A company hauling human waste from Spokane into Idaho as fertilizer has sparked a legal fight with the Coeur d’Alene Tribe.
Gobers Pumping and Repair, with business partner St. Isidore Farms, will have to prove that injecting 54,000 gallons of sewage from septic tanks and portable toilets into a 150-acre patch of privately owned farmland just inside the reservation boundary near Plummer poses no health risk.
The case has prompted a visceral reaction from tribal leadership and pits expert witnesses testifying to the safety of the interstate sludge against worried hunters and anglers.
“It makes me sick just thinking about it,” said Chief Allan, chairman of the Coeur d’Alene Tribal Council.
The tribe filed suit against the two companies in its own tribal courts earlier this year seeking to ban the delivery of waste onto St. Isidore property. While the farm’s property lies outside tribe-owned lands, it is on the reservation, the tribe contended, and the injection process was feared to pose a health risk to grazing animals near the site hunted by tribal members.
In March, the tribal council passed a resolution aimed at forcing the fertilization process off reservation lands by limiting solid waste disposal to council-approved locations.
St. Isidore and Gobers took the dispute to U.S. District Court and used testimony from Tom Hess, a professor of biological and agricultural engineering at the University of Idaho.
“The land treatment is … one of the main ways they treat septage,” Hess said, referring to the semisolid waste that is pumped from residential retention tanks. The process is particularly common on the East Coast, he said.
Hess visited the St. Isidore site in June, gathering soil samples and testing for the presence of disease-causing bacteria in the soil. He determined the site “poses neither threat nor harm to the health and welfare of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe or its members,” according to court records.
Scott Fields, Water Resource Program administrator for the tribe, disagreed.
After reviewing the St. Isidore application approved by the Department of Environmental Quality, Fields expressed concern that the waste posed “a risk to the water quality of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe of Indians’ Reservation.”
Several tribal members also offered declarations expressing concern about the animals grazing nearby.
The injection process shoots the sewage into the ground about eight inches beneath the surface, said Gregg Smith, lead counsel for St. Isidore and Gobers. Hess also concluded the sewage posed no risk to wildlife.
Returning the case to the tribal court to settle the health risk, U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge said the question of whether a threat exists “must be analyzed objectively based on all the facts available.”
Smith called the ruling “frustrating,” disputing many of the claims made by the tribe in response to the ruling. A determination has not yet been made whether to pursue an appeal in federal court or take the argument back to the tribal court in Plummer.
This Oct. 11, 2012 file photo shows a basket of medical supplies await storage in Brookhaven, Miss. The No. 1 question about President Barack Obama’s health care law is whether consumers will be able to afford the coverage. Now the answer is coming in: The biggest study yet of premiums posted publicly by states finds that the sticker price will average about $270 a month if you’re a 21-year-old buying a mid-range policy. That’s before government tax credits that will act like a discount for most people, bringing down the cost based on their income. ROGELIO V. SOLIS, FILE — AP Photo
WASHINGTON — The No. 1 question about President Barack Obama’s health care law is whether consumers will be able to afford the coverage. Now the answer is coming in.
Published: September 4, 2013
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR — Associated Press
The biggest study yet of premiums posted by states finds that the sticker price for a 21-year-old buying a mid-range policy will average about $270 a month. That’s before government tax credits that act like a discount for most people, bringing down the cost based on their income.
List-price premiums for a 40-year-old buying a mid-range plan will average close to $330, the study by Avalere Health found. For a 60-year-old, they were nearly double that at $615 a month.
Starting Oct. 1, people who don’t have health care coverage on their job can go to new online insurance markets in their states to shop for a private plan and find out if they qualify for a tax credit. Come Jan. 1, virtually all Americans will be required to have coverage, or face fines. At the same time, insurance companies will no longer be able to turn away people in poor health.
The study points to the emergence of a competitive market, said lead author Caroline Pearson, a vice president of the private data analysis firm. But it’s a market with big price differences among age groups, states and even within states. A copy was provided to The Associated Press.
The bottom line is mixed: Many consumers will like their new options, particularly if they qualify for a tax credit. But others may have to stretch to afford coverage.
“We are seeing competitive offerings in every market if you buy toward the low end of what’s available,” said Pearson, a vice president of Avalere.
However, for uninsured people who are paying nothing today “this is still a big cost that they’re expected to fit into their budgets,” Pearson added.
The Obama administration didn’t challenge the study, but Health and Human Services spokeswoman Joanne Peters said consumers will have options that are cheaper than the averages presented. “We’re consistently seeing that premiums will be lower than expected,” she added. “For the many people that qualify for a tax credit, the cost will be even lower.”
With insurance marketplaces just weeks away from opening, the Avalere study crunched the numbers on premiums filed by insurers in 11 states and Washington, DC.
Eight of them are planning to run their own insurance markets, while the federal government will run the operation in the remaining four. There were no significant differences in premiums between states running their own markets and federal ones.
The states analyzed were California, Connecticut, Indiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. No data on premiums were publicly available for Texas and Florida — together they are home to more than 10 million of the nation’s nearly 50 million uninsured people — and keys to the law’s success.
However, Pearson said she’s confident the premiums in the study will be “quite representative” of other states, because clear pricing patterns emerged. Official data for most other states isn’t expected until close to the Oct. 1 deadline for the new markets.
The study looked at premiums for non-smoking 21-year-olds, 40-year-olds and 60-year-olds in each of the 11 states and the District of Columbia.
It compared four levels of plans available under Obama’s law: bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Bronze plans will cover 60 percent of expected medical costs; silver plans will cover 70 percent; gold will cover 80 percent, and platinum 90 percent.
All plans cover the same benefits, but bronze features the lowest premiums, paired with higher deductibles and copays. Platinum plans would have the lowest out-of-pocket costs and the highest premiums.
Mid-range silver plans are considered the benchmark, because the tax credits will be keyed to the cost of the second-lowest-cost silver plan in a local area.
The average premium for a silver plan ranged from a low of $203 a month for a 21-year-old in Maryland to a high of $764 for a 60-year-old in Connecticut.
The silver plan premiums for 40-year-olds were roughly $75 a month higher than for 21-year-olds across the states. But the price jumped for 60-year-olds. The health law allows insurers to charge older adults up to three times more than younger ones. That’s less of a spread than in most states now, but it could still be a shock.
“It’s striking that the curve increases quite dramatically above age 40,” said Pearson. “As you get older and approach Medicare age, your expected health costs start to rise pretty quickly.”
But older consumers could also be the biggest beneficiaries of the tax credits, because they work by limiting what you pay for health insurance to a given percentage of your income.
For example, an individual making $23,000 would pay no more than 6.3 percent of their annual income — $1,450 — for a benchmark silver plan.
That help tapers off for those with solid middle-class incomes, above $30,000 for an individual and $60,000 for a family of four.
The study also found some striking price differences within certain states, generally larger ones. In New York, with 16 insurers participating, the difference between the cheapest and priciest silver premium was $418.
This month, a tribal museum in Pendleton is going Pop Art. Tamastslikt Cultural Institute is the place that celebrates Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla tribal culture. But right now it’s exhibiting a series of Andy Warhol panels, in a collection entitled “Cowboys and Indians”. This is one of several events the museum planned to mark a milestone.
The ten panels and additional material are on loan to Tamastslikt from the Rockwell Museum in Corning, New York. Tamastslikt curator Randall Melton says the images are evenly divided among the Cowboys – iconic western figures like General Custer and John Wayne – and Indians – images Warhol obtained from what became the National Museum of the American Indian.
Melton explains, “People kind of give you the ‘Huh? How does that fit into a tribal interpretive center?’ “
He says this show is a departure from the museum’s usual cultural program, but an intentional one. The Tamastslikt show marks the first time these works have travelled. They’re typical of Warhol’s style – photographs, done up in silkscreen, then painted with lots of vibrant color.
April Baer / Oregon Public Broadcasting “Zech” Cyr checks out an image of General Custer.
Dorothy Cyr a tribal member who works next door at the Wild Horse Casino, brought her 12 year old son Zech to see the show.
“It was nice,” the younger Cyr said, strolling amid the panels. “It was really odd the way he uses his art, how he made all the colors.”
Dorothy Cyr added, “I think it’s great opportunity for our tribe to have such works displayed on our reservation.”
The museum regularly pulls in visitors to the casino, but this exhibition, coinciding with Tamastslikt’s 15th anniversary, is intended in part to draw people coming to town for the Pendleton Roundup later this month, and anyone who may not have had the chance to see Warhol’s works before.
Pendleton resident Sue Petersen, who attended the opening, said she just missed a Warhol exhibition in San Francisco some years ago and was glad to see these works in town.
“I think this is just totally awesome,” Petersen said. “I’m blown kind of out of the park, I gotta see the rest of them.”
April Baer / Oregon Public Broadcasting Sue Petersen of Pendleton was among those who came early on opening night to check out the exhibition.
Warhol had suffered some health problems by the time these works were completed in 1986. He’d survived a gunshot wound, and worked with a lot of assistants. Some critics believe his later works lack some of the snap and wit of earlier pieces.
After seeing the panels, Jubertino Arranda, a young artist, said he shares some of those reservations.
“I personally do like a lot of earlier work,” Arranda said. “For me, it was very hit and miss after his brush with death.”
But Arranda still drove all the way from Walla Walla to see the show opening, and loved the technique, and Warhol’s elevation of everyday objects in some of the images. Speaking excitedly about seeing the works in person, Arranda broke off, saying, “Oh, gosh, he was so smart, I think he was really ahead of his time.”
Loretta Alexander is a retired painter herself, a Cayuse tribal member, and the mother of painter Philip Minthorne, whose has a vivid canvas hanging in an adjacent gallery room. She nods in approval at the Warhols’ temporary gallery.
“I liked it,” she said. “And the woman and the baby is the one I liked the best.”
That image, of an unidentified tribal woman with an infant on her back, is one of the few in the exhibition featuring an actual Native American person, notes Curator Randall Melton. Cowboys are represented with figures from Annie Oakley to Teddy Roosevelt. But, in choosing his tribal subjects, Warhol often opted for images like shield designs or an Indian head nickel. Melton wonders if the choice might have been intentional.
April Baer / Oregon Public Broadcasting Curator Randall Melton (second from left) and others pose for a group photo as well-wishers mark Tamastslikt’s 15th birthday.
“It’s interesting to me that he chose these people versus these objects,” Melton said. “I was talking with someone who said that’s how Indian people were seen, things to be moved out of the way for Westward expansion.”
Melton says a lot of people expressed surprise that a tribal museum might consider including a group of images with stereotypical imagery – sometimes painful imagery -for native people. He points to a panel featuring an iconic photo of Geronimo staring directly into the camera.
Melton says the photo was taken after the Apache leader was forced to surrender to the U.S. Army. But Melton says gallery viewers are invited to draw their own conclusions about Warhol’s treatment of the image, and consider what the artist was trying to say.
“The reasoning why he put these images together the way he did,” Melton said, “it’s a statement on the idea of the old west, how thats more myth than fact.”
Also, Tamastslikt’s Executive Director Bobbie Conner points out shows like this, open to interpretation, also present the museum another chance to do its job.
“One of the goals of the project,”Conner explains, “is to break down stereotypes, and to replace those stereotypes with new information.”
Tamastslikt’s regular exhibitions are geared toward cultural and historical exhibitions about tribes represented in the region.
Conner says the museum is doing pretty well, with over 600,000 visitors to the building. After 15 years, the museum is still paying down some of the debt associated with its construction. Conner says she takes deep pleasure seeing the direct access to history the museum unlocks for tribal members and others. Young people trained as teenaged tours guides when the museum opened now have young families of their own, and are bringing their own kids to shows like the Warhol exhibition.
Conner remembers riding horseback as a child in the field where the museum now stands, at the base of rolling hills, next to the tribe’s busy Wild Horse casino.
“Of all the things you could grow up to be,” she recalls, “this was never in my mind’s eye. Our tribe is less than three-thousand members, for us to have this 80 million resort here, including the museum is 180 degrees from when I was a child here. I’m still sometimes surprised I get to work here.”
Tamastslikt will keep Warhol’s Cowboys and Indians on display through October 26th.
Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission A dike is removed from Illabot Creek to restore its historic channel, one of several initiatives under way by Northwest tribes to bring back salmon habitat. This effort is by the Swinomish and Sauk-Suiattle tribes under the auspices of the Skagit River System Cooperative.
As Indigenous Peoples of the Northwest work to restore salmon habitat and with it lost culture and treaty rights, they are grappling with the reality that continued development is undoing their efforts as they go. In September 2012 the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission released a report, “State of Our Watersheds,” documenting the results of local and state planning that have been in conflict with salmon habitat-recovery goals. Below are the principle findings as to what salmon habitat faces.
