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Nine Tribes to Receive $7 Million From Department of Energy for Wind, Biomass, Solar Projects

Ernesto Moniz, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

Nine tribes will receive a total of more than $7 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for clean-energy projects, the agency announced on November 14.

The Coeur d’Alene Tribe in Idaho, the Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich’in Tribal Government in Fort Yukon, Alaska, the Forest County Potawatomi Community in Milwaukee, Menominee Tribal Enterprises in Wisconsin, the Seneca Nation of Indians in Irving, New York, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe Growth Fund in Ignacio, Colorado, the Tonto Apache Tribe of Payson, Arizona, the White Earth Reservation Tribal Council in Minnesota and the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska will use their respective funds to develop a variety of alternative energy sources involving wind, biomass and solar power.

The DOE highlighted the awards during the 2013 White House Tribal Nations Conference as a way to help American Indian and Alaska Native tribes use clean energy to save money, increase energy security and promote economic development.

Today, we are very pleased to announce that nine tribes have been selected to receive over $7 million to further deploy clean energy projects,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in his remarks before the conference. “A couple of examples in those awards, wind power for tribal government buildings at Seneca Nation in New York, energy efficiency upgrades to reduce energy use by 40 percent in Alaska. There are nine tribes that will have these efficiencies. And that addresses this question of mitigation, reducing carbon pollution.”

“American Indian and Alaska Native tribes host a wide range of untapped energy resources that can help build a sustainable energy future for their local communities,” said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz in a statement announcing the awards. “Responsible development of these clean energy resources will help cut energy waste and fight the harmful effects of carbon pollution—strengthening energy security of tribal nations throughout the country.”

In remarks at the Tribal Nations Conference, Moniz said the government planned to work more closely with American Indians on developing energy sources.

“We are looking forward to establishing and advancing a subgroup of the White House Council on Native American Affairs, to really focus on energy development, energy deployment in Indian country,” he said. “I think, working together, with us and agriculture, EPA and other cabinet colleagues, we really want to harness the energy potential in Indian country—conventional energy, renewable energy—to expedite clean energy deployment and electrification. That is something that we will get together on and try to advance promptly.”

While Indian country officially takes up just two percent of the land known as the United States, that territory holds a good five percent of all U.S. renewable energy resources, the DOE noted.

The grants are part of an ongoing push to invest in tribal clean energy projects that began in 2002. The DOE’s Tribal Energy Program has put about $42 million into 175 such projects, providing financial and technical assistance as well along with its Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs. Other grants were announced earlier this year to other tribes.

The initiative also includes technical assistance.

Moniz said the DOE intends to continue and expand on these efforts.

“From community solar projects in New Mexico and Colorado, to the commercial scale wind projects in Maine, small biomass projects in Wisconsin, DOE is working with 20 tribes and Alaskan Native villages to empower leaders with tools and resources needed to lead energy development that can foster self-sufficiency, sustainability, and economic growth,” he told the tribal leaders at the conference. “At the Department of Energy I have certainly made it a priority to raise our game with state, local governments, tribes. We believe, in the end, a national policy needs to build from tribal, state, local, and regional policies and activity.”

Native Leaders Air Concerns at White House Tribal Nations Conference

By: Rob Capriccioso, Indian Country Today Media Network, November 14, 2013

The true potential of the Obama administration’s White House Tribal Nations Conference – now in its fifth year – was on display November 13 when tribal leaders were finally invited to publically criticize and question federal agency shortcomings on decisions affecting American Indian citizens.

At past conferences tribal leaders often felt frustrated that their concerns were only allowed to be offered behind closed doors and were sometimes limited to being in writing due to time constraints. Those realities led to less accountability and transparency from the administration on tribal matters, several leaders at this conference said, resulting in negative budget consequences for tribes and harm to tribal sovereignty.

Some tribal leaders have felt so stifled and controlled at previous Obama administration meetings that some who attended in the past chose not to attend this year. Edward Thomas, president of the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, said he was concerned this conference would turn into another “photo op and publicity staged event as opposed to one where we have the opportunity to tell [the president] directly that his team in not carrying out his promises to Native Americans,” so Thomas cancelled his plans to be there. Several tribal leaders have expressed distress to the administration about the costs of travelling to Washington, D.C. for events where Indian objectives receive little attention beyond lip service.

Tribal leaders say there have been very real consequences to the past tight administrative control of these conferences. American Indian nations have often been portrayed in mainstream press reports about these conferences as mindless cheerleaders of the administration’s policies, with their criticism left without widespread attention. The reality is that many Democratic tribal leaders are strongly supportive of the president and his team, but there is a wide divergence in the beliefs of even Democratic tribal leaders when it comes to how the administration has treated tribes.

Diane Enos, president of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, noted in a rare public question-and-answer session with agency officials this year that there is deep mistrust among Indian citizens of the federal government due to historical injustices, so it is “scary for tribal nations to be asked to cooperate with the federal government” even given an administration that has done some positive things for tribes, including achieving a stronger tribal Violence Against Women Act and a permanently reauthorized Indian Health Care Improvement Act.

Throughout the day-long conference this year, both in closed sessions and in ones open to the press, tribal leaders pummeled administration officials with concerns, especially regarding a plan by the administration to cap contract support costs (CSC) reimbursements to tribes, despite Supreme Court rulings calling for reimbursement. Tribal leaders said the Departments of Health and Human Services and Interior have both shirked responsibility on paying CSC settlements owed to tribes. Beyond CSC, tribal leaders balked over lacking federal support for Indian education, initiatives by the IRS to unjustly tax tribes, and the administration’s support of budgetary sequestration on tribal money that is supposed to be protected as part of the trust and treaty responsibilities the federal government has committed to tribes.

“We need our trustee to be worthy of our trust,” Brian Cladoosby, newly elected President of the National Congress of American Indian and chairman of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, told agency officials sitting on the new White House Council on Native American Affairs at one point in the day. Other tribal leaders lamented publicly that the council needs an Indian-focused director to guide its often-unwieldy work, and they said they wished the council included Native Americans because it seems paternalistic that it does not.

If agency leaders were unaware that tribes have multiple problems with the administration’s decisions on tribal matters before the event, they were quite clear by the end of the day. “Today was some tough love, but families need to have those conversations,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy told tribal leaders after hearing their concerns throughout the early portion of the conference.

In response to tough budget and sequestration questions publicly raised by Juana Majel Dixon, a longtime leader with the Pauma Band, Cecilia Muñoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said the next budget process is underway now, and “everybody has their eye on what’s happening in Indian country.” Dixon responded that Indian country needs to have a Native American leader at the Office of Management and Budget’s table in order to ensure that egregious errors like the CSC cap budget proposal do not happen again.

In all, over 300 tribal leaders, some elected and some leaders of tribal organizations, attended the conference, which President Barack Obama said in an afternoon speech was the most ever for this event.

Obama in the past has used the conference to personally present new tribal initiatives, including an executive order calling for increased agency consultation with tribes and one on Indian education. This year the major news from the president was that he planned to visit Indian country sometime in the next year. He has not visited a reservation since campaigning for president in 2008, which has disappointed many tribal citizens who feel he needs to see with his own eyes the plight of many Indian nations to fully understand the relief that is needed. White House spokesman Shin Inouye said “more details will be released at a later date” regarding the president’s planned trip.

Obama also said he was well aware of tribal concerns. “[T]here’s more we can do to return more control to your communities,” the president said in his speech, adding that he is urging Congress to reauthorize the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act and to pass a long-awaited Carcieri fix on land-into-trust issues.

“[W]e’ve heard loud and clear your frustrations when it comes to the problem of being fully reimbursed by the federal government for the contracted services you provide, so we’re going to keep working with you and Congress to find a solution,” the president said to major tribal applause. “That’s all going to be part of making sure that we’re respecting the nation-to-nation relationship.”

Tribal leaders at the conference generally said they were happy to hear the president is aware that all is not perfect on the federal-tribal relations front, and that he is willing to do more to right the wrongs.

“I recognize that no sitting United States president has ever reached out to Indian country like we have experienced since President Obama took office in 2008,” said Derek Bailey, who attended the meeting as a member of the National Advisory Council on Indian Education and as a representative of the Inter-Tribal Council of Michigan. “He has never swayed from his pledge to engage Indian country and our tribal leadership and to implement positive American Indian and Alaska Native policies that have been developed through tribal consultation and interaction.”

They Eat Horses, Don’t They? Bucking the Slaughterhouse Ban on Horses

Kevin Taylor, Indian Country Today Media Network

You can lead a horse to a slaughter … or can you?

In the United States, the answer is, Not yet.

An federal appellate court in Denver late Monday issued an emergency injunction on behalf of the Humane Society of the United States and other groups opposed to the practice of killing horses for food. The injunction blocks another federal judge’s ruling from Friday that cleared the way for three meatpacking plants to resume horse slaughter for the first time in six years — a move that was both supported and opposed by Native Americans.

“Horse slaughter is a predatory, inhumane business, and we are pleased to win another round in the courts to block killing of these animals on American soil for export to Italy and Japan,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States in a statement. “Meanwhile, we are redoubling our efforts in Congress to secure a permanent ban on the slaughter of our horses throughout North America.”

It seems unusual to say “win another round” when Judge Christina Armijo of the U.S. District Court in New Mexico on Friday dismissed a lawsuit brought last summer by Pacelle’s HSUS, Front Range Equine Rescue and about a dozen more animal welfare groups and several individual Native Americans.

The suit argued that the permits issued to the packing plants required environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act. Armijo ruled that NEPA did not apply when an agency’s action, in this case USDA health inspection, was mandatory. She also noted in her ruling that the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, which granted the emergency injunction Monday, had reached the same conclusion about NEPA in a different case.

Even as he vowed to join the appeal, make “a full rush with Congress” and lobby states to prohibit horse slaughter, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson told USA Today over the weekend, “The odds are not that good about stopping this, but it’s not over.”

The injunction prevents horse slaughter until the appeal is heard.

One plant, in Roswell, N.M., has stock waiting in Texas feedlots and was ready to open next week. “After talking to the USDA today (Monday, Nov. 4), they said they could have inspectors available by the 11th,” said Rick De Los Santos, owner of Valley Meat.

Rick De Los Santos, owner of Valley Meat (AP)

GROWING ISSUE IN THE WEST

Slaughter affects about 2 percent of the estimated 7 million horses in the United States annually. This is a rough estimate as there has not been a census of horses since 2004, according to Nat Messer, DVM, professor of equine medicine and surgery at University of Missouri. The stereotype that has broke-down racehorses or work horses shipped off to a meat-packing plant or glue factory at the end of their days is outmoded. The racing industry and breed associations have reacted to bad publicity by striving to better control the number of horses bred each year, Messer said. There has also been a rise in retirement farms or therapeutic riding programs as a slaughter alternative for older horses. Unregistered horses, whether they be work horses or riding horses, appear to comprise the majority of horses sent to packing plants.

And slaughter has not stopped since Congress essentially banned it in 2006 by stripping funding for USDA inspectors. It has moved across the borders to Canada and Mexico, where between 140,000 and 160,000 U.S. horses have been shipped every year since the domestic slaughter plants closed, according to information from Stephen MacDonald, Agricultural Economist with the office of USDA Economic Research.

But across the arid and semi-arid West — much of Indian Country, in other words — the question of what to do with too many wild, feral or unwanted horses is still a thorny one where there is far less control over equine population and where the big, charismatic animals find themselves in a complex emotional, historical and cultural landscape.

“One of the dilemmas we have is that the horse plays a very important, traditionally intricate role in our society. If it wasn’t for the horse, we probably wouldn’t be the people that we are,” said Harry Smiskin, chairman of the Yakama Nation in Washington state.

The Yakama, early adopters of the horse among Plateau Culture tribes, is among several tribes that came out this year in support of reopening equine slaughter plants. The tribe estimates the number of wild or feral horses on the reservation has grown to 12,000 since the Congressional ban.

“The dilemma we are facing is that these wild horses, or feral horses, are causing severe degradation to the natural resources of our land. As American Indian people, the native people of the land, we utilize a lot of the plants, the herbs and roots from Mother Earth. When you walk onto the landscape of Yakama Nation rangeland, it becomes a moonscape because the horses come through there and what they don’t eat off, they trample down to bare dirt,” Smiskin said. In central Washington’s semi-arid shrub-steppe habitat, the landscape “is definitely fragile. We have spent a lot of time, effort and money trying to manage this fragile ecosystem that we have to keep it in balance, and with the horse right now it is completely out of balance.”

Another tribal leader, President Ben Shelly of the Navajo Nation, also came out in support of the reopening of horse slaughter plants in late summer. His reasoning echoed Smiskin’s.

“The horse is a sacred animal to our people. They have their own songs, they have their own prayers,” he told Indian Country Today in August. “We also believe we need to balance our life, balance our resources. Right now it’s out of balance — there’s too many horses. We can only hold 30,000 and now we’re in the 75,000-plus.”

Shelly, too, described degradation of natural resources and stress on water in drought years. He testified before the Bureau of Land Management’s National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board in Arlington, Va., in September that the growing feral horse population was a financial burden on the tribe (more than $200,000 a year in damage control) and that the federal agencies were not living up to trust responsibilities to help the tribe manage its natural resources.

Wranglers cornered and captured five free-roaming horses in Manuelito, New Mexico. In Navajo territory, parched by years of drought and beset by poverty, one feral horse consumes 5 gallons of water and 18 pounds of forage a day. (Diego James Robles)

NAVAJO LEADER’S REVERSAL

Shelly in August authorized roundups of feral horses, even appropriating copy.4 million to the tribal Department of Agriculture for the task. Various communities on the sprawling reservation held roundups that gathered 1,600 horses. The tribe sells to individuals, not packing plants, but it is widely assumed that buyers had most of those horses trucked over the border to meet their fate in a Mexican slaughterhouse.

Many Navajo were outraged by Shelley’s stand. “This is a Shameful Time in Indian Country! And because of your Support of “Valley Meat Company” Horse Slaughtering Plant, I have Lost ALL my Respect for the NCAI & for the Leadership of the Navajo Nation.,” one Navajo tribal member wrote in a Facebook post.

The NCAI, National Congress of American Indians, passed a resolution in late summer supporting domestic horse slaughter and calling for a line item in the Bureau of Indian Affairs budget specific to management of overpopulation of feral horses on reservations.

Shelly was battered by criticism from traditionalists and elders.

“The healing people,” said Leland Grass of Diné for Wild Horses. “We are going to fight this to the very end.”

Grass spoke to Indian Country Today recently by cell phone atop his horse, Blondie, a captured mustang, during a three-day ride to Tuba City with other Nohooka’ Diné — Elders and Medicine People of the Diné — to perform a healing ceremony for horses.

After Shelly came out in support of horse slaughter, Grass and other healers denounced the decision in a resolution that called for Shelly to “stop the desecration and destruction of the Dine’ Way of Life and Spiritual Foundation by recklessly promoting and supporting the round-up and mass execution of our spiritual relative the Horse.”

The roundups were controversial as tribal members reported horses injured or exhausted as they were hazed by ATVs and dirt bikes.

Opposition mounted throughout the fall, during election season. Then, a month ago, Shelly did an abrupt about-face, announcing a Memorandum of Understanding to oppose slaughterhouses that he agreed to with former governor Richardson. Richardson last summer co-created The Foundation To Protect New Mexico Wildlife with actor and environmentalist Robert Redford specifically to oppose horse slaughter.

Richardson met Shelly at the Northern Navajo Fair in Shiprock in early October. They spent the weekend hashing out the horse issue in nearby Farmington, just off the reservation, and announced a proposed MOU that would reject slaughter and instead focus on adoption and birth control among tools to control horse population.

The MOU was expected well before the end of October but, as of Monday, Nov. 4, “is still being negotiated,” said Navajo spokesman Erny Zah.

According to some ranchers, to control the overpopulation of feral horses, there are two options: slaughter, or their own slow death by thirst or disease. (Diego James Robles)

‘FORCED TO BOARD HORSES’

“We were not happy to hear about that,” Smiskin of the Yakama said about Shelly’s reversal.

