Tulalip News

Trail of Tears Is Used to Sell Bid to Bring 2024 Olympics to Tulsa

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

Tulsa2024, a private Olympic Exploratory Committee seeking to bring the 2024 Summer Olympic Games to Tulsa, Oklahoma, is using the Trail of Tears as a selling point. According to the Tulsa2024 website: “Over half of the States in the USA are of Native American origin. The Olympic Torch would travel though these Native American named states and follow one, or more of the many Trail of Tears to Indian Territory, and end in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, headquarters of the Cherokee Nation. The Olympic Torch would then travel from Tahlequah, OK to Tulsa to the start of the 2024 Games.”

As ICTMN reported in April, the city of Tulsa was indeed exploring a longshot bid to land the 2024 Games, with the support of Mayor Dewey Bartlett. But the ongoing effort, Tulsa2024, is entirely a private effort, according to city officials. The Tulsa Sports Commission has scheduled a press conference today to discuss the issue.

As Travis Waldron of ThinkProgess observes, the most absurd part of the Tulsa Olympic bid “amazingly isn’t the bid itself — it’s that organizers apparently think incorporating the Trail of Tears on the Olympic torch route as a ‘nod to the state’s American Indian history’ is a good idea

In a feature story on Tulsa’s Olympic bid efforts by Mary Pilon for The New York Times, published June 30, reference was made to the Trail of Tears idea: “In a nod to the state’s American Indian history, the Olympic torch would be led along the solemn Trail of Tears, not far from where field hockey would be played in Tahlequah.”

“Using the Trail of Tears as part of an Olympic bid is outrageous, but it’s also just an extension of the thoughtlessness the sports world has applied to Native Americans for decades,” says Waldron.

New chair of Snoqualmie Tribe unsure about casino plan in Fiji

Source: Indianz.com

The new leader of the Snoqualmie Tribe of Washington isn’t sure what’s going on with a casino project in the island nation of Fiji.

The Fijian government announced a partnership with the tribe in December 2011. But the project doesn’t seem to have advanced much amid questions about the tribe’s leadership.

Those questions appear to have been settled by an election last month in which Carolyn Lubenau won the top seat. She told Radio New Zealand international that the tribe was looking into the casino deal.

A LinkedIn page for the project, One Hundred Sands, anticipated an opening this fall. The tribe also anticipated a fall opening.

“The Council has determined that this project is consistent with the Tribe’s priority to diversify economically,” the Spring 2012 newsletter stated. The Tribe’s ownership interest presents a unique opportunity to diversify the Snoqualmie Tribal gaming interests and to produce additional revenue streams for decades into the future.”

Get the Story:
US tribe’s involvement in Fiji casino unclear (Radio New Zealand International 7/2)
Snoqualmie Tribe celebrates election (The Snoqualmie Valley Star 6

Compare a week of U.S. groceries to Mexico, Mongolia, and other countries

By Sarah Laskow, Grist

Have you seen these photos by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Alusio? They show what a family eats for a week in countries around the world. They’re a quick and fascinating window in the differences in the quantity and the quality of food people eat.

Just look for a second at all the colors in this Mexican family’s food:

And then check out the American family’s groceries. Still colorful, yeah, but the colors come from the bright packaging of processed food:

In Mongolia, a more arid environment, the food’s more monochrome:

And in the countries where families have fewer resources, like Ecuador, their food has less variation: They buy groceries in sacks.

There’s a book of these photos, too. Get it!

Oil trains and terminals could be coming to the Northwest

John Upton, Grist

Pacific Northwesterners worried by three planned new coal export hubs along their shorelines have something new to fear.

Oil refiner Tesoro and terminal operator Savage are trying to secure permits to build the region’s biggest crude oil shipping terminal at the Port of Vancouver, along the Washington state side of the Columbia River.

KPLU reports that the proposed terminal would receive crude by rail from oil fields in North Dakota and transfer it onto oceangoing tankers for delivery to refineries along the West Coast. And that’s just one of many plans to boost shipments of oil through the region to coastal ports. Environmentalists are not pleased, fearing oil spills among other problems.

From The Columbian:

The Port of Vancouver got an earful Thursday from backers and opponents of a proposed crude-oil transfer terminal who packed the Board of Commissioners’ hearing room to trumpet their arguments.

Executives with Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies, who want to build the terminal to handle as much as 380,000 barrels of oil per day, told commissioners the project capitalizes on rising U.S. oil production, boosts the local economy and will operate in ways that minimize harm to the environment.

“A lot of family-wage jobs will be created,” said Kent Avery, a senior vice president for Savage.

Critics told commissioners the project, which would haul oil by rail and move it over water, conflicts with the port’s own sustainability goals, increases the risk of oil spills in the Columbia River and further fuels global warming.

“This is a really big gamble,” said Jim Eversaul, a Vancouver resident and retired U.S. Coast Guard chief engineer.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) will have the final decision on the proposal. From the Columbian again:

Port managers are negotiating the terms of a lease agreement with Tesoro and Savage. Commissioners may decide a proposed lease arrangement on July 23.

Such a decision won’t end the matter, though. The state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council will scrutinize the proposed crude oil facility and make a recommendation to Gov. Jay Inslee, who has the final say.

The council’s review could take up to a year or more. The companies hope to launch an oil terminal at the port in 2014.

The Seattle-based nonprofit Sightline reports that 11 port terminals and refineries in Washington and Oregon “are planning, building, or already operating oil-by-rail shipments” and “if all of the projects were built and operated at full capacity, they would put an estimated 20 mile-long trains per day on the Northwest’s railway system.”

The Everlasting Fantasy of Native Americans

Lisa Balk King, Huffington Post Blog

While everyone is focused on Johnny Depp’s Tonto, debating the merits of donning “red face” in order to “… give some hope to kids on the reservations,” the President of the United States has quietly continued his reparative work on the broken U.S. Federal Indian Policy to nary an audience.

The timing couldn’t be more ironic, or telling, about how we choose as a nation to frame Native America. It is so much easier to add our $12 to the coffers of Disney and Depp in order to enter the debate about our fantastical American history.

What we really could, and should, be doing is paying attention to the real life and work being done to address our own historic holocaust. “This land is our land, this land is your land”? This land was their land, and how we choose to continue this sentimentalist view, and therefore keep our moral distance from responsibility, is right out of a Hollywood escapist fantasy.

Enter Depp to play Tonto, a “Native American” (quotes in deference to Native filmmaker Chris Eyre’s observation on HuffPostLive, “I don’t see anything Indian about him… what is it, the buckskin pants?”) dreamed up by a white guy, and voila, everybody is talking about “Indians.”

To wit, last week Obama signed an Executive Order establishing The White House Council on Native American Affairs. The establishment of this Council is to institutionalize the work done thus far by Obama and his top aides, including Jodi Gillette (Standing Rock Sioux), Special Advisor to the President on Native American Affairs and Charlie Galbraith (Navajo), deputy associate director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs in the White House Office of Public Engagement.

Since taking office, Obama has appointed the first-ever Senior Policy Advisor for Native American Affairs within the Domestic Policy Council (Gillette), supported the previously rejected United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), signed the Native American Apology Resolution, H.R. 3326 and thereby “… apologized on behalf of the United States to all Native Peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect of Native Peoples by citizens of the United States,” made a number of Native American appointments to key posts (including the first-ever Native American to be tapped for United States Representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Keith Harper), successfully encouraged the resolution of historic resource settlements, and most notably hosted an annual White House Tribal Nations Conference. This gathering includes a representative from each of the 566 federally recognized tribes and key Cabinet members. The new Executive Order builds upon this annual gathering, aspiring to ensure that future administrations can’t undo the advances made by Obama and company.

Obama’s newly appointed Secretary of Interior, Sally Jewell, made an emotional address to tribal leadership on June 27 at the National Congress of American Indians mid-year conference in Reno, NV. Jewell publicly announced the Executive Order and will serve as Chair of the Council. “The President is firmly committed to building the nation-to-nation relationship with tribes… This is about forwarding and promoting self-determination and self governance.” The Council is meant to organize the federal government’s interactions with Indian tribes in a comprehensive and permanent fashion, breaking down agency “silos” and building capacity.

When asked if this effort was the president’s way of making good on the (somewhat hushed) apology, Jodi Gillette replied, “We are trying to weave that through all of our work. Like the president says, ‘It’s not just about words, its about action.’ We can’t undo what was done in the last 150 years. It’s about doing right by Indian country for the next 150 years.”

So, what does this mean to you, Depp-loving American? It means that you don’t have to count on the occasional return of Hollywood favor for a celebrity-loaned spotlight on Native American children. Real work is being done here, and the strides are measurable.

Everybody loves a good escapist fantasy now and then, and this isn’t such a bad thing. What is not acceptable, however, is the collective amnesia about the responsibility of the United States. As the Apology Resolution clearly and correctly states, we must “… acknowledge the wrongs of the United States against Indian tribes in the history of the United States in order to bring healing to this land.” While it is a grand thought that Tonto can provide a foil to Manifest Destiny, this is truly a job for the superhero (aka American voter) in each of us.

Native Cultures Get National Airplay on Venezuelan Radio

Rick Kearns, Indian Country Today Media Network

Indigenous cultures are receiving national attention on radio shows throughout Venezuela.

The National Venezuelan Radio System (NVRS), which includes 14 indigenous channels, announced in June the start of a weekly indigenous cultures show that will be broadcast across the country.

The Original Cultures radio program was developed by the NVRS’s Indigenous Communication Channel (ICC) and is described in the channel’s press release as being “multicultural, multilingual, aimed at promoting the ancestral cultures and the preservation of the environment from an indigenous perspective.”

“The objectives of this effort,” the statement continued, “will be to educate, inform, entertain, and to know everything related to the original cultures.”

This new show, which premiered on June 11th, will include three segments that will deal with regional, national and international topics through the use of interviews, surveys, public statements, and brief reports among other items. The program will also be run by and feature indigenous people from Venezuela and throughout Abya Yala (Latin America). As with prior ICC shows, indigenous journalists from other countries such as Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Mexico will contribute news reports from their regions.

The first guest of the Original Cultures show was Congressman Jose Luis Gonzalez, a representative of the Pemon community and President of the National Assembly’s Permanent Commission of Indigenous Peoples. In the first episode of the program Congressman Gonzalez spoke about the culture of the Pemon people who live in Bolivar State, located in southern Venezuela.

“We, who are part of nature, and our ancestors, comparing it a little with Genesis in Christianity, said that the creator placed us here; and that the ancestors are in the mountaintops, their contact with the cosmos, spirituality, that is where our origins lie,” Gonzalez said in the first program.

He also congratulated the shows hosts for creating the radio space that would allow all Venezuelans to learn about the origins and the histories of the many indigenous cultures. Gonzalez then spoke briefly about the Pemon cultural value of belonging to a place, of the sacredness of the land, as well as how a company of Pemon (also known as Caribe) archers participated in the Battle of San Felix in 1817, as part of the war of independence against Spain.

The new show will be broadcast on Wednesdays and will be 45 minutes long. Original Cultures will join other national indigenous programming such as Indigenous News, broadcast Monday through Friday on the Music and Information Channel every afternoon at 3:50 p.m. and We Are Amerindians, which goes on the air every Saturday at 3 p.m.

Carrie L. Billy to Represent American Association of Community Colleges

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

Carrie L. Billy, the president and CEO of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, has been elected to the board of directors for the American Association of Community Colleges, a national organization representing nearly 1,200 two-year colleges and more than 13 million students.

She will serve as the board’s public at-large representative speaking for more than 88,000 American Indian and Alaska Native students and community members served by the nation’s 37 tribal colleges and universities.

She officially took office with other new board members July 1 and will serve a three-year term.

The board has 32 members and governs association policy and helps guide strategic direction for national advocacy for the organization.

“I am extremely humbled and honored to be selected by AACC to serve on this important board, which ensures that community colleges and TCUs have key roles in discussions on issues shaping our nation’s higher education policy,” Billy said in a press release. “I am fortunate to be working alongside such dedicated and knowledgeable staff and board members. It is a tremendous privilege to be able to represent TCUs and tribal communities across the country in this capacity.”

Resolving grievances: Eliminating violence against indigenous nations

June 11, 2013 - S. James Anaya, speaking at the WCIP Global Preparatory Meeting in Alta, Norway. (Photo: Ben Powless, Global Coordinating Group Media Team) — June 11, 2013 – S. James Anaya, speaking at the WCIP Global Preparatory Meeting in Alta, Norway. (Photo: Ben Powless, Global Coordinating Group Media Team)

Jay Taber, Intercontinental Cry

While consultations between indigenous nations and modern states worldwide — mostly over resource extraction and development proposals — are in the news, little has been said about conditions for consultations. Since states and corporations are seeking to lend the appearance of meeting the free, prior and informed consent standard set by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, it might seem reasonable that indigenous nations place conditions on how these consultations are conducted.

In Peru, indigenous peoples recently withdrew from a consultation until the state addressed longstanding items of neglect, the logic being that if the state cannot resolve existing grievances over health, education and the environment, then why should indigenous nations meet to discuss allowing corporations additional access to resources in their territories. One of the indigenous proposals in Peru is to establish state institutions designed to interact inclusively with indigenous nations, so that grievances and proposals can be discussed and resolved.

In the follow-up to the international conference of indigenous nations in Alta, Norway last week, Quinault Indian Nation president Fawn Sharp called for a similar protocol at the UN, in which indigenous nations would have a seat at the table. As Sharp noted, “Indigenous nations and each U.N. member now have clearly focused issues on which to base government-to-government negotiations. These negotiations can help eliminate violence against indigenous nations caused by rampant development which pollute lands and waters and force Indigenous Peoples out of their territories.”

