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For Land and Life: 25 stories of Indigenous resilience that you might’ve missed in 2013

By John Ahni Schertow • Dec 14, 2013 Source: Intercontinental Cry

With the sheer number of abuses and attacks that Indigenous Peoples face around the world, we don’t often come by stories of hope and resilience–stories that speak of long-fought struggles coming to a just end, peaceful exchanges between Nations who live in different parts of the world, and assertions of Traditional authority that governments and corporations simply accept without challenge or condition. Here’s a few of those stories that you might have missed over the past 12 months. Here’s to 25,000 more stories just like them!

An Ainu-Maori Exchange

A group of 7 Ainu youth, accompanied by 3 Ainu committee members and 3 interpreters, traveled to New Zealand in order to study the various ambitious endeavors of the Maori people who have successfully revitalized their rights as Indigenous People while living with strength in the society of New Zealand.

After successfully carrying out a major online fundraiser to pay for the journey, the Ainu–who are themselves struggling to revitalize their culture, language and identity–reported a very positive experience during their stay. As explored on theAinu Maori Exchange activity website, the Ainu learned a language teaching method called Te Ataarangi, sat down with the Maori Party-Whangaehu Marae, visited several Maori-based schools and businesses as well as television and radio stations and many different historical sites.

An Alternative Currency

Esquimalt First Nation, in an effort to reform the monetary system, unveiled a new barter currency on their territory known as Tetlas. Similar to a gift certificate, the Tetla was developed by the organization Tetla Tsetsuwatil to assist economic development in the S’amuna’ Nation and other native nations, and to encourage trade with non-natives and among non-natives. More than two dozen businesses now accept the alternative currency.

Indigenous millennium development goals

Colombia’s indigenous organizations revealed five new ‘millennium development goals’ (MDGs), presenting the world’s first national framework for realizing indigenous rights in response to the Millennium Declaration. The move challenged the country’s authorities to record their progress in meeting the new targets, which include the protection of indigenous territory; the implementation of free, prior and informed consent protocols and the ‘institutional redesign’ of the state in its relations with Indigenous Peoples.

Occupying Brazil’s House of Representatives

In Brazil, approximately 700 indigenous leaders occupied the country’s House of Representatives in a concerted effort to stop the nomination process for the Special Committee on PEC 215, a proposal that would transfer from the federal government to the National Congress the authority to approve the demarcation of traditional lands. Despite a heavy-handed response from police officers and security personnel, the Indigenous leaders held their ground until the government representatives took appropriate action.

The little school of liberty

Thousands of people from around the world descended on Chiapas for the Zapatistas’ first organizing school, called la escuelita de libertad, which means the little school of liberty. Originally the group allotted for only 500 students; But so many people wished to enroll that they opened an additional 1,200 slots for the week-long school. While attending the escuelita, students lived with a family in a rebel zapatista community and participated both in the school and in the daily life of the community.

This year, the EZLN also announced the creation of a traveling Indigenous seminar to provide a forum “in which the Indigenous Peoples of the continent can be heard by those who have an attentive and respectful ear for their word, their history, and their resistance.” The announcement was supported by more than 30 Indigenous organizations and governments.

In Defense of Medicine

The Matsés Peoples, in order to protect the medicines from bio-prospectors, decided not to translate their Traditional Medicine Encyclopedia to English or Spanish. The Matsés are writing the Encyclopedia in order to preserve and propagate their traditional systems of medicine for future generations–of Matsés.

“Original Nations” passports

An historic ceremony was held outside the Victorian Trades Hall in Melbourne, Australia for the issuing of “Original Nations” passports and West Papuan visas in conjunction with the West Papua Freedom Flotilla. The flotilla convoy would go on to travel from Lake Eyre to West Papua, highlighting the abuse of human rights and land rights occurring in West Papua and reconnecting the Indigenous Peoples of West Papua and Australia.

Assertions of Authority

Red Sucker Lake First Nation delivered a stop work order to Mega Precious Metals Inc. in Northern Manitoba. The First Nation stated at the time that the company was operating illegally in its traditional territory. Mathias Colomb First Nation (MCCN) issued a similar order to Hudbay Mining and Smelting Co., Ltd. also in Manitoba.

An independent republic

The Murrawarri Peoples took their first steps toward becoming an independent republic on their traditional unceded lands in northern New South Wales and Queensland, Australia. After issuing a formal declaration, The Murrawarri established an interim government in preparation for a parliament that would consist of 54 representatives appointed by their respective ancestral family groups. The Murrawarri Nation’s act of self-determination caught the attention of at least 27 other Indigenous Nations in Australia who requested Murrawarri’s declarations and constitution to use as templates for their own independence movements.

The Tahltan said NO

The Tahltan People celebrated a decision by Fortune Minerals’ to halt mineral exploration activities on Klappan Mountain inside the Sacred Headwaters region of Northern British Columbia, Canada. The decision came after several bold actions led by the Klabona Keepers including the delivery of an eviction notice, a blockade and the take over of a drilling site.

