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U.S. to pay Navajo Nation $554 million in largest settlement with single Indian tribe

By Sari Horwitz September 24, Washington Post

In the largest settlement with a single American Indian tribe, the Obama administration will pay the Navajo Nation $554 million to settle claims that the U.S. government has mismanaged funds and natural resources on the Navajo reservation for decades.

The settlement, to be signed in Window Rock, Ariz., on Friday, resolves a long-standing dispute between the Navajo Nation and the U.S. government, with some of the claims dating back more than 50 years.

The sprawling Navajo reservation, located in parts of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico, is the largest and most populous Indian reservation, with 14 million acres of trust lands, which are leased for farming, grazing and oil, gas and other mineral extraction. The land is also leased for businesses, rights-of-way, easements and housing.

“This landmark resolution ends protracted and burdensome litigation,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement provided to The Washington Post on Wednesday. “This demonstrates the Justice Department’s firm commitment to strengthening our partnerships with tribal nations.”

Under the agreement, the Navajo Nation will dismiss its current lawsuit and forego further litigation against the U.S. government for its historic management and accounting of Navajo funds and resources held in trust by the government.

“The Navajo Nation has worked tirelessly for many years to bring this issue to a close,” said Ben Shelly, president of the Navajo Nation. “After a long, hard-won process, I am pleased that we have finally come to a resolution on this matter to receive fair and just compensation for the Navajo Nation.” Shelly said the tribe will host town hall meetings across the Navajo Nation to decide on how the funds can be used or invested.

Members of the Navajo Nation Council, the legislative branch of the Navajo Nation, said that the agreement doesn’t affect the tribe’s existing or potential claims regarding water and uranium pollution.

“It is very important for the Navajo people to understand that this agreement only addresses historical trust claims and does not prohibit or hinder our Nation from pursuing claims with respect to future conduct,” said Lorenzo Curley, the chairman of the council, who was involved in the negotiations with the Obama administration.

While the settlement marks the largest ever with one tribe, the Obama administration has made several other multimillion-dollar agreements with tribes since 2009 to settle long-standing grievances by Native Americans.

Along with the Navajo Nation, the administration has negotiated settlements resulting in a total of $2.61 billion paid to 80 tribes since 2010 for tribal trust accounting and trust management claims. The Interior Department manages almost 56 million acres of trust lands for federally recognized tribes and more than 100,000 leases on those lands. The department also manages about 2,500 tribal trust accounts for more than 250 tribes.

In the fall of 2009, attorneys for many of the tribes with litigation pending against the U.S. government wrote to President Obama and asked his administration to expedite settlement discussions. In April 2010, Obama administration officials, including then-Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli, met with the attorneys and started a settlement process.

“From his first days in office, President Obama has worked to honor the government-to-government relationships between the United States and tribal governments,” said Sam Hirsch, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, a key member of the department’s Indian country team. “It reflects my personal commitment to resolving long-standing lawsuits rather than wasting the time and resources of both the United States and Indian tribes in contentious litigation.”

In 2011, the administration agreed to pay $380 million to settle a long-running lawsuit by the Osage Tribe of Oklahoma regarding the government’s accounting and management of the tribe’s trust accounts, trust lands and other natural resources.

The next year, Holder and then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a $1 billion settlement of lawsuits filed by 41 federally recognized tribes across the country with claims dating back 100 years.

In addition, the Obama administration in 2009 settled the highly contentious Cobell class-action lawsuit regarding the government’s trust management and accounting of over 3,000 individual American Indian trust accounts. The lawsuit, which involved several hundred thousand plaintiffs, was filed by Elouise Cobell in 1996 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and included hundreds of motions, dozens of rulings and appeals, and several trials over 13 years.

“The landmark Cobell settlement and resolution of 80 other tribal trust management lawsuits under President Obama has opened a new chapter in federal trust relations with tribes and individual Indian beneficiaries,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said.

Going For Launch With The Salmon Cannon

Washington Deparment of Fish and Wildlife crews load 30-pound fall chinook salmon into the salmon cannon. The cannon sucks the fish up to a truck at 22 miles per hour. The fish will then be driven to a nearby hatchery. | credit: Courtney Flatt

By: Aaron Kunz, Northwest Public Radio

WASHOUGAL, Wash. — Salmon may soon have a faster way to make it around dams. There’s a new technology that’s helping to transport hatchery fish in Washington. It’s called the salmon cannon — yes, you read that right.

