Sovereign Hoopa Nation

2011-03 "Recovery and Restoration–Tribal Education Department Applies for Grant for Hupa Language; California Law Passes Ground-breaking Language Credentialing Process" by Kay Heitkamp from "Two Rivers Tribune" newspaper
[http://www.tworiverstribune.com/2011/03/recovery-and-restoration-tribal-education-department-applies-for-grant-for-hupa-language/]
Hoopa Valley Tribal Grant Writer, Norma McAdams, took the lead in applying for the Administration for Native American (ANA) Language Preservation and Maintenance Grant submitted the first week of March, 2011. Hoopa Tribal Education Director, Greg Masten, helped facilitate and move the process along.
“We also had a lot of technical support from the ANA people. That’s part of the process – you can ask for their input,” said Masten. “Multiple conference calls with ANA evaluators helped advise us if there were areas of the grant application that needed strengthening. Others who gave us their input included Hoopa Museum Curator, Salish Jackson, Danny Ammon and Melodie George who teach at Hoopa High School, and Jackie Martin who teaches at Hoopa Elementary School.
The ANA grant funds up to $300,000 for a three-year program. The Hoopa Tribal Education Department applied for the full amount. The grant is the only one the Education Department has applied for specifically for language preservation.
Hupa is the only surviving California Athabaskan language and is nearing the brink of extinction. There are fewer than five first-language speakers – all honored elders. Among them are Verdena Chase, Bill Carpenter Jr., and Sonny Pratt.
If funded, the ANA grant will support collecting, organizing, and analyzing data to determine the current status of the tribe’s language. It also would cover planning and implementing different learning models such as immersion, intergenerational, or master/apprentice formats, and the training and credentialing of teachers.
Support would also be provided for developing, printing and distributing teaching materials, as well as planning, designing, and implementing Hupa language curriculums in schools and education projects to enhance the Hoopa Valley community’s language preservation goals.
Funding would help with recording and documenting oral testimony and old tapes to create resources for future generations.
“Part of what the grant seeks to do is to continue to work with the last fluent speakers and document the process,” said Masten. “We need to gather information, pull it together, and more clearly define the Hupa language. The big challenge is that it never was a written language.”
During the process of applying for the grant, McAdams and Masten met with the schools’ language teachers and Jackson at the museum, and also received input from the community during a public meeting held on Feb. 23 in the Hoopa Tribal Council Chambers.
The director said what the tribe has today is the work of dedicated people who tried to put the language into written format.
“It’s never been completed – it’s always been a work in progress,” Masten said. “There’s a lot of intricacies in the Hupa language – it’s one of the most complex of all Athabaskan languages.”
Jackson confirmed this. Verbs form the base of the Hupa language, rather than nouns. Jackson has been working almost every day with Hoopa tribal elder, Verdena Chase, to document the 64 ways every single verb can be used.
“Documentation is part of the grant. So much more has to be done in this area,” said Masten.
Another grant objective is to help teachers becoming fluent in Hupa and obtain their language teaching credentials. They will be the bridge to the next generation of students who will then continue the process.
“This is all part of a comprehensive language program,” said Masten. “We take for granted all of the rich resources we do have – elders, the body of work that’s already been done, the ongoing documentation of oral histories. It’s very rare what we have here in Hoopa.”
Hoopa Valley High School currently has a four-year Hupa language program. Grant support could help create a program in which older students would start working with the upcoming generation, even children at the pre-schools.
“We’re trying to create an intergenerational linkage, a continuum. We have a lot of good things on hand – video tapes, language camps, dictionaries, videos,” said Masten. “One of my goals is to take all these existing materials and put it into a language program, not just for the sake of having a language program, but to help the language flourish.”
The over-arching goal of the grant is for the language to become a living language.
“We’re only getting so far with the pieces we have,” the director said. “We need to take that next giant step, which is to get Hupa to where it’s a working, living language in our daily lives in the community and into our homes.”
One thing the grant would support is hiring a language coordinator, someone to spearhead the entire project and provide direction. That individual would be in charge of project activities, such as holding a language summit of Native speakers. A coordinator could also develop a technology program to digitize old tapes and recordings using modern software. Masten noted there’s so much that needs to be upgraded before it’s lost forever.
Masten has participated in several meetings geared to the language credentialing process. AB544, a ground-breaking California law passed in 2010, acknowledges that tribes know best who should be teaching their Native language in the schools. Tribes can now develop the criteria for language curriculums based on their own unique customs and traditions.
The director said there’s a need to incorporate more culture and Native languages into public schools, and that to move forward, schools need to begin with tribal values, ideologies, and methodologies, with the tribe’s sustainability in mind.
“Our focus should be on the tribal concept of the purpose of education, which is transferring knowledge from generation to generation – capturing what’s gone on before and incorporating that with what’s ahead,” said Masten. “That’s sustainability. We are a tribal nation, and we have to look at what it takes to sustain a nation. Language is a core component.”

2011-03 "Petition Circulating to Repeal Hoopa Tribe’s Marijuana Cultivation Suppression Ordinance; Tribal Member Collecting Signatures for Ballot" by Kay Heitkamp from "Two Rivers Tribune" newspaper
[http://www.tworiverstribune.com/2011/03/petition-circulating-to-repeal-hoopa-tribes-marijuana-cultivation-suppression-ordinance/]
A petition is circulating to gather signatures from members of the Hoopa Valley Tribe to conduct a referendum election to repeal Title 34, the Marijuana Cultivation Suppression Ordinance passed in November, 1999.
Hoopa Tribal member, Arthur P. Jones Sr. began circulating the petition on March 7 with a goal of petitioning the Hoopa Valley Election Board to put the issue out to vote.
A state-wide voter initiative, the California Compassionate Use Act (Prop 215), was passed in 1996 to allow patients with a valid doctor’s recommendation to possess and cultivate marijuana for personal medicinal use. The law exempts patients and their defined caregivers who possess or cultivate marijuana recommended by a physician from criminal laws which otherwise prohibit possession or cultivation of marijuana. It also safeguards physicians who recommend use of marijuana for medical treatment from being punished or denied any right or privilege.
Under federal law, growing, possession, or distribution of marijuana is still a crime. According to federal law, there is no such thing as medical marijuana. However, there are signs across the nation that federal enforcement of these laws may be weakening in states that have passed compassionate use laws. In October, 2009, in an effort to focus the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) resources on serious drug traffickers, the DOJ released new federal guidelines that instructed federal officials not to go after marijuana users or suppliers who comply with their states’ medical marijuana laws.
Hoopa’s Title 34 ordinance asserts that the Compassionate Act of 1996 lacks standards to implement its goals. The ordinance also states that the open and notorious cultivation of marijuana on the Hoopa Valley Reservation, under the guise of permissive use as described in Prop 215, endangers the general welfare, health, and safety of residents living on the reservation.
The tribal ordinance expressly forbids cultivation of marijuana or possession of any live marijuana plant. Violators can be fined, subject to criminal prosecution, or excluded from living on the Hoopa Valley Reservation. The Hoopa Valley Tribal Court can also issue orders to seize and destroy marijuana plants cultivated in violation of the ordinance.
Proponents seeking to repeal Hoopa’s Title 34 Ordinance cite the fact that California is a Public Law 280 state and that because the state has, through Prop 215, decriminalized the possession and growth of marijuana for medical purposes, the Hoopa Valley Reservation should be governed by state law rather than the tribal ordinance.
PL 280 is a federal law that transferred federal law enforcement jurisdiction to state governments in six states, including California. State law enforcement agencies can take tribal members to state courts for prosecution in criminal cases arising within reservation boundaries.
Jones estimates that there a sufficient number of tribal members living on the Hoopa Valley Reservation who would benefit from being able to grow small amounts of marijuana for their own medical use as prescribed by their physician to make it worth the effort of petitioning the Hoopa Valley Tribe to repeal Title 34.
The goal of Jones is to gather at least 500 signatures to present to the Hoopa Valley Tribal Council to request a referendum election. Contact him at (530) 784-7552 for more information or to sign the petition. Whenever possible, Jones will try to accommodate individuals without a means of transportation by driving to their homes so they can sign the petition.
“We’re a Public Law 280 state. If the state says we’re allowed to grow marijuana for our own medical use, then that’s the law that should apply,” said Jones. “We’re not trying to make up a law. We’re just trying to abide by state law. We need to take this back to the people.”