Honouring the Two Row

A delegation of Haudenosaunee leaders traveled to the Netherlands on Haudenosaunee passports to participate in a ceremony honoring the 400 year old Two Row Wampum Treaty between the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and The Netherlands. The ceremony was held at the Tree of Peace which was planted by the late Mohawk elder Jake Swamp at Wijkpark Transvaal in The Hague in September 2006.

A pilgrimage of hope

Offering solidarity to Indigenous Nations, five Carvers from the Lummi Nation set out on a journey up the Pacific North West Coast sending a message of Kwel’Hoy, or ‘We Draw The Line’ to the resource extraction industry. With them, lain carefully on a flat bed, the Lummi carried a beautifully-carved 22-foot cedar totem pole for Indigenous communities to bless along the way. Their journey gained international attention as a pilgrimage of hope, healing and determination for each of the embattled Indigenous Nations they visited.

A summit of Indigenous communication

The Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication was held in Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec, in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, Mexico. The important summit brought together indigenous media makers from various countries in Latin America to share their ideas and experiences and to continue planning the future of Indigenous multimedia communications.

A return to the land

Ontario’s Springwater Provincial Park became the site of a new land reclamation after Ontario Parks took down its flagand changed the park’s status to non-operational–due to low visitation and funding. A small group of people from several Indigenous nations set up a camp inside the park land, exercising Article 26 of the United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Peoples, concerning the right to lands and resources that were once traditionally occupied. It is the group’s goal to see Springwater as an educational and spiritual centre. So far, they’ve held full moon and drumming ceremonies, children’s programming and feasts.

Meanwhile, the Oshkimaadiziig Unity Camp continued to occupy nearby Awenda Provincial Park , an action that began, says camp spokesperson Kai Kai Kons,”as a result of the illegal surrenders of our inherent rights and traditional territories along with the policies and laws enforced upon our people where the Chippewa Tri Council and Canada are in breach of the 1764 Niagara Covenant Chain Belt.” The group, part of a growing movement called ACTION — Anishinabek Confederacy To Invoke Our Nationhood, states that Awenda Provincial Park is situated on one of five traditional embassies known as Council Rock which is interwoven in the inter-tribal treaty between the Anishinabek and Haudenosaunee.

Other camps were set up throughout the year, including by theThe Lac Courte Oreilles band of Ojibwa in northern Wisconsin and
The Algonquins of Barriere Lake within La Verendrye Wildlife Reserve in Quebec. The well-known Unist’ot’en camp also continued their work to protect sovereign Wet’suwet’en territory in what is now British Colombia.

Coming together as Nations

Evading the Indonesian navy, two tiny boats met near the Australia-Indonesia border to ceremonially reconnect the indigenous peoples of Australia and West Papua. The ceremony was the pinnacle of a 5000km journey beginning in Lake Eyre, in which sacred water and ashes were carried and presented to West Papuan leaders. The cultural exchange of Indigenous elders was held in secret, due to threats made by Indonesian government ministers and military officials who had stated that they would “take measures” against the peaceful exchange.

Another welcomed victory

Two Indigenous communities from northern Saskatchewan were finally dropped from the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s nuclear waste dump shortlist. After several years of grassroots resistance spearheaded by the Committee for Future Generations and supported by other organizations, it was announced on Nov. 21 that both communities were unsuitable for further study.

The Saami step forward

The Saami Peoples stepped forward to defend an area of great spiritual and cultural importance. Walking alongside a group of non-indigenous activists, the Saami set up a roadblock to stop the UK-based mining company, Beowulf, which was planning to carry out a drilling program in the area known as Kallak (Saami: Gállok). The blockade was dismantled on several occasions; however, that did not deter anyone from continuing to defend the land. Ultimately, the Saami and their allies were victorious in preventing Beowulf from moving ahead.

The law of the Messi

A Messi villager in Papua New Guinea put up a “gorgor” at Nautilus’ proposed Solwara 1 experimental seabed mining project site. As a traditional law, the “gorgor protocol” prohibits any Ships or vessels by Nautilus from entering into the area that is protected by the “gorgor”. If Nautilus breaches this area and enters illegally, the Messi “have ALL the right under kastom to destroy the vessels or ship,” commented Karabuspalau Kaiku on facebook.

“Elders and villagers from adjoining villages have caution[ed] the National Government to critically address the issue from the bottom up. Traditional law over the environment must be respected by foreigners,” Kaiku adds.

Preserving history

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) and the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee (LTLT) celebrated the final return of the Hall Mountain Tract to tribal hands. Hall Mountain, a 108-acre tract of land, is the viewshed of the historic Cowee Mound site located six miles south of Franklin. The Mound, a site of great cultural significance to the Tribe, was the largest, busiest diplomatic and commercial center for the Cherokee people and all Native people on the East Coast until the late 1700s.

A place called PKOLS

WSÁNEC nations lead an action to reclaim the traditional name of PKOLS on what is now southern Vancouver Island. Originally known as Mount Douglas, PKOLS is an historically important meeting place and a part of the WSÁNEC creation story. The Douglas Treaty was signed atop PKOLS in 1852. The action to reclaim the name, which signified the renewal of the original nation-to-nation treaty relationship, included a march and a re-enactment of the original treaty signing with governor James Douglas. A joint Declaration reclaiming PKOLS was also signed and a permanent sign was installed.

Defending the Great Lakes

After years of community opposition, the controversial plan to ship radioactive waste across the Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean to Sweden was officially cancelled by the Swedish company, Studsvik. In a rare show of unity, opponents to the plan included City mayors, U.S. Senators, environmental and nuclear groups, indigenous communities and other civil society groups.

We won’t be silenced!

The Oglala Lakota passed a resolution opposing the proposed Otter Creek coal mine and Tongue River Railroad in their historical homelands of southeastern Montana. The Oglala Lakota have thus far been excluded from any consultations despite the fact that the proposed mine site is an area of great cultural and historical significance containing countless burial sites, human remains, battle sites, stone features and artifacts. In addition to calling for proper consultation, the Oglala Lakota called on all Tribal Nations who signed the Fort Laramie Treaty to stand with them in opposing the mine and railroad.

A bittersweet victory

The Musqueam finally managed to bring a certain end to the months-long struggle to stop a condominium development atop the ancient village of cusnaum. The Musqueam recentlyworked out a deal to buy and preserve the site, also known as Marpole Midden, in Vancouver, British Columbia. After 18 months of talks, community members announced plans to place permanent educational signage on the archaeological site, and likely commission several carved poles to honor the more than 4,000-year-old village.

Sitting at a different table

As United Nations delegates gathered in Warsaw to craft a global climate treaty, indigenous leaders from across North America met half a world away. Their message: The solution to climate change will never come via UN talks. The United Nations has always maintained a typical colonial stance when it comes to Indigenous Peoples and land; nevertheless the institution deserved a chance to prove itself. It simply failed to do the necessary work, a failure that we can no longer afford to ignore. “The work that we have is for all of us to do,” said Vickie Downey, a clan mother at the Tesuque Pueblo in New Mexico. “We do this for our grandchildren.”

Turning back the tide of colonialism

With the Idle No More movement in Canada waking up a sleeping giant, a second movement began to take shape known as the Indigenous Nationhood Movement. A movement for “Indigenous nationhood, resurgence, and decolonization”, INM has grown into a vast circle of people connected through commitments to principled action supporting Indigenous nations in advancing, articulating, reclaiming, expressing, and asserting nationhood, raising up traditional governments, and reclaiming and reoccupying traditional homelands. Like the Idle No More movement, INM is an immensely inspiring effort and one that shows great promise for the long road ahead. Indeed, Indigenous Peoples in Canada have once again set a strong example for all other Indigenous Peoples around the world, particularly those who have suffered the harsh burden of isolation and uncertainty in facing an all-too-familiar colonial beast.

California’s $25 Billion Delta Tunnels Plan Leaves Tribes Behind

Marc Dadigan, ICTMN

Before a crowd of 400 people waving signs reading ‘Don’t Kill Me’ above swirling, hand-painted salmon, Winnemem Wintu Chief and Spiritual Leader Caleen Sisk declared California’s proposed $25 billion Delta Tunnels a pernicious threat to salmon and tribal rights to consultation.

“During this whole process the tribes have been ignored, and so have our ‘first in time, first in use’ water rights. Our fisheries and our subsistence to water have been totally left out of this study,” Sisk said. “All of the rivers in California are contaminated, and now we’re going to be transporting [water] to the cities without acknowledging we need to clean them up.”

The coalition of tribes, farmers, environmentalists and fishermen gathered in solidarity on December 13 at the State Capitol in Sacramento to protest the recent release of Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to build two giant tunnels—40 feet in diameter and 35 miles long—to divert freshwater out of the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta to three million acres of farmland, much of it industrial agriculture, and to more than 20 million people in central and Southern California. Some have estimated the actual cost of the tunnels will be closer to $54 billion, once interest from the financing is factored in.

State and federal agencies already annually export millions of acre-feet of water out of the delta, and environmentalists and tribal officials say that the delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast, is in a precarious state. Further damaging its delicate balance of salt and freshwater by exporting more water could threaten the existence of many endangered species and fisheries, including Chinook salmon, as far north as Oregon, the plan’s critics say.

“By taking away our water, the tunnels are taking away from our salmon that we feed on and give us life,” said Jessica Lopez, vice chairwoman of the Konkow Valley Band of Maidu, to the crowd.
It’s taking away from our future generations,” she said, noting that her tribe has never been consulted about the tunnels, even though planning began in 2006. “I’m going to do what I can with my tribe to make sure we stop the tunnels.”
About copy0 billion of the project would be allocated to 100,00 acres of habitat restoration to benefit 57 species, including salmon, and state and federal water officials say the plan will achieve “co-equal” goals of conservation and stabilizing California’s water supply, as climate change is expected to cause water shortages in the coming decades.

Many tribal officials agree with environmentalists and oppose the project because they feel that no amount of habitat restoration could counter the damage caused to the Delta fisheries by the lack of water. The project, called the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan, also doesn’t state directly just how much water will be taken from the estuary, though each tunnel will have the capacity to transport 9,000 acre-feet of water per second, according to the plan.

