Author: Kim Kalliber

Can Canada’s indigenous communities stop Prime Minister Stephen Harper from turning the country into a petrostate?

foreignpolicy.com

VANCOUVER, Canada — On Canada’s western coast, where rain-forested mountains dip into gray-blue seas, the political anger is ready to explode. The indigenous people, whose ancestors have fished, hunted, and thrived here since the last ice age, are furious about an energy policy dreamed up in Ottawa that they fear could permanently damage their land and destroy their way of life.”Opponents can mock our love of our home as sentimental, but it won’t change what we feel,” the award-winning indigenous novelist Eden Robinson wrote recently in the Globe and Mail. “[T]he mood in our base is simmering fury.”

Robinson lives in Kitamaat Village, a small community some 400 miles north of Vancouver, near where the Kitimat River meets salt water. Its 700 indigenous inhabitants belong to the Haisla nation, one of 630 such recognized “First Nations” across Canada, which has called this coastal region home for thousands of years, going back to long before European settlers first arrived in the 18th century.

Lately the Haisla have had to reckon with a new unwelcome visitor: Calgary-based Enbridge, one of the world’s largest fossil fuel transporters. If the Northern Gateway project the company has been proposing for the past decade goes forward, a pipeline pumping 525,000 barrels per day of heavy crude from Alberta’s oil sands would end within walking distance of Robinson’s home. Tensions in her community are so high, she wrote, that “people will spit at you if they think you support Enbridge.”

It’s likely they will also spit at someone they think supports Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. In June, his Conservative government approved the $7.3 billion Gateway project, which would ship oil across the Rocky Mountains to the Port of Kitimat, load it onto supertankers, and sell it for a premium to Asian markets. To reach the Pacific, supertankers must first navigate the winding Douglas Channel. In 2006, a provincial ferry crashed and sank in the channel, and people living in the nearby Gitga’at Nation village of Hartley Bay fear that history will repeat itself — but on a scale of environmental and cultural damage hard to fathom. They recently stretched a 2.8-mile crocheted rope in protest of Gateway across the Douglas Channel.

“Each stitch is shaped like a teardrop,” said blockade organizer Lynne Hill, “because this is a very emotional thing for us.”

“Each stitch is shaped like a teardrop,” said blockade organizer Lynne Hill, “because this is a very emotional thing for us.”

For Harper, Gateway promises a $300 billion GDP boost and the prestige of achieving his most important foreign-policy goal, to remake Canada into a global “energy superpower.” But to many First Nations living along the pipeline’s 731-mile-long route, Gateway symbolizes “everything that people don’t want,” Robinson said.

They intend to fight the pipeline in court by arguing for legal authority over land they’ve lived on for millennia and never surrendered to the federal government. A landmark decision from Canada’s Supreme Court on June 26 may have brought groups like the Haisla one step closer to achieving that authority.

Tension between indigenous people and the pipeline project are nothing new. In 2006, Enbridge sent surveyors, chain saws in hand, into the ancient forest near Kitamaat Village to scout sites for an oil terminal. They felled 14 trees that bore living evidence of First Nations history: deep notches made by the Haisla hundreds, or perhaps even thousands, of years earlier. “We compared it to a thief breaking into your house and destroying one of your prized possessions,” Haisla Councilor Russell Ross Jr. told me in 2012.

The relationship between the Haisla First Nation and Enbridge only got worse. Five years after the tree-cutting incident, the company offered a $100,000 settlement, which was “almost an insult” in the opinion of Chief Councilor Ellis Ross, as he stated in a letter to Enbridge’s president. Even worse was Enbridge’s additional offer to make amends with a “cleansing feast.” If such a ceremony was practiced widely in Haisla culture, Ross wasn’t aware of it.

“I have never witnessed Haisla Nation Council initiate a cleansing feast and I doubt I ever will,” he wrote to the firm. “I would appreciate it if your company’s shallow understanding of our culture is kept out of our discussions.”

All along the Gateway route, Enbridge was making similar cultural flubs. These gaffes, along with a negotiating style Robinson described as heavy on “talking points” and light on listening, had by 2011 caused 130 First Nations across British Columbia and Alberta to oppose the project, many of them not even directly impacted by it. “If Enbridge has poked the hornet’s nest of aboriginal unrest,” Robinson wrote, “then the federal Conservatives, Stephen Harper’s government, has spent the last few years whacking it like a pinata.”

The whacks began coming after Harper’s Conservatives won their first-ever majority rule in 2011. Since then, his Conservative Party has made it easier to get oil and gas projects approved, has cut environmental protections, and has proposed contentious changes to indigenous education. “It’s felt like the Conservatives have just been hammering us with legislation,” Robinson said. Tension with the Conservatives are so widely felt among First Nations that in late 2012 there emerged a protest movement called Idle No More, whose sit-ins, rallies, and hunger strikes brought national attention to the cause of indigenous sovereignty.

