A Yup’ik Indian woman is in the lead to fill out the term in Alaska’s sole Congressional seat with 80 percent of the vote counted. Votes are being tallied in both a special election and a primary in a regularly scheduled election in Alaska. The special election is to fill the remaining months of the late Congressman Don Young’s term. With 96 percent of the vote in, Mary Peltola, Yup’ik and a Democrat, shows a lead of 6 points over Sarah Palin and almost 10 points over Nick Begich, both Republicans. Peltola has 58,614, or 38.05 percent of the votes. Sarah Palin has 49,190, or 31.93 percent.
The nation’s oldest and largest inter-tribal advocacy organization has “parted ways” with its highest-ranking employee, who had been on the job for barely a year. The National Congress of American Indians disclosed the departure of Dante Desiderio as the organization’s Chief Executive Officer. No explanation was given for the decision. “For almost 80 years, it has been our utmost interest and priority to serve as a leading voice for tribal sovereignty interests and initiatives. To continue to better serve our diverse sovereign Tribal Nations, we have parted ways with Mr. Desiderio,” NCAI said in the statement, which did not use the full name of the now-former employee.
The Olympic legacy of Jim Thorpe was finally restored on July 15 when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced the talented athlete will be reinstated as the sole winner of two events, the pentathlon and decathlon, in the 1912 Games in Stockholm, Sweden. The announcement came on the anniversary of Thorpe’s initial wins. Thorpe was stripped of his Olympic medals in 1913 when his status as an amateur athlete was revoked after it came out he was previously paid to briefly play minor-league baseball. Historians now see the move as a combination of racism and fanatical devotion to amateurism. Upon hearing of the reinstatement, Billy Mills, an Olympic gold medalist and a member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Nation, told the Tulsa World, “I was just so, so, touched and so thrilled. I had happy tears. I just took the moment to enjoy the cry.”
