The new Elwha Tribal fish hatchery on the Elwha reservation is to be used to supplement populations of fish that naturally recolonize the river as habitat becomes available. Photo: Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times, 2011
A federal judge has dismissed a suit against the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s hatchery plan as moot, and the tribe has terminated its plan to stock the Elwha with nonnative steelhead.
By Lynda V. Mapes, Seattle Times staff reporter
A federal judge has thrown out a suit against the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s hatchery plan, and the tribe has backed away from stocking the Elwha River with nonnative steelhead.
The Elwha is at the center of the region’s long-running debate on hatcheries and their role in salmon recovery. A $325 million federal recovery project for the river is now under way, with one dam out of the river and another soon gone in the largest dam-removal project in history. With so much at stake, hatchery plans for the fish-recovery effort drew fire early.
Litigation was flying before the first chunks of concrete even came out. Advocates for wild fish filed notice of intent to sue in September 2011 over the new $16 million hatchery built as part of the recovery project. But portions of the lawsuit, filed in March against the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, were thrown out last week by Benjamin Settle, U.S. District Court judge for the Western District in Tacoma.
Settle found that the suit was moot because, since the suit was filed, the tribe had obtained permits from federal fisheries officials to carry out programs at its hatchery, leaving no question to settle.
“It speaks for itself,” said the tribe’s lawyer, Steven Suagee. “The initial complaint had been that the tribe didn’t have the approvals for these hatchery programs, and now we do.“
The new hatchery is to be used to supplement populations of fish that naturally recolonize the river as habitat becomes available. Ultimately, taking two dams out of the river will reopen 70 miles of habitat in the Elwha to salmon and steelhead spawning. But dam removal also is letting loose huge amounts of sediment, trapped behind the dams for a century. As the water gets muddy, the hatchery also is intended to provide a safe-harbor gene bank for four populations of fish listed for protection in the river, including steelhead.
The tribe backed away from one of the programs it sought to run at its hatchery: stocking Chambers Creek steelhead, which, while not native to the Elwha, have provided a fishing opportunity for tribal fishermen for years as native stocks in the Elwha declined because of the dams.
With the dams coming out, however, wild-fish advocates no longer wanted the nonnative fish stocked in the river. The tribe, while not conceding that the fish cause harm to wild stocks, announced in December to federal officials that it has ended its Chambers Creek program and will not be reviving it.
Instead, tribal members will mop up the fish returning from its last release from the hatchery in 2011 until no more of the nonnative fish come back. That will serve the needs both to avoid crossbreeding of the nonnative fish with fragile, rebuilding native runs and to provide a small fishing opportunity for the tribe.
A moratorium is in effect on fishing in the river for five years while populations rebuild. The tribe is negotiating with federal fisheries officials to be able to fish native Elwha steelhead after the moratorium even if those fish are still listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act, if doing so does not set back recovery.
Suagee said that those talks are still ongoing and that nothing is final.
Kurt Beardslee, of the Wild Fish Conservancy, said the nonprofit, which took the lead in the suit, intends to appeal.
Meanwhile, dam removal is on hold until repairs are made to a water-treatment plant built as part of the recovery project that clogged with leaves, sticks and mud during the first fall rains. The plant has not been providing the level of water quality expected nor functioning as planned.
Repairs are expected to put off resumption of work until at least April.
Washington state would see federal funding cut for everything for teacher’s aides for disabled kids to immunizations if Congress can’t reach a budget agreement.
By Lynda V. Mapes and Sanjay Bhatt, Seattle Times staff reporters
From fewer immunizations to classrooms without teachers aides for children with disabilities, Washington state could feel the reduction of millions of dollars of federal aid if Congress can’t reach a budget compromise, a White House report released Sunday says.
Unless Congress acts by Friday, a series of automatic budget cuts, called sequestration in D.C. budget-speak, will take effect, adding up to $85 billion nationally over the course of the remaining fiscal year, through September.
The Senate is to consider bills this week that would avoid the cuts. Meanwhile, the White House on Sunday released the list of potential budget reductions, state by state, as part of its stepped-up campaign to prod Congress to act.
Some state agencies that rely heavily on federal funding would be particularly hard hit.
“My budget is 53 percent federal, and the amount of state and local dollars has also declined,” Mary Selecky, secretary of the state Department of Health, said Sunday.
The cuts would mean a more than 8 percent reduction in her agency’s funding, or $22 million in a department that has already seen a 38 percent cut in state money over the past six years, Selecky said.
Under an analysis prepared by her agency, about half of the new round of federal cuts would come out of food and nutrition programs for infants and pregnant women.
Cuts in federal immunization funding could also mean that 4,451 fewer kids receive vaccinations. Other core services, from breast- and cervical-cancer screening to inspections of health-care facilities and drinking-water protection, would be reduced.
Selecky said public-health budgets are already so tight that further reductions would put people’s health at risk. “Bugs don’t know boundaries, and they don’t know political parties, or that our budget is tight,” she said.
Other reductions in Washington state outlined by the White House include:
• $11.6 million for primary and secondary education, putting 160 teacher and aide jobs at risk. An $11.3 million reduction would jeopardize the jobs of 140 teachers, aides and staff working with children with disabilities.
In addition, around 440 fewer low-income students would receive aid to help them finance the costs of college, and about 1,000 children would be cut from Head Start and Early Head Start services.
• $3.3 million to help ensure clean water and air, and to prevent pollution from pesticides and hazardous waste. In addition, Washington could lose $924,000 in grants for fish and wildlife protection.
• Furloughs for 29,000 civilian Department of Defense workers that would reduce gross pay by
$173.4 million. Army base operation funding would be cut $124 million.
• About $271,000 in grants that support law enforcement, courts, crime prevention and education, corrections and community corrections, drug treatment and enforcement, and crime victim and witness initiatives.
• $661,000 for job-search assistance, referral and placement. Up to 800 disadvantaged and poor children could lose access to child care, and $1 million could be lost for meals to seniors.
Not mentioned by the White House was money to clean up the Hanford nuclear reservation, where last week six tanks holding radioactive material were found to be leaking. The budget cuts could lead to up to 1,000 cleanup workers facing furloughs of up to six weeks, the state says.
“Our concern is anything that slows down cleanup,” said Dieter Bohrmann, spokesman for the nuclear-waste program at the state Department of Ecology. “We need to keep progressing and avoid further delays, especially with the news of additional leaking tanks.”
The list from the White House includes other possible cuts nationally, including reductions for health research through the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, as well as cuts in aviation safety, air traffic control and security. The White House did not say how those cuts would affect the state.
The looming cuts are the result of failed attempts by Congress and President Obama to tame the federal budget deficit, beginning back in 2011. The automatic cuts now facing the country are just the start of more than $1 trillion in across-the-board reductions that would be imposed on domestic and military spending over the next 10 years.
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on ABC’s “This Week” that the worst of the cuts could be alleviated with some flexibility. “We can get all through this,” he said. “The best way to do it is just allow flexibility.”
White House spokesman Jay Carney has insisted for weeks that the agencies have no flexibility. Administration officials did not respond to questions Sunday about whether they would support a change in law to gain flexibility.
Some analysts outside government said they are optimistic a compromise budget solution would be reached before long, mitigating or at least redirecting the cuts.
“My suspicion is this is a game of poker. People in Congress will step up to the plate,” Anthony Chan, chief economist for JPMorgan Chase’s wealth-management service, said in an interview Friday.
He’s not worried if Congress can’t reach a deal right away. “It’s not the end of the world if it takes a couple weeks, a couple months,” he said.
The combination of sequestration, higher payroll taxes and the “fiscal-cliff” deal reached by Congress late last year will shave
1.5 percentage point off the U.S. economy’s growth in 2013, Chan said, but that’s not reason for panic.
The important thing, he said, is for Congress to reach a deal that will eliminate the pall of uncertainty looming over American businesses and holding back their decisions to invest and hire.
Even if the spending cuts produce short-term job losses, the Seattle metro area is outperforming the national average in job growth, Chan said. The area saw 2.9 percent annual job growth in 2012, compared with
1.6 percent nationally.
Construction, manufacturing and the leisure-and-hospitality industries were responsible for a huge part of the area’s job growth. Chan said those numbers, along with a rebound in housing values here and nationally, indicate the nation’s economy is coming back.
President Barack Obama is promising a “big push” for his proposal to provide pre-K for all 4-year-olds.
Source: Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is promising a “big push” for his proposal to provide pre-K for all 4-year-olds.
Obama says having the world’s best education system will help create jobs and boost the middle class, but it starts with early childhood education.
He said studies show that pre-kindergarten kids do better in school, are less likely to become teen parents and are more likely to attend college, have a job and form stable families.
Obama announced the proposal in his State of the Union address last week. Republicans have questioned the cost, which the White House has yet to reveal.
In an interview broadcast Friday with radio host Yolanda Adams, Obama says, quote, “we’re going to make a big push on that.”
Former Marine Capt. Timothy Kudo walks among civilians carrying a burden of guilt most Americans don’t want to share. A veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Kudo thinks of himself as a killer. “I can’t forgive myself … and the people who can forgive me are dead,” he says. Photo: JOHN MINCHILLO / AP
A veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, former Marine Capt. Timothy Kudo thinks of himself as a killer – and he carries the guilt every day.
By Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press
WASHINGTON — A veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, former Marine Capt. Timothy Kudo thinks of himself as a killer – and he carries the guilt every day.
“I can’t forgive myself,” he says. “And the people who can forgive me are dead.”
With American troops at war for more than a decade, there’s been an unprecedented number of studies into war zone psychology and an evolving understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder. Clinicians suspect some troops are suffering from what they call “moral injuries” – wounds from having done something, or failed to stop something, that violates their moral code.
Though there may be some overlap in symptoms, moral injuries aren’t what most people think of as PTSD, the nightmares and flashbacks of terrifying, life-threatening combat events. A moral injury tortures the conscience; symptoms include deep shame, guilt and rage. It’s not a medical problem, and it’s unclear how to treat it, says retired Col. Elspeth Ritchie, former psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general.
“The concept … is more an existentialist one,” she says.
The Marines, who prefer to call moral injuries “inner conflict,” started a few years ago teaching unit leaders to identify the problem. And the Defense Department has approved funding for a study among Marines at California’s Camp Pendleton to test a therapy that doctors hope will ease guilt.
But a solution could be a long time off.
“PTSD is a complex issue,” says Navy Cmdr. Leslie Hull-Ryde, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
Killing in war is the issue for some troops who believe they have a moral injury, but Ritchie says it also can come from a range of experiences, such as guarding prisoners or watching Iraqis kill Iraqis as they did during the sectarian violence in 2006-07.
“You may not have actually done something wrong by the law of war, but by your own humanity you feel that it’s wrong,” says Ritchie, now chief clinical officer at the District of Columbia’s Department of Mental Health.
Kudo’s remorse stems in part from the 2010 accidental killing of two Afghan teenagers on a motorcycle. His unit was fighting insurgents when the pair approached from a distance and appeared to be shooting as well.
Kudo says what Marines mistook for guns were actually “sticks and bindles, like you’d seen in old cartoons with hobos.” What Marines thought were muzzle flashes were likely glints of light bouncing off the motorcycle’s chrome.
“There’s no day – whether it’s in the shower or whether it’s walking down the street … that I don’t think about things that happened over there,” says Kudo, now a graduate student at New York University.
“Human beings aren’t just turn-on, turn-off switches,” Veterans of Foreign Wars spokesman Joe Davis says, noting that moral injury is just a different name for a familiar military problem. “You’re raised `Thou shalt not kill,’ but you do it for self-preservation or for your buddies.”
Kudo never personally shot anyone. But he feels responsible for the deaths of the teens on the motorcycle. Like other officers who’ve spoken about moral injuries, he also feels responsible for deaths that resulted from orders he gave in other missions.
The hardest part, Kudo says, is that “nobody talks about it.”
As executive officer of a Marine company, Kudo also felt inadequate when he had to comfort a subordinate grieving over the death of another Marine.
Dr. Brett Litz, a clinical psychologist with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Boston, sees moral injury, the loss of comrades and the terror associated with PTSD as a “three-legged stool” of troop suffering. Though there’s little data on moral injury, he says a study asked soldiers seeking counseling for PTSD in Texas what their main problem was; it broke down to “roughly a third, a third and a third” among those with fear, those with loss issues and those with moral injury.
The raw number of people who have moral injuries also isn’t known. It’s not an official diagnosis for purposes of getting veteran benefits, though it’s believed by some doctors that many vets with moral injuries are getting care on a diagnosis of PTSD – care that wouldn’t specifically fit their problem.
Like PTSD, which could affect an estimated 20 percent of troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, moral injury is not experienced by all troops.
“It’s in the eye of the beholder,” says retired Navy Capt. William Nash, a psychiatrist who headed Marine Corps combat stress programs and has partnered with Litz on research. The vast majority of ground combat fighters may be able to pull the trigger without feeling they did something wrong, he says.
As the military has focused on fear-based PTSD, it hasn’t paid enough attention to loss and moral injury, Litz and others believe. And that has hampered the development of strategies to help troops with those other problems and train them to avoid the problems in the first place, he says.
Lumping people into the PTSD category “renders soldiers automatically into mental patients instead of wounded souls,” writes Iraq vet Tyler Boudreau, a former Marine captain and assistant operations officer to an infantry battalion.
Boudreau resigned his commission after having questions of conscience. He wrote in the Massachusetts Review, a literary magazine, that being diagnosed with PTSD doesn’t account for nontraumatic events that are morally troubling: “It’s far too easy for people at home, particularly those not directly affected by war … to shed a disingenuous tear for the veterans, donate a few bucks and whisk them off to the closest shrink … out of sight and out of mind” and leaving “no incentive in the community or in the household to engage them.”
So what should be done?
“I don’t think we know,” Ritchie says.
Troops who express ethical or spiritual problems have long been told to see the chaplain. Chaplains see troops struggling with moral injury “at the micro level, down in the trenches,” says Lt. Col. Jeffrey L. Voyles, licensed counselor and supervisor at the Army chaplain training program in Fort Benning, Ga. A soldier wrestling with the right or wrong of a particular war zone event might ask: “Do I need to confess this?” Or, Voyles says, a soldier will say he’s “gone past the point of being redeemed, (the point where) God could forgive him” – and he uses language like this:
“I’m a monster.”
“I let somebody down.”
“I didn’t do as much as I could do.”
Some chaplains and civilian church organizations have been organizing community events where troops tell their stories, hoping that will help them re-integrate into society.
Some soldiers report being helped by Army programs like yoga or art therapy. The Army also has a program to promote resilience and another called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness to promote mental as well as physical wellness; some clinicians say the latter program may help reduce risk of moral injury but doesn’t help troops recognize when they or a buddy have the problem.
Nash says the Marines are using “psychological first aid techniques” to help service members deal with moral injury, loss and other traumatic events. But it’s a young program, not uniformly implemented and just now undergoing outside evaluation for its effectiveness, he says.
At Camp Pendleton, the therapy trial will be tailored to each Marine’s war experiences; troops with fear-based problems might use a standard PTSD approach; those with moral injury may have an imaginary conversation with the lost person.
Forgiveness, more than anything, is key to helping troops who feel they have transgressed, Nash says.
But the issue is so much more complicated that wholesale solutions across the military, if there are any, will likely be some time coming.
Many in the armed forces view PTSD as weakness. Similarly, they feel the term “moral injury” is insulting, implying an ethical failing in a force whose motto stresses honor, duty and country.
At the same time, lawyers don’t like the idea of someone asking troops to incriminate themselves in war crimes – real or imagined.
That leaves a question for troops, doctors, chaplains, lawyers and the military brass: How do you help someone if they don’t feel they can say what’s bothering them?
The Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the Squaxin Island Tribe, the Port of Olympia, the South Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group (SPSSEG), and private landowners are joining together to clear toxic derelict pilings and other structures from much of the southern end of Budd Inlet in Olympia.
The work, which is funded by the 2012 Jobs Now Act, begins this week and continues through March 14. The project is expected to cost roughly $278,000.
The Squaxin Island Tribe’s involvement in the project began when they received three acres of tideland as a donation from a family estate. The tidelands included 224 pilings from a former industrial site.
“We saw this as an opportunity to restore these tidelands by taking out the pilings that are leaching pollutants into Budd Inlet,” said Andy Whitener, Natural Resources Director for the tribe. “There is a lot of work to be done in Budd Inlet to restore its ecological function. Getting these pilings out of here is a great start.”
By mid-March some 400 derelict pilings and 7,000 square-feet of abandoned docks and piers that represented the last reminders of a lower Budd Inlet shoreline once lined with lumber and plywood mills will be removed and shipped to the Roosevelt Landfill in Klickitat County.
It marks the latest step in a slow but steady transformation of West Bay Drive in Olympia from an industrial corridor to a collection of parks, office buildings and shoreline property undergoing hazardous waste cleanup and redevelopment.
The piling and dock removal project stretches across 1.2 miles of shoreline in lower Budd Inlet. It is spearheaded by the state Department of Natural Resources and also features four properties owned by the Port of Olympia, West Bay Reliable, the Delta Illahee Limited Partnership and the Squaxin Island Tribe.
Eagle Rock, located in the McCloud River canyon in Northern California, is sacred to the Winnemem Wintu and has been desecrated with graffiti and carvings. Photo by Marc Dadigan.
Marc Dadigan, Indian Country Today Media Network
This October, not far from Bishop, California five petroglyphs sacred to tribes in the area including the Paiute, Shoshone and Mono were stolen by vandals using chainsaws and ladders. Government officials compared the crime to cutting holes in the Wailing Wall.
On the other end of the state, about an hour from the Oregon border, the Winnemem Wintu’s sacred Eagle Rock, which is still a ceremonial place in use by the tribe, has long suffered desecrations by vandals carving initials into or spray-painting the rock.
Throughout the state, tribal leaders say sacred sites and burial sites are far too vulnerable to vandalism and destruction via development, and California State Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles) agrees.
Gatto recently introduced a “placeholder” for Assembly Bill 52, which states his intent to enact legislation to improve the protection of sacred and cultural sites by requiring developers to consult with the appropriate tribes “prior to project initiation.”
“I think the state of California has not been great custodians of our history,” Gatto said. “After everything we’ve put our Native people through, it would be really wrong and a travesty if we allowed sacred sites to disappear.”
Gatto said he expects his office will spend the next two months consulting with tribes around the state, including federally unrecognized tribes, about what language would make the bill most effective.
He said the bill won’t have to be in final form until August, who added he thinks there is significant pressure to better protect sacred sites after the Bishop petroglyph incident.
Raymond Andrews, the Bishop Paiute Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, said he thinks it’s vital that tribes are brought to the table as a stakeholder at the very start of any development project.
“We told them we don’t just want to be asked to comment after they’ve drawn up all their plans and are already moving forward,” Andrews said. “We want to be right there when they’re planning these projects because they do affect us and our land, and we’re not going to change who we are.”
Gatto agreed that all too often tribes are only consulted well into the planning process when the development has gained significant momentum, which can make it a “fait accompli,” he said.
One possible solution, he said, might be to create a register of sacred sites, some of which would be private to protect the location of sensitive sites. Once a site was listed, it would have enhanced protections, and developers would be required to use the database to check for nearby sacred sites before they even begin planning a project, Gatto said.
“It would put everyone on notice well in advance that there are genuine sacred sites in the area,” Gatto said. “It would limit the criticism that people using laws to protect sacred sites are simply anti-development.”
One limitation of the bill is that it would only apply to state and local agencies, and, thus, would not apply to the many sacred sites located in land currently managed by federal agencies.
“The other stakeholders don’t know the tribes, they don’t know how to come in and be partners,” Andrews said. “They call us a stakeholder with the backpackers and horsemen, but our longevity and subsistence are tied to the land.”
People who are interested in providing input on the bill can contact Gatto’s legislative aide, Katerina Robinson at katerina.robinson@asm.ca.gov.
The crowd at a climate rally in downtown Denver February 17 numbered up to 500 at its height. The rally was in solidarity with a climate event that drew thousands in Washington, D.C. and in at least 15 states and it included a protest against the Keystone XL Pipeline. Photo: Carol Berry.
Carol Berry, Indian Country Today Media Network
The controversial Keystone XL Pipeline, if approved, will be “built through sacred sites, traditional camp grounds and areas full of Native history,” warned a young Native woman whose organization, Idle No More, was one of 30 Colorado groups rallying in Denver February 17 as thousands of activists gathered in the nation’s capital and elsewhere.
Taryn Soncee Waters, 21, Cheyenne/Oglala Lakota/Cherokee, described the danger to Native patrimony to those gathered at a downtown Denver park in balmy weather. Cheyenne Birdshead, 17, Southern Cheyenne/Arapaho, another Idle organizer and speaker, described being arrested “simply for taking part in one of our Native dances.”
Local Idle concerns about damage to Mother Earth and Native culture from the Keystone XL Pipeline meshed with worries about “climate chaos” and other ecological issues raised by various groups at the rally, but the Idle voice was uniquely defiant, learned from generations of those who refused to yield.
People attending the rally in Denver February 17 were asked to wear dark clothing in order to depict an oil spill of the kind described as likely to happen with any pipeline, including the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline. (Carol Berry)
To bring the XL Pipeline issues home graphically, black-clad participants in the #Forward on Climate Solidarity March and Rally depicted an “oil spill”—an occurrence inevitable with pipelines, they said—by lying in a large group, a self-styled blob, on a paved area near Denver’s Civic Center Park.
There were speeches, musical numbers, and the opportunity to sign petitions, one of them urging President Barack Obama not to approve the 1,700-mile Keystone XL Pipeline that would move heavy crude oil from vast Alberta tar sands southeastward, eventually reaching U.S. Gulf-area refineries and ports.
