The Huffington Post | By David Moye Posted: 07/30/2013
The two videos came to light after a Canadian app company called Play Mobility put out a request for videos of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster and its Canadian cousin, Ogopogo, on behalf of itsLegend Tracker app, which drops legendary creatures such as Sasquatch and the Loch Ness monster into real settings.
The first video was posted to YouTube on July 18 and appears to show a group of Chinese tourists in Mission, British Columbia, taking photos of a large ape-like figure in the forest.
It’s hard to make out what the creature is, but one tourist helpfully provides a hint by grunting “Sasquatch,” the same way Japanese actors shout “Godzilla!” in the movies.
The other video, posted July 24, shows the distant image of what could be another ape-like creature ambling in a forest, just a little too far away to be seen clearly.
The videos, while compelling, are raising skepticism since the Legend Tracker app allows people to fake their own Sasquatch and Nessie pics.
Blogger Brian Abrams thinks the video footage stinks more than a non-bathing Bigfoot.
To be fair, the Pacific Northwest is a hotbed for Sasquatch sightings. Legend Tracker spokesman Miles Marziani insists the company had nothing to do with the allegedly user-submitted videos.
He claims the company is trying to pinpoint the exact location of the July 24 sighting.
Crowd-sourced cryptozoological expeditions have their charms, but that may not be the most effective way of proving the existence of Bigfoot, according to Idaho State University professor Jeffrey Meldrum, author of “Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science.”
TEMPE, Ariz.-Journalists covering Indian country received training and discussed Native American issues during the 29th annual National Native Media Conference in Tempe July 18-21.
Native American Journalists Associaiton President Rhonda LeValdo speaks with Dr. George Blue Spruce about the state of dentistry in Indian country. Photo/Stan Bindell
The Native American Journalists Association (NAJA) and Native Public Media sponsored the conference.
The theme of this year’s conference was “Our voices, Our stories, Our future.” The conference was designed to empower native journalists and media professionals to tell their own stories. Journalism professionals lead sessions to train native journalists to tell their stories in a professional manner.
Arizona was well represented with journalists attending from the Navajo Hopi Observer, Navajo Times, Tutuveni and KUYI radio station among many others.
The issues those in attendance focused on included violence against women, dental care and the availability of radio frequencies for Indian communities.
Deborah Parker, vice chairwoman of the Tulalip Tribe in Washington state, fought successfully to have native women included in the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The act was signed into law this past year and promises sweeping changes in the way violent offenders on tribal land are held accountable.
Parker spoke about the legislative process and media coverage of the fight to protect women in Indian country.
“This is also an opportunity to teach our young people about laws, the past and what our future looks like,” she said.
When Parker first started to look into the Violence Against Women Act, people told her that it didn’t have the steam to include native women on reservations because “they have no face here.”
“That made me angry,” she said. “I could see all these faces that were from my bloodline.”
With the help of U.S. Sen Pat Murray, D-Wash. Parker put on a news conference and spoke about the lack of prosecutions of non-Indians committing crimes against women on reservations.
“It was amazing to be that voice,” she said. “The Senate was abuzz. How could they not include Native American women?”
Parker continued to work with the National Congress of American Indians to see the bill passed with inclusion of protecting native women. She said many racist comments came out of the House of Representatives. Some congressmen doubted whether Indian governments had the ability to arrest non-Indian men.
At the beginning of the process, she said one congressman was outspoken against the inclusion of Indian women, but Parker was able to get him to change his mind. She said the way to change the minds of elected officials is to personalize the stories.
“So many children, women and men came forward with what happened to them as children, teenagers and adults,” she said.
Tribes have until 2015 to implement the law with help from the U.S. Department of Justice.
One statistic states that 88 percent of crimes against women on reservations are committed by non-Indians. She said some congressmen did not believe that statistic.
Eric Cantor, R- Va., a conservative congressman, was one of those opposed to including native women in the law. When Parker met with Cantor’s aide, she told Parker that neither she nor the congressman had met a Native American.
“There are a lot in congress who don’t understand us politically, spiritually and traditionally,” she said.
Parker said she knows of several hundred women who have been murdered on reservations without any justice.
Parker said the media was a big help in covering the Violence Against Women Act.
Another topic at the conference was the crisis in rural America, including on reservations, where there are no oral health providers. Lack of dental services and dental problems can cause disease and sometimes death.
Indian Health Service’s dental provider vacancies average 20-30 percent.
Alaska natives have offered one solution by creating the Dental Health Aide Therapist program. Tribes could replicate the program in other parts of the country.
The Arizona School of Dentistry and Oral Health at A.T. Still University in Mesa recently graduated six American Indians to help fill the need.
Dr. George Blue Spruce, the first native dentist in Arizona, said the dental problem also includes a lack of Native American dentists.
Spruce, 82, said until Native Americans can go to a native dentist, Indian self-determination remains a myth.
The others leading this session included Dr. Todd Hartsfield, DDS faculty at A.T. Still; Maxine Brings Him Back-Janis, faculty at Northern Arizona University; Connie Murat, dental aide therapist at Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation and Yvette Joseph, project manager at Kaufman and Associates. W.K. Kellogg Foundation sponsored the dental session.
Geoffrey Blackwell, chief of the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) Office of Native Affairs and Policy, announced that those seeking non-commercial radio stations on reservations can apply for low frequency FM radio stations between Oct. 15 and Oct. 29.
President Barack Obama recently signed the Local Community Radio Act, which mandates expansion of low power FM radio stations that provide listening areas of three to 10 miles.
Since 2000, the government has licensed more than 800 low power FM stations.
A session also took place on the importance of bringing more broadband services to reservations. Those leading this session included Loris Taylor from Native Public Media; Traci Morris from Homaholta Consulting, Michael Copps, from the FCC and Blackwell.
Taylor, a member of the Hopi Tribe, said in order for native radio stations to be successful they need champions on the inside who are non-Indians. She pointed to Coppes as one such champion.
Coppes said that better broadband means more money creating more jobs, education and health care. He said that broadband services throughout the U.S. are not as good as they should be.
“It’s not just Native Americans. Everybody in the country is being held back, especially in the rural villages. We need a sense of mission,” he said.
Blackwell said broadband is as important as roads and water. He said the FCC and tribes need to work together on bringing more broadband services to Indian country.
Blackwell noted that local radio stations continue to provide life saving services such as announcing when tornadoes will hit.
“Lives can be on the line when you can’t get a signal,” he said.
Blackwell said his office works with 50 Indian tribes at any given time. He hopes that his office will soon announce that there will be consultations and trainings to bring more broadband to Indian country this coming fiscal year.
Tim Giago was one of the founders of NAJA and one of the many elder journalists who received recognition during the conference. He founded the Lakota Times in 1981 when the Pine Ridge Reservation was located in the poorest county in America.
Giago, 80, had his office firebombed, his office windows shot out and his life threatened, but he continued publishing until he sold the paper in 1998.
Giago urged the young journalists not to get discouraged. He also offered them some advice.
“You can do a thousand good things, but if you do one bad thing that is what will be remembered,” he said.
Wind energy production increased by 16 percent in the United States from 2011 to 2012. Credit: S.R. Lee Photo Traveller | Shutterstock
By Laura Poppick, Staff Writer
LiveScience.com July 30, 2013
Renewable energy production hit an all-time high in the United States in 2012, according to a recent annual energy report.
A combination of government incentives and technological innovations has helped solar and wind power grow in the United States in recent years, the report suggests. From 2011 to 2012, production increased by 49 percent and wind energy increased by 16 percent, according to a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory annual energy analysis published earlier this month.
“I attribute the steady growth to technological advancements as well as tax incentives and state mandates for renewable energy,” said A.J. Simon, an energy analyst at LLNL, who wrote the report. “I would expect this to continue for a while.”
Though the trend is notable, wind and solar energy combined still accounted for only about 2 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption in 2012. Denmark and Spain, in comparison, produced an average of about 30 percent of their energy from wind power last year. [Power of the Future: 10 Ways to Run the 21st Century]
Oil and natural gas accounted for the majority of energy consumption in the United States, and will likely continue to dominate given recent investments in hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” Simon said. Fracking is the forceful injection of water, sand and chemicals deep into shale rock that releases previously trapped oil and gas deposits.
By opening up reservoirs of cheap and accessible fossil fuels, fracking could slow efforts to expand renewable energy, though this remains uncertain, according to Simon.
‘Potential game-changer’
Still, those involved in solar and wind energy production in the United States remain confident that these alternative options will continue to grow despite advancements in fracking.
“The turbines are capturing more energy and [the wind industry] is managing to keep costs low,” said Jason Cotrell, the manager of wind turbine technology and innovation with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Recent efforts to improve wind power have focused on making the turbines taller so that they reach stronger air currents higher above the ground. This would allow wind farms to expand to areas that have previously been unsuitable for turbines due to low ground-level wind speeds.
