Native American

Fashion is fickle. Just ask Pendleton Woolen Mills.Now that the venerable company is grappling with how to make its biggest product line, women's wear, seem more fashionable, its oldest product, Native American-style ceremonial blankets, are all the rage."

Call Christopher Columbus a hero and you'd better watch out. Evaluating what's happened since he stumbled onto the sands of San Salvador 500 years ago has turned the grade-school myths upside down.His conquest led to greed, exploitation and mayhem, said Robert H. Chambers, president of Western Maryland College. At the Westminster college, a town-meeting style exchange was held yesterday featuring historians, religious scholars, an anthropologist, attorneys and activists.Each summarized an ethnic viewpoint on the arrival of Columbus and other Europeans.

Los Angeles -- A new daily show on CNN for model Christie Brinkley. A new program on superstation WTBS featuring news for kids. An entire new cable channel devoted exclusively to cartoons. And an enormous commitment of programming about Native Americans on all of his networks.Ted Turner, the king of cable TV, regaled the press with descriptions of of new programming and developments in his cable empire. His holdings are now so vast the session lasted more than four hours.And Turner, once mocked by CBS in his bid to take over that network, has become so dominant and secure in his new stature as TV industry leader that he even had some kind and surprising words for the competition at CBS, NBC and ABC."

The fifth-grade students at Freedom Elementary feasted like their Pilgrim and Native American forebears yesterday.Their costumes were paper, and the cuisine was heated in crock pots, but the children easily created the conviviality of shared Thanksgiving meals.The celebration began with "The Unthankful Pilgrim," a drama of a settler disheartened by harsh winters and the loss of family."But he became thankful when his friends reminded him of all he had," said Josh Lapps, who played the lead.

MINNEAPOLIS -- The tomahawk chop is not popular in these parts, where Native Americans do not take kindly to the appropriation and misrepresentation of their heritage. The Atlanta Braves and their fans might mean no disrespect, but they were the focus of a protest rally held outside the Metrodome before last night's opening game of the 88th World Series.America's baseball team has become a political football. The mayor of Minneapolis, Don Fraser, has joined Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., and a coalition of civil rights organizations in denouncing the Braves organization for fostering a demeaning stereotype of Indians.

USA Today's Barbara Reynolds will moderate a round-table discussion on the contributions and costs of Columbus' voyage to America Nov. 24 at Western Maryland College.The town meeting-style exchange, "After 500 Years: What Have We Learned?", is sponsored by the United Church of Christ's National Priority Working Group on the Integrity of Creation, Justice and Peace. It will begin at 1 p.m. in Alumni Hall and is open to the public. Seating will be limited.Opening remarks will be by Dr. Robert H. Chambers, president of Western Maryland College.

The National Museum of the American Indian, whose opening this week is expected to draw the largest number of Indians ever to visit the nation's capital, was positioned to face the rising sun, in accordance with Native American traditions. The museum also faces the U.S. Capitol, which is not in accordance with anything at all. In that old building, less than a block away, as recently as the 1950s - some might argue even later - laws were still being passed to strip Indians of their land and suppress their culture, the same culture that the new, government-supported museum has been built to preserve.

The 250th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's birth Tuesday will mark a moment of appropriate commemoration and sober reflection, and it should, but mainly because of the truths, not the myths, of the man and what they mean to us today.Most Americans know Jefferson as the principal writer of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States. They are familiar with the beautiful memorial dedicated to him in Washington in 1943 at a moment when half the world struggled fervently against tyranny.

Native Americans mistreated againOnce again, among many, many times, we are walking ''The Trail of Broken Promises'' made by the federal government to Native American people.The very idea of the Democratic National Committee presuming to ''coerce, blackmail or beg'' funds from the most destitute and economically suppressed peoples of this otherwise rich society is disgusting, to put it mildly.It is abhorrent when lands, already belonging to the tribes, are held up as the bribe.I believe that our president was innocent of this pressurized tactic leading to robbery of the tribe's welfare fund to support a political ''trillion dollar'' industry.

WINDS BLEW warm across the field, and the skies were bright Dec. 1, when fourth-graders from Running Brook Elementary School put up a 20-foot tepee on school grounds.It would have been easy to imagine that the children were Native Americans from a Plains tribe, instead of Columbia youngsters studying history.The tepee-building project was part of a cultural arts program, "Journeys Into American Indian Territory," sponsored by Running Brook's PTA.The Howard County Arts Council and Wilde Lake Village Board provided additional funding for the project.