Category: News

4Culture + Red Bull Skateable Artwork Opportunity

Red Bull, in cooperation with the Seattle Department of Parks & Recreation is looking for an artist to work in collaboration with a world‐class team of experts to design public artwork that is skateable. This is not a skate park – it is first and foremost a work of art. But this is art that invites interaction and participation.

Red Bull is investing in the Seattle community by creating a truly unique public art experience that explores the creative nexus of public space, athletic skill and individual imagination. Red Bull and the Seattle Department of Parks & Recreation have selected a site for the Red Bull SkateSpace in Myrtle Edwards Park, just north of the Olympic Sculpture Park on an elevated knoll with spectacular views to Elliott Bay and the Olympic mountain range. Red Bull SkateSpace will blend art and skateboarding to create unique terrain where the innovation of skateboarders can truly flourish.

 

ORGANIZATION: 4Culture
DEADLINE TO APPLY: Monday, June 3, 2013
MORE INFO:  Willow Fox, 206.205.8024
Budget: $76,000
Visit www.4culture.org/apply/index.aspx and follow the application specific links.

Website funds UW Bothell researcher’s coal-train dust study

A UW-Bothell researcher turned to a crowd-sourcing website to fund his study of trains’ emissions and dust.

By Sharon Salyer, The Herald

BOTHELL — Ask just about any scientist. They have far more ideas for things they want to investigate than they can ever get the funding to explore.

That’s the conundrum that Dan Jaffe, a researcher at the University of Washington’s Bothell campus, found himself in last month.

Jaffe is a professor of chemistry and atmospheric sciences. He wanted to study just how much emissions and tiny particles called particulate matter are being produced by passenger and freight train exhaust as well as coal dust from trains in Western Washington.

Little currently is known about the environmental effects caused by the passing trains.

His interest was triggered by a proposal to build a $650 million terminal north of Bellingham to export coal, grain and other material to Asia.

The proposal eventually would create up to 450 jobs, backers say. The trade-off: It also would bring more trains through Western Washington — up to 18 each day through Snohomish County, opponents say.

Jaffe thought there was a fairly simple way to conduct his experiment: Install an air-quality monitor that could measure which particles were caused by diesel exhaust and which from the larger coal dust particles over a four- to six-week period this summer.

A web camera also would be installed to document which trains were passing as the emissions occurred.

With the help of some UW students, he figured the experiment could be conducted for a little more than $18,000.

Compared to multi-million dollar research projects, that’s chump change. Nevertheless, Jaffe was getting little more than a swing-and-a-miss trying to drum up financial interest in the project.

Government agencies weren’t too encouraging, he said. “I was getting a little bit discouraged. I was pretty close to giving up.”

That’s when someone suggested he take a look at an online site, microryza.com, where researchers make public pitches for donations to fund their projects. Musicians, artists and others have used similar “crowd-sourcing” websites, such as Kickstarter, to support their projects.

“I was kind of skeptical at first,” Jaffe said.

His pitch outlining the project, with a promise that donors would be credited in the research, was posted on April 29.

Much to his surprise, on Thursday evening, just 11 days after his project was posted, he was notified that the goal had been met, with 236 people pledging a total of $18,055.

Publicity over his project and the way he raised money to do it have generated a lot of interest, he said.

“I’ve had emails from people telling me how to do it better,” Jaffe said. Their suggestions included adding additional monitoring sites or doing an analysis of the chemistry of coal dust.

He said he’s also had some interest from an environmental agency in a coal-producing state.

With the pledge goal reached far earlier than the July 1 online deadline, Jaffe said on Friday that he’s moving up the start of his research.

Assisted by two or three students at the University of Washington’s Bothell campus, he said he hopes to begin collecting information in July.

Measurements may be taken at two different sites. By moving the equipment, information can be collected on whether there are more diesel particulates when trains are moving slowly or if there is any coal dust left behind when the trains are going fast, he said.

Results are expected nine months after the project begins.

“I’ll be pretty mum on releasing it much earlier than that,” Jaffe said. “When the data come in, we have to think about what it means. That’s how science is.

“We need the first shot at it to figure out what it means and to do it in the quiet of the labs.”

Although the fundraising goal has been reached, donors can still make contributions. If enough do, Jaffe said he’s considering adding an additional monitoring site near the Columbia River Gorge.

“There have been reports of coal dust there,” he said. “I think scientific measurements would be very useful.”

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on National Women’s Health Week

Source: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, HHS.gov

Starting with Mother’s Day, we celebrate National Women’s Health Week. As a nation, we honor the women in our lives – our mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, friends, and colleagues – by encouraging them to make their health a priority and to take steps to live healthier, happier lives.

Women are frequently the health care decision-makers in their families. We take time off from work to drive a parent to the doctor. We hold our children’s hands while they get their vaccinations. We make the appointments for our spouses’ checkups – and then make sure they actually go. We stretch and re-work our family budgets to pay the doctor’s bills. And too often, we put our own health last.

But the truth is unless we take care of ourselves first, we cannot really take care of our families. That means we have to eat right, exercise, and get the care we need to stay healthy. Unfortunately, preventive care has not always been easily accessible or affordable for everyone, including young women.

But the health care law is helping to usher in a new day for women’s health. The Affordable Care Act is making it easier for women to take control of their own health.  For many women, preventive services like mammograms, Pap smears, birth control, and yearly well-woman visits are now available without cost sharing. The health care law improves women’s access to appropriate preventive health screenings, which can help detect diseases early, when treatment is most effective and least costly.

Starting next year, insurance companies will no longer be allowed to refuse us coverage just because we’re battling breast cancer or have another pre-existing condition – and they won’t be allowed to charge us more just because we are women.

If you’re one of the millions of women who are uninsured or who buy insurance on their own, more options are on the way because of the Affordable Care Act. Starting October 1, 2013, you will be able to visit a new Health Insurance Marketplace where you can compare and choose from a range of plans to find one that best fits your needs and budget. All of these plans must cover a package of essential health benefits, including maternity and newborn care.

