The Michigan Daily - Monday, March 28, 1994 - 3
*Pow wow
bnngs song,
dance to
Ann Arbor
*By SAM T. DUDEK
DAILY STAFF REPORTER
Crisler Arena was filled this week-
end with the sounds of drums beating
and people cheering, but there was
not a basketball in sight.
Hundreds gathered for the 22nd
annual Ann Arbor Pow Wow, a three-
day celebration of Native American
culture, song and dance.
The pow wow, sponsored by the
Native American Student Associa-
tion (NASA) and Minority Students
Services (MSS), is called the "Dance
for Mother Earth." The annual event
was highlighted by colorful dancers
and rhythmic singers from all Native
American tribes.
Dancers and singers from Michi-
gan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Okla-
boma, Ontario and every other corner
of North America participated in this
year's event, which began Friday and
concluded last night.
Along with these performers and
competitors, Native craftspeople filled
the Crisler corridors, selling authentic
arts and crafts.
The pow wow began with the
Grand Entry. Dressed in colorful and
decorative outfits, 354 dancers en-
tered the arena dancing to the sounds
of the 17 drum groups that circled the
dancing floor.
After the entry, songs were sung to
honor the flags, to unite different tribes
and to honor Native American veter-
ans.
President James J. Duderstadt was
on hand to take part in the festivities.
Speaking in the pow wow's opening
ceremonies, he thanked MSS Native
American Rep. Michael Dashner and
NASA, the event's organizers.
Duderstadt also reminded the
Critics of Clinton
call aide's angry
reaction 'normal'
SARAH WHITING/Daily
A dancer from the pow wow shows his dancing prowess Friday night. The pow wow took place over the weekend.
crowd of the debt the University owes
to Native Americans for the founda-
tion of the institution.
As mentioned in the pow wow
program, the University was estab-
lished in 1817 on land donated to the
state by the Ojibwe, Odawa,
Podewatomi and Wyandotte peoples.
The dancers, performing both in
exhibitions and competitions, dis-
played their spectacular skill with
exciting and rhythmic dances as a
means of celebration and worship.
"The dancing was so lively," said
Rachel Freeman, a first-year LSA stu-
dent. "It was fun to watch.
"I loved it," she went on to say. "I
love the Native American dancing and
their uniforms. I think it was a great
experience."
Along with a dancing competition,
the drum groups participated in their
own contest. The groups circled around
their drums, singing traditional Native
American songs, to which the dancers
performed.
"I was totally intrigued by every-
thing there," said LSA sophomore
Cathleen Eckholm. "The vendors, the
dancers, the songs and the way they
dressed was all beautiful."
After all the dancing was complete,
prizes were awarded to the top five
dancers in each category. Categories
were divided by age and style. Once the
prizes were awarded, winners and non-
winners alike danced one final dance to
conclude the,"Dance for Mother Earth."
Dashner, exhausted from the three-
day gathering he coordinated, said he
was pleased with this year's pow wow.
"I thought it went great," he said.
THE WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON - The leading
Republican critic of President Clinton's
involvement in Whitewater yesterday
said the angry White House reaction to
the appointment of a partisan Republi-
can to investigate civil cases for the
Resolution Trust Corp. was "pretty
natural" and too much should not be
made of it.
Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) said it
would be "premature to draw any ex-
traordinary conclusions" about a phone
call senior White House adviser George
Stephanopoulos made in February to
Joshua Steiner, chief of staff at the
Treasury Department. Sources have
described Stephanopoulos as angrily
asking Steiner how the RTC came to
name former federal prosecutor Jay B.
Stephens to investigate possible civil
cases against Madison Guaranty Sav-
ings & Loan and whether that hiring
could be reversed.
Stephens, aformer Republican U.S.
attorney for the District, of Columbia,
was sharply critical of Clinton when
the president fired him as part of the
removal of all the U.S. attorneys who
were appointed by the Bush adminis-
tration. Stephens also has considered
running for political office.