The Yakama and two nearby Oregon tribes, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Reservation and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, have tried slaughter alternatives such as those proposed in the MOU: roundups for adoption and castration of stallions, they considered birth control for mares, all of which they say are costly in time and dollars for little return.

Gordy Schumacher, Natural Resources program manager for the Umatilla, said the reservation in northeastern Oregon has seen increasing numbers of horses simply dumped by owners who could no longer afford them in the recession, and as the price of hay has tripled in recent years.

The tribe launched a roundup for adoption last year. Only 17 horses were captured. Two injured horses were given to a sanctuary, most of the rest were auctioned but interest was so slim that the last six were simply given away to new owners. “Five of those wound up back on the reservation,” Schumacher said.

Eddie Gunnier, a Yakama tribal member, has done horse trapping, said when the domestic slaughterhouses closed in 2007 the greater shipping distances to Mexico or Canada forced buyers to slash prices. The reduced price versus high costs of gasoline essentially ended horse trapping save for tribal population-control experiments. The castration of stallions was an experiment that ended quickly, he said.

Gunnier and Smiskin said the Yakama considered injections of a birth control drug for wild mares, but balked at the cost as mares would have to be repeatedly rounded up and injected as the drug wore off.

Smiskin said even a slaughterhouse in New Mexico may not be economically feasible. He said area tribes may revive a discussion to site a packing plant closer to the interior Northwest. A proposal for such a plant in Hermiston, Ore., was withdrawn last year after much opposition.

Such opposition to slaughter leaves tribes holding the bag, said John Boyd, a New Mexico attorney who represented the Yakama Nation in the federal lawsuit. “People who don’t want to see any horse slaughtered for any reason — you have Robert Redford and Bill Richardson and anti-animal cruelty organizations — saying you must not slaughter the horses, you must not do this. … In essence, tribes will be forced to support loss of environment, loss of native plants and board a huge population of horses for the emotional benefit of well-meaning horse lovers who are not prepared to fund any sort of solution.”

Smiskin added, “The horse is very important to our culture and traditions. We always want to have a number of those. However, the wild horse was degrading our range areas where a lot of our Indian foods and our medicinal plants grow. You weigh the priority, and right now we think Indian food — those roots that grow in the ground wild up there — are just as important as the wild horses.

“We don’t intend to eliminate our wild herd. We intend to bring it down to a manageable level.”

This April 15, 2013, file photo shows Valley Meat Co., which has been sitting idle for more than a year, waiting for the Department of Agriculture to approve its plans to slaughter horses. A federal appeals court on Monday, November 4, 2013, temporarily halted plans by companies in two U.S. states to begin slaughtering horses, continuing on-again, off-again efforts to resume domestic equine slaughter two years after Congress lifted a ban on the practice. (AP Photo/Jeri Clausing, File)

13 Cabinet Comments From Tribal Nations Conference Morning Session

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network, November 14, 2013

Tribal Leaders from many of the 566 federally recognized tribes were present for the fifth annual White House Tribal Nations Conference held at the Department of the Interior on November 13.

The all day conference that has been a staple of President Barack Obama’s administration and its hopes to improve the government-to-government relations began at 9 a.m. with Cabinet members speaking on behalf of their respective departments.

The speakers addressing the tribal leaders, who were able to voice their concerns later in the day, were: Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, Energy Secretary Ernest Monitz, and the Department of Justice Attorney General Eric Holder.

Each speaker addressed progress in working with Indian country over the past year as well as announced key programs in front of the Native leaders.

Below are 13 clips from the morning session as the Cabinet members addressed the gathering:

Holder: “[C]ountless tribal leaders – both in and beyond this room – have stepped to the forefront of our efforts to preserve cultural values, to enforce treaty obligations, and to secure the rights and benefits to which all American Indians and Alaska Natives must always be entitled. Together, through many generations, you and your predecessors have faced down tremendous adversity – standing up to those who once sought to terminate the federal government’s relationships with tribes. You’ve galvanized support for the rights of American Indians to maintain tribal governments – and to have a seat at the table before major reforms are enacted. You’ve mobilized tribal nations to win passage of long-overdue laws not simply to regulate tribal affairs, but to allow all Native peoples to fulfill their own promise and chart their own paths.”

Shinseki: “I cannot change the records of injustice in our history, and they are many or the lack of trust about the government and this department, but I intend to make things better and I need your help.”

Sebelius: “Our research shows that nearly one in three American Indians and Alaskan Natives don’t have health insurance, one in three. That compares to 62 percent of all non-elderly Americans who are covered with insurance. But in Alaskan Native and American Indian communities only six percent are covered – here the challenges they face are real.”

Foxx: “The department of transportation’s position is clear. Residents of our tribal nation need and deserve safe roads and bridges and access to reliable public transportation. You well know, as well as I do, that transportation is a life-blood to communities, families. When we deliver on the promise of connecting every person on these shores to 21st-century opportunities, that includes tribal communities all across America.”

Moniz: “We want to work closely with tribal leaders to develop renewable resources on tribal lands, in particular. Today, we are very pleased to announce that nine tribes have been selected to receive over $7 million to further deploy clean energy projects.”

Jewell: “I came in at an interesting time as far as the budget. It was with my predecessors and some of the things they faced. We think long-term. We think the future of the culture that you represent, of the land you represent, we think by generations forward, as do I. And yet we are all faced with a crazy budget situation, continuing resolutions, no budget since 2012. Sequestration has hit Indian country harder than any other part of the federal government through the sequestration period we have been enduring since I started in the job seven months ago.”