To get more information about the Marketplace and to sign up for email and text updates to get ready for October, visit HealthCare.gov.

Being healthy starts with each of us taking control. So Monday on National Women’s Checkup Day, and during National Women’s Health Week, I encourage you to sit down with your doctor or health care provider and talk about what you can do to take control of your health.

There’s no better gift you can give yourself – or your loved ones.

FINAL NWHW Infographic_5.10

 

Overcoming Addiction, Professor Tackles Perils American Indians Face

Emily Rasinski for The New York TimesDavid A. Patterson with students at Washington University in St. Louis.
Emily Rasinski for The New York Times
David A. Patterson with students at Washington University in St. Louis.

By Alan Schwartz, The New York Times

LAWRENCE, Kan. — The visitor to Haskell Indian Nations University detailed his roaring 20s: drug addict, garbage collector, suicidal burnout once told by a doctor that he was mentally retarded. It was a curious way to inspire a group of young American Indian students long surrounded by these types of problems. Until he got to the good part.

“I never shared this with anyone until I got my Ph.D.,” he said.

A high school photo of Dr. Patterson before he dropped out.

A high school photo of Dr. Patterson before he dropped out.

His American name is David A. Patterson, his Cherokee name Adelv unegv Waya, or Silver Wolf. He is a tenure-track assistant professor at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. His groundbreaking research on the pitfalls facing Native Americans is both informed and inspired by his own story of deliverance.

“Mentally retarded? I wish I could find that doctor now,” Dr. Patterson said, the students transfixed.

Dr. Patterson, 49, has devoted what he considers his second life to studying the quicksand that just about swallowed him, and that continues to imperil American Indians more than any other ethnic group. About 18 percent of American Indian or Alaska Native adults need substance-abuse treatment, almost twice the national average, according to figures from the federal government. Deaths from alcoholism, diabetes, homicide and suicide are two to six times as high among Native Americans as they are among other groups, according to various studies.

During Dr. Patterson’s childhood in Louisville, Ky., any interest he might have had in his Cherokee roots was discouraged by his abusive father and squelched by teasing schoolmates. By 9, he had moved from beer to highballs, and at 18 he was a quaalude-favoring high school dropout. Detached and directionless, he pointed a loaded rifle at his head one afternoon in his basement before someone knocked at the door.

It was his mother’s brother, Bill Allen. He treated David’s disconnection with some long-repressed family history. Mr. Allen recounted how his grandmother, David’s great-grandmother, was half-Cherokee, making David 1/16th Cherokee. He told him where she came from, the traditions David never enjoyed. This expanding family lineage, which to that point had essentially stopped with his Irish father, gave David a new sense of belonging. Ultimately, the two researched census records and made pilgrimages to obscure Indian cemeteries to trace long-forgotten generations, penciling rubbings off gravestones.

When Dr. Patterson found a red-tailed hawk feather on a sidewalk, Mr. Allen explained how it meant that the bird, signifying wisdom and strength, was leading him on the right path.

“Bill was the one guy I could feel Indian around,” Dr. Patterson said, choking up. “Our pride fed off one another.”

Still an alcoholic garbage worker for Waste Management in Louisville — for a while he processed sewer excrement — Dr. Patterson used this newfound past to conceive a future. He went to employee counseling and, upon psychiatric examination, was told he was dyslexic and mentally retarded; he spent five weeks in a mental health facility. But he took the diagnoses as a challenge, a new starting point. He got sober and began to work with other addicts, and at 27 entered junior college.

Growing his hair into a Cherokee ponytail and with fresh tattoos of a wolf and three tepees, he enrolled at Spalding University and earned a degree in social work. He got his master’s degree and his doctorate from the University of Louisville, also in social work. He was hired by the University of Buffalo as an assistant professor studying solutions for Native American substance abuse and high dropout rates — longtime problems caused in part, Dr. Patterson’s research suggests, by the same cultural disconnection that he had felt.

The Brown School, ranked by U.S. News and World Report as one of the nation’s top schools of social work, lured him away last year.

“He brings to the table new strategies, new ways and new perspectives to think about,” said Pete Coser, the program manager for the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies, a division of the Brown School. “His story and experiences will be able to bring, at least, a light to those that are experiencing it now. Things that plague Indian country. How do we get over the mental monster that keeps us in that box?”

A walking movie script in the genre of Chris Gardner, the homeless single father who became a millionaire investor and was portrayed by Will Smith in “The Pursuit of Happyness,” Dr. Patterson only recently decided to reveal details of his past. And few acquaintances from his lowest points know anything about his present.

“I couldn’t be happier,” said Dr. Adrian Pellegrini, a Louisville psychiatrist who treated Dr. Patterson two decades ago and did not know what became of him. “The biggest miracle for people like David is that they’re still alive.”

Dr. Patterson’s research focuses on intervention strategies for substance abusers in underserved populations, particularly American Indians. He has just finished teaching a graduate-level class on drug and alcohol abuse.

As the first American Indian professor at the Brown School, Dr. Patterson has helped connect Indian students on campus, of whom there about 20, with their varying heritages. (Students belong to the Choctaw, Navajo and Seneca nations and a half-dozen others across the United States.) He invites them to his home to sit around a drum and teach one another Native songs.

One evening, eight students gathered in a downpour with Dr. Patterson outside the Brown building for a traditional spiritual cleansing ceremony. A student lighted some blades of sweet grass and gently waved the smoke on each student with an eagle feather. The smoke rose into the dripping trees as a student led the prayer: “We ask our creator to help us stay on track,” he said, “and take this education, this training, kinship, all of this back home.”

Lindsay Belone, a Navajo from Twin Lakes, N.M., is working on her master’s degree with Dr. Patterson. “He’s brought to the classroom a lot of American Indian spirituality and social justice issues — honoring mother earth and our ancestors,” she said. “He’s definitely a leader in Indian country who I can look up to. If you want to be a professor, that can happen.”

