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Please come and enjoy Jason Schilling, Wildlife Biologist, discuss his mountain trek experiences.
Jason will share highlights of his experiences during mountain treks, from the North Cascades to his recent Miyar Valley expedition in India.
Thursday, November 14, 7pm at the Tulalip Hibulb Cultural Center, Classroom 2
By Vince Devlin, Buffalo Post
Offended that the professional football team headquartered in our nation’s capital still uses a racial slur as its team mascot?
Then you may not be surprised with what was going on with Washington’s NFL franchise in 1961, as Indian Country Today Media Network reported while pointing out a photograph resurrected by Mother Jones magazine.
Back then, the football team owned by the late George Preston Marshall was the last all-white squad in the NFL, and American Nazis marched to encourage him to keep it that way.
One of the signs they held says, “Mr. Marshall, Keep Redskins White!”
When it comes to offensive statements, that would seem the equivalent of piling on. It is relevant today, as ICTMN noted, because current owner Dan Snyder is battling to keep Redskins as the team nickname. (Mother Jones, by the way, refuses to, and redacts the nickname in its stories.)
Both sites refer to Thomas G. Smith’s 2012 book, “JFK and the Integration of the Washington Redskins,” where Smith wrote that Marshall was as upset about the federal government forcing him to integrate (Washington’s stadium is on federal land) as he was at the prospect of diversity.
“Why negroes particularly?” he asked. “Why not make us hire a player from another race? In fact, why not a woman? Of course, we have had players who played like girls, but never an actual girl player.”
The Kennedy administration gave Marshall a choice: let black players on his team, or go find another stadium to play in. The team was integrated, but more than half a century later, many believe Washington’s NFL team is still dragging its feet on racial matters.
Source: Buffalo Post
Is exposure to estrogen-blocking chemicals in one of Canada’s most industrialized regions the reason so few baby boys are born to the Aamjiwnaang First Nation mothers who live near there?
An article by Brian Bienkowski that originally appeared in Environmental Health News and was picked up by Scientific American says a new study is the first to confirm the community’s concerns over elevated exposure to pollutants.
The findings do not prove that chemicals are causing fewer baby boys in the community, but they provide some limited evidence suggesting a possible link.
“While we’re far from a conclusive statement, the kinds of health problems they experience – neurodevelopment, skewed sex ratios – are the health effects we would expect from such chemicals and metals,” said Niladri Basu, lead author of the study and associate professor at McGill University in Montreal.
A 2005 report said baby boys account for only 35 percent of births in the tribe, compared with 51.2 percent nationwide. The reservation sits within 15 miles of a region known as “Chemical Valley,” which is home to more than 50 industrial facilities, including oil refineries and chemical manufacturers.
Forty-two pairs of Aamjiwnaang mothers and children were tested for the study. For four types of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), the average levels found in the children ranged from 2 to 7 times higher than the average Canadian child. The mothers’ average levels were about double the Canadian average for three of the compounds.
PCBs were widely used industrial compounds until they were banned in the 1970s in the United States and Canada because they were building up in the environment.
Eating fish is the most common exposure route for PCBs. But a survey revealed the community eats very little fish, so the high levels of PCBs remain “a puzzle,” Basu said. He suspects the chemicals are still in the soil and air from decades ago.
Shanna Swan, professor and vice-chair for research and mentoring at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, noted that the study was small and it is important not to jump to conclusions. Swan surveyed the community to see if there was interest in following up on the original research, based on births between 1999 and 2003, and was told no.
“There’s no question there’s exposure, it’s clearly a polluted place,” Swan told Bienkowski. “But this is their ancestral home … what to they get out of you telling them how badly off they are?”
Consider the highlights–or lowlights–of Interior’s latest “plan” for Indian land “buy back.”
Source: Indianz.com
First, “the program will exclude reservations east of the Mississippi and in Alaska” according to Interior’s appraisers. In addition, Western states with high concentrations of Indian lands, most notably California, are not on Interior’s priority list for federal buy back funding.