Also causing concern and even outrage among tribal officials is that the tribal consultation process on the massive project hasn’t even begun well after the 35,000-page public draft was released. On Dec. 10, the project lead agency, California Department of Water Resources held an initial informational meeting for tribes.

“For some tribes, that meeting was the first time they had ever heard of the tunnels or the BDCP,” Sisk said.

A different iteration of the project, then called the Peripheral Canal, was investigated as far back as 1982, eventually failing to be approved by a public referendum. The current BDCP began the latest proposal in 2006, and the fact that decades have gone by without consultation has caused some tribes to believe that the omission is intentional.

“When they were studying the peripheral canal [in the 1980s], they did surveys and would find signs of human remains and village sites, so they’ve always known that our sites are there,” said Randy Yonemura (Miwok), who has been following the BDCP since its inception.

Several Miwok village sites with burials are likely to be disrupted by the construction, Yonemura said. However, he said, at a December 10 meeting, state Department of Water Resources officials acted as if they were unaware of the project’s potential to damage the Miwok sites.

“It’s a water grab,” Yonemura said. “They don’t ever talk about California Indian rights to water, even though we were all riparian tribes. They know what they’re doing. They’re seeing what they can get away with.”

Though it’s a work in progress, the Department of Water Resources had only completed a new consultation process in November 2012. Thus tribes have a right to be upset about not having a voice in the Delta tunnels, said Anecita Augstinez, the state water agency’s new tribal policy advisor.

Augstinez said she will be spearheading an extensive outreach effort in the coming months to ensure that tribes receive adequate information.

“Consultation is very important, and I do think the commitment and foundation here is strong (at DWR),” she said. “It’s not going to be a situation where we have one meeting and think we’re done.”

However, many tribal officials remain highly skeptical as to whether state officials will seriously consider altering the plan based on their input.

“Even though we have always been here and have never ceded these lands, it’s convenient for them to act as if there are no tribes in the Delta because so many of us are federally unrecognized,” said Don Hankins, a Plains Miwok cultural practitioner and water resources professor. “The landscape has a lot of different layers of meaning to us, and we want to see the delta be what it should: A healthy, resilient ecosystem for future generations. This plan isn’t going to do that.”

Idle No More & Defenders of the Land Support the Actions of Indigenous Peoples of Canada to Protect Their Waters, Lands & Forests

(Turtle Island/December 16, 2013) Source: Climate Connection

Idle No More and Defenders of the Land networks call on Indigenous Peoples and Canadians to support Indigenous Nations currently engaged in protecting their lands and waters against the corporate-sponsored agendas of the federal and provincial governments.

In the past month, the Mi’kmaq of Elsipogtog, the Algonquins of Barriere Lake and the Cree of Lubicon Lake Nation have been involved in land protection struggles to defend against invasive extractive natural resource development (natural gas exploration, drilling for oil & natural gas/fracking and clear cut logging) taking place on their territories without their Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC).

In each of these land struggles, there are people camping and protecting lands outside in extreme winter weather conditions before the holidays to keep industry activity at bay. Despite weather dipping to -30º C on some days, men, women, children and Elders continue to protect the land to ensure their grandchildren and future generations have something left for their sustenance and livelihood.

We condemn the collusion between the Federal/Provincial governments and corporations who work together to implement economic development plans and activities that disregard the Inherent Aboriginal and Treaty Rights held by Indigenous Peoples.

Sylvia McAdam, an Idle No More organizer stated “we are against shale gas exploration and fracking. We do not support puppet regimes that endorse extractive industry natural resource development on Indigenous lands. We support the FPIC of the Indigenous People’s impacted by extractive resource development on their Indigenous lands.”

Russell Diabo, a member of the Defenders of the Land network, added “the Lubicon Lake Nation protectors are rights holders and are to be commended for their personal sacrifice in camping in the bitter cold to stop unauthorized oil and natural gas development on their traditional lands.”

“The Canadian and provincial government’s current energy and mining policies are designed to destroy the environment. If they are genuinely interested in reshaping Canada’s energy policy in a positive direction they must recognize and affirm Aboriginal and Treaty Rights on the ground,” said Arthur Manuel, a member of the Defenders of the Land network.

Feds OK Eagle Deaths From Wind Turbines; Osage Object

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

They are akin to 30-story spinning skyscrapers, their rotors the width of a jet plane’s wingspan and the blade tips moving at up to 170 miles per hour, creating tornado-like vortexes.

Bald and golden eagles, as well as millions of other birds, are sucked in and chopped up annually by wind farms’ whirling turbines, as the Associated Press described it. Wind farms are killing birds, and the government of President Barack Obama has just decreed it to be collateral damage in the quest for clean energy.

With climate change and renewable energy foremost on many peoples’ minds, Obama has said that wind energy companies will be allowed to kill (accidentally) a certain number of eagles and other birds under 30-year permits. In return the companies must take measures to prevent such deaths and will be required to track and report the number of birds that are killed in their turbines, the AP reported on December 6.

