Smithsonian/Cumberland County Historical Society Jim Thorpe in his Carlisle Indian School track uniform, running in Stockholm at Olympic track practice.
About 1,200 competitors are expected to take part in a multi-sport competition honoring one the greatest athletes from the 20th century. The 3rd annual Jim Thorpe Native American Games will be staged June 8-14 in Shawnee, Oklahoma.
During its first two years, the Games were held in Oklahoma City. Instead, organizers opted to move the games to Shawnee, located about a 30-minute drive east of Oklahoma City. “It was really done to have the Games have more of an Indian community feel,” Annetta Abbott, the Games’ executive director, told ICTMN. “We are more in Indian country now.”
The Games were first staged in 2012, in honor of the 100-year anniversary of Thorpe’s medal-winning performances at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Sweden. Thorpe captured gold medals in both the pentathlon and decathlon events in Sweden. He later played pro baseball and football. About 1,500 athletes from across the country took part in the inaugural Jim Thorpe Native American Games. “The plan was to stage the Games every two years,” Abbott said. “But after that first year, people were asking if we could have it again the next year. So it became an annual event.”
Organizers are also hoping to expand the Games in future years and to stage regional qualifiers across the country. A goal is to then have winners from those regional competitions have a portion of their expenses covered to attend the national Games.
Organizers are anticipating athletes representing at least 60 tribes will take part in this year’s Games. “We’ve got athletes from all corners of the country coming,” Abbott said.
Last year’s participation numbers were down from the first year in large part because of Mother Nature. Abbott said numerous athletes withdrew from the event as tornadoes were rampant, and many parents did not want their children travelling to Oklahoma. “We are really pleased with the numbers we have this year,” Abbott added. “We’ve been able to see what sports work well and we’ve added some divisions in those sports.”
A total of 12 sports will be contested at this year’s Games. Stickball is a new addition. It had been an exhibition (demonstration) sport during the first two years of the games, but is now a full-medal sport. Lacrosse is an exhibition sport this time around.The other sports being offered are basketball, beach volleyball, cross-country running, football, golf, martial arts, softball, tennis, track and field and wrestling.
For the first time, games’ organizers will also offer two $2,500 scholarships to competitors who are college-bound high school seniors. One female and one male winner will be selected.
Abbott said the calibre of athletes at these Games is rather high. “We’ve had some really good athletes,” she said. “Some of the tennis athletes are on the junior amateur circuit. And some of the football and basketball athletes were going to go on to NCAA schools.”
Faith Spotted Eagle slept. In her sleep, she saw her grandmother, lying on a table, wrapped in a blanket with her white braids on her chest.
Her sister appeared. “What’s going on?” Spotted Eagle asked.
“I don’t know. They told us to come.”
A door opened; a room full of people, ancestors, stared silently. She felt in their stares a sadness, but also a strength. Another door opened to another room with the same scene. She knew that if she were to keep opening doors, all the rooms in the house would be filled with those watchful, silent ancestors.
Spotted Eagle closed her eyes, unsure of what do to, but knowing that it was impolite to stare back. Then her grandmother’s voice came to her.
“Look at the treaties. There’s something in the treaties.”
That’s when she woke up.
Spotted Eagle is a Dakota/Nakota elder of the Ihanktonwan tribe in South Dakota. She wears skirts that brush her ankles, and her white braids hang over her shoulders like her grandmother’s — but when she puts on sunglasses, she looks like a badass.
She didn’t know exactly what the dream meant, but she believed it was the answer to a problem she’d been thinking about for some time: How to prevent the Keystone XL pipeline from going through Lakota traditional territory, sacred land.
“Who will be able to stand with us?” she thought. “We have to stand with somebody.”
She prayed. And then she remembered the 1863 treaty between the Ihanktonwan and the Pawnee that was the first recorded peace treaty between tribes. She also remembered that, throughout the last several decades, alliances of natives and non-natives in the northern Plains had formed and re-formed to defeat threats to land and water. Recently, Lakota elders had made moves to resurrect a new Cowboy Indian Alliance – this time, to take on Keystone XL.
In late January of 2013, exactly 150 years after the signing of that first treaty, Spotted Eagle and other activists convened tribal representatives from across the continent on the Ihanktonwan reservation. Their purpose was to ratify the International Treaty to Protect the Sacred from Tar Sands and Keystone XL, a document based on that first 1863 peace treaty. It represented unprecedented unified action from North American indigenous people, with one new addition: This new treaty also included a few of the ranchers from the Great Plains, who feel their lands are also threatened by the tar sands pipeline.
Spotted Eagle told the visitors of how landowners and tribal members had come together in the past, and how they had successfully driven industry off their land. This was a version of the cowboy-Indian story these cowboys hadn’t heard.
Meanwhile, Jane Kleeb — an organizer of landowners with Bold Nebraska — was also looking for support for her small but somewhat isolated band of dissidents back home. Phone calls flew back and forth between South Dakota and Nebraska. Kleeb brought ranchers north to meet with Spotted Eagle and other indigenous leaders; the visitors were nervous and polite, unfamiliar with tribal customs – yet it became clear that they were connected by this pipeline, as well as everything they stood to lose if it went through. An alliance looked promising.
Since then, the alliance has developed, tentatively, through shared purpose. Last week, from April 22-27, members of the budding Cowboy Indian Alliance joined with activists and representatives from tribes across North America in a five-day convergence on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., called Reject and Protect. Wearing moccasins and dusty boots, they ate and prayed together, protested, danced, met with elected officials, and led a 5,000-person march through the streets, beginning each day with ceremony. Their message hung clearly on a banner by the circle of tipis: “No Damn KXL.”
A radical departure
While native/non-native alliances have been forming in various places to prevent all kinds of industrial projects, it is Keystone that has galvanized the environmental movement in a way not seen since the anti-nuclear campaigns of the 1980s. The fight has sparked hundreds of marches, rallies and legal challenges, as well as one of the largest mass civil disobedience actions in the history of the environmental movement.Time magazine wrote in 2013 that it was turning out to be a watershed, the Selma and the Stonewall of the climate movement. That remains to be seen. What’s certain is that the campaign against Keystone has already altered the political landscape.
The environmental movement has long come under criticism for being led by the so-called Big Greens — largely white, middle class membership groups whose interests don’t often represent those actually living in the frontline communities where the pipeline will be built. But the coalition of cowboys and Indians offers a radical departure from this history. Moreover, it is a model of relationship-based organizing, rooted in a kind of spirituality often absent from the progressive world, and — given the role of indigenous leaders — begins to address the violence of colonization in a meaningful way. It may be that these so-called unlikely alliances offer the only chance of forging a movement strong and diverse enough to challenge a continent’s deeply entrenched dependence on fossil fuels.
When TransCanada, the pipeline company, began claiming the right to run the Keystone XL through private property, ranchers and landowners said they finally understood, in some small way, what it might have felt like for Native Americans to lose their land. In speaking of the ranchers, Casey Camp-Horinek, an activist and elder of the Ponca tribe, said, “They, too, are suffering under things like eminent domain. They, too, have had their lifestyles impinged upon by these major corporations.”
The nightmare that’s fostering kinship
The day after Nebraska rancher Bob Allpress rode through the nation’s capitol on horseback in a cavalry contingent of ranchers and tribal members, he was a little stiff. He doesn’t ride much anymore. But Allpress, with his bandana, boots and well-groomed mustache, still looks every inch the cowboy.
When the pipeline route through Nebraska was changed in 2012, ostensibly to avoid the ecologically sensitive Sandhills, the newly proposed path now cut straight through the Allpress’ alfalfa field. If built, the pipeline would lie just 200 yards from their house.
This is no ordinary pipeline, just as tar sands is no ordinary oil. According to aNatural Resources Defense Council report, tar sands oil is 3.6 times more likely to spill than regular oil. It is also highly corrosive and nearly impossible to clean up. Residents who live near the path of Keystone 1 — a smaller, already existing tar sands pipeline operated by TransCanada — know this story already. They saw 14 spills — along its route from Canada to refineries in Oklahoma and Illinois — during the pipeline’s first year of operation.
The southern portion of the Keystone XL has already been built through Texas, in spite of grassroots resistance; now, the last northern section remains. Allpress fears that a tar sands spill would contaminate his land and water, rendering it unusable for years to come.
TransCanada used what Allpress calls “the old slap and tickle” when it notified him that the pipeline would go through his land: a nice offer of some compensation up front, but a warning that under the law of eminent domain, the pipeline would go through no matter what.
“TransCanada’s been nothing but deceitful and a bully the entire time,” he said. And in the words of his wife, Nancy, “We felt like we were the sacrifice.”
But cowboys don’t like to be pushed around. So they told TransCanada to shove it, and joined Bold Nebraska, a four-year-old organization led by Jane Kleeb that has emerged as one of TransCanada’s most formidable obstacles. When Bold Nebraska began partnering with tribes in South Dakota, the Allpresses were on board. They’ve since attended their first tribal council meetings, gone to rallies and public hearings, and written op-eds to Nebraska papers, refuting what Allpress calls TransCanada’s massive public relations campaign.
Environmental activism isn’t exactly what the Allpresses had in mind when they returned to Nebraska to retire from careers in government and the military, and investing what they had in their land.
“I’m a redneck Republican,” Allpress joked. He and his wife are both ex-military. “Standing there in cowboy boots and a hat next to people in peace necklaces and hemp shirts” is a little outside his comfort zone. “It’s been — an experience. A good experience. We’ve enjoyed the hell out of it.”