This May, a United Nations envoy deemed native distrust of Harper a “continuing crisis.” On Gateway, Harper has done little to ease the problem. After the U.S. rejection in early 2012 of TransCanada’s Keystone XL, a pipeline that was supposed to link Alberta’s oil sands to Texas, the prime minister “expressed his profound disappointment” to U.S. President Barack Obama, Harper’s office said in a statement. A week later, at the World Economic Forum, Harper vowed to export oil to Asia instead. Projects like Gateway were now a “national priority,” he declared.

For Harper, the economics of the project provide good reason for its priority status. Enbridge estimates that, once completed, Gateway would boost Canada’s GDP by $300 billion over the next three decades. Ottawa alone stands to gain $36 billion in taxes and royalties. And there is the issue of Canada’s role in the world. One month after the World Economic Forum, in February 2012, Harper traveled to China, where an influential crowd of Chinese business executives that Canada is “an emerging energy superpower” eager to “sell our energy to people who want to buy our energy.”

While Harper delivered that pitch in Europe and Asia, his then-natural resources minister, Joe Oliver (now finance minister), was declaring war on Gateway opponents back at home. In an open letter, Oliver lashed out at the “environmental and other radical groups” that in their protests against the pipeline project “threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.”

It was a tactical stumble, wrote George Hoberg, a University of British Columbia professor who studies the Gateway standoff, that pushed “many moderates who were offended by the style of the attacks into strong opponents of the pipeline.” Oliver’s letter was mentioned again and again during two years of federal hearings on Gateway, for which 4,000 Canadians registered to speak.

By the time those hearings finished last December, Gateway had become one of the top political issues in Canada. Much credit for that is due to a sustained media campaign coordinated by British Columbia’s major green groups, which deliberately evoked memories of Exxon’s 1989 Valdez disaster. On the spill’s 20th anniversary in 2009, they declared a “No Tankers Day.”

“There will be a sacrifice we’re asked to make at some point, and the [ecological] damage will be permanent,” said Kai Nagata from the Dogwood Initiative, one of the leading groups in that campaign. “Nobody’s come up with a compelling argument about why we should accept those risks.”

The continual focus on Gateway’s risks — to one of North America’s vastest wildernesses and to the indigenous people living within it — allowed green groups to broker alliances with First Nations all along the pipeline route. They appeared together at joint press conferences and waged a two-front opposition to Gateway so effective that, by this June, nearly 70 percent of people in British Columbia opposed immediate federal approval of the project, according to a Bloomberg-Nanos poll.

“The reason why Gateway has become such a political albatross for Stephen Harper,” Nagata explained, “is he’s managed to find a way to align the majority of British Columbians with the majority of First Nations.” Not to mention Vancouver’s mayor, British Columbia’s premier, and Harper’s political opponents in Ottawa, all of whom have spoken out against the project.

None of that opposition has deterred the federal Conservatives, though. In mid-June Harper’s government officially approved Gateway, deeming it “in the public interest.” Within hours of the announcement, a coalition of almost 30 First Nations and tribal councils in British Columbia were vowing to “immediately go to court to vigorously pursue all lawful means to stop the Enbridge project,” and promising that “we will defend our territories whatever the costs may be.”

Unlike in the United States, where indigenous peoples were conquered and then settled on reservations, few along Gateway’s proposed route have ever surrendered territory. What power they actually wield over that territory is legally disputed. Yet a Supreme Court decision on June 26 granting land title to the Tsilhqot’in First Nation gives greater legal standing to native groups with unresolved land claims.

The consequences of that decision, as well as the autonomy it ultimately provides to indigenous people, will be decided if groups like the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council, which represents eight First Nations across central British Columbia, challenge Gateway in court as unconstitutional. “What we’ll really be doing is testing our authority and our jurisdiction over the land,” said Terry Teegee, the council’s tribal chief. “It’s really hard to imagine this project going ahead.”

Enbridge is still confident. “We are prepared” for legal challenges, the company’s CEO, Al Monaco, said during a recent conference call, in which he contested the notion that people like Teegee speak on behalf of all First Nations. Monaco argued that 60 percent of indigenous people living along Gateway’s route in fact want to see it built (a claim called “ridiculous” by the Coastal First Nations group). Those court battles that First Nations do bring, in Monaco’s opinion, are likely to be resolved in Enbridge’s favor over the next 12 to 15 months. Gateway’s construction could begin shortly after. “This is not necessarily an endless process,” he said.

For indigenous people like Robinson, as well as the Unist’ot’en husband and wife now living in a wood cabin built intentionally along the pipeline’s path, the fight against Enbridge stands in for a larger cultural struggle. So long as companies and governments continue to view the rights of First Nations “as an impediment to getting what they want,” Robinson said, the struggle will surely continue.

Jennifer Castro/Flickr Creative Commons

Vice Chairman Parks delivers annual State of the Tribes address

 

By Andrew Gobin, Tulalip News

“In 1996, Marysville and Tulalip had just built a bridge, the 88th Street Bridge,” began Tulalip Vice Chairman Les Parks as he delivered the annual Marysville Tulalip Chamber of Commerce State of Tulalip Address. He recalled the direction Tulalip was moving in when he first served on the tribal council, and how it has changed over the last 20 years, noting the focus and success of building an economy that is mutually beneficial for both Tulalip and Marysville.

