Tribe Calls On Feds To Drop Appeal Blocking Use Of Bald Eagles For Ceremonial Purposes

Associated Press

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) – The Northern Arapaho Tribe is calling on the federal government to drop a legal appeal that’s blocking the tribe from killing bald eagles for religious purposes on the central Wyoming reservation it shares with another tribe.

The federal government in June appealed this spring’s decision by U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson of Cheyenne that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the religious rights of the Northern Arapaho by denying the tribe permission to kill bald eagles for its annual Sun Dance.

Fish and Wildlife Service officials had issued a permit to the Northern Arapaho Tribe in 2012 allowing tribal members to kill two bald eagles for the ceremony provided they could only be killed outside the boundaries of the Wind River Indian Reservation. The Northern Arapaho share the reservation with the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, which has its own religious grounds for opposing the killing of eagles.

In his ruling this spring, Johnson sided with the Northern Arapaho and concluded it was wrong for the federal agency to specify that the permit excluded reservation lands.

Johnson ruled the First Amendment prohibited the federal government from burdening one American Indian tribe’s exercise of its religious rights to benefit another tribe. He ordered the agency to reconsider the Northern Arapaho application.

The Fish and Wildlife Service’s appeal of Johnson’s ruling is pending in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver and the agency has just over a month left to file a brief laying out its arguments.

Dean B. Goggles, chairman of the Northern Arapaho Business Council, wrote last week to U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli asking him to drop the federal government’s appeal on religious grounds.

Goggles stated in his letter that the tribe filed its lawsuit in part in response to the federal government’s 2005 prosecution of Winslow Friday, a young tribal member who shot an eagle for use in the Sun Dance. Friday ultimately pleaded guilty and was ordered to pay a fine in tribal court.

“The Tribe needs to protect any Arapaho who is legitimately taking an eagle for religious ceremonial purposes,” Goggles wrote.

“We are writing to ask that you withdraw your notice of appeal so that we may practice the traditions of our Tribe without fear of criminal prosecution,” Goggles wrote.

Ivy Allen, tribal liaison with the Fish and Wildlife Service in Lakewood, Colo., said Monday she couldn’t comment on the tribe’s request to drop the appeal because litigation is ongoing.

Former U.S. District Judge William Downes of Casper originally had dismissed the federal charges against Friday, ruling that it would have been pointless for him to apply for a permit to take an eagle on the reservation because the Fish and Wildlife Service wouldn’t have given it to him anyway.

“Although the government professes respect and accommodation of the religious practices of Native Americans, its own actions show callous indifference to such practices,” Downes wrote in 2006. The federal appeals court later reinstated the charges against Friday.

The bald eagle was removed from the federal list of threatened species in 2007, following its reclassification in 1995 from endangered to threatened. However, the species has remained protected under the federal Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.

The Fish and Wildlife Service maintains a stock of carcasses of eagles and other protected birds at a repository in Colorado. It will release feathers or other bird parts to members of federally recognized tribes who apply for them.

Northern Arapaho tribal members have said it’s unacceptable to them to use an eagle carcass from the federal repository for their Sun Dance.

Source: http://bit.ly/1Ny0Q1m via

Native American Officials Gratified The FBI Is Monitoring Detox Center Shooting Case

Roy Clyde, 32 of Riverton, faces murder and attempted murder charges

The Associated Press

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Officials with the Northern Arapaho Tribe say they’re gratified the federal government is monitoring the state prosecution of a man charged with the shootings last month of two tribal members.

Stallone Trosper, 29, died and James “Sonny” Goggles, 50, was critically injured in the July 18 shootings at the Center of Hope detox center in Riverton. Roy Clyde, 32 of Riverton, faces murder and attempted murder charges.

Northern Arapaho officials last week traveled to Washington, D.C., and urged officials at the U.S. Justice Department to press federal hate crimes charges against Clyde. The tribe also expressed concern about an unsolved 2013 incident involving a Northern Arapaho woman who survived being shot in the eye in the Riverton area.

Riverton Police Chief Mike Broadhead said his agency has turned over investigative files on the detox center shooting to the FBI and will continue to update the federal agency on progress of the case against Clyde. His agency had little information about the earlier shooting, Broadhead said.

John R. Powell, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Cheyenne, said this week that federal officials are monitoring the state investigation and prosecution of Clyde.

“We are very grateful that the Department of Justice took our requests and concerns seriously,” said Dean Goggles, chairman of the Northern Arapaho Business Council. Dean Goggles and James Goggles are cousins.

Business Council member Ronnie Oldman said in a prepared statement that the council appreciates Broadhead’s positive reaction to its concerns.