As the sun set on the first evening of the Washington, D.C. gathering, folks sat under a white tent, eating dinner on paper plates and taking refuge from the tourists who swarm the camp, saying, “Look! Real Indians!”
In one corner, the Allpresses were getting advice from fellow rancher Julia Trigg Crawford from Texas. She’s been fighting Transcanada for years — despite having to concede temporary defeat when the pipeline was installed and began pumping oil through her family’s property. Crawford filed suit and is now waiting for the Supreme Court of Texas to take up her case.
“I’m going down swinging,” she said.
The pipeline fight may be these people’s worst nightmare, but it has fostered a sense of kinship. All along its path, communities are uniting under a shared narrative of fossil fuel exploitation and resistance. Similar patterns are coalescing along the paths of the other tar sands pipelines around the continent, from Vancouver, British Columbia to Portland, Maine.
Like the Cowboy Indian Alliance, partnerships between natives and non-natives have emerged to fight tar sands — and it’s part of a larger trend right now across regions and environmental issues. Zoltán Grossman, a professor of Geography and Native Studies at Evergreen State College, has written extensively about such alliances, pointing to examples of tribes and fishermen who prevented dams and logging in the Northwest, as well as Western Shoshone and ranchers who fought bomb testing in Nevada. In recent years members of the Unist’ot’en clan in British Columbia have invited busloads of non-natives from all over Canada to help prevent a slew of tar sands and gas pipelines from crossing their land. The Cowboy Indian Alliance isn’t alone.
Fossil fuel fights are also bringing together tribes within the indigenous community, some of whom have never had a formal relationship. The tar sands cover parts of Alberta which various First Nations call home, and Crystal Lameman’s Beaver Lake Cree First Nation is among them. Lameman spent much of the week in Washington flanked by Faith Spotted Eagle and Casey Camp-Horinek, two of the leaders who are mobilizing their tribes along the length of the pipeline.
Camp-Horinek is a member of the Ponca tribe, which was forcibly relocated from Nebraska to Oklahoma in 1877. The pipeline, which originates near Lameman’s reserve, will carry tar sands along the very same path as the Ponca Trail of Tears. Camp-Horinek sees this as a direct affront to her people’s memory. And each of the women consider the tar sands a threat to their sacred land.
Camp-Horinek wears her graying braids down over her shoulders, a black shawl, and earrings, round like suns. Lameman is perhaps 30 years younger, with lipstick, outrageously long eyelashes and hair down to her waist. Despite the age difference, they’re both emblematic of the indigenous women leaders who are serving as mentors, organizers and spiritual leaders to their communities. They speak deliberately, as if their words matter. They do not say “um” or “like.” They sit up straight and laugh often.
Both women’s tribes — along with the Cowboy Indian Alliance — are some of the signatories to the International Treaty to Protect the Sacred from Tar Sands and Keystone XL. In a show of defiance and unity, several tribal councils in the United States have also passed individual resolutions condemning the Keystone XL. And Idle No More, a grassroots indigenous rights movement that sprang up suddenly in Canada during the winter of 2012, now has 700 chapters in eight countries. Thanks in part to the rise of digital networks, indigenous peoples today are reaching out to each other in ways that were unthinkable even 15 years ago.
Creating a spiritually integrated environmental movement
Each morning, the Reject and Protect encampment opened with a ceremony around the sacred fire, which was kept burning throughout the week. As smoke drifted up into the morning sun, the circle of participants — indigenous, white, young and old — would stay quiet as an elder offered a prayer.
What most don’t realize is that this would have been impossible until fairly recently. Native ceremonies were illegal for most of the 20th century as part of the U.S. government’s effort to hasten assimilation by suppressing native culture. American Indian spiritual practices were only protected by federal legislation in 1978.
The tribal elders have brought ritual to the Cowboy Indian Alliance, rooting every gathering in native ceremony. Faith often makes progressives uncomfortable; the environmental movement, to be sure, has remained stubbornly secular in the interest of inclusivity and scientific rationality. But here, people don’t seem to mind. They’re solemn; it gives each day a rhythm, a ritual, a reminder that they’re all connected to ancestors, earth and each other.
Since many of history’s most powerful social movements — from civil rights to anti-apartheid — have gained strength from a firm grounding in faith, it begs the question of whether something has been lost by remaining steadfastly irreligious. And in a country where 80 percent of the population claims some spiritual affiliation, there’s a preexisting organizational network that’s largely untapped by the environmental movement. It’s possible that the Cowboy Indian Alliance offers a glimpse into what a spiritually integrated environmental movement might look like, honoring diversity while resisting cooptation.
Part of embracing ceremony is slowing down to a more human pace of organizing — one where priority is given to relationships. Naturally, the alliance organizes on conference calls and on smart phones, but they make time for in-person gatherings, some of which last for several days, where time is given to sitting around and just talking. Telling stories, introducing their grandkids, spending time out on the land. They know that an alliance like this, tenuous and young, lives or dies by the strength of its relationships.
