Facebook Twitter Email
In The Hoop
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15, 2003

Welcome to In The Hoop, Indianz.Com's occasional column about assorted Indian issues.

What about the Indian chick?
With the bicentennial commemoration of the Lewis and Clark expedition underway, there's one woman who hasn't been talked about recently, according to a Chippewa artist who designed a teepee for this week's kick-off event in Charlottesville, Virginia.

"All along the trail, they seem to put so much emphasis on Lewis and Clark," Gloria Wells-Norlin told The Great Falls Tribune. "If it hadn't been for a 14-year-old Indian chick, they never would have found their way."

That "chick" of course is Sacagawea (or Sakakawea, depending on who you ask), a Shoshone woman who helped the men make their way to the Pacific Northwest, acting as an ambassador to the tribes they met and carrying her young son (Pomp) on her back the entire journey.

But don't count on Sacagawea to be missing between now and 2006. The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation of North Dakota will host one of 15 signature events and will include the woman who was an important member of the Corps of Expedition.

Fun with Neal McCaleb
Neal McCaleb is long gone from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and as most of you know, so are most of his e-mails. But if it were up to Sharon Blackwell, former deputy commissioner, that whole messy incident wouldn't have happened.

According to recent testimony by Jean Maybee, a staff assistant, Blackwell was a "fanatic" when it came to e-mails. "She would print them. She would save them. She would put them on CDs. She would put them in little electronic folders, she would print them again," Maybe told special master Alan Balaran last month.

Even after she retired last year, she was concerned about her electronic correspondence. She asked for, and received, permission from McCaleb to come back into the office and file them.

"She was very concerned about the preservation of e-mails and she made a point, talked about her -- before she left in June of 2002 -- about the extensive files that she had built up as deputy commissioner," McCaleb told Balaran.

Blackwell even tried to get McCaleb to take better care of his inbox, according to Maybee. Blackwell had more than one conversation with him on the importance of preserving his e-mails but "she said that she got the impression that he wasn't very worried about it," Maybee recalled.

"She said he doesn't get it."

In Your Hoop
Did you get any of Neal McCaleb's e-mails? Write us and let us know.

More of In The Hoop
Jan. 10 | Jan. 9 | Jan. 2 | Dec. 20