The supermoon of 2012 rises over Entiat, Wash., in this photo by skywatcher Tim McCord snapped on May 5, 2012. (Tim McCord)
Joe Rao, Space.com
The largest full moon of 2013, a so-called “supermoon,” will light up the night sky this weekend, but there’s more to this lunar delight than meets the eye.
On Sunday, June 23, at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT), the moon will arrive at perigee — the point in its orbit its orbit bringing it closest to Earth), a distance of 221,824 miles. Now the moon typically reaches perigee once each month (and on some occasions twice), with their respective distances to Earth varying by 3 percent.
But Sunday’s lunar perigee will be the moon’s closest to Earth of 2013. And 32 minutes later, the moon will officially turn full. The close timing of the moon’s perigee and its full phase are what will bring about the biggest full moon of the year, a celestial event popularly defined by some as a “supermoon.”
You can watch a free webcast of 2013 supermoon full moon on SPACE.com on Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 June 24), courtesy of the skywatching website Slooh Space Camera.
While the exact time of the full moon theoretically lasts just a moment, that moment is imperceptible to casual observers. The moon will appear full a couple of days before and after the actual full moo most will speak of seeing the nearly full moon as “full”: the shaded strip is so narrow, and changing in apparent width so slowly, that it is hard for the naked eye to tell in a casual glance whether it’s present or on which side it is.
During Sunday’s supermoon, the moon will appear about 12.2 percent larger than it will look on Jan. 16, 2014, when it will be farthest from the Earth during its apogee.
Supermoon’s big tides In addition, the near coincidence of Sunday’s full moon with perigee will result in a dramatically large range of high and low ocean tides. The highest tides will not, however, coincide with the perigee moon but will actually lag by up to a couple of days depending on the specific coastal location. [The Moon Revealed: 10 Surprising Facts]
For example, for New York City, high water (6.3 feet) at The Battery comes at 8:58 p.m. EDT on Sunday, or more than 12 hours after perigee. From Cape Fear, N.C., the highest tide (6.5 feet) will be attained at 9:06 p.m. EDT on Monday, while at Boston Harbor a peak tide height of 12.3 feet comes at 12:48 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, almost 2 days after the time of perigee.
Any coastal storm at sea around this time will almost certainly aggravate coastal flooding problems. Such an extreme tide is known as a perigean spring tide, the word spring being derived from the German springen, meaningto “spring up,” and is not — as is often mistaken — a reference to the spring season.
Spring tides occur when the moon is either at full or new phase. At these times the moon and sun form a line with the Earth, so their tidal effects add together (the sun exerts a little less than half the tidal force of the moon.) “Neap tides,” on the other hand, occur when the moon is at first and last quarter and works at cross-purposes with the sun. At these times tides are week.
Tidal force varies as the inverse cube of an object’s distance. We have already noted that this month the moon is 12.2 percent closer at perigee than at apogee. Therefore it will exert 42 percent more tidal force at this full moon compared to the spring tides for the full moon that will coincide with apogee next January.
Huge moon at moonrise Usually the variation of the moon’s distance is not readily apparent to observers viewing the moon directly.
Or is it?
When the perigee moon lies close to the horizon it can appear absolutely enormous. That is when the famous “moon illusion” combines with reality to produce a truly stunning view. For reasons not fully understood by astronomers or psychologists, a low-hanging moon looks incredibly large when hovering near to trees, buildings and other foreground objects. The fact that the moon will be much closer than usual this weekend will only serve to amplify this strange effect.
So a perigee moon, either rising in the east at sunset or dropping down in the west at sunrise might seem to make the moon appear so close that it almost appears that you could touch it. You can check out this out for yourself by first noting the times for moonrise and moonset for your area by going to this website of moonrise times by the U.S. Navy Oceanography Portal.
More than 350 people attend the summit at the Sanford Center in Sioux Falls to discuss American Indian health research. Credit Kealey Bultena / SDPB
KealeyBultena, South Dakota Public Broadcasting
Partners in three states are working with Native American communities to focus on health in Indian country. A federal grant worth more than $13 million establishes a collaboration to research American Indian health in South Dakota, North Dakota, and Minnesota.
Researchers from one dozen health and education organizations meet with members and advocates of America Indian communities. It’s a break on day two of a major health summit in Sioux Falls, and a young woman chats with fellow college students at the conference.
“I’m Courtney Rocke. I’m part of the SURE program, the summer undergraduate research experience,” Rocke says. “I’m from New Mexico; I’m Lakota and Navajo, and I’m majoring in pre-med biology.”
The University of North Dakota junior wants to be an oncologist. She’s particularly interested in cancers found in women.
“Because there’s not a lot of data right now on Native American women and cancer, and that’s a really health disparity,” Rocke says. “The average age on these reservations for Native American women is 30-45, and that’s a really big problem.”
Rocke says her culture ties her to the reservation, which is why she plans on amassing knowledge and skills in higher education to establish her practice on reservations. The future M.D. says discussions surrounding collaborative research for American Indian health inspire her, and one particular speaker unexpectedly piqued her interest.
“I never really thought about public health, but how he spoke and was like ‘We have to change public health now and IHS, and if we’re not going to change it, it’s going to stay forever and people are going to keep getting sicker. Nobody’s going to do anything about it.’ That really touched me, so now I’m looking into public health after my undergrad,” Rocke says.
The breadth of possibilities collaboration offers tribes and non-Native people is unimaginable. That’s according to educator Gene Thin Elk. He’s a Lakota man from Rosebud Sioux Tribe who says all cultures are returning to “indigeniety.” He says that may not be a real word to most people, but it is to Thin Elk.
“It’s this process of indigeniety I talk about,” Thin Elk says. “It’s that there are people actually returning back to common sense, returning back to teachings of the earth, the mother earth.”
“I think this is the time. It should have been the time a long time ago, when our first surgeons and our first MDs from Indian Country came out.” -Courtney Rocke
He says people recognize that embracing the lessons of the past is the way forward. Thin Elk presents at the conference, and his speech examines how tribal nations can be legitimate partners in research to identify health challenges and develop real solutions.
“Research is not new. They used to be able to look out and watch and observe and learn, and as the people observed and learned, to look at it and push in that direction so we can find the things that we need to find out. good, bad or indifferent, and we learn from those,” Thin Elk says.
Thin Elk says he’s been to 454 indigenous nations in the last three decades. His view is that teachings of American Indian culture can benefit people around the globe, but non-Native practices also prove helpful for Native communities. Thin Elk says that symbiosis is desirable – but not at the expense of sovereignty. He notes that protecting intellectual and physical property used in research, elements like genetic codes, blood and tissue samples, is a paramount value.
Russ Zephier from Pine Ridge is a committee member on the Oglala Sioux Tribe Research and Review Board.
“If there’s any individual, group, whatever wants to come onto the Pine Ridge reservation to do research in the health field or whatever it might be in diabetes or heart disease, whatever, they have to come through our board first to get our approval before they can do this,” Zephier says.
That means the Sioux people have standing to allow or disband research, that the committee has a right to know what studies researchers conduct, how they perform those trials, and what the experts find. Zephier says the tribes are open to more collaboration, but money is a significant hurdle in Native health care.
“They have something that they call contract health. If an individual is injured, if they can’t provide that service in Pine Ridge or any of the hospitals on the reservations, then they can send them out to Rapid City or Sioux Falls or wherever, but those funds are limited, so they go on priority stuff,” Zephier says. “If someone has real major issues, then they do it.”
Zephier says he hopes funding issues don’t stand in the way of research and discoveries in mental and physical Native health, particularly incidence of obesity and diabetes.
Native American educator Gene Thin Elk says that’s where the latest generation asserts itself. He says this segment of young people who’ve become educated in health practices possesses the resources for change which spreads up the societal hierarchy.
“We have this generation of elders and traditional healers who are saying, ‘Okay, we’re open to collaboration now and we’re more willing to do that,’ because we have those younger people who can articulate for us and watch out for those things, because they’ve been educated in the process,” Thin Elk says.
“I think this is the time. It should have been the time a long time ago, when our first surgeons and our first MDs from Indian Country came out,” Rocke says. “There’s more now, and it’s growing as time goes on. And we’re learning that everything we were told through assimilation and genocide isn’t true, that we can accomplish whatever we want.”
Pre-med student and Native American woman Courtney Rocke says the new research initiatives offer her cultures a chance at improving health community-wide. She says that’s because people are now actively working to change the situation instead of musing that somebody should.
Health systems, universities, and tribes from three states are part of the Collaborative Research Center for American Indian Health. Specific projects for research in Native American health are currently working through federal approval.
If the Legislature can’t reach a deal by Sunday, state parks would close, state workers would be laid off and the lottery would halt
Jerry Cornfield, The Herald
OLYMPIA — As legislative leaders insisted Thursday that they are nearing agreement on a new state budget, the governor’s office offered a preview of what might occur if they fail and a partial government shutdown ensues.
State parks will close, the lottery will halt, and most convicted criminals will be monitored less closely outside prison walls if Washington is forced to cease many of its operations July 1.
Those are among the hundreds of programs and services which would be halted or scaled back, according to an analysis released by the Office of Financial Management.
In all, 34 state agencies would be completely shut down and 24 others would incur a partial cessation, said Mary Alice Heuschel, chief of staff for Gov. Jay Inslee. Twenty-five agencies would continue operating because they are funded wholly or in large part from sources other than the state’s general fund.
Meanwhile, the leader of the state Senate predicted the Legislature can be done Sunday, one day before layoff notices are sent to thousands of state workers.
“We are going to finish on Sunday and there will be absolutely no shutdown of state government,” said Senate Majority Leader Rodney Tom, D-Medina, who is a member of the Majority Coalition Caucus ruling the Senate.
Senate and House budget negotiators said Thursday they are making steady progress but are at least a day away from achieving an agreement in principle that can be written up and voted on. House Speaker Frank Chopp declined to say if he thought a budget could be passed by Sunday.
Planning for the shutdown won’t stop until the Legislature acts on a spending plan for the biennium that runs from July 1 though June 30, 2015.
Among those agencies that can expect to be shuttered include the Lottery Commission, Public Disclosure Commission and Liquor Control Board.
Washington’s largest agencies, such as the Department of Social and Health Services and Department of Corrections would curtail some activities while community colleges, universities and the court system will stay open.
Also, the Washington State Patrol and Washington State Ferries will operate because those are funded through the state transportation budget, which has been signed in law.
Only once before has the Legislature come this close to forcing a government shutdown. That occurred in 1991 when the House and Senate approved a budget early June 30 and Gov. Booth Gardner signed it shortly before midnight.
Here is a sample of what might happen:
•Most community supervision of ex-convicts would be halted;
Prisons would not accept new inmates;
Offenders in local or tribal jails for violating probation as of June 30 would be released;
Licensing and regulation of real estate brokers, home inspectors, barbers, cosmetologists and many other professions would be suspended;
The State Patrol would halt involvement in Snohomish County Auto Theft Task Force;
No lottery tickets would be sold or drawings conducted;
Horse racing at Emerald Downs would be halted;
State parks would be closed and camping reservations for early July canceled.
Members of the Haisla First Nation march in Kitimat, B.C. as part of a rally in support of the Idle No More movement in 2012. Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Robin Rowland
Michael Woods, Canada.com
Indigenous rights activists are aiming to “increase tension” this summer to oppose the Harper government’s agenda, which they say ignores aboriginal rights and weakens environmental protections.
Friday, National Aboriginal Day, marks the launch of the so-called “Sovereignty Summer” in which the grassroots indigenous Idle No More movement says it will band together with other activist groups to plan “non-violent direct action” across the country.
“The point is to increase tension,” said Sheelah McLean, one of Idle No More’s four co-founders. “To raise awareness and increase tension between people who are wanting to assert their rights and people who are unjustly forgetting about the rights of indigenous peoples.”
At play are many of the same issues that helped galvanize the indigenous movement in December and January when protests reached their peak: matters such as implementing historic treaty rights, the federal government’s changes to environmental protections, and consultation with aboriginals regarding resource development on their traditional lands.
“The one thing that’s going to stop this resource hyper-extraction is the rights of indigenous Canadians, and Canadians have to stand behind them,” McLean said. “Pressure on the government is essential.”
Idle No More grew in reaction to Conservative omnibus legislation that, opponents say, infringed on indigenous rights and weakened environmental protections. It helped lead to a meeting in January between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and First Nations leaders, but many aboriginal leaders and activists have lamented a lack of progress since then.
Now, Idle No More has joined with Defenders of the Land, a group of indigenous activists formed in 2008. McLean said it was a natural fit: much of Idle No More activity has taken place in urban areas, but Defenders of the Land works mostly in remote areas.
Organizers say “non-violent direct action” will cover a wide spectrum, and individual communities will decide what it means. But it could include banner drops, camping, rallies, round dances – and even blockades. Whatever the methods, McLean says tension will continue to escalate if the government ignores aboriginal issues.
“The government is counting on settler Canadians not understanding these issues,” McLean said. “What we’re hoping is to focus on these issues by any means possible to educate people on why they need to stand behind indigenous communities to protect the land.”
Andrea Richer, spokesperson for Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt, said the government is “always prepared to work with those First Nations, and other partners, who want to achieve results.”
“Canadians have a right to peaceful protest, but much more can be accomplished by working together,” Richer said. “While we may not always agree on the way forward, we do agree that it is critical we demonstrate concrete movement on some of the key issues like education, skills and training and economic development.”
Sovereignty Summer national campaigner Clayton Thomas-Muller said there will be “major actions” in mid-July and early August, but declined to provide details. He said the end of the summer would feature “mass mobilization” in urban centres across the country.
Protests will highlight various land-based struggles: Thomas-Muller said there are “dozens and dozens that are potential powder kegs” including proposed pipeline paths, disputes with provincial governments, and proposed hydroelectric and uranium mining expansions.
The groups have listed six demands which include repealing provisions of Bill C-45, the government’s omnibus budget bill that made changes to the Navigable Waters Act; recognition of Aboriginal title and rights; respecting indigenous rights to free, prior and informed consent on matters that may affect them; honouring historic treaties; and launching a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
“Our goal is to … bring this government to a place where they have no choice but to act,” Thomas-Muller said. “What we’re talking about is stopping the ability of Canada to operate as business as usual until the government addresses these six core things.
“It’s ‘go’ time. These are life and death situations, and there needs to be real political will taken to respond to them.”
Friday’s National Aboriginal Day features events across the country that will celebrate aboriginal history and culture. Opposition leader Tom Mulcair, for example, will join a march in solidarity with First Nations starting on Victoria Island near Parliament Hill, the site of Attawapiskat chief Theresa Spence’s January protest liquid diet, and ending in a speech on the Hill.
Little Miss Sunflower Emma Hall presents tribal fisherman Art Seyler with a hat during the opening ceremonies for the Chief Joseph Hatchery on Thursday. Seyler was one of several elder tribal fishermen honored during the event, which drew hundreds of people from the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, several other tribes, and numerous state and federal agencies.
BRIDGEPORT — Hundreds came Thursday to celebrate the new, $50 million hatchery, its concrete raceways, its incubation building, its state-of-the-art plans to raise and release 2.9 million chinook salmon while protecting their wild cousins.
The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation officially opened the Chief Joseph Hatchery bordering the southwest corner of their reservation.
Funded by ratepayers through the Bonneville Power Administration along with Grant, Douglas and Chelan County PUDs, the new facility is expected to bring thousands more spring and summer chinook back to the upper Columbia River for both tribal and non-tribal fishermen.
Those who gathered for opening ceremonies spoke largely about the history of events that led to this day, hailed as the fulfillment of a promise made by the U.S. government before the Great Depression.
First, a traditional salmon song and then tribal members caught the hatchery’s first salmon using a pole net.
Whooping cries and large smiles erupted as the salmon was laid on the aluminum platform, then filleted at a table nearby, its eggs and innards tossed back to the Columbia below.
After the riverside ceremony, tribal fishermen were honored, many speaking of times when the fish were abundant, and shared by all.
It was this place where Colville tribal fishermen came to fish after the construction of Grand Coulee Dam, and later Chief Joseph Dam — just across the river. The dams erased Kettle Falls, one of the largest fishing spots on the Columbia River, where tribes from around the region gathered yearly.
With no fish passage, the dams were barriers to spawning salmon, which still return each year to the concrete wall that prevents them from completing their journey.
So fishermen came here to fish from the rocks, and the bridge, or the wall below the dam.
World photo/K.C. Mehaffey
Freshly caught salmon was cooked and dried using traditional methods at opening ceremonies for the Chief Joseph Hatchery on Thursday. Hundreds of people came to celebrate the new facility, which will produce nearly 3 million smolts for release.
“If you needed something, we all shared,” said Lionel Orr, who had offered up the morning’s salmon song. “It was like a community. If I had fishing line, or hooks, I’d give it to you. It was really a good experience.”
Mel “Bugs Hook ‘Em In The Lips” Toulou recalled being accepted into the clan after catching his first salmon on a ten-foot bamboo pole. “What you feel down here is the brotherhood, and the family that you gain,” he said. They used to catch 50 and 60 pound fish, he said, and their fathers and grandfathers reeled in 100-pounders. Today, the salmon average 25 pounds he said.
Ernie Williams recalled catching 750 pounds of salmon in 72 hours once. And then giving it away to elders on their way home. He praised the rain as “soul cleansing,” and said his mother, Mary Marchand, and other elders who had passed on were there with them. “Those past fishermen too. I know they’re all here, and they’re smiling, too.”
Officials, too, spoke of the past.
John Smith, the first director of the Colville Tribe’s Fish and Wildlife Department, talked about the collaborative effort it took to build the hatchery, with not only the tribes, but state and federal agencies, PUDs and the support of other tribes.
He said he hopes people aren’t upset when they see tribal members catching these new hatchery salmon from boats or scaffolds, using nets or spears.
“What you’ve got to remember is, we’ve been denied a lot of good fisheries for a lot of years,” he said. “I’ve seen the devastation that’s been caused,” he said.
Fish were once 50 percent of their diet, and the dams cut off that food source for so many, he said. “That was like cutting you off from Safeway or Walmart. That’s what it did to our people.”
Federal officials also spoke of the impact that these dams without fish passage had on tribal people, and the promises made to for another hatchery.
Tom Karier, a member of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, said an old document of an 1800s missionary near Kettle Falls revealed that it was not uncommon for tribal fishermen to catch 1,000 fish a day, or count hundreds of salmon jumping out of the water on their way upstream.
“We have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go,” he said. “Today, we celebrate significant progress.”
World photo/K.C. Mehaffey
Sneena Brooks, Robbie Stafford and Dan Edwards were among the drummers singing an honor song for elder tribal fishermen at the opening of the Chief Joseph Hatchery on Thursday.
Leroy Williams, a tribal fisherman who is teaching others the old ways of fishing with hoop nets and dip nets, recalled discovering the letter from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for a fourth hatchery while sorting through papers for the tribe’s fish and wildlife department. The Great Depression and World War II delayed the project, and he promise had been forgotten until they rediscovered this letter.
Hatcheries had been built at Leavenworth, Entiat and Winthrop, but this one was delayed by the Great Depression and World War II, and then forgotten.
The new hatchery is located on 15 acres owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the north bank of the Columbia River, just downstream of Chief Joseph Dam. The complex includes 40 raceways, three rearing ponds, and three acclimation ponds. It draws water from wells and the reservoir behind the dam, known as Rufus Woods Lake.
Colville Tribal Chairman John Sirois expressed gratitude for all the support from tribal members and former council members, agencies, and other tribes.
“This is truly humbling, and a day that we’ll remember forever,” he said.
Elsewhere on the Columbia River, the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs, and Yakama tribes began commercial sales from their summer fishery on June 17, the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission announced.
“This is the first significant commercial fishery of 2013,” the commission said in a media release. “Pre-season forecasts estimate 73,500 summer chinook and 180,500 sockeye. Depending on the actual run sizes, Indian fishers may harvest approximately 20,000 summer chinook and 12,000 sockeye, most of which will be sold commercially.”
The company that wants to export coal to Asia through ports in Washington and Oregon has an agreement with the Crow Tribe that would supply more coal than is consumed in the U.S. each year.
BILLINGS, Mont. — The U.S. government approved plans by a Montana Indian tribe to lease an estimated 1.4 billion tons of coal to a Wyoming company that’s moving aggressively to increase coal exports to Asia, the company and tribe announced Thursday.
The deal between Cloud Peak Energy and the Crow Tribe involves more coal than the U.S. consumes annually.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs’ (BIA) approval allows Cloud Peak to begin exploration work on the Crow reservation.
Cloud Peak has pending agreements to ship more than 20 million tons of coal annually through three proposed ports in Washington and Oregon. Officials in both states oppose the port projects on environmental grounds, but federal officials said earlier this week they planned only limited environmental reviews of the projects.
Cloud Peak CEO Colin Marshall said preliminary work on the so-called Big Metal coal project — named after a legendary Crow figure — has begun. The company says it could take five years to develop a mine that would produce up to 10 million tons of coal annually, and other mines are possible in the leased areas.
The Crow Tribe’s coal reserves are within the Powder River Basin, which accounts for about 40 percent of U.S. coal production. Cloud Peak paid the tribe $1.5 million upon Thursday’s BIA approval, bringing its total payments to the tribe so far to $3.75 million.
Future payments during an initial five-year option period could total up to $10 million. Cloud Peak would pay royalties on any coal extracted and has agreed to give tribal members hiring preference for mining jobs.
The company also will provide $75,000 a year in scholarships for the tribe.
Crow Chairman Darrin Old Coyote said in a statement that the project is a high priority for the impoverished tribe’s 13,000 members. It revives longstanding efforts by the Crow to expand coal mining.
A $7 billion coal-to-liquids plant proposed in 2008 by an Australian company never came to fruition.
The three members of Montana’s congressional delegation — Democratic U.S. Sens. Jon Tester and Max Baucus, and Republican Rep. Steve Daines — issued statements supporting the new agreement. They said it offers a chance to increase job opportunities on the 2.2-million-acre reservation along the Montana-Wyoming border.
Tribal leaders stood on stage last week in Chicago, where the announcement of first-ever, historic wind energy initiative on Tribal land is expected to bring new life and livlihoods to chronicly impoverished reservations in South Dakota.
Last week at the 2013 Clinton Global Initiative, hosted by the City of Chicago, former President Bill Clinton and leaders from six Sioux Indian tribes announced a new wind-power initiative that will harness South Dakota’s greatest natural resource and spur long-term development in the economically depressed region.
Clinton Global Initiative America is an annual event that brings together leaders from the business, foundation and government sectors in an effort to promote economic growth in the United States. The tribes’ initiative comes at a time when renewable energy investment is increasingly a national priority. Through the project, the tribes stand to infuse up to $3 billion directly into the South Dakota economy, an amount roughly equal to the impact of the entire manufacturing sector in South Dakota in a given year.
The planned project could generate 1-2 Gigawatts of power annually. Measured conservatively, that’s more than enough power to electrify the homes in Denver, Colo., for the next 20 years, the typical useful life span of the wind turbines.
The majority of the project’s funding will come through the sale of bonds by a multi-tribal power authority. The bonds are expected to be available to investors in about two years, following a critical planning and preparation stage.
In separate but related news, Deputy Secretary David J. Hayes of the Interior for the Obama administration discussed efforts under way to implement a tribal land buy-back program with reporters on a conference call Tuesday afternoon.
Hayes was joined on the call by Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn, who provided details on the next phase of the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations (Buy-Back Program or BBP), including launching pilot efforts to establish cooperative agreements with tribal governments.
The buy-back program implements the land consolidation provisions of the $3.4 billion Cobell Settlement, which will funnel $1.9 billion into a trust land consolidation fund to consolidate fractional land interests across American Indian property. Background information from the Department of the Interior (DOI) said allotments of land provided individual American Indians in the 19th and early 20th centuries have grown to hundreds and even thousands of individual owners, which makes leasing or developing the parcels difficult.
The result, as former US Sen. Byron Dorgan of South Dakota confirmed in an exclusive interview with Allvoices following DOI’s earlier announcement, is that highly-fractionated allotments lie idle, unable to be used for any economically beneficial purpose.
As Dorgan, who now co-chairs the Arent Fox Government Relations practice and who helped negotiate the Cobell Settlement said, when one person in 2,000 or even 10,000 people can disagree, thereby killing any hope of affiliating land for purposes of economic development, moving forward is hard.
Hayes, who will be leaving DOI soon and said he was proud of his role in helping settle and implement the Cobell Settlement, told reporters that all legal questions have concluded as of last November and that opening the door to implementation now of the $1.5 billion of settlement funds for the BBP itself will be used to purchase fractionated interest so land is available for tribal use.
Historical problems caused the land to be locked up and unusable, but Hayes said 220,000 individual owners on 150 reservations will be impacted by Tuesday’s announcement. Based on fair compensation on a “willing seller basis,” Hayes said the federal government will turn land back over to the tribal nations.
From “government to government” is how Hayes phrased the new relationship between the US government and the six Native American tribes covered by the settlement, a level of respect tribal leaders have waited a long time to realize.
It will take 10 years to spend down the $1.9 billion in settlement funds, Hayes said, adding that it’s his expectation to initiate purchase offers by end of the year. Within the next three years or by the end of the Obama presidency, Hayes believes the BBP will be well on its way to spending down and returning millions of acres of land to tribal control.
The lawsuit and its settlement resolves claims that the federal government violated its trust duties to individual Indian trust beneficiaries, including not providing a proper historical accounting relating to IIM accounts and other trust assets, mismanaging individual Indian trust funds and violating its trust responsibilities for management of land, oil, natural gas, mineral, timber, grazing, and other resources.
Agreements with tribes for program administration has already begun, he said, adding that “we have heard Indian county and we must have support for tribal leaders” as we formalize agreements tribe by tribe. Part of the checks and balances system is providing an oversight board for the BBP to be chaired by DOI Secretary Sally Jewell, who Obama appointed to guide the agency during his second term.
Jewell replaces Ken Salazar, a former US Senator from Colorado, who guided DOI during Obama’s first term starting in 2009.
Hayes said regular meetings at the highest levels can be expected.
A feature of the Cobell Settlement was directed toward higher education scholarships. The settlement authorizes up to $60 million in scholarships for Indian students, to be administered by The American Indian College Fund. The money can be used at tribal colleges, vocational institutions and public and private universities. Twenty percent of the annual scholarships can be used for graduate studies.
The Cobell Settlement requires a board of trustees to oversee the scholarship fund. The Interior Department and the Cobell plaintiffs will each choose two members. The American Indian College Fund will choose one member.
Washburn said that if the systems are set up right from the beginning, there will be upfront advantages from advance planning and behind-the-scenes computer programs that will enable the effort to “move out methodically through a number of reservations.”
Giving a taste of the flavor, he said, shows how the program is gearing for the BBP. Washburn said staffing is up and that outside experts have been retained to assure we have the best program of appraising property as the basis for an offer. Third party groups, he said, are reviewing methodologies and making valid recommendations.
“Were a bunch of suits in Washington,” Washburn said. “We need tribal leaders” to engage when negotiating different agreement with each tribe to factor in their needs. He looked to having 10-12 tribes “on board, moving out from the train station” by the end of the year. Washburn likened the tribes to guinea pigs as sovereignty is returned the tribal nations.
Dorgan, who chaired the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and the Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, believes that while the wind energy project is not dependent on Tuesday’s announcement, it can only help it along.
He said in a phone conversation with Allvoices that it’s not needed for the Sioux Tribes of South Dakota’s wind power initiative. Helping to negotiate the Cobell Settlement, Dorgan said that while there is enough Tribal land available for the wind power initiative, the real resource of value isn’t buried below the ground, but blows above it.
“The government may own the minerals below the land, but the wind above it belongs to the tribes,” he said.
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“You eat from one bowl,” said Ivan M. Ivan, 67, a tribal leader in Akiak, quoting the Yup’ik Eskimo cultural adage about sharing resources, in good times and bad. “That didn’t happen.”
Kirk Johnson and Lee Van Der Voo, The New York Times
AKIAK, Alaska — The humble pollock, great cash fish of the north, conquered the world through the flaky bland hegemony of a fish stick. At more than $1 billion a year, there is no bigger fishery for human consumption on the planet.
But pollock was also meant to be a savior, part of a Washington-backed antipoverty plan aimed at residents here on Alaska’s mostly undeveloped west coast. A generation ago, organizers envisioned federally guaranteed shares of the pollock catch that would create a rising tide of funds to lift up poor, isolated villages where jobs and hope are scarce.
Pollock did succeed, wildly. The dollars that flowed into the Community Development Quota Program, as the catch-share system was called, created a hydra-headed nonprofit money machine. Six nonprofit groups arose on the Bering Sea shore, and they have invested mightily in ships, real estate and processing plants. Over two decades, the groups amassed a combined net worth of $785 million.
But the results on the ground, in rural community and economic development, have been deeply uneven, and nonexistent for many people who still gaze out to the blinking lights of the factory ships and wonder what happened.
“You eat from one bowl,” said Ivan M. Ivan, 67, chief of the native community here in Akiak, quoting the Yup’ik Eskimo cultural adage about shared resources. “That didn’t happen.”
Collectively, the groups created tens of thousands of jobs and scholarships in one of the poorest regions of the nation. But critics say that community development, over time, got lost in a push toward institutional sustainability — and in some cases lavish salaries for leaders. Deregulation became self-regulation with a board of overseers appointed by the groups themselves the only real watchdog in recent years.
Meanwhile, a lopsided division of spoils among the groups has festered into a conflict that some Alaskans fear could unravel the catch-share project itself, which has done much good, they say, despite its flaws. In 2011, according to the most recent figures, one group with a small population got nearly 22 times more revenue per resident than another, larger group, based on allocation formulas locked in by Congress in 2006.
The fate of places like Akiak, a village of 350 people about 400 miles west of Anchorage, was dictated by a political compromise two decades ago, when a line was drawn 50 miles from the Bering Sea. Villages inside the line got pollock money. Akiak’s rutted dirt roads and 80 percent unemployment rate, residents said, bespeak its outsider status, 20 miles from that border.
Residents of Napaskiak, by contrast, a village of similar size 24 miles away, get scholarships, free firewood, free tax assistance and subsidized boat motors, all courtesy of the local catch-share group, the Coastal Villages Region Fund, which also buys halibut and herring from local fishermen.
The rules were hard but necessary, said Dick Tremaine, an economist who was a consultant to the state in the early 1990s. “This was a social engineering experiment that had not yet existed,” he said.
But even communities within the line have seen uneven development.
The federal health clinic in the village of Teller, for example, in Alaska’s northwest corner, went months without toilets last year after its septic system failed. Doctors and patients used five-gallon buckets instead, then stacked them in the street. Worse still, there were often not enough buckets to go around. Cardboard boxes, lined with plastic bags, then had to suffice.
Teller is not unique: 10 of 15 villages dotting the tundra along the Bering Sea outside of Nome — all within the catch-share system — do not have complete sewer service or running water.
“I can understand how C.D.Q.’s, in the early years, focused on the development of businesses,” said Ed Backus, vice president for fisheries at Ecotrust, an economic development group in Portland, Ore., that works in Alaska, referring to the Community Development Quota Program. “But over time as those revenue streams really bulked up, which they have, I think it’s important to remember the main mission of C.D.Q.’s is to really improve life in the villages.”
Spokesmen for the nonprofit groups agreed that not every village has seen the same benefits.
Part of the problem is geography, said Simon Kinneen, vice president and chief operating officer of the Norton Sound Economic Development Corporation, which covers the northern corner of the catch-share region, including Teller. “Developing fisheries and economies in our member communities that do not have reasonable access to commercially viable fish species is difficult at best,” he said in an e-mail.
A spokesman for the Coastal Villages Region Fund, Dawson Hoover, conceded that much more work should be done.
Under that guise, Coastal Villages, the largest of the groups by population, with about 9,300 residents, began an effort last year to get Congress to change how pollock and other fish are apportioned in western Alaska — to a formula based on population.
The shift would greatly increase Coastal’s clout and income, and the effort is creating sharp conflict with other groups that could get less. “The groups with the largest amount of people receive less fish per person,” Mr. Hoover said. “It’s just not fair.”
Many native subsistence fishermen, meanwhile, say the pollock trawlers inadvertently catch too many salmon. Dozens were cited by state game wardens last summer — and faced emotional legal proceedings this spring — for setting their nets on the Kuskokwim River in violation of an emergency fishing ban.
Joe Garnie, a former mayor of Teller, and a board member of the Norton Sound group, said fairness depends on where you look. Imagine what might happen, he said, if a lack of plumbing had led to similar unsanitary conditions in a clinic in, say, Detroit. “In 15 minutes there would be a federal investigation,” he said. “Why isn’t there one here?”
Part of the answer to Mr. Garnie’s question, is that the program grew up without a yardstick, according to people who were involved in its early years. And as each nonprofit group went its way, one-size-fits all measurements no longer applied.
Coastal Villages became a vertically integrated seafood company. The Aleutian Pribilof Island Community Development Association, another catch-share group, developed a separate economic plan for each village. In Norton Sound, benefits were delivered mostly in the form of community grants and scholarships, sending hundreds of Alaskans to college every year and helping villages operate.
Federal rules are loose, requiring only that the groups spend 80 percent of their money in fisheries. And in 2006, Congress stepped back even further, allowing the groups to regulate themselves, with reviews from Washington every decade. But in the first 10-year review, even the self-regulating catch-share oversight board in Alaska said the data measuring changes in poverty and quality of life in the villages was not meaningful.
But there is no doubt that guaranteed pollock shares — later extended to include, crab, pacific cod, halibut and other fish — created a new empire. Coastal Villages now owns an entire fishing fleet based in Seattle and Alaska. The Bristol Bay group owns half of the seafood giant Ocean Beauty. The Glacier Fish Company, based in Seattle, is partly owned by fish-quota groups. Four groups also invested in publicly traded securities, totaling $134 million in 2011, or 28.8 percent of their net assets. Salaries for top executives, meanwhile, have ranged in recent years from $69,503 to $832,367.
The oversight board said in a recent report that in its first 19 years, the program distributed $521 million in wages, training and benefits. But the region’s troubles drag on. Of 65 communities within the 50-mile boundary, including Teller, 38 are still listed as “distressed” at the Denali Commission, a federal agency that focuses on Alaska’s remote communities.
Joel Neimeyer, co-chairman of the Denali Commission, said it would be impossible for one program to solve Alaska’s rural problems. The process of giving people training for jobs, for example can, in a perverse way, create a brain drain that leaves communities ever more locked in struggle. People leave and get a taste of the outside world. “A lot of them just never go back,” Mr. Neimeyer said.
This article was written in cooperation with InvestigateWest, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization based in Seattle that covers the Pacific Northwest.
WASHINGTON – Following extensive consultations with American Indian leaders, the Department of the Interior Tuesday, June 18, made a number of announcements related to the efforts underway for the purchase of fractional interests in American Indian trust lands from willing sellers.
In particular, the Department announced that it has launched efforts to establish cooperative agreements with several tribal nations to facilitate the purchase of individual interests in highly fractionated trust lands for the purpose of consolidating ownership of these acres for the beneficial use of tribal nations.
The Department has also established purchase ceilings to ensure that all qualifying tribes will have the opportunity to participate in the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations. Additional incentives for individual owners to offer their fractionated shares for the benefit of tribal communities also were announced, including minimum payments and Indian scholarship funds.
As part of President Obama’s commitment to help strengthen Indian communities, the Land Buy-Back Program was created to implement the land consolidation component of the Cobell Settlement, which provided a $1.9 billion fund to purchase fractionated interests in trust or restricted land from willing sellers, at fair market value, within a 10 year period.
“With a solid foundation built on government to government consultation, the Department is now prepared to begin working with tribal nations so we can proceed with initial offers by the end of this year,”
said David J. Hayes, Deputy Secretary of the Interior. Hayes, who chairs the oversight board created to ensure accountability within the Interior Department, emphasized that the goal of the Land Buy-Back Program is to unlock the benefit of fractionated lands for tribal communities.
“We need to be smart about managing the available resources of tribal communities and the federal government, while developing flexible processes for each cooperative agreement,”
he said.
As outlined in the Implementation Plan released in December 2012, Department officials have had extensive consultation with tribes across Indian country over the past several months to determine how to move forward with a process that provides an efficient and fair way for individual owners of fractionated interests to participate in the Land Buy-Back Program, maximizes the opportunity for tribal government involvement, and offers the greatest flexibility for each tribal nation to determine what is best for their community.
Today’s announcements are based on these consultations, which will continue to inform next steps. Department personnel have also been hard at work refining valuation methods, updating title systems, and staffing up appraisal teams to accommodate the significant interest in the program.
Pilot Efforts Underway
Interior holds about 56 million acres in trust or restricted status for American Indians. More than 10 million acres are held for individual American Indians and nearly 46 million acres are held for Indian tribes. The Department holds this land in more than 200,000 tracts, of which about 92,000 (on 150 reservations) contain fractional ownership interests available for purchase by the Land Buy-Back Program.
Approximately 90 percent of the fractionated lands available to purchase are in 40 of the 150 locations.
Following its consultations with tribes, the Department of the Interior has identified key criteria that will determine how and when tribal nations will be engaged over the next several years. The Land Buy-Back Program will move forward based on a number of factors, including the severity of fractionation, degree of ownership overlap between tracts, geographic location to maximize efficiency and resources, appraisal complexity, and readiness or availability of resources.
In particular, the Land Buy-Back Program will ensure that all types of tribal communities are participating in all phases of the program – including tribes that do not have large numbers of fractionated lands. Ensuring this type of tribal diversity in the Land Buy-Back Program was an important and frequently raised issue by tribal nations through consultation sessions, and it will be a key consideration in setting priorities.
Using these criteria, the Department will launch pilot efforts with as many as 10 reservations this year, with the opportunity to make adjustments for lessons learned for future implementation. Land research, valuation work, and outreach efforts are underway at several locations, including the Pine Ridge, Crow, Makah, and Sisseton-Wahpeton reservations.
Cooperative Agreement Development
As tribal communities are identified for implementation, the Department will enter into cooperative agreements that are flexible and responsive to the specific needs of the nation involved. Tribes have the opportunity to actively participate in the process, which will improve the program’s effectiveness and efficiency while minimizing administrative costs. Agreements will allow for resources to be provided to each tribal government to facilitate outreach and education, solicit interest from owners, and further identify tribal priorities.
“This is a program that will not be implemented overnight, but we will be thorough and tailor opportunities for the benefit of each nation,”
said Kevin Washburn, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs.
“We must have the flexibility to learn from each buy-back effort and provide transparency for each successive tribe.”
Establishment of Purchase Ceilings and Base Payments
Two key decisions flowing directly from the Department’s nation to nation consultations relate to purchase ceilings and base payments. To ensure that the Land Buy-Back Program will be implemented at as many locations as possible (including less fractionated locations), purchase ceilings will be used to protect against premature exhaustion of funds. Also, the Land Buy-Back Program will provide landowners with a base payment of $75 per offer, regardless of the value of the land, based on estimates for the time and effort required for individual land owners to proceed through the acquisition process and to facilitate sales.
In addition to base payments, the Department discussed the allocation of funds toward Indian educational scholarships as a further incentive for participation. Up to $60 million from sales will be designated for the Cobell Scholarship Fund for American Indians and Alaska Natives. The fund will be controlled by a board of trustees nominated by tribal governments and administered by the American Indian College Fund in Denver, Colorado with 20 percent allotted to the American Indian Graduate Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Transparency & Availability of Resources
The Department is committed to ongoing consultation with tribal nations and full transparency as it continues to implement the many steps associated with the Land Buy-Back Program, which had been referred to as the Cobell Trust Land Consolidation program.
In addition to future consultations, personnel will hold a workshop prior to remarks by Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell at the upcoming National Congress of American Indian’s Mid-Year Conference later this month. The workshop will further discuss the development of cooperative agreements, the ongoing, independent review by the Appraisal Foundation of the Department’s appraisal process, and the pilot efforts and ramp up plans for the acquisition of land at initial locations.
Vince Schilling, Indian Country Today Media Network
On June 18 the Senate voted unanimously (94-0) to approve a tribal amendment to the S.744 Immigration reform bill that will add four tribal government officials to the Border Oversight Task Force that was established originally in the bill.
This amendment was offered by Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) and cosponsored by senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Mark Begich (D-AK), Patty Murray (D-WA), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), and Martin Heinrich (D-NM).
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Border Task Force established in S. 744 which included representatives from local government and law enforcement, civil rights groups, business, private land owners and the Border Patrol, will now have input from tribal representatives from the Northern and Southern regions.
When introduced for a vote on the Senate floor, Sen. Tester lauded the potential contributions of tribal representatives toward the security of our countries borders.
“This amendment will include tribal representatives from the DHS Border Task Force. In this country, within 100 miles of the border we have 13 Indian reservations, some of them right on the border. If we really want to make sure our borders are secure on the North and the South, Indians need to be part of this conversation, our Native American friends.
“They have a unique government-to-government status and their input is critically important this amendment will not cost anything, it has bipartisan support and it will add to tribal representatives, two in the north and two in the southern region,” Tester said.
According to information provided to Indian Country Today Media Network by Tester’s administrators, the amendment would improve border security by improving coordination and communication between DHS and border tribes and by including tribal leaders on the DHS Oversight Task Force responsible for solving problems related to border security.
They also added that, “Indian lands are often desolate and remote, tribal law enforcement resources are spread thin; and communication is poor. In recent years, Indian Affairs Committee hearings revealed that a rising number of smugglers and illegal immigrants have taken advantage of these factors to travel – virtually unnoticed – into the U.S.”
In a recent report, GAO said, “… coordination challenges with tribes have affected the Border Patrol’s ability to patrol and monitor the border so as to prevent and detect illegal immigration and smuggling. Border Patrol officials … reported coordination challenges related to understanding and collaborating with tribes within tribal government rules. Specifically, officials … reported coordination challenges related to tribal government rules that hindered law enforcement in working together to secure the border.”
In a comment to ICTMN via e-mail, Tester voiced his thoughts as to the importance of an Indian voice in the DHS as well as expressing his appreciation for the unanimous support of the amendment.
“As we improve border security, we have a responsibility to make sure that those who live closest to the border have a voice in the process. With 13 Indian Reservations around the country within 100 miles of the border,” said Tester. “My common-sense amendment makes sure that American Indians have a seat at the table, and I’m pleased it passed with unanimous support.”
During today’s airing of the vote on c-span, ICTMN heard one unnamed Senator exclaim, “It’s a good day for Indians.”
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