Those who defend the Washington Redskins‘ right to be called the Washington Redskins despite the fact the name is considered by many—including, um, dictionaries—to be disparaging, offensive and flat-out racist, do so because, as my 10-year-old nephew likes to say, it’s a free country, and Dan Snyder owns the team.
They’re right. Snyder paid $800 million for the franchise and its stadium in 1999 and thus has the right to keep the name in place, as he has said he’ll do, according to ESPN.com.
The problem is that it seems many supporters of the name falsely believe that Snyder is standing firm based solely on some sort of emotional allegiance to it, when really this is about dollars and cents.
If the name starts costing Snyder money, I can assure you that sentimentality will go out the window.
And if the the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office revokes the league’s federal trademark protection on the name “Redskins,” Snyder, his team and the entire league will lose money.
The good news for those who are pro-Redskins is that while that office has indeed been reviewing a case regarding the NFL‘s use of the Washington Redskins’ trademark, it has been doing so for about eight years.
And while a bill was recently introduced in the United States House of Representatives to amend the Trademark Act of 1946 to void any trademark registrations that disparage Native Americans, that has also stalled.
But the bad news for those who are pro-racist nickname is that every new Redskins-related product application made to the Patent and Trademark Office of late has been swatted away in Dikembe Mutombo fashion.
“The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected another product with “Redskin” in the name, the latest sign that it might rule against the Washington Redskins in an ongoing trademark case.
The agency said Monday that “Washington Redskin Potatoes” would be considered disparaging because the product doesn’t contain redskin potatoes and therefore would be associated with the football team.
The ruling then stated that current evidence reflects that “a substantial composite of Native American Indians find the current use of ‘Redskins’ in conjunction with football disparaging.”
The agency issued a similar ruling in January, rejecting “Redskins Hog Rinds.””
As Patrick Hruby from Sports On Earth establishes, the cost of changing the name is tantamount to peanuts. We’re talking about one, maybe two Adam Archuletas (sorry for adding salt to the wound, ‘Skins fans).
ESPN and ABC News sports business correspondent Darren Rovell told Keith Olbermann last year that changing names would be a wash in terms of profits/losses, while Olbermann himself believes Snyder would actually make money doing so.
Regardless, if trademark protection is lost and everyone else on the planet gains the right to manufacture and sell products that contain the team’s name and logo without owing the league a dime, Snyder’s hand will be forced.
And that’ll be a good thing, because based on polls as well as the multitude of lawsuits launched in this regard from dozens of Native organizations, it’s safe to conclude that thousands of Americans are personally offended by the name.
Changing it won’t hurt a soul. So even if that change takes place due to reasons that have nothing to do with compassion, a change is a change.
EVERETT — The Snohomish County Public Utility District on Thursday received federal approval for plans to place two large turbines on the sea floor off Whidbey Island.
The pilot project has been in development for years, and if the PUD’s Board of Commissioners signs off on the project, it may be a few more years before the turbines are installed.
Snohomish County PUD This artist’s rendering shows the tidal energy turbine Snohomish County Public Utility District plans to test to determine if tidal energy is a viable source of electricity.
The project is a test to see if using tides to generate electricity is technically, commercially and environmentally viable, said Craig Caller, an assistant general manager for the PUD.
It would be the first time tidal power turbines in Puget Sound would be connected to the larger electricity grid.
So far, the PUD has raised about $13 million in federal Department of Energy grants, which is expected to cover about half the cost of the project. The rest would come from a mix of more grants and money from the utility’s Resource Reinvestment Reserve, Caller said.
The test area is 200 feet deep in Admiralty Inlet, less than half a mile off the west shore of Whidbey Island and not far from the Keystone ferry slip and Fort Casey State Park.
The utility is to operate the turbines for three to five years, during which time it will study the turbines’ actual performance versus the expected output, maintenance requirements, underwater noise and response of nearby fish and marine mammals.
Gathering that data will determine whether the utility proceeds with a commercial deployment. Right now there isn’t enough data to make even an educated guess as to tidal power’s viability.