Dr. Patterson will return to Buffalo this summer to participate in ceremonies among the Six Nations of the Iroquois and speak with students about Indian challenges. He also plans to visit other American Indian communities across the nation to share his story, much as he did last fall at Haskell, the only accredited university devoted to serving various Indian tribes.

Haskell’s history makes it as much shrine as school: a century ago, young Indians whose tribes’ land had been seized by the United States were sent there to become Christians, cut their hair and shed their traditional customs and tongues. Students who did not comply could be beaten or chained to walls in what is now Kiva Hall. Many died there from such abuse.

Today, about 1,000 students use some of the same buildings to become one of the rare members of their tribes to earn a college degree. More inspiration came from Dr. Patterson, most poignantly when he explained why he took the name Silver Wolf. Wolves “take care of each other,” he said. “Their survival depends on it.”

Terry Redlightning, a Haskell junior from the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, recalled how only 17 of his 100 classmates at Flandreau Indian School graduated with him. He described a “feeling of hopelessness” pervading his community back home and said Indians there live on whatever comes to them. “Whether that’s a government handout or a minimum-wage-paying job — or you commit suicide,” he said.

“Those are your options — at least that’s what the thinking is,” Mr. Redlightning said. “Especially when you’re a kid, you see it. You’re constantly going to funerals. Death by drugs or alcohol. Car wrecks. Suicide. You don’t have any high expectations.”

After his lectures last fall, Dr. Patterson walked around campus to visit relics of Haskell’s sad past — the powwow grounds, Kiva Hall and some sacred wetlands. Then he went to the most solemn area of all. It was a cemetery filled with dozens of small, weathered gravestones for children who, four and five generations ago, did not survive their days at Haskell.

Dr. Patterson teared up when he saw the stones from a distance. “These are the children of the Holocaust for us,” he said.

He dried his cheeks with a tissue and kept walking toward the cemetery. He looked up and saw a red-tailed hawk perched on a lamppost, leading him still.

Freedom of Information Act Used To Push IHS To Offer Plan B Over the Counter

By Eisa Ulen, Indian Country Today Media Network

Mainstream Americans continue to battle over the availability of Plan B. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) determined that the emergency contraception, sometimes known as the morning after pill, must be sold over the counter (OTC) to any woman age 15 and older who asks for it. A strong contingent of Americans, including activists, health care providers and at least one federal judge, have criticized the FDA, saying that Plan B should be available to any woman of any age who asks for it over the counter. The FDA has countered that younger women of child-bearing age cannot safely use Plan B without the assistance of a healthcare provider. As this public debate rages on, too few media outlets have reported on the barriers Native women of all ages have had trying to access Plan B. Until recently, even Native women well past their teen years have been unable to obtain Plan B as an OTC at Indian Health Service (IHS) Units throughout Indian country.

Plan B is the emergency contraceptive routinely given to women after rape has occurred. Because 1 in 3 Native women will be the victim of a sexual assault in her lifetime, the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center (NAWHERC) has worked to secure Native women’s legal right to Plan B, so that women on reservations can access this emergency contraceptive in the crucial first 24 hours after sexual contact has occurred, when the pill is most effective in preventing conception of the egg and sperm.

Charon Asetoyer
Charon Asetoyer

While the battle to make Plan B available over the counter to Native women at IHS units continues, progress has been made through the activism of NAWHERC. South Dakota-based Charon Asetoyer, CEO of the Native American Community Board, runs NAWHERC. In February of 2012, Asetoyer and Pamela Kingfisher published the NAWHERC Roundtable Report on the Accessibility of Plan B as an OTC within the Indian Health Service. This document exposed the inconsistencies between Native women’s legal right to Plan B, and the failure of IHS to provide this emergency contraception on demand and over the counter.

Indeed, given the fact that Native women experience rape at levels that are comparable to the rates of women living in war zones, NAWHERC identified the failure of IHS to make Plan B accessible over the counter as more than a legal issue. NAWHERC identified this failure to adequately protect Native women from conceiving a child following sexual assault as a human rights issue.

Much like the mainstream public debate regarding the availability of Plan B to younger American women, IHS has forced Native women of all ages to see a health care provider before they can access Plan B. Not only is this time- and cost-prohibitive for many women in Indian country, it too often demoralizes the woman seeking care. Asetoyer says she has heard of health care providers who, “in some cases, chastise a woman, blame her” for requesting a prescription for Plan B. No woman should have to answer questions about her use of birth control in order to access emergency contraception. As Asetoyer says, “that is extremely dehumanizing.”

Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union Reproductive Freedom Project, says, “Certainly, the devastatingly high rate of sexual assault among Native women makes access to emergency contraception all the more critical, but even if that were not the case the inability of Native women to obtain emergency contraception at IHS facilities would be a violation of their basic civil and human rights: Every woman should have the opportunity to prevent an unplanned pregnancy and to decide whether and when is the right time, for her, to become pregnant. Moreover, the United States government is under a distinct legal obligation to ensure that Native women have access to comprehensive health care.”

While the Roundtable Report was published last year, Asetoyer says that as far back as 2005 her organization started “working and organizing women” around the subjugation of Native women who attempt to access Plan B. “IHS was extremely resistant” to the efforts of NAWHERC to liberate Native women from this dehumanization, Asetoyer says. “They just do not like standardization of any kind.”

Despite that resistance, standardization is coming. The 2009 omnibus bill mandated standardization of Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANE nurses) within IHS. According to Asetoyer, $3 .5 million was allocated for the rigorous training required to be certified as a SANE nurse. These health care providers not only improve health outcomes for victims of sexual assault, they also aid law enforcement in prosecuting rapists. In addition, Asetoyer says the 2010 Tribal Law and Order Act signed by President Obama standardized sexual assault policies and protocols within IHS.

