WASHINGTON — President Obama’s FY-2014 budget request for Indian Affairs, which includes BIA and BIE, is $2.6 billion—representing a mere $31.3 million increase over last year.

The proposed budget is aimed at attempting to meet government’s responsibilities to tribes, while exercising tough fiscal responsibility, and striving to improve operations and efficiency.

From Staff Reports

MISSION — Five imaginative and skilled students of Great Plains Art Institute, Sinte Gleska University, have brought home eight of 16 prestigious awards in painting, drawing, sculpture and mixed media, won at AIHEC's 40th Annual Student Conference.

By Gregg Bear

ROSEBUD — An aide to RST President Cyril Scott reportedly is under investigation by Rosebud police for allegedly stealing and forging financial documents for personal gain.

According to sources in the president’s office, a former presidential aide is being investigated for allegedly forging names to payroll deduction forms and benefitting financially from the transactions.

From Staff Reports

WHITE RIVER — White River Health Care Center, home for the elderly and disabled, is a happy beneficiary of the RST Secretary’s Office, which adopted the center as an outlet for volunteer work.

Under Secretary Linda Marshall, the Secretary’s Office recently initiated a fundraiser for the center, helping raise more than $500 through ticket sales.

COMMENTARY

By Gregg Bear

Deepening the mystery of human beginnings, researchers recently disclosed finding a new and obscure possible prototype of humans, revealing a creature that, from head to toe, is a collection of early and modern body parts.

Scientists were astounded to find that these hominids had humanlike hands attached to apelike arms, an ape’s narrow rib cage but more humanlike lower torso, and a similar spine with roughly the same number of vertebrae.

MISSOULA, Mont. — “Everyone talks about rights, but they have a cost,” said opposition attorney Sara Frankenstein, who represents Montana state and county defendants in the federal voting-rights case, Wandering Medicine v. McCulloch.

For expense reasons, Montana Indians shouldn’t expect counties to spend money providing early-voting satellite offices, she said.

COMMENTARY

By Rep. Lydia Whirlwind Soldier

My writings are my ideas only; they do not represent decisions or goals that represent any other person.

I have been thinking lately of the transition that our tribal government is experiencing. Many of our people have spoken of how our tribal government is organized, and it is often suggested that we need to go back to a traditional form of government.

COMMENTARY

There are days when all things appear in line and the world is a beautiful place. It happens whenever I’m outside on a cold winter day and detect the drifting scent of woodsmoke.

At times like this, I can imagine many things, and invariably, they take me back to a wonderful place—the sweet home of my grandparents.

My grandparents, the late Bernard and Ada (Little Money) Flood, lived on the Great Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota, at a place called Okreek.

LETTERS

Dear Editor:

Our Lakota Dakota Nakota Spiritual group inside the Jameson Annex Prison in Sioux Falls held a powwow on January 26, 2013, which was successful and inspiring.

The singing, dancing, prayers and food inspired a feeling of unity and confidence.

LETTERS

An open letter to former President George W. Bush:

You told us [the Iraq Invasion] could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion.

I especially did not join the [Army] to carry out preemptive war. Preemptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes.