Julie Willson
Serving the communities in Stephenson County
VOL. 87 • NO. 23
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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2, 2021
Native American author, playwright shares knowledge, spreads understanding By Margaret Plevak
CORRESPONDENT
PHOTO SUBMITTED Shopper’s Guide
Putting together a successful school year
Pearl City sixth-grade students Sawyer Williams and Parker Allen work together on an end-of-theyear project in Janet Rauch’s class recently.
PHOTO SUBMITTED Shopper’s Guide
Dressed in their commencement best, Pearl City afternoon preschool students from Kylie Schlemme’s class show off their diplomas.
At 22, Kimberly McIver Sigafus was married with one child and another on the way. Maybe because of her burgeoning family, she was thinking more about her own roots, especially her father, a member of the Ojibwa tribe who died when she was only a year old. Sigafus, now a local playwright and director with the theater in Orangeville, grew up in the inner city of Minneapolis with her mother, who had an Irish background. “I always knew I was Native. There’s no question in my mind I wasn’t white,” Sigafus said. “It was hard not to notice I wasn’t the same, and I was bullied as a kid.” Her mom had some stories about her dad, but not many. She had been widowed young, didn’t know a lot about her husband’s side of the family and — after several moves, including to Wisconsin and Alaska — had lost touch with those relatives over the years. But she remembered some of them lived in Lafayette, Louisiana. Years before the internet, Sigafus hunted down a Lafayette phone book and wrote to every person in it who shared
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building understanding about Native American people. Sigafus, an author and playwright, gives presentations about Native culture around the area.
Lead service line replacement bill passes Senate, heads back to House By Tim Kirsininkas CAPITOL NEWS ILLINOIS
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her maiden surname, hoping to reconnect with family. Her father’s brother — her Uncle Jimmy, who had spent years trying to track her down — received her letter on his birthday. He contacted Sigafus, and she discovered that while her father’s relatives had lived on the White Earth Reservation in northwestern Minnesota, she had plenty of family in Louisiana. She and her mother flew to Lafayette. “We got off the tarmac and went into this tiny building filled with 75 Native people,” Sigafus remembered. “My mom said it was the first time I walked into a place and she couldn’t find me — I didn’t stand out.” While there, her relatives taught her Native recipes and shared family stories. Her Uncle Jimmy gave her an Ojibwa name, Bekaadiziikwe, which means “Quiet Woman.” Sigafus realized the Native PHOTO SUBMITTED Shopper’s Guide side of her had been there all Kimberly McIver Sigafus believes knowledge is key to along.
The Illinois Senate passed a bill May 28 that would require water utilities to replace lead service lines. House Bill 3739, known as the Lead Service Line Notification and Replacement Act, would require all water utilities to compile an inventory of all known lead water service lines and submit a plan for removal and replacement of the lines to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. Although the installation of new lead service lines has been banned since the 1980s, Illinois has more than 636,000 lead service lines still in oper-
ation, according to data from the Metropolitan Planning Council. That number accounts for more than one-eighth of all lead service lines still in use in the United States, according to the Illinois Environmental Council. “Illinois children live in a state with the largest number of lead service lines, increasing the risk of neurological and behavioral abnormalities due to lead exposure,” chief Senate sponsor Melinda Bush, D-Grayslake, said during debate on the bill. “The state of Illinois has a clear mandate to responsibly plan for the replacement of toxic lead service lines.”
Under the bill, water utilities would be required to submit an initial plan for lead service line replacement by April 15, 2024, with a final plan due to IEPA by April 15, 2027. The bill allows water utilities to apply for extensions to the deadlines, if needed. The bill would also establish a state-run grant program to assist in minimizing the costs of lead line replacement. Bush said the long deadlines allow for communities to plan funding for the removal and replacement projects, which Republicans raised as a major concern to the legislation.
See BILL, Page 9
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