News Archives - Page 327 of 456

Study launched to examine declining salmon runs

Millions of dollars have been spent to restore fish habitat in Western Washington.

Property owners pay taxes to local governments to control stormwater runoff.

State government and tribal fisheries have put huge investments into hatcheries.

“While all that has been going on, we’ve seen a precipitous decline in the survival rate of both hatchery fish as well as wild fish,” said Phil Anderson, director of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

That’s why the department, along with the Tulalip Tribes and 25 other organizations, are beginning a five-year study to determine why some species of salmon and trout are having trouble surviving their saltwater voyages.

The Salish Sea Marine Survival Project, as it’s called, is an international effort. Canadian groups are agreeing to pay half of the estimated, eventual $20 million cost of the study.

The decline has been seen in fish runs both in Washington and British Columbia.

“The fish don’t know there’s a border,” said Mike Crewson, fisheries enhancement biologist for the Tulalip Tribes.

The marine survival rate for many stocks of Chinook and coho salmon, along with steelhead, has dropped more than 90 percent over the past 30 years, according to Long Live the Kings, a Seattle-based non-profit group formed around fish preservation.

Numbers for sockeye, chum, and pink salmon have varied widely over the same time period.

For some reason, many of these anadromous fish — those that spawn in fresh water and spend most of their lives at sea — are not doing well in saltwater, particularly in the inland waters of Western Washington.

The Snohomish and Skagit river systems have been hit particularly hard, Crewson said.

While there’s a solid understanding of the factors affecting salmon survival in fresh water, according to Long Live the Kings, the issues in the marine environment are more complex.

From what is known so far, the survival problem has been traced to a combination of factors. Pollution, climate change, loss of habitat and increased consumption of salmon by seals and sea lions are all playing a part, Tulalip tribal officials have said.

Tribes and government agencies have been collecting information on their own, but it hasn’t yet been put together into context, Crewson said.

That will be one benefit of the new study — synthesizing the work done so far, he said. More research will be done as well.

The Tulalips, for example, have two smolt traps they use to catch young fish to track their progress and survival rates. The tribe already spends about $500,000 per year on fish survival programs and will increase their sampling efforts as part of this study, Crewson said.

Other studies more focused on certain areas, such as a joint effort between the Tulalips and the Nisqually tribe focusing on the Snohomish and Nisqually river systems, will be folded into the larger effort, Crewson said.

“The survival’s especially poor in Puget Sound (as opposed to the open ocean),” he said. “We’re trying to figure out what’s different in Puget Sound.”

The state recently appropriated nearly $800,000 toward the new study. The Pacific Salmon Foundation, a Canadian group, has raised $750,000 to support project activities north of the border. That group is serving as the organizer for efforts there, as is Long Live the Kings on the American side.

The Pacific Salmon Commission, a joint Canadian-American organization formed to implement treaty agreements, is putting in $175,000.

The rest of the money will be raised as the study progresses, officials said. A report and action plan is expected after five years.

In challenging tribal court, Alaska state goes to bat for man convicted of beating his wife

August 25, 2013 Anchorage Daily News

By RICHARD MAUER — rmauer@adn.com

Earlier this month, when Edward Parks was convicted in Fairbanks of the kidnapping and brutal assault of his girlfriend, the prosecutor told a Fairbanks reporter it was a victory in the “state’s larger war against domestic violence.”

But three months earlier, with Parks sitting in jail awaiting trial for beating Bessie Stearman so badly he broke three of her ribs and collapsed one of her lungs, the Parnell administration intervened on his behalf before the Alaska Supreme Court. In a case that’s still pending, the state government is seeking to void a tribal court order declaring him an unfit parent.

For Natalie Landreth, a Native-rights attorney representing the adoptive parents of one of Parks’ children, the state’s move was an outrageous example of attaching greater importance to its political fight against tribal rights than the protection of the child, who is now 5.

“Why on earth would you step in to defend someone’s right to access a child when he has just been convicted of almost murdering the mother?” Landreth said.

Attorney General Michael Geraghty said the state is intervening on Parks’ side to protect Parks’ constitutional rights, not get his child back.

“I guess I can understand to a lay person how it might appear that we’re supporting Mr. Parks, but I don’t think that’s the case. We’re supporting his due process rights as we would with any other Alaskan,” Geraghty said. “That doesn’t mean we think he’s a good guy, that he should be a parent or that he’s entitled to custody of his kids.”

Parks has his own attorney to defend his rights and the state’s entry into the case on his behalf was optional, Geraghty acknowledged, but he said the state chose to file its own brief in the Alaska Supreme Court because the case was bigger than Parks.

At issue is whether a small tribal court in the village of Minto, 130 road miles west of Fairbanks, could strip Parks of his parental rights to one of his daughters, named “S.P.” in legal filings, and approve her adoption by Jeff Simmonds, the cousin of the child’s mother, and Simmonds’ wife Rozella. According to court filings, S.P. is a member of the Minto tribe, as is her mother, Stearman, the victim of Parks’ rage. Jeff Simmonds is also a Minto tribe member, while Rozella Simmonds is a Zuni Pueblo Indian from the Southwest.

One of Parks’ parents is Alaska Native and Parks himself is an enrolled member of the tribe at Stevens Village, about 60 miles north of Minto on the Yukon River, according to the court filings.

To the state, that meant that the Minto court was trying to enforce its order against a nonmember of its tribe. The Minto court’s declaration on May 7, 2009, that Parks was an unfit parent was improperly reached, the state said in its brief to the Alaska Supreme Court, filed in April.

The proper venue for that question is before a state judge in Fairbanks, not the elders of the Minto court, the state said.

Landreth, from the Native American Rights Fund office in Anchorage, said the state is overreaching and ignoring the years of legal precedent since Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978.

‘sovereignty issues are current issues’

Alaska, like other Western states with significant Native American populations, has had a contentious history with tribal rights. The federal government recognizes more than 200 tribes in Alaska — most of them small, rural villages — and they form parallel governments to the municipalities under state law, and the state itself — at least for duties and rights granted by Congress. Native rights are based in the U.S. Constitution and in aboriginal-rights doctrine subscribed to by the United States. Tensions over tribal sovereignty have grown or subsided, depending on who was governor and what issues were hot at the time.

“Certainly tribal sovereignty issues are current issues, they’re topical issues, I agree with that,” Geraghty said. But the decision to intervene on Parks’ behalf against the Minto tribal court was about Parks’ legal rights, not an effort by the state to restrict tribes.

Landreth doesn’t see it that way. By declaring that Parks shouldn’t be bound by the tribal court even though his daughter, his daughter’s mother, and one of the adopted parents are tribal members, the state is trying to make new, impractical law, she said.

“The legal term for that kind of argument is ‘Just Silly,'” Landreth said. “Tribes, especially in Alaska, are so small that nobody’s going to marry someone in their own tribe because they’re mostly related within two degrees of blood.”

If both parents have to be members of the same tribe for a tribal court to have jurisdiction under the Indian Child Welfare Act, that would foreclose a decision in almost every case except those involving the largest tribes in the state, like the Tlingit-Haida people, she said.

QUESTIONS OF JURISDICTION

S.P. was born in Fairbanks in 2007. At the time, Bessie Stearman, her mother, was on probation for drug charges, according to the filings with the Supreme Court. By the following January, Parks had been jailed on an assault charge for breaking Stearman’s finger “in a dispute relating to the trimming of S.P.’s fingernails.” The attack came to the attention of a tribal social worker.

In May 2008, with Parks working on the North Slope, Stearman was jailed for probation violations. She asked Rozella Simmonds to care for S.P.

Parks found out, quit his job, and returned to Fairbanks. He learned that the Minto tribal court had granted temporary, emergency custody to the Simmondses, and agreed to that arrangement at least for the time being, though he preferred placing the baby with his mother instead.

Over the course of the next year, the tribe held more hearings and set up a visitation schedule for S.P. with Parks and Stearman. The couple continued in their relationship and eventually had three more children, including a set of twins.

“Yeah, she went back to him,” said assistant District Attorney Andrew Baldock. “As domestic violence cases go, it’s not unusual for that sort of thing to happen.”

Parks got a lawyer, Don Mitchell, an Anchorage attorney who has written extensively about Native law — and who has a problem with tribes as legal entities in Alaska.

Parks demanded that S.P. be returned to him. He accused the tribe of kidnapping her. On May 5, 2009, he “abducted” S.P. from the Simmondses, according to Landreth’s petition. The Alaska Office of Children’s Services, with the help of Fairbanks police, returned S.P. “to her tribal foster home,” Landreth wrote.

Two days later, the tribal court convened again, this time in a hearing to terminate the parental rights of Stearman and Parks. The court met in Minto. Stearman, Parks, Parks’ mother and Mitchell participated over a speakerphone in the Tanana Chiefs Conference office in Fairbanks.

Parks told the court it had no jurisdiction over him. Mitchell wanted to speak on Parks’ behalf, but was told by a “court facilitator” — a clerk of sorts — that lawyers are only allowed to advise their clients and submit written documents, not make oral arguments.

The court allowed the interested parties to speak, went into closed session, and returned with its verdict: S.P.’s parents were unable to provide a “violence-free environment” and were not fit as parents. The child would continue to live with Stearman’s cousin and his wife.

LEGAL PROTECTIONS

Parks and Stearman filed suit in Superior Court in Fairbanks on Sept. 17, 2009, trying to get S.P. back. Mitchell originally represented him. The judge, Paul Lyle, refused Landreth’s request to dismiss the case, ruling that Parks was denied due process by the Minto court.

While the case was kicking back and forth between Lyle’s court and the Alaska Supreme Court, Parks lost control again, this time apparently worse than at any other time.

On Dec. 18, 2011, according to the Fairbanks News-Miner, Parks took Stearman to an area near South Cushman Street in Fairbanks and began beating her. He brought her home, tied her with a belt, and kicked and choked her some more. Parks held her for two days, refusing to take her to the hospital until she promised not to call police.

“There were some very small children that were in the residence,” Baldock, the prosecutor, said in a telephone interview. “She was not physically able to go to the hospital — she had a collapsed lung and a couple broken ribs and the children were just kept in the other room away from her.”

But not S.P. She was safe with Jeff and Rozella Simmonds.

Parks was arrested. On Feb. 9, 2012, a Fairbanks grand jury handed up a seven-count indictment that included two kidnapping charges. Another count was for witness tampering. From his jail cell, Parks continued to try to get Stearman to not testify against him, Baldock said. Parks also used delaying tactics to put off the trial, apparently believing Stearman would change her mind, Baldock said.

It didn’t happen. She testified against him. After a one-week trial, the News-Miner reported, he was convicted Aug. 12 on all counts.

Baldock said he was carrying out state policy to aggressively pursue domestic violence cases under Gov. Sean Parnell and Attorney General Geraghty’s “Choose Respect” campaign.

“I can’t speak anything about the civil stuff,” Baldock said, referring to the state’s role in the Minto tribal case, “but certainly from the attorney general on down, there’s a real impetus in making sure that these kind of cases are handled appropriately.”

The civil lawsuit had ground along as Parks waited for trial in his jail cell in Fairbanks. The state intervened on his behalf April 26.

“Having the government in your corner is certainly a useful situation for any litigant,” said Mitchell, Parks’ attorney. “I viewed it as a helpful development.”

Mitchell had to drop out of the case because he had represented both Stearman and Parks, and they had become adversaries in the criminal case. Each now has their own attorney in the civil case. He still believes it was right to pursue the lawsuit.

“At the heart of this problem is the fact that every single person who lives in a village is a citizen of the state of Alaska who is entitled to have access to the same procedural and substantive protections as any other citizen of Alaska, and that has been thrown out the window in the political enthusiasm for the invention of Indian tribes in Alaska and the further invention of tribal courts,” Mitchell said.

But Landreth said the tribal court got it right years before.

“Respondent now has 43 criminal entries on Court View,” she wrote in 2012 in her second petition to the Alaska Supreme Court, referring to Parks’ record in the state’s on-line court database. “As this case has progressed, the wisdom of the Minto Tribal Court’s decision to place S.P. in the Petitioners’ (Simmondses) stable home has become even more apparent.”

The matter is pending in the Alaska state courts. Parks is due to be sentenced in February.

Reach Richard Mauer at rmauer@adn.com or 257-4345.

Veronica case: Motion filed to suspend visits from Capobiancos

Matt and Melanie Copabianco (back left and right) arrive at Cherokee Nation Courthouse on Aug. 16 for a custody hearing involving a 3-year-old Cherokee girl they are trying to adopt.LISA SNELL | NATIVE TIMES PHOTO — Matt and Melanie Copabianco (back left and right) arrive at Cherokee Nation Courthouse on Aug. 16 for a custody hearing involving a 3-year-old Cherokee girl they are trying to adopt.
LISA SNELL | NATIVE TIMES PHOTO

25 August 2013

LENZY KREHBIEL-BURTON, Native Times

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – A motion is now on file to suspend any visits between a non-Native South Carolina couple and the three-year-old Cherokee child they have been attempting to adopt for almost four years.

According to docket sheets posted Sunday on the On Demand Court Records system, Angel Smith, the court-appointed attorney for Cherokee Nation citizen Veronica Brown, filed the motion Friday in Cherokee County District Court, along with a request for a hearing to revisit the matter.

Smith was appointed in Cherokee County District Court on Aug. 19 after representing the child in Cherokee Nation District Court for almost a month. She is also Brown’s representative in a federal lawsuit filed last month by the Native American Rights Fund, the National Indian Child Welfare Association and the National Congress of American Indians.

It is unclear whether Matt and Melanie Capobianco, the James Island, S.C., couple attempting to adopt the child, have actually met with the girl and if so, how often, since arriving in Oklahoma two weeks ago. The Capobiancos were awarded custody of the child last month by a South Carolina family court judge, but the order has not been enforced in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin has threatened to sign off on an extradition warrant for Veronica’s biological father, Dusten Brown, if he did not allow the couple to see the girl. Brown is wanted in South Carolina for custodial interference after missing a court-ordered visitation with the Capobiancos and an adoption investigator earlier this month while he was at National Guard training in Iowa. He has since turned himself in to Sequoyah County law enforcement and has a hearing scheduled for Sept. 12 in Sallisaw.

Along with Smith’s motions, the Capobiancos have filed their own motions with the court objecting to the appointment of a guardian ad litem to represent Veronica Brown’s best interests during the court proceedings, as well as their objection to Smith’s appointment as the three-year-old’s lawyer.

Additionally, special judge Holli Wells entered an order of recusal Friday, excusing herself from future proceedings in the case.

Thanks to a gag order issued by both the Cherokee County District Court and the Cherokee Nation District Court and a seal on all related documents, no details are available about the flurry of Friday filings other than the docket sheet line items. Earlier this month, the two sides agreed to mediation, but it is unclear whether those talks have started and if so, how they have progressed. It is also unclear what, if any, challenges were filed in Oklahoma to the South Carolina family court’s order granting custody to the Capobiancos. Under Oklahoma statute, Brown and his attorneys had until Friday to do so.

U.S. proposes overhauling process for recognizing Indian tribes

By Michael Melia, Source: Associated Press; Washington Post

KENT, Conn. — His tribe once controlled huge swaths of what is now New York and Connecticut, but the shrunken reservation presided over by Alan Russell today hosts little more than four mostly dilapidated homes and a pair of rattlesnake dens.

The Schaghticoke Indian Tribe leader is hopeful that its fortunes may soon be improving. As the Interior Department overhauls its rules for recognizing American Indian tribes, a nod from the federal government appears within reach, potentially bolstering its claims to surrounding land and opening the door to a tribal-owned casino.

“It’s the future generations we’re fighting for,” Russell said.

The rules floated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, intended to streamline the approval process, are seen by some as lowering the bar through changes such as one requiring that tribes demonstrate political continuity since 1934 and not “first contact” with European settlers. Across the country, the push is setting up battles with host communities and already recognized tribes who fear upheaval.

In Kent, a small Berkshires mountain town with one of New England’s oldest covered bridges, residents have been calling the selectman’s office with their concerns. The tribe claims land including property held by the Kent School, a boarding school, and many residents put up their own money a decade ago to fight a recognition bid by another faction of the Schaghticokes.

Members of the stae’s congressional delegation also have been in touch with the first selectman, Bruce Adams, who said he fears court battles over land claims and the possibility that the tribe would open its own businesses as a sovereign nation within town boundaries.

“Everybody is on board that we have to do what we can to prevent this from happening,” he said.

The new rules were proposed in June by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which invited public comment at hearings over the summer in Oregon, California, Michigan, Maine and Louisiana. The Obama administration intends to improve a recognition process that has been criticized as slow, inconsistent and overly susceptible to political influence.

Federal recognition, which has been granted to 566 American tribes, is coveted because it brings increased health and education benefits to tribal members in addition to land protections and opportunities for commercial development.

Tribes have been pushing for years for Congress or the Interior Department to revise the process.

“I am glad that the Department is proposing to keep its promise to fix a system that has been broken for years, leaving behind generations of abuse, waste, and broken dreams,” wrote Cedric Cromwell, chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe in Massachusetts, which was recognized in 2007.

The new rules would create tensions for host communities and some recognized tribes, according to Richard Monette, a law professor and expert on American Indian tribes at the University of Wisconsin. Tribes along the Columbia River in Washington state, for instance, will be wary of a new tribe at the river’s mouth gaining recognition and cutting into their take of salmon. Tribes elsewhere fear encroachment on casino gaming markets.

“This is a big issue throughout the whole country,” Monette said.

The salmon-harvesting Muckleshoot Indian Tribe in Washington state argues that the new rules seem to lower the threshold for recognition. Tribal Chairman Virginia Cross wrote to the Interior Department that the changes, if approved, would lead to acknowledgment of groups of descendants who “have neither a history of self-government, nor a clear sense of identity.”

In Connecticut, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D) said the state’s congressional delegation is united against changes that he said would have far-reaching ramifications for several towns and the entire state.

“Our hope is we can dissuade officials from proceeding with a regulatory step that would be very misguided, because it would essentially eviscerate and eliminate key criteria,” Blumenthal said.

Supporters of the rule change say it helps to remove unfair burdens. Judith Shapiro, an attorney who has worked with several tribes on recognition bids, said some have lost out because records were lost or burned over hundreds of years.

The Schaghticoke reservation dates to the mid-1700s, but it has been carved up to a tenth of its original size. As recently as 1960, Russell said, the town fire department would come out to burn down homes on the reservation when tribal members died to prevent others from occupying them.

When Russell’s house burned down in 1998, however, the townspeople from across the Housatonic River helped him to rebuild. Russell, who grew up hunting and fishing on the reservation, said that if the tribe wins recognition, it can work something out with the town on the land claims.

“That’s what I want them to understand,” he said. “We’re not the enemy.”

— Associated Press

To The Barricades! Echo-Hawk Says Justice for Natives at Tipping Point

Kevin Taylor, ICTMN

With his distinctive round eyeglasses and long, gray braids, Walter Echo-Hawk looks rather more owlish than revolutionary.

But the longtime Pawnee speaker, author and lawyer who toils on the frontlines of federal Indian Law makes a strong argument that it is time to drive a stake into the legacy of colonialism in his new book, In the Light of Justice: The Rise of Human Rights in Native America and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Fulcrum, 2013).

That stake could be the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Echo-Hawk sets out to examine and explain. Adopted by the United States in December 2010, it has yet to be integrated into law or policy. This provocative book, educational and inspiring for indigenous and “settler” alike, can show the way.

Echo-Hawk says he was motivated to write this volume as something of a hopeful counterpoint to his previous book, In the Courts of the Conqueror, which examined the worst cases in federal Indian law.

What jumps out at anyone studying mainstream attitudes toward this country’s Indigenous Peoples is the fact that what much of white America thinks of as a bygone era of treaty making, frontier warfare and taming the West is, to Indian people, current events. Life under the heel of historical oppression looks far different than the view of the boot wearer.

This difference in perspective goes deep to the bubbling heart of the notion of Melting Pot America, dividing white from brown, immigrant from Native. The confusion over Indian and Non-Indian relations becomes clear in this well-focused book when Echo-Hawk identifies a root cause that is often forgotten, or is not understood in the first place: colonial policies and their attendant settler mind-set.

It’s symptomatic of a severe disconnect, to say the least, that a nation founded upon principles of liberty and justice and freedom for all—one willing to shed blood in defense of these principles against oppressors, no less—could treat its original inhabitants with such astonishing injustice.

Echo-Hawk demonstrates how this dynamic plays out in America’s courtrooms, especially the U.S. Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Marshall is one of the nation’s most revered jurists, yet it was Marshall who introduced the doctrine of conquest into federal Indian law in the 1823 decision Johnson v. M’Intosh, ruling that colonists owned any Indian lands “acquired and maintained by force.” Tribal people, he wrote, were “fierce savages, whose occupation was war,” and thus did not warrant international legal protections for countries under invasion.

Doctrines of conquest and discovery used by European nations during 500 years of colonization, Echo-Hawk writes, allow governments to usurp indigenous land, property and rights without consent even today. Though Marshall later evolved his thinking, Echo-Hawk notes, the seeds planted in 1823 still exist. The Roberts Court, he writes, is one of the most hostile to Indian rights—the Baby Veronica ruling being the most recent example—and is actively eroding gains made in recent decades.

For every M’Intosh, Echo-Hawk says, there were other, more reasoned, decisions such as Worchester v. Georgia in 1832, in which the high court rejected conquest as an absurd legal fiction. But even as that ruling was being published, the federal and state governments were in the grip of the Indian Removal Movement, evicting Southern tribes from their homelands.

These “clothes of the conqueror,” as Echo-Hawk calls them, do not befit a democratic nation such as ours. He offers keen insight into the parallels between the long, painful African-American struggle for equality and the fight of tribal people to maintain their rights. The Civil Rights movement for many years used a counterintuitive tactic, known as the Margold Plan, to file a multitude of lawsuits urging the federal government to uphold its legal standard of “separate but equal.” Case after case after case was pursued to this end, forcing school districts and local governments and the courts to confront racial inequalities and cynical government policy.

Over several decades this approach focused at least a trickle of attention onto racial injustice, scored court victories and gained allies. Then, Brown v. Board of Education signaled a shift in tactics to a direct assault in order to show, Echo-Hawk writes, that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional.

Echo-Hawk believes that Indian Country is poised at a similar tipping point.

Skirmish after skirmish in often hostile federal courts has carved some sturdy pillars for treaty rights and sovereignty. But, Echo-Hawk argues, the cultural survival of Native America depends on a march to justice, and so does America’s evolution from a settler state to a more fully just society.

Echo-Hawk is a lawyer, and his topic of international human rights sometimes pulls him into dense thickets of language. But far from being a slog, the words in this book are illuminated by his passion for the topic, and his deep knowledge of the fight for fair treatment in federal courts. His words often burn with clarity, as does his message: Although the U.N. Declaration is a powerful tool for asserting human rights for Indigenous Peoples, it will not implement itself.

