It has happened again, this time not with oil but with grain.
However, the Quinault Nation pointed out on May 16, the derailment of a grain train in Grays Harbor County is all the affirmation needed to show that transporting something more hazardous, namely oil, in this manner has too much chance of ending badly.
“Another train derailment in Grays Harbor County? Three in three weeks? Rails ripped up, Cars tipped over. Cargo spilled out,” said Quinault Indian Nation President Fawn Sharp in a statement. “That cargo may have been grain this morning, but it might just as well have been oil, and that would have been disastrous.”
Sharp was alluding to a May 15 incident in which seven cars carrying grain tipped over when 11 cars on the train they were part of derailed. It was the third such occurrence in as many weeks on the network of tracks operated by Puget Sound & Pacific Railway in the Grays Harbor area, the Quinault statement said. This came right on the heels of two earlier derailments—one on April 29, when a grain car tipped over in Aberdeen, and another on May 9 in east Aberdeen, when some cars came off their tracks, the Quinault said.
The cargo was different, but the propensity of train cars to derail no matter what they were carrying says that transporting oil via this method is not safe, the Quinault said. Around the country and in Canada, derailments of trains bearing crude oil, much of it from oil sands and deemed especially flammable, have resulted in destruction and even death.
However, Puget Sound & Pacific Railway, a division of Genessee & Wyoming, said it was investigating the cause of the derailment.
“This series of minor derailments is a highly unusual, unacceptable occurrence and subject to a rigorous investigation,” company spokesperson Michael Williams, Genesee & Wyoming, told radio station KXRO on May 16. “The first two derailments were caused by localized failure of railroad ties that were saturated with moisture from recent heavy rains. Other locations experiencing this issue have been identified and are being corrected prior to receiving another train. The cause of yesterday’s derailment is still being determined.”
Several tribes in the Northwest are opposing railroad terminals in or near their territory that would handle oil and coal. Oil traffic in particular has troubled the Quinault.
“Now, one-two-three, it’s as easy as that. Any argument in favor of bringing Big Oil into our region has been knocked out cold,” said Sharp in the statement. “As we have consistently stated, our people and our treaty-protected natural resources are jeopardized by these oil shipments. This danger is real. We have invested millions of dollars to protect and restore the ecological integrity of our region, and we will not allow Big Oil to destroy it.”
This June, Washington State Parks (WSP) will be hosting three “free days”, June 7, 8 and 14th and will not require payment for day-use. In honor of National Trails Day and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Free Fishing Weekend, June 7th and 8th and National Get Outdoors Day on June 14th will all be “free days”. Some nearby popular WSP include Deception Pass, Mount Pilchuck, Fort Casey, Birch Bay and Larrabee State Parks.
All WSP’s “free days” apply only to day use (not overnight stays or rented facilities). A Discover Pass is still required to access lands managed by the Washington state departments of Natural Resources and Fish & Wildlife.
Discover Pass and Day-use
$30 annual Discover Pass and $10 day pass’s can be purchased at a license dealer, by phone or online. *transaction fees do apply.
Fort Casey State Park Picture source: Washington State Parks
Snohomish County Parks
These “free days” do not apply to Snohomish County parks of which only some require a day-use or annual permit. For frequent users of Snohomish County Parks, they offer an annual permit pass that can be used at all county parks that charge a day-use fee (Flowing Lake Park, Kayak Point Park, Wyatt Park, and Wenberg Park).
Permits can be purchased for $7.00 at the Welcome Center Pay for day use, $70 for annual *transaction fees do apply. Purchases can be made online, at the Parks Administration office (Willis Tucker Park) and, in most cases, at the parks where day-use fees are required.
Willis Tucker Park Source: Snohomish County Parks
WSP Information Center
Ph: (360) 902-8844 (8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Monday – Friday)
E-mail: infocent@parks.wa.govSnohomish County Parks and Recreation information
6705 Puget Park Dr. Snohomish, WA 98296
Ph: (425) 388-6600
OSO — The damaged stretch of Highway 530 closed since the deadly March mudslide will reopen to traffic this weekend, state transportation officials said Thursday.
Exactly when it will open is to be announced today by the state Department of Transportation, whose leaders had predicted it would be mid-June before enough slide debris could be removed to enable safe travel by drivers.
When it reopens, the road will be a single lane and a pilot car will lead vehicles in each direction, as is done now on the parallel Seattle City Light access road that has served as a temporary route for the past month.
The March 22 mudslide killed 42 people and entombed a mile-long stretch of the highway under more than 100,000 cubic yards of debris. One person, Kris Regelbrugge, is still missing.