“It’s in its infancy. It’s about where wind technology was decades ago,” said Dave Aldrich, president of the PUD’s Board of Commissioners.
In issuing the license, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ruled that the PUD has addressed concerns raised by Native American tribes and an undersea cable company.
The Tulalip Indian Tribes, the Suquamish Tribe and the Point No Point Treaty Council, representing the Port Gamble and Jamestown S’Klallam tribes, opposed the project, saying the turbines posed a risk to fish and fishing nets and would force the state to close the area to fishing.
A data communications company, Pacific Crossing of Danville, Calif., also protested the project. The company operates more than 13,000 miles of undersea fiber-optic cable that pass through Admiralty Inlet to Harbour Pointe from Asia and California. It is concerned cables would be damaged by the operation of the turbines.
Caller said that FERC in its ruling said the turbines posed no risk either to undersea cables or marine wildlife, nor would they impede the tribes’ fishing rights.
Officials from the Tulalip Tribes and Pacific Crossing could not be reached for comment.
In the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland, another pilot project using the same model of turbines found there was no danger to wildlife.
“What they found consistently over that time is that when the turbine is rotating, that fish and mammals simply avoid it,” Caller said.
The turbines are to be made by the Irish firm OpenHydro. They are approximately 20 feet in diameter, weigh 414 tons each and sit 65 feet high on a triangular platform 100 by 85 feet.
At peak generation, the turbines could produce 600 kilowatts of electricity. But because this is a pilot project, it is unlikely the turbines would ever generate that much electricity for the grid, Caller said,
If the PUD’s board votes to move forward with the project — Aldrich said it likely will — the utility will need to obtain permits from Island County, where the power would be brought to shore, order the turbines and hire contractors.
It’s brand new territory for the utility, and installation of the turbines is years away.
“We’re pioneers if we go through with this,” Aldrich said.
Chris Winters: 425-374-4165 or cwinters@heraldnet.com.
Racial minorities are more likely than white students to be suspended from school, to have less access to rigorous math and science classes, and to be taught by lower-paid teachers with less experience, according to comprehensive data released Friday by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
In the first analysis in nearly 15 years of information from all of the country’s 97,000 public schools, the Education Department found a pattern of inequality on a number of fronts, with race as the dividing factor.
Black students are suspended and expelled at three times the rate of white students. A quarter of high schools with the highest percentage of black and Latino students do not offer any Algebra II courses, while a third of those schools do not have any chemistry classes. Black students are more than four times as likely as white students — and Latino students are twice as likely — to attend schools where one out of every five teachers does not meet all state teaching requirements.
“Here we are, 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the data altogether still show a picture of gross inequity in educational opportunity,” said Daniel J. Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California at Los Angeles’s Civil Rights Project.
In his budget request to Congress, President Obama has proposed a new phase of his administration’s Race to the Top competitive grant program, which would give $300 million in incentives to states and districts that put in place programs intended to close some of the educational gaps identified in the data.
“In all, it is clear that the United States has a great distance to go to meet our goal of providing opportunities for every student to succeed,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement.
One of the striking statistics to emerge from the data, based on information collected during the 2011-12 academic year, was that even as early as preschool, black students face harsher discipline than other students.
While black children make up 18 percent of preschool enrollment, close to half of all preschool children who are suspended more than once are African-American.
“To see that young African-American students — or babies, as I call them — are being suspended from pre-K programs at such horrendous rates is deeply troubling,” said Leticia Smith-Evans, interim director of education practice at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
“It’s incredible to think about or fathom what pre-K students could be doing to get suspended from schools,” she added.
In high school, the study found that while more than 70 percent of white students attend schools that offer a full range of math and science courses — including algebra, biology, calculus, chemistry, geometry and physics — just over half of all black students have access to those courses. Just over two-thirds of Latinos attend schools with the full range of math and science courses, and less than half of American Indian and Native Alaskan students are able to enroll in as many high-level math and science courses as their white peers.