Jane Kleeb, Bold Nebraska’s fearless leader, says that these relationships are a part of the strategy. The early alliance meetings were about “sharing stories and building trust, so that whatever TransCanada tries to do, we were a stronger alliance that they couldn’t break.” Since the alliance lacks TransCanada’s bottomless bank account, she laughed, “The only thing I can do is build those relationships.”
By supporting native rights, the Cowboy Indian Alliance is beginning the dialogue not just about broken treaties, but about the long history of colonization, the effects of which are ongoing among some of the United States’ poorest populations. Clayton Thomas-Muller, an indigenous organizer from Canada, said that the alliance “represents an important step towards reconciling America’s bloody colonial history.”
This is perhaps why the scene on that first sunny morning of Reject and Protect was so symbolic. In accordance with custom, the alliance leaders gathered before the Chief of the Piscataway Tribe, Billy Red Wing Tayac, and formally requested permission to enter Washington, D.C. — what was originally considered Piscataway territory.
And so it was that Bob Allpress, a fourth-generation rancher, born and raised on what was once Lakota land, found himself presenting an offering to Chief Tayac, encircled by a throng of photographers. The weight of history bore down on them all — the forced removals, the outlawing of native traditions and ceremony, the theft of land guaranteed by treaties the U.S. government never really intended to keep. With the Capitol dome looming pale behind him, Chief Tayac accepted the handmade blue-jean blanket and said, “We welcome you, and we welcome all cowboys in the fight against the pipeline.”
Standing on the shoulders of earlier alliances
“Unprecedented” is a word that’s heard often in the Cowboy Indian Alliance. What most don’t realize, however, is that there is a long history of successful alliances between natives and non-natives, particularly around industrial projects that residents see as a threat to land and water.
This is actually a later incarnation of an alliance that was first formed in 1987 to prevent a Honeywell weapons testing range in the Black Hills, one of the most sacred sites in Lakota cosmology – where, in the 1970s, alliances successfully fended off coal and uranium mining. In 1980, a rancher, Marvin Kamerer, hosted 11,000 visitors at a Black Hills Survival Gathering to learn about native rights, sustainable living and clean energy. According to Native Studies scholar Zoltán Grossman, similar alliances prevented a toxic waste dump on Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in 1990, a hog farm and coal trains in the early 2000s, and Kevin Costner’s resort complex in 2002 — to name a few.
Although the alliances have generally dissolved after each campaign, each one set a precedent for future collaboration. And while they haven’t been easy, they’ve been remarkably effective.
Alliances like this go unreported, Grossman believes, because “they’re more dangerous to the status quo” than stories of conflict — that is, because they might inspire people to work together.
“The Keystone pipeline effort is standing on the shoulders of earlier successful efforts at alliance-building,” he said. “So I’m not surprised that it’s been as powerful as it has been.”
In August of 2011, 1,253 people were arrested at the White House protesting Keystone. Indigenous activists came from all over North America, going to jail side by side with non-native activists. Thomas-Muller, who also organizes with Idle No More, said that 350.org — one of the major facilitators of the action — made the move to reach out to the indigenous community and that “resulted in the biggest civil disobedience since the Vietnam War.”
The choice to focus on the pipeline came after a spectacular failure of a political strategy in which BigGreenthrew all of its weight behind the climate bill — officially known as the American Clean Energy and Securities Act. After the bill failed in the Senate, there was widespread disenchantment with the political process, a sense that the one chance for federal legislation had been lost, that the influence of the fossil fuel industry in Congress was too great. What resulted was a shift in focus away from Washington and toward local fights over coal, oil and natural gas — and a recognition that a movement isn’t really a movement unless it’s led by its grassroots base.
Enter Keystone. This was everything the climate bill was not: concrete, and easy to understand and get behind.
“You’re either for it or against it,” said Jason Kowalski, Political Director of 350.org, which helped support Reject and Protect. “The oil either flows, or it doesn’t.”
And by physically connecting impacted communities in America’s red state heartland from Alberta to Texas, it also offered a way to connect them through shared opposition — and, ultimately, shared values.
Since then, some mainstream environmental organizations have begun to step back and allow environmental justice organizations to come to the fore, something that Kowalski says hasn’t always happened.
“The indigenous people who are here have been doing this longer, and in a more heartfelt way, than any of us can imagine, on the frontlines of this fight,” Kowalski said.
Ultimately, though, there’s only one person who will make a decision on Keystone: President Obama. And so on Wednesday, April 23, nine leaders from both the cowboy and tribal contingents met with three staffers from the Obama administration to ask the president to reject the pipeline.
There was a buzz in the air at the encampment when they returned— Camp-Horinek, Faith Spotted Eagle and their compatriots were still charged from the encounter.
