August 30, 2010
RIVERTON–As a child in California, Helsha Acuña was so sensitive about her Native American heritage—her father was Apache, her mother Aleut—that she sometimes tried to pass herself off as Italian. But the racism she encountered was rarely personal. For that, she testified in federal court, she had to come to Riverton.
Fresh from graduate work at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Acuña moved to Riverton in the mid-1990s, her daughter and two horses in tow, to teach Native American Studies at Central Wyoming College. She was thrilled when the owners of a nearby ranch, where she had arranged to board her horses, invited her to live in a trailer home on the property in exchange for caretaking duties. But Acuña’s relationship with the couple quickly soured. She was still unpacking her things when the husband stopped by with the news.
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August 12, 2010
Lander—In an important Wyoming civil rights case, a federal judge rejected two voting schemes proposed by Fremont County as perpetuating “separation, isolation, and racial polarization in the county.”
Instead, U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson, of Cheyenne, ordered the county to provide for district election of county commissioners along lines proposed by members of the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes. The tribal plan includes one district that is largely Native American.
Judge Johnson’s Tuesday, August 10, order marked a clear victory for tribal plaintiffs in the 2005 voting rights case. The case is one in a series of lawsuits claiming discrimination against minorities, including Native Americans living on reservations Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming, under Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act.
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