(WASHINGTON, D.C.)  The Piscataway Elders’ Council has completed its correction of tribal enrollment and chart numbers, clearing the final hurdle to new enrollments and the issuance of new tribal identification cards. This will end an extremely long hiatas in the processing of new enrollments, which at this point have been stalled for years. It will also allow members of the tribe who submitted applications several years ago to finally know their enrollment status and apply for a tribal ID card.

For the first time in years, the enrollment process appears to be back to normal.

The Piscataway Communications Office is now setting into motion a plan presented to and approved by the Elders Council for the distribution of tribal identification cards. The cards are intended to prevent counterfeiting and provide a solid credential for those wishing to use a “Native American Document” in I-9 Employment forms. As the tribe is expected to expand rapidly now that the enrollment process is back on track (using data obtained from the Elders Council, the Communications Office estimates that the tribe’s enrollment will increase by 300% – 350% over the next ten years) , tribal ID cards may also become required for entry into tribal programs, ceremonies, festivals, and other events.

Tribal ID cards are different than the tribal enrollment cards that many tribal members already possess and are distributed when enrollment applications are approved:

Tribal Enrollment Cards:

• Are a confirmation of enrollment in the tribe
• Are not a form of identification, as they do not contain identifying information
• Contain the member’s name, enrollment number, chart number and other pertinent enrollment info
• Have no expiration date
• Are free of charge, but generally distributed only once upon enrollment confirmation

Tribal Identification Cards:

• Serve as both a confirmation of tribal enrollment, and a form of identification
• Contain all information present on Enrollment Cards, plus a photo and other identifying information
• Like all forms of identification, have an expiration date (ID’s must be renewed every five years)
• Have a small fee – expected to be $10 or less

Registration for tribal ID cards will open November 1, 2010. There will be two options available to obtain an ID card.

Option 1:

• Obtain an ID application from the tribal website, or by contacting the communications office at piscatawayconoy@gmail.com
• Read the instructions on the application and complete the application in its entirety
• Submit the application, along with a photocopy of your government-issued photo ID for verification, and your registration fee as directed in the application
• You will also be required to submit a digital photograph as specified in the application

Option 2:

• Appear at one of several Registration Fairs (these are expected to commence in late November or early December)
• At the registration fair, you will be provided with an ID application and have your photo taken, and have all necessary verification done on-site

ID cards will be mailed in batches every 4 – 6 weeks. If for any reason we are unable to provide you with a card (e.g. your enrollment could not be verified), you will receive a full refund of the registration fee and an explanation for why the card is being withheld.

Questions about this process can be directed to piscatawayconoy@gmail.com.

(ISSUE, MD)  The 2010 Piscataway Green Corn Festival wrapped up on September 26 on what was a rainy day for most of Southern Maryland.

While gray skies and wet weather prevailed over the state for most of the day, the grounds in Issue, MD where the Green Corn Festival was held enjoyed blue skies and beautiful weather for the entire event, allowing the approximately 100 festival participants to enjoy the tribe’s most eventful seasonal festival yet.

Tribal members and guests enjoyed a touch football game, tomahawk throwing tournament, two-round potato dance contest, and a “nut kicking contest”, in addition to the traditional feasting and dancing that accompanies the tribe’s signature cultural celebration. Also in attendance were special guests: Maryland Senator Thomas Middleton and Charles County Commissioner Reuben Collins. The pair were invited by the tribe’s Legislative Affairs Director Barry Wilson, and encouraged tribal members to make a significant turnout in what are shaping up to be incumbent-hostile elections in November.

Pervasive rain elsewhere in the region accompanied by a relatively late flyer advertisement kept attendance at this year’s festival low compared to last year’s attendance of nearly 200, but high participation in other tribal activities has allayed any concern that “interest” in tribal celebrations is waning. Enjoying particular popularity are the tribe’s political organization efforts; the Maryland Indian Voter Roll now boats over 3,000 according to the Piscataway Communications Office.

The tribe’s Feast for the Elders next month will round out the seasonal festivals for 2010. A photo gallery from the 2010 Green Corn Festival is expected to be released soon.

Don’t you hate it when, after 400 years, you still can’t quite complete the genocide? Consider the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation.  Shouldn’t they be wiped out, finally, if for no other reason than the inconvenience they present to your average speller?

Nope, they’re just too pesky to fade away into the Connecticut gene pool, in which more than a few past and present politicians seem to dwell in the shallows.
And for no other reason than their continued attempt to fight the power, whether it’s Attorney General Dick Blumenthal, U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, Gov. Jodi Rell or the two Indian casinos — the state’s two business partners — we should be rooting for them to finally regain the official status they had for hundreds of years after the white Colonists shooed them away from the lucrative coast and back into the hills of Litchfield County, in 1736.

It’s a classic David-and-Goliath story, the kind that even anti-gamblers like me (isn’t the daily ride to Hartford enough of an odds-against proposition?) can cuddle up to and support.