IMCO Construction of Ferndale received a $4.9 million contract to clear the debris in preparation for another contractor to repair and reconstruct damaged sections. The state might award a contract for that work as early as today.
In recent days, as IMCO workers removed more and more material, state transportation officials got a better sense of the extent of damage.
Most of the original road is intact, with slightly more than 500 feet actually missing, said WSDOT spokesman Travis Phelps on Thursday. That section will be lined with gravel and rock when the single-lane road is reopened, he said.
The state isn’t expected to restrict who can use the one-lane road.
Meanwhile, residents and community leaders plan to gather along the closed road Saturday morning for a moment of silence. Then they, with Gov. Jay Inslee and Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson, will walk the road.
This will be one of the final events before cars and trucks are allowed to drive by the Steelhead Haven neighborhood wiped out in the disaster.
Students leave class and wait for the bus on the last day of classes at the Wounded Knee District School in Manderson, South Dakota. Photo by Peter van Agtmael/Magnum for MSNBC
MANDERSON, South Dakota — In almost any other context it would be a given, an expectation as simple as a dark cloud spitting rain. But when 12-year-old Carleigh Campbell tested proficient on the South Dakota achievement test last year, it was a rather astonishing feat.
Campbell is a student at a school where four students have attempted suicide this year alone. Roughly four out of five of her neighbors are unemployed and well over half live in deep poverty. About 70% of the students in her community will eventually drop out of school.
It’s against this backdrop that Carleigh met expectations on the state’s mandated exam, the only student out of about 150 in her school to do so. To state the obvious, Carleigh’s academic achievement is a bright spot in an epically dark place.
Carleigh is a Native American sixth grader at the Wounded Knee School located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where a well-documented plague of poverty and violence has festered since the Oglala Sioux were forced onto the reservation more than a century ago. There is virtually no infrastructure, few jobs and no major economic engines. Families are destabilized by substance abuse and want. Children often go hungry and adults die young.
These realities wash onto the schoolyards here with little runoff or relief, trapping generations of young people in hopelessness and despair.
“We’re in an urgent situation, an emergency state,” said Alice Phelps, principal at the Wounded Knee School. “But underneath all the baggage is intelligence, potential, and these children all have that.”
Few communities in America are as eager for a silver lining as the Lakota of the Pine Ridge reservation, situated on more than 2 million rambling acres, nudged up against the Black Hills and Badlands National Park. Nowhere is it more palpable than in the reservation’s schools, a jumble of public, private and federal systems that often overlap but rarely ever bolster the academic prospects of the most forgotten children in America.
Carleigh Campbell, 6th grader at Wounded Knee school. She was the only student of 150 students who tested proficient on last year’s state exams. Photo by Peter van Agtmael/Magnum for MSNBC
While the 565 Native American tribes recognized by the U.S. government enjoy sovereign status as separate nations, nearly all Indian education funding is tied up with federal strings. Unlike most public schools that rely largely on local tax money, there are virtually no private land owners on the reservations, so no taxpayers to tax. The government often pays as much as 60% of a reservation school’s budget compared to just 10% of the budget of a typical public school. When last year’s federal sequestration cuts kicked in, Indian country was hit first.
The government is starting to own up to its failures. In a startling new draft report released in April by the federal Bureau of Indian Education, which oversees 183 schools on 64 reservations in 23 states, the agency draws attention to its own inability to deliver a quality education to Native students. BIE-funded schools are chronically failing and “one of the lowest-performing set of schools in the country,” according to the report.
“BIE has never faced more urgent challenges,” the report said. “Each of these challenges has contributed to poor outcomes for BIE students.”
During the 2012-2013 school year, only one out of four BIE-funded schools met state-defined proficiency standards, and one out of three are under restructuring due to chronic academic failure, according to the report. BIE students performed lower on national assessment tests than every other major urban school district other than Detroit Public Schools, the report says.
BIE students also perform worse than American Indian students attending regular public schools. In 2011, 4th graders in the BIE scored 22 points lower in reading and 14 points lower in math on national proficiency tests than their Indian counterparts attending public schools.
BIE schools are typically located in some of the poorest, most geographically isolated regions of the country. Four of the five poorest counties in America are located on reservations. Shannon County, where Pine Ridge is located, is the second poorest with a per capita income of just $6,000-$8,000 a year. It’s also extremely difficult to attract quality teachers willing to relocate to remote outposts with limited quality housing and extreme quality of life issues.
The BIE blames its failures on “an inconsistent commitment from political leadership,” institutional, budgetary and legal barriers as well as bureaucratic red tape among federal agencies. Those systemic issues have produced a disjointed system that has even clogged up the delivery of required materials, including textbooks.
