American Indian activist Robideau dies at 61
February 20, 2009 by Neerdaels
Filed under Indigenous News
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American Indian activist Robideau dies at 61
Friday, 20 February 2009 18:04
By The Associated Press
PORTLAND — Robert Robideau, an American Indian activist who was acquitted of
killing two FBI agents in a 1975 shootout in South Dakota, has died. He was 61.
Robideau had been living in Barcelona, Spain, where authorities said that his
death Tuesday may have been related to seizures caused by shrapnel left in his
head from an accidental explosion.
Robideau, a Portland native, was the cousin of Leonard Peltier and a member of
the American Indian Movement who had occupied the reservation town of Wounded
Knee, S.D., for 71 days in 1973, two years before the shootout.
His son, Michael, told The Oregonian that Robideau attended Roosevelt High
School and received a degree in cultural anthropology from Portland State
University.
The newspaper said that Robideau left for South Dakota in the early 1970s with
several family members, including Peltier, to join AIM and its protests against
poverty and corruption on tribal reservations.
In June 1975, two FBI agents followed a man wanted in the theft of a pair of
cowboy boots onto the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The agents soon came under
heavy rifle fire and were killed.
The FBI identified Peltier as a suspect in the shooting and placed him on their
most wanted list.
Bill would move Hoh Indians to higher ground
February 2, 2009 by Neerdaels
Filed under Northwest / Coastal
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By Kim Murphy
Los Angeles Times
HOH INDIAN RESERVATION — If anything is a certainty on the Hoh reservation, it is rain.
Blinding sheets, gentle showers, a slow drizzle in the trees: It comes in different forms almost every day. The Hoh Rain Forest in the Olympic Peninsula gets more precipitation than anywhere in the continental United States, up to 14 feet a year.
Floods happen so often that the wood-plank structure housing the tribe’s administrative offices is permanently surrounded by sandbags, as are several buildings nearby. Half-a-dozen homes on the reservation have been abandoned or washed away by the constant flooding, not to mention the occasional tsunami.