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Nez Perce Tribe’s Resistance to Keystone XL Pipeline is Nothing New

Renée Holt, Native News Network, Guest Commentary

As I enjoy the last day of summer break, before I return back to school, I have been thinking about the recent media publicity my tribal community has received regarding the Keystone XL pipeline.

As an enrolled member of the Nez Perce Tribe, and a mother to three beautiful children, a couple weeks ago, our community, the Nimiipuu (aka the Real People) stood in solidarity with our First Nations brothers and sisters in Canada who oppose the Keystone XL pipeline.

Our community has been protesting the Megaloads for well over two years.

Although regional media has highlighted the Nez Perce tribal council arrests and members of our community for their Indigenous activism, what media has failed to see is that our community has been protesting the Megaloads for well over two years. It just happens to be that we held our first town hall meeting in March 2011 and Winona La Duke shared information on the negative effects of the Keystone XL and the importance of a protest.

In collaboration with the grassroots organizations Friends of the Clearwater and Wild Idaho Rising Tide (who have worked tirelessly on this environmental issue) our tribal council made an informed decision with the intention of making it known the Nimiipuu oppose the Keystone XL pipeline and the transportation of the Megaloads through our ancestral homelands.

From the ancestral homelands of the Nimiipuu people, located in North Central Idaho, I am writing this to members of society, both Indigenous AND non Indigenous, to do more than question and challenge this global climate issue, but to also help fight the battle against the Keystone XL pipeline.

It has been shown in studies from the Environmental Protection Agency and grassroots organizations such as the Rainforest Action Network that gas emissions were toxic and communities located near these sites have higher rates of cancer and contamination of water resources. Not only do the Indigenous communities that are located near these sites suffer, but so do the plants and wild life. If there is one common thread we share as citizens of the global community, it is this, water is necessary to live. Once water is poisoned, we’re all poisoned.

We need to educate and inform citizens and look respectively at Indigenous governments who are protecting their homelands.

Whether in the United States or Canada, Indigenous lands and surrounding areas are continually being devastated by oil pipelines. The lives of people, wildlife and plants suffer and the Megaloads protest ought to remind us, as human beings, the value and sacredness of life is a responsibility. Whether Indigenous or non Indigenous, as humans, to oppose and protest the Keystone XL Megaloads being transported through ancestral homelands is rooted in a responsibility to community and Mother Earth. At this time, due to frustrations with the US Forest Service, the Nimiipuu community and grassroots efforts have filed a lawsuit.

If they are not stopped, the Keystone XL pipeline devastation will continue and the health and well being of those who live near these environmental hazardous areas, regardless of racial ethnicity, will be negatively affected. As an Indigenous woman, I am writing this to share with non Indigenous readers a little bit of who we are as people. Because we often make our homes where our ancestors made their homes, we also live on reserves/reservations that were at one time unwanted land. Today, the unwanted land is now sought by big oil corporations where environmental hazards have disrupted and devastated the ecosystem.

I also believe it is important to mention that the Keystone XL pipeline is an international issue. The responsibility is that of Secretary of State John Kerry to oversee international issues as appointed by President Obama.

Native American Chiefs Honored, Revered on New Website

New NativeAmericanChiefs.org features essays, photos of legendary Native American chiefs.

Source: PRWeb

Native American chiefs are supremely honored, and hold the highest position within individual Native American tribes. Before generals and politicians ruled the land, the United States was filled with indigenous Native American tribes, and was host to many small societies existing beneath chiefdom.

In Native American culture, an elder was considered to be the wisest. Elders were thought to deliver just decisions, and often rose to the rank of chief. Native American chiefs have accomplished many important feats for Native Americans, and have been recorded within American history.

Now, a new website dedicated to legendary Native American chiefs has been launched.

“Many Native American chiefs have been regarded as great warriors, and have spearheaded campaigns to protect their people from danger at overwhelming odds,” said NativeAmericanChiefs.org spokesperson James Heldon. “Chiefs have led entire civilizations, expelled enemy occupants and have led tribes into profitable lands, filled with hunting grounds and fertile soil.”

The Native American leader, Geronimo, was an Apache warrior who fought the United States and Mexico to protect his people’s land. His father-in-law, Chief Cochise, was considered a fearsome warrior, and spent much of his life at war with Mexican forces to protect his tribe’s culture.

The Navajo chief, Manuelito, evaded capture by American forces in the 1800s, and additionally led his people into battle against overwhelming odds against the American Army. He took part in several battles, and participated in the Long Walk, where the United States forced the Navajo tribe to walk—at gunpoint—from their Arizona reservation to eastern New Mexico.

The Sioux chief, Sitting Bull, is arguably the most famous Native American leader. He’s considered a figure of deep conviction, cunning and bravery, and led his people to a decisive victory against opposing forces during the Battle of Little Bighorn. The Sioux, themselves, were fierce combatants, and entered battle with traditional war shirts, decorated with human scalps and ceremonial beads. Camouflage wasn’t used, as war garments were worn to inspire fear within the enemy. A chief normally stuck out, and was decorated with elaborate clothing and jewelry.