“On the east side of this bridge was a brand new corridor–and it was a big day for the Marysville Tulalip area.” Today, it is a shopping plaza that includes Haggens, Starbucks and other retail stores.  “But on the west side of the freeway there was nothing but a stand of cedar trees,” he recalled. “We went to work building Quil Ceda Village. One of the greatest feelings is to do what we did here at Tulalip, for our Indian people, and the dream and the vision that we had of economic success has become a reality.”

Since the construction of the 88th Street Bridge in 1996, the Quil Ceda Village business park experienced a rapid growth in economic development, creating a successful economy which continues to grow today. In that time, Quil Ceda Village also received a charter as a federal municipality, now operating as a city, governed by the Tulalip Tribes, and yet, separate from the tribal government. Because of that structure, Quil Ceda Village has been able to contribute immensely to the greater economic development and growth of Snohomish County. Since the establishment of first federal city, Washington D.C., Quil Ceda Village is the second federally chartered city in the nation. A dream realized after more than 50 years, the village is a thriving success which has the Tulalip Tribes poised to reclaim taxes.

“The Federal Register now contains language that prohibits states and counties from assessing taxes on building improvements on and off reservation when it’s Indian owned-land and affirmed by the Great Wolf Lodge case this September in the Ninth Circuit,” continued Vice Chairman Parks. “We are currently in the process of developing an Assessor’s office so that we can begin to assess those taxes we’ve always known were ours. Tulalip itself, and I know it has been told to the Marysville Tulalip Chamber of Commerce many times, put a ton of money into the infrastructure, in the ground we’re sitting on, to the tune of about $65 million. Now I believe we are in excess of $100 million.”

“And who gets to benefit from the tax?” he asked. “Marysville does, Snohomish County does, the state does, but Tulalip gets zero,” Vice Chairman Parks explained.

There are a number of Tulalip public works projects that are underway, planned, or in the planning process that will ease some of the stressors and impacts which accompany economic expansion. Most notably are the utilities project known as the Big Water project, and revisions to the 116th Street Freeway Overpass to streamline traffic flow. Currently, the overpass is a bottleneck, with one lane in each direction, and a center turn lane for each freeway onramp.

Parks announced, “Next month we’re going to put out to bid to start construction of the bridge. In eighteen months, we’re going to see a six-lane bridge, which is what everybody’s been waiting for,” he said. “Largely, Tulalip is the lead on that project; we invest a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of effort. We know we have been responsible for the traffic nightmare, we know Marysville has been partially responsible, but we have taken the lead. We do that because we want to be good neighbors. We want our success to be your success, and your success to be ours. Thank you Marysville, thank you everybody that’s contributed to that project,” said Vice Chairman Parks.

“In about two years we’re going to have water pumping through that new water main. 36 million gallons a day, that’s a lot of water. We may not need all that water yet but future generations will. When we decided to invest in that line through a negotiated settlement with Mayor Ray Stephanson, and the City Council of Everett, we wanted water to enhance and augment our stream flows, where our salmon are being raised, and we wanted to do that due to the loss of habitat. We want water back at Tulalip, and we’re going to use water for our people, and we’re going to us water for our salmon. For me, particularly exciting is we’re going to be able to ground inject some of that water into our streams that have low flow during the summer months, and we are going to start seeing more salmon. More salmon for our people, because that’s who we are, salmon people. That water main is two years away and stream augmentation is right behind it.”

Vice Chairman Parks emphasized the importance of Tulalip youth and the fact that they are the next generation of Tulalip leaders. Much has been set aside for them but what has been done to prepare them to manage their success? Chairman Herman Williams, who spoke at the State of the Tribes Address following Vice Chairman Parks, said he and Tulalip Board of Directors have made it clear that education is an important focus of their administration.

On March 29 of this year, the Marysville School District held a summit on education and what role it should play in the success of students. There, Troy McClelland, president and CEO of the Economic Alliance of Snohomish County said, “Snohomish County is first in the state in manufacturing. We are second in the technology field. There are many successful economies in the state, but what makes us different is, in Snohomish County, we build things. There is a place for every student to succeed, if we continue to provide the competitive economy.” Chairman Williams noted that he has spoken with Marysville Superintendent Dr. Becky Berg about this very issue, saying that what students need most for our local economy are tools. They get an education, yet lack the tools and skills to succeed.

Parks said, “For the first time in the United States, a Indian TERO program is able to certify apprenticeships in the state in which we live. Chairman Williams has had a dream that we will have a full-fledged vocational training center on the reservation. And he’s talked about this for years, he’s talked about educating our youth, and he has walked his talk over the years. He knows how important it is to educate our youth, but he also knows that when they leave high school not all of them want to go to college. Some of them want to enter into the trades, some of them want to get trained in computers; and so he’s wanted this vocational training center. The TERO commission really has taken the first step in getting that done with the apprenticeship program. I know that in the very near future, Chairman Williams is going to continue to push, and we will soon have a full-fledged vocational training center on the reservation.”

Vice Chairman Parks ended the State of the Tribes address by thanking the Tulalip and Marysville communities for their coordinated efforts to support the victims and their families of the Oso Landslide, calling it one of the most tragic events in Washington’s history. “The Oso tragedy brought back to memory a piece of Tulalip history in 1830,” he said. “We lost many of our ancestors in a slide right off the tip of Camano Island. That slide buried many, and the subsequent Tsunami drowned many more that were subsisting in villages on the beaches of Hat Island. Our Oso brothers and sisters were welcomed by our Tulalip brothers and sisters at Heaven’s gates. Today I ask that we honor and remember those lost in both tragedies,” he said.

Groups want to see Montana judge’s racist emails

In this June 23, 2011, file photo, Chief Judge Richard F. Cebull makes a speech during a naturalization ceremony at the federal courthouse in Billings, Mont. (AP Photo/Billings Gazette, James Woodcock, File)
In this June 23, 2011, file photo, Chief Judge Richard F. Cebull makes a speech during a naturalization ceremony at the federal courthouse in Billings, Mont. (AP Photo/Billings Gazette, James Woodcock, File)

 

By MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A group of American Indians wants a court to preserve and eventually release an investigative file containing inappropriate emails sent by a federal judge, including a racist message involving President Barack Obama.

Two Indian advocacy groups from Montana and South Dakota and a member of the Crow tribe filed a petition in U.S. District Court in California asking for the file to be preserved as evidence.

The groups want to know if Chief District Judge Richard Cebull made biased decisions from the bench. Their next step will be to file a lawsuit seeking public release of the documents, plaintiffs’ attorney Lawrence Organ said Wednesday.

Cebull was investigated after forwarding a racist message involving Obama. A judicial review panel found he sent hundreds of emails from his federal account that showed disdain for blacks, Indians, Hispanics, women, certain religions and others. He was publicly reprimanded and retired last year.

The investigation found no evidence of bias in his rulings. Organ said the only way to know that for sure is through the release of the emails.

“The fundamental principles of our entire legal system fall apart if a judge doesn’t come in with a neutral position,” Organ said. “If there are other decision makers involved, we’re not asking for their private email accounts. All we want to see are the emails accounts they used as government officials.”

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has said its file on Cebull is confidential.

Plaintiffs in the case are South Dakota-based advocacy group Four Directions, Montana-based Indian People’s Action, and Sara Plains Feather, a member of southeastern Montana’s Crow Tribe.

Four Directions was involved in a voting rights lawsuit that sought to force several Montana counties to establish satellite voting districts on reservations. Cebull ruled against the Indian plaintiffs in that case, which was later settled after the 9th Circuit overturned his ruling.

Cebull himself and 10 others requested the misconduct investigation after The Great Falls Tribune reported the judge forwarded an email in February 2012 that included a joke about bestiality and Obama’s mother. Cebull apologized to Obama after the contents of that email were published.

The investigation looked at four years of Cebull’s personal correspondence sent from his official email account.

Cebull told the 9th Circuit panel that his “public shaming has been a life-altering experience.” Nominated by former President George W. Bush, he received his commission in 2001 and served as chief judge of the District of Montana from 2008 until 2013.

Named as defendants in the case were the office of 9th Circuit Executive Cathy Catterson and the Committee on Judicial Conduct of the Judicial Conference of the United States.

Ninth Circuit spokesman David Madden said he could not comment on the pending petition.

The plaintiffs attempted in May to directly petition the 9th Circuit. That was rejected by the court’s clerk, who said the petition needed to be filed first at the district court level.

Macklemore joins group demanding Duwamish river clean-up

 

Macklemore-slideby GARY CHITTIM / KING 5 News

SEATTLE – A newly formed group of community leaders who say they represent residents, Tribes, workers, fishing families and others, is demanding a better cleanup plan for the Duwamish River.

The group kicked off its “River for All” campaign with a new billboard on Highway 99 South where it crosses the Duwamish. It features their celebrity member, Seattle hip hop artist Macklemore.

Macklemore released a statement on his website, saying “We are Seattle. No bridge, boundaries or invisible man-made lines divide us. This is our home, our people and our community. This is our city’s only river.”

Group member BJ Cummings said the current plan proposed by the EPA properly addresses removal or capping of hot pockets of contamination in the river but calls for a natural recovery method for less contaminated sites. That depends on the river use its natural downriver migration of clean silt to cover the toxic areas over time.

Cummings said that is not good enough to protect the health of the residents along the Lower Duwamish who already face higher pollution exposure rates than most parts of the city.

The EPA is working on a response but has not issued it yet.

Resources

Duwamishcleanup.org

EPA Cleanup Plan

Win a kayaking trip with Macklemore

Big Victory As Court Upholds Small Towns’ Right To Ban Fracking

New York Court of Appeals says local communities can ban controversial oil and gas drilling methods. such as fracking.