First, let’s set the record straight: there’s not really an explosion. But the salmon cannon does propel fish from one spot to another.

That was demonstrated Tuesday, when the salmon cannon transported fish from southwest Washington’s Washougal River to a nearby hatchery. The goal is to make the move easier on the fish, in three steps.

Watch the video: The Salmon Cannon In Action

First, the cannon: A long, flexible tube stretches out of the river. At one end, crew members wade into the river. They heave up a 30-pound fall chinook salmon and lift it into the tube.

The fish is sucked up the 110-foot tube at about 22 miles per hour. And then it plops out into a truck filled with water and swims around.

“It’s almost magical the way the fish will move through the system. It’s like a slip and slide, going uphill,” said Vince Bryan, the CEO of Seattle-based Whooshh Innovations, the company that’s engineering the salmon cannon.

After the truck is filled with about 100 fish, they’ll be driven to a nearby hatchery. These fall chinook salmon will be used to help breed next year’s hatchery runs for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Eric Kinne, the department’s hatchery reform coordinator for southwest Washington, said the fish are less stressed with the salmon cannon. Before this, salmon were transported with a forklift and tote container.

“We would have to fill it with water and put the fish in. Then we’d have to turn it around and haul it up to the landing area and then dump them into a truck. It was very hard on fish,” Kinne said.

The salmon cannon technology was first used as a way to transport fruit. Bryan said the hope is that it will one day transport fish up and over large dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers.

“We’ve actually had even early discussions with getting fish over dams like the Grand Coulee. We’re starting out much smaller than that, obviously,” Bryan said.

It’s also a way to keep hatchery fish out of the natural spawning grounds of wild fish, Kinne said.

The unit demonstrated Tuesday cost about $150,000, he said.

So does the salmon cannon hurt the salmon? Kinne said the state Department of Fish and Wildlife tested out the salmon cannon with steelhead before putting it into action. They compared fish transported with the cannon to fish transported by hand.

“We held them for six weeks to see if there was any difference in mortality, or difference in condition of fish, and no. Everything was really good,” Kinne said.

Every once in awhile, a small salmon will get stuck in the tube, which is designed to operate with fish 15 to 30 pounds. Crews can then send either a water-soaked sponge or a larger salmon to help move it up the tube.

Yakama Nation tribal fisheries are also testing out a salmon cannon in central Washington.

Story and audio by Courtney Flatt. Video by Aaron Kunz and Courtney Flatt.

Seattle To Fine Residents For Not Composting

A vote by the Seattle City Council may put the city more on par with Portland, Oregon, in terms of food waste recycling. | credit: Flickr Photo/Dianne Yee (CC-BY-NC-ND)

By: Kim Malcolm, KUOW

The Seattle City Council unanimously passed a new rule Monday governing what residents put in your garbage bin.

The idea is to increase the amount of food scraps going to compost.

Council member Sally Bagshaw said promoting this practice could reduce up to a third of Seattle’s waste ending up in landfills.

“So if we just get ourselves into the mindset of, Ok, we’re going to recycle our bottles, our papers, our cans, just as we’ve been doing for the past 25 years, and now we’re going to compost the stuff in your kitchen, really easy to reduce the amount of stuff that’s going to a landfill,” she said.

Under the new rule, garbage haulers can ticket bins that contain 10 percent or more of food waste.

Single family households would be fined one dollar on their bi-monthly bill if they exceed that amount.

Owners of multifamily buildings will face a fine of fifty dollars after the third violation.

READ: Seattle Considers Fining Residents For Failing To Compost

Bagshaw’s office says the city of Seattle sends 100-thousand tons of garbage to landfills every year.

The new law is aimed at helping Seattle reach its goal of having a recycling rate of 60 percent by 2015. The change is expected to generate an additional 38,000 tons of compost material every year.

San Francisco also has a mandatory composting ordinance.

Collectors will begin tagging garbage bins with warnings Jan. 1. Fines start until July 1.

Seattle Public Utilities asked the council to consider the ordinance because the agency is falling short of its recycling and composting goals. The council vote was 9-to-0. No public hearing was required.

The Associated Press Contributed to this report.