Holder: “Today, we declare that we must never forget. We must never deny the injustice that – for decades upon decades – was inflicted on Native peoples. And we affirm that this painful past has informed, and given rise to, a sustained period of cooperation and self-determination – a period that began in a moment of national challenge, when the nation confronted a New Frontier.”

Jewell: “I know that when I speak to individual members of Congress they care about Indian country, and your voices to them are really, really important. But when it comes down to actually getting a budget done, they aren’t delivering. We need to hold them accountable to that and we will certainly be your partners in that effort.”

Sebelius: “Before President Obama took the oath of office, there was a steady decline in the number of children in Head Start who spoke a tribal language at home. Today we are using the Head Start new performance standards to integrate tribal language and culture into classrooms and curriculum. That is a big step forward for the next generation.”

Moniz: “This department has a major challenge in terms of cleaning up – there is no nice way to say it – the cold war mess. Much of this has an impact on traditional tribal lands. When it came to establishing our programs, I have to say, tribes in the affected areas, they have been fantastic partners in making us focus on the long-term cleanup to a level where sufficient activities could be removed. That has been a tremendous help as we structure the programs.”

Shinseki: “President Obama and I are committed to providing equal access to all veterans. If you understand the spread and the difference in the landscape, you will appreciate that the commitment means that whether or not you are living in an urban area or are a rural veteran, you are in the most remote of locations, like the outer banks of Alaska, or maybe even Guam, seven miles beyond Honolulu. Our commitment is to provide as best we can equal access to every veteran, no matter the condition, and that includes veterans on tribal lands. With the support of the congress, the president has increased the budget request for V.A. by over 50 percent since 2009. Rural, urban, remote, Native American all in the same benefits.”

Foxx: “We know and you know that a rebuilt road or a new transit system can be the difference between a child getting to school on time or the difference between an elder going to the doctor or not. No one knows better than the American tribal leaders that safe, reliable transportation is a key to accessing good jobs. It is why last year the federal transit administration awarded more than copy5 million from our tribal transit program to help 72 tribal governments provide the critical transportation services that thousands depend on every day.”

Holder: “We must recommit ourselves to collaboration on an unprecedented scale – no matter the obstacles we face. And we must declare – together – that, despite everything that’s been achieved, we will not rest as long as crime rates in so many tribal communities continue to exceed the national average.

“We will not accept the shameful fact that American Indians are disproportionately likely to become victims of crime and violence.”

Fawn Sharp: Conference Appreciated but ‘We Need More’

Fawn Sharp, Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

The following are comments by Quinault Indian Nation President Fawn Sharp in advance of today’s 2013 White House Tribal Nations Conference, the fifth of its kind since President Barack Obama took office in a way to improve the government-to-government relationship between federally recognized tribes and the United States government.

Today, President Barack Obama and top officials of his administration are meeting with hundreds of elected chairs, presidents and other key leaders from Indian tribes across the country. It is the fifth annual such gathering, an event promised by the president when he first entered the White House, intended to improve federal/tribal government-to-government relations.

We truly appreciate this opportunity to visit President Obama and listen to his thoughts about the various issues affecting Indian country. But we need much more than a listening session. These annual gatherings do comprise a gesture of good will well beyond any ever made by any president. But we need more than gestures. We need more than progress reports and we need more than promises. Our people are suffering and we need a “paradigm shift,” from the way tribes have been treated by this country in the past to the way they must be treated in the future.

I call upon the president to take a stand—a genuine stand—in favor of a true, democratic, nation-to-nation dialogue regarding the pressures and afflictions facing Indian country today. We need to establish a formalized and permanent intergovernmental framework between the tribes and the United States to, among other objectives, establish agreement on revenue restoration and trust reform through amendment of the self-governance compact.

What this means in layman’s terms is that it’s time for America to wake up to the fact that there are still Indian nations in this country. We haven’t gone away, and we’re not about ready to go anywhere. Our people have been ignored, mistreated, lied to and cheated throughout our history with the United States and the time has come for it to stop.

Indian, Alaskan Native and Hawaiian peoples have endured, and are enduring, the worst possible conditions, from extreme poverty to early death. Our children go to the worst schools. We have the worst health care and we are on the front lines facing the very real impacts of climate change and ocean acidification. The glaciers in our mountains are melting. Our lands and waters are being eroded, poisoned with pollution and displaced by careless development.

Too often, federal agencies ignore our rights and our sovereignty. To name just a few examples:

— Three years after 144 countries passed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples through the U.N. General Assembly in 2010, President Obama finally decided to sign it—the final country to do so. But even then, the Department of State said the U.S. government didn’t agree with provisions affirming the principle that Indigenous Peoples must directly participate in policies and actions that directly affect their rights and interests. The principle opposed by the U.S. says that indigenous nations have the right to “free, prior and informed consent” before a government’s actions may be carried out. It is a fundamental right of any government. This effectively means the U.S. denies tribes the basic democratic principle that people have a right to know and consent to planned state government policies and actions that affect their livelihood, their social, political, economic and cultural interests and their future survival—a fundamental human right.

— Indians pay as much in taxes as they receive in federal payments under treaties and compacts. So, Indians are paying the U.S. to fulfill its treaty commitments. Also, non-Indian citizens receive approximately 50 times more in return benefit for taxes paid than Indian citizens do. Still, federal appropriations to tribes are being slashed—funds that belong to the tribes and are desperately needed for everything from medical care to education. These are topics for bi-directional dialogue along with implementation of the U.N. Declaration at the World Conference.