 

Perforating tools, used to create fractures in the rock, are lowered into one of six wells during a roughly two-week hydraulic fracturing operation at an Encana Corp. well pad near Mead, Colo. (AP/Brennan Linsley)
Perforating tools, used to create fractures in the rock, are lowered into one of six wells during a roughly two-week hydraulic fracturing operation at an Encana Corp. well pad near Mead, Colo. (AP/Brennan Linsley)

 

By Nadia Prupis, Mint Press News

 

In a victory for fracking opponents, towns in New York today won the right to ban oil and gas production operations from their communities. The ruling may have widespread effects on the drilling industry as towns continue to file moratoriums on the environmentally harmful process.

The decision sets a precedent for environmental activists in New York as more than 170 of the state’s other municipalities wait for legal action to be taken on anti-fracking measures in their communities as well. Towns in Colorado, Ohio, California, Pennsylvania and Texas are also beginning to pursue oil and gas production bans, public interest law firm Earthjustice reports.

The New York Court of Appeals ruled 5-2 that the communities of Dryden and Middlefield can use zoning laws to prohibit heavy industry within municipal borders. The decision rested in large part on preserving the quality of life and “small town character” of both towns, which are situated in rural areas of New York and have not been historically associated with the oil and gas industry.

Industrialization, particularly fracking, would “irreversibly overwhelm” the rural character of these communities, the court stated.

The seven-judge panel said that its ruling was not a statement on the safety of the controversial practice of fracking, but about the division of state and local government power.

“These appeals are not about whether hydrofracking is beneficial or detrimental to the economy, environment or energy needs of New York, and we pass no judgment on its merits,” Associate Judge Victoria Graffeo wrote for the majority opinion.

“These are major policy questions for the coordinate branches of government to resolve. The discrete issue before us, and the only one we resolve today, whether the State Legislature eliminated the home rule capacity of municipalities to pass zoning laws that exclude oil, gas and hydrofracking activities in order to preserve the existing character of their communities,” she said.

Still, many activist groups see the decision as a victory for the environment.

“The decision by the Court of Appeals has settled the matter once and for all across New York State and has sent a firm message to the oil and gas industry,” said Earthjustice managing attorney Deborah Goldberg.

Dryden recently garnered the attention of the natural gas industry for its proximity to the Marcellus Shale, a methane-heavy formation that covers large areas of land in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. Middlefield, while not in shale territory, is primarily an agricultural community that was recently evaluated as a potential natural gas resource.

EarthFix Conversation: Is There Hope For Salmon In Northwest Cities?

Alan Yeakley is the director of the School of the Environment at Portland State University and co-author of Wild Salmonids in the Urbanizing Pacific Northwest. | credit: Courtesy of Portland State University
Alan Yeakley is the director of the School of the Environment at Portland State University and co-author of Wild Salmonids in the Urbanizing Pacific Northwest. | credit: Courtesy of Portland State University

By Cassandra Profita, OPB

 

Swimming through cities is a fact of life for many salmon in the Northwest. With all their pavement and pollution, cities add to the challenges salmon face as they make their way to the ocean and back to their spawning grounds.

Alan Yeakley is the director of the School of the Environment at Portland State University and co-author of Wild Salmonids in the Urbanizing Pacific Northwest. The book sets out to answer a key question: Can wild salmon populations coexist with humans in urban areas?

EarthFix reporter Cassandra Profita sat down with Yeakley to talk about exactly why cities are such a problem for salmon and steelhead in the Northwest, and what urban-dwellers can do about it.

Cassandra Profita: Tell me what got you interested in this topic. I think of it as salmon in the city.

Alan Yeakley: When the focus has been so strongly and of course rightly so on the wild land areas, agricultural areas, forested areas, the hinterlands. That’s most of the land surface, the land area, but yet it has always been recognized that these fish have to go through these lethal urban areas. So, any fish going through the entire Willamette Basin has to go through Portland. Any fish going in the Columbia Basin has to at least go through the area between Portland and Vancouver, and with those toxics coming off the streets with the sediments coming in the higher temperatures that city environments create, it’s quite a challenge for fish to go through those areas and yet it represents such a large part of the Pacific Northwest that they have to pass through twice in their lifetime.

Profita: So, are you looking at what challenges salmonids have in urban environments?

Yeakley: Yes, they range across a whole suite of issues. And it ranges from physical impacts from sediment coming into the streams at higher rates coming off of our roads, the toxic elements that are coming in either from automobile exhaust or waste, or from fertilizer that people are applying to their yards, from industrial sites. Just all manner of – you know that toxic soup that is produced from cities that hits these streams.

Every time somebody steps on the brakes in their car – including me. Today I drove my car in so that had some impact on salmon. And we’re all doing this. We’re all having these tiny little impacts that add up. We know from copper in the brake pads that has a sub-lethal effect. In other words, it’s an effect that won’t kill the fish but it will reduce their ability to function, just having some presence of copper in the water that’s coming off those brake pads. So, these everyday practices that we do, watering our lawns too much so that the water doesn’t just soak into the lawn but goes out into the street and moves into the street, particularly if we put too many pesticides, herbicides or insecticides. The insecticides affect the insects in the stream and those insects are part of the salmon’s diet. So any extra insecticides we’re putting in our yards that go into the stream will then affect the fish. These are indirect effects, but they’re still effects.