“That would be the potential game-changer, when every state in the U.S. could benefit from wind,” Cotrell said.
Solar oversupply
Solar power has also benefitted from new innovations, but its recent success stems largely from a global oversupply of photovoltaic cells. The combined effects of the economic downturn in 2008 and overambitious renewable policies around the world resulted in an abundance of panels and a relatively small market, according to Tom Kimbis, vice president of Solar Energy Industries Association.
At this point, Kimbis said, expanding the reach of solar energy depends more on the price of the panels than improving their efficiency.
“The efficiency of the panels is now good,” Kimbis said. “The industry has been working to improve efficiency of solar cells for decades and it’s easy to buy a solar module with a 20 percent or higher efficiency today. That’s not really the issue right now. The issue that people care about is how much will it cost and will it work for them.”
Costs depend largely on government tax incentives, which vary from state to state and from year to year. Cotrell and Kimbis both believe that current work in innovating solar and wind power will continue to reduce baseline prices and increase the prevalence of renewable energy in the United States.
Some of the 4781 bottle caps collected from Midway Atoll shorelines by a 9-member team from the PIFSC Coral Reef Ecosystem Division during a cleanup mission in April 2013. Credit: NOAA photo by Kristen Kell
Elizabeth Howell, LiveScience Contributor | July 30, 2013
In an area of Hawaii, far removed from most human habitation, a recent cleanup effort yielded an 18-wheeler’s worth of human debris during a 19-day anti-pollution campaign this year.
The region, which includes Midway Atoll, some 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) from the Hawaiian mainland, acts as a “fine-tooth comb” in picking up debris from elsewhere, officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told LiveScience. Broken fishing gear, tattered nets and plastic fragments litter the water and land on the beaches.
As challenging as it is to clean up that much debris, it’s even more of an undertaking to remove it. Heavy machinery could damage the environment, so about 90 percent of the underwater cleanup is done by divers, said Kyle Koyanagi, NOAA’s marine debris operations manager.
“They physically go down and remove the net little by little with pocket knives, slowly cutting away at the debris that is entangled,” Koyanagi said. “They remove it from that environment, pull it in with their arms, hands and back, and transport it in small vessels on to larger support vessels.”
NOAA does this campaign every year, but the annual budget is in “soft money,” Koyanagi said, which means it’s vulnerable to budgetary effects such as sequestration.
Cleanup changes every year
The Coral Reef Ecosystem Division Marine Debris Project, run by NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, has collected 848 tons (769 metric tons) of debris —about the weight of 530 sedan-size cars —in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands since the program began in 1996.
Efforts began after pollution was identified as a major threat to monk seals, an endangered species native to Hawaii. Decades of built-up pollution required NOAA to spend anywhere from 60 to 120 days at sea between 2000 and 2005, when intensive anti-pollution measures began in earnest. [Video: Humans Hit the Oceans Hard]
With the buildup now addressed, the agency has now been in “maintenance mode” since 2006, picking up whatever gets washed into the area annually. A typical field season lasts 30 to 60 days.
“We put together an annual effort every year depending on our budget that gets allocated,” said Mark Manuel, NOAA’s marine ecosystems research specialist. “It will be some kind of survey effort, whether a shore-based, three-week mission or an extensive, two-month cleanup [at sea].”
James Morioka, Kerrie Krosky, Kristen Kelly, Tomoko Acoba, Kevin O’Brien, Kerry Reardon, Edmund Coccagna, Joao Garriques, and Russell Reardon (clockwise from upper right) pose on April 18 atop the large, 13,795-kilogram (about 30,400 lbs) pile of fishing gear and plastic debris collected during their 2013 cleanup effort around Midway Atoll. Credit: NOAA photo by Edmund Coccagna
Turning nets to energy
The amount of debris collected varies wildly from year to year. Surveyed areas in Hawaii include the French Frigate Shoals, Kure Atoll, Laysan Island, Lisianski Island, Maro Reef, Midway Atoll and Pearl and Hermes Atoll.
This year’s efforts stayed on the shore due to budgetary concerns, Koyanagi added, which likely reduced the amount of debris collected, even though it could have filled a big rig.
“As you can imagine, the ship time is very expensive,” Koyanagi said. “Because of budget cuts this year, we could not afford to do a full-blown effort and get to the remote atolls.”
