Just before Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana) took up the gavel of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in February, he introduced the Native Language Immersion Student Achievement Act.
Rob Capriccioso, ICTMN
Just before Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana) took up the gavel of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in February, he introduced the Native Language Immersion Student Achievement Act, which would amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) to provide increased federal financial support to Native American language programs at American Indian-focused schools.
If passed, the bill would establish a grant program to support schools using Native American languages as their primary language of instruction. The legislation would appropriate $5 million for fiscal year 2015, and “such sums as may be necessary for each of the succeeding 4 fiscal years.” The secretary of the Department of Education would be responsible for making grant awards to eligible institutions each of the years, and grantees would be required to submit annual reports.
“We are racing against the clock to save and revitalize our sacred Native American languages,” Tester said when he announced the bill. “Preserving Native languages will strengthen Indian culture and increase student confidence—leading to greater academic achievement and a stronger economy.”
Support from the National Congress of American Indians and many Native-focused organizations, which plan to hold a congressional briefing March 12 on Capitol Hill to heighten awareness of the bill, has been widespread.
“In introducing the Native Language Immersion Student Achievement Act, Sen. Tester has answered the call from Indian country to invest in Native language immersion schools,” says Brian Cladoosby, president of the National Congress of American Indians. “Not only are these unique schools our best hope to save and revitalize our sacred Native languages, but they offer Indian education the purest form of intellectual sovereignty, because no right is more sacred to Native peoples than the right to freely speak our Native languages.”
Native education advocates widely view the bill as an opportunity to influence ESEA reauthorization discussions that are ongoing in the Senate. While the ESEA, which includes the Indian Education Act, still faces some hurdles in passing this Congress, advocates are hopeful that Tester’s legislation can ultimately be included in that broader education legislation.
“Sen. Tester’s bill offers Indian country heightened ownership in its educational destiny and a lifeline in saving Native Languages,” says Ryan Wilson, president of the National Alliance to Save Native Languages, which is hosting the Capitol Hill briefing. “Just as important to Indian country it is good policy and reflects a sharpened focus and stronger Indian Education Act.”
Wilson says that tribal recommendations to enhance the Native language and education components of the ESEA have gone unheeded by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions (HELP) to date.
“Senate Committee on Indian Affairs recommendations from the 112th Congress that were contained in the groundbreaking Native Class Act and Native Build Act were not reflected as well,” Wilson adds. “Native language provisions published within the White House ESEA blueprint were also not included.”
Wilson says the Alliance is calling on Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the HELP committee, to include provisions contained within the Native Language Immersion Student Achievement Act when the committee ultimately moves its ESEA bill to the Senate floor.
As this policy discussion unfolds, tribal advocates are also noting ideas that they believe could strengthen Tester’s bill.
John Echohawk, executive director of the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), which provides legal counsel to the Tribal Education Department National Assembly, is taking the opportunity to advocate for a strong role for tribal governments in saving Native languages as part of this legislation.
“Many tribes now have Tribal Education Departments or Agencies (TEAs),” Echohawk says. “Under tribal law, under the laws of some states, and increasingly even under federal law, TEAs are in the best position to coordinate resources from tribal, federal, and state programs to focus on language immersion programs in schools and communities. Some TEAs are even developing and implementing the needed language preservation and immersion programs.
“As they grow in numbers and capacity, TEAs are consistently taking the lead in meeting the need for tribal language, culture, and history programs and curricula,” Echohawk says. “TEAs are very familiar with the link—as recognized in scores of federal reports—between culturally relevant schooling, including language immersion programs, and Native student success.”
Echohawk is scheduled to appear at the March 12 Capitol Hill briefing on the legislation.
PORT ANGELES, Wash. — Anne Shaffer sits on the sandy shoreline of the Elwha River and looks around in amazement. Just two years ago, this area would have been under about 20 feet of water.
So far about 3 million cubic yards of sediment — enough to fill about 300,000 dump trucks — has been released from the giant bathtubs of sediment that formed behind the two hydroelectric dams upstream. And that’s only 16 percent of what’s expected to be delivered downstream in the next five years.
All of that sediment is already reshaping the mouth of the Elwha, which empties into the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the northern shore of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.
The depth at the mouth of the river has changed by about 50 feet. Long, charcoal-colored sandy beaches have formed where there once only smooth, platter-sized cobblestones.
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“This place is like Christmas,” says Shaffer, a marine biologist and the executive director of the Coastal Watershed Institute. “Everyday you come out here and its something new.”