According to a statement filed in court by Riverton police, Clyde, a city parks worker, told investigators he long had been considering killing people he referred to as “park rangers.” In Riverton, the term “park rangers” refers to homeless alcoholics — most of them American Indians. Many come to the city from the surrounding Wind River Indian Reservation, where alcohol is illegal, and drink in the parks.

Relatives of both victims of the detox center shootings have said neither man was homeless.

Clyde waived a preliminary hearing in Fremont County Circuit Court this week, sending the state’s case against him to district court. His arraignment there hasn’t been scheduled yet.

Fremont County Attorney Patrick J. LeBrun said this week he hadn’t decided whether to seek the death penalty against Clyde.

Devon Petersen, a lawyer with the Wyoming Public Defender’s Office who represents Clyde, declined comment on Thursday.

In an interview this week, Broadhead he regards his agency’s investigation into the detox center shootings as complete.

Broadhead said the shootings came even as the community has made great strides in recent years in addressing public drunkenness and homelessness. Volunteers of America took over the center about two years ago and began sending many people to other clinics for long-term treatment.

Before Volunteers of America took over, Broadhead said, the city took an average of over 2,000 people a year into custody for public intoxication. After the first full year of management of the detox center by Volunteers of America, he said that number had fallen to about 1,100.

“You can drive around and the problem used to be much more overt than it is now,” Broadhead said.

by Ben Neary, The Associated Press. Posted Aug 6, 2015

http://www.startribune.com/tribal-officials-gratified-fbi-monitoring-shooting-case/320974351/

In Wyoming, Shooting Highlights Divide Between A City And A Reservation

Angeline Vargas, right, comforted her brother James Goggles at a hospital in Casper, Wyo., last week. Mr. Goggles was shot at an alcohol detox facility in Riverton, Wyo. CreditRyan Dorgan for The New York Times

by Jack Healy, July 29, 2015

RIVERTON, Wyo. — Roy Clyde was sick of the homeless people who linger in this city’s parks, urinating in public and drinking bottles of vodka and mouthwash, he told the police. So on a recent afternoon, the police say, he grabbed his handgun, walked into an alcohol detox facility called the Center of Hope and shot two men as they lay on green floor mats, killing one and critically wounding the other.

Local officials called it a senseless attack on society’s most vulnerable fringe. But Mr. Clyde, a city parks worker, was white, and the victims were American Indians, members of the Northern Arapaho Tribe. Tribal officials here on the edge of the two-million-acre Wind River Reservation saw the shooting as a hate crime that added another page to a long history of violence and mistrust here in Indian Country.

“There’s a lot of animosity toward the Indian people,” said Dean Goggles, the chairman of the Northern Arapaho Tribal Business Council. “It’s always been there.”

After the shooting, Ron Clyde unloaded his gun, took off his shirt and walked outside, arms raised in surrender, to wait for the police to come, the police said.CreditTibby Mcdowell/The Ranger, via Associated Press

Local news forums discussing the case have swelled with condolences and calls for understanding, but also with accusations of bigotry and “race baiting” by people listing off crimes committed against, or by, American Indians in the area. The police and local leaders held a meeting last weekend to reach out to the homeless in the parks, but some residents said they thought the crime had only accentuated the divisions that can feel as constant as Wyoming winds.

“It should’ve brought people together,” said Cynthia Salazar, who was sitting with her family in a park one recent afternoon. “All I’ve seen are people on both sides. It’s not good.”

Tribal officials have asked federal prosecutors to investigate the shooting as a bias attack. (Wyoming has resisted years of efforts to pass state-level hate-crime laws.)

Had the two men been white, tribal officials say, James Goggles, 50, a cousin of Dean Goggles, would not be lying in a hospital bed, and Stallone Trosper, 29, would not be dead.

Mr. Clyde told the police he had gone looking for “park rangers” — a local slur that tribal officials say refers to homeless Indians. Many of the people who drink in the parks are Native Americans, as are about 85 percent of the detox facility’s clients, according to local officials.

The room where Roy Clyde shot Mr. Goggles and Mr. Trosper as they lay on green floor mats at the Center of Hope. Ryan Dorgan for The New York Times

But an arrest affidavit played down any racial motivation, saying that Mr. Clyde was “targeting transient people regardless of race.” Mr. Clyde, who is being held in the Fremont County jail, has not entered a plea, and his family members did not return phone calls or online messages.

Over decades, even as tribal members and nonmembers became neighbors and intermarried, the legal and cultural borders between them have defined struggles over environmental rules and property rights, crime and justice, and even the town itself.