The tribe, (pronounced SCAT-ah-coke) is on the eve of what they hope will be a U.S. Supreme Court decision to review the rejection of their request for recognition, overrule last year’s Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and send the whole application back to the Department of the Interior’s now Bush-administration-free Bureau of Indian Affairs.

It could set the unlikely stage for a Bridgeport casino that could easily siphon off New Yorkers from Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods, which provide the state hundreds of millions of dollars each year through 25 percent of their recession-reduced handle of slot-machine revenue.

Carter Oosterhouse, an HGTV producer who has been filming the tribe’s various trials and tribulations, told me recently  the whole saga may go on for another five or six years.

“The story is the underdog, the person pushed around,” Oosterhouse said, adding  he wanted to create a national platform for the Schaghticokes while telling a compelling story.

“If you ask people in Connecticut about the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, they don’t know anything,” Oosterhouse said in an interview from California. “They were the first federally recognized tribe to have it taken away. You have to ask what happened?”

Oosterhouse has a five-minute trailer for his work (http://www.vmg-login.com/VMG_Login/Schaghticoke_Road.html) featuring a younger Blumenthal with what looks like real hair; Chief Richard Velky of Kent; Russell Means, the Oglala Sioux who for over 40 years has been a leader in the Native American movement; and even Bridgeport MayorBill Finch.

“The history of the state of Connecticut and the history of the Schaghticoke tribe are one and the same,” says Finch, who’s a history buff. “We wouldn’t be Connecticut, an Indian name, if it weren’t for the Native Americans who first lived here.”

At the height of the George W. Bush era, in October 2005, on Columbus Day, no less, the tribe received a fax rescinding their federal recognition.

It illustrated the pressure from the aforementioned folks at the top of this column, plus then-U.S. Reps. Chris Shays, Nancy Johnson and Rob Simmons, Republicans since voted out of office from the state’s Fourth, Fifth and Second Districts, where the two casinos are located.

The tribe once spread into New York state and Massachusetts before being relegated to the whole northwest corner of the state. Their land was then reduced to 2,100 acres and finally 400 acres, including 385 mostly rocky ledge-and-hilltop acres in Kent. The tribe has active claims for thousands of acres worth millions of dollars that in the past they had been willing to barter for a crack at the casino in Bridgeport. Velky, who works in the Connecticut Post’s Bridgeport printing plant, told me last week that he has no doubt it was politics that scuttled the Schaghticokes.

“I would have to wonder if it was for the casinos or something else,” he said.

Velky and the tribe will find out over the next month or so whether the U.S. Supreme Court will take up their appeal.

“The best decision would be to send it back to the Second Circuit, because of the appearance of political influence, then back to Department of the Interior,” Velky said. “At this point almost all the characters have changed.”

Maybe it’s the mountain redoubt that has been the key to the tribe’s tenacity over the generations.

“We were the people of peace and kept to ourselves,” Velky said. “We always retreated back into the Kent area and maintained our identity.”

What allowed the peaceful Schaghticokes to survive back before the pilgrims, sharing the coast with the more war-like Pequots, may give the necessary strength to the 300 tribal members who are left to persevere in the 21st century.

Ken Dixon’s Capitol View appears Sundays in Hearst’s Connecticut Newspapers. You may reach him in the Capitol at 860-549-4670 or via e-mail at kdixon@ctpost.com. On Twitter, he is KenDixonCT.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) As cooler temperatures begin to arrive, we are reminded that the summer is quickly coming to a close. Soon it will be time to ring in our “most pleasant season” with our Green Corn Festival and Homecoming.

Last year’s Green Corn Festival was a great hit with nearly 200 people attending one of the largest cultural gatherings of Piscataways seen in many years. The feast featured an all-Native menu, exhibition dancing, several traditional and entertainment dance contests, and a live Piscataway drum.

Coordinators for the event this year will be visiting more members of the tribal community to solicit input about how to make this year’s event even more special. Keep your eyes on your mailboxes in the coming weeks for more information about this year’s signature tribal festival.

(ACCOKEEK, MD) Despite stumbling at the start because of scheduling issues, the 2010 Piscataway PACE program successfully concluded its second year last Sunday.

Thirteen Piscataway youth received academic tutoring, tribal language and history lessons, and enjoyed field trips to Jefferson Patterson Park and other venues over the program’s three weekends in August. With a track record of success now established, the program’s coordinators are hoping to be eligible for grant funds that will allow the program to mature completely.

A mature PACE program is envisioned as an intensive, weeks-long program where Piscataway youth are immersed in an environment of academic learning, tribal history and cultural values and, perhaps most interestingly, Algonquian language – where spoken English is “prohibited” except during academic sessions.

Grant funding would help secure a dedicated location for the program, in addition to more volunteer mentors that would allow children to be sectioned off by academic level. Individual mentors currently juggle students across a wide swath of academic levels, often teaching 3rd graders and 9th graders at the same time.

More information about the 2011 PACE Program will be posted as it arrives.