However, more needed to be done. IHS was still not making Plan B available over the counter. Asetoyer says she and her colleagues “realized we had to continue to work” on the availability of Plan B within IHS. NAWHERC contacted leaders in the community of reproductive justice advocacy and asked if they would upload the Roundtable Report and share it electronically with their followers on one day in March 2012 that would be called Push the Button Day. NAWHERC contacted the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, the National Women’s Health Network, the National Black Women’s Health Project, the National Organization for Women, the Women of Color Network, and the Center for Reproductive Rights, among others. “They said yes,” Asetoyer says, and Push the Button Day was launched. Word about the realities of Native women “got out there, and it got out there fast, and it got out there not only in Indian Country but in the mainstream,” Asetoyer says. “People were shocked. They were appalled.”

In addition to disseminating information on Push the Button Day, Asetoyer and Kingfisher appeared with Dr. Susan V. Karol, chief medical officer for Indian Health Service, on the radio show Native America Calling. During the broadcast, Asetoyer says, Karol stated that emergency contraception was accessible at IHS units on-demand and “behind the counter.” (This term describes where the emergency contraception is physically placed and means women must ask the pharmacist for it.) But, as reported in ICTMN, Native women weren’t able to access Plan B without a prescription at all. “We really caught IHS not even knowing what was going on in their own service units out in the field.” (Read: Despite High Incidence of Rape, Women Denied Right to Plan B)

Asetoyer says that the story of Native women’s inability to access Plan B over the counter at IHS units started to appear in other media within 24 hours after the Native America Calling radio show aired.

As a follow-up with IHS, NAWHERC contacted Dr. Karol with a letter and asked her when emergency contraception would be available over the counter. Asetoyer says that, on May 21, 2012, her office received a response letter stating that IHS was finalizing policy to make Plan B available “behind the counter” and as an over the counter medication.

Frustrated that Native women could not access emergency contraception over the counter, while many college students in the mainstream were able to purchase it in an on-campus kiosk, Asetoyer began considering other options to pressure IHS. Asetoyer communicated with Senator Barbara Boxer of California and Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota. Senator Johnson contacted IHS, Asetoyer claims, and received a letter from the Indian Health Service that was similar to her own. Senator Boxer, Asetoyer says, has been “working very diligently on access to emergency contraception.”

When Seantor Boxer’s office was contacted and asked to provide an interview for this article, Boxer spokesperson Peter True issued this statement: “Senator Boxer supports efforts to ensure that women, including women who rely on the Indian Health Service, can get access to the healthcare they need, including emergency contraception. She will continue to work towards that goal.”

In her last letter of communication with IHS, Asetoyer says she explained that NAWHERC would have to seek legal remedies if IHS refused to make Plan B available over the counter. In February of this year, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) requested access to the policies IHS claimed it was working on to make EC available as an OTC.

Filed on behalf of NAWHERC under the Freedom of Information Act, this request spurred the IHS to action. “All of a sudden,” Asetoyer says, “IHS starts providing emergency contraception as an over the counter.”

“We decided, together with NAWHERC, to file the Freedom of Information Act because the government had been saying for too long that they were ‘working on’ a solution to this problem,” Kobi-Molinas says, “but no one was seeing any results.  The purpose of the FOIA is to put an end to this stonewalling and force the government to explain what, if anything, it has been doing to ensure Native women could access EC OTC at IHS facilities.”

Asetoyer says her office has surveyed service units since the Freedom of Information Act was filed and has determined that over 40 IHS units, “almost all,” now provide emergency contraception to women who ask for it over the counter. This victory, Asetoyer says, is “based on a directive they received from area offices.” Asetoyer claims that, in response to the Freedom of Information Act, IHS Director Dr. Yvette Roubideaux was personally making telephone calls to IHS offices in order to make Plan B available over the counter.

When asked to provide an interview for this article, the IHS provided this official statement: “Emergency contraception is available in IHS federally-run facilities.”

Kobi-Molina explains: “A Freedom of Information Act request is essentially a tool for government accountability and transparency. This Freedom of Information Act does not directly make emergency contraception available, but it shines a spotlight on what the government is (or is not) doing to deal with this problem, and that sort of information is invaluable to advocates—democracy doesn’t happen behind closed doors, so a Freedom of Information Act makes sure those doors stay open.”

Despite the victories achieved in making emergency contraception available over the counter, Asetoyer says verbal directives can be rescinded, and NAWHERC wants a permanent solution put in place through written IHS policies. NAWHERC also wants 100 percent compliance at all IHS service providers.

To help more Native women understand their legal rights regarding Plan B, as well as its function in a woman’s body, NAWHERC is engaged in what Asetoyer calls “training in the community.” She adds, “we want to continue the process of demystifying emergency contraception.” NAWHERC has developed an Emergency Contraception Tool Kit to let Native people know that it is contraception, not an abortive, and so does not terminate a pre-existing pregnancy.

“The Tool Kit is a pack of information that will explain emergency contra: What it is. How it works. Your right to it,” Asetoyer explains. With a pamphlet, poster, fact-sheet, and PSAs for local radio stations, this Tool Kit will enable NAWHERC to launch the next phase of the struggle to make Plan B available – the public information phase. While the Tool Kit is aimed at school counselors, shelter advocates, those who work with victims of assault, and other professionals who work with women and girls, it is also intended for moms and other women to share at the kitchen table.

Asetoyer believes her office is charged with the task of informing Native women in part because the IHS suffers from paternalism and “old practices, old attitudes” that are hard to change. Citing past IHS protocols, like the sterilization of women without their consent, and inserting Norplant and refusing to remove it on demand, Asetoyer says the IHS still has “that old mindset: They know what’s best for us.”

