As the effects of climate change become more and more pronounced and better understood, the concerns of Indigenous Peoples are coming more and more to the fore. Conventional science is beginning to understand not only that they suffer inordinately from the phenomenon, but also that their traditional knowledge could hold some keys for adaptation, if not mitigation.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Change Assessment in May highlighted the effects on Indigenous Peoples, including those from the Pacific Islands and the Caribbean. In concert with that the authors made a video that lays out some of these challenges and how they are interconnected. Below, an interview with T.M. Bull Bennett, a convening lead author on the National Climate Assessment’s Indigenous Peoples chapter.
“We’re starting to see a change in how we interpret the environment around us,” Bennett says below. Indigenous populations, he adds, are “on the short end of the stick.”
Courtesy James Tucker, of law firm Wilson Elser, in Las Vegas The extreme isolation of many Alaska Native villages makes early voting, and the options it offers, a critical part of helping residents get to the polls.
A perfectly timed combination of negotiation and grassroots organizing has allowed numerous Native villages across Alaska to become absentee in-person voting locations for federal elections for the first time. That’s a sea change from just a few weeks ago, when voters in only about 30 Native villages had a way to cast a ballot ahead of Election Day, said Nicole Borromeo, general counsel of the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN). Meanwhile, Alaska’s urban voters had 15 days to do so. The locations will be in place for the August primary.
This transformation in voting access follows years of fruitless requests to the state for the election services by three groups: AFN, an organization of regional and village corporations, tribes and other entities; ANCSA Regional Association, a group of Native-corporation CEOs; and Get Out The Native Vote. “In late June, AFN and ANCSA sat down with the state and said, ‘we will sign up the locations,’” recalled Borromeo, who is Athabascan from McGrath Native Village. The state agreed, and the Native team began seeking groups and individuals to handle the election activities.
“Eleven days later, we had added 128 locations,” said Borromeo. “We have been entirely focused on this.” The goal is to bring equal voting rights to all of Alaska’s 200-plus indigenous villages, she said.
This has been a Native-led project, according to Borromeo: “We identified the problem, we identified the solution, and we made it happen. Now, the state has to play its part and do election training. We’ll be monitoring to be sure it happens. We intend to be a long-term partner in this effort.”
The project’s success shows that voting rights can be provided quickly and efficiently when there’s a will to do it, said Natalie Landreth, member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma and a Native American Rights Fund plaintiffs’ attorney litigating the Alaska Native voting-rights case Toyukuk v. Treadwell.
Media coverage of the just-concluded trial helped the Native team convince the state to let it set up the new voting centers, said Borromeo: “It was the perfect political storm.”
Nicole Borromeo, general counsel of the Alaska Federation of Natives (Courtesy AFN)
“Our people have a hunger to vote,” she added. “They go to huge lengths to do so, and overcome barriers no one else in the country faces.” Just to get to the polls, Alaska Native voters cope with fierce winter weather, vast distances and, in one village photographed by James Tucker, another Toyukuk v. Treadwell plaintiffs’ attorney, a raging river that separates two precincts sharing one ballot box. Pollworkers in a small launch brave ice-filled water to transport the box across the water, Tucker said.
The pressure of survival in a demanding environment is another hurdle. “During the election season, many rural voters are busy with subsistence activities and may not be near their polling place on Election Day,” said Jason Metrokin, ANCSA chair. The new centers expand their options and give them the same access as urban Alaskans, Metrokin said.
Once Alaska Native voters get to the polls, the traditional-language speakers need translation of election materials. However, testimony in Toyukuk v. Treadwell exposed yet another obstacle: longstanding systemic problems in the state’s delivery of federally mandated language assistance. (The judge’s decision is expected shortly.)
Lieutenant Governor Mark Treadwell, the lawsuit’s lead defendant, recently announced that the new locations will make 2014 election ballots “the most widely available in state history.”
That has the potential to transform politics in a state where indigenous people make up a fifth of the population. Said AFN president, Julie Kitka, “Having access to early voting is only the first step. Now our people need to learn about this right and understand what they’re being asked to vote on. There is much more work to be done by the state’s Division of Elections.”
The Coeur d’Alene Tribe in Idaho is asking for information that will lead to the person who wrote “white power” and other racist messages on a reservation historical marker over the weekend.
Vandals defaced a sign off Highway 95 on the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation.
Credit Coeur d’Alene Tribe
The writing was discovered on a sign for the former site of the DeSmet Mission south of Plummer. The message also included the words “die … Indians,” an expletive and what appear to be swastikas.
Groups that have worked to drive white supremacist elements out of north Idaho are condemning the act. Tony Stewart, one of the founders of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, said, “We denounce it in the most strong terms. It is racist. It is filled with hatred and it’s very depressing to us to know that kind of attitude and belief is anywhere in the world.”
Stewart said the vandalism is more likely the work of “lone wolves” than the re-emergence of any organized group. In the 1980s and ’90s, the Aryan Nations had its world headquarters in Hayden, Idaho.
Stewart said the person who defaced the sign could be charged with a federal hate crime.
One of the lowest tides of the year this weekend revealed a “crime scene” at the beach at Golden Gardens Park in Seattle.
The victims: thousands of clams that died in the prime of their lives. Each bivalve victim has a tiny hole drilled near its hinge.
Also strewn on the beach were gray rubbery things that looked like toilet plunger heads. The Beach Naturalists from the Seattle Aquarium say concerned citizens have collected them in buckets, upset that someone would have dumped so much litter on the beaches.
But it turns out that the holes and the toilet plunger heads are all the products of a little-known predator: the moon snail.
The culprit: Not a toilet plunger head, but the predatory moon snail. Credit KUOW Photo/Joshua McNichols
A Gruesome Murder
When it comes to the moon snail, Seattle Aquarium Beach Naturalist Will Downs is unwavering when he describes how the moon snail treats its victims: The snail “doesn’t see his prey. He feels them. He tastes them. And if you’re a clam, he sneaks up on you and engulfs you.”
Low tide at Seattle’sGolden Gardens Park.
Credit: Joshua McNichols/KUOW
It gets worse. If the snail can’t smother the clam then and there, it drills through the clam shell with its bony, barbed tongue. That specialized tongue slowly files away at the clam, “day after day sometimes, until it can reach the interior, where the clam thought it was safe. Then it extrudes in there acids, enzymes, anything that’ll digest the clam.”
Downs grins as he delivers his punch line: “…and then it slurps up its own clam chowder.”
And those rubbery things that look like toilet plunger heads? Downs says they’re moon snail egg collars. The snail squeezes out the leathery substance by fusing together eggs, sand and its own mucus. As the egg collar emerges, it wraps around the moon snail’s shell, taking on the shell’s shape.
Case Closed
Before we condemn the moon snail, Seattle Aquarium naturalist Darcie Larson said the moon snail may be vicious predators of clams, but they’re an important part of the beach ecosystem of Puget Sound.
“If we had no predators, we might have too many shellfish. And then the shellfish population would get out of balance,” she said. “And they would eat up all the food, all the plankton in the ecosystem. We refer to predators like that as keystone species, and they hold the whole system together.”
So are moon snails threatened? Larson said anecdotally, the moon snails are doing well. Which is good, as other predators, such as sunflower sea stars, are currently suffering from a mysterious wasting disease.
Richard Walker Saaduuts Peele, a Haida master carver, instructs Gabriel Port, a Samish Nation descendant, on a finer point of canoe carving on October 23, 2010, at the Center for Wooden Boats in Lake Union, Seattle. Saaduuts is resident carver at the center, and has carved two canoes with the assistance of local students.
Haida master carver Saaduuts Peele was a guest at Pinehurst K-8 School in Seattle, Washington on June 18 for the school’s final graduation ceremony—the school will soon be torn down to make way for a new school.
Peele and Pinehurst students carved a 40-foot ocean-going canoe, Ocean Spirit, in 2003-04 and gifted the canoe to the Native community of Hydaburg, Alaska in a potlatch in April 2004. The canoe was returned to Seattle on June 18.
Saaduuts, resident carver at the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle, is doing some repairs to the canoe at the center. Once repairs are completed, the canoe will return to Hydaburg.
Herald file photo Tulalip tribal member Tony Hatch presents the first salmon of the fishing season during a Salmon Ceremony on the Tulalip Reservation in 2004. The traditional ceremony honors the first salmon to be caught with the hope that the fishing season will be plentiful. Following a feast, the bones of the salmon are returned to the water so that the honored fish will speak highly of the tribe.
Puget Sound is one of the iconic wonders of the world and defines who we are, not only as tribes, but all residents of Western Washington.
This great body of water was still being formed by receding glaciers when the tribes arrived, and we have lived off her abundant natural resources ever since. Over thousands of years our beautiful and unique inland sea has become a complex ecosystem, supporting not only an abundance of sea life, but also mixing with freshwater resources at the mouths of our great rivers, providing a consistent and plentiful food source for us humans.
This natural resource wealth has influenced every part of our tribal traditions. Stories of the great salmon runs have been carried down through the generations, and they tell us these waters once rippled with silver, as salmon arrived home after several years out to sea. The clams, crab and mussels were also abundant, and along with berries, roots and the plants we harvested, our traditional diet was, and continues to be, sacred to us.
The old Indians used to say, “When the tide is out, the table is set!”
For more than 200 years the descendants of the settlers, and now peoples from around the globe, have called the Puget Sound home. Like the tribes, they have lived off her rich resources, appreciated her great beauty and passed laws to protect her from exploitation.
Today, however, the health of Puget Sound is failing fast. In recent years it has lost 20 percent, or more, of the plankton that makes up the base of our food web. Everything above plankton in the food chain is also affected and is showing signs of great stress. The loss of plankton is beyond comprehension and is the single greatest barometer of what is happening to the waters we have all largely taken for granted.
It is time the citizens of Washington, and in particular citizens of Puget Sound, act on this information. With plankton gone, it means every animal up the food chain pays the price, including us.
Mark my words: Puget Sound is dying! Finding whales dying from natural causes is expected. Finding whales that are emaciated and starving is alarming and will become a common scenario if we do not address the problem quickly. But what is happening; why are plankton dying? We are only beginning to understand the complex interactions between warming ocean waters, how they affect the state’s inland sea, and how human activities play into this alarming situation.
Toxins in the food chain are devastating from the bottom all the way up. Recent evidence suggests that nutrient pollution, such as nitrogen and phosphorus from wastewater treatment plants, septic systems, residential homes, agriculture and other sources, are significantly disrupting the food web in Puget Sound. We cannot continue to ignore the fact that the sound is the baseline of our livelihoods and that we humans are only as healthy as our environment.
The great waters and rivers of the Salish Sea have existed since the last ice age (13,000 years ago) and with the melting of the ice the Puget Sound was born. Mother Nature has created this beautiful place we call home, and in less than 200 years, and largely within the last 100 years, we have managed to undo what Mother Nature provided us.
How many more years will it take to entirely wipe out sea life in Puget Sound? Can she sustain the barrage of pollutants that are killing the plankton for another 50 years? Do we have another 25 years to act before reaching the tipping point, or have we already arrived? Our window of opportunity to heal her is closing. It is our duty to do all that we can to improve her health and time is not on our side.
The Tulalip Tribes have collaborated with governments, nonprofits, and other entities on a variety of habitat restoration projects, on and off reservation, and we continue to lobby for the protection of Puget Sound. One project that we feel very proud to be a part of is Qualco Energy. Partnering with farmers and environment groups in the Snohomish River basin we have worked together to build an anaerobic digester, which channels cow manure away from streams and fresh groundwater sources by converting it to electricity before it is sold to the electricity grid. It is an example of the type of collaboration it will take to restore the health of our Sound.