Profita: Did you look into how salmonid populations are actually doing in urban environments? Did you look at their numbers?

Yeakley: From the city of Portland we work with Chris Prescott. He and others are doing comprehensive surveys of these salmonid populations. They do them on a routine basis every year. trying to understand population levels of salmonids. And recently Chris sent me some data about a month ago, actually, from some some encouraging results for native fish populations in Portland urban streams including salmonids that are on the uptick. So there are some encouraging results from Portland. There are also encouraging results from other cities such as Boise and Seattle and some of the other surrounding metropolitan areas in the Pacific Northwest in terms of some of the salmon numbers coming back. Of course, they’re not in any substantial numbers yet, but at least there is some presence of salmon in some of the area streams now.

Cassandra Profita: Can you tell what kinds of environments are seeing the uptick in salmon and what kinds of areas are not?”

Yeakley: “Yes, where municipal efforts have been most successful and most intense we’re seeing the best return. For instance in the Johnson Creek watershed, there have been a number of very large restoration sites, recovery sites that have been conducted by the city of Portland, the city of Gresham and with some help from other entities. All of these people working together have been able to recover stream segments’ entire floodplain areas, and that’s really notable so they’re to be lauded.

The big challenge, of course, is these habitats are not sufficient still to recover very large populations of salmonids. And they sometimes are not connected together well enough. So there will be a big stretch of nice habitat and then they’ll go through a concrete, very narrow concrete passage like an LA stream-type channel where you don’t have any riparian, any side channels, any overhanging vegetation. So it’s kind of like a Mario game where you have little stretches where the fish are really doing OK and suddenly it gets really tense again and the numbers are not going to not come back very strongly until we reconnect and get rid of some of these really lethal habitats that still remain in their path.

Profita: What have you found needs to change to accommodate fish in urban areas and what’s realistic?

Yeakley: The realistic question is really the challenge. Part of what needs to be done is just what municipalities like the city of Portland are already doing. It just needs to be continued. More of it. Because it’s working but it’s not sufficient for full recovery.

So that’s the first thing. We just need to continue what cities like Seattle, Portland and others are already doing. But then more needs to be done in the same area, so all the streams still in damaged conditions have lots of toxics going into them have lots of nearby homes that don’t have a lot of mitigation, a lot of bioswales or other retention ponds to intercept the pollutants as they come off these urban lawns. Those still need to be continually upgraded in terms of adding more interception of those toxic pollutants and more reduction of the toxic impacts of either the urban residents or of the commercial areas or industrial areas.

Alan Yeakley is the director of the School of the Environment at Portland State University and co-author of Wild Salmonids in the Urbanizing Pacific Northwest.

Obama Signs Northwest Lawmaker’s Bill For Toxic Algae Research

Algae bloom in the Pacifi Northwest. credit: Ashley Ahearn, 2012
Algae bloom in the Pacific Northwest. credit: Ashley Ahearn, 2012

By David Steves, OPB

A Northwest lawmaker’s battle against toxic algae blooms won the support of President Barack Obama Monday, when he signed into law a bill aimed at controlling such outbreaks.

Oregon congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici and Florida Sen. Bill Nelson co-sponsored the bill, which authorizes $82 million dollars for new research meant to control toxic algae blooms nationwide.

The advocacy group Ocean Champions applauded the effort from Congress and the White House. The group’s president, David Wilmot, issued a statement saying it costs the nation about $100 million dollars a year to deal with toxic algal blooms.

Bonamici said during her floor testimony in the House that she got behind the legislation after learning that toxic algal blooms were leading to yearly die-offs of Dungeness crabs in Oregon. She also said climate change was making the problem worse.

“This will become increasingly important as coastal populations increase and changes in the environment, such as warmer water temperatures, have the potential to alter the growth, toxicity and geographic distribution of algal blooms,” Bonamici told her House colleagues.

Northwest waters have been hit by a number of these outbreaks in recent years. Toxic algae has contaminated Washington’s Puget Sound and several lakes in Oregon, including Fern Ridge and Lost Creek reservoirs.

Algal blooms have also made shellfish unsafe to eat and have been harmful to salmon. Public health agencies have had to close beaches to shellfish harvesting and issued no-swimming restrictions for lakes in the Northwest because of such outbreaks.

First Nations ceremonial shaming rite targeted at federal government

An ancient First Nations ritual steeped in symbolism is going to take place in the nation’s capital this summer.