Once the debris is picked up, NOAA works to recycle as much of it as possible. Nets, for example, are sent to Schnitzer Steel Hawaii Corp. on the mainland, where they are chopped up for the City and County of Honolulu’s H-Power plant to convert into electricity.
The facility, run by Covanta Energy, burns the nets and generates steam, which is used to drive a turbine and create electricity.
Shawn Atleo (Vince Fedoroff/THE CANADIAN PRESS / WHITEHORSE STAR)
By SHAWN ATLEO
The Globe and Mail | July 25, 2013
Recent reports about the Canadian government’s experiments on hungry, impoverished First Nations children in residential schools have sent a shock wave through the country.
My reaction was deeply personal. My father attended one of the schools where these experiments took place. My family and countless others were treated like lab rats, some even being deprived of necessary nutrition and health care so researchers could establish a “baseline” to measure the effects of food and diet.
First Nations, while condemning the government’s callous disregard for the welfare of children, were perhaps the only ones not completely surprised. The experiments are part of a long, sad pattern of federal policy that stretches through residential schools, forced relocations and the ultimate social experiment, the Indian Act, which overnight tried to displace ways of life that had been in place for generations. All of these experiments are abject failures.
It’s time to end the experiments. Canada must start working with us to honour the promises our ancestors made in treaties and other agreements, to give life to our rights as recognized by Canadian courts and relinquish the chokehold of colonial control over our communities.
As I said on the day this report came to light: Canada, this is your history. We must confront the ugly truths and move forward together. And there is a way forward that requires a dedicated commitment across three key areas: respect, fairness and reconciliation.
Respect requires that Canada work with First Nations to give life to our rights, title and treaties. This requires true partnership. The government must stop making decisions for us and start working with us. First Nations want control over the decisions that affect their lives, to shape their own policies and institutions. They are putting ideas on the table and driving solutions.
We see this clearly in the commitment and clarion call for First Nations control of First Nations education. We reject unilaterally imposed legislation. We will exercise our right to create our own systems that are sustainable, that support our children’s success and value our languages and cultures. This is already happening in Nova Scotia, Alberta, B.C. and elsewhere – First Nations working together and pooling expertise to achieve graduation rates that exceed provincial norms. This is success we must support. It must be not the exception, but our collective expectation and commitment.
Fairness requires that we end the unequal funding that condemns too many of our people to a daily struggle to survive. The experiments on our children did not make us poor. Rather, the government experimented on our children because they were poor, an impoverished population suffering from malnutrition and deprivation. But like so much else, poverty was imposed on us. The research notes that government systematically cut back relief payments to First Nations throughout the Depression era. Non-indigenous Canadians received relief at a rate two and three times higher than First Nations. At the onset of the Second World War, relief was cut again and we were further deprived.
This is still happening. Funding for First Nations – for many of the same things Canadians expect, such as schools and infrastructure – has been capped at a 2-per-cent increase, per year, for 17 years, despite the fact that our population has boomed and inflation outpaces this amount. Provinces enjoy transfers closer to 6 per cent, and these are guaranteed.
Escaping the poverty trap requires fairness, an investment now so we can build stable communities today and stronger nations tomorrow. Research shows that healthy First Nations can contribute hundreds of billions to the economy, while saving more than a $100-billion in costs connected to poverty. Why would we not support this approach?
Finally, the way forward requires reconciliation. This means truth telling, and it requires deliberate and clear action. The government must come forward and disclose all documentation on residential schools to the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The government must be open and transparent in accounting for its spending on First Nations and the billion dollars that is poured into the bureaucracy each year. The government must stop stalling and release all documents related to its unequal funding of First Nations child welfare, the subject of a current complaint before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. It also means action to advance reconciliation through recognizing our inherent rights and responsibilities and clear commitment to honouring and implementing treaties and agreements forged between the Crown and First Nations.
Canadians are rightfully shocked by these revelations. It shakes the core of their belief in Canada as a fair and just nation. It’s time to be honest about our history. We can’t change the past but we must commit to change the present and work together to create a better, brighter and just future.
Maura Sullivan, secretary for the Central Band of Chumash Nation, speaks about the proposed changes to federal acknowledgment regulations for Native.American tribes Thursday in Solvang. Daniel Dreifuss/Staff
Federal officials heard testimony Thursday in Solvang on proposed changes to the process for Native American tribes to get recognized, a procedure speakers described as expensive, lengthy and burdensome.