We have been supportive of President Obama and his policies, and we hope to continue to do so. But the time has passed when one-sided listening sessions can be counted as true progress in U.S.-tribal affairs. Democratic dialogue between our nations and the U.S. is needed to validate any consent requested of Indians. It’s not happening. Nor will it, until the “intergovernmental framework” to implement the government-to-government policy is formalized.

I challenge President Obama to make his administration a time for real progress for the Indian people—one that will be marked in history as a cornerstone of change, when true intergovernmental dialogue commenced between us and when the tribes finally received some of the respect they deserve.

Audio & Video from White House Tribal Nations Conference

Source: Indianz.com

The White House Tribal Nations Conference began this morning at the Interior Department in Washington, D.C.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell kicked off the session after an introduction by Jodi Gillette, the Senior Policy Advisor for Native American Affairs at the White House. This is Jewell’s first Tribal Nations Conference since joining the Obama administration earlier this year.

Tribal leaders also heard from five more Cabinet secretaries. They were: Secretary Eric Shinseki, Department of Veterans Affairs; Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Department of Health and Human Services; Secretary Anthony Foxx, Department of Transportation; Secretary Ernest Moniz, Department of Energy; and Attorney General Eric Holder, Department of Justice, who was introduced by David Gipp, the president of the United Tribes Technical College in North Dakota.

After the morning remarks, tribal leaders went into breakout sessions on a variety of topics. The sessions were not open to press.

The afternoon session will resume at 2pm with remarks from three more Cabinet secretaries, to be followed by a listening session of the new White House Council on Native American Affairs. President Barack Obama created the council by executive order in June.

Obama is expected to deliver final remarks at the conference around 3:30pm. The afternoon session will be webcast at www.doi.gov/news/video/live.cfm.

Video from the morning session can be viewed here

Washburn Finalizes Administration’s Patchak Patch

By Rob Capriccioso, Indian Country Today Media Network

Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn announced November 12 a finalized rule that aims to resolve some problems created for tribes by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, which said that a litigant can sue for up to six years after the U.S. Department of the Interior takes lands into trust for tribes.

The court ruled in June 2012 in Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians v. Patchak that the law does not bar Administrative Procedure Act challenges to the Department of the Interior’s determination to take land in trust even after the United States acquires title to the property, unless the aggrieved party asserts an ownership interest in the land as the basis for the challenge. In the case at hand, it allowed a lawsuit to go forward challenging a tribal casino in Michigan from opening, despite the suit being filed three years after Interior took land into trust for the tribe. More broadly, it left the door open for costly lawsuits years after tribal projects, including casinos, housing and healthcare facilities, have broken ground.

The new rule partially addresses the issues by ending a 30-day waiting period Interior established in 1996 for the assistant secretary to take land into trust for tribes wanting to develop casinos on such land. That so-called “self-stay policy” was meant to give parties a heads up in case they wanted to file suit. The rule clarifies that the assistant secretary’s decision is final, and it allows the assistant secretary to take the land into trust with no waiting period. Lawsuits, though, are still a possibility.

“The reason for staying is just not so compelling anymore,” Washburn told Indian Country Today Media Network in May when he proposed the rule that has now been finalized. “Our argument is that people can still bring their action if they want to after we’ve taken the land into trust—at least that’s what Patchak says.”

The new rule also includes a 30-day appeal period for Bureau of Indian Affairs land-into-trust decisions that do not involve casinos. If parties do not file an appeal within 30 days before the Interior Board of Indian Appeals, then they will lose the right to do so ever.

“If they don’t appeal, then they are out of luck,” Washburn told ICTMN in May. “Kind of like when the minister says, ‘Speak now or forever hold your peace.’”

“If an appeal isn’t filed in 30 days, it’s golden—the land is in trust, and it’s secure [for tribes],” Washburn added.

Washburn previously admitted that there are shortfalls for tribes here because, under the rule, Interior will be providing wider notice of its decision to acquire land. He said the benefit of the rule outweighs that risk: “If people have concerns, we need to get them out of the bushes and get them to raise their concerns within 30 days—not wait 5 years and 11 months,” he said.

He predicted that critics of the administration’s tribal land-into-trust policies, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), will appreciate that the policy codifies that parties in opposition will be contacted by Interior. “I think that’s a change that she will appreciate,” he said.

An Interior press release said the new rule “demonstrates the Obama Administration’s continuing commitment to restoring tribal homelands and furthering economic development on Indian reservations.”

Beyond the administration, tribal advocates have been asking Congress to pass a true “Patchak patch” that would say that once the United States takes land into trust for tribes, the decision is completely immune from lawsuits whether the lands are intended for casinos or other uses.

“But we can’t wait for Congress to do that,” Washburn said in May. “We don’t know if they will. We certainly would support such legislation, but, in the meantime, we have to figure out how we protect tribes now.”

According to the Department, 38 tribes and tribal organizations commented on the proposed rule before it was finalized, while 16 from state, county, or local governments and organizations representing such governments commented and 12 members of the public, including individuals, advocacy groups and other organizations commented. Most tribal commenters were supportive of the rule, although there were some tribal objections, while most state, county, or local governments and organizations and members of the public were opposed to the rule.

Michael Anderson, an Indian affairs lawyer with Anderson Indian Law, said the new rule is a positive one for tribes.

“This is a good development and could shorten the current six-year statute of limits under the Administrative Procedure Act to challenge Interior land-into-trust decisions,” Anderson said.

The final rule is online here.