At least one speaker voiced the concern that while Obama did not approve the pipeline’s first application, additional environmental compliance and political factors could lead to his approving the second planned route, which may avoid the ecologically sensitive Sand Hills in Nebraska but not the underlying Ogallala Aquifer, a major source of U.S. water.
Marchers at a 30-organization climate crisis rally in Denver headed toward downtown’s Civic Center Park, with Idle No More leaders Cheyenne Birdshead (left) and Taryn Soncee Waters heading up the line. (Carol Berry)
Rally organizers quoted NASA scientist James Hansen as saying that “burning oil in the Canadian tar sands [source of the Keystone XL Pipeline’s crude oil] could eventually raise the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere to 600 ppm [parts per million], which he said would be ‘game over’ for a safe climate.”
The 350.org, one of the event’s co-sponsors, is named for what many scientists deem the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—350 ppm, organizers said in a press release.
In addition to 350Colorado, rally co-sponsors included Idle, the American Indian Movement of Colorado, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Environment Colorado, Protect Our Colorado, What the Frack?! Arapahoe, Earth Guardians, PLAN-Boulder County, Be the Change, Clean Energy Action, Eco-Justice Ministries, Colorado Move to Amend, Climate Ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Boulder, AspenSnowmass, Protect Our Winters, and 14 Colorado GoFossilFree.org Campus Divestment Campaigns.
Although tar sands and climate change protests in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere have produced numbers of celebrity and other arrests, Idle events in the Denver area so far have been arrest-free—except for one in January at a mall in Broomfield, a community north of Denver, where Birdshead was taken into police custody after Round Dancing and where others were also cited for trespassing.
“I myself was arrested simply for taking part in one of our Native dances,” she recalled as she addressed the current rally. “It used to be illegal for our people to do our songs, dances and ceremonies. But we still have them because our ancestors did them even though they faced imprisonment.”
This week the arrestees were to have been charged in court for trespass, but the charges were dropped. Birdshead said they had been willing to go to trial, if necessary, because “doing the right thing isn’t always easy but we do it for the future generations, just like our ancestors did it for us.”
There was no obvious police presence at the Denver rally, although uniformed state parks officials were checking to make sure the Sierra Club-obtained park permit was being used according to regulations—and it was, they said.
Birdshead’s grandmother, 70-plus Virginia Allrunner, Cheyenne, is an inspiring and reliable presence at the Idle events, even though in many ways they’re largely youth-focused: A 12-year-old, Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez, leader of the Earth Guardians youth group, emceed the current rally and Native emphasis generally has targeted the legacy that will be left for children and grandchildren.
“We will not retreat. We will not stop. We will go forward to protect Mother Earth. We are Idle No More,” the young women chanted together as they concluded their presentation before the hundreds at the Denver rally.
Secretary of State John Kerry jokes with reporters during a news conference with Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird on February 8, 2013. Photo: Associated Press.
Indian Country today Media Network
Newly confirmed Secretary of State John Kerry, a strong advocate of addressing climate change, is being watched for his stance on the Keystone XL pipeline, even as President Barack Obama highlights environmental preservation as a priority.
Kerry met with his counterpart, Canada’s Foreign Minister John Baird, on February 8, to chat about their mutual energy interests, among other things. Kerry promised a decision “soon” but did not give a real timetable.
“I can guarantee you that it will be fair and transparent, accountable, and we hope that we will be able to be in a position to make an announcement in the near term,” he said at a news conference following the meeting, according to the Associated Press.
“Obviously, the Keystone XL pipeline is a huge priority for our government and the Canadian economy, and I appreciated the dialogue we had about what we could do to tackle environmental challenges together,” Baird said, for his part.
They were Kerry’s first comments about Keystone XL since he was sworn in as secretary of state. The project, a $7 billion, 1,700-mile extension of an existing pipeline that runs from the Alberta oil sands in Canada, is already undergoing an environmental review begun by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
Kerry garnered attention in August of last year, when the then senator compared climate change to the dangers posed by Iranian arms proliferation and drew a link between environmental stability and national security, among other issues.
“I believe that the situation we face, Mr. President, is as dangerous as any of the sort of real crises that we talk about,” said Kerry, speaking on the floor of the Senate.
“This issue actually is of as significant a level of importance, because it affects life itself on the planet,” he said. “Because it affects ecosystems on which the oceans and the land depend for the relationship of the warmth of our earth and the amount of moisture that there is and all of the interactions that occur as a consequence of our climate.”
At his confirmation hearing he grouped it with other major international issues.