Shaffer is leading a team of researchers who are studying the Elwha’s nearshore area, where the river’s freshwater meets the saltwater tides. Shaffer explains that until recently this area was starved of sediment, and now a whole new ecosystem is forming. Her team is trying to find out what tiny creatures are moving in.
They’re searching for evidence that species like sand lance and surf smelt are using this area as spawning grounds. These tiny fish are a common food sources for juvenile salmon.
Sand lance (top) and surf smelt (bottom) by David Ayers/USGS.
Sand lance, she explained, require a very fine grain sediment in order to lay their eggs.
“We now are surrounded by the exact grain size that sand lance need to spawn,” she says.
The team scoops up bags of sand to test in the lab. So far they haven’t found evidence of sand lance spawning in this new habitat, Shaffer says. But they have found that surf smelt are spawning in areas where sandy substrate has built up.
During recent fish census surveys of the Elwha’s estuary, Shaffer’s team counted baby chum salmon in numbers they haven’t seen in years, if ever, Shaffer said. And they’ve also found a number of eulachon, a type of smelt that was once an abundant food source for coastal tribes. The eulachon is now listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
“As soon as this habitat is available, these fish are using it,” Shaffer says. “None of us anticipated how quickly it would occur. I’d never seen a eulachon in the estuary before, but in the last three months, every time we survey, we see them.”
The drone of a single-engine plane causes Shaffer to look up and shield her eyes.
“I bet that’s Tom,” she says with a smile.
A Bird’s Eye View
Port Angeles pilot and photographer Tom Roorda has had one of the most unique perspectives during the last two and a half years while the dams have been slowly dismantled. He started taking land-survey photos of the Elwha eight years ago. Back then his photos were used to help the federal Bureau of Reclamation prepare for dam removal.
Today his jaw-dropping aerial photos capture the giant plume of sediment flowing out of the mouth of the Elwha.
“Until I started taking these pictures, no one had any idea how much sediment was coming down or how far it extended out into the strait,” Roorda said.
The flush of sediment has moved the mouth of the Elwha north by about 300 feet, creating a long skinny spit that extends into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The area that used to serve as the Elwha’s estuary has been inundated with freshwater and a new estuary is forming downstream.
“As soon as it starts to rain that sediment gets washed down into the river and we get these big gulps of sediment coming down,” Roorda said.
This winter’s rains have continued to flush sediment downstream, so much so that the river’s flow is currently 10 times higher than normal. While all that sediment is ideal for building nearshore habitat, some worry the water will be too murky for salmon. Sediment can clog and irritate their gills and make it difficult to find food.
But Shaffer for one, isn’t concerned.
“Salmon are brilliant,” she said. “They have evolved over millenia. If they’re given a chance to acclimate to it, they will.”
The First Leap?
Today the entire length of Elwha looks like a free-flowing river. That’s because recent storms have submerged the remaining 25 or so feet of the Glines Canyon Dam.
Glines Canyon Dam, March 10, 2014, Olympic National Park
From webcam images, it’s difficult to even identify the slope of what remains of the 210-foot spillway. This is causing some to wonder how much longer it will be before the first fish leap over the concrete barrier that remains.
It may take weeks or months, but when the first leap happens, it’s not likely to be a salmon.
“Steelhead are quite the athletes. A steelhead can leap up to 12 feet in a single jump,” said John McMillan, a NOAA biologist who is tracking fish recovery on the Elwha.
McMillan is betting on steelhead — trout that, like salmon, are born in freshwater streams before migrate to marine waters. He says he’s seen steelhead ascend a 35-foot cascading waterfall by taking a series of long leaps.
Researchers are using imaging sonar to track the different fish returning to the Elwha, and they’ve found that some steelhead have already returned to the lower Elwha, McMillan said. The bulk of the run, however, is expected to take place from April to early July, he said.
Dam deconstruction will pause May 1 to minimize disruption to the steelhead spawning season.
Removal of the Lower Elwha Dam finished in March 2012. The last of the rubble of the Glines Canyon dam is expected to be gone by September 2014.
On Tuesday Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget request of $11.9 billion dollars for the Department of the interior. The 2015 budget request represents an increase of 2.4 percent from 2014 or $33.6 million dollars to support Indian country initiatives such as land and water conservation, strengthening tribal nation relations, renewable energy development and expanding employment opportunities for Native youth.
“The President’s balanced and responsible budget strategy supports the pivotal role this Department plays as a driver of jobs and economic activity in communities across the country,” said Jewell in a DOI release.
“The budget enables the Interior to carry out its important missions and contains key proposals to uphold our trust responsibilities to American Indians and Alaska Natives, provide a new approach for responsibly budgeting for wild land-fire-suppression needs, invest in climate resilience, and bolster our national parks and public lands in advance of the National Park Service’s 100th anniversary in 2016,” she said.
Jewell also stated that President Obama will continue to support full, permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which she said was “one of the Nation’s most effective tools for expanding access for hunting and fishing, creating ball fields and other places for children to play and learn, and protecting Civil War battlefields.”
“We are very pleased to see the administration’s continuing commitment to Indian country in a time of tight budgetary constraints, said Bill Anoatubby, Governor of the Chickasaw Nation in an email to ICTMN. “We are hopeful that the proposed budget will have a positive impact on the lives of Native Americans.”
According to the DOI, funding from the U.S. Government to Indian country is not one-sided. The Interior’s programs and activities contributed an estimated $371 billion to the economy in 2012 and supported another estimated 2.3 million jobs in the U.S.
The DOI also stated that the Interiors programs continue to generate an excess of revenue for the American people monetarily above their annual appropriation. In 2015, the DOI estimates receipts of nearly copy4.9 billion. A portion of these funds will be shared with State and local governments for school funding, infrastructure improvements and water-conservation projects.
In the confines of the 2015 budget, the DOI also proposes revenue and savings legislation that is estimated to generate over $2.6 billion in the next 10 years.
Specific initiatives in the budget geared toward strengthening tribal nations include a $34 million dollar increase from 2014. These monies provide support to fund social services, economic development, sustainable stewardship of natural resources and community safety in Indian country.
The budget also includes directives to improve educational outcomes in Indian country by providing $79 million for elementary, secondary and post-secondary education programs. The increases are $46 million in 2015 to support the Bureau of Indian Education and its associated programs.
Improving and increasing access to health care in communities includes $4.6 billion for Indian Health Service (IHS) with an additional Opportunity, Growth and Security Initiative that includes an additional $200 million for the construction of IHS health care facilities.
There will also be a $5.23 billion budget over the next 10 years to support the training of 13,000 new residents in a medical education program that incentivizes physician training; $3.95 billion will be budgeted over the next six years to scale up the National Health Services Corps to place 15,000 health care providers annually in the areas that need them most.
Additional budgeted monies include non-specified resources to support the Affordable Health Care act, $650 million for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Native American Housing Block Grant program, $395 million for Department of Justice (DOJ) public safety initiatives in Indian country and $352 million for Public Safety and Justice programs funded by the BIA.
Kevin Brown, who is chief of the Pamunkey Tribe in Virginia and stands on a promising threshold to become federally recognized by 2015, said he is encouraged by the budget increase as a recognition as to the importance of the viability of Indian country.
“All of this sounds promising as well as encouraging,” Brown said. “If I am not mistaken, I also believe there are line items in the BIA’s budget which allows for the allocation of funds of newly federally recognized tribes. I’d like to be able to secure some of that funding.
“All of my time has been volunteered, my assistant chief volunteers as well as my secretary. I’d like to get broadband, and have a computer for the tribal office to get connected to the world.”
Youths’ suicides rattle Indian country: The silence that has shrouded suicide in Indian country is being pierced by growing alarm at the sheer numbers of young Native Americans taking their own lives — more than three times the national average, and up to 10 times the average on some reservations.
By Sari Horwitz, Washington Post
SACATON, ARIZ. The tamarisk tree down the dirt road from Tyler Owens’s house is the one where the teenage girl who lived across the road hanged herself. Don’t climb it, don’t touch it, admonished Owens’s grandmother when Tyler, now 18, was younger.
There are other taboo markers around the Gila River Indian reservation — eight young people committed suicide here over the course of a single year.
“We’re not really open to conversation about suicide,” Owens said. “It’s kind of like a private matter, a sensitive topic. If a suicide happens, you’re there for the family. Then after that, it’s kind of just, like, left alone.”
But the silence that has shrouded suicide in Indian country is being pierced by growing alarm at the sheer number of young Native Americans taking their own lives — more than three times the national average, and up to 10 times on some reservations.
A toxic collection of pathologies — poverty, unemployment, domestic violence, sexual assault, alcoholism and drug addiction — has seeped into the lives of young people among the nation’s 566 tribes. Reversing their crushing hopelessness, Indian experts say, is one of the biggest challenges for these communities.
“The circumstances are absolutely dire for Indian children,” said Theresa M. Pouley, the chief judge of the Tulalip Tribal Court in Washington state and a member of the Indian Law and Order Commission.
Pouley fluently recites statistics in a weary refrain: “One-quarter of Indian children live in poverty, versus 13 percent in the United States. They graduate high school at a rate 17 percent lower than the national average. Their substance-abuse rates are higher. They’re twice as likely as any other race to die before the age of 24. They have a 2.3 percent higher rate of exposure to trauma. They have two times the rate of abuse and neglect. Their experience with post-traumatic stress disorder rivals the rates of returning veterans from Afghanistan.”
In one of the broadest studies of its kind, the Justice Department recently created a national task force to examine the violence and its impact on American Indian and Alaska Native children, part of an effort to reduce the number of Native American youth in the criminal justice system. The level of suicide has startled some task force officials, who consider the epidemic another outcome of what they see as pervasive despair.
Last month, the task force held a hearing on the reservation of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community in Scottsdale. During their visit, Associate Attorney General Tony West, the third-highest-ranking Justice Department official, and task force members drove to Sacaton, about 30 miles south of Phoenix, and met with Owens and 14 other teenagers.
“How many of you know a young person who has taken their life?” the task force’s co-chairman asked. All 15 raised their hands.
“That floored me,” West said.
A ‘trail of broken promises’
There is an image that Byron Dorgan, co-chairman of the task force and a former senator from North Dakota, can’t get out of his head. On the Spirit Lake Nation in North Dakota years ago, a 14-year-old girl named Avis Little Wind hanged herself after lying in bed in a fetal position for 90 days. Her death followed the suicides of her father and sister.
“She lay in bed for all that time, and nobody, not even her school, missed her,” said Dorgan, a Democrat who chaired the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. “Eventually she got out of bed and killed herself. Avis Little Wind died of suicide because mental-health treatment wasn’t available on that reservation.”
Indian youth suicide cannot be looked at in a historical vacuum, Dorgan said. The agony on reservations is directly tied to a “trail of broken promises to American Indians,” he said, noting treaties dating back to the 19th century that guaranteed but largely didn’t deliver health care, education and housing.
“The children bear the brunt of the misery,” Dorgan said, adding that tribal leaders are working hard to overcome the challenges. “But there is no sense of urgency by our country to do anything about it.”
At the first hearing of the Justice Department task force, in Bismarck, N.D., in December, Sarah Kastelic, deputy director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association, used a phrase that comes up repeatedly in deliberations among experts: “historical trauma.”
Youth suicide was once virtually unheard of in Indian tribes. A system of child protection, sustained by tribal child-rearing practices and beliefs, flourished among Native Americans, and everyone in a community was responsible for the safeguarding of young people, Kastelic said.
“Child maltreatment was rarely a problem,” said Kastelic, a member of the native village of Ouzinkie in Alaska, “because of these traditional beliefs and a natural safety net.”
But these child-rearing practices were often lost as the federal government sought to assimilate native people and placed children — often against their parents’ wishes — in “boarding schools” that were designed to immerse Indian children in Euro-American culture.
In many cases, the schools, mostly located off reservations, were centers of widespread sexual, emotional and physical abuse. The transplantation of native children continued into the 1970s; there were 60,000 children in such schools in 1973 as the system was being wound down. They are the parents and grandparents of today’s teenagers.
Michelle Rivard-Parks, a University of North Dakota law professor who has spent 10 years working in Indian country as a prosecutor and tribal lawyer, said that the “aftermath of attempts to assimilate American and Alaska Natives remains ever present . . . and is visible in higher-than-average rates of suicide.”
The Justice Department task force is gathering data and will not offer its final recommendations to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on ways to mitigate violence and suicide until this fall. For now, West, Dorgan and other members are listening to tribal leaders and experts at hearings on reservations around the country.
“We know that the road to involvement in the juvenile justice system is often paved by experiences of victimization and trauma,” West said. “We have a lot of work to do. There are too many young people in Indian country who don’t see a future for themselves, who have lost all hope.”
The testimony West is hearing is sometimes bitter, and witnesses often come forward with great reluctance.
“It’s tough coming forward when you’re a victim,” said Deborah Parker, 43, the vice chair of the Tulalip Tribes in Washington state. “You have to relive what happened. . . . A reservation is like a small town, and you can face a backlash.”
Parker didn’t talk about her sexual abuse as a child until two years ago, when she publicly told of being repeatedly raped when she “was the size of a couch cushion.”
“A majority of our girls have struggled with sexual and domestic violence — not once but repeatedly,” said Parker, who has started a program to help young female survivors and try to prevent suicide. “One of my girls, Sophia, was murdered on my reservation by her partner. Another one of our young girls took her life.”
Stories of violence and abuse
Owens recalls how she used to climb the tamarisk tree with her cousin to look for the nests of mourning doves and pigeons — until the suicide of the 16-year-old girl. The next year, the girl’s distraught father hanged himself in the same tree.
“He was devastated and he was drinking, and he hung himself too,” Owens said.
She and a good friend, Richard Stone, recently talked about their broken families and their own histories with violence. When Owens was younger, her uncle physically abused her until her mother got a restraining order. Stone, 17, was beaten by his alcoholic mother.
“My mother hit me with anything she could find,” Stone said. “A TV antenna, a belt, the wooden end of a shovel.”
Social workers finally removed him and his brothers and sister from their home, and he was placed in a group home and then a foster home.
Both Owens and Stone dream about leaving “the rez.” Owens hopes to get an internship in Washington and have a career as a politician; Stone wants to someday be a counselor or a psychiatrist.
Owens sometimes rides her bike out into the alfalfa and cotton fields near Sacaton, the tiny town named after the coarse grasses that once grew on the Sonoran Desert land belonging to the Akimel O’Odham and Pee Posh tribes. She and her friends sing a peaceful, healing song she learned from the elders about a bluebird who flies west at night, blessing the sun and bringing on the moon and stars.
One recent evening, as the sun dipped below the Sierra Estrella mountains, the two made their way to Owens’s backyard. They climbed onto her trampoline and began jumping in the moonlight, giggling like teenagers anywhere in America.
But later this month on the reservation, they will take on an adult task. Owens, Stone and a group of other teenagers here will begin a two-day course on suicide prevention. A hospital intervention trainer will engage them in role-playing and teach them how to spot the danger signs.
“In Indian country, youths need to have somebody there for them,” Owens said. “I wish I had been that somebody for the girl in the tamarisk tree.”
The marbled murrelet, a federally protected seabird that nests in the coastal forests of Washington, Oregon and Northern California. | credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
SEATTLE — The Washington Board of Natural Resources voted unanimously Tuesday to approve the sale of 200 acres of the Olympic Peninsula that are home to the threatened marbled murrelet. The money from the timber sale will go to the University of Washington.
200 acres might not seem like that big of a deal, but not if you ask Peter Goldman, director of the Washington Forest Law Center.
“These 200 acres are extremely important,” he said. “These lands around these timber sales are heavily used and officially mapped as occupied by the marbled murrelet.”
Goldman was referring to a rare seabird whose numbers have plummetted to the point that it’s listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. It nests in old-growth coastal forests of Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and California.
Goldman is working with several environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, Seattle Audubon Society, and Olympic Forest Coalition, who oppose the timber sale because it will mean clearcutting in murrelet habitat. The tracts are known as the “Goodmint” and “Rainbow Rock” timber sales, and are located on the western part of the Olympic Peninsula.
There are roughly 2,000 murrelets left in Washington and the population has been declining by up to 8 percent each year over the past decade. The birds can fly upwards of 50 miles to forage the ocean for food. For timber cutters and marbled murrelet alike, coastal forests on the Olympic Peninsula are highly desirable, and harder to come by.
Last year the University of Washington received $1.35 million from timber sales on state lands, according to the state Department of Natural Resources.
“So the question,” Goldman says, “is whether the University of Washington is really saying they want to log the last remaining habitat for the marbled murrelet for approximately $600,000.”
In an emailed statement, a spokesman for the University of Washington said: “This is the Department of Natural Resource’s decision. Some people may disagree but it is their call.”
Tom DeLuca, the director of the University of Washington’s school of Environmental and Forest Sciences, is the vice chairman of the state Board of Natural Resources, which makes decisions about timber sales. DeLuca did not vote on this particular sale and did not respond to requests for an interview.
Peter Goldmark (not Goldman) is the chairman of that board, and the commissioner of public lands for the state of Washington.
“The opponents make an emotional issue that these are the last acres available when in fact they’re not,” Commissioner Goldmark said.
These 200 acres may not be the last remaining marbled murrelet habitat but they’re part of it.
In a report released in 2008, the Department of Natural Resources identified key habitat that should be protected for marbled murrelet throughout the state. The 200 acres that are now up for sale were included in that report.
When asked about the report, Goldmark downplayed the findings.
“This is a science team report only,” he said. “It’s not proposed as a plan because, first and foremost, our major responsibility is a fiduciary interest to supply revenue for the trust beneficiaries.”
Goldmark added that the DNR has refrained from logging on thousands of acres elsewhere in the area, at a significant cost to those “trust beneficiaries” — like the University of Washington, Washington State University and public schools throughout the state, which received almost $175 millionfrom timber sales last year.
The 200 acres will be put up for sale in April. Environmental groups have indicated they will to file a lawsuit in the next 30 days.
Billy Frank junior, a Nisqually Tribal elder passes out hugs in 2011 to students at Wa He Lut School in Nisqually. The school sits just off the Nisqually River at Franks’s Landing, once the frontline of the Northwest fish wars in which Billy Franks was arrested many times for fishing off the Nisqually reservation. (The News Tribune file) DEAN J. KOEPFLER
By Lisa Bauman, Associated Press
OLYMPIA, Wash. — American Indian tribal members arrested while exercising their treaty fishing rights before 1975 would get the chance to clear their criminal records under a bill headed to Gov. Jay Inslee’s desk.
House Bill 2080 passed the Senate unanimously Wednesday. It passed the House in February.
The measure would allow tribal members to apply to the sentencing court to expunge their related misdemeanor, gross misdemeanor or felony convictions. Family members and tribal officials could also seek a vacated criminal record on behalf of a deceased person. The court would have the discretion to vacate the conviction, unless certain conditions apply, such as if the person was convicted for a violent crime or crime against a person.
Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle, said the bill corrects a mistake.
“It’s the closest this branch of government can come to an apology,” he said.
Tribal members and others were arrested in the 1960s and 1970s while asserting their right to fish for salmon off-reservation under treaties signed with the federal government more than 100 years before. At the time, however, those acts violated Washington state regulations, and there were raids by game wardens and other clashes with police. The Northwest fish-ins known as the “Fish Wars” were modeled after civil rights movement sit-ins and were part of larger demonstrations to assert American Indian rights nationwide.
Sen. John McCoy, D-Tulalip, said he knew a tribal elder who wanted to travel to Canada but couldn’t due to a felony conviction for asserting his fishing rights.
“He’s passed away but I’m sure his family members would appreciate it,” he said of the bill.
Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2014/03/05/3018302/senate-oks-fish-wars-bill-heads.html#storylink=cpy
Vimeo/Moccasins on the Ground Can a Tipi Stop a Pipeline? Many American Indians are game to find out. Above, a still from the video compiled by Moccasins on the Ground about Keystone XL resistance.
From the Oglala Lakota Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation to the Rosebud Sioux and others, American Indians are standing firm against the Keystone XL pipeline, which would run through or skirt their territory if approved.
The Lakota Sioux have been pushing back against TransCanada, the conglomerate that wants to run the 1,700-mile-long pipeline from the oil sands of Alberta to the Gulf Coast of Mexico, for years. Last week the Rosebud Sioux passed a unanimous resolution against the project. And a group of American Indian tribal leaders opposing the pipeline have vowed to take a “last stand” and are working together, training opponents to put up passive resistance if it comes to that.
“We see what the tar sand oil mining is causing in Canada, we see what the oil drilling in the Dakotas is doing—as they gouge her [Mother Nature] and rape her and hurt her, we know it’s all the same ecosystem that we all need to live in,” Lakota activist and Pine Ridge resident Debra White Plume told Inter Press Service News Agency last month. “For us it’s a spiritual stand—it’s our relative, it hurts us.”
The Rosebud Sioux Tribe approved a resolution on February 25 to reject outright a document that the federal government wants the tribe’s leaders to sign saying that they have been adequately consulted according to the law.
“This Programmatic Agreement for the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline project has not met the standards of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, because the Rosebud Sioux Tribe has not been consulted,” said Council Representative Russell Eagle Bear in a statement from the tribe. “Additionally, the Cultural Surveys that have been conducted already are inadequate and did not cover adequate on-the-ground coverage to verify known culturally sensitive sites and areas.”
Keystone XL would wend its way through the Great Sioux Nation, including the lands of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, making them the appropriate tribe to be consulted on land within Tripp, Gregory, Lyman, Todd, and Mellette Counties in South Dakota, the statement said.
“This is a flawed document and it will not be accepted,” Rosebud Sioux Tribal Council President Cyril Scott said of the federal agreement they are being asked to sign. “It is our job as the Tribal Council to take action to protect the health and welfare of our people, and this resolution puts the federal government on notice.”
It is not the first time the government has been accused of fabricating consultation. The first draft of the environmental assessment report, released a year ago, met with resistance from tribes over what they said were inaccuracies, shoddy research and incomplete consultation, among other objections.
The U.S. Department of State is currently evaluating the final version of the environmental assessment report and accepting input from several federal agencies during a 90-day public comment period that began on January 31, when the report was issued, according to U.S. News & World Report. The State Department is also studying the consultants on the report as more and more revelations about their ties to TransCanada come to light.
Nearly 400 people, many of them students, were arrested last weekend when they chained themselves to the White House fence in protest of the pipeline, the Washington Post reported.
The Native group Moccasins on the Ground has been conducting training sessions and recently hosted a conference in Rapid City, Help Save Mother Earth from the Keystone Pipeline, to teach civil disobedience tactics.
“As the process of public comment, hearings, and other aspects of an international application continue, each door is closing to protecting sacred water and our Human Right to Water,” said Debra White Plume, a Lakota activist who lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation and has been very vocal in opposing the pipeline, in a statement from Moccasins on the Ground. “Soon the only door left open will be the door to direct action.”
Below, Moccasins on the Ground leaders explain what draws them to protect the sacred water and address the question, Can a tipi stop a pipeline?
Despite banning the sale, growing and processing of legal marijuana, the Yakima City Council is seeking tax money from the upcoming pot industry.
The Yakima Herald-Republic reports the city council voted unanimously Friday to seek state tax revenue raised by businesses in cities that do allow legalized marijuana. Yakima joined a letter by the Association of Washington Cities asking the state to share recreational marijuana taxes with cities.
City staff and police argued that legalized marijuana from other parts of the state will strain public resources in the city.
Councilman Dave Ettl says the city’s position is not hypocritical.
Alison Holcomb, who led the initiative that legalized marijuana, says cities like Yakima contribute to public-safety problems by banning marijuana and pushing it into illegal activity.
A plan for studying issues related to a possible mini-dam on the South Fork Skykomish River near Index has been approved by a federal agency, despite Tulalip Tribes concern that the study won’t accurately assess the possible effects on fish.
“We have met numerous times with PUD and have provided extensive comments regarding the study plans and the proposed project but believe our comments were not adequately addressed,” Williams wrote in the letter, dated Feb. 18.
FERC determined that the PUD’s study plan was mostly adequate and sent a letter to the utility Jan. 30 giving it the go-ahead. Some small changes were recommended. Williams’ letter was in response to approval of the study.
The PUD could have the study done and ready for public comment by early 2015, spokesman Neil Neroutsos said.
If the utility formally applies to build the mini-dam, which it has yet to do, FERC would have the final say.
The possibility of any type of dam on the scenic stretch of river above Sunset Falls has drawn fierce resistance from neighbors and environmental groups.
The $133 million project would involve diverting water from a pooled area behind a seven-foot inflatable weir above Sunset Falls into a 2,200-foot pipeline downstream to a powerhouse just below the falls. It’s expected to generate enough power for about 10,000 homes. Some water would be allowed to flow over the weir.
Chinook, coho, pink and chum salmon spawn above the falls and head downstream.
The tribes have listed several conditions under which they’d support the project. They include assurance that stream flow will be adequate and establishment of a reliable fish-counting system. They don’t believe the PUD’s study plan accomplishes those goals.
Kim Moore, an assistant general manager for the PUD, acknowledged some differences with the tribes but said he thought the Tulalips and the utility staff were in agreement on most of the points.
“I was caught off guard by the tone of this letter” from the Tulalips, Moore said.
The designation does not prevent development, but FERC must take it into account in its decision on the project.
The PUD has asked the council for a rule change that would allow a mini-dam in a protected area if it can be shown that it’s helpful to fish and wildlife. A decision on that request could come this summer, council spokesman John Harrison said.
The Tulalips have said they could back the rule change if their conditions are met. Otherwise, “it is exceedingly difficult for the tribes to support exempting this site from the protected areas list,” Williams wrote in the Feb. 18 letter.
The PUD has agreed to monitor fish passage after the dam is built but did not include a fish count in the study to be done beforehand. Officials say it’s difficult to accurately measure the number of fry and fingerlings headed downstream.
“It’s an expensive proposition and it’s hard to get really good data,” Moore said.
FERC agreed with the PUD on that issue.
“Studying the out- migration timing of smolts in the project area is unnecessary because the timing is adequately understood,” the FERC letter reads.
The utility and the tribes also disagree on the amount of time needed to measure river flow to make sure that enough water will run over the weir to carry young fish downstream.
The PUD’s plan is to sample one migration season — this spring and summer. The tribes want two years of data.
“We don’t think there’s a need,” Moore said.
The agency again agreed with the PUD, in part. It recommended that the utility study at least three different flow conditions to provide a range of scenarios. If not enough data are collected this year, more studies could be required next year.
Moore said the PUD is doing the fish studies it believes are required by the federal government, 17 in all.
He hopes to work things out with tribal officials.
“We have overall a good relationship with the Tulalips,” Moore said. “I do not think we’re that far apart, quite frankly.”
Williams, too, said agreement is possible.
“I think there’s still some room to work with the PUD to try get part-way there on some of the issues, but we’re not there yet,” he said.
Nez Perce Tribal Fisheries/Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission Salmon nests, known as redds, in the Clearwater River. Fall 2013 saw a record number along with an equally record number of returning salmon.
Source: Indian Country Today Media Network
Fall Chinook salmon not only returned in droves to spawn in the Snake River Basin, but also created a record number of redds, or nests, that bodes well for the future.
Data culled from several sources show that a record number of salmon spawned in the Snake River Basin in 2013, boosted by a record number of wild fall Chinook that passed Lower Granite Dam, the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC) announced on February 25. It was the highest number of wild fish to return since the Ice Harbor Dam was built in 1960.
“The multi-agency run reconstruction of fish returning to Lower Granite Dam revealed 21,000 wild fall Chinook returned to the Snake River in 2013, accounting for 37.5 percent of the total Snake River fall Chinook return of 56,000 fish,” the CRITFC said in a statement. “Over 6,300 redds were created in the Snake River and its tributaries between Lower Granite and Hells Canyon dams. The increase in Snake River returns and the increased distribution in redds were aided by tribal programs that supplement existing Snake River fall Chinook populations.”
Fall Chinook numbers were already surpassing expectations in the Columbia River, with more than a million returning, the CRITFC noted back in September 2013. Moreover, fall 2014 is looking to surpass even that record, with a potential 1.6 million returning, the Lewiston Tribune reported on February 21.
Now, Northwest tribes are again jubilant at yet another “return of the king,” as Chinook are known. The Snake River return records are being attributed to the success of an innovative hatchery program that intermingles hatchery fish with wild. It was a controversial notion when it was first implemented, but subsequent studies have indicated that the interbreeding does not harm either population.
“The Nez Perce Tribe’s Snake River recovery program has resulted in fall chinook returns that the region can truly celebrate,” said CRITFC Chairman and Nez Perce Tribe Executive Committee member Joel Moffett in the statement. “Despite returning to a river noted for hot temperatures and poor passage conditions, these resilient fish were able to spawn in numbers not witnessed in many, many years.”
Every year the Nez Perce Tribe releases 450,000 yearling fall chinook and 2.8 million sub-yearling fall Chinook, the CRITFC said. In all, the broader program releases five million juvenile fish back into the Snake and Clearwater river systems. Since 1990, when the adult fall Chinook return numbered just 78 in the Snake River, the number has increased to 2013’s 21,000 wild adults, the commission said. More information on the ins and outs, as well as the history, of the Nez Perce restoration project is at Snake River Fall Chinook.
“Abundance is a key to success in the Columbia Basin. The Nez Perce Tribe has shown the Columbia Basin that we can rebuild salmon runs with the assistance of hatcheries,” said CRITFC Executive Director Paul Lumley in the statement. “We are anticipating a lot of fall chinook returning to the Columbia River this year. For anyone wondering why, the answer lies with tribal programs like the Nez Perce Tribe’s Snake River Fall Chinook Program. It is as simple as putting fish back in the rivers and protecting the watersheds where fish live.”
Moffett noted that the record numbers are just the beginning and do not guarantee future success without continued effort.
“This year’s run gives us hope for the future, but we still have a long way to go,” Moffett said. “We must continue to do everything we can to ensure the fish runs continue on this path toward a healthy, self-sustaining population capable of supporting well-managed tribal and non-tribal fisheries. Doing so will ensure the success of this run is repeated in years to come.”