He was hired by the RTC in early
February, and among the cases the
agency is examining for a possible civil
action is the Rose Law Firm's repre-
sentation of Madison before Arkansas
regulators. Hillary Rodham Clinton,
then a partner at Rose and a partner in
the Whitewater Land Development Co.
with her then-governor husband and
James B. McDougal, who owned Madi-
son, asserted to the state regulators that
Madison was on the road to financial
health. It later collapsed, requiring a
$60 million taxpayer bailout.
Leach, the senior Republican on
the House Banking Committee who is
leading the GOP charge onWhitewater,
told NBC's "Meet the Press" yesterday
that the Stephanopoulos phone call
"may have been a mistake" but he
added, "I hope we don't make too
much of this part of the story."
Instead, Leach pressed for a full
congressional investigation of the rela-
tionship between Madison and
Whitewater. Leach has maintained that
Whitewater and Madison were so in-
tertwined that the Clintons ended up
with financial benefits from Madison
even as it was collapsing and their
Whitewater land development was fail-
ing. The president maintains he lost
$46,000 on Whitewater.
Leach's benign view of the
Stephanopoulos conversation, first re-
ported Saturday in The Washington
Post, was backed by House Speaker
Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) and, per-
haps unexpectedly, by another former
official, Marlin Fitzwater, the press
secretary to President George Bush.
"I have to admit that if you stand in
George Stephanopoulos' shoes, it
would be a little difficult not to be
surprised and outraged by that appoint-
ment" of Stephens, Fitzwater told a C-
SPAN interviewer. Fitzwater called the
angry reaction "pretty normal," echo-
ing White House Counsel Lloyd
Cutler's terminology - "perfectly
natural" - in describing the move.
Stephanopoulos has said he called
Steiner, a longtime friend, to ask how
the appointment had ocurred and to
vent some anger. When Steiner told
him that nothing could be done about
appointments by an independent regu-
latory agency, Stephanopoulos said,
that was the end of the discussion.
"I don't think there is any evidence
they tried to get rid of Jay Stephens,',
Foley said yesterday, adding, as Cutler
had said, that it would be "natural" for
the White House to be concerned about
the appointment. In retrospect, he said,
White House aides may have failed to
display "good political judgment" in
their handling of the unfolding
Whitewater problem, but he lamented
an atmosphere in which virtually ev-
erything the White House does on the'
issue has become suspect.
Foley said he expects the'House
will hold hearings on Whitewater as
early as May, and Leach said, "I think
this query should proceed forthrightly
and hopefully can be put behind us in a
month or two."
White House officials have been
resigned to a more drawn-out process:
going into summer and would be ec-s
static, at this point, to have Whitewater
behind them in a month or two. The
reports of contacts between White
House and Treasury officials over the
issue produced a series of subpoenas
by Robert B. Fiske Jr., the special coun-
sel named to conduct the Whitewater
inquiry.
Treasury officials, plus eight White
House officials, have appeared before
Fiske's grandjury in the last two weeks.
After weeks of resistance, Democratic
leaders in both Houses have agreed to
hearings on the issue.
Yesterday, Leach adhered to his
previous assessment that the:
Whitewater affair is not about impeach-
ment and should not be about criminal
charges against the Clintons.
Journalist discusses his
experiences in S. Africa
CRY BUNNY
* By MARIA KOVAC
DAILY STAFF REPORTER
Bruce Finley is taking a break from
the pressures of a journalism career,
but he's not taking it easy.
The Northwestern graduate who has
worked at various publications across
the country, including the Denver Post,
is spending this year through a fellow-
ship at the University as a journalist in
O residence at the Business school.
"The purpose is to let (journalists)
study and reflect for ayear and develop
other interests," Finley said.
Finley's main interest has become
the people of South Africa. He made a
presentation Friday at the School of
Education on his experiences while in
Africa. The small, informal lecturewas
part of a series sponsored by the South
African Initiative Office.