“The many stories of Native American chiefs are passed down through history, and tribes keep them alive—even today,” said Heldon. “Their tales of bravery and heroism are inspiring legends, and will likely exist for centuries. Chiefs have historically led their tribes through struggles, famine and war, and continue to lead modern tribes through hardships.”

To learn more information about Indian chiefs, as well as their accomplishments, take a look at NativeAmericanChiefs.org. Visitors will encounter stories of battles, and access biographical information pertaining to Native American leaders.

Fix the Census’ Archaic Racial Categories

By Kenneth Prewitt, NY Times

STARTING in 1790, and every 10 years since, the census has sorted the American population into distinct racial groups. Remarkably, a discredited relic of 18th-century science, the “five races of mankind,” lives on in the 21st century. Today, the census calls these five races white; black; American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian; and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.

The nation’s founders put a hierarchical racial classification to political use: its premise of white supremacy justified, among other things, enslaving Africans, violent removal of Native Americans from their land, the colonization of Caribbean and Pacific islands, Jim Crow subjugation and the importation of cheap labor from China and Mexico.

Of course, officially sanctioned discrimination was finally outlawed by civil rights legislation in 1964. The underlying demographic categories, however, were kept. Securing civil rights required statistics. Thus resulted an uneasy marriage of preposterous 18th-century racial classifications to legitimate 20th-century policy goals like fair electoral representation, anti-discrimination programs, school desegregation, bilingual education and affirmative action.

But the demographic revolution since the immigration overhaul of 1965 has pushed the outdated (and politically constructed) notion of race to the breaking point. In June the Supreme Court struck down a core provision of the Voting Rights Act, taking note of changing demographics. I disagree with the court’s ruling, but agree that society is changing. And our statistics must reflect those changes.

Fast-growing population groups — mixed-race Americans, those with “hyphenated” identities, immigrants and their children, anyone under 30 — increasingly complain that the choices offered by the census are too limited, even ludicrous. Particularly tortured is the Census Bureau’s designation, since 1970, of “Hispanic” as an ethnicity or origin, thereby compelling Hispanics to also choose a “race.” In 2010, Hispanics were offered the option to select more than one race, but 37 percent opted for “some other race” — a telling indicator that the term itself is the problem.

Indeed, anyone who filled in “some other race” that year was allocated to one or more of the five main groupings. Many absurdities have resulted.

America has about 1.5 million immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa — some 3 percent of the nation’s black population. Like President Obama’s father, who was Kenyan, their experience differs vastly from that of African-Americans whose ancestors were enslaved, yet they are subsumed into the same category — one that, until this very year, continued to include the outdated term “Negro.”

The census considers Arabs white, along with non-Arabs like Turks and Kurds because they have origins in the Middle East or North Africa. Migrants from the former Soviet nations in Central Asia are lumped in as white along with descendants of New England pilgrims.

An indigenous person from Peru, Bolivia or Guatemala is Hispanic, but if she “maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment,” she might also be counted as part of a racial group that includes the Inupiat and Yupik peoples of Alaska.

Are Australian immigrants whites or Pacific Islanders? (The Census Bureau’s own documents are unclear on this.)

The census has no second-generation question, leaving Congress to debate immigration reform with inadequate statistics about which new Americans are learning English, finishing school, living in segregated neighborhoods or staying out of jail. Social scientists closely track intermarriage as an indicator of assimilation, but the census reports intermarriage only among whites, blacks, Hispanics and others — overlooking unions between, say, Japanese and Chinese, Cubans and Mexicans, Nigerians and native-born blacks. These marriages may have as much to tell us about where the nation is headed as the rate at which whites intermarry.

Much attention has been paid to the news that non-Hispanic whites now account for less than half of births in the United States and that deaths now exceed births among non-Hispanic whites. These projections are oversimplified and misleading because they rely on the outdated “five races” concept. The far more significant turning point is the shift from a nation of a few large racial blocs into a hybrid America of numerous nationalities, ethnicities and cultures, unprecedented in human history. It is this hybrid, multivalent, dynamic America that is not reflected in the census. We cannot, however, fix this at the expense of abandoning racial categories, which are still needed for legitimate policy purposes.

The Census Bureau has begun to consider what changes it will recommend for the 2020 census. It will focus, appropriately, on operational improvements, like increasing response rates. But there are also political decisions to be made.

I URGE three actions. First, drop the current race questions, which misleadingly conflate race and nationality, and ask two new questions: one based on a streamlined version of today’s ethnic and racial categories, and a separate, comprehensive nationality question. (The 2010 census asked Hispanics, Asians and Pacific Islanders to specify a national origin and allowed American Indians and Alaska Natives to put down their tribe.)

These two questions would allow for much-needed flexibility. Broad racial groupings are significant for protecting voting rights, but information on national origin is more useful for understanding health disparities in a metropolis, or for diversifying a university’s student body. Indeed, the failure to appreciate rising inequality within the country’s white majority and to distinguish, say, inner-city blacks from African asylum-seekers, or Southeast Asian refugees from well-educated East Asians, have contributed to the criticisms of affirmative action as too blunt a tool of social policy.

Second, add parental place of birth to the census. One-fourth of Americans under the age of 18 are children of immigrants — a proportion that will increase sharply over the next quarter-century.

Third, slowly phase in the use of the data to make policy. There is a precedent: in 2000, there was strong opposition to the new option of selecting more than one race. It was feared that this would reduce the size of various racial minorities. The government responded by counting those who are white and of one minority race as minorities for the purposes of civil-rights monitoring and enforcement. The new comprehensive statistics on national origin would be put to use judiciously. The five races would not disappear from the statistical system, but neither would they be the only policy tool available.

Americans may hope for a colorblind future, but we know that the legacy of discrimination continues to haunt us; that some new immigrants are assimilated even as others are left behind; that new versions of racism crop up, within as well as among the five “races.”

Faced with these empirical realities, statistical ignorance is a moral failure. It is also a political failure to ignore the arrival of a hybrid America. Even the questions on race we use in 2020 will be wrong for 2100. It will take decades of gradual re-engineering to match census statistics to demographic realities. The Census Bureau is prepared; what’s missing is public awareness and political leadership.

Kenneth Prewitt, the director of the United States Census Bureau from 1998 to 2000, is a professor of public affairs at Columbia University and the author of “What Is Your Race? The Census and Our Flawed Effort to Classify Americans.”

What Protection Of Traditional Knowledge Means To Indigenous Peoples

By Catherine Saez, Intercontinental Cry

World Intellectual Property Organization member states in July concluded the biennium work of the committee tasked with finding agreement on international legal tools to prevent misappropriation and misuse of genetic resources, traditional knowledge and folklore.

Indigenous peoples and local communities are holders of a substantial part of this knowledge and are demanding that it be protected against misappropriation but also against its use without their consent.

Intellectual Property Watch conducted two interviews with different indigenous groups attending the 15-24 July WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC) (IPW, WIPO, 25 July 2013).

The IGC is working on the protection of genetic resources (GR), traditional knowledge (TK), and traditional cultural expressions (TCEs or folklore) against misappropriation mainly by commercial interests. Other concerns include knowledge that has been claimed for collection purposes, or research, or has been used for a long time and is considered part of the public domain.

Indigenous peoples’ groups have said that the public domain was basically created at the same time as the concept of intellectual property and their particular knowledge had been put in that public domain, by default, without their consent.

Preston Hardison, policy analyst representing the Tulalip Tribes, Jim Walker of the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action (Australia), and Ronald Barnes of the Indian Council of South America answered questions about the protection of traditional knowledge, on the issue of the public domain, and what would be an optimum result of the IGC.

“I work for a tribe of 4,600 people, on a very small 6 mile square reservation. They’ve lost 90 percent of their land. They are surrounded by a sea of non-indigenous peoples. Their habitat has been fragmented. When they reserved their treaties they reserved a lot of ‘off reservation rights’,” said Hardison.

“They have this small reservation but they get to hunt and gather fish all around because they knew the reservation was going to be too small to sustain them,” he said. “But now all these lands are getting fragmented, polluted, broken up, rolled over by cities and urbanization, [and] climate change is causing species to move away from their territories, invasive species are coming in.”

The whole IGC discussion started with the problem of biopiracy, he said, and how to protect knowledge from being patented. “However the problem in the IP system, is that the best way to protect against patents is through the public domain because that is prior art.”

“What we very quickly found out is that this defensive approach was not helping us because the patent problem is really just a problem of temporary monopoly and the solution was for us to permanently lose control of our knowledge by putting it in the public domain.”

There are also issues when the knowledge is a pathway to discover the natural resources, “so people discover the value of cultural heritage through the traditional knowledge but the resource itself may not be protected,” Hardison said. “By solving the patent problem, by making your knowledge available, you may have opened yourself up to petty exploitation, to non-monopolistic exploitation.”

“The main problem is not the monopoly [inherent in a patent],” he said. “It is people finding out what the value of our medicinal plants is and coming and taking every single one they can find.”

Ronald Barnes, of the Indian Council of South America told Intellectual Property Watch: “When we talk about protection we want protection against exploitation so that the protection remains in the control of the holders of TK and the owners so that their right to self-determination is recognized and respected.”

People wanting to use the knowledge “have to register and let us know how they acquired it and how they are using it. Perhaps if it is sacred we don’t want it to be developed,” he specified. “Sometimes we try to keep it close to ourselves but it leaks out. There is always a way to go to one person and compensate that one person and then they say we have acquired this from you and now we have the right to develop it but it is still our collective property.”

Colonizers Put Traditional Knowledge in the Public Domain

There are some stewardship obligations that go with the knowledge, Hardison said. “When you receive it you don’t receive it freely to do whatever you want with it, you have obligations to the land, to whatever it is referring, to the spirits or the ancestors. This is a real problem with the public domain. Tribes have often shared their knowledge in the past but they shared it with people who had similar views and concepts and understood these obligations. But now we are in this world with 7 billion people on the internet.”