“Indigenous rights are never freely given—they must be demanded, wrested away, then vigilantly protected,” Echo-Hawk writes. “That is the essence of freedom.”

Tribal court to hear complaint over US settlement

Source: Native American Times

NESPELEM, Wash. (AP) – A tribal court will hear a civil complaint Wednesday claiming the Colville Confederated Tribes should have distributed to tribal members all of a $193 million settlement with the U.S. government.

The Wenatchee World reports that tribal member Yvonne L. Swan filed the complaint in May on behalf of herself and 2,700 tribal members who had petitioned to have the entire settlement distributed to tribal members.

The money is part of a $1 billion settlement from the U.S. government with American Indian tribes whose trust lands were mismanaged by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The tribe’s Business Council pledged to spend half of the settlement on senior centers, health clinics, and other programs. The council distributed the rest in two separate payments, giving about $10,000 to each of about 9,500 members.

Is climate change humanity’s greatest-ever risk management failure?

By Dana Nuccitelli, Grist

Humans are generally very risk-averse. We buy insurance to protect our investments in homes and cars. For those of us who don’t have universal healthcare, most purchase health insurance. We don’t like taking the chance — however remote — that we could be left unprepared in the event that something bad happens to our homes, cars, or health.

Climate change seems to be a major exception to this rule. Managing the risks posed by climate change is not a high priority for the public as a whole, despite the fact that a climate catastrophe this century is a very real possibility, and that such an event would have adverse impacts on all of us.

For example, in my job as an environmental risk assessor, if a contaminated site poses a cancer risk to humans of more than 1-in-10,000 to 1-in-1 million, that added risk is deemed unacceptably high and must be reduced. This despite the fact that an American man has a nearly 1-in-2 chance of developing and 1-in-4 chance of dying from cancer (1-in-3 and 1-in-5 for an American woman, respectively).

To that 42 percent chance of an average American developing cancer in his or her lifetime, we’re unwilling to add another 0.001 percent. The reason is simple — we really, really don’t want cancer, and thus consider even a small added risk unacceptable.

Yet we don’t share that aversion to the risks posed by human-caused climate change. These risks include more than half of global species potentially being at risk of extinction, extreme weather like heat waves becoming more commonplace, global food supplies put at risk by this more frequent extreme weather, glaciers and their associated water resources for millions of people disappearing, rising sea levels inundating coastlines, and so forth.

This isn’t some slim 1-in-a-million risk; we’re looking at seriously damaging climate consequences in the most likely, business-as-usual scenario. The forthcoming fifth IPCC report is likely to state with 95 percent confidence that humans are the main drivers of climate change over the past 60 years, and the scientific basis behind this confidence is quite sound. It’s the result of virtually every study that has investigated the causes of global warming.

The percentage contribution to global warming over the past 50-65 years is shown in two categories, human causes (left) and natural causes (right), from various peer-reviewed studies (colors).

Yet in a recent interview with NPR, climate scientist Judith Curry, who has a reputation for exaggerating climate science uncertainties, claimed that based on those uncertainties, “I can’t say myself that [doing nothing] isn’t the best solution.”

This argument, made frequently by climate contrarians, displays a lack of understanding about risk management. I’m uncertain if I’ll ever be in a car accident, or if my house will catch fire, or if I’ll become seriously ill or injured within the next few years. That uncertainty won’t stop me from buying auto, home, and health insurance. It’s just a matter of prudent risk management, making sure we’re prepared if something bad happens to something we value. That principle should certainly apply to the global climate.

Uncertainty simply isn’t our friend when it comes to risk. If uncertainty is large, it means that a bad event might not happen, but it also means that we can’t rule out the possibility of a catastrophic event happening. Inaction is only justifiable if we’re certain that the bad outcome won’t happen.

Curry is essentially arguing that she’s not convinced we should take action to avoid what she believes is a very possible climate catastrophe. That’s a failure of risk management. I wonder if she would also advise her children not to buy home or auto or health insurance. Maybe they’ll be a wasted expense, or maybe they’ll prevent financial ruin in the event of a catastrophe.

Climate change presents an enormous global risk, not in an improbable 1-in-a-million case, but rather in the most likely scenario. From a risk management perspective, our choice could not be clearer. We should be taking serious steps to reduce our impact on the climate via fossil fuel consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions. But we’re not. This is in large part due to a lack of public comprehension of the magnitude of the risk we face; a perception problem that social scientists are trying to determine how to overcome.

At the moment, climate change looks like humanity’s greatest-ever risk management failure. Hopefully we’ll remedy that failure before we commit ourselves to catastrophic climate consequences that we’re unprepared to face.

John Lovick: ‘Dr. King’s speech … was a turning point in my life’

Photo courtesy of John LovickSnohomish County Executive John Lovick was raised by his grandmother in this house in Robeline, La. It had no running water when Lovick was a child. — Photo courtesy of John Lovick
Snohomish County Executive John Lovick was raised by his grandmother in this house in Robeline, La. It had no running water when Lovick was a child.

By Julie Muhlstein, The Herald

He was 12, old enough to know what it meant.

“Dr. King’s speech, frankly, it was a turning point in my life,” Snohomish County Executive John Lovick said last week.

Lovick grew up in the tiny town of Robeline, in Louisiana’s Natchitoches Parish.

He was raised by his grandmother, Elsie Lee Lovick. A mother of 11, she had picked cotton and scrubbed floors to support the family. Their house had no running water.

Robeline was far from Washington, D.C., where on Aug. 28, 1963, tens of thousands of people joined the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The march ended with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s history-making “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

Many Americans watched the landmark events of the Civil Rights Movement in their living rooms. Lovick didn’t have that luxury.

“We didn’t have a TV. We would hear about it, or listen to the radio. Obviously, we knew these things were going on,” said Lovick, 62, who lives in Mill Creek.

Mark Mulligan / The HeraldSnohomish County Sheriff John Lovick speaks to the media about his intention to seek appointment to the position of Snohomish County Executive in front of the Snohomish County Courthouse Monday morning. — Mark Mulligan / The Herald
Snohomish County Sheriff John Lovick speaks to the media about his intention to seek appointment to the position of Snohomish County Executive in front of the Snohomish County Courthouse Monday morning.

For a child in a segregated school, in a region that was ground zero in the struggle for racial equality, King was a towering figure.

“There were conversations about him in school — always Dr. Martin Luther King. He was the one black public figure you could really see,” Lovick said.

As Snohomish County’s top public figure, Lovick will join in a celebration marking the 50th anniversary of King’s speech at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Everett Community College’s Jackson Center. Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson, former Everett City Councilman Carl Gipson and Tulalip Tribes Chairman Mel Sheldon are also scheduled to speak at the free event.

Lovick said that as a boy in Louisiana, “not in a million years did I imagine I’d be executive of a very large county — that level of success.” Yet he took to heart a message brought forth by King’s powerful words.

“As I watched him, as I listened to his speeches, he always said things were going to change. There will be opportunities. He wanted to make sure we were prepared, by staying in school, staying out of trouble,” Lovick said.

“Things were very, very tough growing up down there. But there’s a future out there. It was a message that always resonated with me,” said Lovick, who served in the U.S. Coast Guard, and as a State Patrol trooper, a state lawmaker and as county sheriff before being chosen in June to lead Snohomish County after Aaron Reardon’s resignation.

The systematic segregation of Lovick’s childhood is gone, but not the hurtful memories.

In all his years of school in Robeline, where Lovick graduated from Allen High School in 1968, he never had a white classmate. “It was just the way life was,” said Lovick, who remembers seeing school buses go past carrying white students.

Schools in his Louisiana town remained segregated long after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that found separate educational facilities are unequal. In 1957, King had taken a strong stand in the fight for integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Ark.

It wasn’t until the early 1980s, Lovick said, that Allen High in his hometown was ordered closed by a federal judge.

There was dismay in his voice as he described a visit to Robeline after finishing boot camp in 1970. “I went to a movie theater and had to sit in a segregated section — in my Coast Guard uniform. There was a sign, ‘colored,’ with a finger pointing in one direction,” he said. “That stirred up some terrible memories.

During his boyhood, the Ku Klux Klan was active. Lovick said his grandmother, who died three years ago at 97, feared for his safety when he would walk home. “She was always afraid of what would happen to me. At the time, there was a lot of hatred,” Lovick said.

He recently saw “The Butler,” based on the true story of a black man who worked 34 years, under eight presidents, as a White House butler. With its sweep of history, Lovick said the movie was a reminder that “a lot of people sacrificed and suffered for me to be here.”Lovick shared another painful memory. His grandmother, he said, would “crawl on her knees scrubbing floors, but she couldn’t walk in the front door of the house where she worked.”

Yet he chooses to turn away from bitterness, embracing King’s message of love and forgiveness. “Hating people is too much of a burden for me to bear,” he said.

When King spoke those words — “I have a dream today” — Lovick said he was a little too young to join in demonstrations for civil rights.

“I have tremendous admiration for those people who did the hard things,” he said. “I don’t know right now if I would have had the courage to do what they did.”