Riverton was carved out of the Wind River Reservation for white settlement in 1905, becoming a city apart where alcohol is sold and 80 percent of its 10,000 residents are white. Tribal and nontribal residents eat at the same restaurants, are married into one another’s families and play video slots side by side at Wind River Casino. But middle-age Arapaho leaders who grew up on the reservation, population 10,000, have childhood memories of “No Indians” signs in store windows.

Tribal leaders said the shooting was the latest entry in a troubling ledger. They pointed to the case of a gay Northern Arapaho member who was beaten to death by two teenagers in 2013 in what his mother later called a hate crime; and to the case of a Northern Arapaho woman complaining of a pain in her head who said she was turned away from a hospital after staff members there failed to observe that she had been shot. In 2010, tribal members won a voter-discrimination lawsuit against the county’s elections system.

Riverton was carved out of the Wind River Reservation for white settlement in 1905, becoming a city apart where 80 percent of its 10,000 residents are white. Ryan Dorgan for The New York Times

In his ruling on the voting case, Judge Alan B. Johnson of Federal District Court wrote that “discrimination is ongoing, and that the effects of historical discrimination remain palpable.”

Days after the shooting, Northern Arapaho leaders met with elected leaders and law enforcement officials from the area to talk about what to do next. Richard Brannan, a tribal council member, said it seemed as if most of the non-Native American officials did not see the discrimination that the Indian leaders felt so viscerally. Tribal leaders and the Riverton mayor, Lars Baker, met to try to find common ground. But Mr. Baker said he was not sure what “common ground” really meant.

The shooting happened in what city officials and nonprofit workers described as a cinder block sanctuary for people struggling with alcohol and drug problems. James Goggles, “Sonny” to his friends and family, was a Navy veteran. Mr. Trosper was shy and kind, said his uncle George Abeyta, and was hoping to start community college to study political science.

“He wanted to get back on his feet,” Mr. Abeyta said. “He wanted to dry out.”

Mr. Clyde, the man charged with shooting them, had worked for the city’s parks department for about 13 years, mowing lawns and keeping things tidy, said Riverton’s police chief, Mike Broadhead. About a week before the shooting, friends of Mr. Clyde noticed a change in him that coincided with a tense run-in between a female parks employee and one of the “park rangers.”

After the shooting, Mr. Clyde unloaded his gun, took off his shirt and walked outside, arms raised in surrender, to wait for the police to come, the police said.

“It’s like he’s just a guy on a mission,” Chief Broadhead said. “It was like, mission accomplished.”

Mr. Trosper’s uncle said the family sat in teepees with his body, offering prayers and hopes for his safe passage, before burying him last week. Mr. Goggles’s relatives are still cycling through his room at a hospital in Casper. He can barely speak, may be blind in one eye and may not walk again, relatives said.

Ben Piper, left, hugged Teddy Goggles, grandfather of the injured James Goggles, at a park in Riverton, Wyo. Many of the people who drink in the parks are Native Americans, according to local officials. Ryan Dorgan for The New York Times

The residue of the shooting has also stretched across Riverton and back to the park where a cluster of people — some family, some friends — were drinking in the shade. They had started with mouthwash that morning, but by 3 p.m. had moved on to a plastic quart bottle of vodka.

“We’re all park rangers right here,” said Vincent Lee Yellow Bear, whose two grown children shared shots with him. The conversation wandered: They had known Mr. Goggles — a good guy. They were not homeless, they just did not want to go to their homes. They were angry about the shooting, but said it would not displace them.

“My family will always be here,” Mr. Yellow Bear said. “We ain’t scared here.”

Source: http://nyti.ms/1KA5Xgs

Tribe Seeks Hate Crime Charges After Parks Employee Shot 2 Native Americans, Killing One

Roy Clyde is taken into custody half a block from the shooting.

By Rachelle Blidner

The Northern Arapaho Tribe wants a Wyoming man charged with a hate crime after police say he killed one tribal member and wounded another at a detox center while targeting homeless alcoholics.

Roy Clyde, a 32-year-old parks employee, told authorities he shot Stallone Trooper and James (Sonny) Goggles as they were lying in beds at the Center of Hope in Riverton on Saturday, police said.

Trooper, 29, died at the scene, and Goggles is in serious condition at a nearby hospital. It’s unclear whether either of them was homeless.

Riverton, a town of about 11,000 people in central Wyoming, is surrounded by the Wind River Indian Reservation, home to the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes.

Tribal leaders who plan to meet with federal officials in Washington next week called for an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

“The trend of violence against Indian people in and around Riverton is alarming,” Dean Goggles, chairman of the Northern Arapaho Business Council and cousin of victim Sonny Goggles, said in a statement Tuesday. “It’s our responsibility as tribal leaders to do everything we can to try and stop these crimes of hate.”