Second, according to Interior’s latest plan, “once fair market value determinations have been made, the Department will mail offer packages to individuals with ownership interests in those valued tracts and seek to acquire those interests that individuals are willing to sell.”
In other words, Interior expresses no intention of consulting in person with individual Indian landowners to ensure they understand the proposed purchase and sale transaction. That despite a clear ruling in Cobell v. Norton, 225 F.R.D. 41, 45 (D.D.C. 2004) that such sales “require communication between individual Indian trust-land owners and agents of Interior.” Mass mailings are simply not the communication or consultation that is required to cause Indians to fully understand the consequences of signing boilerplate papers that will cause them to cede their ancestral lands.
Get the Story:
Gabe Galanda: Interior’s Indian Land Buy-Back Plan: More Sketchy By the Day (Galanda Broadman 11/11)
Related Stories:
Appraisal Foundation reviews Cobell land consolidation plans (11/8)
By Andrew Gobin, Tulalip News Reporter
Veterans and their families packed the Longhouse at the Hibulb Cultural Center & Natural History Preserve on Monday, November 11th. The event hosted by Hibulb staff, which was open to all veterans in the Tulalip community, featured a lunch incorporating traditional foods in addition to an honoring and healing ceremony. Veterans that spoke reminded those in attendance about the sacrifices made by soldiers and their families, emphasizing the importance of remembering the cost of the world we live in.
With the presentation of the colors by the Tulalip Honor Guard, the Veterans Day celebration began. Each veteran was thanked with a blanket, introducing themselves while taking a moment to speak about their service. Some listed their rank and various wars and theaters, while others spoke about what Veterans Day means to them.
“It’s important to remember the veterans and to thank them,” said Tulalip Chairman Mel Sheldon, a Vietnam veteran. He referred to the ill tempers and bad attitudes that Americans had towards the Vietnam War, and in turn, how poorly returning soldiers were treated. “Today is a day to honor the sacrifice made. When war came you raised your hand, and we thank you for your service.”
“It is important to remember the families and their sacrifice,” said veteran, David Ventura. “They had to sacrifice time with their sons and brothers, and many times a life shared. Mothers, fathers, wives, brothers and sisters all had to live with the uncertainty of someone they loved dearly, for the service they gave to this nation.”
Korean War veteran Ray Moses spoke about the horrors of war.
“When I was in Korea,” he began, “my brother was killed right along side me. That moment was the most helpless feeling I have ever experienced. I couldn’t cry; I couldn’t get mad. All I could do was keep fighting. I had to. The worst memories I have are about death.”
He paused a moment. “Why do I tell you these things? People these days say, ‘we don’t want to hear that, those old things.’ And I tell them, without those old things all these new things wouldn’t be here.”
Hibulb staff served a lunch of fry bread and hamburger stew, along with traditional foods including mushrooms, nettle tea, and black moss pudding, which in our culture is a medicine for calming the spirit and mind.
By Douglas Fischer, IC Magazine
Thousands of delegates are gathered in Warsaw for another round of climate talks. On the other side of the globe, indigenous leaders say they’re done with the UN talks.
I have nothing to say to them. They are orators of the highest quality, but the time for excuses has gone.
– Uncle, Eskimo runner
GHOST RANCH, N.M. – As United Nations delegates gather in Warsaw in the 19th annual effort to craft a global climate treaty, indigenous leaders from across North America met half a world away and offered a prophecy: The solution to climate change will never come via the UN talks.
Tribal elders from the United States, Greenland and Mexico spoke of the need for individual action rather than government edicts, and of the difficulty – and urgency – of replacing economic questions with moral ones.
They spoke of grandfathers and grandmothers, of battles with alcoholism and disenfranchisement, of a world that’s changing around them and a need to do something for their grandchildren. Most of all, though, they talked of a need for a new direction in an increasingly unsustainable world.
Organized by the Bozeman, Mont.- based American Indian Institute, the gathering drew about 65 people from across North America.