“We want to have a situation in which students of color — and every student — has the opportunity and access that will get them into any kind of STEM career that takes their fancy,” said Claus von Zastrow, director of research for Change the Equation, a nonprofit that advocates improved science, technology, engineering and math education, or STEM, in the United States. “We’re finding that in fact a huge percentage of primarily students of color, but of all students, don’t even have the opportunity to take those courses. Those are gateways that are closed to them.”
The Education Department’s report found that black, Latino, American Indian and Native Alaskan students are three times as likely as white students to attend schools with higher concentrations of first-year teachers. And in nearly a quarter of school districts with at least two high schools, the teacher salary gap between high schools with the highest concentrations of black and Latino students and those with the lowest is more than $5,000 a year.
Timothy Daly, president of the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit that recruits teachers, said that while the data looked at educator experience and credentials, it was also important to look at quality, as measured by test scores, principal observations and student surveys.
“Folks who cannot teach effectively should not be working with low-income or African-American kids, period,” he said, adding that the problem was difficult to resolve because individual districts are allowed to make decisions on how to assign teachers to schools.
PHOENIX—I am Isadore Boni and a member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona. Living with HIV has not been easy. A lot of people think you can just take pills, but it’s far greater than that.
I’ve gone through the trenches living on the streets of Phoenix for two years, digging ditches working day-labor at minimum wage. Because of the stigma, I chose to disappear for a while and very rarely communicated with my family. I’ve also dealt with hate-crimes while homeless.
I knew this was not what I planned for my life. I am a college graduate from Arizona State University. This was not supposed to happen. Several years later after obtaining housing for people with AIDS my life changed. Going public took me to places I never imagined. I became affiliated with the National Native American AIDS Prevention Center sitting on their Community Advisory Council. It was in 2007 that they began the National Native American AIDS Awareness Day.
With the CDC reporting that Native people have the shortest life-span after infection, I decided to do more than expected. I never had a “job” at an AIDS agency. I did all my fundraising through car-washes at the store I worked as a janitor. More than 80 ASU students would volunteer their time to raise funds. This is how I managed to reach Indian country. My tribal council would not embrace me when I was diagnosed; I expected this, I thought it was because of my sexual orientation as well. I began thinking “if I were straight I’d be embraced by everyone.”
National Native American HIV/AIDS Awareness Day is held on March 20, and every year I do all I can to share my story, even if it’s to homeless people on the streets. This day is about learning the facts of HIV/AIDS, but also to remember those who are living with HIV/AIDS and those who died of complications.
This is not a city problem; it’s a reservation problem too. If our reservations provided education, testing, and linkage to care, perhaps we wouldn’t have the shortest life-span.
Today, after all the years of educating my people, my tribal council has completely embraced me, even passing a confidentiality law. I still do not have a “job” in this field, but I know people like me are needed I am honored to speak for those who are voiceless, advocate for patient rights, and continue to live my life with the knowledge that my Higher Power guides me. Thy Will, not Mine, be Done.
The Upper Skagit Indian Tribe is tagging juvenile steelhead to estimate freshwater productivity and learn more about smolt-to-adult survival in the Skagit River.
Steelhead have a complex life history, making it hard for salmon managers to forecast returns. Juvenile steelhead can leave freshwater habitat between their first and fourth year of life, and return from the salt water after one to five years. In addition, steelhead are repeat spawners, unlike other species of salmon, so they can return to salt water before coming back to fresh water to spawn again.
Compared to other river systems in Puget Sound, the Skagit River still has an abundance of wild steelhead.
“We estimate how many adult steelhead come back to the Skagit River based on spawning ground surveys,” said Jon-Paul Shannahan, biologist for the Upper Skagit Tribe. “Right now, we don’t know how many juvenile steelhead leave the watershed.”
A fish weir guides juvenile steelhead into a trap in Hansen Creek. The steelhead are tagged and then released to help fisheries managers learn more about smolt-to-adult survival.
The tribe has partnered with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife to collect steelhead smolts using screw traps in Hansen and Illabot creeks. The smolts are tagged with passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags that will provide data when the steelhead leave and return to the two tributaries. These PIT-tagged steelhead can also be monitored for encounters in other research or harvest sampling.