Permits will last 30 years and be reviewed every five years, the U.S. Department of the Interior said in its statement announcing the rules change. It builds on a permitting program begun in 2009 under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, the department said.

While the measure’s stated purpose is to acknowledge that some bird deaths are inevitable, environmental stewards hold that such allowances give companies too much leeway. The Osage Tribe is already battling an application for just such a permit by Wind Capital Group. The company is seeking to build a 94-turbine wind farm and estimates it would kill up to 120 eagles annually during the life of the project.

The Osage reacted strongly to Obama’s rule change announcement and said the President should know better.

“President Obama knows how important eagle feathers are to us: He was adopted into the Crow Nation and was adorned with a full war bonnet containing eagle feathers from head to toe,” said Assistant Principal Chief Scott N. Bighorse, according to the AP.

The Audubon Society said it would challenge the new ruling, which was handed down the by U.S. Department of the Interior.

“Instead of balancing the need for conservation and renewable energy, Interior wrote the wind industry a blank check,” said David Yarnold, president and CEO of the Audubon Society, in a statement. “It’s outrageous that the government is sanctioning the killing of America’s symbol, the bald eagle.”

The nation’s highest priority should on finding “reasonable, thoughtful partners to wean America off fossil fuels,” Yarnold said. “We have no choice but to challenge this decision, and all options are on the table.”

Duke Energy Corp. pleaded guilty last month and was fined copy million last month for killing eagles with its wind turbines.

Meanwhile, as of December 11, 15 companies had applied for permits, not just wind power enterprises but also building companies and the military, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services spokesperson Chris Tollefson to the Journal Record. The Fish and Wildlife Service is in the middle of a 60-day public-comment period that ends on February 3 on environmental considerations for the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind projects in Wyoming. Two public hearings are scheduled, the first one on December 16 in Rawlins, Wyoming and the second on December 17 in Saratoga, Wyoming, according to Greenwire. The project itself was approved last year, Greenwire reported. The facility “proposes to string together as many as 1,000 turbines across more than 220,000 acres of BLM and ranch lands,” Greenwire said. The environmental review is to determine such a project’s effect on golden eagles.

Below, the Osage Nation explains the effect of wind turbines on migrating eagles.

The grinch that stole the coal industry’s Christmas

By Todd Woody, Grist

Coal industry executives can only wish Santa will leave them a lump of the black stuff in their stockings this Christmas. But as 2013 draws to a close, those stockings are likely to be empty as the pace of coal-fired power plant closures accelerates.

Market research firm SNL Energy estimates that coal-fired plants generating as much as 64,002 megawatts of electricity will be shuttered by 2021. That’s 5,000 megawatts more than SNL predicted in May. Just since that earlier projection, however, several energy companies and utilities announced they would close some big coal plants, including the Tennessee Valley Authority’s decision in November to take out of service coal-fired power stations generating 3,100 megawatts. That would leave the government-owned utility in the heart of coal country reliant on nuclear and natural gas to generate the bulk of the region’s electricity.

That’s certainly good for the planet, given that coal is responsible for 42 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

In the United States, the death of coal is being driven by low natural-gas prices and the imposition of stricter environmental regulations that could make operating a coal-fired power plant a money-losing proposition.

Thanks to the shale gas fracking boom, natural-gas prices remain at rock bottom. That means utilities and power producers are finding it cheaper to switch to that much cleaner-burning fuel than to undertake expensive retrofits of decades-old coal plants to meet new federal emissions regulations. Shale gas now provides nearly a quarter of the U.S.’s natural gas supply and low prices are likely to persist over the next decade, according to SNL.

“Since SNL Energy’s spring analysis, market conditions have shown little improvement, keeping pressure on coal generators,” states the report issued Tuesday. “Natural gas prices remain stubbornly low, which has depressed wholesale electricity prices and spurred competition for coal units from the competing natural gas.”

SNL predicts coal closures could add $5 a megawatt-hour to the wholesale price of electricity in coal-dependent regions of the U.S. Depending on their electricity use, some utility customers would pay $5 more a month on their bill, SNL spokeswoman Christine Twomey told The Atlantic.

In more bad news for the coal industry, on Thursday the U.S. Export-Import Bank approved restrictions on the financing of overseas coal-fired power plant projects. And on Tuesday, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London announced that it would cease financing most coal-fired power plants in Eastern Europe and central Asia. The World Bank and the Obama administration have adopted similar policies.

“We cannot use carbon without having a thought about what the impact of climate change is going to be,” Riccardo Puliti, an executive with the European bank, told Bloomberg. “There is a climate-change problem, and there are actions to be undertaken in order to solve it.”

This story was produced by The Atlantic as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Geoduck industry fighting China’s shellfish-import ban

Washington geoduck farmers and harvesters have turned to politicians to help overturn a Chinese shellfish-import ban that’s all but shut down the local industry.

By Jay Greene, December 14, 2013 the Seattle Times

Washington geoduck harvesters and government officials, including Gov. Jay Inslee, are scrambling to overturn China’s decision to ban some shellfish exports from the Pacific Northwest.