In June, the Department of the Interior (DOI) released a draft of potential changes to its Part 83 process for acknowledging certain groups as American Indian tribes granted a government-to-government relationship with the United States.
At the moment, the U.S. has 566 federally recognized tribes, of which 17 have been recognized through Part 83. California has 109 federally recognized Indian tribes with between 70 and 80 seeking federal recognition.
The draft proposal, the subject of two sessions Thursday at Hotel Corque, is meant to give tribes and the public an early opportunity to provide input on potential changes to the Part 83 process.
Proposed revisions are intended to improve transparency, timeliness, efficiency, flexibility and integrity in the acknowledgment process, according to the DOI.
However, critics of the proposed rules are calling them the “Patchak patch,” a reference to Supreme Court decision last year in favor of David Patchak, a Michigan man who challenged the way the government takes land into trust for tribes.
They say the proposed rules are meant to drastically limit the uncertainties created by the Patchak decision by adding administrative barriers for potential litigants and rushing fee-to-trust acquisitions, which removes land from local jurisdiction and makes it part of an Indian reservation, under tribal authority.
Larry Roberts, deputy assistant secretary for Indian Affairs, said the presentation during the afternoon public meeting was the same delivered during the morning tribal consultation session.
The public session Thursday afternoon drew between 60 and 70 attendees, including Solvang Mayor Jim Richardson, in the ballroom of the hotel, which is owned by the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians.
Roberta Cortero of the Central Band of Chumash Nation speaks her concerns about the proposed changes to federal acknowledgment regulations for Native American tribes Thursday In Solvang. Daniel Dreifuss/Staff
Many of the speakers represented California tribes seeking recognition, a process they described as cumbersome, costly and very time consuming, or as Mona Olivas Tucker, tribal chairwoman of the Yak Tityu Tityu Northern Chumash in San Luis Obispo County, put it, something she doesn’t expect to be completed in her lifetime.
Valentin Lopez, tribal chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band of Coastanoan/Ohlone Indians in the San Juan Bautista area, said the acknowledgment process is getting more and more difficult, is too lengthy, should be moved out of the hands of the DOI Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the burden of proof for recognition should revert to the BIA from tribes.
Michael Cordero, tribal chairman of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation, said criteria changes could make it easier to be recognized and tribes, such as his, could benefit from the acknowledgment.
A “Letter of Intent,” which begins the acknowledgment petition process, has been submitted for the tribe, he said.
During a break, Cordero said the session had been helpful in clarifying some issues on the process and requirements.
Across San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation has about 2,500 enrolled members, Cordero said.
Under the proposal, reviews of a petitioner’s community and political authority — criteria for acknowledgment — would “begin with the year 1934 to align with the government’s negation of allotment and assimilation policies and eliminate the requirement that an external entity identify the group as Indian since 1900,” according to the DOI.
No More Slots attorney Jim Marino asked why 1934 is being used in the criteria. He represents several groups against more Indian gaming and land acquisition through the fee-to-trust process, which removes land from local jurisdiction and makes it part of an Indian reservation under tribal authority.
The 1934 Indian Reorganization Act represented a “dramatic” shift in federal policy toward self determination for tribes and the use of that year as a benchmark is meant to reflect that change, Roberts said.
To block attempts to annex property into the Santa Ynez Reservation, opponents of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians have questioned whether it’s legally a tribal government and thus able to take land into trust via the fee-to-trust process.
The battle centers on Chumash efforts to annex almost 7 acres they own across Highway 246 from the tribe’s Santa Ynez casino.
Members of Preservation of Los Olivos (POLO) and Preservation of Santa Ynez (POSY) have presented documentation to the Bureau of Indian Affairs the groups believe prove the Chumash were not under federal jurisdiction in 1934, and do not qualify to take any land into trust.
By contrast, the Chumash tribe logo and flag says “Federally Recognized Tribe since 1901.”
Due to POLO’s continuing litigation, the group has been advised not to comment on the proposed rule change, POLO president Kathy Cleary said.
Other plans by the Chumash to annex property into the reservation, notably 1,400 acres they own about 2 miles east of the casino and an additional 5.8 acres in the casino area along Highway 246, have also been met with opposition.
Sam Cohen, legal and government affairs specialist for the Chumash, said the proposal is not applicable to the local tribe.