The BIE has had 33 leaders in 35 years, making a chaotic system that has not operated efficiently for decades even worse.
Dr. Charles Roessel, director of the BIE, told msnbc that the agency is actively consulting with tribes across the country to identify ways the bureau can help tribes bolster the academic outcomes of their students. The draft report was the product of those consultations.
Some challenges are obvious. “How do you get a quality teaching staff at a very remote part of the country where you don’t have a city to support or you don’t have the infrastructure and the salaries are lower?” Roessel said, adding, “The greatest impact in a classroom is the teacher and we need to improve the quality of that instruction. And we have to do it with our hands tied behind our back and our feet tied together, too.”
Never Gave Up Sovereignty
Poor academic performance plagues American Indian students both on and off federal lands.
Even as other historically oppressed minority groups like African Americans and Hispanics have made steady academic progress over the last decade, achievement among American Indian youth has stalled. Huge spikes in black and Hispanic high school graduation rates have pushed the country’s overall graduation rate to an all-time high, while the rate for Native American students is trending in the opposite direction.
Compounding the poor academic outcomes is what advocates in Indian country describe as a history of broken treatises, lingering racism and chicanery.
While tribes operate some of the BIE schools, the funding comes with various restrictions and benchmarks. And in the case of traditional public schools that operate near reservations and have a large number Indian students, funding goes directly to states and does not provide culturally relevant Indian education.
“The central offices, they take their big cut out and they have everything, so by the time it gets to our children there’s very little money left and that’s one of the big problems,” Bryan Brewer, president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, said on a recent afternoon during a town-hall style meeting between tribal members and BIE officials. “We don’t have enough money for facilities. If we need to buy something, a furnace, something like that, we have to cut out a teacher. It’s that bad.”
The economic and political implications are worst in states with the largest populations of American Indians, including New Mexico, Montana, Oklahoma and South Dakota.
“There are challenging state and tribal dynamics. There’s history involved here and the reality of sometimes incompatible bureaucracies, the lack of capacity and understanding of one another and even alternative goals,” said William Mendoza, the executive director of the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education. “The experience has been one of a history of tragedy where the effort, both real and perceived, was to assimilate American Indians.”
A Manitoba fly-in fishing lodge came under fire for a section in its brochure that claimed all First Nations have a genetic intolerance for alcohol. (laurieriverlodge.com)
Brent Fleck of Laurie River Lodge in Manitoba calls offending section of brochure ‘stupid’
CBC News (Canada) Posted: May 29, 2014 6:40 AM CT Last Updated: May 29, 2014 9:03 AM CT
The owner of a Manitoba fishing lodge said he’s devastated by a section printed in his visitors guide that says aboriginals cannot handle alcohol, and has issued an apology.
“It was a total mistake and should not have been in there. It’s an old trip planning guide that I’ve used for like 15 years and I had no idea that that was even in there,” Brent Fleck of Laurie River Lodge said via phone from the facility near Lynn Lake, calling the offending section “stupid.”
“I’ve issued an apology to the chief down in Pukatawagan and to the natives that work for me and … it’s certainly not our opinion and not something that we want to forward in any way shape or form.”
The lodge’s Facebook page was filled with angry comments over a section of the 37-page brochure for people planning a trip to the lodge. A paragraph on Page 10 warns guests not to give alcohol to aboriginal guides.
“We take great care when hiring our staff, however the subject of native guides must be touched upon,” reads the section.
“We use Cree Indian guides from the town of Pukatawagon (sic) in northern Manitoba. They are wonderful people and fun to fish with however, like all native North Americans, they have a basic intolerance for alcohol. Please do not give my guides alcohol under any circumstances.”
Although Fleck said it was written 15 years ago, that section of the guide was noticed recently by someone and spread rapidly on social media.
Fleck said he has removed the offending guide from the lodge’s website and offered an explanation as to why it was there in the first place.
“You might be interested to hear that the paragraph in question was written years ago in an attempt to remove the pressure that a guide feels when his guest asks him if he would like a drink at shore lunch,” he told CBC News.
“We run a very high repeat business here at Laurie River and many of our guides have guided the same guests for 20 years or more. Friendships are cemented with great memories of days on the water. That same friendship puts a guide in an awkward position if a guest offers him an alcoholic beverage.
“He is a professional and he is responsible for the health and welfare of his guests while on the water. If he accepts the drink, his ability to ensure that safety is diminished. If he does not accept it he may feel that he runs the risk of offending the guest. The best solution is to let the guest know well beforehand that he should not offer,” Fleck added.