Leonardo DiCaprio at the UN: ‘Climate change is not hysteria – it’s a fact’

‘The time to answer the greatest challenge of our existence on this planet is now. You can make history or be vilified by it’

Leonardo DiCaprio speaks at the opening of the United Nations

Source: The Guardian

Thank you, Mr Secretary General, your excellencies, ladies and gentleman, and distinguished guests. I’m honored to be here today, I stand before you not as an expert but as a concerned citizen, one of the 400,000 people who marched in the streets of New York on Sunday, and the billions of others around the world who want to solve our climate crisis.

As an actor I pretend for a living. I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems.

I believe humankind has looked at climate change in that same way: as if it were a fiction, happening to someone else’s planet, as if pretending that climate change wasn’t real would somehow make it go away.

But I think we know better than that. Every week, we’re seeing new and undeniable climate events, evidence that accelerated climate change is here now. We know that droughts are intensifying, our oceans are warming and acidifying, with methane plumes rising up from beneath the ocean floor. We are seeing extreme weather events, increased temperatures, and the West Antarctic and Greenland ice-sheets melting at unprecedented rates, decades ahead of scientific projections.

None of this is rhetoric, and none of it is hysteria. It is fact. The scientific community knows it, Industry and governments know it, even the United States military knows it. The chief of the US navy’s Pacific command, admiral Samuel Locklear, recently said that climate change is our single greatest security threat.

My Friends, this body – perhaps more than any other gathering in human history – now faces that difficult task. You can make history … or be vilified by it.

To be clear, this is not about just telling people to change their light bulbs or to buy a hybrid car. This disaster has grown BEYOND the choices that individuals make. This is now about our industries, and governments around the world taking decisive, large-scale action.

I am not a scientist, but I don’t need to be. Because the world’s scientific community has spoken, and they have given us our prognosis, if we do not act together, we will surely perish.

Now is our moment for action.

We need to put a pricetag on carbon emissions, and eliminate government subsidies for coal, gas, and oil companies. We need to end the free ride that industrial polluters have been given in the name of a free-market economy, they don’t deserve our tax dollars, they deserve our scrutiny. For the economy itself will die if our ecosystems collapse.

The good news is that renewable energy is not only achievable but good economic policy. New research shows that by 2050 clean, renewable energy could supply 100% of the world’s energy needs using existing technologies, and it would create millions of jobs.

This is not a partisan debate; it is a human one. Clean air and water, and a livable climate are inalienable human rights. And solving this crisis is not a question of politics. It is our moral obligation – if, admittedly, a daunting one.

We only get one planet. Humankind must become accountable on a massive scale for the wanton destruction of our collective home. Protecting our future on this planet depends on the conscious evolution of our species.

This is the most urgent of times, and the most urgent of messages.

Honoured delegates, leaders of the world, I pretend for a living. But you do not. The people made their voices heard on Sunday around the world and the momentum will not stop. And now it’s YOUR turn, the time to answer the greatest challenge of our existence on this planet … is now.

I beg you to face it with courage. And honesty. Thank you.

Highway 530 reopens 6 months after Oso slide

KOMO News

People take part in a community walk along Highway 530 before it was reopened through the mudslide zone.

DARRINGTON, Wash. – With a moment of silence and a community walk, the stretch of highway in Snohomish County covered by a massive mudslide two months ago reopened on Saturday.

Gov. Jay Inslee joined the ceremony on Saturday as community members walked the mile-and-a-half stretch of Highway 530.

The March 22 mudslide that covered the road in debris killed 42 people. One other person, Kris Regelbrugge, is still missing.

One of those who took part in the community walk was Diana Bejvl, whose son was killed in the mudslide. She stopped at the slide site to take some pictures of her son’s badly damaged truck and saw a familiar sight lying there on a tree stump – a sweatshirt with a picture of Tootsie Roll Pop on the front.

“I go, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,'” she said after recognizing the dirty sweatshirt as one that her son, Alan, often wore.

“We’d always laugh at it,” Bejvl said.

Bejvl said she saw her son a week before the mudslide and was supposed to have lunch with him and his fiancé on the day of the slide. They never made it.

“He’s having the last laugh today,” Bejvl said. “It’s ‘look what I gave you today, Mom?’ And I’ll take any gift from him that I can get.”

Bejvl said she knows nothing will ever bring her son back. But she never takes for granted the memories she will always have of him.

“Value what you can, who you can, when you can, while you can,’ Bejvl said. “Take that with you today and spread the love.”

After she and the others completed their walk through the slide zone, the highway was reopened.

The reopening is a great relief to local residents, who have been traveling from Darrington to Arlington by driving around the slide on a gravel Seattle City Light access road.