“If we decide to exchange knowledge, the problem is that the public domain exhausts all of our rights. It destroys the stewardship obligations that go with the knowledge,” he said.

Some of the indigenous peoples’ knowledge has been in the public domain for a long time, he explained, and allowed to be accessed for all these years, “but we never agreed to that,” he insisted. “We are not looking for monetary compensation but looking get the recognition of our right to control access.”

“We’ve held our traditional knowledge for thousands of years. It is ours,” said Barnes. “Then comes another peoples and we are colonised, why should we be held to a limitation to the knowledge control and the right to protect it?”

Optimum Outcome of the IGC, Carveout from Public Domain

One outcome of the IGC would be the identification of certain kinds of TK associated with GR, TK and TCEs that could be protected in perpetuity, some carved out of the public domain, said Hardison. “We don’t think all can, and we are open to discussion on what is protectable and what is not.”

“We are interested in creation and creativity too and some tribes and indigenous peoples would like to engage in this and some won’t, that is their business,” said Hardison. “For those who engage in it we don’t want the price of that to be the public domain, and that’s how it works.”

In the world system today, “there are very few examples of intangible cultural heritage laws which treat our knowledge in this holistic way,” Hardison said, adding, “what we have is IP law.”

“Our problem is if we ever exchange knowledge with an outsider in any way, the second we exchange it, it falls within the IP regime. We’ve never had a chance to negotiate that. We are not considered in the Berne convention [Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works], or any other WIPO conventions,” he noted.

“We know all cannot be protected but we want a regime to respect our rights where it can, and have that discussion about what can be protected and what can’t. We never put it in the public domain. That was the colonizers who put it in there for us.”

Common Thread, but Common Positions Hard to Achieve

“We might have different views on how we might get there, to achieve certain outcomes,” said Walker.”Circumstances might be different in different countries.”

“Some issues are easier than others,” said Hardison, Part of the problem is financial support, he said. Indigenous groups “are only funded for the minimum amount of time,” he said. “For example, we get three hours on Sunday before the meeting to meet together. That is not a lot of time to start working out common positions, especially on the kind of things that we have now.”

“It has gotten better now that we have translation, generally, coordinated by DoCip (Indigenous Peoples’ Center for Documentation, Research and Information),” he said. “But it is still hard to talk cross-culturally.”

“You need to have the resources back at home,” said Walker. “Getting prepared for those meetings is very difficult because generally you have your other obligations to your organization or to the people back home. Often you don’t have the time or the resources to get around and start consulting everyone to get a unified view or to get other opinions or inputs,” Walker said.

Barnes said that getting a common view was a tough exercise. “Whether or not we like it, we have some indigenous peoples who are paid more, given more funds and they are more willing to cooperate, whereas some of us refuse those funds and they want to retain their property.”

This Interview originally appeared at

www.ip-watch.org

One in 20 Teens Use Cancer Causing Smokeless Tobacco

Source: Native News Network

WASHINGTON – It is bad for teens to take up smoking because of ill effects it has on health, but young people should be taught smokeless tobacco is not good for them either.

Smokeless tobacco is a form of tobacco that is not burned. Smokeless tobacco, known as snuff, chewing tobacco, oral tobacco, spit or spitting tobacco, causes cancer and other diseases. Smokeless tobacco is known to cause oral cancer, esophageal cancer, and pancreatic cancer.

A recent study indicates one in 20 middle school or high school students use smokeless tobacco products. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health saw that in national survey data.

The scientists also saw the power of peer pressure.

“Adolescents who had a friend that used smokeless tobacco were 10 times more likely to use smokeless tobacco themselves,”

commented Researcher Constantine Vardavas.

For comparison, teens with a family member who used smokeless tobacco were only 3 times more likely to use it.

Nearly all of the smokeless users reported it’s easy to get the stuff.

Unfortunately, smokeless tobacco is addictive because it contains nicotine. Studies reveal users of smokeless tobacco and those who smoke cigarettes have comparable levels of nicotine in the blood. In users of smokeless tobacco, nicotine is absorbed through the mouth tissues directly into the blood, where it goes to the brain. Even after the tobacco is removed from the mouth, nicotine continues to be absorbed into the bloodstream. Also, the nicotine stays in the blood longer for users of smokeless tobacco than for smokers

Smokeless tobacco is not a safe substitute for cigarettes.

National Congress of American Indians Joins National Action to Realize the Dream March

Source: Native News Network

WASHINGTON – Fifty years after the March on Washington where the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered one of the most dynamic speeches of the last century on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, thousands are expected to be in Washington on Saturday, August 24, for the National Action to Realize the Dream March & Rally.

In an act of solidarity, the National Congress of American Indians has partnered with the National Action Network, and numerous other national conveners, to help organize and assist in planning for this historic march and rally.