“The sentence was poorly worded and for that I feel horrible. When this whole thing first came to light I’m like, ‘Holy cow, how could I be so stupid. I had no intention of offending anyone and I feel horrible that I did.
“We take great pride in the professionalism of our entire staff here at Laurie River Lodge and I am always bragging about the quality of my guides. In my mind they are the best guides in Manitoba, maybe even all of Canada and I had absolutely no intention of insulting anyone.”
Chiefs demand apology
Once the story about the controversial brochure hit social media and the mainstream media on Wednesday, Manitoba First Nations chiefs called for an apology from the lodge.
Arlen Dumas, chief of the Mathias Colomb First Nation, which includes Pukatawagan, wrote a letter to Fleck on Wednesday and demanded he apologize for his “racist, discriminatory incitement of hatred.”
David Harper, grand chief of the Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, which represents First Nations across northern Manitoba, was also outraged.
“It’s totally derogatory, totally treating us like an animal. Basically, you’re saying, ‘Do not feed the bears,’ right? ‘Don’t give alcohol to these First Nations.’
“Nobody in their right mind would say such comments.”
Fleck said he told Dumas he would comply with the chief’s requests to make things better.
“My only concern is that I’ve hurt some of the people who work for me and who have worked for me for over 20 years and that wasn’t my intention,” he said.
Backlash on Facebook page
The wording was denounced by people posting on the lodge’s Facebook page.
“Disgusting … it speaks volumes of your own intolerance to basic intelligence,” read one comment.
“An incredible display of racism,” read another.
Harper said the Manitoba government should look into the matter to see whether it could crack down on the lodge through licensing or some other mechanism.
“In order for licences to be approved, these kind of comments should also be a factor.”
Deputy Premier Eric Robinson, who is aboriginal and a former tourism minister, said an apology was necessary, but he was also giving the lodge owners the benefit of the doubt.
“I think it’s an oversight on their part and perhaps they didn’t proofread what was written.”
On May 24, millions of people from around the world participated in the March Against Monsanto, calling for the permanent boycott of genetically engineered foods and other harmful agro-chemicals.
By Eco Watch
On May 24, millions of people from around the world participated in the March Against Monsanto, calling for the permanent boycott of genetically engineered foods and other harmful agro-chemicals. Marches occurred on six continents, in 52 countries, with events in more than 400 cities, including 47 U.S. states.
Daniel Bissonnette, a very articulate 9-year-old, mesmerized listeners in this must-see video at a Vancouver, Canada, March Against Monsanto event, asking key questions on why children—the most vulnerable age group to ravages of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and pesticide—are subjected to the worst food possible.
“Monsanto’s predatory business and corporate agricultural practices threatens their generation’s health, fertility and longevity,” said Tami Monroe Canal, founder of March Against Monsanto (MAM) who was inspired to start the movement to protect her two daughters. “MAM supports a sustainable food production system. We must act now to stop GMOs and harmful pesticides.”
GMOs have been partially banned by Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Madeira, New Zealand, Peru, South America, Russia, France, Switzerland and Costa Rico, and are currently labelled in 62 countries. In India, more than 250,000 farmers have committed suicide after Monsanto’s Bt cotton seeds did not perform as promised. Farmers, left in desperate poverty, are opting to free their families of debt by drinking Monsanto pesticide, thereby ending their lives. Many farmers in other countries are also stripped of their livelihood as a result of false promises, seed patenting and meticulous legal action on the part of Monsanto and other big-ag interests. In many parts of Africa, farmers are left to choose between starving or eating GMOs.
“If we fail to realize that March Against Monsanto is not about GMOs alone, then we have already lost the battle,” said Kelly L. Derricks, founder of March Against Monsanto’s Agent Orange awareness program, which educates supporters on this deadly chemical weapon that Monsanto was the largest manufacturer of during the Vietnam War era.
An Open Letter from World Scientists to All Governments Concerning Genetically Modified Organisms is signed by 828 scientists from 84 countries and details concerns regarding GMOs coupled with a call for an immediate 5-year suspension of GMO crops in order to conduct “a comprehensive public enquiry of agriculture and food security for all.”
Grace Her Many Horses has dedicated many years of her life to law enforcement. After this article was published she was removed from her position at Rosebud and has since returned to work on the Fort Berthold Reservation. Article is reprinted with permission from The Sicangu Eyapaha (Rosebud Sioux) tribal newspaper.