During Finley's two trips to Africa
in 1991 and 1992, his goal was to "use
journalistic interview techniques" to
interview ordinary South African
people, he said.
Finley said he believes that "ac-
cessing the situation in South Africa
will depend on understanding ordinary
citizens."
"The real gap in our knowledge (of
South Africa) is in the unseen, un-
'The real gap in our
knowledge (of South
Africa) is in the
unseen, unheard
individual.'
Bruce Finley
journalist in residence
heard individual,"Finley said.
Through all his interviews, Finley
claims he has found several common
threads running through the South Af-
rican people.
He said he sees "an untapped entre-
preneurial energy" in the people. He
shared slides of the small business ven-
dors in the poor streets of Soweto as
evidence of such energy. Finley also
notices "a hunger for education."
He told of a South African family
saving all the money they could to send
their children to private schools in
Pretoria in order to prepare for univer-
sity educations.
Finley's lecture ended with com-
ments and questions from the small
gathering in attendance which proved
to hold mixed reactions about his pre-
sentation.
JOE WESTRATE/Daiiy
A mother attempts to have her nervous child sit on the Easter Bunny's lap
at Briarwood Mall yesterday.
McPhail speaks to local high school students on women's issues at 'U' Dental school
By PATRICIA MONTGOMERY
DAILY STAFF REPORTER
Even though she lost the 1994 De-
troitmayorial election, Sharon McPhail
says the race is not over.
McPhail had not decided if she will
run in the 1998 mayoral elections, but
she said she believes a Black woman
should be in the race, she told a group
of Washtenaw County high school stu-
dents Saturday morning at the Univer-
sity Dental school.
The presenters of the event, the
leadership conference and workshops,
were the "Sistahs Leading The Next
Generation" and The University
Mentorship Office.
Devon Archer, the coordinator of
Saturday's function said, "The New
Leadership Project is a conference to
get high school students involved
(more) in leadership positions, par-
ticularly, public policy. What we want
them to come away with today is to
envision themselves as leaders and to
gain some leadership skills."
Archer said she has spoken with
Lester Monts, director of the Office of
Academic and Multicultural Initiatives,
and has urged Monts to "institutional-
ize" the New Leadership Project to
make the program a yearly event.
African American women should
run for government office because of
discrimination in the criminal justice
system, McPhail said. This belief was
one of her reasons for running for mayor
of Detroit.
"Detroit's debt is $2.25 billion,"
McPhail said. Reducing Detroit's defi-
cit, she said, will be difficult because
the handling of the debt is like "a ship
without a compass."
She said former Mayor Coleman
Young "needed to be replaced because
Coleman wasn't concerned with
women's issues like child care, but he
was a good man."
"Archer's downfall is promising
everybody everything," she warned.
Already politically active in their
high schools, the women at the confer-
ence were selected either by their aca-
demic counselors or their Black Stu-
dent Union advisers. During work-
shops, students shared their aspirations
and identified with their heroines.
Pioneer sophomore Sonja Jordan
said, "I'm not going to think solely of
myself but think of others by reaching
out to them."
McPhail wasted no time in getting
the message over to her audience. She
compared widespread institutional dis-
crimination to the "big block."
"Getting past the big block," she
said, "the block that keeps us from
doing things (because) we have been
taught 'you can't be the dentist, the
editor, the mayor."'
She criticized the media for stereo-
typing Black women. Even though
Black women have taken a larger role
in the media recently, "historically the
media has been less pleasant," she said.
In addition, McPhail said, "More
needs to be done about women getting
the least from their efforts, the most
abused group of people in society who
have the deepest feeling for others and
research shows that!"
McPhail's pivotal point forAfrican
American women is "don't be self-
aggrandizing"-once a Black woman
reaches success she should help others,
particularly other Black women, to suc-
ceed.
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