Asetoyer notes that these are institutional issues and says that some providers within IHS have wanted to give EC OTC, but decision makers within IHS have had older ideas. Asetoyer adds that all those years of not providing EC OTC have communicated to Native women, and men, that “we don’t have the capabilities to make these kinds of intelligent decisions for ourselves.” Providing EC OTC, Asetoyer says, means acknowledging that “women know what’s best for their own bodies, their own reproductive health.”

NAWHERC is charging forward with two aims: to spread the word about the availability of EC OTC within IHS and to make this new situation within IHS permanent. In addition to informing women, Asetoyer says “we need to get this into policy. The struggle is not over.”

 

Read more at https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/05/13/freedom-information-act-used-push-ihs-offer-plan-b-over-counter-149323

County beekeepers adjust to causes of colony collapse

County’s beekeepers continue to see threat to agriculture

Nick Adams / The HeraldQuentin Williams checks over his bees in the back yard of his Snohomish home on May 5. Williams, the manager of Beez Neez, has six hives with two breeds of bees. A federal report suggests that parasites, malnutrition and pesticide exposure are behind the decline in bee colonies nationwide.
Nick Adams / The Herald
Quentin Williams checks over his bees in the back yard of his Snohomish home on May 5. Williams, the manager of Beez Neez, has six hives with two breeds of bees. A federal report suggests that parasites, malnutrition and pesticide exposure are behind the decline in bee colonies nationwide.

By Bill Sheets, The Herald

Last fall, hobbyist beekeeper Jeff Thompson had nine hives of honeybees. “I only had two hives make it through the winter,” said Thompson, who keeps bees at his home in Edmonds and also in Mill Creek.

Dave Pehling, who keeps hives at his home near Granite Falls, lost all his honeybees over the winter.

Neither was surprised to hear about a report regarding one of the more mysterious recent environmental problems: the sharp decline of honeybees.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Agency report issued a week ago cites a complex mix of problems contributing to honeybee colony declines, which have accelerated in the past six to seven years.

Factors include parasites and disease, genetics, poor nutrition, pesticide exposure and farming practices, according to the report.

“It’s just a combination of stresses,” said Pehling, an assistant with the Washington State University cooperative extension in Snohomish County. He has a zoology degree and has been keeping bees since the 1970s, he said.

The recent report warns that even with intensive research to understand the cause of honeybee colony declines in the United States, losses continue to be high and could pose a serious threat to meeting the pollination demands for some commercial crops. Growers in California have had trouble pollinating almond trees in the winter, for example, and blueberry farmers in Maine face similar pressures.

Many bee experts have focused on pesticides recently, Pehling said. While he agrees that’s a factor, he doesn’t think it’s the biggest one.

The varroa mite, native to Southeast Asia, was introduced to North America in the 1980s.

In about 1987, it reached Snohomish County, Pehling said.

“That’s when I started losing bees,” he said.

The mite lays eggs on young honeybees and the larvae feed off the living bees’ blood, weakening them and making them more susceptible to illness from other factors, Pehling said.

In Asia, the mites feed off the bees as well but those bees are smaller, providing less space and food for the mites and keeping the relationship in balance, he said.

Pesticides can temporarily control the mites but the chemicals collect in the wax in the hives and erode the bees’ health.

“It’s not an acute effect, but it can affect the immune system and shorten life of an adult bee,” Pehling said.

Now, beekeepers are experimenting with “softer” chemicals such as Thymol and essential oils, he said.

“I think there’s a multitude of issues why the bees are declining,” said Thompson, vice president of the Northwest District Beekeepers Association, based in Snohomish.

He said that whether pesticides are the major cause of bees’ problems or not, they worry many beekeepers.

Neonicotinoids are synthesized, concentrated forms of nicotine made into pesticides.

“These are very long-acting products” that get absorbed into plants and in turn by bees, Thompson said.

“That’s the beekeepers’ big concern right now, they don’t like it,” he said.

Honeybees are not native to North America but have been here since the 17th century, Pehling said. They have managed to mostly live in balance with other species, he said.

Dozens of bees are native to Washington state, including some variety of bumblebees, he said. Pehling keeps bumblebee hives as well as honeybees, he said.

One species, the western bumblebee, has experienced some decline in recent years but “most of (the native species) are doing OK,” he said.

Because of honeybees’ role as prolific pollinators, their decline could spell serious trouble for American agriculture, experts say.

The USDA estimates that a third of all food and beverages are made possible by pollination, mainly by honeybees. Pollination contributes to an estimated $20 billion to $30 billion in U.S. agricultural production each year.

A consortium will study the problem this year with the hopes of putting in place measures to help reduce bee deaths next growing season, said Laurie Davies Adams, executive director of the San Francisco-based Pollinator Partnership, which is overseeing the project.

Farmers, beekeepers, pesticide manufacturers, corn growers, government researchers and academics will study this summer ways to address the corn dust problem by changing the lubricant used in the machinery, as well as trying to improve foraging conditions for bees at the same time the pesticides are applied.

“It’s not in anybody’s interest to kill bees,” she said. “It just isn’t.”

Erika Bolstad of the McClatchy Washington Bureau contributed to this story.

Student Loans, Big Decisions, and Staying Hungry: Advice for Graduates

Gyasi Ross

May 09, 2013 in ICTMN.COM

We are firmly in graduation season. All of my graduations happened at least a decade ago, so I barely remember them. I do vaguely remember my law school graduation—I was at a crossroads in my life, facing HUGE student loans and not wanting to simply toil my life away at a large law firm making some ridiculously rich people even richer.  That whole time in my life was stressful and I made some big decisions; those decisions turned out right, but could’ve easily blown up in my face.

One decision I made was that money was not going to determine my career; my career was going to be serving Native people. Therefore, I went to work for a bus pass and about seventeen bucks a week at the National Congress of American Indians (I jokes…it was actually $25).