ROSEBUD, SD – Former Rosebud Sioux Tribe Police Chief Grace Her Many Horses took a temporary job working in the Bakken Region near Newtown, North Dakota. This Bakken Basin stretches from Montana to North Dakota and it is rich in shale oil supplies. She began work in June of last year until October of the same year. It was her first experience with Man Camps. She seen them before while driving past on the way to pow-wows but this was going to be the very first time she would enter the premises and work the area as a law enforcement officer. This seasoned professional would be in for a rude surprise.
“When I first got there some of the things they talked about, in any of these areas, was they told the men ‘Don’t go out and party. Don’t get drunk and pass out. Because you’re going to get raped,” she said without hesitation.
It’s not exactly something you would expect to hear from a workers’ camp but these places are not exactly your ordinary laborers’ camps. The depth of depravity and dubious behavior are commonplace in these so-called Man Camps. No one will say that all of the inhabitants are criminal but there is definitely an element there that has rocked the local law enforcement officials to the very core of their morals and value systems.
There are identifiable variables that remain constant: These oil workers usually come from desperate conditions. These workers usually have a family they have left elsewhere so they are not looking to start new relations. These workers are paid an excessive amount of money. These workers are well aware their employment is only temporary. These workers know they are living in a remote environment where law enforcement is already stretched beyond its limits and the temptation for criminal behavior is very strong. Unfortunately, most of America still cannot comprehend this information.
“Sexual assaults on the male population has increased by 75% in that area,” she continued. That kind of statistic makes maximum security prisons look like the minor league. “One of the things we ran into while working up there was a 15 year old boy had gone missing. He was found in one of the Man Camps with one of the oil workers. They were passing him around from trailer to trailer.”
He went there looking for a job and was hired by individuals within the Man Camp to do light cleaning in and around their personal areas. The young teenager was forced into sex slavery. It’s the kind of thing you hear about in the ghettos of third world countries; not in the quiet and remote countryside.
The victims aren’t just males but females too. Everyone has heard by now of the missing school teacher that was kidnapped as she was out jogging, repeatedly sexually assaulted, and murdered near one of these Man Camps. The age of the Man Camp victims varies. The assailants are not necessarily looking for male and female adults. They are also going after little girls.
Grace Her Many Horse recalls one specific instance where “We found a crying, naked, four year old girl running down one of the roads right outside of the Man Camp. She had been sexually assaulted.”
There has been a significant rise in prostitution, gambling, and organized crime in these Man Camps too. The oil workers enjoy being compensated at salaries far above that of the average American blue collar worker. So when their paydays come around the predators venture out of the camps and into nearby towns and places a little further down the road. They usually move in caravans of workers with large amounts of cash stuffed into their pockets. Their large payoffs give them the buying power to obtain anything they can think of including prostitutes and hardcore drugs that have never been seen in these towns before. It has a devastating effect on the local small towns.
This former tribal police chief’s first experience talking with prostitutes that cater to Man Camps came here on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation. She pulled over two vans heading out of town. They were filled with female passengers, again, of varying ages. They were heading in the direction of the Man Camps. One of the brazen occupants declared outright to this officer, “Well, you know why we are going up there.” It’s not something you would expect to hear from a woman but these passengers were determined to make it to their destination one way or another.
After taking a long breath followed by a sigh Officer Her Many Horse said, “That small tribal town has been through so much. When you go into to their casino around 11 at night you notice the flavor of the patrons has dramatically changed for the worse.” She speaks of her short time policing those camps and admits it was easy to notice how hard drugs and prostitution had increased dramatically.
She spoke with local Indians that said they used to frequent their casino but they stopped. Things had changed so much that a large number of locals dare not venture outside at night. There are strangers everywhere. Again, this is coming from a small town where most of its population is Native American and everyone had known each other’s first names and origin. Now it is hardly recognizable. Businesses were forced to open only to be shuttered later. Trash and debris has increased. Violence of all types has surged and the beauty of the land has been replaced with heavy construction vehicles and the destruction of lands once referred to as God’s Country. The traffic on local highways has increased significantly as well as the number of traffic accidents and its numerous victims that can no longer speak for themselves. Life goes on in these small Indian towns but it is a life that is bitter and strange.
Meth has been seen as having destructive effects on Indian communities before but now there are new drugs filtering onto Indian reservations from these Man Camps. “There is a new drug called Crocus. When you ingest it your skin boils from the inside-out. It leaves you with permanent scars on the surface of your skin that resembles the scales of a crocodile. It will literally eat your feet off, eat your limbs off. It’s horrible. That’s been introduced up there and it is more addictive than heroin. The drug trade is rampant up there.” She explains how the police department near that particular Man Camp is smaller than the one here in Rosebud. “They need help,” she confesses.