The reopened stretch of highway will have a single-lane for alternating traffic with speed limits of 25 mph.

Penobscot Chief to Selectmen: Drop the Redskins Road Name

Gale Courey Toensing, Indian Country Today, 9/16/14

Penobscot Indian Nation Chief Kirk Francis and former Chief James Sappier, an Elder Council member, have separately asked the Wiscasset Board of Selectmen to rescind a vote allowing a private road to be named Redskin’s Drive.

But if Selectman Bill Barnes has his way, that’s not likely to happen any time soon.

Francis wrote to the Wiscasset selectmen September 4 on behalf of the Penobscot Nation “to express our grave disappointment that you, in your duty as civic leaders, have condoned the perpetuation of the term ‘redskin’ by allowing it to be used as a road name within your town.”

The selectmen of Wiscasset, Maine, population 1,097, voted 3-1 with one abstention on August 21 to approve a resident’s request to name a small, private road Redskin’s Drive. Vice Chairman Ben Rines made the motion, Barnes and Selectmen Tim Merry voted with Rines to approve the motion, Selectman Jefferson Slack abstained and Chairwoman Pam Dunning voted against it.

The offensive word has been a contentious issue in Wiscasset for years. In 2012 after a bitter yearlong battle, the school committee voted 4-1 to change the Wiscasset High School’s mascot from Redskins to Wolverines.

Francis told the selectmen that Nation citizens appreciated sharing their history and perspectives on the use of the Redskins name with the people of Wiscasset during that battle. “We remain grateful for the understanding and good will those leaders demonstrated by changing the name of their mascot. We understand that change is difficult and that people may feel nostalgic about certain aspects of their past, but we cannot quietly accept a sentimentality that hurts our people.”

The word is so offensive to American Indians generally and particularly to Maine’s Wabanaki nations – the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet and Micmac tribal nations—because it reminds them of a time when they were hunted by settlers and their bodies and scalps sold to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Frances wrote. “The 1755 Spencer Phips Proclamation placed a bounty specifically on my people, the Penobscot, offering payment up to 50 pounds for each man, woman and child. When scalps were brought in for payment, they were referred to as ‘redskins,’” Francis wrote.

He talked about the real harm that derogatory terms like redskins have on Indian communities, eroding children’s self-esteem and contributing to the poorest educational outcomes and the highest suicide rates in the country. “Suicide rates among Native people have risen 65 percent in past ten years. The American Psychological Association called for the elimination of this term in 2005 citing serious negative consequences on the mental health of Indian youth and the Center for American Progress has recently deemed its use a civil rights violation,” Francis wrote.

Any use of the word is “extremely offensive,” the chief wrote, urging the board to overturn its decision. “It is not too late to make this sincere gesture and begin the journey toward deeper understanding and a mutually respectful relationship,” Francis wrote.

Sappier, who served as chief from 1986-1992 and from 2004-2006, told the selectmen that allowing the Redskins name to be used was based on racism or ignorance of the “true history” of the country ‘’where hundreds of villages were completely wiped out due to the small pox epidemic that ravaged through our tribal villages throughout the northeast,” he wrote, adding that the smallpox as deliberately introduced. “Please do change this racist name to one more acceptable [and] appropriate to/for all peoples,” Sappier wrote.

Barnes, the only selectman who could be reached, told ICTMN why he sees nothing wrong with the word in the following interview:

The Penobscot chiefs have asked you to rescind your vote allowing the Redskins name to be used because the word is offensive. Will you do that?

Well, I don’t feel it’s anything bad.

But Indians say the term is bad and offensive.

No, I really don’t feel its offensive.

But you’re not Indian, are you?

Nah, but I think what needs to be done is remember the Indians so they don’t get forgotten because if it hadn’t been for the Indians in this country the white man would have never survived.

The Indians are offended because the word was used to describe the scalping of Indians here in Maine.

I certainly wouldn’t do anything to hurt the Indians, that’s for sure!

Would you ask the board to rescind its vote?

I don’t think I would because I think the Indians need to be remembered and that’s one way to remember them.

But they say it offends them and it hurts their feelings and harms their children.

Well, I have all the respect in the world for them and I think a lot of us have a little Indian blood in us and I can tell you right now there is nothing I would do to hurt the Indians. Like I said, the white man would never have survived and what really bothers me is what the white man did afterwards – put ‘em on reservations and put ‘em places where they thought they wouldn’t exist. But a name? That name shouldn’t bring any harm to the Indian and I have all the respect in the world for the Indian and anything they’ve gotten, they certainly deserve.