The March commemorates the 50th Anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The March will take place from 8:00 am until 2:00 pm on Saturday, August 24, and will focus on Jobs, Justice, Voting Rights and Freedom. In the wake of the Trayvon Martin tragedy, the Supreme Court’s decision impacting the Voting Rights Act (Shelby County v. Holder ), and the Baby Veronica adoption case – where the statutory requirements of the Indian Child Welfare Act were wrongfully evaded – it is more important than ever for our collective voices to unite for justice and dignity for all people.

The National Congress of American Indians calls on friends and allies nationally to participate, and for those in the Washington DC area to volunteer for the March; bring their families and friends in a show of support; and to help spread the word. The National Action Network is requesting volunteers for the following areas:

Marshalls
Cleanup
Medical (licensed nurses to assist with health needs)
Volunteers are asked to contact the volunteer office at 800.311.7020 or by email at MLK50volunteers@gmail.com

Also, while the March will occur on Saturday, events are taking place beginning August 21 through August 28. Click here for the most up to date list of events throughout this week of mobilization.

White Sturgeon Rebound With Help From Kootenai Tribe of Idaho

Jack McNeel, ICTMN

At first glance they look like miniature tadpoles. Stare a little harder, though, and tiny sturgeon features become apparent. The white sturgeon hatchlings are in the midst of a comeback brought about by the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho.

A nearby hatchery tank swarms with year-old sturgeon, their large bodies and broad pectoral fins narrowing down to high, pointed tails much like fighter jets. The adults are in huge tanks, only a few fish but each seven or eight feet long.

White sturgeon were here when dinosaurs roamed the country, but man has now put this population of sturgeon in danger of extinction. Historically they were a very important food source for people along the Kootenai River, but they were more than just food.

“Sturgeon were looked upon as our grandfathers,” said tribal chairperson Jennifer Porter, sharing a story told to her by a tribal elder. “Sturgeon could live to be over a hundred years old. They knew the river. They knew the land. Our families would ask the sturgeon, our grandfathers, to guide them through. They were the ones who knew how to go up and then back down the river.”

Sturgeon are the largest freshwater fish in North America and can reach weights well over a thousand pounds, and lengths in excess of 12 feet. Human activity over the past 50 years has drastically reduced their number. In 1994 they were listed as an endangered species.

The Kootenai Tribe of Idaho stepped in with a management plan to help recover sturgeon within the Kootenai River. That program continues and is growing stronger, but much is left to be done. A sturgeon hatchery was constructed in 1991 and still supplies thousands of young fish to the river each year. Hatchery manager Chris Lewandowski said that a cyclical maintenance grant from Bureau of Indian Affairs for Native American hatcheries has allowed some recent improvements. This includes a spawning room, new vapor barrier, and waterproof paneling in some of the fish buildings. Improvements are planned during the coming months for additional improvements with funding from the Bonneville Power Administration.

Hatchery workers spend many days through the spring months using rods and reels to catch these huge fish, take them to the hatchery and hold them till the females are ready to spawn. After eggs are collected, the adult fish are then returned to the Kootenai River.

This is the majestic fish’s only shot at reproduction. Construction of Libby Dam in Montana 50 years ago affected spawning habitat and river flows downstream. Little or no natural recruitment to the population has occurred since that time. Essentially the only addition of young fish comes from those released from the hatchery.

“We spawned nine females this year with approximately 225,000 eggs collected from these fish,” Lewandowski said. “We used a total of twelve males in combination with the nine females to make seventeen family groups.”

Some males were used with more than one female to make up these groups. Five groups, 75,000 eggs, were sent to a backup facility in British Columbia.

“This serves as a failsafe to make sure we have survival from at least one facility in a given year,” Lewandowski said, adding that the young fish will also be released throughout the Kootenai River.

The 2013 spawning season met all the established goals. The hatchery is designed to rear 12 sturgeon families comfortably. During the mid-2000s they reared as many as 18 families but found that the increased density in the tanks caused higher mortality rates. The number of families was reduced to 12, and the result is less mortality. In addition, average size at release doubled to the present 5565 grams. Thirty grams is considered minimum for the fish to have a good chance of survival.

Young fish are reared in the hatchery for 16 to 18 months before being released, Lewandowski said. On average about 10,000 fish are released annually. A second hatchery several miles north of the present hatchery is also underway and should be ready in early 2014.

“The new hatchery will give us more rearing space to provide a quality fish while improving genetic diversity by being able to spawn more females,” Lewandowski added.

Hatching nest eggs, a walk in Finance Park

Native youth attend Junior Achievement camp

Upon entering Finance Park, students are given an identity complete with a salary, a family, pets, and a debit card, to learn how to juggle their finances in "real world" situations. — Upon entering Finance Park, students are given an identity complete with a salary, a family, pets, and a debit card, to learn how to juggle their finances in “real world” situations. Photo/Andrew Gobin.

By Andrew Gobin, Tulalip News

Students from the Tulalip Tribes Summer Youth Program spent the day in Finance Park at Junior Achievement World in Auburn, on Thursday, August 15th. The day at the park is the culmination of a two-week educational JA (Junior Achievement) camp at Tulalip. The camp is unique to the tribes as it targets what Tulalip students are calling their “18 money,” the trust fund per capita that the tribe sets aside for them until they graduate. The Tulalip camp focuses on the trust fund, and teaches how to make that money go further.

