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his court case may bear watching: Environmental groups are suing two government agencies to have the rusty patch bumble bee declared an endangered species. It’s worth watching because the issue could have some impact on how farmers here in the Midwest work their fields. Bees in general have notably been on the decline in recent years for reasons that are not entirely clear. But the bumble bee has been particularly hard hit: It was reported in Reuters that the species numbers have declined by about 95 percent when com- pared to other bee species. Environmentalists say the reason for the bumble bee’s decline can be traced in large part to farming practices such as the reduc- tion of plant habitat as farmers increasingly convert what was once pasture land to crop production, and to the use of destruc- tive pesticides. Urbanization and parasites are also cited as fac- tors. As pollinators, bees play an essential role in the cycle of plant life. Without them working in our fields, we could face very seri- ous food shortages, according to The Weather Channel. Bees are important in pollinating everything from field beans to tomatoes. “… (T)here’s a long, long list of crops that if we didn’t have these bees, we would not have these in our diet,” according to British bumble bee expert Dave Goulson. What could this lawsuit do if it’s successful? Could it mean that more lands may be left in pasture in order to give the bees habitat to survive and thrive? Could it produce new regulations about the use of pesticides, which some critics say are also impacting honey bees and monarch butterflies? Could it also impact the use of herbicides? One environmental website noted that the rise of genetically modified crops has al- lowed farmers to increase their use of herbicides that kill un- wanted plant life that are essential to bee survival. None of this is a given, and a lot must happen before this law- suit is successful and bees are afforded some protection. But it should remind people how important bees are to the foundation of agriculture — and what some widely used practices may be doing to these creatures, and ultimately, to us. In the zeal to open up more and more land for production, farmers may be doing more harm than good. And if the govern- ment sides with that argument, the trend may be forced to slow down — and some mindsets may be forced to change. kmh T HE P RESS D AKOTAN THE DAKOTAS’ OLDEST NEWSPAPER | FOUNDED 1861 Yankton Media, Inc., 319 Walnut St., Yankton, SD 57078 Wednesday, 5.21.14 ON THE WEB: www.yankton.net VIEWS PAGE: [email protected] PRESS DAKOTAN PAGE 4 views OPINION Protecting Bees: Could It Sting? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Romans 6:3. Portals of Prayer, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis FROM THE BIBLE By The Associated Press Today is Wednesday, May 21, the 141st day of 2014. There are 224 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On May 21, 1924, in a case that drew much notoriety, 14-year-old Bobby Franks was murdered in a “thrill killing” carried out by University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb (Bobby’s cousin). Both men received life sentences; Loeb was killed by a fellow prison inmate in 1936 while Leopold was paroled in 1958, dying in 1971. On this date: In 1471, King Henry VI of England died in the Tower of London at age 49. In 1542, Spanish explorer Her- nando de Soto died while searching for gold along the Mississippi River. In 1881, Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross. In 1892, the opera “Pagliacci,” by Ruggero Leoncavallo, premiered in Milan, Italy. In 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh landed his Spirit of St. Louis near Paris, completing the first solo air- plane flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 33 1/2 hours. In 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean as she landed in Northern Ireland, about 15 hours after leaving Newfoundland. In 1941, a German U-boat sank the American merchant steamship SS Robin Moor in the South Atlantic after the ship’s passengers and crew were allowed to board lifeboats. In 1956, the United States ex- ploded the first airborne hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. In 1959, the musical “Gypsy,” in- spired by the life of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, opened on Broadway with Ethel Merman starring as Mama Rose. In 1972, Michelangelo’s Pieta, on display at the Vatican, was damaged by a hammer-wielding man who shouted he was Jesus Christ. In 1982, during the Falklands War, British amphibious forces landed on the beach at San Carlos Bay. In 1991, former Indian Prime Min- ister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated during national elections by a suicide bomber. Ten years ago: The U.N. Security Council approved a peacekeeping force of 5,600 troops for Burundi to help the African nation finally end a 10-year civil war. Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors Corp., struggling to survive, announced it would cut 11,000 jobs. Five years ago: A day after the Senate voted to keep the Guan- tanamo prison camp open, President Barack Obama made his case for closing the facility, denouncing what he called “fear-mongering” by political opponents; Obama made his case moments before former Vice Presi- dent Dick Cheney delivered his own address defending the Bush adminis- tration’s creation of the camp. A 66- year-old woman with terminal cancer became the first person to die under Washington state’s new assisted sui- cide law. One year ago: Former IRS Com- missioner Douglas Shulman told the Senate Finance Committee he first learned in the spring of 2012 that agents had improperly targeted politi- cal groups that vehemently opposed President Barack Obama’s policies, saying he decided to let the inspector general look into the matter. Singer Kellie Pickler and pro partner Derek Hough were named “Dancing With the Stars” champions. Today’s Birthdays: Rhythm-and- blues singer Ron Isley (The Isley Brothers) is 73. Rock musician Hilton Valentine (The Animals) is 71. Actor Richard Hatch is 69. Musician Bill Champlin is 67. Singer Leo Sayer is 66. Actress Carol Potter is 66. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., is 63. Actor Mr. T is 62. Music producer Stan Lynch is 59. Actor Judge Reinhold is 57. Actor-di- rector Nick Cassavetes is 55. Actor Brent Briscoe is 53. Actress Lisa Edel- stein is 48. Actress Fairuza Balk is 40. Rock singer-musician Mikel Jollett (Airborne Toxic Event) is 40. Rapper Havoc (Mobb Deep) is 40. Actress Ashlie Brillault is 27. Actor Scott Leav- enworth is 24. Actress Sarah Ramos is 23. Thought for Today: “If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.” — Carl Schurz, American politician (1829-1906). ON THIS DATE MANAGERS Gary L. Wood Publisher Michele Schievelbein Advertising Director Tonya Schild Business Manager Michael Hrycko Circulation Director Tera Schmidt Classified Manager Kelly Hertz Editor James D. Cimburek Sports Editor Beth Rye New Media Director Kathy Larson Composing Manager Israel Montalvo District Manager Published Daily Monday-Saturday Periodicals postage paid at Yankton, South Dakota, under the act of March 3, 1979. Weekly Dakotian established June 6, 1861. Yankton Daily Press and Dakotian established April 26, 1875. 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I come across this version of the very first Sweat Lodge Ceremony or “Inipi” in our Dakotah language. Here from “Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions” as told to Richard Erdoes by John (Fire) Lame Deer is that story. “Inipi — Grandfather’s Breath: In speaking of sacred things, I will tell you first about the Inipi — the sweat bath. I do this because we always purify our- selves in the sweat house before start- ing one of our ceremonies. Whether we celebrate the sun dance or a vision quest, the Inipi comes first. It could be that the Inipi was our first rite, that all the other ceremonies came later. We have an old tale which makes many of us believe that this is so. It is the story of Inyan Hoksi — the Stone Boy. “The tale begins with a young girl who had five brothers. They lived together. The girl did the cooking, made robes out of hides and stayed with her brothers all through the seasons. Each day the five brothers went out to hunt. They fol- lowed the game. As soon as one place was hunted out they moved their tipi to another one. One day, they came to a creek which flowed through a canyon. This place made them feel strange and uneasy, though they did not know why. The brothers went out to hunt in the morn- ing, each one choosing his own path, but when night fell only four came back. They did not know what happened to the one who did not re- turn. Four went out the next day, but only three came back. They were scared, but still they had to hunt if they wanted to eat. Every time they went out one brother failed to come back. “And so the girl was left alone. She did not know what to do. She had nobody to bring her food or to protect her. She didn’t even know how to pray to the spirits for help, because this hap- pened long ago, before the people had cere- monies or ways of worship. They did not dance or have a pipe then. “The girl did not want to go on living alone. She went to the top of the hill and cried. She picked up a good-sized, round stone and swal- lows it, thinking: ‘This will kill me.’ As soon as she swallowed that rock she felt at peace. She drank a little water and at once the stone began to move within her. It made her feel happy. She was pregnant, though she did not know what child-bearing was. After four days she gave birth to a boy. “This Stone Boy, Inyan Hoksi, grew fast. In one week he grew as much as others do in one year. His mother would not let him go far, because she did not want lose him as she had lost her brothers. They lived on herbs and roots. One day Stone Boy made a bow and arrow. He took a sharp stone and chipped into a barbed point, which he fitted to the arrow shaft. This was the first stone arrow point. Up to then hunters had used only pointed sticks hardened in fire. “When Stone Boy’s mother saw this bow and arrow she started to weep. He asked, ‘Why do you cry?’ She told him, ‘I do not like these things, because now you will go out and hunt and never come back,’ and she told him of his five uncles who had not returned. He said, ‘Fix me a pair of moccasins and some food, I must go and find them.’ She cried, ‘But if you don’t come back what will I do?’ He only smiled at her. ‘I will come back with my uncles.’ “He started out early next morning. In the evening he smelled smoke. He followed the smoke and came to a tipi before which an old ugly women was sitting. Next to her, propped up against her tipi, were five large bundles. She in- vited him to stay and gave him some meat to eat. When it was dark he wanted to lie down and sleep, but the old woman said, ‘I have a back- ache. I wish you would rub my back or, better still, walk on it. That will make me feel better.’ Stone Boy walked up and down on the huge woman’s back and felt something sharp sticking out of her backbone like a spear. He told himself: ‘This is what she used to kill my uncles.’ He jumped high into the air and came down hard on the old woman, breaking her neck. “He built a big fire, threw the old witch in and burned her to ashes. He looked at the five large bundles and thought: ‘Could these be the bodies of my uncles?’ He felt the presence of spirits, heard their voices. They told him to build a little lodge of willow sticks and hides and put the five bundles inside a circle, to put red-hot stones from the fire into the middle of it, to take water in an animal skin bag and pour it over the rocks.” The conclusion of this story of the first Inipi among our people in next week’s Rez of the Story. Doksha (later) ... The Rez Of The Story A Sweat Lodge Story Vince TWO EAGLES BY ROBERT B. REICH Tribune Content Agency According to a report released earlier this month in the widely respected health research journal The Lancet, the United States now ranks 60th out of 180 countries on maternal deaths oc- curring during pregnancy and childbirth. To put it bluntly, for every 100,000 births in America last year, 18.5 women died. That’s com- pared to 8.2 women who died during pregnancy and birth in Canada, 6.1 in Britain, and only 2.4 in Iceland. A woman giving birth in America is more than twice as likely to die as a woman in Saudi Arabia or China. You might say international comparisons should be taken with a grain of salt because of difficulties of getting accurate measurements across nations. Maybe China hides the true ex- tent of its maternal deaths. But Canada and Britain? Even if you’re still skeptical, consider that our rate of maternal death is heading in the wrong di- rection. It’s risen over the past decade and is now nearly the highest in a quarter century. In 1990, the maternal mortality rate in Amer- ica was 12.4 women per 100,000 births. In 2003, it was 17.6. Now it’s 18.5. That’s not a measurement error, because we’ve been measuring the rate of maternal death in the United States the same way for decades. By contrast, the rate has been dropping in most other nations. In fact, we’re one of just eight nations in which it’s been rising. The oth- ers that are heading in the wrong direction with us are not exactly a league we should be proud to be a member of. They include Afghanistan, El Salvador, Belize and South Sudan. China was ranked 116 in 1990. Now it’s moved up to 57. Even if China’s way of measuring mater- nal mortality isn’t to be trusted, China is going in the right direction. We ranked 22 in 1990. Now, as I’ve said, we’re down to 60th place. Something’s clearly wrong. Some say more American women are dying in pregnancy and childbirth because American girls are becoming pregnant at younger and younger ages, where pregnancy and birth can pose greater dangers. This theory might be convincing if there were data to support it. But contrary to the stereotype of the pregnant young teenager, the biggest rise in pregnancy-related deaths in America has oc- curred in women 20-24 years old. Consider that in 1990, 7.2 women in this age group died for every 100,000 live births. By 2013, the rate was 14 deaths in this same age group -- almost double the earlier rate. Researchers aren’t sure what’s happening, but they’re almost unanimous in pointing to a lack of access to health care, coupled with rising levels of poverty. Some American women are dying during preg- nancy and childbirth from health problems they had before they became pregnant but worsened because of the pregnancies -- such as diabetes, kidney disease and heart disease. The real problem, in other words, was they didn’t get adequate health care before they be- came pregnant. Other women are dying because they didn’t have the means to prevent a pregnancy they shouldn’t have had, or they didn’t get the prena- tal care they needed during their pregnancies. In other words, a different sort of inadequate health care. One clue: African-American mothers are more than three times as likely to die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth than their white coun- terparts. The data tell the story: A study by the Roo- sevelt Institute shows that U.S. states with high poverty rates have maternal death rates 77 per- cent higher than states with lower levels of poverty. Women with no health insurance are four times more likely to die during pregnancy or in childbirth than women who are insured. What do we do about this? Yes, of course, poor women (and the men who made them preg- nant) have to take more personal responsibility for their behavior. But this tragic trend is also a clear matter of public choice. Many of these high-poverty states are among the 21 that have so far refused to expand Medi- caid, even though the federal government will cover 100 percent of the cost for the first three years and at least 90 percent thereafter. So as the sputtering economy casts more and more women into near poverty, they can’t get the health care they need. Several of these same states have also cut family planning, restricted abortions and shut- tered women’s health clinics. Ideology is trumping the health needs of mil- lions of Americans. Let’s be perfectly clear: These policies are lit- erally killing women. Robert Reich is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. His new film, “In- equality for All,” is now out on iTunes, DVD and On Demand. Robert Reich US Women ‘Endangered’? Good Find! Tom Johnson, Yankton Thanks to whomever found my checkbook lost in the Yank- ton Mall and returned to the Mall Office. Again thank you for your honesty and good deed. The PRESS & DAKOTAN encourages its readers to write let- ters to the editor, and it asks that a few simple guidelines be followed. n Please limit letters to 300 words or less. Letters should deal with a single subject, be of general interest and state a specific point of view. Letters are edited with brevity, clarity and newspaper style in mind. n In the sense of fairness and professionalism, the PRESS & DAKOTAN will accept no letters attacking private individuals or busi- nesses. n Specific individuals or entities addressed in letters may be given the opportunity to read the letter prior to publication and be allowed to answer the letter in the same issue. n Only signed letters with writer’s full name, address and daytime phone number for verification will be accepted. 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