This spring, the Upper Skagit Natural Resources Department plans to install one PIT tag antenna array in Hansen Creek that will record information when tagged fish swim over the antennas. If funding is secured, another antenna array will be installed in Illabot Creek next year.
Previous data has shown that steelhead out-migrate from the upper Skagit watershed at an older age compared to fish in the lower watershed. Illabot Creek is near Rockport in the upper watershed, and Hansen Creek is in the lower watershed near the tribe’s Sedro-Woolley reservation.
“These two creeks represent a tiny sliver of the available habitat,” Shannahan said. “We picked these two productive tributaries as initial sites to represent the age diversity of the smolts and the habitat conditions from the entire basin. We have decent adult return data, some decent habitat and flow data, and plan to expand this data to get a picture of the entire basin productivity. ”
Ultimately, the tribe wants to incorporate this research into long-term monitoring in the Skagit basin, but has not identified a long-term funding source.
“We believe this is a unique project on the Skagit,” said Scott Schuyler, natural resources director for the Upper Skagit Tribe. “Given how complex the life history is for steelhead, this is an great opportunity to truly learn more about the species.”
For more information, contact: Jon-Paul Shannahan, Upper Skagit Tribe, 360-854-7089 or jonpauls@upperskagit.com; Kari Neumeyer, NWIFC, 360-424-8226 or kneumeyer@nwifc.org
Western Washington tribes are quickly recovering from a sudden ban in December 2013 on selling geoduck to China.
The Asian country claimed it received a shipment of geoduck from Ketchikan, Alaska, that had high levels of paralytic shellfish poisoning, and a shipment from Poverty Bay in Puyallup, Wash., that had high levels of arsenic.
Suquamish Seafoods employee James Banda packs geoduck for international shipping.
As a result, China announced it was banning all imports of bivalve shellfish from Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Northern California. This was just before the Chinese New Year, a lucrative time for harvesters and buyers, when geoducks are traditionally served.
“It was bad at the beginning because we didn’t know what was going on,” said Tony Forsman, general manager of the Suquamish Tribe’s Suquamish Seafoods, which regularly ships shellfish internationally. “China didn’t tell us for two weeks they were doing this.”
Officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have been working with Chinese officials to determine how they came to their conclusions and have been in close communication with Washington Department of Health and western Washington tribal officials about the progress. Officials from NOAA are meeting in person with officials from China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine this month to further discuss the situation.
The shellfish in question from Poverty Bay passed all the rigorous tests needed to be exported to China, said David Fyfe, shellfish biologist for Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.
“We’re working with China to figure out why we suddenly don’t meet their standards,” he said.
In the meantime, harvesters and buyers are continuing to send their catches to other Asian countries, including Vietnam. U.S. officials are asking China to reduce the ban area from the West Coast to just the two original areas of concern.
Suquamish Seafoods had to layoff nine employees in December – including those who sort, pack and ship the shellfish – but everyone was re-hired by mid-February. Suquamish Tribe harvesters annually gather nearly 500,000 pounds of geoduck.
“There have been blips in the market, such as having to sell smaller geoduck, plus market pressure forced prices down,” Forsman said. “We’ve all just had to adjust – divers, market, buyers, us. Things are fine now but we had to adjust and adjust fast.”
Despite the “blip”, it did prove that the United States shellfish quality control system works, Fyfe said. Harvesters have to meet the National Shellfish Sanitation Program standards, which includes providing information about the harvester, day and tract from which shellfish was harvested.
In this photo taken on March 10, 2014, Brad Hamlett owner of the Wrangler Gallery in Great Falls holds a painting by David Humphreys Miller. Hamlett’s gallery is selling the Humphreys collection which includes 122 framed pieces, hundreds of photographs and negatives along with artifacts and notes of interviews Humphreys did with his subjects. (AP Photo/The Great Falls Tribune, Larry Beckner) NO SALES LARRY BECKNER — AP
GREAT FALLS, Mont. — A collection of paintings, photos and sketches depicting some of the last pre-reservation Native Americans, including survivors of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, could sell for more this weekend than any of the other individual works during Western Art Week.