There are oil workers there that can’t even speak English. The sex offenders are very prevalent. “We found thirteen sex offenders in one Man Camp and that Man Camp is found directly behind the tribal casino. Our supervisors would tell us “Watch your kids. Don’t let them run through there.” Making matters worse was the fact that Grace Her Many Horses moved up there with her two young daughters ages ten and fourteen. Living in those conditions and having to worry about the safety of her children must have added years to her life. After the need for workers ends the small town is left with its eye sore oil pipeline, businesses will go bust, the introduction of these new hardcore drugs will linger on, and its shocked residents will be left to contemplate their decision for the oil pipeline in years to come.
The most startling time Grace Her Many Horses spent at the Man Camps was when her police force had to serve warrants on some of the workers and remove them from their dwellings. She and her co-workers took things very serious, suited up in full SWAT gear, went through extra-ordinary measures to could conduct their raids, and to protect themselves from harm.
“It was scary. I never had to do that before in my many years of service. I feel really bad for the local residents because the flavor of their [Indian] reservation has changed so much,” she admits.
It leads the common Rosebud resident to ask if we have enough police officers to cover the proposed Man Camp being built nearby the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation. She was not hesitant to argue: “No we do not have enough members on the police force. We barely have enough people to cover our [Indian] reservation right now. If you were around for the first week of January we had a double-homicide, we had unattended deaths, we had shootings, we had a major car accident, and that’s just in one week. We were so busy here at the [police] station. My whole department worked thirty hours straight. I told those guys to go home, get showered, and come back to work. That’s not even taking care of our outlying communities. This tribal police department isn’t equipped to handle what’s going to happen out there when the Man Camp arrives. The infrastructure of the towns on this Indian reservation will be forced to expand then months later it will collapse onto itself. Because I’ve witnessed it doing just that… what I am saying up there in Newtown, ND. It’s going to be really scary. Realistically speaking, we’re going to need to setup a substation for the area nearest to the Man Camp, and we got have people on call 24 hours a day there too. I don’t know how we are going to deal with that just yet. We are overwhelmed as is stands right now. Once the Man Camp moves in…” Basically, it’s not a future everyone wants to see.
Narragansett Indian Reservation, United States – On an unmarked country road in New England, a faded sign welcomes visitors to the Narragansett Indian Wetuomuck Community Village. But what lies ahead is more akin to a graveyard. Instead of the community promised by the sign, 12 empty homes sit in a field swallowed up by weeds. The only hint of life is the dull hum of a distant highway.
It was on this patch of land that, in 2009, the US Supreme Court crippled the socio-economic aspirations of the Narragansett Indian tribe – and others across the country. The legal battles started when Rhode Island state authorities objected to the Narragansett tribe’s plan to build a low-income housing complex on 31 acres of land adjacent to its modest reservation.
In response, the tribe moved to place the land into federal trust, which would have freed it from most local regulations and taxes. Rhode Island tied up the application with lawsuits, saying the Narragansetts would eventually build a casino on the land – a claim the tribe denies.
“If you cut off resources to a group, that’s how you conquer them,” Narragansett tribal councilman Cassius Spears Jr told Al Jazeera. “That’s been the state of Rhode Island’s policy for hundreds of years: They want to dissolve the tribe.”
The Narragansetts held off the state until the case reached the Supreme Court. In its 2009 Carcieri v. Salazar ruling, the court decided that the government could only put land into trust for tribes that were “under federal jurisdiction” in 1934 – the year the procedure was established. Since the Narragansett tribe was federally recognised only in 1983, the government’s decision to accept their land trust application was ruled invalid.
The Carcieri ruling denied the Narragansetts and potentially scores of other tribes’ access to one of their most effective tools for development. Five years later, the results are being felt across Indian country.
Millions spent on legal fees
Matthew Thomas packs a wooden pipe, takes a puff, and raises the smoky offering up to the sky. The Narragansett chief’s feathered headdress sways as he repeats the blessing. Beside him, dancers decked in traditional regalia wait for the pow-wow drumming to start.
This is how many outsiders picture an Indian chief’s duties. But during his 16-year tenure as leader of the Narragansetts, Thomas has spent far more time battling for his tribe in courtrooms. By now, he said, the tribe has spent millions of dollars on legal fees.
“If we could utilise the money that we had to take to fight the state and everyone else, we probably could’ve done very well with other forms of economic development,” he told Al Jazeera. “The states and the towns have deeper pockets than us, so it’s easy for them.”
The Narragansetts are not the only ones struggling with litigation. The Carcieri decision has been followedby more than 15 federal lawsuits challenging Indian land rights.