1. Estuaries are losing functional habitat because of population increases in lower portions of watersheds. “In the Suquamish Tribe’s area of concern, there has been a 39 percent loss of vegetated estuarine wetland area and a 23 percent loss of natural shoreline habitats, particularly small ‘pocket’ estuaries,” the report states. “Moreover, there are now 18 miles of bulkheads, fill and docks armoring the shoreline and degrading near-shore salmon habitat.”
All told, some 40 percent of Puget Sound shorelines have some type of shoreline modification, with 27 percent of the shoreline armored.
2. Rapidly increasing permit-exempt wells threaten water for fish. Since 1980, there has been an 81 percent increase in the number of new wells being drilled per 100 new Puget Sound residents moving into the area. The number of exempt wells in the Skagit and Samish watersheds since 1980 has increased by 611 percent, from an estimated 1,080 exempt wells to approximately 7,232.
“When more water is extracted from an aquifer than is being recharged, aquifer volume is reduced and the natural outflow from the aquifer decreases,” the report states. “This reduces the amount of fresh water available to lakes, wetlands, streams and the Puget Sound nearshore, which can harm salmon at all stages of their life cycle.”
3. Degraded nearshore habitat is unable to support forage fish. “In the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe’s focus area, according to studies since the 1970s, herring stocks have decreased from a status of healthy to depressed,” the report states. “In Port Gamble and Quilcene bays, which contain two of the largest herring stocks in Puget Sound, approximately 51 percent of spawning areas inventoried by [the] Port Gamble [S’Klallam] Tribe have been either modified or armored.”
4. Timber harvest has removed vast amounts of forest cover throughout all watersheds. In the Stillaguamish watershed, only 23 percent of the 1,777 acres of riparian area currently have any forest cover. In the Snohomish River basin, the Salmon Conservation Plan recommends that 150-foot buffers on both sides of fish-bearing streams be at least 65 percent forested. In 2006, those buffers were just 41 percent forested, with no gain since 1992 and little increase since that time.
5. Streams lack large woody debris. Large woody debris plays an important role in channel stability and habitat diversity. Estimates of large woody debris in the Green and Cedar rivers are 89 to 95 percent below the levels necessary for “properly functioning conditions” for salmon habitat.
6. Barriers cut off vast amounts of fish habitat. Despite extensive restoration efforts, many fish passage barriers, such as culverts, tide gates and levees still block salmon from accessing many stream miles of habitat. In the Quileute management area, culverts fully or partially block more than 168 miles of stream habitat. Most of these culverts are located on private forestlands. Culverts in the Chehalis basin block or impede salmon access to more than 1,500 miles of habitat.
7. Agricultural practices negatively impact floodplains and freshwater wetlands. Diking, draining and removing trees have resulted in a loss of stream buffers, stream channels and wetlands, and resulted in increased sediment and polluted runoff from agricultural activities.
In 1880, the Nooksack basin contained 4,754 acres of wetland to 741 acres of stream channel. By 1938, nearly 4,500 acres (95 percent) of off-channel wetland area had been cleared, drained and converted to agriculture. As of 1998, the lower mainstem retained less than 10 percent of its historical wetlands.
As of 2006, riparian areas of the Skagit River delta region are 83 percent impaired. Of that amount, only 12 percent are developed; the remaining 71 percent of impaired lands support crops and pasture.
8. Sensitive floodplains are being overdeveloped. In the Lower Elwha Tribe’s area of concern, 37 percent of the Morse Creek floodplain has been zoned for development — from utility rights of ways to single-family homes. Downstream of Highway 101, nearly half of the floodplain has also been zoned for similar development.
9. Puget Sound-area impervious surface increased by 35 percent from 1986 to 2006. It is projected that by 2026, the amount of impervious surface will increase another 41 percent.
“The Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Plan (2007) lists ‘Minimize impervious surfaces’ as a key strategy for protecting habitat,” the report states. “Impervious surface causes increases in stream temperatures; decreases in stream biodiversity, as evidenced by reduced numbers of insect and fish species; and contributes to pollutants in storm-water runoff, which can contaminate local aquatic systems.”
10. Loss of forest cover continues. From 1988-2004, Western Washington forestlands have declined by 25 percent—a loss of 936,000 acres of state and private forestland converted to other uses. Recent research from the University of Washington indicates that nearly one million more acres of private forestland are threatened with conversion.
