

Art empowers Native prisoners

Exhibit spotlights Oregon’s native American prisonersBecause of the sad history of these people, which is only now beginning to be addressed in a compassionate way, it isn’t uncommon to have three generations of Native Americans from one family all in the prisons of Oregon. And not just men; between l977 and 2004, the rate at which we incarcerate women increased by 700 percent. These people are warehoused. In Oregon almost nothing is done to rehabilitate them. We lock the door and throw away the keys. And when they do get out, if they do, they can’t find jobs and they can’t find places to live. Thirty percent of them go back in again.

In Oregon there is now an organization that is trying to do something about it, at least for the Native Americans in the system. It is called Red Lodge Transition Services, and they have come up with a way to make these invisible people visible—through their art.

“Native American Art Empowers ‘Invisible People.’” That’s the name of the exhibit now traveling around the state, and it’s coming to Bandon in December.And:It features works by more than 50 Native American artists incarcerated in the 14 facilities of Oregon’s prison systems. They have all donated their art, which has been handsomely framed by framers, to raise money for Red Lodge Transition Services, a nonprofit organization that helps inmates transition to successful life back in our communities. There is some amazing artwork here. I went up to Eugene on Nov. 8 to see the show and was impressed with what these men and women have been able to create with the simplest materials: colored pencils, regular pencils, small sheets of paper, ball point pens.