“The Department of the Interior has started to initiate the process of reviewing revisions to the federal acknowledgment regulations for Native American tribes that hope to be federally recognized,” he said in a statement. “Since the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians was federally recognized in 1901, the revisions don’t apply to the Santa Ynez Chumash tribe.”
Transcripts from both sessions will be available at www.bia.gov, officials said.
The discussion draft is available for review at www.bia.gov/whoweare/as-ia/consultation.
Interior officials will accept written comments on the draft until Aug. 16 by email to consultation@bia.gov or by mail to Elizabeth Appel, Office of Regulatory Affairs & Collaborative Action, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1849 C Street, NW, MS 4141, Washington, DC 20240.
Navajo allottees in New Mexico can now submit their Bureau of Indian Affairs probate document or state-issued small estate affidavit as a way to receive trust settlement claims from the class action suit Cobell vs. Salazar.
On July 16, Richard Levy, who was appointed by Judge Thomas F. Hogan as special master overseeing the Cobell payments, made an amendment to the class action suit, which had been in litigation between Elouise Cobell and the federal government for years.
Cobell (Blackfeet) had filed the largest class action suit against the federal government, on behalf of 500,000 holders of individual Indian trust accounts, for mismanaging and failing to account for billions of dollars in Indian assets it held in trust over the last century.
In 2010, the federal government approved a settlement worth $3.4 billion for the trust case, with the money being divvied up to compensate individual account holders, buy back lands and restore them back to tribal nations, and set up a $60 million scholarship fund.
Levy’s July 16 amendment allows for the BIA probate and small estate affidavit forms to serve as conduits to expedite payments to beneficiaries, both Individual Indian Money class account holders and trust administration class holders of the suit.
“This should help,” said David Smith, attorney with the Cobell class action suit, in a July 18 interview with the Navajo Times at the Farmington Civic Center.
Smith, along with Garden City Group CEO Jennifer Keough and Ervin Chavez, president of the association of Navajo allottees known as Shi Shi Keyah, saw more than 800 people turn out for meetings in Twin Lakes and Farmington last week. The meetings were a chance for Navajo allottees to hear updates on the Cobell case and the status of payments from the Garden City Group, the firm charged with administering settlement claims for the 500,000 Native American allottees.
Initially, the court had only allowed state and tribal probate forms to be used for allotment settlement claims, which only processed about 88 percent of them, Chavez said.
Chavez, who filed a friend of the court brief in the Cobell case on behalf of Navajo allottees, said that Levy’s amendment only helps allottees, most of whom already have the BIA probate documents in hand to process for their claims.
“The judge accepted that amendment to the settlement and that’s going to help a lot of families get money from the settlement,” he said.
With the special master’s amendment, Smith is hoping the 7,409 Navajo people whose whereabouts are unknown to the BIA get processed for payment. It’s also a way for heirs to process through the probate system to acquire payments of their deceased relatives.
One of the 800 people to show up at the GCG meeting on July 18 was 31-year-old Tim Beyale of Nageezi, N.M. He has allotments near Nageezi, N.M and Chaco Culture National Historical Park.
Beyale didn’t know if it was worth pursuing his claim through the Garden City Group, mostly because the $1,000 payment from his late father’s allotment would be split among his siblings and a stepmother he learned about at the time of his father’s death. The payment from his own allotment, he said, added up to a “Chiclet” amount.
The Garden City Group was on hand with computer booths and staff helping Navajo allottees like Beyale process their claims. Booths were also set up at the Twin Lakes Chapter meeting on July 17 for allottees from that region of the reservation.
For LaVone Royston, the amendment allows for her to fill out a small estate affidavit to expedite payments from her late mother’s allotments as well as mineral payments from oil companies that drill on the allotments.
“Her estate is still going through the probate process,” Royston said, which is due in part to the original terms of the Cobell settlement.
Royston, who is an accountant, attended the meeting in Farmington to also find out why the documents her mother used to receive from the oil companies ceased coming when she died in 2011.
“Since she passed away, I can’t get anything,” she said.
What Royston did learn, however, from GCG is that she can’t have access to her mom’s financial records because the land acquisition is still in probate and a federal privacy act prevents heirs from accessing that information until they get the probate document.
According to Chavez, the Navajo Area BIA office told allottees in Twin Lakes they were backlogged with probate cases for the next 13 years. Crownpoint District Judge Irene Toledo also attended the meeting in Twin Lakes to get clarity on the settlement and reportedly told Chavez, Smith and GCG officials most of her cases are tribal probate ones.