Different palette
Here amid the hills and mesas that painter Georgia O’Keeffe made famous, these elders presented a different palette with which to look at environmental woes. They placed little faith in the weighty United Nations process that opened Monday and will draw thousands of people to Warsaw over the next two weeks to try to find a way to stem emissions of greenhouse gases.
“I have nothing to say to them,” said Angaangaq, an Inuk known here as Uncle and who since 1975 has been “runner” for his elders in Greenland, spreading their words worldwide. “Not one of those United Nations people responsible has ever changed.”
“They are orators of the highest quality, but … the time for excuses has gone long ago.”
The dismissal of the UN was all the more striking given that it came from those who, in the 1970s, spearheaded the quest to have the world body recognize indigenous rights.
Forty years later, they have moved on.
Faithkeeper
Oren Lyons is faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation in the Haudenosaunee, formerly the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy. In the late 1970s he saw the UN as a “beacon” that would finally begin to address and restore indigenous rights. No longer.
He spent years traveling to and talking before various global forums. At a summit in Davos, Switzerland, a few years ago he realized he had a “guaranteed prophecy” to offer. It still applies today:
“You will meet again next year, and nothing will have changed.”
Of course, Native elders are not the only ones feeling disenfranchised by the UN talks. Occasionally a “people’s summit” sprouts near the official one, offering space and a platform to artists, activists and others frustrated by lack of action on social and environmental justice issues at the UN proceedings.
Even at the UN talks, hope has been tempered: No breakthroughs are expected this year. Delegates and observers say the best they can hope for is progress toward a more ambitious agreement in Paris in 2015.
But for the elders gathered here in New Mexico, time is up. Change, they said repeatedly, must come from a far more personal level.
Seven generations
“The work that we have is for all of us to do,” said Vickie Downey, a clan mother at the Tesuque Pueblo in New Mexico. “We do this for our grandchildren.”
Many at the three-day forum referenced the ancient Haudenosaunee tradition of thinking seven generations into the future.
“We’re a small group, the indigenous peoples of the Earth, but we’re very old,” Lyons said.
And Lyons, who is getting old, too, senses a return to the “old values:” Respect, concern for the future, sharing.
“How do you instruct 7 billion people as to their relationship to the Earth?” he asked. “It’s very difficult – when you’re struggling to protect your people and you’re hanging by a thread – to instruct other people.”
Uncle brought a pair of drums from Greenland. He spoke of Nanoq, the polar bear, and of the 78 new species of fish swimming in Greenland’s waters – “I grew up knowing every single fish in the world of my home. Now I have 78 new ones to learn” because of dramatic changes in the environment.
Not just beautiful words
He spoke, too, of his reluctance to join the circle of elders and be a runner. But as a runner – as “the world’s most-traveled Eskimo,” as he said – he’s seen a universal message coming from tribes:
Change, he said, “is going to come from you.”
“Many, many Native people have the same sayings: It is you, not your city, not your state, not your government, not the UN.”
“These people are not just talking beautiful words,” he added. “These people are talking wisdom if only you and I are able to listen.”
Photos, from top: Oren Lyons (left) talks with Tewa Dancer Andrew Martinez after an Eagle Dance at Ghost Ranch. Tewa Dancers perform the Buffalo dance. Both by Douglas Fischer. Photo of Uncle courtesy Oona Soleil.
Douglas Fischer is editor of The Daily Climate, a news service covering energy, the environment and climate change. Find us on Twitter @TheDailyClimate or email Douglas Fischer at dfischer@DailyClimate.org
By Jay Taber, Intercontinental Cry Magazine
Earlier this year, IC reported on the Citizens Equal Rights Alliance/Tea Party anti-Indian conference in Washington State, USA. Key to launching the CERA anti-Indian hate campaign in the Pacific Northwest, we noted, was the support of Tea Party radio host Kris Halterman.
As Ashley Ahearn reports at EarthFix, voters in Whatcom County have rejected Wall Street/Tea Party candidates in local elections this week. While Tea Party activist Kris Halterman bemoans seeing her PACs efforts go down in flames, she and Ahearn neglect to mention Halterman’s persistent promotion of anti-Indian bigotry on her KGMI Radio program. Seeing how Lummi Nation joined environmental activists and local Democrats in urging voters to support Halterman’s opponents, that might yet prove newsworthy as upcoming federal decisions on tribal treaty rights potentially challenge Wall Street’s plans to build the largest coal export terminal in North America on Lummi Indian burial grounds at Cherry Point.
Source: Indian Country Today Media Network, November 14, 2013
Tribal Leaders from many of the 566 federally recognized tribes were present for the fifth annual White House Tribal Nations Conference held at the Department of the Interior on November 13.
The all day conference that has been a staple of President Barack Obama’s administration and its hopes to improve the government-to-government relations began at 9 a.m. with Cabinet members speaking on behalf of their respective departments.
The speakers addressing the tribal leaders, who were able to voice their concerns later in the day, were: Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, Energy Secretary Ernest Monitz, and the Department of Justice Attorney General Eric Holder.
Each speaker addressed progress in working with Indian country over the past year as well as announced key programs in front of the Native leaders.
Below are 13 clips from the morning session as the Cabinet members addressed the gathering:
Holder: “[C]ountless tribal leaders – both in and beyond this room – have stepped to the forefront of our efforts to preserve cultural values, to enforce treaty obligations, and to secure the rights and benefits to which all American Indians and Alaska Natives must always be entitled. Together, through many generations, you and your predecessors have faced down tremendous adversity – standing up to those who once sought to terminate the federal government’s relationships with tribes. You’ve galvanized support for the rights of American Indians to maintain tribal governments – and to have a seat at the table before major reforms are enacted. You’ve mobilized tribal nations to win passage of long-overdue laws not simply to regulate tribal affairs, but to allow all Native peoples to fulfill their own promise and chart their own paths.”
Shinseki: “I cannot change the records of injustice in our history, and they are many or the lack of trust about the government and this department, but I intend to make things better and I need your help.”
Sebelius: “Our research shows that nearly one in three American Indians and Alaskan Natives don’t have health insurance, one in three. That compares to 62 percent of all non-elderly Americans who are covered with insurance. But in Alaskan Native and American Indian communities only six percent are covered – here the challenges they face are real.”
Foxx: “The department of transportation’s position is clear. Residents of our tribal nation need and deserve safe roads and bridges and access to reliable public transportation. You well know, as well as I do, that transportation is a life-blood to communities, families. When we deliver on the promise of connecting every person on these shores to 21st-century opportunities, that includes tribal communities all across America.”
Moniz: “We want to work closely with tribal leaders to develop renewable resources on tribal lands, in particular. Today, we are very pleased to announce that nine tribes have been selected to receive over $7 million to further deploy clean energy projects.”
Jewell: “I came in at an interesting time as far as the budget. It was with my predecessors and some of the things they faced. We think long-term. We think the future of the culture that you represent, of the land you represent, we think by generations forward, as do I. And yet we are all faced with a crazy budget situation, continuing resolutions, no budget since 2012. Sequestration has hit Indian country harder than any other part of the federal government through the sequestration period we have been enduring since I started in the job seven months ago.”
Holder: “Today, we declare that we must never forget. We must never deny the injustice that – for decades upon decades – was inflicted on Native peoples. And we affirm that this painful past has informed, and given rise to, a sustained period of cooperation and self-determination – a period that began in a moment of national challenge, when the nation confronted a New Frontier.”
Jewell: “I know that when I speak to individual members of Congress they care about Indian country, and your voices to them are really, really important. But when it comes down to actually getting a budget done, they aren’t delivering. We need to hold them accountable to that and we will certainly be your partners in that effort.”
Sebelius: “Before President Obama took the oath of office, there was a steady decline in the number of children in Head Start who spoke a tribal language at home. Today we are using the Head Start new performance standards to integrate tribal language and culture into classrooms and curriculum. That is a big step forward for the next generation.”
