Tulalip News

Native boxers set sights on 2020 Olympics

071113box1 — (Courtesy photo).
TOP: San Carlos Apache boxer Tommy Nosie (left) spars with Nico Martinez of the Menominee Indian Boxing Club of Wisconsin during the 2013 All Indian Boxing Championships in San Carlos, Ariz.

By Quentin Jodie, Navajo Times

The host city of the 2020 Summer Olympic Games has yet to be determined but Greg Parsons is thinking big.

As the promoter of the 2013 All Indian Boxing Championships, Parsons is prophesying that we’ll have a Native American boxer competing in those games.

“I am looking at some of our 15- and 16-year-old kids,” Parsons said. “Some of them competed at the JO (Junior Olympics) this year and they placed real high.”

Of course that conversation depends on what happens to the fate of the boxing climate within the Native American community.

Parson said in years past, the AIBC has attracted as much as 90 fighters back in his heydays. But last year the event only drew in 32 boxers, which featured only four championship bouts.

This year, however, the numbers were a bit healthier as 52 boxers showed up, which was held at the Apache Gold Casino and Resort in San Carlos, Ariz., on July 4-6.

“We need consistency,” Parson said. “Sometimes this event goes away for one year and it comes back another. It’s really about consistency because for some Native kids this is the biggest tournament they look forward to.

“If this is not around they could lose interest for a whole year,” he added. “If we can keep this going I am sure we can get someone to the Olympics. We just need to so support them and send them places and give them the best fights we can. Maybe we can schedule some international bouts.”

071113box2 — Yoruba Moreu Jr., (left) of New Mexico sustains a right hand punch to the head from Jameel Maldonado of Arizona in San Carlos, Ariz.

Parsons said it’s imperative to keep the AIBC event ongoing and in the future he would like for the event to be move to other sites.

“I believe it will be back in San Carlos next year but we would like to spread this around as much as we can,” he said.

At this year’s event, Parsons said they ended up with 54 fights including 17 tournament bouts.

“I think we did pretty good,” he said. “We got teams from Canada, Wisconsin, Oregon, Utah, Washington and South Dakota.”

The Wisconsin team, which was represented by the Menominee Indian Boxing Club, brought in eight fighters ranging from 9 to 14 years old.

“Everyone got a ‘W’ this weekend,” said Jason Komanenkin, who co-serves as the MIBC coach along with Arnold Peters and Gerald Wayka Jr. “We are very happy with the results. We got eight national Native American champions.”

One of those fighters is Leon Peters, who went 2-0 in the 110-pound category in the 11-12 age group.

“My coaches told me what to do,” said Peters, while adding that his right hand is his best punch.

Last December, Peters also went 2-0 and won the National Silver Gloves Championship in Kansas City, Mo., after qualifying in a regional meet in South Dakota.

“I won my first match by a split decision,” Peters said. “I drove him with my right hand and he started running (away from me.) I practically chased him down.”

In his next match, he stopped his opponent with a TKO in the second round to win the title.

“I was proud that I brought the title home to my tribe,” he said.

According to his dad, Arnold Peters, his son prepared for that tournament by sparring with kids older than him.

“He’s big for his age,” Arnold Peters said of his son. “In a lot of tournaments we went to the normal-sized kids would not fight him so we moved him up. He lost a lot of those fights and his spirits was down but I just told him to keep going.”

Besides Leone Peters, the MIBC also got one of its fighters to compete at a national event as Antonio Makhimetas boxed at the 2013 USA Boxing Junior Olympic National Championships in Mobile, Ala., two weeks ago.

“I think he beat the best 145-pounder in the country,” Komanenkin said, “but the judges didn’t think so.”

According to Arnold Peters, they started their gym four months ago as a way to get kids off the streets.

“We got 16 kids in our basement but we’re doing our best to keep the kids off drugs and alcohol,” Peters said.

The former boxing pro said it’s a shame that they have those issues on the reservation but a lot of people in the community are thanking them for the service they provide.

“They like what we’re doing,” he said. “We don’t have much but we’re taking what we have and turning them into champs.”

– See more at: http://www.navajotimes.com/sports/2013/0713/071113box.php#sthash.0xP8IHCi.dpuf

5 Genetically Modified Foods You Should Never Eat

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

Since genetically engineered foods were introduced in 1996, the United States has experienced as upsurge in low birth-weight babies, infertility and an increase in cancer.

Agricultural tech giants like Monsanto have restricted independent research on their crops, which is legal, because under U.S. law, genetically engineered crops are patentable. The studies that have been conducted link genetically modified foods to a vast array of diseases—and long-term effects have yet to be measured.

Below, Indian Country Today Media Network rounds up the five most deadly genetically modified crops or substances on the market that you should avoid at all cost.

1. Corn

This is not our ancestors’ corn. Genetically modified corn contains toxic materials and is at least 20 percent less nutritious for our bodies, according to a report titled “2012 Nutritional Analysis” by globalresearch.ca.

Corn is the worst offender on the GMO list, because at least 65 percent of the U.S. corn production is genetically modified, and it is found in so many products and forms—on the cob, in nearly every processed food with corn syrup, in the corn feed consumed by the chickens and cows you may eat, and the list goes on.

Genetically engineered corn contains the highly toxic gene Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), which Monsanto introduced in the 1990s to make plants immune to Roundup, which is Monsanto’s weed and insect killer that tears into the stomachs of certain pests.

According to Sherbrooke University Hospital in Canada, Bt has been found in the blood of humans, including in 93 percent of pregnant women they tested, in 80 percent of the umbilical blood in their babies, and in 67 percent of non-pregnant women tested.

2. Soy

More than 90 percent of soybeans grown in the United States are genetically modified, and animal studies have shown devastating effects from genetically engineered soy, including allergies, sterility, birth defects, and offspring death rates up to five times higher than normal, according to Dr. Joseph Mercola in the Huffington Post.

Americans typically consume unfermented soy, mostly in the form of soymilk, tofu, TVP, and soy infant formula, which have at least 10 adverse effects on the body, like reducing one’s ability to assimilate essential nutrients and increasing the potential for thyroid cancer.

3. Sugar Beets

Sugar beets comprise more than 50 percent of U.S. sugar production, while sugar cane counts for the remainder, Natural News reports. Last year, the USDA deemed genetically modified sugar beets safe, de-regulating the crop. Now the hazards of an already toxic substance are exacerbated, presenting the likelihood of increased cancer rates, changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal tract, allergic reactions, infertility and accelerated aging.

But all sugar is best avoided, according to a specialist in pediatric hormone disorders and the leading expert in childhood obesity at the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco, Robert Lustig. “Sugar is not just an empty calorie, its effect on us is much more insidious. It has nothing to do with the calories. It’s a poison by itself,” Lustig says.

4. Aspartame

This fake sugar substitute is made from genetically modified bacteria and is used in basically every diet soda and product on the market.

Aspartame “has been linked to a number of diseases, can impair the immune system, and is even known to cause cancer,” Natural News reported. In one study, of the 48 rats given aspartame, up to 67 percent of all female rats developed tumors roughly the size of golf balls or larger.

5. Canola

Canola—marketed as being void of “bad fats”—is a genetically engineered oil developed in Canada from the Rapeseed plant, which is part of the rape or mustard plant family.

Rapeseed oil is poisonous to insects and used as a repellent.

So while olive oil is made from olives and coconut oil is made from coconuts, canola oil is made from the rapeseed. Canola is short for “Canadian oil low acid.”

Agri-Alternatives, a magazine for the farming industry, notes “By nature, these rapeseed oils, which have long been used to produce oils for industrial purposes, are… toxic to humans and other animals.”

But, canola oil companies insist that through genetic engineering, it is no longer rapeseed, but “canola” instead.

According to Dr. Josh Axe, “It’s an industrial oil, not a food, and has been used in candles, soaps, lipsticks, lubricants, inks and biofuels. Rapeseed oil is what is used to make mustard gas. In its natural state, it causes respiratory distress, constipation, emphysema, anemia, irritability and blindness.”

Cedar Grove odor complaints return

By Bill Sheets, the Herald

EVERETT — As the weather keeps heating up, so again are the complaints against Cedar Grove Composting.

The Smith Island business was cited for four odor violations last month by the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency.

Inspectors for the agency recently traced the smells from residences in Marysville to the composting plant, twice June 6 and twice again June 25, agency spokeswoman Joanne Todd said.

The citations bring the total to 13 in the past five years for Cedar Grove. The plant has received numerous other odor complaints during that time from people living in Marysville and north Everett. The company also has received four written warnings in those five years.

A Cedar Grove official said information from its odor monitors contradict the clean air agency’s information regarding the June 6 complaints. As of Friday the company hadn’t yet received the violation notices for June 25, company spokeswoman Susan Thoman said in an email.

“Our on-site electronic odor monitoring system indicated that no detectable odors left our property during the time cited by the (notices for June 6),” Thoman wrote. “We plan to share this monitoring information with the agency.”

The notices won’t necessarily result in disciplinary action against the company.

“It’s up to our supervisors to be able to work through that with Cedar Grove,” Todd said. “And they can appeal it.”

These citations were the first for Cedar Grove in 2013, Todd said.

In 2011, the company was fined $169,000 for odor violations going back several years at both its Everett plant and its plant in Maple Valley, King County.

The company appealed those fines to the Puget Sound Growth Management Hearings Board, a state regulatory panel. The fines were upheld but the board knocked $50,000 off in deference to Cedar Grove’s expenditures on measures to curb the odors.

The board said Cedar Grove to that point had spent $6.5 million on odor control at the two locations combined, some of it voluntarily and some as a result of earlier violations.

Cedar Grove collects yard and food waste from hauling companies in much of Snohomish and King counties and grinds it, cures it and sells it for compost in gardens.

In past years, complaints often have spiked early in the summer, corresponding with an increase in volume of waste being brought to the plant at Smith Island.

Cedar Grove officials have said other sources could be causing the odors. The remainder of Cedar Grove’s fine from 2011 — $119,000 — was put toward an odor study last year by the clean air agency.

The study will combine information from 10 electronic odor monitors, called “e-noses,” and recorded impressions from volunteers in an attempt to scientifically determine the source of the offensive stench.

The total cost of the study is $375,000.The city of Seattle and King County, which both have sent yard and food waste to Cedar Grove for composting, are putting up $100,000 and $50,000, respectively. The city of Seattle recently decided to end its arrangement with Cedar Grove effective next spring. The clean air agency is spending $25,000 on the study.

Four monitors are located at Cedar Grove, having been purchased previously by the company. One monitor each also has been placed at the wastewater treatment plants operated by Everett and Lake Stevens; the Cemex plant in north Everett; the clean air agency’s weather station in central Marysville; one at a volunteer’s home in Marysville and another at a home in Everett.

The results of the study are expected later this year.

Ballots and local voters’ pamphlets scheduled to be mailed for August 6 Primary

EVERETT – Snohomish County Elections will mail ballots tomorrow to over 332,000 voters for the August 6 Primary. The August 6 Primary is not countywide. Voters in Edmonds, Everett and Tulalip as well as some of the surrounding areas have no races to vote on in the Primary and will not receive a ballot. The local voters’ pamphlets will be mailed today one per household to areas featuring a Primary race or issue.

This year’s primary features all partisan races that are up for election and any non-partisan race with three or more candidates. This includes three County Council positions as well as a number of city, school district, fire district, and sewer district positions. Ballot measures for Monroe, Fire District 4, Fire District 28, and the Arlington Transportation Benefit District are also up for voter approval.

Voters are encouraged to be an informed voter by learning about the races and issues on their ballot, reading and following the ballot instructions, not writing in silly names for office, signing their ballot envelope and returning their ballot as soon as practical. These steps will ensure that their ballot can be counted without issue or delay.

Snohomish County conducts all of its elections entirely by mail. There are no polling locations. All eligible voters will be mailed a ballot to their current residential or mailing address beginning July 18.

Voters choosing to return their voted ballot through the mail must ensure that it is postmarked no later than August 6. Voters may return their voted ballot postage free to any one of eleven 24-hour ballot drop box locations in Snohomish County. Ballots can be deposited at these locations any time until 8:00 pm on Election Day, though voters are encouraged to return their ballot as soon as practical to avoid potentially long wait times at drop boxes on Election Day.

The eleven 24-hour ballot drop boxes locations are:

Arlington (near library)

135 N Washington Ave, Arlington

Edmonds (near library)

650 Main St, Edmonds

Everett (Courthouse Campus)

Rockefeller Ave and Wall St, Everett

Everett (at McCollum Park)

600 128^th St SE, Everett

Lake Stevens (near the city boat launch)

1800 Main St, Lake Stevens

Lynnwood (in front of City Hall)

19100 44^th Ave, Lynnwood

Marysville (behind Municipal Court)

1015 State Ave, Marysville

Monroe (near Library)

1070 Village Way, Monroe

Mukilteo (near library)

4675 Harbour Pointe Blvd, Mukilteo

Snohomish (near library)

311 Maple Ave, Snohomish

Stanwood (near library)

9701 271^st St NW, Stanwood

More information is listed on the insert delivered with each ballot and can also be found online at www.snoco.org/elections. Voted ballots returned to the 24-hour ballot drop boxes must be deposited directly into the ballot drop box.

Snohomish County Elections will have accessible voting equipment designed for voters with disabilities available in the Auditor’s Office beginning July 17 through August 6 and at the Lynnwood Sno-Isle Library on Monday, August 5 from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. and Election Day, Tuesday, August 6 from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. The Lynnwood Sno-Isle Library is located at 19200 44^th Ave, Lynnwood.

The Snohomish County Auditor’s Office is located on the first floor of the Snohomish County Administration Building, 3000 Rockefeller Avenue, Everett. Voters may drop their voted ballots at the Auditor’s Office Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The office will have extended hours on Election Day, Tuesday, August 6 from 7:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m.

Snohomish County Elections may be reached at 425-388-3444.

Keystone XL could hike gas prices as much as 40 cents a gallon

By John Upton, Grist

If the Keystone XL pipeline is built, Americans could pay as much as 40 cents more per gallon for gasoline in some parts of the country, according to a new report by the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog [PDF].

That’s because oil extracted in Canada would start to bypass traditional American markets, traveling through the pipeline to the Gulf Coast and onto tanker ships bound for international markets where oil fetches higher prices.

“The pipeline is being built through America, but not for Americans,” Consumer Watchdog researcher Judy Dugan said in a statement. “Keystone XL is not an economic benefit to Americans who will see higher gas prices and bear all the risks of the pipeline.” From the report:

The aim of tar sands producers with refining interests on the Gulf Coast — primarily multinational oil companies — is to get the oil to their Gulf refineries, which would process additional oil largely for fuel exports to hungry foreign markets. Other oil sands investors, including two major Chinese petrochemical companies and major European oil companies, have an interest in exporting crude oil and/or refined products to their markets. Such exports would drain off what the tar sands producers consider a current oversupply, and help push global oil prices higher. …

U.S. drivers would be forced to pay higher prices for tar sands oil, particularly in the Midwest. There, gasoline costs could rise by 20 cents to 40 cents per gallon or more, based on the $20 to $30 per barrel discount on Canadian crude oil that Keystone XL developers seek to erase. Such an increase, just in the Midwest, could cost the U.S. economy $3 billion to $4 billion a year in consumer income that would not be spent more productively elsewhere. The West Coast imports much smaller amounts of Canadian oil in a larger and more complicated market. Even so, a sharp price hike for Canadian oil could bump Pacific Coast gasoline prices by a few cents a gallon.

The report also connects a few corporate dots, showing who’s really intended to benefit from Keystone XL:

Here’s an easy way to protect coastal communities from rising seas and storms

By John Upton, Grist

Protecting nature is the best way of protecting ourselves from rising tides and storm surges, according to new research.

Sand dunes, wetlands, coral reefs, mangroves, oyster beds, and other shoreline habitats that ring America help to protect two-thirds of the coastlines of the continental U.S. from hurricanes and other such hazards.

Developers see these coastal areas and think — *ding* *ding* *ding* *ding* — opportunity. They want to replace shoreline habitats with waterfront homes, shipping channels, highways, and other delights of urbanism and commerce, along with hulking concrete structures designed to keep the rising seas at bay.

Or, another idea would be to leave nature intact and let it continue to shelter us.

The latter approach would, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change, be the superior option for protecting lives and property in most of the nation’s coastal areas.

Led by Stanford University’s Natural Capital Project, researchers mapped the intensity of hazards posed to communities living along America’s coastlines from rising seas and ferocious storms now and in the decades to come. They examined the hazards those communities would face in the year 2100 with and without the coastal habitats left intact. Here is what they found:

Habitat loss would double the extent of coastline highly exposed to storms and sea-level rise, making an additional 1.4 million people now living within 1 km of the coast vulnerable. The number of poor families, elderly people and total property value highly exposed to hazards would also double if protective habitats were lost.

The research team’s map shows areas where natural systems would be most effective for sheltering lives and properties. From ClimateWire:

The East Coast and Gulf Coast would feel the largest impacts from depleted ecosystems, because they have denser populations and are more vulnerable to sea-level rise and storm surge.

Florida would see the largest increase of people exposed to hazards by 2100 under one sea-level rise scenario highlighted by the researchers. If coastal habitats were preserved, about 500,000 Floridians would face intermediate and high risk from disasters, compared with almost 900,000 people if the habitats disappeared.

New York sees one of the biggest jumps as a percentage of people facing risk under the same scenario. With habitat, a little more than 200,000 people would face high risk, compared with roughly 550,000 people without habitat.

But what’s wrong with building seawalls, levees, and such? Couldn’t such infrastructure allow builders to develop the shorelines safely, keeping rising waters at bay? The paper explains some of the problems with that approach:

In the United States — where 23 of the nation’s 25 most densely populated counties are coastal — the combination of storms and rising seas is already putting valuable property and large numbers of people in harm’s way. The traditional approach to protecting towns and cities has been to ‘harden’ shorelines. Although engineered solutions are necessary and desirable in some contexts, they can be expensive to build and maintain, and construction may impair recreation, enhance erosion, degrade water quality and reduce the production of fisheries.

So let’s maybe thank nature for protecting us by leaving it intact, yeah?

Lies, Betrayal, & Embezzlement: Chamber of Commerce Head Pleads Guilty

By Carol Berry, Indian Country Today Media Network

Justice caught up with the former head of the Rocky Mountain Indian Chamber of Commerce (RMICC) July 12 in Denver District Court when, despite his earlier assertions of innocence, he pleaded guilty to charges of theft from RMICC, including felony theft of more than $20,000, and avoided a jury trial.

Joshua Running Wolf, 32, of the Blackfeet Nation, Browning, Montana, has been ordered to repay the RMICC $30,000 in restitution before his sentencing October 11 or the felony theft charge will remain on his permanent record and he will serve jail time, according to a deputy district attorney.

Potential penalties for the crimes are up to 24 years incarceration and up to a $750,000 fine for the major theft conviction and up to 18 months in county jail with a $5,000 maximum fine for conviction on a charge of misdemeanor theft of more than copy,000, an amount cited by the prosecution.

Dee St. Cyr, Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska and RMICC board chairwoman, said justice prevailed “but there are no winners in this case.” Running Wolf was offered the opportunity to serve as president, but in that capacity he “stole large sums of money from the very people who supported him.” RMCC will continue to provide services to the Native business community, she said.

Deb Emhoolah, Kiowa, RMICC board of directors secretary, noted Running Wolf is the father of four of her grandchildren. “He abandoned them nearly two years ago and embezzled RMICC funds to support his philandering lifestyle,” she explained. “RMICC is stronger, in a better place and we are looking forward to a successful future for RMICC.”

Don Kelin, of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma and a RMICC member, said Running Wolf “embezzled funds from what little dollars the [RMICC] had and embezzled funds from the education funds for our youth” as he “continued with lies to the Indian community about what happened.”

According to the charges to which Running Wolf pleaded, the thefts occurred in a period that began in 2011, about three years after he said he became RMICC president. The matter came to light when “we were doing audits,” he said in an interview shortly after his arrest. He said at that time that he was “not too sure” about the charges against him but that he was not aware of doing anything wrong.

The amount of total restitution was placed at copy15,152.

Chilean court sides with Indigenous Diaguitas, blocks world’s largest gold mining company

Source: Washington Post/Associated Press

A Chilean appeals court ruled against the world’s largest gold mining company on Monday, favoring Chilean Indians who accuse Barrick Gold Corp. of contaminating their water downstream and creating more doubts about the future of the world’s highest gold mine.

The judges in the northern city of Copiapo unanimously ruled that Barrick must keep all its environmental promises before moving forward with construction of the Pascua-Lama mine at the very top of Chile’s mountainous border with Argentina. They also said Barrick must monitor the condition of three glaciers next to the mine project.

Chile’s environmental watchdog agency already ordered construction stopped until Barrick builds systems to keep the mine from contaminating the watershed below, and Barrick executives have publicly committed the company to fulfilling the requirements of its environmental permit.

But Monday’s ruling goes beyond that by demanding repairs to damage in the watershed below, by calling for increased monitoring of the impact on surrounding glaciers, and by opening up the project’s environmental license for review. The judges found no evidence of contamination due to mine construction, but said the watershed could face “imminent danger” without more environmental protections.Attorney Lorenzo Soto, who represents about 550 Diaguita Indians in the case, said this review might even kill the $8.5 billion mine, which has been under development for more than seven years. “The project’s conditions aren’t the same as they were in 2006. New conditions could be established, and we don’t discard any scenario, including the closing of the project,” Soto said.Scarce river water is vital to life in Chile’s Atacama Desert, and the Diaguitas fear that the Pascua-Lama mine above them is ruining their resource.Barrick acknowledged the ruling in a statement late Monday that did not say whether or not the company would appeal.

The company said it “is committed to diligently working to complete all of the projects the regulatory requirements” and is working with Chile’s environmental regulator to construct a water management system by 2014, after which time it expects to renew construction on the actual mine.

Still, the ruling could mean more lengthy delays for the binational mine, which was initially expected to be producing gold and silver already. While Argentine officials are eager to keep building, most of the ore is buried on the Chilean side. On the Argentine side, where Barrick fuels a third of San Juan province’s economy, officials have been watching closely and trying to figure out how to preserve thousands of jobs.

Barrick’s stock traded up slightly Monday at $15 a share after reaching near-historic lows due to falling gold prices and Pascua-Lama setbacks.

Native Presence Added to Commission on White House Fellowships

Rion Joaquin Ramirez, left, was named by President Barack Obama to the President's Commission on White House Fellowships on July 12. — Rion Joaquin Ramirez, left, was named by President Barack Obama to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships on July 12.

By Richard Walker, Indian Country Today Media Network

Rion Joaquin Ramirez is general counsel for the Suquamish Tribe’s Port Madison Enterprises, which has expanded the tribe’s economic diversity and made it one of the largest employers in Kitsap County, west of Seattle.

Ramirez is soon to take on another significant responsibility: Helping select men and women who work for a year as full-time, paid assistant to senior White House staff, the vice president, Cabinet secretaries and other top-ranking government officials.

Ramirez, Pascua Yaqui/Turtle Mountain Chippewa, was named by President Obama to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships July 12. He was not available for comment; technically, the president has only announced his intent to appoint Ramirez to the commission, so Ramirez can’t speak to the media until the appointment is official, which should be within two weeks, according to the White House Communications Office.

There are 27 commission members. Other current members include Keith Harper, Cherokee, who represented the plaintiff class of 500,000 individual Indians in Cobell v. Salazar and is Obama’s nominee for representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council; retired four-star Gen. Wesley Clark; Peabody and Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist John Hockenberry; eBay founder Pierre Omidyar; former U.S. Sen. Paul Sarbanes of Maryland; and Brown University president Ruth J. Simmons.

Ramirez is the second presidential appointee associated with the Suquamish Tribe this year. In May, Obama appointed Suquamish Tribe Chairman Leonard Forsman to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.

The president appoints members of hundreds of federal agencies and commissions, but each has considerable influence over its area of focus. For example, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation manages the federal historic preservation review process and promotes historic preservation as a means of promoting job creation, economic recovery, energy independence, sustainability, and resource stewardship. In March, it endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, saying it was “an opportunity to promote better stewardship and protection of Native American historic properties and sacred sites and in doing so … ensure the survival of indigenous cultures.”

Speaking as chairman of the Suquamish Tribe, Forsman said Ramirez has helped formulate Indian policy on the federal level and helped develop the legal infrastructure needed for tribes to expand their economies. “He’s been a part of our growth for quite a long time,” Forsman said. “He’s interested in the community, in the social aspects of the tribe, and he’s very familiar with families here and from other tribes.”

Ramirez is the son of Larry Ramirez, an American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame inductee who pitched for Cal State Northridge’s 1970 NCAA Division II national championship team and was the first Native American to pitch a winning complete game in the College World Series.

The younger Ramirez earned a B.A. from the University of Washington and a J.D. from the University of Washington School of Law. He was an associate at Dorsey & Whitney LLP and Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt, P.C., and served as counsel for the University of Washington’s Child Advocacy Clinic. He joined Port Madison Enterprises in 2004.

He is a past president of the Northwest Indian Bar Association and a former appellate court justice for the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, where he is enrolled.

In 2012, Ramirez was a member of the Obama for America National Finance Committee and co-chairman of the Obama Native Outreach Group. He raised between $200,000 and $500,000 for Obama’s reelection campaign.

President Lyndon B. Johnson established the White House Fellows Program in October 1964, declaring that “a genuinely free society cannot be a spectator society.” His intent was to draw individuals of exceptionally high promise to Washington for one year of personal involvement in the process of government “and to increase their sense of participation in national affairs.” Fellows are expected to employ post-fellowship what they learned by “continuing to work as private citizens on their public agendas.”

Johnson hoped Fellows would contribute to the nation as future leaders. Indeed, most if not all have: Past Fellows include Tom Johnson, who later became publisher of the Los Angeles Times and chairman of CNN; Robert C. McFarlane, who served as national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan; Colin Powell, who became an Army general, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and U.S. Secretary of State; Timothy E. Wirth, who became U.S. senator from Colorado and an Under Secretary of State; and numerous authors, elected officials, journalists, military leaders, and assistant Cabinet secretaries.

The current class includes civic leaders, doctors, lawyers, military officers, public policy specialists, and a journalist.

According to the commission website, commissioners met in Washington, D.C. the first week of June and interviewed 30 White House Fellowship finalists. Commissioners will recommend 11-19 for appointment; fellows are paid at GS level 14, step 3 – currently $90,343 – and benefits, and cannot receive any other compensation during their Fellowship.

Science vs. Traditional Knowledge in Climate Change: Can’t We All Just Get Along?

M. Kalani Souza, Native Hawaiian, head of the nonprofit Olohana Foundation, played the guitar for attendees of the Rising Voices of Indigenous People in Weather and Climate Science Workshop July 1 – 2 at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. He is also with the Federal Emergency Management Agency , University of Hawaii, where he is national director of population centers, working on Native community capacity for climate change.

By Carol Berry, Indian Country Today Media Network

The hydrologist had carefully studied the scientific data and knew for a fact that water would be present if he drilled. So sure was he that he ignored a Hawaiian elder’s warning against drilling for water in that spot. The scientist did indeed hit water—but it was red, brackish and undrinkable.

He had drilled on a hill that had been named, millennia ago, Red Water. Nearby was another site that had carried the name Water for Man for thousands of years. That is where the drinkable water could be found, but it did not take a hydrologist with fancy instruments.

“We assume contemporary knowledge displaces that of the past, but it’s not true,” said Ramsay Taum, Native Hawaiian, board director of the Pasifika Foundation and on the faculty of the University of Hawaii, after giving this example of science’s potential to erroneously override indigenous knowledge.

Taum’s comments were among several themes aired in a workshop, Rising Voices of Indigenous Peoples in Weather and Climate Science, sponsored partly by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) on July 1–2 in Boulder, Colorado. Also backing it were the Intertribal Council On Utility Policy, South Dakota; the Olahana Foundation, Big Island, Hawai’i; the Indigenous Peoples Climate Change Working Group, and the Getches–Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment.

During the two-day conference, scholars and tribal college students grappled with the readiness issues noted in President Barack Obama’s Climate Action Plan, which he released on June 25. (Related: Obama: No Keystone XL if It Increases Carbon Emissions)

Taum’s anecdote was just one example of the myriad ways in which traditional knowledge can trump scientific knowledge, even as climate change creates yet another Trail of Tears in forcing the relocation of Native communities due to flooding, fire and other encroachments on their traditional territories. The reliance on science to the exclusion of millennia of careful observation is another way in which culture is being eroded, participants said.

“The fear of our elders is that knowledge is running faster than wisdom,” said Papalii (“Doc”) Failautusi Aveglio, a hereditary Samoan leader and a faculty member at the University of Hawaii’s school of business.

Culture is not just lost via relocation. It can result indirectly when, for example, water contamination stops people from eating locally caught fish. Tribes then require money to buy replacement food, and the loss of local food sources ultimately ends daily fishing by grandfathers and grandsons in which tradition was passed down, said Michael MacCracken, chief scientist for climate change programs, Climate Institute, Washington, D.C.

Because of such changes, Native communities are increasingly involved in addressing climate questions, workshop planners said.

Even as Native peoples become the first- and hardest-hit by climate change, their traditional ways of relating to the natural world are distorted and undervalued by Western science. On top of that lies the irony that those least affected by climate change likely had the most to do with creating the conditions that caused it, said Daniel Wildcat, Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation and a faculty member at Haskell Indian Nations University.

The harsh climate effects could mean a “whole new Trail of Tears,” Wildcat said.

Yet such clashes between traditional and scientific knowledge seemed destined to continue, if one scientist’s insight is any indication.

“I’m not interested in reconciling science and Native knowledge,” said panelist Roger Pulwarty, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “They mean different things.”

Pulwarty was concerned about who would represent tribal peoples in seeking climate-change solutions, since asking them to collect information would be asking them to divulge potentially confidential tribal history. Taum countered that indigenous knowledge could be presented in different ways, sometimes embodied in stories that had been passed down through generations.

“One of the things indigenous people bring to the table is a whole different concept of our place in the world,” said Wildcat in summing up the workshop’s main underlying theme. “We have been treating life around us like resources—they’re not resources, they’re relatives.”