Gov. Jay Inslee announced his proposal this week to address the issue of fish consumption that has large implications for our health and water quality standards. Gov. Inslee’s proposal begins to address Puget Sound’s health but not to the level that we had hoped. While the proposed rate of fish consumption is significantly higher, his proposal also increases the risk of cancer deaths by some toxins. The governor’s proposal strengthens water quality with one hand, but weakens it with the other. The net effect seems to be a very modest change for some chemicals, and no change at all for others. It also represents yet another delay on committing to the health of the Puget Sound, and to the health of those who depend on its resources.
There are no winners in the governor’s announcement. We want to be able to encourage our people to eat more fish and shellfish, as it sustained them well for many generations, and forms the basis of our shared ways of life. We remain hopeful that the court of public opinion will convince the governor to reconsider his proposal so that when the tide is out it is safe to eat at the table.
Les Parks is the vice chairman of the Tulalip Tribes.
Malala Yousafzai is a courageous advocate for universal education and girls’ rights. Malala was targeted for her brave activism and in October of 2012, the Taliban boarded her school bus and shot her and two other girls. After the shooting, Malala was flown from her home in Pakistan to the UK to recover. Malala is now back at school and continues to campaign for every child’s right to education.
What is Malala Day?
Malala Day, observed this year on 14 July 2014, is not just a day to celebrate Malala Yousafzai. It is a day for all children everywhere to raise their voices and be heard. It is a day to stand up for education and say to world that we are stronger than the enemies of education and stronger than the forces that threaten girls, boys and women from leading happy and productive lives. Learn more about Malala Day through her official website: www.malala.org
Last year, July 12, 2013 was Malala’s 16th birthday. To celebrate Malala Day, the global community came together to highlight the leading role that youth can play in enabling all children to get an education. Malala marked the day by giving her first public speech since the shooting dedicated to the importance of universal education at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
In support of the UN Secretary-General’s Global Education First Initiative, international youth leaders convened at the United Nations and in cities around the world in support of reaching the goal of having all children, especially girls, in school and learning by 2015.
Participate
Partner with Malala Day by going to www.malala.org/partners and by sharing Tweets, Facebook messages, photos or videos using the hashtag #StrongerThan. You can find images to share on social media here.
Sign Malala’s Petition
At this moment there are 58 million children without access to education and millions more who aren’t learning in school. Working together, that number can be lowered by 2015. On July 12, Malala marked her 16th birthday by delivering to the highest leadership of the UN a set of education demands written by youth. Continue to stand with Malala by signingthis letter to show your demand for emergency action in support of Malala’s education fight.
Buy-Back Program to begin implementation at Crow Nation,
Fort Belknap, Fort Peck to facilitate purchases from individual landowners
Source: Program, Buy Back
WASHINGTON, DC – In the latest step in the successful implementation of the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations (Buy-Back Program), Deputy Secretary of the Interior Michael Connor today announced that the Department has signed three additional agreements with tribal nations in Montana to facilitate the purchase of individual interests in fractionated trust lands and consolidate ownership for the tribes with jurisdiction. Agreements with Crow Tribe, Fort Belknap Indian Community, and the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation detail what each tribal government will do to help implement the Buy Back Program and provide resources to facilitate outreach and education, and solicit interest from owners.
To date, the Buy Back Program has made nearly 33,000 purchase offers to owners of fractionated interests, successfully concluded transactions worth more than $72 million and restored the equivalent of more than 203,000 acres of land to tribal ownership.
“President Obama has made clear his commitment to help strengthen Native American communities and I am proud that today we are continuing that momentum with the steady implementation of the Buy-Back Program,” said Deputy Secretary Connor. “I want to thank the Crow Tribe, Fort Belknap Indian Community, and the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation for their partnership as we work together to ensure individuals are aware of this historic opportunity to strengthen tribal sovereignty by supporting the consolidation of tribal lands for the benefit of each tribal nation.”
Land fractionation is a serious problem across Indian Country. As lands are passed down through generations, they gain more owners. Many tracts now have hundreds and even thousands of individual owners. Because it is difficult to gain landowner consensus, the lands often lie idle and cannot be used for any beneficial purpose. There are more than 245,000 owners of 3 million fractionated interests, spanning approximately 150 Indian reservations, who are eligible to participate in the Buy-Back Program.
