Tribes: a new era: from economic development to health care and family services, Native Americans are making a better life for themselves.

• Author: Lohmer, Josh

At a school on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana, the students had just received computers but didn't know what to call them. This is no ordinary elementary school. It is an immersion center called Nizipuhwahsin--"real speak" in the Blackfeet language--where students learn Piegan, the language of their ancestors. Virtually dormant for generations, Piegan never developed a word for computer.

Piegan is a descriptive language, explains instructor Rosella Many Bears, so she and her fellow teachers listened to the students chatter in their native tongue about the computers. Based on the kids' observations, a Piegan word--Aikaamsinaki--was born. It means "the thing that writes fast."

Like the Nizipuhwahsin students, tribes across the country are rebuilding their nations and, in the process, deciding again for themselves what it means to be Cherokee, Hopi, Mohawk, Osage--identities that until recently have been shaped by centuries of violence, heartbreak and neglect.

"Prior to the 1970s and 1980s, when tribes really began governing themselves, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs dominated reservations with antiquated and paternalistic systems," says Jacqueline Johnson Pata, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians.

Since then, says Pata, the tribes have been building up their capacity in just about every area, from economic development and social services to health care and education.

"I have seen amazing growth over the last decade and am very optimistic about the future," she says.

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The picture varies from reservation to reservation, but overall, the tribes' resurgence has been dramatic. Since 1990, the population in Indian Country has increased by more than 25 percent. Poverty remains high but has dropped by more than one-fifth thanks to falling unemployment rates and a 30 percent rise in incomes.

Such progress is evident in the Pacific Northwest, where the extraordinary strides three tribes have made in the last half-century signal what tomorrow might look like for America's native nations

SIGN OF WHAT'S TO COME

Standing on the bank of the Nisqually River, Billy Frank Jr. waves to a pair of fishermen cruising by in aluminum boats. They wheel around in tandem, cutting parallel arcs in the swift, milky Nisqually, which runs west from Mount Rainier to the southern Puget Sound.

"They never whip around like that to say hello to me," jokes Frank's 26-year-old son Willie as he pulls on orange hip boots, preparing to do some fishing.

Willie's dad is a legend in this area. Without him, Native Americans probably wouldn't have the right to fish these waters. Thanks to his leadership and a group of local tribes, the rivers, the salmon and the Indians--an intertwined trio--are making a comeback.

"We just can't keep going on and on as our natural resources...