“Junior Achievement is actually a k-12 curriculum,” explains Gary Hauff, regional director for Junior Achievement. “Typically we go into schools and offer education programs for class credit. For the tribes, we are trying something different. The summer camp is unique to Tulalip, geared towards teaching personal finance responsibility and budgeting agendas.”

“At JA we work with the youth to plant the seeds of financial responsibility and stability,” added Sue Elkin, manager at JA World.

Finance Park is designed as a virtual city where students can practice being adults, and put into action what they learned at camp. Arriving at JA World, the students are given an identity complete with a salary, a family, pets, and a debit card. Students then buy or rent a house or apartment, purchase a car that adequately fit the demands of their virtual life, collect and pay their bills, and even make time for vacations. Along with projected costs, kids learn to deal with unexpected costs that arise in everyday life. Students tour the park, collecting bills and shopping, and making the dreaded stop at the chance station, where they draw cards that may result in an unlucky additional cost to their budget, such as taking their pet to the vet.

“We get a real look at life, and what the costs are,” said Bradley Fryberg. “Here [Finance Park] I make $48,000 a year, I have no kids, I’m single, 30, and have an apartment and a sports car.”

Some students juggled two or three kids and drove mini vans.

“Junior Achievement teaches us to be responsible with our money,” said Bryce Juneau Jr. who is planning on saving his trust money until after college.

Students learn about stocks and bonds, compound interest accounts, the risks associated with both of those, and the possible gains they offer.

“Just as life is multi-faceted, we at JA are diversifying,” explained Elkin. “We used to be strictly business oriented, then last year we started branching out into the sciences and other fields. This year we worked to incorporate art and music into the program.”

Tulalip Tribal Member, Israel Simpson, and his winning shoe design. Photo/Andrew Gobin

This included a little fun competition working with shoe designs and a special appearance by Native shoe designer Louie Gong.

Gong spoke to the students about his designs and the work it entails. He provided shoe forms called “mockups” for the kids to express their creative talent on. The shoes were then voted on and the student with the winning shoe design received tickets to a Mariners game.

Tulalip’s Israel Simpson designed the winning pair of shoes. “I just picked up the pens and kept going. Inspired from my auntie, always saying, draw what you feel.”

The camp encourages education, both in the completion of high school and in pursuing higher education. This is important, because many do not realize that should they not complete high school or get their G.E.D., they with not get their trust per capita until they are 21.

Many different post high school options are explained including trade schools, community colleges, universities, online degrees, and entrepreneurship.

Beyond Keystone XL: Three Controversial Pipelines You Probably Haven’t Heard Of

By Kiley Kroh, Climate Progress

While the national debate remains largely focused on President Obama’s impending decision regarding the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, communities across the U.S. and Canada are grappling with the oil and gas industry’s rapidly expanding pipeline network — cutting through their backyards, threatening water supplies, and leaving them vulnerable to devastating spills.

As production booms in Alberta’s tar sands and fracking opens up vast oil and natural gas deposits around America, companies are increasingly desperate for new pipelines to get their product to market. “We’ve so narrowly focused on Keystone that a lot of these other projects aren’t getting the scrutiny they probably need,” said Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust. He explains that as production skyrockets and companies look to cash in, no one is really in charge of it all. “We’re leaving it up to these individual companies to come up with their own solutions to figure out how to move energy and we don’t have any national policy guiding those decisions.”

According to a recent analysis of federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration data, since 1986 there have been nearly 8,000 incidents, resulting in more than 500 deaths, more than 2,300 injuries, and nearly $7 billion in damage.

Here are three of the most recent pipeline controversies emerging around the country:

1. Bluegrass Pipeline

Land owners and protesters gather on the steps of the Kentucky state capitol to protest the Bluegrass Pipeline. CREDIT: AP Photo/Dylan Lovan

Opposition is growing to the proposed 500-mile bluegrass pipeline, which would transport flammable natural gas liquids across Kentucky to an existing line that terminates in the Gulf. Landowners and environmentalists gathered at the state capital last week to protest the project, which they fear would threaten water supplies and safety. Residents were caught off guard by the project — landowner Stacie Meyer said she noticed survey markers going up near her property and had to search the internet and consult her neighbors to find out what they were for.

Locals are concerned the company, Williams Co., could use imminent domain to seize the land if opposition proves too strong. As the Courier-Journal reported, “Brad Slutskin, a Woodford County landowner who spoke at the rally, said the pipeline companies are threatening condemnation based on a loose interpretation of Kentucky law, and most property owners don’t have the money to mount a court challenge.” Residents opposed to the pipeline — including a group of nuns and monks who are refusing to give up their land for the project — delivered a petition with more than 5,200 signatures asking Gov. Beshear to include pipeline and eminent domain-related issues in the upcoming special legislative session, which he refused.