Aid struggles to reach Typhoon Haiyan survivors

Global aid efforts are underway and battling logistical issues to help victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. VPCPhoto: David Guttenfelder, AP — Global aid efforts are underway and battling logistical issues to help victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. VPC
Photo: David Guttenfelder, AP

Source: USAToday.com

TACLOBAN, Philippines — Five days after super Typhoon Haiyan devastated the central Philippines, government and relief agencies struggled Wednesday to get aid through to the worst hit areas.

In the especially hard-hit city of Tacloban, where the mayor’s office estimates that between 5,000 and 10,000 people may have died — though the president’s office says the death toll may be somewhat lower — hungry survivors expressed anger at the lack of help while sporadic looting continued despite armed police patrolling streets that appear part war zone and part garbage dump.

“I live on the road from the airport and I haven’t seen any goods coming out,” said businessman Noel Mateo, 50, who lost five of his seven trucks to storm surge Friday. “I don’t see any reason at all why they can’t give out the stocks,” he said. Mateo said he has heard “good news” on his radio about extensive relief.

To improve the response, the central government is now taking over in Tacloban, said Thelma Barerra, a Dept. of Heath official who led a team of psychological health workers that flew in with 55 doctors from Manila hospitals Tuesday.

“Just like the (2004) tsunami in Indonesia, all service providers have been affected from the mayor on down, so organization has not been good yet and needs central government control,” she said.

“The city government is still trying to be in charge, but we have no capacity,” said Tecson John S. Lim, the Tacloban city administrator Wednesday.

“The central government does what they think they should, and we coordinate,” he said. The city will be without power for another three months, said Lim, although the Philippine energy secretary mandated the process be completed in two months, he said.

According to Barerra, the damage is even worse in Tacloban than in Banda Aceh where she assisted in 2004, when the devastating Christmas-time tsunami struck. Her own team still lacks their medical and goods supplies, stuck at Tacloban airport Wednesday.

Help from abroad is arriving but experiencing similar difficulties.

A 40-strong Belgian emergency response team flew 30 hours and landed Tuesday morning, ready to set up a tent hospital. But all their equipment and medical supplies remained stuck at the airport Wednesday, said Koenraad Schwatgen, a member of the B-FAST team.

“It’s frustrating but understandable. We have to adapt to local conditions,” he said. “We are here to help them in their way, but we always want to help a little bit faster.”

Schwatgen guessed Filipino officials were giving priority to shifting food and water supplies out of the airport. The terminal building was destroyed in the storm but the runway is functional.

Yet residents are seeing little evidence of food and water relief getting through, a scenario that is compounding the pain for survivors still searching for missing relatives.

“No supplies have reached us,” said Edward Bongcaras, 43, who is worried about his two children in south Samar province, a badly hit area where communications have still not been reestablished.

Mi’kmaq Anti-Fracking Protest Brings Women to the Front Lines to Fight for Water

Courtesy Ossie Michelin, APTN National NewsThis photo of 28-year-old Amanda Polchies kneeling before Royal Canadian Mounted Police while brandishing an eagle feather during anti-fracking protests in New Brunswick has become iconic as a symbol of resistance to destructive industrial development—and of women's role in fighting for the water. — Courtesy Ossie Michelin, APTN National News
This photo of 28-year-old Amanda Polchies kneeling before Royal Canadian Mounted Police while brandishing an eagle feather during anti-fracking protests in New Brunswick has become iconic as a symbol of resistance to destructive industrial development—and of women’s role in fighting for the water.

By Martha Troian, Indian Country Today Media Network

As Amanda Polchies knelt down in the middle of the blocked-off highway with nothing but an eagle feather held aloft separating her from a solid wall of blue advancing police officers, she prayed.

“I prayed for the women that were in pain, I prayed for my people, I prayed for the RCMP officers,” the 28-year-old Elsipogtog First Nation member told Indian Country Today Media Network. “I prayed that everything would just end and nobody would get hurt.”

As Polchies faced off against hundreds of RCMP officers on the highway near her community, she couldn’t help but notice how many of those beside her were indigenous women—the keepers of the water, fighting to keep fracking chemicals out of the ground.

“So many people got hurt,” she said as she recalled “looking around, seeing all of these women.”

$Mi'kmaq women face police in anti-fracking protest on October 17, 2013, in New Brunswick near Elsipogtog First Nation. (Photo: Twitter)$

Mi’kmaq women face police in anti-fracking protest on October 17, 2013, in New Brunswick near Elsipogtog First Nation. (Photo: Twitter)

Polchies was just one of the dozens of indigenous people who grappled with fully armed RCMP officers just south of a town called Rexton on October 17, 2013. Very early that morning, the RCMP had moved in on an encampment of Mi’kmaq Warrior Society members and others as they slept. They were enforcing an injunction against the blockade of a worksite for SWN Resources Canada, the company that has been searching for shale gas in the area since spring.

Photos and video of the raid show several snipers wearing camouflage or dressed all in black lying in surrounding fields. Hundreds of photos have emerged on social media from this day that show Indigenous people—both men and women of all ages—confronting police. But it’s hard not to notice how many of those images show indigenous women. Many women can be seen drumming, singing, praying and even smudging RCMP officers with the cleansing smoke of sage, cedar, sweetgrass or other traditional medicine.

By the time Polchies arrived that afternoon, the situation had become a standoff. On one side, RCMP officers in a straight line across the highway. On the other, opponents to shale gas—the majority of them Mi’kmaq. Before long, the situation became a fight. Arguments erupted, women screamed, and weaponry was raised. The RCMP used tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and even dogs. Polchies saw two women hit with pepper spray in the face. Seeing these women in pain “spoke to” her, she said.

