Healing Old Wounds Nic Ceremony Celebrates Indian Awareness

Human rights groups are hailing Wednesday’s agreement between the Coeur d’Alene Tribe and North Idaho College as a key step toward combatting racism and the negative stereotypes plaguing North Idaho.

Tribal members sang, performed traditional drumming and burned sweet grass to symbolize healing between the community and the Coeur d’Alene Indians who thrived on the site before it became Fort Sherman and later NIC’s campus.

“It’s time to forget who threw the first punch,” said Richard Mullen of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe. “It’s time to heal as a people so we can start talking as friends, as neighbors.”

Tribal Chairman Ernest Stensgar encouraged the audience of more than 200 to close their eyes and imagine a time before brick buildings and cut lawns, when the lakeshore pine trees were just saplings.

“This was always a place of teaching, of learning, of the handing down of knowledge and life skills,” Stensgar said.

The cooperative effort is intended to enhance services for Indian students and add more history and culture to NIC’s academic programs. The plan, first hatched seven years ago by Social Science Division Chairman Tom Flint, includes a Native American Studies program and courses in the Coeur d’Alene language.

“Today I feel the Coeur d’Alene Tribe has been blessed with a new era for our youth and an understanding between races,” Stensgar said.

“In North Idaho we don’t like the stigma that’s been placed upon us.”

Stensgar said he tires of hearing the largely negative stereotypes of North Idaho as he travels around the country and explains where he’s from.

“They say, ‘Isn’t it difficult for you to live there in this place of hatred?’ Well I tell them those people are ignorant and very few and we are learning to get along.”

Tensed Mayor Maryann Hurley, Idaho Board of Education President Judith C. Meyer and Rep. Jim Clark, R-Hayden, were among the dignitaries in the crowd, which also heard letters of support from Gov. Phil Batt and human rights activist Bill Wassmuth.

“It’s not just a negative image created by a few racist extremists that plagues our country and the North Idaho area,” wrote Wassmuth, executive director of the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment. “There is also a persistent societal racism that promotes oppression of some individuals and peoples. This agreement takes a step toward rectifying that injustice.”

The agreement includes plans to build a long house to serve as a cultural center and changing the names of some rooms, streets, pathways and gardens.

NIC’s campus was a traditional gathering place for the tribe because of its strategic location where Lake Coeur d’Alene forms the Spokane River.

The Coeur d’Alenes lived amiably at “Headquarters,” often hosting other tribes as they passed north to pick berries and east to hunt buffalo. They later welcomed Catholic missionaries, French fur traders, miners, settlers and the military.

In his first public remarks, NIC interim president Ronald Bell said people and institutions are remembered for the way they treat others.

“The gesture by this college to embrace those who once lived here is what I will recall many years after I leave NIC,” Bell said.

Stensgar received Bell with a hearty “Welcome to Indian Country” and then later added: “This is Indian Country. It always has been and it always will be. But it’s your country, too, and we gratefully share it with you.”

Marshall Mend, of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, said welcoming the Coeur d’Alenes to NIC is just the first step. They must feel comfortable in Coeur d’Alene’s businesses and community life, too, he said.

“That’s what’s going to make Coeur d’Alene great, it’s with little steps like this that we are going to erase the images of hate and create an image of love and that’s what Idaho will be known for.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos