Tulalip News

Empowering Women: Artisans Cooperatives that Transform Communities

June 12, 2013 – Oct. 27, 2013 at the Burke Museum, Seattle

One Moroccan artist teaches a village of women to read. An embroiderer from India takes out her first loan. A Hutu woman from war-torn Rwanda works with a Tutsi to make “peace” baskets. And a soup kitchen for AIDS orphans delivers meals because of a folk art cooperative’s success in Swaziland. From Africa to Asia to the Americas, female artisans are creating grassroots cooperatives to reach new markets, raise living standards, and transform lives.

Empowering Women provides an intimate view of the work of ten such enterprises in ten countries. This exhibition illustrates the power of grassroots collaborations to transform women’s lives, through inspiring personal stories, stellar photographs and stunning examples of the cooperatives’ handmade traditional arts.

Open daily 10 am – 5 pm | Phone: 206-543-5590
Located on the UW Campus at 17th Ave NE and NE 45th Street

With new search, Facebook users should check privacy settings

Will Oremus, Slate; Source: The Herald

For the past six months, a select group of Facebook users have had a chance to try out the site’s hyped “Graph Search” function. For those unfamiliar with it, Facebook’s Graph Search function is kind of like a regular search function, only more complicated. But the bottom line is that it indexes everyone’s public posts, likes, photos, interests, etc. to make them as easy as possible for everyone else, from friends to exes to cops to advertisers to your boss, to find.

Facebook opened Graph Search to a limited audience earlier this year, but it’s rolling it out to everyone over the next couple of weeks, starting this week. So if you were waiting for the right time to go through your privacy settings and hide the embarrassing stuff before the whole world sees it, you can stop waiting. The right time is now.

Some have called Graph Search a privacy nightmare, because it takes information that was hard to find and makes it easy to find. For instance, if you for some reason hit “like” on the page of radical Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki three years ago, your name and face might now pop up when someone at the FBI gets the bright idea on a slow day to search Facebook for “people who like Anwar al-Awlaki.”

If Graph Search is a privacy nightmare, it’s sort of like the kind in which you find yourself out in public with no clothes on. The bad news is that what’s seen can’t be unseen. But the good news is that it won’t happen if you’re already dressed. That is, Graph Search won’t take any information that you had set to private (or “friends-only”) and turn it public. So if you don’t want strangers to see your profile’s naughty parts, you can go to your Facebook privacy settings right now and cover them up.

There’s an easy way and a hard way to do this. The (relatively) easy way is to click “limit past posts,” which will turn all of your old posts to “friends only” in a single swoop. But if you want some things to stay public, or to be visible to friends of friends, you’ll need to do it the hard way, which is to click “Use Activity Log” and go through all of your old posts one by one. Oh, and you’ll also want to double-check the privacy settings on your “About” page, which controls who can see the basic information on your profile.

Again, the basics are:

Go to your privacy settings and check who can see your future posts and past posts.

To hide individual posts or likes, click “Use Activity Log” and scroll down through your history, editing the privacy settings for each one as you go.

To check who can see your profile information, go to the About page on your profile and click the “edit” button next to each category.

—

Oremus is the lead blogger for Future Tense, reporting on emerging technologies, tech policy and digital culture.

Schimmel Family to Kick Off National UNITY Conference in July

WOODLAND HILLS, CALIFORNIA – Attendees of the UNITY conference next month will see and hear firsthand one of the most inspiring role models in Indian country as Jude Schimmel addresses them.

Jude Schimmel averaged 5.7 points per game and lead the team in assists with 106.

Jude Schimmel is a star on the basketball court and in the university classroom.

Louisville Cardinals super sixth woman, sophomore guard Jude Schimmel, who won the Elite 89 award for the 2013 NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Championship, will kick off the National UNITY Conference along with her parents Rick and Ceci Schimmel to be held in the greater Los Angeles area from July 12-16, 2013.

The Elite 89 is presented to the student athlete with the highest cumulative grade point average participating in the NCAA championship finals.

Schimmel, who is majoring in sociology, currently carries a 3.737 grade point average, which is the highest GPA among all players in the NCAA women’s basketball Final Four.

For the season, Jude averages 5.7 points per game and leads the team in assists with 106.

The Louisville women’s team lost to UConn in the national championship game last April. Jude’s sister Shoni is unable to attend as she will be playing in the World University Games in Russia.

Jude Schimmel in the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Championship game

As many as 1200 Native American Youth Leaders from throughout the U.S. are expected to attend the UNITY conference in Woodland Hills just outside of LA.

Other confirmed keynote speakers include: The 1491s comedy group, Alex Shulte LPGA golfer, Charles Pierson CEO, Big Brothers and Big Sisters Leroy Not Afraid Crow Nation Legislative Branch, Justice of the Peace, and Deborah Parker, Vice Chairwoman of the Tulalip Tribes.

The lineup of this year’s Speakers is gearing up to make this National UNITY conference one of the best ever.

National Museum of American Indian Annual Living Earth Festival July 19-21

Source: Native News Network

WASHINGTON – Join the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in celebrating its fourth annual Living Earth Festival Friday, July 19, through Sunday, July 21. This year’s festival features live music and dance performances, a Native cooking competition, a film screening, hands on crafts and storytelling for families, an outdoor farmers’ market with local produce and game, a discussion of tribal environmental activism, as well as beading demonstrations and workshops on cheese making and sculpture.

Living Earth Festival Friday, July 19, thru Sunday, July 21

Highlights include:

Indian Summer Showcase Concert

On Saturday at 5:00 pm, this concert in the Potomac Atrium will feature the talents of Quetzal Guerrero, a Latin soul singer, violinist, guitarist, and percussionist, She King, an indie rock outfit from Toronto fronted by Six Nations vocalist Shawnee Talbot, and a performance by GRAMMY award winning artist Ozomatli, a “culture mashing” group whose music embraces influences from hip-hop, salsa, dancehall, cumbia, samba, and funk.

Dinner and a Movie

On Friday evening, the museum’s Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe will offer an a la carte menu from 5 pm to 6:30 pm before the 7 pm screening of Watershed: Exploring a New Water Ethic for the New West in the Rasmuson Theater. Narrated by Robert Redford, the film highlights the lives and thoughts of six individuals living and working in the Colorado River basin and examines the issue of balancing the interests and rights of cities, agriculture, the environment, and Native communities when it comes to water rights. The screening is free, but registration through the NMAI website, is required. Registration does not ensure a seat; seating is on a first come, first served basis. Limited walk up seats will be available on the night of the show.

Farmers’ Market

On Sunday from 10 pm to pm, a farmers market will be open on the museum’s outdoor Welcome Plaza. Local produce and game will be available from Common Good, Coonridge Organic Cheese Farm, Chuck’s Butcher Shop, and more.

Environmental Discussion

On Saturday at 2 pm, Tribal ecoAmbassadors will host a discussion in the Rasmuson Theater on the roles of Native professors and students in addressing environmental issues with a focus on work toward local solutions to preserve public health, reduce carbon footprints, and increase sustainability.

Sculpture Workshop

On Friday at 1 pm and 2 pm and Saturday and Sunday at 11 am, 1 pm and 2 pm in the imagiNATIONS Activity Center, Muscogee Creek artist Lisan Tiger Blaire is hosting a sculpture workshop. Free tickets are available at the Activity Center. The workshops are first come, first served.

WHAT:
Living Earth Festival

WHEN:
Friday, July 19 – 1:00 pm – 5:30 pm
Saturday & Sunday, July 20 & 21st – 10:00 am – 5:30 pm

WHERE:
Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian
4th Street and Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20560

Double-Edged Sword

Jay Taber, Intercontinental Cry

Over the last few years, participatory mapping by indigenous communities has been heralded as a breakthrough in their relations with corporations and modern states. As the theory goes, by mapping sacred cultural sites and natural resources essential to their survival, indigenous nations can help corporate states avoid unnecessary conflict through cooperative conservation. Of course, that is only one theory, the other being that by informing corporate states of their most fundamental vulnerabilities, indigenous nations are plotting their own doom.

As it happens, this concern over betrayal by modern states, corporations and NGOs behind the participatory mapping phenomenon is well-founded. According to renowned cartographer and social scientist Denis Wood, his research in Oaxaca, Mexico reveals that participatory mapping gets turned into a method for making maps that support state and military interventions into Indigenous life. The title of his forthcoming book — Weaponizing Maps, a genealogy of U.S. Army mapping of indigenous populations where counter-insurgency military measures have been used for U.S. interests abroad — kind of sums up his view on the topic.

While participatory mapping can help indigenous peoples better understand their situation, when shared with their potential enemies, it is a double-edged sword.

Invitation to Tulalip Artists for Anniversary Event, Saturday, August 17, 2013

haʔɬ sləx̌il, siʔiʔab dxʷlilap ʔaciɬtalbixʷ.

Good day, Honorable Tulalip People.

Tulalip Tribal artists are invited to set up vendor tables during the 2nd Anniversary celebration of the Tulalip Tribes Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve. The Anniversary event will be held Saturday, August 17, 2013, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Vendors can begin setting up at 9 a.m.

We welcome you to reserve a table to showcase your talents as we celebrate the legacy of our ancestors with the Anniversary of the Hibulb Cultural Center opening.* One table and two chairs will be provided. Meals will be available for purchase.

Please contact one of the following people by August 9 to sign up so we can arrange areas:

Mary Jane Topash, 360-716-2657, mjtopash@hibulbculturalcenter.org

Lois Landgrebe, 360-716-2610, llandgrebe@hibulbculturalcenter.org

ťigʷitubuɬəd čəɬ

We thank you folks.

Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve

*Non-tribal vendors are welcome pending space availability and a $20 fee.

Quinoa Fever: Superfood’s Soaring Popularity is Killing South American Growers

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

The burgeoning global demand for quinoa may be negatively impacting the people who grow it, reports columnist Joanna Blythman for The Guardian.

Until recently, the ancient seed was primarily eaten by the rural poor of Bolivia and Peru. Now the superfood indigenous to the Andes mountain range of South America is showing up in restaurants and grocery stories across the U.S. and in recipes all over the web. It is commonly recommended as a compliment to fish or lamb, or to bolster the heartiness of a fresh salad or pan-seared greens.

Indian Country Today Media Network’s food columnist Dale Carson, Abenaki, has likewise written about the healthy pasta substitute—rich in iron, protein, fiber, potassium, zinc and essential amino acids.

“[T]he Inca called quinoa chisa mama, ‘mother of all grain…,’” she writes, offering recipe suggestions for quinoa and beans, as well as a quinoa salad with avocado.

But this sudden championing of quinoa has its drawbacks. The price is soaring, and the Peruvians and Bolivians who have subsisted on it for centuries can no longer afford it.

The New York Times reported in 2011 that increased demand for quinoa had driven up the price three-fold in the past five years. Meanwhile, Bolivia’s consumption fell by 34 percent over the same period.

Costs have shot so high that now in Bolivia and Peru, “imported junk food is cheaper,” writes Blythman. “In Lima, quinoa now costs more than chicken.” And even more devastating, climbing quinoa prices have been blamed for a rise in malnutrition among children in quinoa-growing regions.

There’s no denying the seed is nutritious and widely touted. The United Nations even declared 2013 the Year of Quinoa, and Bolivia’s President Evo Morales attended the U.N. ceremony on February 20.

But given its ability to cripple food security among South America’s poor, enthusiasm for the seed “looks increasingly misplaced,” Blythman writes.

On the flipside, capitalism buffs like Doug Saunders of the Globe and Mail have contended the economic boost from quinoa exports is reviving the impoverished communities of Bolivia and Peru.

And Edouard Rollet, co-founder and president of Alter Eco—a company that has spearheaded the fair trade and organic quinoa markets—proposes another perspective. The issue at hand, he says, is not whether or not to develop the quinoa market—it is how it is done:

“Giving the poorest of the poor in Latin America—farmers that grow quinoa—access to income or ‘protecting’ this region from globalization, is a false choice,” he said in a recent conference call, reported Mother Nature Network’s Sami Grover. “It’s up to everyone involved, especially companies, to determine if they will operate in a way that fairly benefits those at quinoa’s origin—or if they will operate business as usual.”

Montreal’s First Peoples’ Festival of Fun is Almost Here

Gale Courey Toensing

In a few short weeks, a 100-foot tall tipi will once again rise up at Place des Festivals, the main square smack in the middle of downtown Montreal, in preparation for the 23rd First Peoples’ Festival.

This year’s festival will take place July 30 through August 5 at Place des Festivals and various sites around the city, as well as across the St. Lawrence River on Mohawk territory at Kahnawake. The giant tipi anchors a state-of-the-art sound system and stage where concerts take place, films are screened, and dancers and other performers entertain and educate thousands of people who come to the festival.

André Dudemaine (Innu), the co-founder, president and artistic director of the First Peoples’ Festival, described this year’s program for the Présence autochtone—the French name for First Peoples’ Festival—in a media release.

“This is a cultural event that, as its name indicates, is a presence, and a constant one,” Dudemaine said. “Our festival’s 23rd edition flows from a far more ancient presence and constancy, the millennial cultures of the original peoples of this part of the planet. Despite many efforts to erase these peoples’ indelible mark or relegate them to invisibility, a festival in Montreal can still bear the name Présence autochtone, in dignity and pride.”

The hatchet, Dudemaine noted, has become a metaphor that hits hard and loud—artistically—in the films, poetry, paintings, sculpture and other visual arts, literature, music, legends, stories and history expressed and displayed during the weeklong indigenous celebration.

The First Peoples’ Festival began as a celebration of indigenous filmmaking, and that tradition continues to play a major role in the festival, with numerous screenings throughout the week. Indeed, the festival maintains perhaps the largest archives of indigenous films searchable at http://www.nativelynx.qc.ca/en/filmo.html.

This year’s festival will open with the world premiere of filmmaker Pierre Bastien’s Paroles amérikoises, the opening film, which will be shown on July 30 in the Grand Bibiliothèque auditorium. The film is about Innu poet Rita Mestokosho and the poets she has summoned to Ekuanitshit (“where things run aground”), an Innu community of just over 500 people who were transferred by the federal government to the remote reserve at the confluence of the Mingan River and the Gulf of Saint-Lawrence.

Mitchif (a world premiere) by André Gladu, celebrates the memory of the Métis heroes Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont. Xingu is a Brazilian feature based on the lives of the Boas brothers, veritable South American Schindlers who saved many lives by creating the first officially recognized Indian territory in Brazil. Heart of Sky, Heart of Earth, a sumptuous German production on contemporary Maya cosmovision facing off against the destruction of natural spaces and the hope of the new era that has just begun. Two other not-to-be-missed feature films are Polvo, a story of revenge and rough justice in post-civil-war Guatemala, and the Argentine film Belleza, a diabolical intrigue involving three women—the mother, the daughter and the young Indigenous housemaid.

Poet-singer-songwriter-film director Richard Desjardins will perform l’Existoire ultime (Ulimate Existence) in his last concert before taking an extended leave from performing. Inuit musician Beatrice Deer will open the concert on August 3 at Club Soda, a legendary Montreal music venue that hosts international performers. Two major free concerts are also on tap.

“Fiddle No More is a war cry to say out loud that the bullshit is over and that Amerindians are here to stay and that their presence will be felt with even more strength and determination,” Dudemaine said. The concert will feature rockers CerAmony and Digging Roosts on August 1. The next night Électrochoc zaps the crowd with vibrant music. On August 3, all traffic stops on St. Catherine Street, the main thoroughfare of downtown Montreal, as the Nuestramericana friendship parade takes place, with Indigenous Peoples from all over the western hemisphere marching and dancing to drums. (Related: Video: UNDRIP Parade at the Montreal First People’s Festival)

Other festival happenings include a discovery tour showcasing Aboriginal Montreal; a photo exhibition of the Long Walk of Innu women to Montreal for Earth Day 2012; Inuit sculptors at work on the plaza; a cinema space in a Longhouse where the people can discover works by young First Nations filmmakers; an indigenous food stand, and a fun introduction to archaeology for kids. Finally, the festival will close with the Canadian premiere of Winter in the Blood, an adaptation of the Blackfeet writer James Welch’s novel.

For more, see the full calendar of First Peoples’ Festival activities.

Quebec oil-train tragedy triggered oil spill that threatens water supplies

John Upton, Grist

The deadly oil-train explosion in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, on Saturday also sparked an environmental disaster. An oil sheen has stretched more than 60 miles down a river that’s used as a source of drinking water.

By Tuesday morning, 13 people had been confirmed dead and some 37 were still missing after runaway train cars loaded with fracked crude from North Dakota derailed in the town and ignited. Lac-Mégantic’s fire chief said the fire is now under control, but a small area of town is still off limits for safety reasons. Emergency crews continue to search for bodies of the missing. Officials are urging relatives to provide them with DNA, such as on toothbrushes, to help them identify the dead, and are warning that some of the bodies may never be identified.

Meanwhile, water and environment officials are facing up to a crisis of their own. An estimated 26,000 gallons of oil that spilled from the rail cars flowed into the Chaudière River. Residents downstream are being asked to conserve water as municipalities switch to backup sources. From CBC News:

Quebec Environment Minister Yves-François Blanchet told CBC’s Quebec AM that he flew over the Chaudière River Sunday to see the extent of the damage caused by the oil spilled from the derailed tankers.

“What we have is a small, very fine, very thin layer of oil which, however, covers almost entirely the river for something like 100 kilometres from Lac-Mégantic to St-Georges-de-Beauce,” he said.

“This is contained at St-Georges-de-Beauce for the time being, most of it, or almost entirely, and we are very confident we will be in a position to be able to pump most of it out of the river. However, there will be some impact.”

From the BBC:

A spokesman for Quebec’s environmental ministry says floating barriers and other tools are being used to block the oil from heading downstream.

But the pollution has already reached the nearby town of Saint-Georges, prompting fears oil could flow into the St Lawrence River.

Air quality in the town is also a concern. Officials say the air is safe, but an odor may remain.

Explosion at West Virginia fracking site seriously injures four

John Upton, Grist

Federal investigators are trying to figure out what caused an explosion at a West Virginia fracking site over the weekend. The blast injured at least seven people, including four workers who were sent to a hospital with life-threatening burns.

Residents and activists have long complained about safety practices by frackers operating in the state, where they draw natural gas from the Marcellus shale formation. Traffic accidents involving trucks traveling to and from frack sites in the state are common, and explosions can be deadly.

Hydraulic fracturing was not underway at the time of Sunday’s blast in Doddridge County. The explosion occurred 50 yards away from the work crew and it did not involve the drilling rig. From Reuters:

Two storage tanks containing brine and fracking fluid from the well exploded at 4 a.m. EDT on Sunday Antero spokesman Alvyn Schopp said. Five workers were taken to hospital with burns, he said.

“We do not know the ignition source, but we suspect it was a methane explosion,” said Schopp, vice president at Antero, an oil and natural gas company controlled by Warburg Pincus LLC.

The cause of the explosion remains a mystery, but it could not have come as a huge surprise to fed-up residents of the state.

In April, two workers were killed and two others were injured by an explosion at a frack site in Tyler County, W.Va., though the story was quickly buried amid news of the Boston marathon bombings.

Also in April, AlterNet published a feature article that catalogued frackers’ shoddy safety records in West Virginia, and described the pollution that they cause. The piece includes a series of photographs of accidents, including this photo below, of a fire that burned for more than a week at a well site in September 2010:

Fracking fire — Wetzel County Action Group

“It burned for something like nine days,” Ed Wade, the resident who shot the photograph, told AlterNet. “But the [West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection] said there were no cases of air pollution. You believe that?”