 

 by Carlito Pablo on Jun 25, 2014, Straight.com, Vancouver BC

 

First Nations carver Beau Dick says a copper shield, like the one he holds, will be shattered in Ottawa in a symbolic gesture of anguish.Carlito Pablo
First Nations carver Beau Dick says a copper shield, like the one he holds, will be shattered in Ottawa in a symbolic gesture of anguish.
Carlito Pablo

A copper shield will be smashed on Parliament Hill, an act believed never to have been done before in Ottawa. Called copper cutting, the ceremonial shaming practice will evoke what many consider to be a broken relationship between the federal government and Canada’s aboriginal people.

“Our coppers are a symbol of justice, a symbol of truth, a symbol of balance,” according to Beau Dick, a renowned carver from Vancouver Island’s Namgis First Nation.

At his UBC studio, the resident artist in the department of art history, visual art, and theory explained that breaking copper constituted an insult in old times.

“It is banishment. It is an expression of extreme disappointment and anguish,” Dick explained to the Georgia Straight.

The ritual, indigenous to Natives of the Pacific Northwest, had not been practised for decades until the 59-year-old artist revived it last year.

After marching for a week from the northern tip of Vancouver Island with relatives and supporters, Dick shattered a copper shield in front of the B.C. legislature in Victoria on February 10, 2013.

During a gathering at UBC later last year to celebrate his artist residency, the idea was born to perform the ceremony in Ottawa. One of those present at that social event was Giindajin Haawasti Guujaaw. Also a famous carver, Guujaaw is a former president of the Council of the Haida Nation.

When aboriginal representatives meet on Parliament Hill on July 27 for the shaming ceremony, it will be Haida copper that will be split.

“We’re facing a federal government here that has shown total disregard for the environment, for the wildlife, for the people of the coast, and we want to express that in the best way that we can and that’s in the breaking of the copper,” Guujaaw told the Straight in a phone interview.

Foremost among the grievances is Ottawa’s recent approval of Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway oil pipeline, a $7.9-billion project that has divided First Nations in B.C.

“It’s a one-show pony over there. They’re only interested in oil,” Guujaaw noted.

The Haida artist also mentioned cutbacks to Fisheries and Oceans Canada undermining the conservation of marine resources that many Native groups rely upon for food and cultural purposes. Guujaaw said he doesn’t expect anything to change on the part of the government anytime soon.

As to what aboriginal people want to put across to Ottawa, Guujaaw said: “The message will be the ceremony.”

In the past, copper was a marker of Native wealth and status, according to Eldon Yellowhorn, chair of SFU’s department of First Nations studies. When chiefs held a potlatch, the metal was given as a gift, said Yellowhorn, who hails from Alberta’s Piikani First Nation.

Although the planned breaking of copper may be symbolic, he noted that it’s indicative of Native sentiment about processes around projects such as oil pipelines. “Many of them feel that they haven’t been consulted,” Yellowhorn told the Straight by phone, “so I’m sure this is a way of illustrating to the government that they’re not pleased.”

Like broken metal, frayed relationships can be restored, but there should be amends, according to Dick. “There has to be atonement,” he said.

On Wednesday (July 2), Dick and Guujaaw will meet at the UBC First Nations House of Learning for ceremonies to kick-start a cross-country journey to Ottawa. Dick’s five-year-old grandson and an almost 90-year-old aunt are coming along.

“We as a First Nation group want to move forward together in unity with our fellow men to create a better world,” Dick said. “I think that this is where we start this notion of reconciliation and unity.”

Field Notes: a Visit to Lummi Nation’s Sacred Summit and the Protection of the Salish Sea

By Ana Chamgoulova, Summer Law Student Volunteer at West Coast Environmental Law, 25 June, 2014

 

The 10 day Water Festival hosted by The Lummi Nation of Washington State wrapped up on June 22nd. I had the opportunity to attend part of the festival, along with another law student volunteer and WCEL Staff Lawyer, Eugene Kung. The part we were present for was the Stommish Sacred Summit, which consisted of a day of presentations on the topic of Sacred Obligations, a talk by Winona LaDuke, and a rally against a proposed coal port in the Salish Sea. These events hold great relevance for the environmental movement and the fight against fossil fuel projects in Canada.

 

 

The Lummi are Coast Salish people, whose combined traditional territory stretches throughout the Pacific Northwest, from the northern limits of the Strait of Georgia through Puget Sound (together known as the Salish Sea), and covers present-day Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle. The Lummi have close trade, cultural and family ties with Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish and Musqueum, the Coast Salish First Nations that may be more familiar to the Canadian audience. The Oregon Treaty of 1846, which set the present-day Canada-USA boundary, determined their divergent courses of history. And yet, as my fellow law student volunteer Elizabeth Zarpa put it:

Their lineage and kinship with other Coast Salish nations stretches across international boundaries here in Canada. The struggles which they face against natural resource companies imposing pipelines, railways and tankers throughout their territories is similar to what other First Nations in Canada experience.

Stommish Sacred Summit

The Water Festival includes such events as a film festival, canoe races, a carnival and the Sacred Summit, and it is part of the cultural revitalization efforts by the Lummi Nation. The Sacred Summit in particular was organized in accordance with the Lummi traditional laws, opening with a prayer and selection of prominent community members to act as witnesses. I am personally always honoured and excited to attend such events, because of the palpable resilience and sacredness of Indigenous traditions. It helps that there is usually bannock being served.
The day’s events were held in a giant longhouse supported with massive cedar trunks, some of which have been carved into beautiful totem poles.