The ban has brought the geoduck industry here to a virtual halt.

Fish inspectors in China notified the U.S. Embassy on Dec. 3 that China was tentatively suspending imports of geoduck and other “double-shell aquatic animals,” such as oysters, because they found high levels of paralytic shellfish poisoning, or PSP, in a Nov. 21 shipment of geoducks.

PSP is a biotoxin produced by algae that shellfish eat and, in humans, in high levels it can lead to severe illness and even death.

KUOW first reported news of the ban.

The ban is a particularly nettlesome problem in Washington because China accounts for about 90 percent of geoduck exports from the state. And fisheries in the state harvest and farm 5.5 million to 7 million pounds of geoduck annually, according to Taylor Shellfish Farms, one of the state’s largest geoduck providers. Those companies generally sell geoduck, which is a burrowing clam, for between $7 and $25 a pound.

The ban also affects Alaskan shellfish.

Local fish companies, though, are struggling to understand the ban because testing by the Washington State Department of Health in the area where the geoduck shipments originated found PSP levels well below internationally accepted limits.

“We’ve gone back and looked at all records — they show results way below any human-health concern,” Donn Moyer, a health-department spokesman, said Saturday. “We don’t have any evidence or information whatsoever about any high levels of PSP in any shellfish.”

Geoduck harvesters believe the Chinese inspectors applied a standard for the level of toxicity that is well below what is considered safe for humans.

“The numbers I saw (that Chinese inspectors used) are just plain ridiculous,” said Tony Forsman, general manager of Suquamish Seafoods, a business run by the Suquamish Tribe.

To compound the challenge, communication from the Chinese government has been scant. State regulators and fishery executives say they have heard nothing more from the Chinese since the Dec. 3 notification. Press officials from the Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t respond to an email query Saturday.

That’s led the industry to turn to political leaders to resolve the issue. On Friday, the governor and Commissioner of Public Lands Peter Goldmark sent a letter to the heads of the Food and Drug Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration asking them to engage in “direct interaction with the Chinese government” to determine the status of the ban and to gather information about the Chinese inspection.

In the meantime, local geoduck harvesters and farmers are curtailing operations. Suquamish Seafoods, which sends all of its geoduck, between $2 million and $3 million a year, to China, has idled its 24 divers.

“This is unprecedented,” Forsman. “The tribe really depends on it.”

Taylor Shellfish Farms, which sells some geoduck domestically, has had to reduce hours for its workers. And if the Chinese ban continues much longer, prices for geoduck sold domestically will drop because of a market glut.

“That may have an impact on domestic prices,” said Bill Dewey, Taylor’s director of public policy and communications.

Staff reporter Carol M. Ostrom contributed to this report. Jay Greene: 206-464-2231 or jgreene@seattletimes.com. Twitter: iamjaygreene

China Imposes First-Ever West Coast Shellfish Ban

A geoduck farm near Puget Sound's Totten Inlet between Shelton and OlympiaCourtesy of KOUW news — A geoduck farm near Puget Sound’s Totten Inlet between Shelton and Olympia
*Courtesy of KOUW news*

Source: KOUW.org

Originally published on Thu December 12, 2013 5:58 pm

By ASHLEY AHEARN AND KATIE CAMPBELL AND ANTHONY SCHICK

China has suspended imports of shellfish from the west coast of the United States — an unprecedented move that cuts off a $270 million Northwest industry from its biggest export market.

China said it decided to impose the ban after recent shipments of geoduck clams from Northwest waters were found by its own government inspectors to have high levels of arsenic and a toxin that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning.

The restriction took effect last week and China’s government says it will continue indefinitely. It applies to clams, oysters and all other two-shelled bivalves harvested from the waters of Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Northern California. U.S. officials think the contaminated clams were harvested in Washington or Alaska. Right now they’re waiting to hear back from Chinese officials for more details that will help them identify the exact source.

State and federal agencies oversee inspection and certification to prevent the shipment of tainted shellfish. Jerry Borchert of the Washington Department of Health said he’s never encountered such a ban based on the Chinese government’s assertion that these U.S. safeguards failed to screen out contaminated seafood.

“They’ve never done anything like that, where they would not allow shellfish from this entire area based on potentially two areas or maybe just one area. We don’t really know yet,” Borchert said.

The biggest blow could fall to those who farm or harvest the supersized geoduck clams. In the Northwest, they’re concentrated in Washington’s Puget Sound, where about 5 million pounds of wild geoduck are harvested each year. Aquaculture accounts for an additional 2 million pounds, according to estimates from the Washington Department of Natural Resources.

Blake Severns inspects a wild geoduck just plucked from the bottom of Puget Sound. Severn is a diver with the the Washington Department of Natural Resources Aquatics Resource Division.Courtesy of KOUW news — Blake Severns inspects a wild geoduck just plucked from the bottom of Puget Sound. Severn is a diver with the the Washington Department of Natural Resources Aquatics Resource Division.
*Courtesy of KOUW news*

A barricade around the Chinese consumer market means trouble for those in the Northwest who rely on Asian trade.