Each had taken a turn in the meeting telling their stories to the three staffers, in an effort to demonstrate that, in Camp-Horinek’s words, “We’re part of a devastating pipeline story that is as clear and as connected as they want Keystone XL to be.”
But the representatives of the administration, she said, remained “100 percent stone-faced.”
These were the presidents of the Rosebud and Oglala Sioux nations — sovereign nations whose treaties entitle them to meet with similarly ranked heads of state, she noted, before asking, “Where was the President of this nation to meet with us?”
So they walked out.
Tribal relationships with the United States government have, for obvious reasons, been fraught with bad feelings. Centuries of land theft, racism, genocide and forced assimilation cannot be erased overnight.
The cowboy contingent stayed, wanting to take advantage of this chance to tell their stories – hoping that some part would make its way up the ladder. But they left feeling equally discouraged. The distance between Washington and Nebraska seemed great indeed.
The White House couldn’t be reached for comment. But, according to the meeting attendees, there was something good that came out of it: assurance that the Obama administration had taken note of the coalitions, the “very different people that are coming together” around the pipeline, said Camp-Horinek. “They’re paying attention.”
The elephant in the room — or, in this case, the tipi — is the problem of land ownership. What happens when a rancher speaks of “my land” or “my private property” to a room full of people who believe that the land was stolen, and never really belonged to them in the first place? How to begin to address the competing claims to land that is central to the identity and culture of both groups?
The Cowboy Indian Alliance doesn’t seem ready to address this in public just yet. There are speeches, expressions of gratitude, fortitude, even love. The wounds of history are alluded to, but obliquely. For now, at least, these questions are secondary to the urgency of fighting the pipeline. “The land doesn’t belong to us — we’re just caretakers” is a sentiment that’s frequently heard.
Behind closed doors, however, at the first meeting of the alliance, the tribal elders laid it all out.
“We pulled no punches with them,” Camp-Horinek said. “About how the land that they live on now became land that they could buy and sell. It was our blood.”
She also insisted that “It’s part of their history as well as ours. And it has to be brought out and spoken of, or else there isn’t an alliance.”
As much as the alliance represents a step towards healing old wounds, it remains just that — a step. As a movement, said Thomas-Muller, “we need to develop an organizing framework that effectively addresses racism, oppression, misogyny and colonialism.” That work is beginning, he believes, but there’s a long way to go.
While any real dialogue about colonialism has been set aside for the moment, it has by no means disappeared. Grossman, in his study of history’s successful alliances, writes that this may not be a bad thing; that the “conventional wisdom” which tells coalitions to emphasize sameness, to downplay the native rights issue in favor of unity, is ultimately self-defeating.
“I’ve concluded that the conventional wisdom is largely bullshit,” he writes. “Emphasizing unity over diversity can actually be harmful to building deep, lasting alliances between native and non-native communities. History shows the opposite to be true: the stronger that native peoples assert their nationhood, the stronger their alliances with non-Indian neighbors.”
Grossman has a warning. “There’s always going to be an effort either to prevent alliances from coming together,” he said, by exploiting racial or class conflicts between groups. Often, that means corporations will make concessions benefiting only the privileged group in the hope that they’ll take what they can and leave. According to Grossman, alliances need to plan in advance for the inevitable divide and conquer tactics that are “as old as colonialism.”
“And the response should be: we’re not going to go home until everyone has their demands met,” he said.
Maybe their next meeting at the White House will be with Obama himself. And maybe then, if they decide to walk out, they’ll walk out together.
It’s more than property rights
In 1882, Bob Allpress’ great-grandfather built his homestead on a patch of land south of the Keya Paha River on what was then Lakota land. The land rolls under a wide sky, the hills curving like muscles of the earth.
In 1886, the Lakota signed a treaty with the U.S. government, and were relocated to reservations on the other side of the river. According to family lore, though, Allpress’ family maintained good relations with their Lakota neighbors. His great-uncle and grandfather both spoke fluent Lakota.
One hundred and thirty years later, the Allpresses invited members of the budding Cowboy Indian Alliance, including Faith Spotted Eagle, to their farm. Allpress thought there might be sacred sites somewhere on it; he’d found beads and arrowheads. Spotted Eagle, gazing over the rolling landscape, pointed to the highest ridge and told the others what she knew: that this was a burial site, sacred ground.
The pipeline, Allpress said, would “cut right down the middle of that ridge.”
He looked down at his hands for a moment before continuing. “I keep trying to tell them, but they don’t seem to care. That’s what pissed me off. They don’t care.”
This, of course, is what brings these cowboys and these Indians together: land. For some landowners it’s merely a problem of property rights. For most, though, it goes far deeper, down below the grass and soil to the very roots of their identities as either cowboys or Indians, to a sense that they are irrevocably tied to this land, that if you poison it, that they will be poisoned too.