But with the option of filing a small estate affidavit with a New Mexico county, Royston is hopeful to process through the probate system more quickly.
“I am going to file,” she said. “I can do it a lot faster and don’t have to wait for a BIA hearing.”
The first round of payments was distributed in 2012 to Individual Indian Money Account holders, who held an account from October 25, 1994 to Sept. 30, 2009. These beneficiaries are also known as individuals of the historical accounting portion of the settlement. They each received a $1,000 payment.
Smith anticipates the second round of payments to be released this fall to those allottees who didn’t process through during the first round of payments. These allottees are known as the “trust administration” class, with an open account from 1985 to Sept. 30, 2009. The second round of payments will be no less than $800 for some allotees, Smith said.
Delores Hesuse, on behalf of her late father, Henry Hesuse, who founded the Shi Shi Keyah group, said she was glad that Judge Hogan agreed to the amendment in the suit.
From her experience and what she’s seen with other allottees, they would spend over a month within the legal system to get their land probated with the original terms of the case.
“I finally got what the Garden City Group and Cobell lawyers were saying,” she said. “Everybody was lost within our system. They only knew of the federal probate.”
Information: contact the Garden City Group at 888-404-8013 or visit www.indiantrust.com.
Contact Alastair L. Bitsoi at 928-871-1141 or by email at abitsoi@navajotimes.com.
The waters off the Pacific Northwest are becoming more acidic, making life more difficult for the animals that live there, especially oysters and the approximately 3,200 people employed in the shellfish industry.
Researchers from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will set sail Monday (July 29) on a monthlong research cruise off the U.S. and Canadian West Coast to see how ocean acidification is affecting the chemistry of the ocean waters and the area’s sea life.
Ocean acidification occurs when greenhouse-gas emissions cause carbon dioxide to accumulate in the atmosphere and become dissolved in sea water, changing the water’s chemistry and making it more difficult for coral, shellfish and other animals to form hard shells. Carbon dioxide creates carbonic acid when dispersed in water. This can dissolve carbonate, the prime component in corals and oysters’ shells.
The world’s oceans are 30 percent more acidic than they were before the Industrial Revolution, scientists estimate.
This cruise follows up on a similar effort in 2007 that supplied “jaw-dropping” data on how much ocean acidification was hurting oysters, said Brad Warren, director of the Global Ocean Health Partnership, at a news conference today (July 25). (The partnership is an alliance of governments, private groups and international organizations.)
That expedition linked more acidic waters to huge declines in oyster hatcheries, where oysters are bred, Warren said. Oyster farms rely ona fresh stock of oysters each year to remain economically viable.
When the data came in from that cruise, it was “a huge wake-up call,” Warren said. “This was almost a mind-bending realization for people in the shellfish industry,” he said.
The new cruise will also look at how acidification is affecting tiny marine snails called pteropods, a huge source of food for many fish species, including salmon, said Nina Bednarsek, a biological oceanographer with NOAA’s Pacific Environmental Marine Laboratory.
The research will take place aboard the NOAA ship Fairweather, which will depart from Seattle before heading north and then looping back south. It will end up in San Diego on Aug. 29. During this time, scientists will collect samples to analyze water chemistry, calibrate existing buoys that continuously measure the ocean’s acidity and survey populations of animals, scientists said.
The researchers will also examine algae along the way. Ocean acidification is expected to worsen harmful algal blooms (like red tide), explosions of toxin-producing cells that can sicken and even kill people who eat oysters tainted with these chemicals, said Vera Trainer, a researcher at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center.
Now, I know online commentary isn’t generally known for its erudite reflection. After all, troll culture revels in trashing everyone.
But whenever an article is posted about Idle No More or treaty rights or First Nation poverty, the comments section is quickly overwhelmed with abusive attacks. It is impossible not to recognize a relentless pattern of malevolence. In cyberspace the racists are loud, proud and determined to define the terms of discussion around aboriginal issues.
Let’s compare these responses to those following recent natural disasters in Oklahoma, Bracebridge and Alberta, which prompted outpourings of heartfelt and moving comments.
And yet when two communities in my region, Attawapiskat and Kashechewan, were hit by flash flooding earlier this spring, the pages were filled with vicious glee. Online consensus was that the families who were flooded out by failed sewage lifts were actually responsible for the flood – either because of deviousness or mental decrepitude. The idea that government agencies might send aid to help these Canadian citizens sent commentators into a rage.