“The court’s ruling has been at the bottom of much delay in the trust land acquisition process,” Robert Anderson, an Indian law expert at the University of Washington, told Al Jazeera. “Uncertainty and delay is the enemy of economic development.”
No one knows how many tribes could be impacted by the Carcieri decision, as there is no agreement on what it means for a tribe to be “under federal jurisdiction”. Some courts have taken it to be synonymous with being formally recognised as a sovereign tribe by the federal government. If that view persists, dozens of tribes could be excluded from the land trust system. Earlier this year, a federal court effectively preventedthe Big Lagoon Rancheria tribe from building a casino on trust land because the tribe was not federally recognised in 1934.
“Under the constitution, the courts should defer to Congress on its views of Indian affairs and its relationships with Indian tribes,” John Dossett, an attorney with the National Congress of American Indians, told Al Jazeera. “Part of the concern is that the Supreme Court’s becoming a little bit unmoored from that and is kind of making up its own ideas about what it thinks federal Indian policy ought to be.”
‘Tremendous victory’ for Rhode Island
Native Americans once roamed the area that is now called Rhode Island. Today, the Narragansett reservation is limited to a few thousand acres, most of it swampland nestled in thick forest. And under a 1978 agreement with the Rhode Island government, what little land the Narragansetts do have is subject to state jurisdiction.
States covet the potential tax revenues generated on Native American land. When the Carcieri ruling was issued, then-Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch gushed. “[T]his decision is a tremendous victory for the State of Rhode Island … and for the importance of states’ rights across the United States of America,” he said in a statement issued at the time.
Such statements evoke the domineering paternalism that has characterised state-tribe relations. Without the regulatory and tax exemptions the land trust system confers, Native Americans cannot take control of their development, said Spears.
“The main intent is to be able to put land under our sovereignty as a nation so we could be self-contained for the benefit of our people,” he said. “Any kind of economic venture that we’ve put forward has beenchallenged by the state and put in court.”
Native American self-rule makes economic sense. Research by Harvard University and the University of Arizona concluded that tribal sovereignty is “the only policy that has worked to make significant progress in reversing otherwise distressed social, cultural, and economic conditions in Native communities.”
But for the Narragansetts, this is about more than economics. In their view, land means cultural survival.
“Without the ability to put land into trust, we cannot gain land and put it under our jurisdiction that will allow us to have access to traditional life ways,” Spears said. “Our clams and quahogs, going out and getting blue shell crabs, gathering bulrush to make mats for our traditional homes – we now have to fight for public access to try to find those areas. If we don’t have land, our culture is at the point where it cannot be practiced without permission from outside societies.”
‘Out of Control’
Relief from the legal tussles may be coming. The Supreme Court did not offer detailed guidance on how authorities should determine which tribes were “under federal jurisdiction” in 1934 and are therefore eligible to use the land trust system. In response, a Department of the Interior solicitor recently issued an opinion outlining a new research procedure for deciding which tribes qualify and which ones do not.
Under the new system, tribes which had continuous relations with the government, or participated in government-administered programmes as of 1934, will likely be able to use the land trust system even if they were not formally recognised as a sovereign tribe at the time.
Most if not all 566 federally-recognised tribes should be able to satisfy the new criteria, Anderson said. He added that “the best solution” would be anew law unequivocally allowing them all to use the trust system, regardless of what their status was in 1934.
“The solicitor’s opinion simply makes the best of a bad situation,” Anderson said. “Courts could disregard it, and every tribe arguably not ‘under federal jurisdiction’ in 1934 would have to obtain an administrative ruling on their status that could then be litigated in court by any who disagree.”
For now, the fate of the land that sparked the Carcieri case is uncertain. Thomas “likes” the solicitor’s opinion but expects further litigation if a new law is not passed soon.
“I think tribes are going to have to unite,” he said. “Due to the makeup of the Supreme Court and the way they’ve treated the native people of America for years, it’s just getting out of control.”
A divided Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Michigan can’t block the opening of an off-reservation American Indian casino because the state’s legal challenge is barred by tribal sovereign immunity.
In a 5-4 decision, the high court said the state could not shutter the Bay Mills Indian Community’s casino about 90 miles south of its Upper Peninsula reservation.
The ruling was a win for Indian tribes, which have increasingly looked to casinos as a source of revenue and have relied on immunity to shield them from government interference. But it’s a disappointment for Michigan and more than a dozen others states that say the decision will interfere with their ability to crack down on unauthorized tribal casinos.
Michigan argued that the Bay Mills tribe opened the casino in 2010 without permission from the U.S. government and in violation of a state compact. The tribe had purchased land for the casino with earnings from a settlement with the federal government over allegations that it had not been adequately compensated for land ceded in 1800s treaties.