This is why a concurrent event — to Reject and Protect in Washington — took place in Red Shirt, S.D.: a three-day nonviolent direct action training, preparing participants to physically block TransCanada’s bulldozers. It was part of a series of trainings in Lakota territory called Moccasins on the Ground that have been happening for over a year in anticipation of Obama’s pipeline decision.
“We cannot sit and wait for his decision,” the website says. “We must act now and be ready to protect our sacred water, our lands, our families.” Keystone XL — and industrial projects like it — have truly engendered a unity among indigenous peoples across North America that is unprecedented in any era.
Meanwhile, when the tipis were rolled back up and the week-long event came to a close, landowners like Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska, weren’t thinking about a vacation. They’ve got plans too.
On June 20, TransCanada’s pipeline permit will expire in South Dakota – which means that, along with Nebraska, it will be the second state where regulatory holdups are delaying the pipeline. She’s got a long list of rallies, political campaigns and court cases to organize around. For the moment, Obama’s decision has been delayed until after the November elections. For Kleeb, this is more time to grow the movement. But mostly, she wants to build.
“It takes out a lot of you to be fighting all the time — to be in the ‘warrior stance,’” she said from her car, on her way to a meeting with reporters. According to Kleeb, the focus, post-Keystone — no matter the decision — will be on constructing small clean energy projects, like the Build Our Energy Barn, constructed by volunteers in the path of the pipeline and powered by wind and solar. “Farmers and ranchers and tribes are very self-reliant,” she said, and will want to generate their own energy that doesn’t rely on imported fossil fuels.
Prophesying victory
There is an old Lakota prophecy of a black snake, a creature that would rise from the deep, bringing with it great sorrow and great destruction. For many years, the Lakota people have wondered what the prophecy meant and when it would come to pass.
When they heard news of this pipeline – this tube, immeasurably long, that would pump black oil through the heart of this country — some Lakota people began to wonder if the snake appeared at last.
These cowboys and Indians believe they will win. But what then? Will this alliance fall apart, as others have in the past? If they defeat this black snake, what happens to the other black snakes, in other back yards, to the network of pipelines that are spreading across the land like veins? Will the relationships last?
“No doubt,” said Kleeb. She’s received messages from landowners saying that the week in Washington “touched them to their very core. One of the landowners said that it gave them a deep, emotional respect for their fellow landowners and ranchers but also for the tribes, which they didn’t have before.”
Casey Camp-Horinek said that she’s not privy to the future. “But the people that we are aligning ourselves with,” she said, “I really believe they’re going to help us uphold those treaty rights.”
There is another prophecy that is also spoken of by tribal elders from different nations: the prophecy of the Seventh Generation, which, loosely put, foretells a time when young people would lead an uprising, joining with other peoples to defend land and allow humans to continue living on the earth.
Far from her homeland, in the middle of the National Mall, flanked by monuments to a colonizing nation, Camp-Horinek spoke of the work before her, and for her sons and their children, who are also here. Joining with cowboys, she said, “fulfills not only the prophecy, but it fulfills a sacred duty that we were born with.”
The Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission says the white dots in the water are tribal fishing buoys and the wooden stake marks the beginning of the proposed Morrow Pacific coal export project site at the Port of Morrow in Boardman. | credit: Courtesy of CRITFC
An Oregon coal export developer is challenging claims that its proposed dock on the Columbia River would interfere with tribal fishing sites.
The Confederated Tribes of The Umatilla Indian Reservation and the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation have submitted letters and affidavits to the Oregon Department of State Lands indicating they have tribal fishing sites in the area where Morrow Pacific has proposed to build a dock in Boardman, Oregon for coal barges.
The Morrow Pacific project would transport around 9 million tons of coal per year from Wyoming and Montana to Asia. The coal would be delivered by train to the dock site in Boardman, where it would be transferred to barges on the Columbia River. The barges would carry the coal to another dock site downstream near Clatskanie, Oregon where the coal would be transferred onto ocean-going ships.
Morrow Pacific needs a permit from the DSL to build a dock at the Port of Morrow in Boardman. DSL rules say the state can issue the permit as long as the action would not “unreasonably interfere” with preservation of water for navigation, fishing and public recreation.
The company submitted a letter to the state Thursday arguing that its dock will not “unreasonably interfere” with fishing. It also argues that considering fishing impacts from the dock is outside the DSL’s authority for this permit.
Brian Gard, a spokesman for Morrow Pacific, says the company disagrees that tribes have proven their members fish at the dock site. He says the affidavits submitted to the state either misidentify the site geographically or they fail to show that tribal fishing has taken place in the dock location.
“We do not believe they establish tribal fishing or tribal fishing sites at the Port of Morrow industrial Dock 7 site,” Gard said. “Understanding the site context is important here. The proposed dock site is in a heavily industrial area. It’s on port of Morrow property. It’s situated between two other docks. It’s an area designated by the state as an area where docks are to go.”
Sara Thompson, spokeswoman for the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission, which includes the Umatilla and Yakama, released a photo (above) she says shows a set of tribal fishing buoys in the water next to the proposed Morrow Pacific project site.
“Not only have we been fishing there since time immemorial, but we continue to fish there at the present time,” said Chuck Sams, communications director for the Umatilla tribes. “We have provided affidavits to the Corps of Engineers and Oregon Department of State Lands, and we’ve spoken directly with Ambre Energy and Morrow Pacific explaining that we have fishing sites, usual and accustomed, at their proposed facility.”
In a recent speech, Gov. John Kitzhaber noted the conflicts flagged by the tribes shortly after declaring his opposition to coal exports in the Northwest. The governor said he will do all that he can “under existing Oregon law to ensure that we do not commit ourselves to a coal-dependent future.”
An osprey soars with a fish in its talons. Research by the U.S. Geological Survey says osprey are among the species harmed by contaminants in the lower Columbia River. | credit: Matt Shiffler Photography/Flickr
The U.S. Geological Survey has found high levels of toxic substances in the Columbia River everywhere from sediments to resident fish to osprey eggs.
The results of a six-year study of the Columbia River downstream from the Bonneville Dam were announced on Tuesday.
USGS hydrologist Steven Sobieszczyk says the contaminants –- which come largely from household products -– hadn’t been effectively tested for in the past.
“In a lot of cases, there’s not even thresholds set for safe and unsafe because we’ve never looked for them before,” Sobieszczyk said.
Elena Nilsen is a research chemist and team lead at USGS in Portland.
She says largescale sucker, the fish species they studied, show abnormalities including negative sperm health that makes it harder for them to reproduce.
With a study involving 13 principal investigators over those years, Nilsen points to confirmed links between household products and effects in the ecosystem of the Columbia River.
“A lot of these things come through the pathways of the wastewater treatment plant into the river – but the ultimate source was usually us,” Nilsen said.
Sara Thompson is public information officer for Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. Although regional tribes don’t rely on largescale sucker as they do on salmon and steelhead as subsistence fisheries, she says the new USGS study raises larger water quality concerns.
“Water quality often goes overlooked and ignored because it’s not tangible. You can’t see it,” Thompson said. “We can see fish populations decrease in the Columbia River system and the Willamette System but we can’t see these toxics. We have to make water quality standards a priority in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.”
If resident sucker fish are consumed regularly, health risks, including cancer, could increase.
Nilsen says immigrant communities may be most affected; they eat largescale sucker fish more than other groups because the fish can be caught locally and provide a reliable food source.
The USGS study measured toxics in river sediments, aquatic insects, sucker, and then osprey eggs.
Nilsen says the findings show bioaccumulation -– in which higher levels of toxins were found the higher up the food chain you looked.
In addition, contaminant levels were higher the further downstream the government scientists looked, as the human impacts accumulated.
The three sites studied were near Columbia City, Ore. and Skamania and Longview on the Washington side of the lower Columbia River.
Nilsen says the toxic sources observed are often as innocuous as furniture, non-biodegradable cleaning products and even home electronics. Through consumption and cleaning those toxins can make their way into regional waterways.
“It’s made me just try to be more mindful of the effects that I in my own home can have –- and thinking about everything we’re putting down the drains,” Nilsen said.
USGS has provided this data to health authorities in Oregon and Washington, which are responsible for issuing consumption advisories.
The two states issued related advisories regarding resident fish below the Bonneville Dam last fall.
VIDEO produced by the USGS to explain its research into contamination in the Columbia River:
Tongass Conservation Society The headwaters of the Unuk River, where a company called KSM wants to build a humongous open-pit mine for cold, copper and other metals.
It has become an all-too-familiar story: Pristine waters. Salmon habitat. Sacred significance. Mining.
The Unuk River watershed, straddling the border between British Columbia and Alaska, is on track to become ground zero in a struggle to stop the world’s largest open-pit mine, Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell (KSM). The fight against it is uniting First Nations and Alaska Natives as they battle to preserve stewardship of the pristine region. And it is just one of five massive projects proposed for the region.
If KSM secures the financing and the regulatory go-ahead, the giant mine would turn 6,500 acres of pristine land into an industrial zone that would generate more than 10 billion pounds of copper and 38 million ounces of gold, according to a project summary. As with any large mine, it would employ a hefty workforce—in this case mostly Canadians—and create taxes and royalty payments for Canada. But it would also produce a slew of waste. And that’s what critics say downstream Alaska communities stand to take on: none of the economic benefits but much of the environmental risk.