The Wrangler Gallery, located at 316 Central Ave., is seeking a buyer for the 122-piece David Humphreys Miller collection. Gallery owner Brad Hamlett says it is worth $3.8 million, according to an independent appraiser who looked at it recently.
It’s on display at the gallery throughout Western Art Week. The collection is owned by a family friend of the Millers who’s a representative with the Solomon Family Trust.
“This collection belongs in a museum where the public can access it and study it,” Hamlett said. “It’s also a very interactive exhibit. Native people come in to see it, and they may see members of their family who never had a photo taken of them, but they will remember them and start talking about their memories.”
Included in the collection are more than 50 sketches of the survivors from the Battle of the Little Big Horn and exclusive photos from the various Hollywood westerns Miller worked on with the Sioux Natives he brought to appear in the films. He would then collect the money given to the Natives and make sure they were given their fair shares once they returned to the reservation.
Some of the films Miller worked on as adviser include “Cheyenne Autumn” and “How the West was Won.” He worked on 25 films in total, bringing authentic Natives to play Indians in the films.
Miller, of Ohio, was 16 when he came to Montana and the Dakotas in 1935 to interview the surviving warriors who had wiped out the U.S. Army forces led by Gen. George Armstrong Custer in 1876.
He formed a lifelong relationship with the people. Over the course of his life, Miller learned 14 Indian languages, including sign languages, and was adopted into 16 different Indian families.
He also wrote two books about the battles titled “Custer’s Fall: The Indian Side of the Story” and “Ghost Dance.” Both books are on display in the exhibit.
In his artist’s statement, Miller wrote that he began his journey with the goal of finding out what happened from those who survived the battles. He said it was a long task that took many years to complete.
“I recall feeling a considerable sense of urgency when I began my quest. Will Durant has written that ‘no man in a hurry is quite civilized,'” he writes. “I was anything but civilized in my haste to find as many old Indian veterans of Little Big Horn as I could to straighten out history. The Indians almost certainly had never even heard of Durant, yet I found there was no way of hurrying them. The project of seeking them out, persuading them to pose for their portraits and interviewing them about their individual roles in the Custer Fight took a number of years —1935 through 1941 and 1946 through 1955 when the last survivor died.”
In 1972, Miller’s works won the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. Beyond the artwork, many of the old black-and-white photos in the collection are one-of-a-kind images.
Hamlett said they’ve recently had the curator from the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman at the gallery looking at the collection. He said the curator told him that just the photographs and negatives were worth $600,000.
Hamlett said the collection also includes several priceless artifacts, including the headdress of John Sitting Bull, the Northern Apache ghost dancer and stepson to the Sioux Chief Sitting Bull.
There also is a rare Ghost Dance Shield, given to Miller as a wedding gift July 4, 1954, by Sam Helper, who survived the Ghost Dance massacre, also known as the Wounded Knee massacre, in December 1890.
All of the artifacts were given to Miller as gifts and cannot be sold, Hamlett said, but will be given to a museum that might look to show the collection.
Some of the more interesting pieces featured in the 95 sketches and 25 oil paintings include:
. Black Elk, subject of the book “Black Elk Speaks,” the Sioux warrior who adopted Miller as his son;
. Chewing Black Bones, the Blackfeet warrior for whom the campground near St. Mary is named;
. Juniper Old Person, father of Earl Old Person, chief of the Blackfeet Nation; and Joseph White Bull, who told Miller that he killed Custer in hand-to-hand combat. The body was identified after the battle by an Indian woman who had been captured by Custer and bore him a son, White Bull told Miller.
Many of the portraits painted by Miller between 1935 and 1941 are of the 70 surviving Indian warriors from the Battle of the Little Bighorn quoted in “Custer’s Fall.”
A portion of the collection was shown at the University of Wyoming in 2012.
Barbara Koostra, director of the Montana Museum of Art and Culture at the University of Montana, said the museum would be interested in acquiring the exhibit but does not have the financial resources to buy it.
“A few years ago our museum made inquiries about this collection in terms of a potential gift. This is due to the fact we have no acquisition funding,” she said. “At that time, there was not a desire to gift the collection and it appears their desire to sell continues. We’d be extremely interested in such a collection coming to our public collection but are not in a financial position to acquire it in terms of a purchase.”