Moniz: “This department has a major challenge in terms of cleaning up – there is no nice way to say it – the cold war mess. Much of this has an impact on traditional tribal lands. When it came to establishing our programs, I have to say, tribes in the affected areas, they have been fantastic partners in making us focus on the long-term cleanup to a level where sufficient activities could be removed. That has been a tremendous help as we structure the programs.”
Shinseki: “President Obama and I are committed to providing equal access to all veterans. If you understand the spread and the difference in the landscape, you will appreciate that the commitment means that whether or not you are living in an urban area or are a rural veteran, you are in the most remote of locations, like the outer banks of Alaska, or maybe even Guam, seven miles beyond Honolulu. Our commitment is to provide as best we can equal access to every veteran, no matter the condition, and that includes veterans on tribal lands. With the support of the congress, the president has increased the budget request for V.A. by over 50 percent since 2009. Rural, urban, remote, Native American all in the same benefits.”
Foxx: “We know and you know that a rebuilt road or a new transit system can be the difference between a child getting to school on time or the difference between an elder going to the doctor or not. No one knows better than the American tribal leaders that safe, reliable transportation is a key to accessing good jobs. It is why last year the federal transit administration awarded more than copy5 million from our tribal transit program to help 72 tribal governments provide the critical transportation services that thousands depend on every day.”
Holder: “We must recommit ourselves to collaboration on an unprecedented scale – no matter the obstacles we face. And we must declare – together – that, despite everything that’s been achieved, we will not rest as long as crime rates in so many tribal communities continue to exceed the national average.
“We will not accept the shameful fact that American Indians are disproportionately likely to become victims of crime and violence.”
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/11/14/13-cabinet-comments-tribal-nations-conference-morning-session-152246
By Global Justice Ecology Project, Source: Climate Connections
The United Nations climate meetings involve the big powers of the United States and other industrialized “developed” countries. Lurking in the background are the financial sectors and investors of capital often having meetings in 4-5 star hotels.
Everything I have seen from the industrialized countries (including G20 countries) is false solutions towards addressing climate change. They have been playing a game of chess with climate.
As articulated at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in 2010 in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the root cause of climate change is capitalism. IEN had a delegation in Cochabamba actively involved in the outcome documents. The problem is countries will continue to drill, dig, and burn up every drop of oil, gas, and coal; no matter how expensive it is, till it runs out globally.
After fossil fuel resources are depleted, the world will move into a global bio-energy and bio-economy (plants, energy crops, trees, algae, etc.). To do this, they need full access to land (and water), with no restrictions – worldwide. Everyone’s rights to land and water will be diminished.
The issues of access to and political power games over Energy and Water will be the battleground for our next generation. It will be over the Privatization of Nature – of Mother Earth. We will witness more deregulation of corporate activity, more privatization and commodification of the natural “commons”. They have given themselves rights to have Dominion over Nature.
What will it take to turn this around?
Many are grappling with this question. But, I believe a mass movement globally is needed to resist this insanity. But, it also involves a spiritual awakening. As I have said many times, the people of the world must re-evaluate what their relationship is to the sacredness of Mother Earth.
As Indigenous Peoples, those that follow our teachings, we know what our responsibilities are to the Natural Laws of Mother Earth. But the industrialized man, industrialized societies do not know this. IEN has spoken to this for over 22 years!
The modern world of capitalism and its world of corporate schizophrenia are already co-opting our Indigenous leadership with false solutions via benefit-sharing scenarios, or to be nice “Indians” and just share our traditional knowledge for adaptation to climate change; rather than our participation demanding real change and action.
Real binding commitments and real actions to reduce emissions at source must be the major path in these negotiations. But, this is not the agenda in Warsaw at this time. This is why the tar sands in Canada is ground zero in Turtle Island – North America to fighting for climate justice; for the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and for a new colonial paradigm (not ours, but their system) that moves away from a Property Rights regime, towards a system that recognizes Earth Jurisprudence.
–Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of Indigenous Environmental Network and member of the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change, the Indigenous caucus within the UNFCCC