But they would like you not to use the name Redskins.

I’m not going to recommend that it be taken down.

Quilcene Bay shellfish show lethal levels of PSP biotoxins

By Rob Ollikainen , Peninsula Daily News

PORT TOWNSEND — Lethal levels of marine biotoxins that cause paralytic shellfish poisoning have been detected in shellfish taken from Quilcene Bay, Jefferson County health officials warned Monday.

Quilcene and Dabob bays have been closed to the recreational harvest of molluscan shellfish — clams, oysters, mussels and scallops — since Sept. 8.

Paralytic shellfish poisoning, or PSP, concentrations have risen to more than 6,000 micrograms per 100 grams of shellfish.

That’s 75 times the 80-microgram closure level, and twice the levels detected last week.

“It keeps climbing,” said Michael Dawson, water quality lead for Jefferson County Environmental Health.

A combination of warm weather and calm water may be contributing to the elevated levels of PSP, Dawson said

Additional samples from Quilcene Bay and surrounding areas were collected Monday.

“Right now, we’re mostly wanting to check and see if it might be spreading,” Dawson said.

“So we’ve been checking down the Hood Canal.”

The state Department of Health is warning the public that eating shellfish with such high amounts of toxin is potentially deadly.

Symptoms of PSP can appear within minutes and usually begins with tingling lips and tongue moving to the hands and feet, followed by difficulty breathing and potentially death.

Danger signs have been posted at public beaches warning the public not to eat the shellfish, Dawson said.

Marine biotoxins are not destroyed by cooking or freezing.

The closure does not apply to shrimp.

Crabmeat is not known to contain the biotoxin, but the guts can contain unsafe levels.

To be safe, clean crab thoroughly and discard the guts, health officials say.

Commercially-harvested shellfish are tested for toxins prior to distribution and should be safe to eat.

Areas closed to the recreational harvest of all species of shellfish in Jefferson County are Quilcene Bay, Dabob Bay and Discovery Bay.

Kilisut Harbor, including Mystery Bay, and the Port Ludlow area are closed to the recreational harvest of butter and varnish clams only.

Jefferson County Public Health will continue to test affected beaches and will notify the public when shellfish are safe to harvest, officials said.

In Clallam County, the recreational harvest of butter clams is closed from Cape Flattery to Dungeness Spit.

Varnish clams are closed along the entire North Olympic Peninsula.

Sequim Bay is closed to all species of shellfish.

Seasonal closures are in effect for the Pacific Ocean beaches.

Recreational shellfish harvesters can get the latest information about the safety of shellfish on the state website at www.doh.wa.gov or by phoning 800-562-5632 before harvesting shellfish anywhere in the state.

Recreational shellfishers also should consult state Fish and Wildlife at www.wdfw.wa.gov.

California Climate Activist Dumps $1M Into Washington State

By Austin Jenkins, NW News Network

California billionaire and climate activist Tom Steyer has dumped $1 million into Washington state.

File photo of California billionaire and climate activist Tom Steyer

Credit Stuart Isett / Fortune Brainstorm Green

The seven-figure contribution was made last week and became public Monday.

Steyer wants to help Democrats take control of the Washington Senate and $50,000 of Steyer’s money has already moved into a political action committee associated with Senate Democrats.

Steyer also spent heavily in Washington last year.

Recently, he had lunch with Democratic Governor Jay Inslee at the governor’s mansion. Inslee’s climate change agenda has been stymied by the mostly Republican coalition that controls the state Senate.