“Knowing a pipeline is coming through, is like waiving a red flag to the creatures of the Earth. God created Earth as our land to use not abuse,” Sister Joetta Venneman told local WAVE News.

As the gas fields north and east of Kentucky boom, the state will likely find itself in the crosshairs of many battles to come. In fact, while the fifth Kentucky county was passing a resolution opposing the Bluegrass Pipeline on Wednesday, the Courier-Journal reported that the project may already have some competition — a joint venture to convert an existing natural gas line called the Tennessee Gas Pipeline.

2. Energy East Pipeline

Milo Zeankowski-Giffin, left, and Max Griefen hold signs during a Montpelier, VT tar sands protest.

Milo Zeankowski-Giffin, left, and Max Griefen hold signs during a Montpelier, VT tar sands pipeline protest. CREDIT: AP Photo/Toby Talbot

Facing resistance in the U.S. over its Keystone XL proposal, TransCanada Corp. is moving forward with plans for another tar sands pipeline project that would carry almost as much crude as Keystone. The new pipeline, the most expensive in TransCanada’s history, would run from Alberta to the Atlantic seaboard, ending where a new deep-water marine terminal would be built to export the crude overseas. In early August, TransCanada said it received the long-term contracts for about 900,000 barrels of crude per day and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has already indicated his support for the project.

TransCanada’s proposal has been met with stiff opposition from Canadian environmentalists and native leaders — particularly in Quebec, where Premier Pauline Marois has halted natural gas exploration while last month’s deadly Lac-Megantic crude oil train explosion is still being cleaned up.

The $12 billion development plan calls for converting 1,864 miles of an existing, 55-year-old pipeline currently used for natural gas to carry the oil. Though the proposed route does not cross into the U.S., it does skirt the border with Maine. Perhaps most worrisome to residents of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, however, is that the increased shipping capacity from Alberta will impact another pipeline — the 70-year-old Portland Pipeline. Currently, the pipeline is used to ship crude into Canada but residents are concerned the flow will be reversed to bring Canadian tar sands into the U.S. As the Boston Globe explains, “this would provide Canada — whose Alberta-centered oil industry is suffering from too much supply and too little access to overseas markets — its first direct pipeline to a year-round, deep-water port.” Residents throughout New England are staunchly opposed to the region becoming a conduit for the dirtiest form of fossil fuel production, holding anti-pipeline demonstrations in Portland, while 29 Vermont communities passed resolutions banning tar sands oil from the state.

For now, residents of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont are left with little option other than waiting to see how the Energy East pipeline development may impact the Portland Pipeline. In a statement released earlier this month, the company said, “It is uncertain to us what the entire impact of this proposed project might be on crude movements and crude supplies for the East Coast. We are continuing to evaluate this recent development.”

3. Eastern Gulf Crude Access Pipeline Project

Keystone pipeline in yellow, Eastern in blue and red. Graphic credit: Paul Horn, InsideClimate News

Enbridge’s proposed 774-mile pipeline would run from Illinois to Louisiana and carry oil from North Dakota’s Bakken formation, as well as Canadian tar sands. The pipeline would be capable of transporting almost as much crude as Keystone XL and, as Inside Climate News reports, will likely sail through the regulatory process because much of the pipeline is already constructed as a natural gas line.

“Converting pipelines makes [approval] easier and riskier, too,” explains Weimer. “Keystone is brand new, state of the art pipeline with its own set of problems. Enbridge on the other hand, is converting other pipelines that have already been in the ground for years — putting in new types of crude or switching natural gas to liquid on pipelines that aren’t built to today’s standards. Those old pipes being re-purposed certainly presents a new risk.”

While the Keystone decision is momentarily stalled, Eastern Gulf is just one of many new pipelines being built to ship North American oil to the Gulf Coast for refining and export. According to Inside Climate, “Enbridge plans to build thousands of miles of pipelines over the next few years, including an expansion of its Alberta Clipper pipeline from Canada to Wisconsin. If approved, that line would ship up to 880,000 barrels of Canadian crude into the United States each day, compared to the Keystone’s capacity of 830,000 barrels per day.”

Last month, all five members of Minnesota’s Public Utilities Commission approved increasing the flow of the Alberta Clipper line while refusing concerned citizens the opportunity to testify publicly. The initial expansion still awaits approval from multiple government agencies but Enbridge already has its sights set on a second expansion, which wasn’t discussed at the meeting. The protesters, including several Native American representatives, fear their communities could soon face the same devastating impacts of tar sands development being felt in Alberta. Marty Cobenais of Bemidji, part of the Indigenous Environmental Network, told the Bemidji Pioneer that the pipeline is a major issue for his Red Lake community. “This is huge,” he said. “This is in our back yard.”

A worker cleans up oil in Mayflower, AR days after a pipeline ruptured and spewed oil over lawns and roadways. CREDIT: AP Photo/Jeannie Nuss

These fights are just three of many being waged by citizens across the country. Alabama residents, for instance, have been protesting multiple pipeline projects — including the Plains All-American oil pipeline, which would run 41 miles to Mississippi and through a section of Mobile’s drinking water supply.