As Quinault and 71 other American Indian nations proposed at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in May, indigenous governments must have a dignified and appropriate status at the UN in order to end violation of indigenous rights by its member states. Until indigenous nations are fully participating members of the UN, violations and violence inflicted on indigenous communities will likely continue to increase. As the 72 nations stated, “Without effective implementing measures and without international monitoring of indigenous peoples’ rights, the purposes of the Declaration cannot be achieved.”

As indigenous nations and modern states seek a path to establishing constructive solutions to long festering conflicts, national and international institutions will need to be invented and reinvented. With the UN World Conference on Indigenous Peoples scheduled for September 2014, it is perhaps not too soon to begin.

What’s up with Gina McCarthy’s nomination to head the EPA?

Claire Thompson, Grist

Many of Obama’s nominees have not been popular with Republicans in the Senate, but Gina McCarthy has faced a particularly tough fight. GOP senators boycotted a committee vote on her nomination two months ago, mostly because of their knee-jerk hatred of all things related to the EPA (or, as some prefer to call it, the job-killing organization of America).

McCarthy has a reputation as a tough and experienced policymaker committed to fighting climate change, whose work as Massachusetts’ top environmental advisor contributed to the Supreme Court’s landmark 2007 ruling giving EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gases. She’s worked for Republicans as well as Democrats and collaborated constructively with industry, but that background hasn’t calmed GOP worries about what the EPA might do on climate change.

Over recent months, McCarthy repeatedly assured senators that the EPA was not working on carbon regulations for existing power plants. But then last week, Obama announced in his big climate speech that he planned to order EPA to develop just such regulations. Politico reported last week that this could further endanger McCarthy’s nomination because GOP lawmakers might accuse her of misleading them or argue that she was out of touch and incompetent (although the only people Politico quoted to support that theory were an oil-industry lobbyist and a GOP energy strategist).

But now, a week later, Politico reports that, on the contrary, a McCarthy confirmation is looking increasingly likely. Enough Republicans are philosophically opposed to filibustering presidential nominees that Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, says she isn’t concerned about having to lock up 60 filibuster-proof votes in McCarthy’s favor.

Some Republican senators, like Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), find McCarthy qualified and seem likely to support her. So do some fossil-fuel-friendly Democrats, reports Politico:

“My constituents are generally very upset with the EPA and [its] overreach and [its] overregulation,” Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said.

“Having said that, I have honestly gotten nothing but positive comments back from the industry groups in Louisiana on Gina McCarthy herself. I mean, while the industry groups are very negative towards the EPA generally, they are very positive towards Gina McCarthy as a person … that could potentially find compromises on some of these things.”

Democratic Senate leaders plan to put McCarthy up for a vote sometime this month. As of Monday, EPA has been without a permanent administrator for 137 days, the longest period of time in its history. It’s been 119 days since McCarthy’s nomination, also a record delay.

Idle No More delivers Sovereignty Summer message for Canada Day – This is stolen Native land.

Activists with No More Silence and Idle No More unveil surprise banner at Canada Day celebration in Toronto, call attention to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

Source: Climate Connections, July 1, 2013

At this evening’s Canada celebration at Mel Lastman Square, a group of activists as part of Idle No More’s Sovereignty Summer campaign, scaled the main stage at Toronto’s official Canada Celebration and ‘dropped’ a banner reading, “Oh Canada, your home on Stolen Native Land.”

Also, members and supporters of the group No More Silence were on hand at Mel Lastman’s Square handing out educational flyer’s about Idle No More and also No More Silence’s campaign to call attention to the tragedy of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. Silvia McAdams, a spokesperson for Idle No More says, “there is a deep interconnection between the ongoing extractive industries based economy of Canada and the violence that industry represents against our most sacred mother earth and this country’s ongoing failures to address and resolve the murdered and missing First Nations women’s and girls’ crisis. Sovereignty Summer calls for an immediate national Inquiry led by grassroots Indigenous women to develop a national action plan.”

Also on hand were activists dressed up as a promotional team from RBC, handing out flyers for a fictional “Colonialism Dividend” for Canada Day. “The point of this is to call attention to the source of Canadian wealth: Native land and resources,” says Audrey Huntely of No More Silence. “While the stereotype of the drunken lazy Indian living on hand outs persists it is in fact Native land and resources that make up the riches of this country – projects like the tar sands financed by banks such as RBC generate huge profits for a few while destroying the land and communities in their path. Hand in hand with this destruction go skyrocketing rates of violence against women. In fact Native women are five to seven times more likely to be murdered than other women,” Huntley says.

Sovereignty Summer is the new campaign of the Idle No More movement and the Defenders of the Land Network, intended as an education and action-based campaign focused on Indigenous Rights and in defense of Mother Earth. Building on the momentum and enthusiasm of the Idle No More Winter and Spring towards a strategic and effective next stage of this movement.