I used to think trolls wrote their crap because they could post it anonymously. But now I see people not only willing to sign their name to it but even to supply a headshot. The purveyors of these false stereotypes seem to be hijacking the public conversation away from issues like chronic infrastructure underfunding, third-class education and the inability to share in economic development.
So why the lack of action?
It’s not as if Canadians haven’t taken impressive steps to fight cyber-bullying. And yet whenever I hear about the wonderful efforts being made to protect young people online, I think of the trauma experienced by children in Attawapiskat from online attacks. When the media began reporting on their struggle to have a school built in the community, online haters again took over the comments pages. A teacher in Attawapiskat told me the children were shaken by commenters calling them “lazy Indians,” “losers,” “gasoline sniffers,” etc.
How is it that school boards, parents, police and editorialists rightly tell young people to speak out against the humiliation by individual youth online but don’t seem to notice when the hate is directed at First Nation children?
Canada is one of the most digitally literate societies in the world. The task before us isn’t just about challenging stereotypes of First Nation people, but correcting the emerging and inaccurate image of the ugly Online Canadian. There is simply too much at stake to allow important issues and stories to be poisoned by trolls. So when you see examples of these hate comments, please be Idle No More.
Charlie Angus is the Member of Parliament for Timmins-James Bay.
Facebook’s data center in Prineville. The main data halls are in the center of the picture. The cold storage facility is the L-shaped building on the lower right. (Facebook photo)
Facebook users post 350 million photos on a typical day. On a holiday, like Christmas or New Year’s Eve, they post more than a billion.
Altogether, Facebook now hosts more than 250 billion photos — and it’s seeking new technologies to store those old pictures efficiently and reliably at its data centers in Prineville and elsewhere around the world.
“These are the precious memories of people around the world,” said Jay Parikh, Facebook’s vice president of infrastructure. “We can’t lose them.”
Parikh was in Portland today to deliver a keynote address at OSCON, the annual O’Reilly Open Source Convention at the Oregon Convention Center. He spoke about the company’s “Open Compute Project,” an effort to build collaboration among data center operators to improve performance and efficiency.
Facebook says 82 percent of its traffic is focused on just 8 percent of its photos, generally the most recent posts. It plans to put older images into “cold storage,” data centers that host older photos in more efficient — albeit a bit less speedy — facilities.
If Facebook can store photos more efficiently, it can substantially cut its energy use, operating costs and environmental impact.
OSCON back again in 2014 and 2015
The O’Reilly Open Source Convention will return to Portland in 2014 and again in 2015.
The state’s largest annual tech conference attracts more than 3,000 people to the Oregon Convention Center each year. It first came to Portland in 2003, then moved to San Jose in 2009. The following year, Portland signed a four-year deal to bring OSCON back.
That deal expires this year, but OSCON says it plans to return next year and in 2015. Next year’s conference will run July 20-24.
The cold storage concept isn’t new. Parikh talked about it early last winter, and I wrote about it in February after visiting the cold storage construction site in Prineville.
On Wednesday, Parikh offered more detail about Facebook’s vision for the future. Construction on its Prineville cold storage facility is due to wrap up this fall, he said in a conversation following his OSCON keynote. Substantial testing will follow, he said, before it begins hosting older photos.
Each cold storage data hall will hold 1 exabyte of data — equivalent to 1 million of the 1 terabyte hard drives now common in PCs. Facebook will fill each cold storage data hall with 500 racks of servers.
Most of those servers will be idle most of the time. Facebook will keep just a small number of hard drives running, and spin up additional ones when it needs to retrieve the photos they store from cold storage.
Waking up those hard drives is a slow, energy-intensive process. Parikh said Facebook hopes a new technology will emerge that’s both faster and more efficient. He calls it “cold flash.”
It’s the same flash memory technology that stores the songs on your smartphone, and the documents you carry around on a thumb drive.
Cold flash, Parikh said, would be a low-grade, high-capacity storage technology. It wouldn’t need the durability that flash memory in a thin laptop requires — most of the cold storage material stored on it would sit unused forever.
It will likely be a year or two before anyone develops suitable flash memory, Parikh said. And perhaps it’s impossible to do it at a price that would be cost-effective for Facebook.
But through its Open Compute efforts, Parikh said he hopes to demonstrate that Facebook and others would provide an eager customer base for whoever invents cold flash.
All kinds of businesses, he said, need electronic cold storage for old records they may never need — but must retain, just in case.