Despite not eating the entire time I was at NCAI, I formed many meaningful relationships that I still treasure to this day.  I’m thankful for that, and I’m thankful for the Native folks at NCAI (and really anyplace) that remember why they are far away from home and are zealously advocating for Natives. I’m also thankful that the time in DC allowed me—a young, irrelevant, rez-boy punk lawyer—to work directly with many of the folks making policy in DC.  Anybody who knows me knows that I don’t like the DC political scene. I love DC, but hate when folks—Native and otherwise—lose track of why they’re out there and instead start to think they’re out there simply to be out there. Wearing suits and stuff.  I watched many well-meaning people stop focusing on the Native people they are supposed to represent, and instead just focus the prestige of a DC gig. Many Natives lose their connection to their homelands, if indeed they ever had a connection. And some view being Native as simply a gimmick to attract business.

But I digress.

During that same time, I also was fortunate enough to meet some people who were truly out there to make a difference. I met folks who couldn’t wait to get back to their homelands, but they dutifully continued to serve far away from home.  I consider these folks to be my “big brothers and sisters,” folks who are amazing at what they do, look out for me (and others) and have their heart solidly with Native people.  They showed a lot of love to a broke Native kid and they didn’t have to. Some of those folks include Wilson Pipestem, Todd Araujo, Big Ernie Stevens (after he stopped wanting to beat me up, which I deserved, but that’s a story for another day), Holly Cook Macarro, Jackie Johnson, Jamie Gomez, Steve Hill, and Walter Lamar, amongst others.

 

All those experiences and relationships came as a result of taking the road less traveled and not letting money dictate my decisions.  My family was (and still is) a struggling rez family, so simply taking the money was tempting. Yet, I lost entirely too many loved ones early in life and that taught me that life can be short, and powerful memories and doing something positive in that short time is probably more important than money.

Which brings me to graduations.

I planned to go to Haskell’s graduation ceremony. I love Haskell, and my big brother Ernie was kind enough to ask me to come. I can’t go. I will, however, be speaking at a few other graduation ceremonies, and I’m thankful for that.  I’d love to have the chance to talk to all of the Native graduates to hug you and support you. Still, since I cannot speak to every Native student graduating from all levels of education, here’s 10 12 things I would tell all of you if I could:

1)     Congratulations little sisters and little brothers.  You worked hard.  Breathe for a minute. 

2)     You earned this.  Good job—they don’t give those diplomas and degrees out easily (most Americans do not have a degree).

3)     Money is necessary but overrated. Don’t be a prostitute—do something you really want to do. It may be hard to believe but your precious time is the commodity, not money.

4)     Be careful.  There will be people that try to convince you that you are special because you are an “educated Native person.” They will ask you how you “made it out,” as if our homelands are horrible places that we must have escaped from. This is a divide-and-conquer technique intended to alienate you from your people.

5)     Native people do not resent white man’s education—that is a myth. Our people resent assholes who think they are smarter than everyone. 

6)     You are not the first smart Skin—your education does not make you smarter than anyone else within our communities.  Our ancestors have survived for thousands of years, in much harsher conditions than we can imagine, without formal educations.  You and I would die in those conditions.  They didn’t. They didn’t need degrees to prove their intelligence—our survival proved their intelligence. 

7)     You did not get that diploma/degree by yourself—don’t kid yourself. Yes, you worked…but our ancestors, by faith, provided the infrastructure where you would be assured educational opportunities.  They laid the groundwork. We stand on their shoulders.

8)     Simply “getting an education” does not help Native people. Native people getting an education only helps if we involve ourselves in our communities and work for the most vulnerable amongst us.

9)     Indigenous education is focused on the survival of the collective, white man’s education is focused on the success of the individual.  If we don’t center our educations around our communities, we become just like every other non-Native with an education. The world does not need a bunch of brown white people.

10)     As a result of numbers 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, all of us fortunate enough to get white man-educated have an obligation to continue this legacy of helping our people get stronger collectively. 

11)     Enjoy the summer. Chop some wood for some elders. Take a language class. Go take some young Native kids hiking. Get out of the city for a second. Community education is just as important to the Indigenous soul as any classroom.

12)     Don’t have unprotected sex. Just don’t, generally. But really don’t now…child support will cost you more now than it did when you were a broke student.

Good job—you are the best. You’ve overcome great odds and are modern day warriors.  You have centuries of our people cheering for you.  If I can help, please let me know.  

 

 

Gyasi Ross
Blackfeet Nation Enrolled/Suquamish Nation Immersed
Activist/Attorney/Author
Twitter: @BigIndianGyasi
www.cutbankcreekpress.com

National Museum of the American Indian and Bureau of Indian Affairs to Co-Host Special Indian Country Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Exhibit During National Police Week in D.C.

Source: U.S. Department of the Interior
WASHINGTON – For the first time in their histories, the National Museum of the American Indian and the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Justice Services will co-host a special exhibit of the Indian Country Law Enforcement Officers Memorial during the 2013 National Police Week.  The special exhibit will be located in the Museum’s Potomac Atrium from May 13 through 17.
 
“National Police Week is an important opportunity to educate the public about the Indian Country Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and honor those in law enforcement who have given their lives in the line of duty in Indian Country,” said Kevin K. Washburn, Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs.  “I want to thank the National Museum of the American Indian and its director, Kevin Gover, for co-hosting this special exhibit on the Memorial.”
 
“The National Museum of the American Indian is pleased and proud to host this special exhibit of the Indian Country Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in conjunction with the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Justice Services,” said Museum Director Kevin Gover (Pawnee).  “It is only fitting that the Museum, which is home to so much of Indian Country’s history, should acknowledge during National Police Week those law enforcement officers who have given their lives to protect Indian people.”
 
The Indian Country Law Enforcement Officers Memorial includes the names of 101 tribal, state, local and federal law enforcement officers working on federal Indian lands and in tribal communities who have died in the line of duty since the mid-1800s.  It is located at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, N.M. 
 