“The Crow Tribe has been focused on addressing fractionated lands on the Crow Reservation for decades. We continue to be committed to restoring the tribal land base and are optimistic that the Cobell Land Buy-Back Program will provide critical funding towards these efforts,” saidChairman DarrinOld Coyote.“Execution of the cooperative agreement is the first important step to implement a tribal member prioritized approach to realize the benefits of the Program.”
The Department recently announced 21 locations where land consolidation activities such as planning, outreach, mapping, mineral evaluations, appraisals or acquisitions are expected to take place through the end of 2015. These communities represent more than half of all the fractional interests and unique owners across Indian Country.
“Fort Belknap would like to express their appreciation with the Land Buy-Back Agreement. We have had a professional working relationship with the Land Buy-Back team. Fort Belknap will be looking forward to increasing tribal land ownership and strengthening the economic environment for the tribe and tribal members. Consolidated tracts are a greater benefit to the overall land use and produce greater income,” said Councilman Curtis Horn, Fort Belknap Indian Community Tribal Land Chairman.
The Buy-Back Program is entering into cooperative agreements that are flexible and responsive to the specific needs and unique circumstances of each tribal government and location involved. The agreements showcase the active role that tribes can have, which is intended to improve the Program’s effectiveness and efficiency while minimizing administrative costs.
“It is my hope that this historic agreement will begin to address thegrowing problem of fractionalization of Indian land ownership on ourReservation by restoring our tribal land base, promoting Indianself-determination, strengthening and advancing the economic security of our tribal community, and fulfil the United States’ trustresponsibility to Indians,” said A.T.Stafne, Chairman of the Fort Peck Tribal Executive Board. “This Agreement recognizes the Tribes’capacity, professionalism and familiarity with trust lands on FortPeck Reservation to efficiently implement land purchases.”
The Buy-Back Program was created to implement the land consolidation component of the Cobell Settlement. The Settlement provided $1.9 billion to consolidate fractional land interests across Indian Country. The Buy-Back Program allows interested individual owners to receive payments for voluntarily selling their land. Consolidated interests are immediately transferred to tribal governments and stay in trust for uses benefiting the tribes and their members.
In addition, sales will result in up to $60 million in contributions to the Cobell Education Scholarship Fund. This donation is in addition to the amounts paid to individual sellers, so it will not reduce the amount landowners receive for their interests.
July 11, 201 .Warner, Oklahoma (within Cherokee Nation jurisdiction), Alaskan Tribal Nations Map Released
I officially announce the release of this unique, newly-copy-written Alaskan Tribal Map. It is a continuation in my Tribal Nations Map series, using-as in its predecessors-original autonyms that Tribes have called themselves historically. It also goes beyond listing “linguistic groups”, and shows the names of each individual Native Nation that has called Alaska home for millennia. Research for this map involved speaking to dozens of Cultural Directors, museums Directors, Tribal leaders, researching books by Natives and non-Natives, etc. If you are interested in doing an interview about this map, please find my contact information below.
My maps were also recently featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered”:
During a July 2 interview with Megyn Kelly, host of Fox News’ “The Kelly File,” filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza says the genocide of the Indigenous Peoples of this country didn’t happen.
Bill Ayers, an elementary education theorist and former leader in the opposition of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, went head to head with D’Souza during the interview.
“The American Indian population shrank by 80 percent over 150 years,” D’Souza says. “The main reason for that was not because of warfare or systematic killing, it’s because the white man brought with him from Europe diseases to which the Native Americans… did not have any immunities.”
D’Souza, who produced the film “America,” couldn’t be more wrong. The diseases weren’t only brought over from Europe, but literally handed to the Indigenous Peoples in blankets with the intention of wiping out the population to take their land. Do we even need to mention the Indian Removal Act or boarding schools?
Watch the full video and see Ayers and the YouTube commentator defend these positions.
Here’s a video from YouTube—start watching at 2:35—with some commentary:
