Finally! Indian Country Gets Its Labor Force Report

laborpopreport

The Interior Department has published the latest report on the American Indian population and labor force, updating and improving on the previous report that was published in 2007 with data from nine years ago.

The 2013 American Indian and Labor Force Report was published January 16 and sent to Congress as mandated by Public Law 102-477– the Indian Employment, Training, and Related Services Demonstration Act of 1992.

The 151-page report presents findings from the 2010 Labor Force Survey of American Indians and Alaska combined with statistics produced by the 2010 U.S. Census–the most recent year for which adequate statistics were available. The data is based on populations of American Indians and Alaska Natives living on or near the service areas of federally recognized tribes. It doesn’t count members of federally recognized tribes who are living far away from federally recognized tribes’ areas – one of several complications created by data limitations.

Spoiler alert: This report full of statistical tables and charts is not your relaxing bedtime easy-to-read government report (if indeed such a report exists).

Attention government policy wonks: This one’s for you.

Some of the report’s main findings are:

— Approximately 28.1 percent of the Native population is below 16 years of age, with slightly more boys than girls. Approximately 64.8 percent is between16 and 64, with slightly more females. Those ages 65 and older represent only 7.1 percent of the population, with more women than men (4.0 percent versus 3.1 percent).

— About 50 percent of all the Native Americans studied, who are 16 years or older, are employed either full or part time in civilian jobs.

— Approximately 21 percent of all Native American employees work for a government (federal, state, local, or tribal).

— In some states, less than 50 percent of Native Americans 16 years or older among those studied are working.

— An estimated 23 percent of all Native American families in the United States in 2010 earned incomes that are below the poverty line.

— The highest estimated rate of poverty is in South Dakota, with 43-47 percent of Native American families in 2010 earning incomes below the poverty line.

The report is produced and published by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) under Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn, who had promised its completion in 2013. The two-week delay in publication was caused in part by the two-week government shutdown last October.

RELATED: Legal and Political Questions Surround Interior’s Decision Not to Release Tribal Jobs Survey

“It was a tough year with the government shut down and sequestration so everything suffered a bit and, quite frankly, this report is quite a challenge,” Washburn told Indian Country Today Media Network.

Washburn said he hopes the report, together with other data, will be useful in determining relative needs for resources in different regions across Indian country. But “[I]t will always necessarily be a historical document. We simply do not have the staff to produce up-to-the-minute data, and the report is called for only once every two years. That said, it can give a general impression of relative need.”

The Interior Department came under fire by Congress last summer for the delay in publishing the report. The report is supposed to be published every two years, but the department didn’t produced a report in 2009 or 2011. Washburn, who was appointed in late 2012, got the report out in a little over a year.

RELATED: Congress Investigating Interior on Missing Tribal Jobs Reports That Broke Law

RELATED: Senators Rebuke Interior on Missing Tribal Jobs Reports

The law mandating the report doesn’t provide funding for it. One full-time employee – an economist – was assigned the task of producing the report. “It would take a small army of researchers to capture all the nuances so we are limited. The idea is to have higher quality data produced and this report does have higher quality data than previous reports because we were much more careful about the methodology.”

But it’s a question of priorities, according to Washburn. Although the report is “not unimportant,” Washburn said he didn’t want to pull human resources from other important aspects of the BIA’s mission “and I’m not sure Congress would like us to. I don’t think Congress wants us to be a statistical agency. I think it wants us to provide services to Indian people. I think it’s going to be hard for us to regularly produce high quality statistical reports.”

So why not hand the task over to the Census Bureau or Labor Department with their armies of researchers with expertise in statistics?

“I’m not authorized to do that,” Washburn said.

Until Congress considers such a hand-over, the BIA will consult more with Indian country “to find how they think we could be doing this report more effectively… We have an obligation if we produce a report there has to be some integrity to it and a certain level of quality is required,” Washburn said. “And that’s difficult to achieve with our limited resources.”

 

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/01/29/finally-indian-country-gets-its-labor-force-report-153303

Humetewa Close to Becoming First Female Native on Federal Bench

diane_humetewa_2009_orig

Hopi citizen Diane Humetewa smiled through a positive nomination hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 28 in her effort to be confirmed as a U.S. district judge in Arizona.

President Barack Obama nominated Humetewa to the position in 2013 after his administration previously forced her to step down from a U.S. attorney position in Arizona in 2009. At that time, the president chose Dennis Burke to take her position, but Burke resigned in August 2011 after admitting to leaking information about a federal agent. Humetewa went on to become a professor and lawyer at Arizona State University.

RELATED: Obama Nominates Native American Woman to Federal Court

Many in Indian country were glad that Obama decided to give Humetewa a second look, this time to become the first female Native American to serve on the federal bench. She would be only the third Indian to do so in history if confirmed to the position by the full Senate.

Judging from support given to her by both Democratic and Republican senators at her nomination hearing, she will likely easily pass the committee, and then her nomination will proceed for consideration by the full Senate.

One of Humetewa’s main champions is Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) who recommended her for both her previous U.S. attorney position and for the federal judgeship. The senator, whom she previously worked for when he led the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, introduced her with supportive remarks at the confirmation hearing.

“It has been said that the Arizona bench ‘would be enriched by a member who reflects the community it serves.’ With that in mind, I am particularly excited about our third nominee, Diane J. Humetewa, also to the District of Arizona, in Phoenix,” McCain said. “Ms. Humetewa’s nomination is truly historic: Being a member of the Hopi Nation, if Ms. Humetewa is confirmed, she would be the first Native American woman to ever serve on the federal bench.

“Ms. Humetewa’s service to the Hopi Nation, which includes work as prosecutor and an appellate court judge to the tribe, runs deep and has remained a cornerstone of her career,” McCain added. “She is also a long-time advocate for victim’s rights, which can be traced back to her service as a victim advocate before she attended law school.”

McCain’s support for Humetewa serves as a stark contrast to his criticism of the president’s nomination of Cherokee citizen Keith Harper to become a U.S. representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. Harper’s nomination stalled in the Senate last December due partly to McCain’s concerns about Harper’s human rights record, but Harper was re-nominated earlier in January to the same position by the president.

RELATED: McCain Prompts New Questions and Investigations Involving Harper’s U.N. Nomination

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), who chaired the hearing, said that she was impressed that McCain and committee member Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) worked in a bipartisan fashion with the White House to help fill several Arizona judicial vacancies.

Humetewa said at the hearing that she was very pleased to be joined by family members, friends and colleagues. She added that her parents were watching the hearing via webcam from back home on the Hopi reservation.

In response to a question from Hirono regarding how her past judicial work with the Hopi Tribe would help her in this position, Humetewa said that she learned to be objective and timely in her decision making during her time with that tribal court.

In response to a question from Flake on the implementation of pro-tribal elements of the Violence Against Women Act and the Tribal Law and Order Act, Humetewa noted that both laws are in their infancy, but she said she looks forward to working with tribes that take on the increased jurisdictional opportunities offered under those laws.

Also in response to a question from Flake, Humetewa noted that she helped prepare a 2007 report by the Native American Subcommittee of the U.S. Sentencing Commission that found disparities in the application of sentencing guidelines to Native Americans. Penalties were harsher for Indians who committed assaults in Indian country versus non-Indian who were sentenced in state courts for similar assaults, she testified. If sentencing guidelines are to be modified in the future, she said tribal consultation would be important to achieve.

Flake, impressed with Humetewa’s responses, said he was delighted by her “trailblazing way.”

 

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/01/29/humetewa-close-becoming-first-female-native-federal-bench-153320

Tribes could get help for sockeye fishery closure

Associated Press

SEATTLE — Commercial and tribal fishermen in Washington state could be getting federal help after the closure of the Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery last year cost them millions of dollars.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker issued a disaster declaration for the fishery Tuesday. That allows Congress to send money to the affected communities.

The Fraser River flows from the Canadian Rockies into the Strait of Georgia at Vancouver, British Columbia. Low returns of sockeye to the river prompted the closure.

Several Washington tribes, including the Lummis, Nooksacks and Tulalips, fish for sockeye. They and the state’s nontribal, commercial fishermen typically bring in a collective $4.1 million per year from sockeye. The Commerce Department says last year, the total was just $115,000.

Pritzker said that if Congress appropriates money, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will work closely with Congress, the tribes and the state to distribute it.

Fishing life at Tulalip

Salmon cooked traditionally, Sebastien and Eleanor Williams, Tulalip Bay by the old dining hall, now Tulalip Montessori. Totem Beach, Tulalip c.1960s. Courtesy of Mae Williams.
Salmon cooked traditionally, Sebastien and Eleanor Williams, Tulalip Bay by the old dining hall, now Tulalip Montessori. Totem Beach, Tulalip c.1960s. Courtesy of Mae Williams.

By Andrew Gobin, Tulalip News

It was the first day of my fifth grade year, but I was not going to be in class. At 5:00 a.m. while my classmates slept, waiting to start yet another year of school, I had already had breakfast and bundled up for the opening of the Silver (Coho) Salmon run. We made a beach seine set, right around a school of Silvers. I had never seen so many fish. We had 1500 fish in that set, and one lone chum for good measure. Growing up, this was my life. My summers were spent beach seining and roundhauling as much as I could. Each year, I would miss the first week of school, which always seemed to coincide with the start of the Silver run. And as the fishing seasons continued into November, the weather worsened, and I would beg to go fishing with dad. It is a way of life for my family, for many families, at Tulalip and all along the Puget Sound. For many, it was a living.

Tulalip fisherman Clyde Williams recalls early fishing in the 40s and 50s.

“We moved to the beach the day after school got out. We would buy our shoes at the commissary; everyone had Navy shoes. We were beach seining. We lived on the beach. Next to me was Stan, Bernie, and the Cheers. When we were fishing, if there was something wrong with our net we’d have to stretch it out at low tide and rehang it.

Just about everybody around here had a smoke house, back when we lived down there at the big house. We fished all day to fill the smoke house. That’s when everybody stayed at the big house. All the women would butcher fish all day long, we’d have to go out there as kids and pack wood in for the smokehouse, and we were the ones that had to keep the fire up. They’d always tell us ‘don’t you pile too much wood on you’ll burn the smokehouse down.’ We tended fires all day, we had to go check the fire every hour, make sure it was still burning. Even all night we’d have to go out there. They’d leave it in there for two days, and that was enough.

Fishing really took off. Everybody was catching fish, and then we went further out, changing from seining, to gillnetting, to roundhauling. Wes Charles and Chuck James brought the gillnetting to Tulalip. They were the first ones. A lot of people don’t know that anymore. Roundhauling was really something different. Bernie and Herman were the first ones to go out there; they roundhauled by hand for years before they did it with power. All of those guys used to get two or three hundred kings in a set. There was a state gillnetter that used to shoot at us. Other state boats tried to ram our boats and run up our nets chopping them all up.”

Fishing Kings Lawrence Jones, Penny Jones, and Stan Jones, Spee-Bi-Dah c.1950s. Courtesy of Stan and JoAnn Jones.
Fishing Kings Lawrence Jones, Penny Jones, and Stan Jones, Spee-Bi-Dah c.1950s. Courtesy of Stan and JoAnn Jones.

Tulalip fisherman Stan Jones remembers fishing growing up in the 40s and 50s, and the struggle that grew through the 60s as the state began enforcing new laws, leading up to the Boldt Decision. Stan stepped away from fishing serving 44 years on Tulalip Tribal Council and was a key player during the Boldt Decision.

“Dad always had a net in the back of the house, in the back room. He hung his nets in there, sewed every mesh out of linen. Once when he was out I went in and tried to sew his net; he came home and cut all my work out and redid it. We just had short nets, dad stayed on shore or up in the river.

When dad was sick, me and my brother Junior, we’d take the boat out and fish. Once up in the river we had about 25 or 30 Kings.

We couldn’t fish during the day, so we fished at night. The state fisheries officer John LaPlant, he used to come by and harass us. ‘If you’re gonna be here, put some lights on your boat,’ he’d say. Then the other rule was we couldn’t be more than 600 hundred feet offshore, so we just had little short nets. They were always coming by to see how far we stretched our nets out. If they thought you were too far, they arrest you right off the boat, and let your boat and net go adrift.”

Growing up, I heard these stories constantly. I almost feel like I was there, like I knew John LaPlant. I grew up in a post war era. Playing in the backyard there were many parts to boats and old fishing equipment,  old corks scattered from hanging nets, and there was the old smokehouse. Grandpa used to smoke fish, not like the old days. Fishing and smoking fish though, that’s when the stories came out.

I learned the shores of Tulalip by the fishing landmarks and family grounds. Dad always says things like, “Run this end of the net up there into Roy Henry’s grounds.”

I didn’t know then, but I was learning about who we were, who we are, and the struggle to protect that. Dad would point out places on the shoreline, telling some fish stories. Even if we weren’t fishing, maybe driving around Tacoma or up across Deception Pass, Dad was always telling fishing stories. If grandpa was with us we had twice the stories. Amidst the stories, there was talk about the regulations and the law, and the fish wars. Today, I realize that the life I live fishing, like many others, was hard fought to protect. It is so much more as well. It is our identity, it defined our parents and grandparents, and it is our way of life.