Similarly, the Montana Historical Society has viewed the exhibit but does not have the resources to purchase it, either.
“It’s appears to be a wonderful and important collection but not something that is on our priority list at this time,” Historical Society Director Bruce Whittenberg said.
The owner of the collection, who wished not to be identified, said Miller never sold any of his artwork. She said he saw it as a chance to tell the story of the Native people who survived these historically important battles by hearing it directly from them.
“He had a wonderful life and did what he wanted to do,” she said.
Hamlett said the gallery owner inherited the collection after the Millers died and wishes to sell it to help share Miller’s memory, and the historical importance of his paintings, with the world.
“She was one of (the Millers’) best friends and she had gone to the reservation with them from time to time and she knew how important their personal relationships with the native people were,” Hamlett said. “In fact, Miller actually was buried on the Sioux reservation.”
The Millers especially became close friends with Dewey Beard and his family. Beard was the last living survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn and the Battle of Wounded Knee. He lost his first wife, his parents and children in the battles.
The collection’s owner said Miller was accepted as a member of the family among people in the tribes he visited such as Beard and others.
Some other interesting aspects of Miller’s life include his work as host of the 1950s TV show “Cavalcade of Books,” in which he interviewed authors and speakers. It was on his show that he interviewed Richard Nixon. He also did portraits of famous Hollywood icons such as Charlton Heston and Milburn Stone.
Miller’s wife, Jan, worked as a researcher on the program “This Is Your Life.” Before meeting Miller, she was a reporter for a daily newspaper in New Orleans. She first met Miller when she interviewed him for a story. They met again a few years later and married shortly thereafter.
More than anything, however, Hamlett said Miller’s curiosity in the Northern Plains culture was by far the most enduring aspect of his life.
“I think he had a sincere interest in history and he wanted to find out what happened, and the only ones who could tell him were the Indians,” Hamlett said. “There’s no other collections like this one, historically or artistically, especially because he used the oral history of these people that would be gone if he hadn’t come along and wrote it down and showed these people through his art.”
Information from: Great Falls Tribune, http://www.greatfallstribune.com
Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2014/03/19/3042447/collection-of-native-american.html#storylink=cpy
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — An upcoming special episode of Investigation Discovery’s “Dark Minds” TV series says it has new information about confessed Alaska serial killer Israel Keyes, including the identity of a potential victim.
Keyes was believed to have killed at least 11 people before committing suicide in his Anchorage jail cell 15 months ago while awaiting a federal trial in the rape and strangulation murder of his last known victim, Samantha Koenig. The 18-year-old Anchorage woman was abducted in February 2012 from the local coffee stand where she worked.
The two-hour, season-opening “Dark Minds” episode scheduled to air April 2 reports what it says are new details about the Koenig case. The episode, which includes dramatizations by actors, also suggests a man who disappeared from Washington’s Olympia National Park in 2004 — Gilbert Gilman — was an undisclosed victim of Keyes, who had been in the region to participate in a marathon. And it claims Keyes identified himself as a bisexual and a necrophiliac.
Series creator and host M. William Phelps told The Associated Press that he spent more than a year investigating Keyes, interviewing people including authorities, a serial killer he calls “Raven,” a criminal profiler, people who knew Keyes, as well as former Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Warner, who was present during many of Keyes’ interviews with the FBI.
“It really exhausted me, emotionally and physically, this case,” Phelps said Wednesday. “I was just living it 24/7.”
After the Koenig kidnapping, Keyes reportedly sipped wine in a toolshed outside his home, telling his victim there exactly what he planned to do before he sexually assaulted and killed her, leaving her body in the shed before embarking on a cruise the next day. The series also claims Keyes later sewed open the eyes of the dead and frozen victim to make her look alive as he photographed her with a new copy of a local newspaper.
Authorities have already revealed that Keyes wrote a ransom note on the back of the photo, demanding that $30,000 be placed in Koenig’s account. He texted a message, directing the family to a dog park where the note could be found. Her family deposited money from a reward fund.