“American foreign policy is also defined by food security and energy security, humanitarian assistance, the fight against disease and the push for development, as much as it is by any single counter terrorism initiative,” he said. “It is defined by leadership on life threatening issues like climate change, or fighting to lift up millions of lives by promoting freedom and democracy from Africa to the Americas or speaking out for the prisoners of gulags in North Korea or millions of refugees and displaced persons and victims of human trafficking. It is defined by keeping faith with all that our troops have sacrificed to secure for Afghanistan. America lives up to her values when we give voice to the voiceless.”
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and other environmental groups lauded his confirmation and urged him to continue being an advocate for climate change concerns. As part of that, they
“If approved, the Keystone XL pipeline would boost carbon pollution tomorrow by triggering a boom of growth in the tar sands industry in Canada, and greatly increasing greenhouse gas emissions,” the NRDC said in a statement on February 6.
A coalition of 60 environmental groups along with the NRDC also asked Kerry “to help secure a global agreement to deal with the climate crisis; to reject any new or expanded infrastructure for tar sands oil, starting with the Keystone XL pipeline; and to secure funding for international climate action, particularly in developing countries and the most vulnerable communities.”
Tens of thousands of people rallied in Washington on Sunday February 17 to demand action on climate change and for an end to the Keystone XL pipeline project.
Redhouse now uses drumming and singing to help addicts in recovery programs. (Lee Allen)
Lee Allen, Indian Country Today Media Network
Navajo Native Tony Redhouse doesn’t look his age, and for several decades he didn’t act it either. Now in his mid-50s, he was what is referred to as a “bad boy” in his formative years. In fact, because he was high all the time, he says he received his early education not in school, but on the street. “I was first incarcerated at the age of 14, put in a California mental hospital in a straightjacket, from an LSD overdose,” he says. “They called me Gas because of my habit of inhaling gasoline as a cheap high.”
Redhouse, who says there isn’t a drug he didn’t do, later got kicked out of his family’s home and ended up in foster care, where things just got worse because, he says, members of his adoptive family were also addicted to drugs.
What followed over the next 20 years and stretched from the Bay Area to England was a series of marriages (five), more trips to detox than he can remember (100-plus), medical problems (hepatitis C), a stint in prison (two years), and five alcohol-drug-related DUIs. “I had a habit of running into telephone poles and totaling vehicles,” he recalls. “I was in the dark for a long time. I wandered the streets unaware of where I was and not really caring. I ate out of Dumpsters. I committed crimes to get money for more drugs. I was suicidal and self-destructive.” Recognizing the inevitable end to the path he was on, family members intervened and had him committed to a mental hospital when he was 50.
And there he found both himself and a new path. “Although it had taken me half a century to reach that point, I came to my senses and decided to change my life.”
Once Redhouse decided to become a good guy, new vistas opened up for him as an inspirational speaker, a recording artist and a sound healer. He says those are all ways he can help others in need—addicts, domestic violence victims, grief and trauma survivors, and hospice members about to transition. “Because I had already walked the negative footsteps and knew their pitfalls, I began alternative teaching, sharing spirituality as a means of recovery influenced by Native American culture.”
(Photo: Lee Allen)
He now lectures to capacity crowds across the Southwest and also teams up with such lecture-hall luminaries as Deepak Chopra and Dr. Oz. He speaks passionately of his years working with Native Ways women in recovery program at a Tucson, Arizona facility. According to that facility’s web page: “Therapy is designed to meet the unique needs of Native women and draws on their cultural strengths to promote healing and recovery” and quotes a Great Spirit Prayer—“Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people.… I seek strength not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy—myself.”
“The audience is 25 to 30 female addicts, some just out of prison or detox—a lot of them still strung out on meth and coke—and here I am, [at] the first phase of their recovery. I’m a visual artist in musical form—bells, bar chimes, wooden blocks, shakers, flutes, drums, a palette of sound equipment. The lights are turned off, candles are lit, and I start playing the flute and drum while humming a chant. These women don’t have an inkling about where we are headed, but every time the music begins, they put their heads down on the table and go into their own internal, calming space. The nurturing sound of the heartbeat drum brings security and takes them back to before their addiction, before being molested or beaten, returning back to the days before anything bad had happened.”
