4/6 DQ Univ. Corn planting ceremony- powwow

As we arrived, it seemed like a group of participants and supporters were waiting at the outside threshhold of the school while some people at the school buildings were figuring out whether it would be safe to hold the pow wow. Many had anticipated some sort of police response similar to the week before, and probably quite a few stayed away because of this. Despite the announcement of a Board meeting that morning, no board members had arrived.
Noticias 14 and KCRA TV stations were present, as well as professional journalists from the Daily Democrat and Sacramento Bee, and they conducted interviews with several ex-students who are skilled at voicing the position of the community members demanding an effective refounding of the school. Many people here were very unhappy with news coverage from last week where photos of belongings scattered by police in the dorm were published, implying that the students are messy and lazy. Coverage also put students on the defensive just for being present, even though the community has a right to question what happened to allow this school which functioned for over three decades to fall out of accreditation and be shut down. Some students explain that financial mismanagement is a large part of it, which should require a defense by the Board of Trustees and their management or secretarial staff to the community: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aWOVs8PWGI
Even if financial records cannot be traced, the students have a legitimate position in demanding that Trustees more effective at finding a way to restart the school should be added to the board. One community member explained that the board should have 16 members instead of its current 5, and that quite a few qualified people have been repeatedly turned down when they applied, including a professor from Sacramento State.

At the same time, all of this is quite complicated to explain to any outside person. We described this pow wow to some other people later, and mentioned that 50 police had been sent in with dogs by the Board of Trustees to the school to arrest the students for being on the campus - and they said that doesn't make sense. Really, it doesn't make sense at all, because it's hard to understand what motivates the administration. Maybe some stories about out-of-control condominium association boards or public school boards filled by people with an agenda provide some parallel. It seems like several lawyers need to be recruited in order to achieve justice here.

So around noon, a group of several dozen set up in a circle around a fire pit in front of the dormitories. People talked about the week's events and ate, and helped clean up the area by the dorms, and we looked around the campus. The greatest impression for me is that this place has tremendous potential due to its infrastructure. The Central Valley has some of the best agricultural land in the country with a 10 month growing cycle, and DQ has nearly 1 square mile of land, although they directly use a smaller portion of this. The land was reacquired under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 which promised tribes first rights to land no longer used by the federal government, and DQ used to be a small army base. I imagine that a couple of the buildings there were built during the army period. There are also some dormitories which used to be fully used when a couple hundred students attended.
A medium sized garden plot had been dug, which is impressive given the small number of caretakers this season. A greenhouse had some starter plants. The students would like to see classes in practical alternative energy technologies, and the land holds a working windmill which is pumping water. Across the rest of the county, there are a lot of nonfunctional relic windmills. Several solar panels had been set up near a parking lot, but were not actively powering a building.

One community member described how her parents had been around at the founding of the school, and the 2-3 week summer camps for kids had been a really valuable experience for learning cultural traditions. A large number of people have moved through this school during three decades. She described being arrested last week, and how the sheriffs office had been really rude or abusive. They sat in a van in the sun without air conditioning for several hours before being taken to the jail, and then a warden refused to allow a pregnant woman to lie down when she was sick.

About thirty people were present for the corn planting ceremony. I liked how William Underbaggage and others conducted this in an accessible fashion for people who don't have it as a tradition. They both were fluent in a native language, and Underbaggage described the importance of providing a positive place for youth- his nephew was recently killed in Iraq and he has another nephew over there. He described how depressing it was to see a grandmother arrested by the sheriff last week, and how outrageous it was that they returned and got arrested some people within a sweat house, which is now fenced off.
After this, several people started making public nominations of potential board members. One man made an interesting partly critical statement along the lines that he had been sent by Darrell Standing Elk, who has conducted traditional ceremonies at DQ, and he wanted to say he was offended for being called a BIA staff, and that some people should be more respectful of elders, but it wasn't clear as to what incident he was referring to. Most people stayed for the rest of the afternoon doing a pow wow and making plans for the school.