2024 Sister's Keeper Summit and Training
April 26, 2024
Register now for the 2024 Sister's Keeper Summit in San Diego from May 31–June 2, 2024.
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November is National Native American Heritage Month, an annual celebration of the culture, heritage, and history of American Indians and Alaska Natives.
National Native American Heritage Month is an opportunity for celebration, but it's also an important opportunity to reflect on the dispossession and displacement faced by Indigenous peoples now and in the past, and all the resilience and activism done to ensure the continuance of Indigenous culture and community today.
Efforts to institutionalize a time to honor Indigenous peoples go back over a century. In 1916, the first American Indian Day was declared by the State of New York. Over the course of the 20th Century, a number of states declared similar holidays. In 1990, President George H. W. Bush first issued a proclamation designating November as National Native American Heritage Month.
To celebrate National Native American Heritage Month, AFGE’s honoring AFGE members of Indian descent by telling their stories and saluting them for their contributions to the labor movement and the American public as a whole.
Tim Petoskey is a police officer at the Seattle VA who also served in Air Guard and Army Guard. He currently serves in the Army Reserve as a military intelligence officer. He is also a congressional liaison for AFGE Local 3197 and District 11’s representative to the AFGE Law Enforcement Committee.
Petoskey is a member of the Waganakising Odawa Tribe whose ancestral homelands are the Upper Great Lakes.
Petoskey comes from a military family who moved all over the world. His father was a World War II veteran. His paternal grandfather served in World War I as what we call today a code talker – an American Indian who used his tribal language to send secret communications on the battlefield.
His last name is the name of a city in northern Michigan, which was named after one of his ancestors. ‘Petoskey’ was supposed to be pronounced Be-do-se-gay, but it was mispronounced over time because, as Petoskey explained, throughout the American history people of Indian descent were not favorite, so it was better that people assumed that they were Polish or some other race other than Indian.
The indigenous people have endured so much since the arrival of the English settlers in Jamestown, Va., in 1607. From the massacres of the indigenous people in pursuit of land to the American Indian boarding schools where indigenous children were taken from their families and forced to forsake their Indian names, languages, religion, tribal clothing, this troubled history has made some people critical of Petoskey’s career choice as being part of the dominant culture.
But to Petoskey, his career has allowed him to maintain his heritage and its warrior path. When he swore the oath of office, he did it in both English and Odawa language.
“To join both the active-duty military and then later the Army Reserve was in pursuit of the recognition of my place within a tribal concept,” he explained in this award-winning video produced by the Army.
“As many Americans, I’m not descended solely of Waganakising Odawa people. My dad was dark skin. My mom was clearly Caucasian. Like it or not, we are Americans. In 1924 the government included us in the dynamics. My tribe doesn’t include just Odawa but includes America as a whole,” Petoskey added, referring to the year when Congress enacted the Indian Citizenship Act, granting citizenship to all Native Americans born in the U.S.
Petoskey’s father was one of the indigenous kids taken to a boarding school where he experienced abuse that led to a lifetime of trauma. The boarding schools were intended to destroy their culture, but to Petoskey, they failed.
“When I get up every morning, I offer ‘sema’ or tobacco – and I say a prayer – addressing the spirit of each of those places I turn,” he said. “You can’t explain to someone what it’s like to be Odawa – it’s something you experience, you understand through time. I’m Odawa to my core. My every fiber of being is reflected to me constantly in my culture. I can’t think of doing life any other way.”
Patricia “Trish” Salway is a member of the Blackfeet Tribe located in Browning, MT right outside of Glacier National Park.
Along with being part Blackfeet, Salway is also Cree and Sioux. Her family has lived on the Blackfeet Reservation for decades. Her Grandfather Hugh Monroe has a mountain named in his honor, Rising Wolf Mountain, which is located outside of Glacier in Two Medicine, MT. In her Sioux heritage, she is a distant relative of Sitting Bull, most known in history for his battle with Colonel Custard at the Battle of the Little Big Horn aka Custer’s Last Stand.
Along with her Native American Heritage she is also French Canadian. The Blackfeet Reservation was once known as the Blackfeet Territory or Northern and Southern Piikani which runs through Glacier National Park and up into Canada.
Salway and her parents were born and raised in Browning. She has two brothers and two sisters. Her younger brother still lives on the Blackfeet Reservation and is the Local Union President at the Indian Health Service in Browning.
She continued with a new generation with two daughters and a son, her oldest daughter was also born in Browning. Her fiancé is also of Indian descent and belongs to the Navajo Tribe.
Salway has been an employee of the VA Montana Health Care System for 22 years and a member of AFGE for the last 13 years. She has served as Local 3570 secretary for the last six years and has been treasurer for the last three.
“I’m very proud to be Native American,” she said.
Register now for the 2024 Sister's Keeper Summit in San Diego from May 31–June 2, 2024.
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A recent AFGE town hall in Hawaii was a huge success as locals, staff, and members of Congress joined forces to make the federal government a better place to work.
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The Federal-Postal Coalition, which includes AFGE, is asking the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to increase uniform allowance for federal workers.
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