Redhouse says the simplicity of sound healing takes the mind to a place where it can begin to be clear enough to make healthy decisions. “If you think about indigenous cultures, there are three ancient forms of expression used in ceremony to express our emotions and dreams—voice, drum and flute. They speak louder than words and allow us to connect with the spiritual realm. When I use these sounds, they evoke thoughts, images, feelings that take people back to their beginning, back to the simple state, the sound of a heartbeat, a breath, the hum of a lullaby—back to a peaceful place, a sacred place, for us to start healing inside. We remove all the built-up complications and come back to the point where you can see clearly what your life is and what you want it to be.”
The healer’s philosophy, as he explained in a documentary co-produced by Chopra called Death Makes Life Possible, came from his hospice work. “I teach that if you are ready to die, then you are ready to live. Spending time with people who are transitioning, you see them settle old scores and make peace with people and situations so they can stop struggling and depart. We’d be wise to adopt that concept of clearing up unfinished business, closing the chapters in our lives that no longer serve us. If we can make peace to depart this world, we can also make conditions that will allow us to live passionately and completely.”
Continuing to help others helps him to continue helping himself. “I feel like I’m right in the center of my destiny, why I’m on this Earth, my life’s purpose, why I’ve gone through everything I’ve gone through so far that has shaped me, the ups and downs, the darkness. I’m doing things right now. I’m a tool in the hands of spirits, that’s all. I’ve become another instrument, blessed to have an opportunity to change other lives for the better.”
EVERETT — While a federal study recently gave an environmental OK to the Snohomish County Public Utility District’s plan to try out two tidal power turbines, some don’t agree with the conclusion.
Three Indian tribes, a cable company and a cable trade group all sent letters last week to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission opposing the Admiralty Inlet project as it’s proposed.
The tribes, including the Tulalips, say the turbines could interfere with fishing. The cable interests believe the project could damage trans-Pacific cables that run through the inlet.
The letters were sent to meet Thursday’s deadline for commenting on the federal environmental study.
The tribes and others expressed concern earlier in the process as well, but the 215-page draft report concluded that the turbines pose no threat to the cables, wildlife habitat or fishing.
Officials with the PUD have seen the latest responses, said Jeff Kallstrom, an attorney for the utility.
“We’re still looking them over in detail. I don’t think anything that’s said is something that hasn’t been said before,” he said.
A final environmental study could be written this spring or the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission could simply reference the comments in either issuing or denying a license for the $20 million project, Kallstrom said. Either way, he expects a decision this summer, he said.
The first draft of the study concluded the turbines would not interfere with tribal fishing in part because “the size of the project would be very small relative to the fishing area. There is no current use of the project site as a commercial salmon fishery.”
The Tulalip Tribes, the Suquamish Tribe and the Point No Point Treaty Council, representing the Port Gamble and Jamestown S’Klallam tribes, each sent letters disputing the report’s conclusions.
“Development of this project would force the state and tribe to close this area for all types of fishing due to the safety hazards of fishing gear or anchor lines getting caught in the turbines,” wrote Daryl Williams, environmental liaison for the Tulalip Tribes, in a 35-page letter to the federal agency.
In the PUD’s project, the turbines would be placed in a flat area 200 feet underwater. Each circular turbine resembles a giant fan, sitting about 65 feet high on a triangular platform with dimensions of about 100 feet by 85 feet. The turbines are made by OpenHydro of Ireland.
The turbines would be placed about 575 and 770 feet from fiber-optic cables owned by Pacific Crossing of Danville, Calif. The cables extend a total of more than 13,000 miles in a loop from Harbour Pointe in Mukilteo to Ajigaura and Shima, Japan, and Grover Beach, Calif.
The proposed distances from the turbines to the cables “significantly depart from industry standards,” said Robert Wargo, president of the cable association, in his letter to the federal agency.
Kurt Johnson, chief financial officer for Pacific Crossing, has said the company is concerned that the cables could be damaged by the placement of the 350-ton turbines or by anchors from boats in the area, he said.
Officials with the PUD earlier submitted to the federal agency a list of precautions that crews would take when operating near the turbines. The most important of these is that boats would stay running when in the area to eliminate the need for dropping an anchor, according to Craig Collar, senior manager for energy resource development for the PUD.
For placing the turbines, OpenHydro officials have told those at the PUD they can get them within 10 feet of their target locations, Collar said.
At peak output, the turbines are expected to generate 600 kilowatts between them, enough to power 450 homes, PUD spokesman Neil Neroutsos said. Most of the time the output will be less, officials said. They emphasized that this would be only a demonstration project intended to determine whether more turbines could be effective in the future.
The project is expected to cost $20 million to $25 million. The PUD has received nearly half that amount in a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.