Deadline approaches for first Cobell land consolidation offers

Source: Indianz.com

Deadlines are fast approaching for Indian landowners to accept offers being made under the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations.

The first offers went out last month to members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of South Dakota. Responses are due starting this Wednesday.

Offers went out to members of the Makah Nation of Washington last month as well. Responses are due at various times, until February 10, according to a reminder from the the Interior Department.

Participation is entirely voluntary. Acquisitions will be paid out of a $1.9 billion land consolidation fund that was created by the $3.4 billion Cobell settlement.

A portion of each purchase will go to the Cobell scholarship fund. Up to $60 million will be awarded to Indian students.

The Oglala Sioux and Makah were the first tribes to sign cooperative agreements under the program. Offers will be made on other reservations in the country.

Klamath Youth Program Melding Science and Traditional Knowledge Wins National Award

U.S. Fish and Wildlife ServiceService biologists provide tribal youth in northern California and southern Oregon with a unique opportunity to combine their cultural knowledge about the local ecology with the high-tech capabilities of NASA, the Service and other federal agencies.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Service biologists provide tribal youth in northern California and southern Oregon with a unique opportunity to combine their cultural knowledge about the local ecology with the high-tech capabilities of NASA, the Service and other federal agencies.

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

A unique collaboration between a Klamath youth leadership development program and U.S. government researchers has won the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Partners in Conservation award for its use of traditional knowledge in conjunction with modern science.

The Klamath Tribal Leadership Development for Integrative Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge Program, operating in northern California and southern Oregon, was one of just four recipients working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Klamath Tribes said in a media release. The partnership was one of 20 recipients overall out of groups working with various federal agencies on environmental conservation and won for its work in habitat restoration and the implications for fisheries management.

The cornerstone was the Klamath tribal youth program, started last summer to connect scientists and college students to Klamath Basin restoration projects. Juxtaposing traditional knowledge and modern science, youths from the Yurok Tribe, Hoopa Valley Tribe, Karuk Tribe, Quartz Valley Indian Reservation and Klamath Tribes worked with scientists from NASA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Forest Service for 10 weeks in the Klamath Tribal Leadership Development Program for Integrative Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge. Together the partners restored habitat, developed models and collected data from two Klamath watershed tributaries, the Sycan River in Oregon and Shasta Big Springs Creek in California, that support tribal fisheries, the Klamath said in the statement.

The U.S. Department of the Interior noted the unique melding of tribal cultural knowledge with today’s technology that got the program chosen out of the 14 partnerships that were nominated for the award by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Students worked first with tribal elders to gather ancestral knowledge of the region’s lands and waterways, then applied that knowledge to programs whose goal is to restore and manage native fish populations in the Klamath Basin. At the same time, the program gave tribal youth job skills, setting them up as future conservation leaders even as they contributed to present-day management of fish species that are important to indigenous culture and the ecology, the Fish and Wildlife Service said in a release.

“This partnership has the promise to result in some of the most advanced approaches to fisheries management in the country and will help prepare tribal youth for future careers in conservation,” the Fish and Wildlife Service said. “To date, these agencies have brought their collective resources and expertise with established and emerging technologies and have applied these to this collaborative effort, including remote sensing and unmanned aircraft systems. These technologies hold promise for improving our knowledge base and conservation effectiveness through energy efficient, cost-effective approaches to data collection with less impact on our ecosystems.”

Other partners involved were the Nature Conservancy, Humboldt State University, Southern Oregon University and the Oregon Institute of Technology, the Klamath statement said.

“The Department of the Interior is proud to recognize the accomplishments of those who are innovating and collaborating in ways that address today’s complex conservation and stewardship challenges,” said Department of the Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, who handed out the awards on January 16. “These partnerships represent the gold standard for how Interior is doing business across the nation to power our future, strengthen tribal nations, conserve and enhance America’s great outdoors and engage the next generation.”

Proud honorees. (Photo: Courtesy Klamath Tribes)
Proud honorees. (Photo: Courtesy Klamath Tribes)

 

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/01/27/klamath-youth-program-melding-science-and-traditional-knowledge-wins-national-award

Will Keystone XL Pipeline Pump Sexual Violence Into South Dakota?

The human devastation wrought by the economic energy boom in the Great Plains region may get worse for Native women. This nightmare, according to Keith Darling-Berkus has created a culture of misogyny in which sexual violence—including rape, sex trafficking and domestic assault—are normalized. It has been described as “a male-dominated dystopian nightmare.”

That description is especially ominous for Native women, who are 2.5 times more likely to be victims of sexual violence than women of other races. The perpetrators of this violence are overwhelmingly non-Native.

Native advocates are predicting a similar fallout for women in South Dakota if the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline is approved. TransCanada plans to house pipeline construction workers in three rural man-camps located close to reservations in South Dakota. Each camp will house approximately 1,000 workers.

Both law enforcement officials and native and women’s rights advocates cite the emergence of these ‘man-camps’—temporary housing for transient workers—as major contributors to a rise in violence against all women wherever they are established.

According to Assistant U.S. Attorney for South Dakota, Kevin Koliner, Native women comprise 40 percent of sex trafficking victims in the state.

Although some research links the recent oil boom to the emergence of a culture of misogyny in North Dakota, Native-women advocates maintain that the Great Plains of North and South Dakota present fertile ground for such a culture to take hold. They note, for instance, that South Dakota is considered by some men to be a sex tourism destination.

“They come in the fall for pheasant hunting season and in summer for the Sturgis Bike Rally,” says Susan Omanson, executive director of BeFree58 Ministries, a non-profit in Sioux Falls serving survivors of sex trafficking.

Sexual violence, including prostitution and trafficking, are firmly imbedded in the culture and economy of South Dakota .

“Pheasant hunting and the bike rally are economic sacred cows in South Dakota and few residents will dare criticize the industries for fear of losing that influx of cash,” notes Chamberlin, South Dakota-based journalist Maria Burch who has covered the area’s economy for several years. “Most folks around here have to work two or three jobs in order to make ends meet. The income from hunting is very important.”

Revenue from pheasant hunting and the Sturgis Bike Rally represent a significant portion of income for many residents. In Tripp County alone, a popular destination for pheasant hunting, hunters spent copy1.3 million in 2011, according to South Dakota Game Fish and Wildlife Agency. Overall, the state agency reports that hunting pumps $66 million into the state. According to a survey conducted by the Sturgis Rally Department, the overall economic impact of the annual motorcycle rally was over $800 million in 2012.

Although most hunters and bikers in the area are well-behaved, there is a dark side to both those activities, according to U. S. Attorney Brendan Johnson, who says, “Wherever you have a large gathering of men, you have a strong opportunity for prostitution and sex trafficking.”

Advocates for victims of trafficking and prostitution note that there is a strange allure in South Dakota for those looking to purchase commercial sex. “There is a wild west, lawless atmosphere that attracts some visitors to our state,” says Burch. “Not much has really been done to discourage that perception.”

Carmen O’Leary, executive director for the Native Women’s Society of the Great Plains, adds that long-standing prejudice against Native people in the Dakotas contributes to a laissez-faire attitude by the public and law enforcement when it comes to pursuing perpetrators of sex crimes against Native women.

Not surprisingly, she says, the safety of Native women doesn’t figure very prominently in economic development projects in the region.

Although the proposed pipeline promises a huge economic boost for the state, South Dakota is totally unprepared for the hidden social and human costs, says Faith Spotted Eagle, Ihanktunwan (Yankton) and member of the Brave Heart Society. She and other pipeline opponents point to the impact of man camps and boomtown mentality on women in the Bakken oil region of North Dakota.

“The attitude [in the Dakotas] seems to be that the lives of a few Indian women are a small price to pay for economics,” says an advocate who asked not to be identified for fear of negative reaction from her board of directors.

In 2013, The Polaris Project, a non-profit organization combating sex trafficking, ranked South Dakota last in the U.S. in its efforts to enact a basic legal framework to combat trafficking.

Arrests for sex trafficking in South Dakota have overwhelmingly been prosecuted under the federal trafficking law. U.S. Attorney Johnson has made the prosecution of these crimes a priority. After an undercover operation during the 2013 Sturgis Bike Rally, his office prosecuted nine men for sex trafficking. Victims ranged from 12 to 15 years of age.

South Dakota passed a law specifically outlawing human trafficking in 2011. In Sioux Falls, one person has been charged under the state law so far, according to Sam Clemons, Public Information officer for the Sioux Falls Police Department. The dearth of law enforcement in much of rural South Dakota only adds to the problem, notes Burch. “Police are spread pretty thin out here,” she says. She thinks that encourages a sense of impunity in men looking to purchase sex. Burch says some of the patrons of the ultra-expensive hunting lodges come to the area with an outsized sense of entitlement.

