I have been in Washington, DC this past week. I got home on Saturday and attended the ceremonial dance in East Lake. It was good to see many people in attendance.

I was in DC on behalf of Women Empowering Women for Indian Nations and I along with two other board members visited offices of the National Indian Education Association (NIEA), National Indian Gaming Association (NIGA), Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Interior. On Wednesday evening, I was able to attend a Democratic National Committee event with Tony Bennett (I left my heart in San Francisco) and most importantly our President Obama was in attendance and gave a speech. That was an exciting evening.

On our visits, Lillian Sparks, Executive Director, of NIEA stated that language revitalization is a priority of NIEA. I mentioned Ojibwe.com but she had not heard of that program. I plan to provide this information to Mary Hermes.

At the meeting with the Department of Interior, WEWIN's objective was to talk about women-owned businesses. What was interesting about this meeting, is that in the mist of talking business, the Chief of this economic development division start talking about the Smith River tribe from California. This tribe was in to visit recently and wanted economic development dollars to purchase Rosetta for their language. Apparently, this tribe has three speakers left and they want to save the language. Wow! I was shocked that this chief would talk about this when we were there to talk women owned businesses. Then of course I had to talk about Ojibwe.com (not that I know any details about it) but will pass on the information to Mary Hermes. I hope that the Smith River Tribe finds a way to save the language before they lose any of their three speakers.