First dedicated on May 7, 1992, at the United States Indian Police Academy then in Marana, Ariz., both the Memorial and Academy were moved to their present site on the Center’s Artesia campus and re-dedicated there on May 6, 1993.  Each year since 1991, the Office of Justice Services has hosted a service at the site to honor the officers on the Memorial.
The special exhibit, which is maintained by the Office of Justice Services at its headquarters in the Department of the Interior building in Washington, D.C., includes a plaque with all of the names inscribed on the Memorial, a binder with officer profiles, a display case of police badges, and a Book of Remembrance that visitors can sign.
 
According to the website of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, President John K. Kennedy in 1962 proclaimed May 15th as National Peace Officers Memorial Day and the week in which that date fell as National Police Week.  Established by a joint resolution of Congress the same year, National Police Week pays special recognition to those law enforcement officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty for the safety and protection of others.
 
Established in 1989 through an Act of Congress, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian is an institution of living cultures dedicated to advancing knowledge and understanding of the lives, languages, literature, history and arts of the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere.  For more information about the museum and its public program schedules, visit www.AmericanIndian.si.edu.
 
The BIA Office of Justice Services’ mission is to enhance public safety and protect property in Indian Country by funding or providing law enforcement, corrections and tribal court services to the nation’s federally recognized tribes.  It operates 36 law enforcement programs, oversees 152 tribally operated law enforcement programs, coordinates emergency preparedness support on federal Indian lands by working cooperatively with other federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies throughout Indian Country, and provides training and professional development to BIA and tribal law enforcement through the U.S. Indian Police Academy in Artesia, N.M.
 
Visit the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center website at http://www.fletc.gov/about-fletc/locations/artesia/indian-country-law-enforcement-officers-memorial.html to view the Indian Country Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and a list of officers’ names.
 
WHO:             The National Museum of the American Indian and the Bureau of Indian
Affairs Office of Justice Services.
 
WHAT:          Special exhibit of the Indian Country Law Enforcement Officers Memorial
during National Police Week.
 
WHEN:          May 13-17, 2013, from 10:00 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. EDT daily.
 
WHERE:        The National Museum of the American Indian, Potomac Atrium (1st level),
4th & Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C. (located on the National
Mall between the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and the U.S.
Capitol Building); Phone: 202-633-1000.

Missing money: Feds halt funding for $361M reservation pipeline

30 April 2013

MATT VOLZ, Associated Press

 

• The irregularities are among several alleged corruption issues on the Rocky Boy’s reservation in northern Montana, said Kenneth Blatt St. Marks, a former tribal chairman.

BOX ELDER, Mont. (AP) – Federal officials temporarily stopped funding a $361 million water pipeline for a Native American reservation in Montana after learning that millions of project dollars were missing and a Chippewa Cree leader in charge of the project steered federal dollars to a company he owns.

The tribe has since replaced the missing money, but federal funding for the pipeline won’t resume until tribal leaders show they have permanently fixed the problems, Bureau of Reclamation regional director Michael J. Ryan said.

“While we commend the tribe for restoring the funds soon after the shortage and for self-reporting the issue, this reallocation of funds without consultation is a serious non-compliance matter with potentially long-lasting implications,” Ryan said in a March 18 letter obtained by The Associated Press.

Pipeline funding is controlled by the Bureau of Reclamation, which is part of the Interior Department. Bureau spokesman Tyler Johnson confirmed that the agency’s inspector general is conducting an investigation, but Johnson declined to provide details.

The irregularities are among several alleged corruption issues on the Rocky Boy’s reservation in northern Montana, said Kenneth Blatt St. Marks, a former tribal chairman. Marks said he reported the missing pipeline funds to the Bureau of Reclamation and that he is cooperating with the inspector general and with federal prosecutors in an investigation into alleged corruption on the reservation.

“There’s millions and millions and millions of dollars missing here,” claimed St. Marks, whom Ryan also identified as having a potential conflict of interest in the pipeline project. “This reservation is upside down.”

Calls to tribal officials were referred to attorney Dan Belcourt, who said he was not authorized by acting tribal chairman Richard Morsette to comment on the pipeline project or St. Marks’ allegations. Belcourt released a brief statement Saturday on behalf of tribal leaders that said they are “actively working with BOR on the issues raised in that letter.”

“The tribe and BOR share a common goal of seeing the Rocky Boy’s/North Central Montana Regional Water System project through to completion,” the statement said.

Congress approved the project in 2002 to bring reliable drinking water to the poverty-stricken reservation in the shadow of Montana’s Bear Paw mountains. Construction began in 2006, and when it is completed, the pipeline will run about 50 miles from Lake Elwell, serving as many as 30,000 people on and off the reservation.

Congress originally estimated the project’s cost at $228 million. That has since risen to $361 million due to inflation and rising costs.

It was unclear what effect a funding delay would have on constructing the pipeline, which is now 22 percent complete. As of last year, the bureau had allocated $96 million in addition to $10 million allocated by Congress.

St. Marks said that, as then-tribal chairman, he discovered at a Dec. 31 meeting with tribal leaders that $3.5 million was missing from Chippewa Cree bank accounts for the water project. Johnson declined to confirm the amount missing, saying it was part of the investigation.

No one could explain where the money went, St. Marks said. The meeting was held at the Chippewa Cree Construction Corp., the company that heads the project.

St. Marks reported the missing funds to the Bureau of Reclamation. In January, the Chippewa Cree Business Committee – the tribe’s governing council – replaced the money with cash from other tribal enterprises, he said.

It still is not clear what happened to the missing money.

Tony Belcourt is CEO of the construction company and head of the pipeline project. Belcourt also co-owns MT Waterworks, a company formed in 2010 that was awarded a $633,000 contract by the tribal construction corporation he heads to supply pipe for the project.

St. Marks said he fired Belcourt as the construction corporation’s CEO after the Bureau of Reclamation learned of that conflict of interest. But the eight other members of the ruling Chippewa Cree Business Committee reinstated Belcourt while St. Marks was on a trip to Washington, D.C.