Though pipeline companies are seeking to capitalize on the Lac-Megantic tragedy to tout the safety of crude transport over rail, the devastating impacts of pipeline spills are impossible to overlook. Last week, the New York Times profiled two communities in Michigan and Arkansas that are forever changed by tar sands pipeline spills. Though it’s been three years since Enbridge’s pipeline rupture that spewed more than 840,000 gallons of tar sands crude into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River, the region is far from restored. And even despite EPA’s recent order for Exxon to dredge the river, an EPA spokeswoman estimated that 1620,000 gallons of oil will remain in the Kalamazoo.

And in March, an Exxon Mobil pipeline burst, spilling an estimated 210,000 gallons of crude into a Mayflower, Arkansas neighborhood. What’s left behind is bleak: “Four months later, the neighborhood of low-slung brick homes is largely deserted, a ghostly column of empty driveways and darkened windows, the silence broken only by the groan of heavy machinery pawing at the ground as remediation continues.” As Inside Climate News has continued to report, residents are now grappling with the long-term effects of the toxic spill, including the difficult process of relocating their families and the frightnening health complications that have begun to manifest.

In addition to re-purposing old pipelines, there are several aspects of the unchecked expansion of fossil fuel pipelines across the country that has Weimer concerned. First, pipeline regulation needs to be strengthened and clarified. He explains that right now, “regulations are written in such a way that to a vast degree, it’s left up to the pipeline companies to figure out how safe their pipelines are and what to do about it.” And it’s not just oversight — planning future pipeline routes is also dictated by the companies themselves. “The way we leave it up to each company means we could have multiple pipelines from different companies moving [their products] through the same place. Each company is just trying to capitalize and make money. State and local government really hasn’t thought about it much — is unprepared — and pipelines will go into place before there are policies to guide the construction. It can really affect the way local communities may develop and often happens before the community has any sense of what they can do about it.”

Cherokee Nation Attorney General on TV Personality Troy Dunn

Levi Rickert, Native News Network

Cherokee Nation Attorney General Todd HembreeCherokee Nation Attorney General Todd Hembree — Cherokee Nation Attorney General Todd Hembree
Cherokee Nation Attorney General Todd Hembree

TAHLEQUAH, OKLAHOMA – For those of you familiar with the ongoing custody battle over Cherokee Veronica Brown between her biological father, Dusten Brown and a non-Native adoptive couple from South Carolina, you may have seen Troy Dunn, from the show called “The Locator,” on the Dr. Phil Show saying disparaging things about the Indian Child Welfare Act.

On Wednesday, he showed up at a press conference held by the South Carolina couple, who flew to Tulsa, Oklahoma to attempt to sway Dusten Brown to give up his legal battle to keep his daughter.

Troy Dunn was present and said more disparaging things about the Indian Child Welfare Act. At the news conference, he called on Brown to meet one-on-one with him without attorneys or Cherokee Nation officials. Brown never responded to Dunn.

Outside the Tulsa Hyatt where the press conference was held, over a dozen supporters of Veronica and Dusten Brown were outside with signs.

“I was there to support …the bottom line is the sovereignty of every tribal nations. We have to stand up and fight for our rights and children,”

commented Linda Sacks, a tribal citizen of the Cherokee Nation, who was there to support the Browns.

“It’s about sovereignty …that is the ultimate thing.”

Then on Thursday, Dunn with a television camera in tow attempted to show up at a Cherokee school where Veronica was. Cherokee marshals turned him away.

Cherokee Nation Attorney General Todd Hembree issued the following statement late Thursday afternoon:

“I was concerned with the Capobianco’s judgment in putting forth Troy Dunn as the central spokesperson in their press conference yesterday. Mr. Dunn’s Internet presence reveals that he is a reality TV producer, a stand-up comedian and a “motivational speaker.” He is neither a counselor nor mental health expert although he perpetuates that illusion on TV.”

“Furthermore, in his more than year long involvement with the Capobiancos, he has proven himself not to be a neutral party in this matter, he has made inflammatory statements to the media and has publicly posted degrading comments about Veronica’s real father, Dusten Brown.”

“Troy Dunn is injecting himself into a complex and emotional legal issue for which he sorely lacks any relevant skill set.”

“My concerns of yesterday were well founded in that today, Troy Dunn and his hired TV cameras were asked to leave Cherokee Nation school premises by Cherokee Nation Marshals. His antics are inappropriate and dangerous. The safety and well-being of our children is our first priority.”

“His shenanigans and grandstanding is purely for the cameras and self-promotion. Our concern has been and always will be what is in the best interest of Veronica, a beautiful and innocent Cherokee child. The Cherokee Nation is not interested in his personal entertainment endeavors and his media circus.”

“We are steadfast in our commitment to creating a safe environment for Cherokee citizens. We all want to see an amicable resolution to the Veronica Brown impasse. Sadly, Troy Dunn’s theatrics are a distraction to this very difficult issue.”

“Dusten Brown, an American war veteran, deserves his due process and Veronica deserves her privacy.”