Keyes also said he robbed banks to help pay for his travels to find random victims.
Keyes, the second eldest in a large family, was homeschooled in a cabin without electricity near Colville, Wash., in a mountainous, sparsely populated area. The family moved in the 1990s to Smyrna, Maine, where they were involved in the maple syrup business, according to a neighbor who remembered Keyes as a nice, courteous young man.
After leaving the Army, Keyes worked for the Makah Indian tribe in Washington, then moved to Anchorage in 2007 after his girlfriend found work here. A self-employed carpenter and handyman, he was considered competent, honest and efficient. He had a young daughter who lived with him and his girlfriend in Anchorage.
Keyes was arrested in Lufkin, Texas, about six weeks later after using Koenig’s debit card. Three weeks after the arrest, Koenig’s dismembered body was found in a frozen lake north of Anchorage.
The FBI and other authorities have been able to link Keyes to the only three victims he named — Koenig and an Essex, Vt., couple, Bill and Lorraine Currier, who disappeared in 2011. In months of interviews with authorities after his arrest last year, Keyes toyed with investigators, doling out snippets and clues about other possible victims across the country as he demanded a promise that he would be executed rather than spend his life in prison.
Keyes never disclosed much information about the other crimes, trying to keep as many details as possible out of the media so his daughter wouldn’t be able to find any information up on the Internet or his mother wouldn’t have a heart attack reading what he did.
The FBI has publicly released a timeline of travels and crimes by Keyes, hoping to shed light on unsolved killings in the nation. Authorities have been trying to determine whether Keyes was involved in the 2009 disappearance of a New Jersey woman, Debra Feldman, who was last seen at her Hackensack home.
Anchorage-based Special Agent Kevin Donovan with the FBI said Wednesday he didn’t immediately know the status of the New Jersey case. He also said authorities have received information about cases that could be tied to Keyes and are following up on it. But he said he wouldn’t characterize any of it as strong leads.
“We are still looking for any additional information from the public or from law enforcement that might help us identify additional victims,” he said.
At the end of the upcoming episode, Phelps urges viewers to help solve mysteries that remain about Keyes and his unknown victims.
“I hope the families can have some answers from this,” he said. “That’s my goal.”
Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2014/03/19/3043377/tv-show-to-profile-late-alaska.html#storylink=cpy
Image source: twitter.com/BuffySteMarie ‘If you really want to see something historic in your life, go to Fort McMurray and just bear witness to what they’re doing,’ says legendary musician-activist Sainte-Marie.
For decades, Buffy Sainte-Marie has been an artistic trailblazer. The Sixties folk explosion saw the Canadian-born Cree songwriter confront the colonial status quo with hit songs like “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” as well as the anti-war anthem “Universal Soldier.” Sainte-Marie, who is currently based in Hawaii, is gearing up to record her first album of new material since 2008 (more on that later), and took a few minutes to share her thoughts on a number of topics with ICTMN.
We’ve seen your Tweets (@BuffySteMarie) about the oil sands, or tar sands as they’re sometimes called — what’s your take on the situation?
Almost a year ago I went to Fort McMurray (Alberta) and I was just devastated with what’s going on there. Just devastated. I just told everybody I could: “You’ve got to take this seriously.” Even since I was there, other people have really stepped forward in their own ways, Neil Young in particular. He’s caught a lot of criticism because he didn’t involve me, Susan Aglukark or other Native people. Neil came to the induction ceremony in Nashville, at the Musicians Hall of Fame, and I told him I’d seen some of the criticism and not to listen to it at all! Because it’s so important, it has to be everybody doing whatever they can, whenever they can, and being effective at whatever level they can be. You reach people your way, I do it my way and Neil does it his way. But people have to see it.
It’s really worth a trip to Fort McMurray just to see it with your own eyes. If you really want to see something historic in your life, go to Fort McMurray and just bear witness to what they’re doing. It’s never going to return, and this is the future of the planet if the present people are allowed to stay in charge. We are allowing them to stay in charge. We are allowing it. That’s why we have wars. We have to be really vigilant and supportive of one another, because it has to stop. There’s no turning back.
Neil Young toured with the First Nation that’s experiencing high cancer rates from the tar sands. And yet he also caught criticism when people said, “Oh, he’s just an outsider, he lives in California — what right does he have to criticize this?”
(Laughs). Because it’s not only about Canada, that’s why! Good for Neil for stepping up. Everybody should be stepping up at whatever their most effective level is. It’s not just about Native people and it’s not just about Canada. Just the weather changes are indicative: people just gotta wake up.
Have the issues changed over time, or is it still the same root issues as in your songs “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” or “Universal Soldier”?
The root issue is always the same. It’s about corporate greed in charge of all of our energy. That’s the root issue. But in the 1500s it was gold and silver in Central America, and then coal, oil, and now uranium. I have a song that’s going to be on the album I’m recording now called “The Uranium War.” It has a line:
Coal and oil and hey, now uranium
Keep the Indians under your thumb
Pray like hell when your bad times come
Get ’em up, rip ’em up, strip ’em up
Get ’em with a gun.
So the violence that occurs, and has been occurring against Indigenous People in the world because of resources has now become obvious to the non-indigenous people too. There are now more people understanding how devastating the misuse of resources not only can be, but just plain is.
Let’s talk about the Longest Walk. Richie Havens passed on last year, and you were a long supporter of the Longest Walk and affirming treaty rights. Could you offer some thoughts on him, his passing and his legacy?
He and I kind of emerged around the same time — the summer of 1963-4. We would see each other over the years. He came and visited me in Hawaii a few times. We were good friends. He was such an incredible interpreter of other people’s songs, and such a good guy. Pete Seeger too — he just did so much for the world through music, in ways both subtle and big. You know, heaven must be a great place, because there’s a lot of people going there!
Pete Seeger with Buffy Sainte-Marie. Source: twitter.com/buffystemarie
You were with Pete Seeger at Clearwater Fest last summer. The photos were just beautiful, you guys having a lovely hug.
He was just really, really special, huh?
Do you ever feel nostalgic for that era, when you all emerged almost at once? It must have been such a different energy because it was also a social movement as well as being about music.
It was, but I’ve been waiting for it to come back. And I think it has. For me, the Internet is like the Sixties. It used to be, in the Sixties, all kinds of music was available to you, but it was kept away. You had to go with this label and that genre. It really became a very narrow-minded corporate world. They’d sign 90 artists and shelve 90 others. It used to be so unfair. But now you can hear all kinds of music, and everybody can get played, publish a song, or share things on the Internet. It’s such a wonderful time that we’re living in. You shouldn’t discount it or think that the Sixties were better. The Sixties were about a true student movement. And now there’s another true populist movement, so let’s do what we can, while we can.
To learn more about Buffy Sainte-Marie, visit her official site BuffySainte-Marie.com.
K-Cups seem like the complicated Starbucks order of today: an expensive, caffeinated way to express your oh-so-unique taste and personality. Who needs to run out for a tall caramel macchiato when you can make a single serving of Wolfgang Puck’s Jamaica Me Crazy medium roast in the comfort of your kitchen?
Except all those little plastic cups add up to some massive trash. Ten and a half loops around the equator, in fact, according to Mother Jones. Kind of ridic for a company owned by a fair-trade, organic coffee brand, no?
Plus, the No. 7 plastic blend is BPA-free, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe. Even if all that plastic magically disappeared into the ether on disposal, its manufacture could be making workers sick, writes MoJo:
One concern with this plastic mix is the presence of polystyrene, containing the chemical styrene, which Hoover warns is especially worrisome for workers. A possible carcinogen, styrene can wreak havoc on the nervous systems of those handling it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
Keurig would not tell me what types of plastic go into its #7 blend, saying the information was proprietary, nor would it confirm or deny the presence of polystyrene in the mix.
If that weren’t bad enough, Keurig taxes you for being bad at math: K-Cups cost you more than twice what a bag of beans does — about $50 a pound. Damn, son! If you refuse to surrender your Keurig, reusable filters or biodegradable pods are the way to go.