“I just realized I had a feather in my hand,” Polchies said. “I just knelt down in the middle of the road and I started praying.”

Polchies didn’t realize it at the time but a reporter with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network snapped a photo from behind with his phone and posted it to Twitter. That image of Polchies kneeling down with a raised eagle feather, facing a line of officers in front of her, has come to symbolize the conflict between First Nations and the government-supported oil and gas companies that covet the resources under their land. And central to that conflict are women, the defenders of the water.

Mi’kmaq women stared down RCMP officers near Elsipogtog First Nation on October 17. (Photo: Twitter)

SWN Resources Canada, a subsidiary of Texas-based Southwestern Energy Company, has a license to explore 1 million hectares in the province of New Brunswick. While the company has only been searching for shale gas deposits, protesters believe that once they find them, it won’t be be long before the company employs the controversial technique known as fracking to get at it. Many fear that the practice, which involves injecting toxic chemicals into cracks in the rock to loosen the deposits, will contaminate and destroy local water systems. Protesters want to see SWN pack up and go home. Many women have been arrested, jailed and even injured as they passionately defend their life-giving water supply. Protests have been ongoing since June.

Indigenous women are traditionally responsible for water, said Cheryl Maloney, who is from Shubenacadie First Nation, a Mi’kmaq community near Truro, Nova Scotia, and is president of the Nova Scotia Native Women’s Association.

“Women have a connection to the water based on the moon and our cycles,” Maloney told Indian Country Today Media Network. “But that alone doesn’t explain the intense connection that our young people, the seventh generation have.”

There is an awakening going on, she said, with young women revitalizing their culture after years of seeing it being oppressed and taken away from their families through residential school.

“All the prophecies are pointing to these young people,” she said. “Our young people are spiritually awakened. Make no mistake, they are spiritually driven and following their ancestors.”

Haley Bernard, 22, of Pictou Landing, Nova Scotia, heeded the call. The recent graduate of Cape Breton University in Mi’kmaq Studies gave her support on the front lines on October 17, answering her best friend Suzanne Patles’ cry for help.

“Women are protectors of the water, we have water in our body, we carry a child, and they’re covered in water, so we’re meant to do that. We’re supposed to do that,” said Bernard. “We know the law, we know our treaties, we know what we’re supposed to protect.”

For her part, Polchies never planned on becoming a symbol. When the line of RCMP officers moved forward, she remained on her knees.

“I heard someone behind me saying, ‘Keep praying if you’re not going to get up.’ That’s what I did.”

All she could see was darkness from the uniforms that surrounded her.

“I just closed my eyes and held my feather and prayed for protection,” she said. “Then all of a sudden there was light.”

Polchies said that’s when RCMP officers moved to the other side of the road and started arresting people. One of the women Polchies saw was 66-year-old Doris Copage, a respected Mi’kmaq Elder from the Elsipogtog First Nation.

“I got pepper sprayed, I didn’t know what that was and I didn’t think they would do anything to the women,” Copage told Indian Country Today Media Network.

Armed with only a crucifix, Copage had set out that day with her husband in response to a call for help from the protest site. Seeing the gravity of the situation, Copage started to recite the rosary with the community’s priest, also present.

“The [RCMP officers] were really mocking at us, talking and laughing,” Copage said, adding that she questioned one of them at the frontline.

“I asked him, ‘Are you really ready to kill the Natives?’ ” she said, and was shocked by his answer.

“He looks at me and says, ‘Yes, if I have to,’ ” Copage said. “I said, ‘How many are you planning to kill?’ He didn’t say how many. He put his three fingers out.”

Copage told the officer that the indigenous people had no protection and that she had only came out as an Elder to pray. She intends to continue standing up for her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and the community.

“I want to call it ‘protect,’ ” said Copage, rather than “protest.” “We are here to protect our water, our land. We have a river. It’s a beautiful river, we love it and we respect it.”

Of the 40 people arrested, three men are still in custody, with no trial date in sight. Aaron Francis, Germaine “Junior” Breau and Coady Stevens, members of the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society, pleaded not guilty in New Brunswick Provincial Courthouse on Friday November 8, according to a statement from the society.

“I am happy they have entered their plea of not guilty,” said Susan Levi-Peters, former Chief of Elsipogtog First Nation, in a statement on November 8, “and I am saddened that they are still locked up for protecting our women and elders who were for fighting for our water and land.”

Dozens of Bambis Stage Sit-in on Road in Japan’s Nara Park

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

Blockades have been in the news lately, given indigenous resistance to fracking and other industrial invasions around Turtle Island.

But a different sort of blockade is happening across the Pacific at the tranquil Nara Park in Japan, about 300 miles southwest of Tokyo. It’s a deer park, meaning it is filled with gardens and deer—the Sika deer, Cervus nippon to be exact, also known as the Japanese deer—that are spotted and thus appear fawnlike.

“The park is home to hundreds of freely roaming deer,” according to the website Japan-Guide.com. “Considered in Shinto to be messengers of the gods, Nara’s nearly 1,200 deer have become a symbol of the city and have been designated a natural treasure.”

Shinto, the site explains, means “the way of the gods” and is the indigenous faith of the Japanese people, “as old as Japan itself.” It and Buddhism are the main religions in the country today.

Visitors can buy little crackers to feed the deer. Though the animals can get feisty if they think you’re about to hand over a cracker, they are for the most part tame, the site says, even bowing when offered food, as the website Kotaku.com notes.

In August the deer staged a sit-in of sorts on the road that bisects the park.