The Skagit River System Cooperative—operated by the governments of the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe and the Swinomish Tribe, in partnership with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Forest Service, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, Pacific Salmon Commission and the state—recommends no new construction of riprap without mitigation. However, since 1998, at least one mile of riprap has been added to the existing 14 miles of riprap shoreline along the middle Skagit River.
“Shoreline armoring contributes to river channel degradation by impeding natural bank erosion and river meandering, and disconnecting terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, directly impacting salmon habitat,” according to the NWIFC’s report, “State of Our Watersheds.” “Young juvenile chinook have been shown to use river banks modified with riprap at densities five times lower than natural banks.”
Dennis Banks, cofounder of the American Indian Movement, has issued a Declaration of War on Diabetes.
LEECH LAKE BAND OF OJIBWE TERRITORIES – Dennis Banks, 77, a cofounder of the American Indian Movement, has announced a 18,000 mile motorcycle run across America with hundreds of American Indians participating to “declare war on diabetes.”
His announcement was distributed through a news release Sunday from his foundation, the Nowa Cuming Institute. The news release states:
“The Nowa Cuming Institute has issued a Declaration of War on Diabetes.”
“Diabetes is at an epidemic state in Indian country and must be halted,”
said Banks, who was diagnosed with diabetes four years ago and has reversed his diabetes through a strong diet.
The motorcycle run will have four staring locations in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego on August 11 with the final destination of the nation’s capital, Washington, DC on September 10, 2014.
Throughout the various routes across America, motorcyclists will stop at various American Indian reservations and communities as they journey to Washington.
Once in Washington, the group will visit members of Congress and present them with a national diabetes policy, according to Banks.
This will be the second endeavor by Banks to draw attention to the ill-effects of diabetes in Indian country. In 2011, he led the “Longest Walk 3 – Reversing Diabetes” that took the long walkers to 72 American Indian reservations and communities before they arrived in Washington.
“If we don’t address this medical issue now, there will no one in the seventh generation who will be healthy and if we don’t take action now to stop diabetes, they will condemn this generation,”
said Banks.
The Nowa Institute released the announcement so that tribes and others who want to be part of the pre-planning of this historic motorcycle run can do so now.
We are asking people of interest to aid in this “War on Diabetes.” said Banks.
Those interested in assisting and supplying diabetes materials may email Goody Cloud at ndn_queen_bee@yahoo.com.
Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission Although much work is being done to restore salmon habitat in the Pacific Northwest—such as replacement and repair of culverts, as pictured above—salmon habitat is being compromised faster than it can be put back together.
Millions of dollars were spent on salmon habitat recovery in 2012, and millions more are being spent this year. But a foremost salmon expert says that without federal coordination of those efforts, and enforcement of existing laws, we may have passed a tipping point.
“We need to bring salmon habitat restoration back to the White House,” said Billy Frank Jr., chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission and one of the foremost salmon experts, in a 2012 telephone interview with ICTMN. He was about to walk into a meeting with Justice Department officials and members of Congress to ask that the federal government lead a coordinated salmon recovery effort.
“The federal government has turned over all of its responsibility to the state,” he said. “State agencies are broke and they’re not managing anything now.”
It took just 150 years to damage salmon habitat that had flourished for thousands of years. Development in shoreline areas. Dams. Fertilizers. Logging. Polluted storm-water runoff that ultimately made its way to the sea.
Today, dams have been torn down on the Elwha River. Culverts are being removed so that salmon can return unimpeded to natal streams. Dikes are being dismantled so waters can return to estuaries. Pollution sources are being identified and corrected. But according to studies by the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, Washington State is losing salmon habitat faster than it’s being restored, and Frank believes that federal leadership is needed to implement salmon recovery consistently across jurisdictional lines.
Salmon recovery involves many agencies and jurisdictions, but those efforts are often not in sync; in fact they frequently conflict with federal salmon habitat-recovery goals. In one example, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has issued permits for shoreline structures that salmon recovery goals seek to remove. In Washington State’s Shoreline Management Act, homes are considered a “preferred” shoreline use, although home development often is accompanied by the construction of bulkheads and docks. Shoreline armoring and riparian vegetation removal are within the jurisdiction of National Marine Fisheries Service’s policy governing enforcement of the Endangered Species Act, but “there appears to be only one instance of NMFS exercising its enforcement authority over these activities during the past decade,” according to a 2011 report from the fisheries commission, “Treaty Rights at Risk: Ongoing Habitat Loss, the Decline of the Salmon Resource, and Recommendations for Change,” which led to an ongoing initiative of the same name.
But little has changed, and in September 2012 the fisheries commission released another report, “State of Our Watersheds,” documenting the results of local and state planning that have been in conflict with salmon habitat-recovery goals.
With the Connecticut governor joining Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s racist anti-Indian campaign against reforming the federal recognition process, the circle of opposition is almost complete.
The Republican American newspaper reported August 16 that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy “is lining up to oppose the latest efforts to grant federal recognition to three Connecticut Indian tribes.”
There are no “latest efforts” underway to grant federal recognition to Connecticut’s three remaining state recognized tribes – the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation, the Golden Hill Paugusetts, and the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation. But Blumenthal has succeeded in stirring up fear and trembling in Connecticut’s local, state, and federal elected officials over Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn’s “Preliminary Discussion Draft” of potential changes to the federal acknowledgment regulations.
“The governor shares the concerns of Connecticut’s federal delegation and the attorney general regarding the potential impact of the proposed Bureau of Indian Affairs tribal recognition regulations,” Malloy’s spokesman Andrew Doba said in the report.
Two weeks after Washburn released the draft, Blumenthal organized a meeting in his Connecticut office on July 9 to rally officials against it. “Why reopen this very acrimonious and painful chapter of Connecticut and tribal history when we have come to a place of peace and understanding?” Blumenthal said in the report.
This is nothing new on Blumenthal’s part. It’s a replay of his successful effort in 2005 to reverse the federal acknowledgment of the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation (EPTN) and the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation (STN), which were given Final Determinations in 2002 and 2004, respectively. After a relentless and orchestrated campaign of opposition against the STN by local, state and federal elected officials led by Blumenthal and an anti-Indian sovereignty group and its powerful White house-connected lobbyist, Barbour Griffith & Rogers (BGR), the BIA in an unprecedented move issued Reconsidered Final Determinations and took away both tribes’ federal acknowledgment.
The governor joined Blumenthal’s pre-emptive strike on the reform effort a few days after the Hartford Courant, the state’s oldest newspaper, published an editorial supporting the effort to stop additional Connecticut tribes from being acknowledged and opening casinos.
With all of Connecticut’s elected officials and its newspaper of note lining up behind Blumenthal, the only thing remaining to provide a complete déjà vu all over again of Connecticut’s 2005 anti-Indian movement is the resurrection of TASK – Town Action to Save Kent. TASK was a group of wealthy landowners in Kent where the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation has its 400-acre reservation. The group formed a political action group and hired the then White House-connected lobbyist Barbour Griffith and Rogers – now known as BGR to carry out “strategies of surrounding the Department of the Interior” and contacting senior White House and agency officials at Washington events such as the National Governors Association and the Republican Governors Association annual meetings in order to overturn the Schaghticoke federal acknowledgement.
Salmon Homecoming is all about the people of the Pacific Northwest, whoever they are and whatever they do. That means we’re here for you, because your health, spirit and even your sustainable economy is most certainly about the salmon.
The Salmon Homecoming Alliance is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit foundation, established to organize, plan, develop and facilitate programs and events associated with Salmon Homecoming. Board members represent a variety of governments, associations, foundations and industries. Our objectives are to provide opportunities for tribal and non-tribal communities to come together in a positive atmosphere, learn from one another, and explore ways to support cooperative spirit in salmon restoration and protection.
We are happy to continue the tradition by celebrating the 21st annual Salmon Homecoming ceremony. The celebrations have always included cultural presentations, such as Northwest traditional gatherings, Pow Wows and Cedar Canoe events. We’ve sponsored environmental fairs, educational outreach activities, salmon bakes and even salmon runs. We present “Seventh Generation Legacy Awards” every year to people who have made important contributions to natural resources and Indian/non-Indian relations. We have accomplished much, but our Salmon Story has just begun.
“Salmon are the measuring stick of well-being in the Pacific Northwest.”
-Billy Frank, Jr., Chairman, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
ATLANTA – Researchers have figured out how much a person with type 2 diabetes can expect to pay over a lifetime. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, Xiaohui Zhuo ran a computer model based on national data.
Here’s what he found:
“Persons with diabetes pay on average over $85,000 treating the disease over his or her lifetime.”
This includes treatment for diabetes such as insulin, and treatment for conditions that grow from diabetes, such as kidney disease, heart disease and stroke.
Unfortunately, American Indians and Alaska Natives have alarming statistics when it comes to diabetes. American Indians and Alaska Natives have the highest prevalence of diabetes among all United States racial and ethnic groups, according the Indian Health Service.
The following statistics relating to diabetes among American Indians and Alaska Natives are staggering:
2.3 times higher – Likelihood of American Indian/Alaska Native adults to have diagnosed diabetes compared to non-Hispanic whites;
9 times higher – Likelihood of American Indian/Alaska Native youth aged 10-19 to have diagnosed type 2 diabetes compared to non-Hispanic whites;
1.9 times higher – Incidence rate of kidney failure due to diabetes in American Indian/Alaska Natives compared to the general United States population and
1.6 time higher – Death rate due to diabetes for American Indian/Alaska Natives compared with the general United States population.
Even with the dismal statistics, Type 2 diabetes is preventable and can be managed through eating healthier meals and increasing physical activity.
Five-year-olds who consume four or more sodas daily are more than twice as likely to attack others, fight with them or destroy their property, according to findings from a study by the Children’s Hospital Medical Center, published August 16 in the Journal of Pediatrics.
Many studies have confirmed a relationship between adolescents’ soft drink consumption and aggression, depression and suicidal thoughts; but this is the first time scientists have identified this association between soda and young children.
The long-term effects of soda consumption manifest in adults, who suffer from diabetes, obesity, stroke, depression, tooth decay, and all kinds of ailments—also linked to poor diet and processed junk foods heavy in salt, preservatives and color additives. These types of foods provide little to no nutritional value. Processed foods and sugary drinks are making this country unhealthy.
It’s common knowledge that soda, diet soda, energy drinks and other “liquid refreshments” are chock-full of sugar, caffeine, and color additives. But what about juice?
I once gave my babies sweet, sugary apple juice in their bottles, thinking it was good for them. Apples are a fruit, aren’t they? Fruits are good for you, right?
Wrong. Not store-bought apple juice. It’s full of sugar, which causes tooth decay, especially on young pearly whites. We live and learn.
For years, I drank what I thought was a healthy tonic daily of V-8 vegetable juice, the juice of one-half lemon (way too much) and a couple of drops of Worchestershire sauce. My dentist said that probably accounted for the substantial loss of enamel on my teeth.
There just isn’t a drink much better for you than water. Good ‘ol water instead of soft drinks and other liquids.
One of the first things the New England settlers noted about the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island was that they typically drank water—cold or hot, and oftentimes flavored. The Ojibwa (Chippewa) of the western Great Lakes typically boiled their water with vegetables, twigs and leaves, explains Frances Densmore in her 1974 book How Indians Use Wild Plants for Food, Medicine and Crafts.
All Natives regularly drank broths and stocks. The Iroquois, for instance, would drink the water they used to boil cornbread, as well as the water they used to boil nuts when separating oil, writes Arthur C. Parker in his 1968 book Parker on the Iroquois.
Following in the footsteps of our ancestors, here are some tips to spice up your water and make it your go-to thirst quencher:
Keep a large jar in the fridge filled with water and fruit for flavor. Try lemon, orange, watermelon, peaches, or even herbs. I like cucumber, fresh ginger and mint! The taste is subtle but refreshing, and a nice break from the ordinary.
The Iroquois regularly prepared blackberry-infused water, particularly in winter with dried blackberries. It was believed to frighten away the cold, Densmore writes in her book.
RELATED: The Original Finger Food (All about berries; includes the recipe for Dale’s mouth-watering Strawberry-Rhubarb Slump.)
For something sweet, make a refreshing drink with organic maple syrup. It is said that the original ice cream cone was simply maple syrup poured over snow that was stuffed into a birch bark cone.
Dale Carson, Abenaki, is the author of three books: New Native American Cooking, Native New England Cooking and A Dreamcatcher Book. She has written about and demonstrated Native cooking techniques for more than 30 years. Dale has four grown children and lives with her husband in Madison, Connecticut.