Clyde said he lashed out because he was tired of cleaning up after “park rangers” — a term for homeless alcoholics that is often used against Native Americans who drink in area parks — according to police.

He reportedly told investigators he would have killed white people if he thought they were “park rangers.”

The victims “are members of our tribe, they are human beings and they matter to us,” Norman Willow, a member of the business council, said in a statement. “We are sickened by what happened here.”

Sonny Goggles was shot at the detox center and is in serious condition at a hospital.

The Council said it had received a “steady stream of reports about abusive behavior towards native people,” including one about a woman who was shot in the face by a passing car in Riverton in 2013. She was reportedly released from the hospital without treatment.

“Now, another two of our tribal members have been gunned down while in a shelter,” councilmember Richard Brannan said. “I’ve lived here my whole life, and the anti-Indian sentiment seems to be getting worse.”

People need to acknowledge that “racism played a role in this,” just like it did in the murder of nine black people in a Charleston, S.C., church last month, Councilmember Ronald Oldman said.

Roy Clyde, 32, confessed to shooting two men at a substance abuse treatment center because he was tired of homeless people’s alleged behavior in parks, according to cops.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Cheyenne is in contact with local agencies about the investigation, spokesman John R. Powell said.

“If the Department of Justice feels that they have to prosecute that as a hate crime, I don’t think they’ll find an awful lot of opposition,” Riverton Mayor John (Lars) Baker said.

With News Wire Services

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/wyoming-tribe-man-shot-2-charged-hate-crime-article-1.2300063

Fed-Up Park Worker Shot ‘Two Homeless Native Americans’ At Detox Centre

This Saturday, July 18, 2015 photo shows police officers surrounding the suspect in a shooting in Riverton, Wyo. The Wyoming man accused of opening fire at an alcohol detoxification center, killing one man and wounding another, is a parks employee who said he targeted the facility because he was tired of cleaning up after the homeless population, police said Monday. (Tibby McDowell/Riverton Ranger via AP)

The Associated Press

RIVERTON, Wyo. (AP) — A parks employee in a central Wyoming city who said he was incensed by homeless people drinking in parks slipped into a detox center over the weekend and shot two men in the head as they were lying in their beds, killing one and critically wounding the other, authorities charge.

A judge on Monday ordered Roy Clyde, 32, of Riverton held without bond. Clyde is charged with one count of first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder. A preliminary hearing was set for July 29.

Riverton police Capt. Eric Murphy said Monday that Clyde is a 13-year employee of the City of Riverton. Murphy said Clyde called police after the shooting at the Center of Hope facility and reported it. Police arrested him nearby.

Clyde told investigators that he targeted the detox facility because he was tired of cleaning up after homeless people, Murphy said. “And basically he was angry at that, and that’s what precipitated him to go and do this violent act,” Murphy said.

Despite Roy Clyde’s reported complaint, there was no immediate indication that anyone inside the Center of Hope facility — including the victims — was homeless at the time of Saturday’s attack. Moreover, police say the center caters to all segments of the population with addiction problems.

Fed-Up Park Worker ‘Shot Two At Detox Centre’

According to police statement filed in court Monday, Clyde told investigators he had long been considering killing people he referred to as “park rangers.” In Riverton, the term “park rangers” refers to homeless alcoholics — most of them American Indians. Many come to the city from the surrounding Wind River Indian Reservation, where alcohol is illegal, and drink in the parks.

The reservation is home to both the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes. A spokesman for the Northern Arapaho Tribe said Monday that both victims in the shooting, whom authorities have not yet publicly identified, were Northern Arapaho.

Police Det. Scott Peters filed a statement in Fremont County Circuit Court on Monday to support the charges against Clyde.

“Clyde admitted that he had been considering killing people he referred to as ‘park rangers,'” Peters wrote, adding that Clyde stated his decision was not race-based.

“He specifically indicated that if he had encountered white people meeting his criteria, he would have killed them as well,” Peters wrote.

Fremont County Attorney Patrick J. LeBrun declined comment on the case. He said Clyde didn’t yet have an attorney.

According to Murphy, Clyde walked through the back door of the Center of Hope, passed two staff members and went to an area for clients, where he shot the men. As he walked back out, he set down a handgun and was arrested soon thereafter.

Some staff members and clients of the detox center locked themselves in a bathroom when the shooting started, Murphy said.

The center, run by Volunteers of America, caters to anyone with addiction problems. Law enforcement agencies commonly take all sorts of people there who have been abusing alcohol or drugs, Murphy said.

“They have different levels of treatment,” he said. “If they encounter somebody who’s intoxicated, they can take them there for the evening until they sober up.”

A telephone call to the center went unanswered on Monday.

http://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2015/07/20/police-man-held-in-detox-center-shooting-resented-homeless