Oglala Sioux Want to Vote on the Rez

By LACEY LOUWAGIE, Courthouse News Service

RAPID CITY, S.D. (CN) – Oglala Sioux claim in court that Jackson County, S.D., is obstructing Native Americans’ right to vote by refusing to set up a voter registration and balloting site on the remote Pine Ridge reservation.
Thomas Poor Bear, vice president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and three other tribal members sued Jackson County and its Board of Commissioners on Sept. 18, in Federal Court.
Reservation residents have to travel at least 27 miles to the county seat in Kadoka to register and vote, which is twice as far as white residents travel, according to the complaint.
Poor Bear asks that Jackson County set up a satellite voting office in the reservation town of Wanblee.
Lack of transportation compounds the problem.
The Census Bureau reported that nearly one in four Native Americans in Jackson County has no access to a vehicle, but that every white household does.
According to the Oglala Lakota Nation website: “Many people walk to reach their destinations,” but distance between communities and harsh South Dakota weather often make this difficult or impossible.
“What we filed on Thursday really isn’t anything new – it’s just happening in a different way,” plaintiffs’ attorney Matthew Rappold said in an interview.
“The record speaks for itself in how the state government has tried to make the right to vote inaccessible to Native American people.”
In 2004, U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier detailed South Dakota’s long history of voting discrimination in a 144-page opinion in Bone Shirt vs. Hazeltine , which claimed that South Dakota redistricting diluted the impact of Native American votes.
Before 1924, Native Americans could vote only after “severing tribal relations,” Schreier wrote.
Even after the 1924 American Indian Citizenship Act gave Native Americans full citizenship rights, South Dakota continued to ban them from voting or holding office until the 1940s.
Native Americans in the part of the Pine Ridge Reservation now in Jackson County could not vote until 1983, because people from “unorganized counties” – counties attached to other counties for judicial purposes – were forbidden to vote.
South Dakota’s Help America Vote Act task force supports the measure to place a voting office on the reservation, and has even reserved funds for Jackson County to do so, the complaint states.
Nonetheless, minutes from a County Commissioners’ meeting in June this year, cited in the complaint, state: “This would be an additional expense for Jackson County.”
Jackson County Auditor Vicki Williams, a defendant in the new case, declined to comment on the county’s position.
The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Southwestern South Dakota encompasses 11,000 square miles and spans three counties – Bennett, Shannon, and Jackson. It is home to more than 18,000, of which 88 percent are Native American, according to the 2010 census. The nationally famous Badlands of South Dakota also lie on Pine Ridge Reservation land.
About 39 percent of Native Americans live below the poverty line in Jackson County, which is nearly twice the percentage of whites, according to the Census Bureau’s 2006-2010 American Community Survey.
“Due … to the disparity in socio-economic status and the history of racial discrimination, Native American election turnout has historically been very low in South Dakota,” the complaint states, though South Dakota voter turnout is high overall.
Poor Bear wants Jackson County ordered to establish a satellite office on the reservation before the November elections, which will include gubernatorial candidates and constitutional amendments.
He claims there is “no justification” for not opening the satellite office, and that “the cost and burden on the county to designate a satellite office will be negligible in comparison to the irreparable harm that plaintiffs have already suffered, and will continue to suffer, as a result of the violation of their statutory and constitutional rights.”
Attorney Rappold, of Mission, S.D., said, “If we’re successful, and there are similar issues in other areas, this case would be something to tell the local folks: ‘You need to make sure you are doing things properly.'”

Canadian Museum for Human Rights opening marked by music, speeches and protests

Demonstrators call for attention to First Nations issues and the Palestinian struggle

Canadian Museum for Human Rights officially opens amid protests

CBC News

It was a morning of music, dance, speeches, a little rain and a lot of protest as the Canadian Museum for Human Rights officially opened in Winnipeg.

“With the placement of this final stone, at the heart of our circle, it is with great pleasure that we now declare open the Canadian Museum for Human Rights,” Gov. Gen. David Johnston stated as the centre stone — part of a circle of hand-gathered stones from national parks and national historic sites — was set in place during the opening ceremony Friday.

TIMELINE | Canadian Museum for Human Rights
PHOTOS | A look inside the museum
INTERACTIVE | Video tours of 4 of the museum’s galleries
Live updates from CBC reporters at the grand opening
Canadian Museum for Human Rights: time-lapse and sunset

Inside the event, hundreds of dignitaries gathered and heard speeches about the genesis and purpose of the $351-million museum.

Meanwhile outside, dozens of protesters used the media spotlight to bring attention to issues of murdered and missing women, First Nations water rights, the disappearing traditional lifestyle of First Nations and the Palestinian conflict.

“What happens when these guys over here, with their suits and ties and their outfits, destroy everything?” one First Nations protester yelled.

‘You have to shine a light in some dark corners in Canada’s history because we have to know, I think, where we came from to know where we’re going.’— Stuart Murray, museum president and CEO

As strains of O Canada rang out, it mixed with songs of First Nations women protesting and was punctuated by a woman yelling, “Your museum is a lie.”

One of the first groups to arrive brought their message of the struggle of Palestinian people in Gaza.

They said they feel overlooked and will continue to push in the hopes that eventually they will be featured in the museum.