 

The day began with welcomings from elected council member Jay Julius and Hereditary Chief Tsilixw. Despite the two representing different sources of leadership, one from a Tribal Council established by the United States government and the other from a traditional system of governance, they both spoke about the sacred obligation to protect the environment in their traditional territory. To them, the environment is not something external to human life, but is the source of their livelihood. Lummi have survived and thrived off of salmon, clams, mussels and other seafood abundant throughout the Salish Sea since time immemorial.

Resource extraction projects would inevitably contaminate the coastal waters and the seafood and so they would threaten the very way of life of the Lummi. The idea of protecting the environment is not just rhetoric for them, but is a matter of survival and sacred duty. We also heard from Jewell James, who Environmental Law Alert readers may remember as the master carver and spiritual leader that gifted a totem pole to the Tsleil-Waututh as a symbol of solidarity among Coast Salish Nations opposing destructive fossil fuel projects.

The Canadian Connection

The cross-border links became even more obvious when the two Canadian guests spoke: Rueben George, the Sundance Chief of Tsleil-Waututh, and Eugene Kung, staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law. Rueben spoke of the shared culture of the Lummi and Tsleil-Waututh. Despite the many years of being separated by an international border, their shared understanding of the responsibility for the environment persists. For the Tsleil-Waututh, the idea of sacred obligations to the environment found expression in the Sacred Trust Initiative, whose goal is stopping the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. Their resistance was motivated by their experience with the existing pipeline, which has had four major leaks since 2005. Because of this and other industrial developments in the Burrard Inlet, it has been harder and harder for the Tsleil-Waututh to practice their traditional way of life. Rueben doesn’t want this to happen to the Lummi, and he encouraged them to keep up their fight against the local resource extraction projects.

Eugene then spoke more specifically about the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion proposal, the flawed National Energy Board process, and the legal aspects of the resistance to this project. This Canadian project is important for the Lummi, because the tanker traffic, set to increase to 400 tankers a year, would cross their territory and threaten their water as well.

The environment transcends national borders, contaminants transcend national borders, just as the environmental movements and the Coast Salish culture should transcend national borders. Eugene also explained how strong indigenous laws can help the greater environmental movement through such legal tools as the duty to consult and accommodate where Aboriginal rights and title are involved.

Coal Port at Cherry Point

The Lummi are facing their own fossil fuel project: a proposal to build a deep-water marine terminal at Cherry Point, which would become North America’s largest coal port, exporting up to 54 million dry metric tons per year. The project got off to a rocky start with the Lummi Nation, when in 2011 the company behind the proposal failed to obtain government permits for some preliminary work but went ahead with it anyway and ended up disturbing an ancient burial site. Now, as the Sacred Trust Initiative reports, “The Lummi Nation is concerned not only about the destruction of their sacred sites, but also about the deterioration in air quality and contamination of water and soil as a result of fugitive coal dust dispersal. Shipping of coal could also have devastating impacts on fishing and fishing rights along the Washington coast.” The Lummi do have a strong legal case based on treaty fishing rights, so much so that the US Army Corps of Engineers considered denying permits for the proposal based solely on their opposition.

Getting Out of the Fossil Fuel Economy

The highlight of the Sacred Summit for me was a very inspiring talk by Winona LaDuke, an internationally renowned Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) activist. People from all over Whatcom County, Bellingham and Seattle joined us for her talk. Environmental work can sometimes feel like a game of whac-a-mole, with a new pipeline or coal mine or refinery being proposed every few months. We live in the fossil fuel age, from the car-friendly infrastructure of our cities to the policies and subsidies our governments use to promote an oil-based economy. Ms. LaDuke reminded us of the bigger picture, of the dangers posed by climate change, of the inevitable end to big oil. We should be aiming for a graceful transition instead of a catastrophic crash, and we should do it as soon as possible. Every pipeline that we stop should give our governments pause about their energy policies. Every renewable energy project and conservation measure will decrease our own dependence on fossil fuels.

The WCEL delegation at the end of a long day, left to right: Ana Chamgoulova, Elizabeth Zarpa and Eugene Kung

The evening wrapped up by calling forward the witnesses, who gave their reflections on the evening. Their job throughout the day was to make sure everything was done properly, and their reflections legitimized the event according to traditional Lummi law. I could feel the significance of following protocol and doing things property in this great longhouse, and how the Lummi drew strength from the thousands of years of history so they can continue to fulfill their sacred obligations.

West Coast Environmental Law has long been working within the Canadian legal system to advance and uphold indigenous laws to protect the environment. This trip gave me a more international perspective on our work and reminded me that there are a lot of people – Aboriginal and not – fighting for a better world. This Earth is of all of our home.

By Ana Chamgoulova, Summer Law Student Volunteer at West Coast Environmental Law