“It’s had an incredible impact,” said George Hill, the geoduck harvest coordinator for Puget Sound’s Suquamish Tribe. “A couple thousand divers out of work right now.”

The U.S. exported $68 million worth of geoduck clams in 2012 — most of which came from Puget Sound. Nearly 90 percent of that geoduck went to China.

Geoduck are highly prized in China, where the clams sell for retail prices of $100 to $150 per pound. Although geoduck are harvested year round, demand peaks during the holiday season leading up to the Chinese celebration of the lunar new year — which falls on Jan. 31 for 2014.

The geoduck (pronounced “GOO-ee-duck”) is a the world’s largest burrowing clam. It’s slow-growing, regularly reaching 100 years old and often weighing as much as 10 pounds.

Harvesters are waiting for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to negotiate with the Chinese government to come to an agreement on how to move forward and reopen shellfish trade. NOAA stopped issuing certification for shellfish exports last Friday.

Officials say the investigation is ongoing but the closure could last for months. While the industry awaits a resolution at the international level, it is adjusting to the new reality.

The Suquamish Tribe is trying to develop other markets in New York, California and locally at seafood markets in Seattle, Hill said.

Bill Dewey, a spokesman for the largest shellfish supplier in Washington said his company, Taylor Shellfish, is looking at other solutions.

“I was just talking to our geoduck manager and he’s got two harvest crews and three beach crews essentially doing makework,” Dewey said. “He’s too nice a guy to lay them off during the holidays but there’s only so much you can be charitable about making work for people and eventually you’re going to have to lay them off.”

Idle No More founders honoured by U.S. magazine

Derrick on December 10^th 2013 WC Native News

What started in Saskatoon one year ago with a small teach-in grew into a global movement whose founders were recently named by Foreign Policy magazine to its top 100 global thinkers list.

The founders — Jessica Gordon, Sylvia McAdam, Sheelah McLean, and Nina Wilson — are on the list with other notables such as NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, U.S. secretary of state John Kerry, Pope Francis, teenage activist Malala Yousafzai, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

The group’s entry on the list explains how the global movement started when the four women started emailing each other about concerns with proposed federal legislation affecting land management, water management and several other issues related to First Nations, Metis and Inuit people. They started a Facebook page called “Idle No More” to coordinate local meetings and events.

“Before long, #IdleNoMore was trending on Twitter, and protests under the same name spread across Canada. Solidarity demonstrations also occurred in the United States, Europe, and Australia,” the entry states. “The protests in particular targeted Canada’s extractive industries, asserting that new pipelines and other projects would destroy land and disrupt ecosystems. One protest delayed exploratory drilling in British Columbia.”

This is the fifth year the magazine has put out the list.

“This (is a) remarkable list of people who, over the past year, have made a measurable difference in politics, business, technology, the arts, the sciences, and more,” the magazine states on its website.

Link: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/2013_global_thinkers/public/

Temporary Victory for Mi’kmaq! SWN Abandons Fracking Until 2015 elsiroundancefire

$Canada_fracking_victory$

from APTN National News

A Houston-based energy company that has faced ferocious resistance from a Mi’kmaq-led coalition is ending its shale gas exploration work for the year, says Elsipogtog War Chief John Levi.

Levi said Friday that the RCMP informed him that SWN Resources Canada is ending its exploration work, but will return in 2015.

Levi said SWN and its contractors would be picking up geophones from the side of the highway today. Geophones interact with thumper trucks to create imaging of shale gas deposits underground.

“They are just going to be picking up their gear today,” said Levi. “At least people can take a break for Christmas.”

Demonstrations against the company escalated this week. Demonstrators twice burned tires on Hwy 11 which was the area where SWN was conducting its shale gas exploration.

SWN could not be reached for comment.

SWN obtained an extension to an injunction against the demonstrators Monday after arguing it needed two more weeks to finish its work. In its court filing, SWN claimed it needed about 25 km left to explore.

Levi said the Mi’kmaq community, which sits about 80 km north of Moncton, will be there again in 2015 to oppose the company. Levi said SWN will be returning to conduct exploratory drilling.

“We can’t allow any drilling, we didn’t allow them to do the testing from the beginning,” said Levi.

Levi said word that SWN is leaving is no cause for celebration just yet.

“We went through a lot,” he said. “We need some time for this to sink in and think about everything, think about what we went through…People did a lot of sacrificing.”

There could be happy green news hidden in the budget deal

Reuters/Jonathan Ernst Paul Ryan and Patty Murray, budget buddies.

By Ben Adler, Grist

Congress can often seem hopelessly anti-environment, what with right-wing Republican extremism, the power of extractive industries in both parties, and the rural bias of the Senate. This week is a partial exception, so savor it.

On Tuesday night, House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and his Senate counterpart Patty Murray (D-Wash.) struck a deal to fund the government through Sept. 30, 2014, and reverse some of the painful spending cuts from sequestration. The Bipartisan Budget Act does not specify how much money would go to each government program, only that $63 billion that would have been cut from federal discretionary spending over the next two years will instead be replaced thanks to some increases in fees and some cuts from other areas such as federal employee pensions. About half of the spending will go to defense, and half to domestic agencies, including environmental programs. If it passes, it will be up to the House Appropriations Committee to determine exactly which program gets what.

Environmental organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council are issuing statements celebrating the good news. “This is a positive first step in undoing some of the damage to national parks, clean drinking water, air pollution monitoring, and other environmental priorities,” says Alex Taurel, deputy legislative director for the League of Conservation Voters.

The celebration could be premature, though. The bill may not even pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Conservatives were objecting to the deal before it had even been made, and anti-government zealots on the far right, such as the Ron Paul–affiliated Campaign for Liberty, are coming out against it.

And if it does pass, environmentalists will still have to pressure congressional appropriators to restore funding to important environmental programs. The wish list is long. Sequestration cuts have made it more difficult for state and local governments to monitor and maintain air and water quality. The Clean Water State Revolving Fund, for example, is an EPA program that gives grants to states to lend money to localities that need to make capital improvements to their drinking-water or wastewater-treatment facilities. Sequestration cuts have meant that governments are putting off these essential investments. Scott Slesinger, legislative director at NRDC, says restoring those funds and making sure that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has adequate funding are top priorities. A blunt instrument such as sequestration can be very bad for NOAA because some years it needs to make a big expenditure, such as launching a new satellite, that will pay off over many years thereafter. But a hard, low cap on that year’s NOAA appropriation means it won’t have money for other programs.

Other environmental lobbyists point to clean air monitoring as an area where they hope to partially reverse sequestration. “A big area people ought to be concerned about is air pollution,” says Taurel. “A ton of money comes from the EPA and goes out to states to measure levels of smog in the air to tell people if it’s a code red day, or code orange day, and old people, kids, and people with respiratory problems need to stay in.”

Some environmental programs are likely to fare better than others. The EPA, for example, is a terrible bogeyman in the eyes of Republicans, so it may not see much additional funding. Interior Department programs, such as national parks, are less politically polarizing.

“You’ll have hopefully less closures at national parks in 2014 than you saw in 2013,” says Taurel. In addition to national parks and monuments being closed during the recent government shutdown, many were closed during portions of the year due to lack of funds. “One message from the government shutdown is that the public cares about public lands, especially national parks,” says Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club lands protection program. “So in theory you would see some of those cuts restored if Republicans are looking at public opinion.”

Why the conditional? Don’t all politicians care about public opinion? Well, many congressional Republicans do not. This is a caucus that rejected gun-control measures with 90 percent public approval in the wake of a massive school shooting. House Republicans are mostly just concerned with winning over the most radical elements of their base, in order to stave off primary challenges and then coast through the general election in their safely Republican districts. But there is not an anti–national parks lobby, much less one with the awesome power of the National Rifle Association, so there is cause for hope.

Some of the $63 billion is coming from oil and gas leasing. Of course, it would be better if no such drilling occurred at all, but it was going to happen anyway. The proposed budget deal would approve a treaty between Mexico and the U.S. to divvy up offshore drilling lease revenue from the GuIf of Mexico, which would add money to the treasury. Other components of the deal, such as limiting interest payments to oil and gas companies that overpaid on leases and eliminating federal assistance for deepwater oil exploration, are actually good, if minor, steps toward removing our enormous subsidies for fossil fuels. On the other hand, the deal does not eliminate tax subsidies for the oil industry, as President Obama has requested.

It is also worth putting the budget deal in its larger, lamentable, context. This is not so much progress as it is a partial reversal of a terrible regression. The sequestration cuts in the Budget Control Act of 2011 were supposed to be so draconian that it would force the two parties to reach a big bipartisan agreement to reduce long-term deficits. The whole premise was half-baked, since at a time of fitful economic growth, high unemployment, widening inequality, and record-low interest rates on federal government borrowing, our focus should be on stimulating growth through more deficit spending, not less. Stronger growth would also reduce budget deficits in the future through higher tax revenues and lower mandatory spending on poverty-relief programs such as food stamps.

Instead of pushing hard for stimulus, Democrats caved to Republicans’ economically illiterate anti-deficit hysteria. And then they found that Republicans were unwilling to make a deal that involved any additional tax revenue, thus dooming the efforts to find a grand bargain and locking in the sequester cuts. We also suffered through a government shutdown caused by Republicans’ irrational demands that President Obama and the Democratic majority in the Senate accede to their entire agenda, as if Mitt Romney had just won the election. Both the sequester and the shutdown adversely affected virtually every environmental program. This deal between Ryan and Murray is the outgrowth of those two catastrophes, and an effort to avoid their repetition.

“We passed the political hurdle where we’re finally starting to push back against the sequester, which is great from our perspective,” says Manuel. But the 2011 budget bill locked the sequestration levels in for 10 years, making them the new baseline from which future government funding levels are negotiated. Every effort to restore or increase funding is now a huge uphill climb. “The harm is still being done,” says Taurel, “because the sequester remains in place.”

Ben Adler covers climate change policy for Grist. When he isn’t contemplating the world’s end, he writes about cities, politics, architecture, and media. You can follow him on Twitter.