The protesters said they were upset the issue is not being recognized at the museum, even though they have met with museum representatives over the past couple of years to have it featured in one of the galleries.

Other protesters called on the museum to recognize what they said was the historical “genocide” committed against First Nations by the Canadian government. They drummed, performed ceremonial smudges, chanted and carried placards.

Buffy Sainte-Marie told reporters on Friday afternoon that Canada and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights should be using the term ‘genocide’ to describe the residential school experience. (Jillian Taylor/CBC)

Their sentiments were echoed by legendary Canadian musician Buffy Sainte-Marie, who is performing at the museum’s opening concert Saturday night.

Sainte-Marie told reporters that Canada and the human rights museum should use the term “genocide” to describe the residential school experience.

“I think the museum needs to be much more honest, much more bold and much better informed,” she told reporters Friday afternoon.

“I don’t really think that some of the museum people are truly aware of what our history has been.”

Sainte-Marie admitted that she hadn’t seen all the galleries in the museum yet, but added that her expectations were not high.

Group cancels performance

Saturday’s concert was supposed to feature First Nations DJ group A Tribe Called Red, but the group pulled out on Thursday, citing concerns about how the museum portrays aboriginal issues.

A Tribe Called Red cancels performance at human rights museum

“We feel it was necessary to cancel our performance because of the museum’s misrepresentation and downplay of the genocide that was experienced by indigenous people in Canada by refusing to name it genocide,” the group said in a statement Friday.

“Until this is rectified, we’ll support the museum from a distance.”

Museum president and CEO Stuart Murray said the museum will and should spark protest and debate. The vision for the museum has always been to allow people to voice their opinions, he said.

“The Canadian Museum for Human Rights will open doors for conversations we haven’t had before. Not all of these conversations will be easy. We accept that but we will not shy away,” he said.

Officials said they are open to talking to different groups and will update the museum’s content as human rights issues unfold around the world.

‘The journey is finally beginning’

In addition to the opposition from protesters, the museum has faced construction delays leading up to Friday morning’s grand opening ceremony, which began with an indigenous blessing led by elders, including a First Nations prayer, a Métis prayer and the lighting of an Inuit qulliq, or oil lamp.

The ceremony was attended by numerous dignitaries including the Governor General and former Manitoba premier Gary Doer, who is now Canada’s ambassador to the United States.

Current Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger, Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz and the museum’s national campaign chair, Gail Asper, spoke at the event, while the program also featured special performances from Canadian vocal quartet the Tenors, YouTube singing star Maria Aragon and Winnipeg singer-songwriter and fiddle player Sierra Noble.

Asper paid tribute to her late parents, Babs and Israel Asper, who were the driving forces behind the museum.

“Neither my father Israel nor my mother Babs [is] here alive to celebrate with us, but I know they would be filled with gratitude and joy that the journey is finally beginning, this beautiful journey of education and, most importantly, action,” Asper said during the ceremony.

A children’s dance finale, representing Canada’s next generation of human rights leaders, concluded the opening ceremonies program.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper wasn’t in attendance. A spokesperson said his schedule did not permit him to be there.

Heritage Minister Shelly Glover, who attended the opening ceremony, said the museum is an important space.

“This is a museum that will provide information and an educational opportunity to so many Canadians, and it’ll make you proud to be a Canadian,” she said.

When asked about the protesters outside, Glover said she would like people to take a look at the museum before judging what’s inside.

Lightning rod for protests, questions

The country’s new national museum is located next to the Forks National Historic Site, where the Red and the Assiniboine rivers meet in downtown Winnipeg.

Designed by world-renowned architect Antoine Predock, the museum with its Tower of Hope and sweeping windows forms a new silhouette on the city’s skyline.

The museum has been a lightning rod for protests, and some academics say they’re concerned the content may be susceptible to interference by governments, donors and special interest groups.

Human rights museum watering down Canada’s violations, professor fears

“The most important concern is not the concern of individual communities who are disputing the exact manner in which their wrongs have been depicted, but rather the overall issue of independence,” said Michael Marrus, an expert on international human rights at the University of Toronto.

Glover said at the opening ceremony that the museum “must present a balanced and factually accurate account of both the good as well as the bad.”

Murray said the museum has not been subject to any interference, and the content does expose Canada’s human rights failures.

“You have to shine a light in some dark corners in Canada’s history because we have to know, I think, where we came from to know where we’re going,” he said.