Nancy Niles of the Oglala Lakota tribe and former resident of Sturgis agrees that tourism promoters often sell South Dakota with romanticized notions of the Wild West associated with the gold rush and pioneer days, where anything goes. “Prostitution at the rally has become normalized,” she says.

Niles lived in Sturgis for 25 years and raised her family there. During that time she says she watched her country town turn into a thick clot of leather and t-shirt shops, strip clubs and a main street that allows public drinking. Commercial sex workers are brought into the city for the rally, according to Niles.

“People got angry with me when I began to call attention to the prostitution that takes place during the rally,” she says. “People prefer to keep their heads in the sand in order to protect the economic injection that the rally brings.”

The hard-partying, anything-goes atmosphere creates a hostile environment for all women in the area.

Niles and her husband recently moved to Nebraska for their retirement. “I could no longer stand to let my taxes go to support this kind of activity,” she says.

Man camps versus tourism

The male tourists who can afford to stay at an upscale, all-inclusive hunting lodge or bring their bikes on extended visits to the bike rally represent a different demographic than those who will be drawn to work on the Keystone pipeline and live in man camps.

“A lot of these guys who come here to work and live in the man camps are on their last dime. They don’t have a whole lot to lose,” notes Sadie Young Bird, executive director of the Ft. Berthold Coalition Against Violence in North Dakota. Indeed, ABC News recently aired a story calling attention to the large increase of registered sex offenders who have relocated to the Bakken oil region.

Marla Bull Bear, executive director of the Native American Advocacy Program in Winner worries about the close proximity of the proposed man-camp in Colume, 10 miles from Winner. Winner is the town closest to the Rosebud Reservation and has a substantial Native population.

Bull Bear’s organization conducts activities designed to divert youth toward healthy traditional Native ways such as a horse camps and coming of age ceremonies.“ Due to poverty and family dysfunction, many of our youth are so vulnerable. They could present easy targets for sex traffickers,” she says.

“Youth in our groups tell us about girls who simply disappear and end up working in the commercial sex industry. Sex trafficking is already here,” she notes.

Jess Keesis, the mayor of Winner, knows first-hand about the rowdy tendencies of men who work in the oil fields, but he believes the camps that will house the pipeline workers will be different. “I’ve worked in the Alaska oil fields and seen oil booms–this won’t be anything like that,” he says.

According to Keesis, the pipeline construction will be far more short-lived than an oil boom and won’t have long-term negative effects on the community. He estimates that it will take about 14 months to complete the pipeline.

Faith Spotted Eagle, however, describes this attitude as terribly shortsighted. “If a woman is brutalized by a pipeline worker, you are talking about a lifetime of impact.”

She bemoans the sense of powerlessness expressed by communities that will be affected by the pipeline. “The average person thinks they can’t stand up to TransCanada. We have internalized this economic-predator thinking that resembles Stockholm syndrome. Since we feel powerless about corporations taking over our communities, we end up siding with these predators.”

For Spotted Eagle, women who suffer from the fallout of economies such as oil are more than unavoidable externalities. “These women have names; they are our sisters, our daughters, our mothers.”

 

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/01/27/will-keystone-xl-pipeline-pump-sexual-violence-south-dakota-153280

Google Hangout Will Highlight Educational Options During National School Choice Week

Digital learning groups will host leaders in digital learning on webcast

Source: NSCW Newswire

Seattle, WA (January 27, 2014) – Digital learning innovator Getting Smart, the International Association for K12 Online Learning, the Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation and Digital Learning Now will host leading online educators and experts in a Google Hangout.

The online event, titled “Digital Learning – Giving Students Choice” will discuss the importance for school choice opportunities for all students regardless of zip code, and how digital learning is changing the educational landscape.


The Getting Smart online event will be held on at 4 p.m. EST on January 28, and is one of 5,500 independently planned events taking place during National School Choice Week 2014 – the nation’s largest-ever celebration of educational opportunity.


The Google Hangout speakers will include Getting Smart CEO Tom Vander Ark; iNACOL President and CEO Susan Patrick; Christensen Institute Co-Founder and Executive Director Michael Horn; Digital Learning Now! Executive Director John Bailey.


Participants can connect to the Google Hangout online at https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/clv0csgu4g700s2nr6grj0rengs.


Getting Smart is an advocate for better K-12 educational options and believes the shift to digital holds learning promise for improved student achievement.


National School Choice Week shines a positive spotlight on effective education options for children – including traditional public schools, public charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, online academies, and homeschooling.