‘I Have a Dream’ event at EvCC

A free public celebration marking the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Jackson Center on the Everett Community College campus, 2000 Tower St. Speakers include Snohomish County Executive John Lovick, Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson, Tulalip Tribes Chairman Mel Sheldon and former Everett City Councilman Carl Gipson.

“The March,” a new PBS documentary looking back at Aug. 28, 1963, the day King delivered his landmark speech in Washington, D.C., will air at 9 p.m. Tuesday on KCTS, Channel 9.

WSU to begin design work for Everett university center

$10M set for Everett university center building’s design

Genna Martin / The HeraldEverett Community College Vice President of College Services Patrick Sisneros (center left) leads a group that includes Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson, Washington State University administrator Paul Pitre and state legislators Mike Sells, Hans Dunshee and Nick Harper, on a tour of the proposed site of a new WSU building near the EvCC campus at College Plaza on Broadway. — Genna Martin / The Herald
Everett Community College Vice President of College Services Patrick Sisneros (center left) leads a group that includes Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson, Washington State University administrator Paul Pitre and state legislators Mike Sells, Hans Dunshee and Nick Harper, on a tour of the proposed site of a new WSU building near the EvCC campus at College Plaza on Broadway.

By Jerry Cornfield, The Herald

EVERETT — These days the parking lot is pretty empty at College Plaza, an aging strip mall covering a long block on North Broadway.

There’s a barber shop and a nail salon, a store where most everything costs a dollar and a pay phone that works. And there’s lot of empty storefronts.

Flip the calendar ahead three years and passersby could be gazing at the cornerstone of a Washington State University branch campus.

WSU secured $10 million in state funds this year to design a 95,000-square-foot building near the corner of North Broadway and Tower Street.

The site is envisioned as the future home of the University Center of North Puget Sound, a consortium of four-year colleges including WSU that now conduct classes across the street in Everett Community College’s Gray Wolf Hall.

But by the time the building opens, WSU is expected to be running the consortium, having cemented its place in the city.

“It needs to be here because this is where the students want to go,” said Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, after completing a tour last week of the plaza site with other lawmakers and representatives of the city and community college.

He brushed off a question on whether he hoped this structure would lead to a full-throttled branch campus.

“I won’t call it a name or anything. That’s just where you put the building,” he said. When people drive by they’ll know it’s WSU and they’ll get excited, he said.

All of this came together fairly quickly.

Everett Community College now manages the University Center whose members include Western Washington University, Central Washington University and the University of Washington’s Bothell campus. A state law passed in 2011 calls for WSU to take over next summer.

As part of the deal, WSU prepared a long-term operating plan and it predicted the University Center would run out of space by the end of the decade as enrollment rises from 465 students a year ago to nearly 1,200.

Everett Community College owns College Plaza and uses it for parking. Conversations last year led to the proposal for the building in the plaza and to acquire three nearby properties for development of a parking lot. The targeted parcels include the Everett Trailer Court and the property with a Subway sandwich shop and a 7-Eleven store.

EvCC President David Beyer said the presence of the college and WSU on both sides of North Broadway will give the area a whole new feel — and be a boost to the profile of both institutions.

“It will mean something for the community,” he said. “That’s been our whole thrust is to get ourselves out there so we are not looked at as that old campus in North Everett.”

Dunshee, who is chairman of the House Capital Budget Committee, had to muscle the $10 million into the state’s construction budget over the objections of his counterparts in the Senate Majority Coalition Caucus.

“We were fighting over it at 2:30 a.m. on the last day. That was about an hour before we finished up,” he said. “It was 10 or zero.”

Of the money, $7 million is for the design work and the rest is for land acquisition.

Paul Pitre, special assistant to WSU President Elson Floyd, said there’s not a specific timeline for finishing either task. But conversations are under way at the university as officials keep in close contact with lawmakers, the community college and the city at each step.

Many issues lie ahead. For example Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson encouraged Pitre to make sure trailer court residents are given as much as two years to relocate.

Finding the funding to build will be an issue, too. The Legislature probably won’t address the money issue until 2015.

Rep. Mike Sells, D-Everett, focused on the positive

“I’m encouraged that we’re moving forward on this,” he said. “It won’t be the last building. Once you start down this road, you keep working on it.”

Obama Includes Natives When Discussing Legacy of Discrimination in US

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

During a town hall-style event in Binghamton, New York on August 23, President Barack Obama addressed the legacy of discrimination in the United States according to the Associated Press.

Obama said that poor people, run-down neighborhoods and underfunded schools would continue to exist even if a magic wand could remove discrimination.

Obama addressed the bias legacy of America, “from slavery to laws that required the separation of blacks and whites,” and how it “has meant that institutional barriers to success exist for many groups, particularly blacks, Latinos and Native Americans,” according to AP.

Smart policies to help those communities that will help America’s youth have a chance for success are what is needed.