That reinstatement, and St. Marks’ ownership in another company that was awarded a separate $1.9 million contract for the pipeline, prompted Ryan in his letter to tell the tribe to correct the ethics violations.

“We request that the tribe take immediate corrective action to remedy these apparent conflicts of interest,” Ryan wrote. He did not elaborate on what action the tribe had to take.

Belcourt, a former state legislator, declined to comment Friday and referred questions to his cousin, tribal attorney Dan Belcourt, who said he was not authorized to comment.

St. Marks was the owner of Arrow Enterprises, a private construction company that was awarded the $1.9 million contract before he became the tribe’s chairman. St. Marks said he turned over the company to his wife to end any conflict of interest.

But Johnson, of the Bureau of Reclamation, said the federal agency has not accepted that arrangement and the agency is requesting action to resolve the conflict.

In his letter, Ryan said the Chippewa Cree’s accounting of project funds was not accurate and lacked supporting data such as bank statements, balance sheets and expense statements. Johnson said Friday that the tribe has submitted additional financial information and corrected its accounting.

Still, Ryan gave the tribe until April 29 to resolve the rest of the problems and avoid more funding delays.

St. Marks became tribal chairman in November but was impeached in March by the business committee, which leveled seven charges against him ranging from inappropriate sexual comments to an employee to trading in two tribal vehicles so he could buy a sport-utility vehicle for personal use.

St. Marks denied the charges. He claimed he was impeached for cooperating with the federal investigation and for asking questions about the finances of some of the tribe’s biggest enterprises: its casino, health clinic and an online lender.

Iron Man 3 Blasts Sand Creek

Dr. Leo Killsback, Indian Country Today Media Network

The majority of mainstream Americans know little to nothing of the violent and unjust history of the colonization of Native America. Anytime such truth is revealed to the public on the big screens, it should be done fairly since these are rare opportunities to reach the masses. The brutality of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 is one of the most horrific events in American history, but it is so shameful and remains out of sight, ignored, and therefore out of the minds of the majority of Americans. Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 includes the story of Sand Creek in the first real acknowledgement of the massacre in the modern mainstream film industry, but Black miserably fails to take advantage to shed some light on the dark and shameful history of the U.S.

In the movie the villain called the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) justifies his violence in a series of propaganda videos. One video showed historic pictures of Cheyennes, even children at Carlisle boarding school, with his voice-over telling how the U.S. waited for warriors to depart on a hunt before soldiers attacked the peaceful camp. The Mandarin then asserts that this same tactic inspired his terrorist group to attack a church in Kuwait filled with the families of American soldiers. Initially, I was generally impressed that Sand Creek was actually mentioned in the blockbuster film. I was even fascinated that the fictionalized villain correlated the Sand Creek Massacre to conflicts in the Middle East. Unfortunately, by midway through the film, I was completely disappointed and deeply upset that the massacre was even mentioned.

The purpose for using Sand Creek wasn’t too clear, but results in too many wrong assumptions. Are Americans supposed to hold resentment towards their terrorists as Cheyenne survivors held resentment towards the U.S. after Sand Creek? Does the correlation promote sympathy for unjust acts of genocide committed by the U.S. in 1864, or condemn terrorists as unjust and irrational as the U.S. soldiers? Whatever the case, the use of Sand Creek further confuses the populace of crimes of the past.

If the movie had made a parallel between the U.S. atrocities committed at both Sand Creek and in modern Middle East conflicts, like the revisionist films of the 1970s, then it would actually promote sympathy for the insurgents, since they defend their families and homelands against the same imperial aggression. The Mandarin’s comparison had potential to be an intelligent reflection of the George Santayana’s celebrated quote: “those who ignore history are bound to repeat it.” But this was not the case and such parallels are likely to never happen in Hollywood. Besides this isn’t my primary concern.

What upset me the most is that when the Mandarin was captured and exposed as a fraud, and as he lost all credibility, he took the true story of Sand Creek with him. By virtue of association, the true story of the massacre was falsified, devalued, and in all likelihood, branded in the minds of viewers as nothing short of propaganda from a fictional terrorist played by a drug-addicted actor, played by Ben Kingsley. I would rather have the events of Sand Creek completely ignored than be subjugated to so many levels of fictionalization.

Those who teach American Indian history already face major challenges because we are often doubted for teaching unpopular content. We are also not easily respected as experts, nor are we privileged with credibility when teaching of America’s history of deception and violence against Indians. We must learn an art of teaching that encourages students to intellectually engage and evaluate unpleasant and threatening truths, while ensuring that they are welcomed and respected, as they are encouraged to welcome and respect Indian perspectives. We also must substantiate and cite facts in access to avert the appearance of bias. This is not an easy art that one can learn over night, but must be done as we sincerely and honestly impart valuable knowledge and wisdom. Both the Mandarin and Iron Man represent a source of such challenges.

I understand that the Mandarin had to develop as a worthy villain and at the end of the day it was just a movie. But when actual events, especially well-documented heinous acts of genocide, are included in make-believe stories the truth in history can also become make-believe, especially to those with no prior knowledge. Viewers may come to pompously devalue or fiercely contest any future exposures to American Indian history, especially when learning of events where innocent Indian people fell victim to the violence perpetrated and condoned by the U.S.

Most who have never learned of American Indians typically rely on Hollywood for education, whether they know it or not. Hollywood has refined their art of deception.

Iron Man 3 represents that deception, enabling ignorance to thrive while disgracing the nearly 200 innocent Cheyenne men, women, and children who were murdered that cold day on November 29, 1864. Any massacre should never be fictionalized.

Dr. Leo Killsback is a citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation of Montana and culturally and spiritual identifies as a Cheyenne person. He is an qssistant professor in American Indian Studies at Arizona State University.

 

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/05/08/iron-man-3-blasts-sand-creek