Writing for the majority, Justice Elena Kagan said that the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act only allows a state to bring lawsuits challenging casinos operating on Indian lands. But the Bay Mills casino was opened outside the tribe’s reservation, Kagan said, placing it outside the law’s coverage.
Since the casino does not fall under federal gaming laws, Kagan said it is subject to the ordinary tribal immunity that extends to off-reservation commercial activities. Kagan said it doesn’t matter that the casino was authorized, licensed and operated from the tribe’s reservation.
Kagan noted that Michigan officials have other options for dealing with the casino, such as bringing a lawsuit against individual tribal officials or even prosecuting tribal members under criminal laws. She was joined in her opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.
The casino has been closed since 2011, when a federal judge sided with Michigan and issued an injunction barring it from operating. The 6th Circuit U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw the injunction out after ruling that the court lacked jurisdiction over some claims and that the tribe also has sovereign immunity.
In a statement, the Bay Mills tribe said the decision “affords proper deference to Congress’ judgment and it will ensure that tribes like Bay Mills can continue to fund tribal education and perform other sovereign functions.”
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said he would follow the court’s advice and target individual tribal members for civil and criminal penalties.
Sixteen other states had submitted a brief in the case urging the court to side with Michigan. They argued that criminal prosecutions are less effective and more burdensome on the state in policing unauthorized casinos.
In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said he disagreed with the court’s 1998 case extending tribal sovereign immunity to bar lawsuits arising from an Indian tribe’s commercial activities outside its territory. In the 16 years since that decision, “tribal commerce has proliferated and the inequities engendered by unwarranted tribal immunity have multiplied,” Thomas wrote.
Thomas was joined in dissent by Justices Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Samuel Alito.
Scalia also wrote a separate dissent to say that he had agreed with the court’s 1998 decision, but is now convinced that is was wrongly decided. Scalia said he would overrule that case “rather than insist that Congress clean up a mess that I helped make.”
The case is Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Community, 12-515.
———
Associated Press writer John Flesher in Traverse City, Michigan, contributed to this report.
Redskins President Bruce Allen sent a response to Senators Maria Cantwell (D-MD) and Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) letter on Friday, saying that the team’s name was “respectful” toward Native Americans. “Our use of Redskins as the name of our football team for more than 81 years has always been respectful of and shown reverence toward the proud legacy and traditions of Native Americans,” Allen wrote in the letter addressed to Reid.
On May 22, 50 senators sent a letter to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell urging him to endorse changing the team’s name. Goodell has yet to publicly respond to the letter, but Allen and his franchise remain defiant.
In his letter, Allen said the name “originated as a Native American expression of solidarity” and that its logo was designed by Native Americans (ICTMN reported that this story about the logo’s design was fabricated; as did the The Washington Post). He also wrote that a majority of Native Americans as well as all Americans supported the team’s name, a fact that has been frequently disputed; most notably by the Change the Mascot Campaign.
Some of the team’s players have tweeted their support for Allen’s letter. Each tweet from Ryan Kerrigan, Desean Jackson, Alfred Morris, Brian Orakpo, and Pierre Garcon said something similar, “President Bruce Allen sets the record straight in response to Harry Reid’s letter.“ Other players also weighed in in support of the letter.
Bruce Allen is the President and GM of the Washington football team (AP Photo)
In January, however, cornerback DeAngelo Hall told Mike Hill of Fox Sports that the team should “probably change its name.” He’s the only ‘Redskins’ player who has dared even whisper a public name-change endorsement. And the Seattle Seahawks’ Richard Sherman, told Time.com, that the NFL would not take action similar to what the NBA did in banning soon to be former Clippers owner Donald Sterling for his racist comments“because we have an NFL team called the Redskins.”
But the National Congress of American Indians is hoping for more than just a few players to speak out. The organization reportedly sent more than 2,700 letters to players and former players in the NFL asking them to speak out against the name. The letter included some of Sherman’s comments on the Redskins name.
“Because you are in the NFL, you command a level of respect and credibility when speaking out about the league’s behavior,” NCAI’s letter said. “Indeed, players are the most publicly identifiable representatives of the league, which means your support is critical to ending this injustice.”
Players — some former players and coaches — were asked to respond using the hashtag #rightsideofhistory.
Here are a few tweets in support of the name change:
The BIE blames its failures on “an inconsistent commitment from political leadership,” institutional, budgetary and legal barriers as well as bureaucratic red tape among federal agencies. Those systemic issues have produced a disjointed system that has even clogged up the delivery of required materials, including textbooks.