With its remote headwaters in British Columbia, the Unuk River is one of the world’s most prolific salmon waters. An international river, the Unuk flows into neighboring Southeast Alaska and its temperate rainforest, the 17-million-acre Tongass National Forest, a place of towering coastal mountains, tidewater glaciers and fog-shrouded islands. The Unuk empties into Misty Fjords National Monument, an attraction for cruise ship passengers viewing glaciers, bears and whales that dot Alaska’s Inside Passage. The Unuk, known as Joonáx̱ in Tlingit, supports large runs of king salmon, a cultural icon prized by commercial, sport and subsistence fishermen alike.
“The consequences for salmon runs on both sides of the border could be devastating, yet Alaskans would see none of the economic benefit,” wrote National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Michael Fay in a 2011 letter to British Columbia Premier Christy Clark, signed by nearly 40 other scientists.
Seabridge Gold, the mine developer, expects KSM to generate more than two billion tons of acidic waste rock called tailings, a byproduct of the mining process than can be lethal to fish. The tailings would be held behind two huge dams—each taller than the Hoover dam—built in the headwaters of the Nass River, one of British Columbia’s most important salmon rivers.
Because KSM is located in sensitive fish habitat, it has raised the ire of Southeast Alaska tribes, fishermen and some Canadian First Nations. They joined forces in early April, forming a cross-border working group to develop a unified strategy to protect their interests.
It’s not just KSM that worries them. KSM is one of more than a dozen mines planned for northern B.C., including five located in salmon-bearing watersheds that arise in Canada and drain into Alaska. The British Columbia government is encouraging the mines’ development, offering tax breaks and relaxed environmental rules. Also spurring development is the construction of a new power line extending electricity into the northwest corner of the province, bordering Alaska. The transboundary projects include Red Chris, Schaft Creek, Galore Creek and Tulsequah Chief. The international rivers they could affect are the Taku, Stikine and Unuk, some of Southeast Alaska’s top salmon rivers.
“These projects could not be in a worse location. Salmon is our traditional food. If anything happens to them, we would be in a world of hurt,” said Ketchikan fisherman and tribal leader Rob Sanderson Jr.
Fishing, seafood processing and tourism are key economic drivers in Southeast Alaska. The seafood industry produced $641 million worth of fish in 2011, which created 17,500 jobs and $468 million in wages. A million visitors tour the area every year, spending about copy billion.
Tribes have passed numerous resolutions of concern about how KSM and the other transboundary mines could potentially contaminate the region, including their traditional fishing grounds. Recently a delegation of tribal leaders and fishermen flew to Washington, D.C. to lobby for State Department intervention. They delivered a letter signed by 40 businesses, groups and individuals asking for help.
Alaska’s congressional delegation got the message. Shortly after the Alaskans flew home, Senators Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich, along with Congressman Don Young, contacted the office of Secretary of State John Kerry by letter asking him to get involved to protect Alaska’s interests. Because the mines are located in Canada, Alaska tribes feel they have less influence over the outcome than if they were on U.S. soil.
“It’s happening in a foreign country. We don’t have a lot of control over it,” said Sanderson. “They don’t even have to consult with Alaska tribes.”
The U.S. Environmental Protect Agency has raised issues regarding the KSM project, mirroring the tribes’ concerns. The U.S Interior Department has urged Seabridge Gold to consult with Alaska tribes regarding fishing and clean water.
Recently Seabridge sent its vice president for environmental affairs to Alaska to participate in a tribal meeting on Prince of Wales Island near Ketchikan regarding KSM. Seabridge’s Brent Murphy told the Juneau Empire that “the overwhelming design philosophy for the KSM project is the protection of downstream environments and that is ensuring protection also for Alaskans.”
On its website, Seabridge notes that KSM has undergone extensive review by environmental and technical experts over the past five years to see that salmon and other wild resources are protected.
But Seabridge’s assurances have done little to allay skepticism on the U.S. side. Since the meeting on Prince of Wales in late March, the newly elected president of Alaska’s largest tribe, the Juneau-based Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, has elevated the matter.
“This is a direct threat to the lifestyle and culture of our tribes’ 29,000-plus members,” said Richard Peterson, tribal president.
At Peterson’s urging, the Central Council adopted a resolution giving Southeast Alaska’s 19 federally recognized tribes the green light to work with First Nations to try to slow the development of the transboundary mines.
“We need a collective call to arms,” said Peterson.
Not all B.C. First Nations oppose the KSM mine or the other transboundary projects. The Gitxsan and Nisga’a Nations support the mine’s development. But others, including the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs, who live downstream from where the KSM waste facility would be located, are opposed.
“Nass River fish are critical for the food security of the Gitanyow,” said Kevin Koch, a fish and wildlife biologist with Gitanyow Fisheries Authority. “KSM poses a major threat to the Gitanyow way of life.”
Koch noted that the Gitanyow have constitutionally protected aboriginal rights to fish in the Nass. Seabridge maintains that any ill effects from mine waste on Nass River salmon would be minimal.
Peterson is unconvinced.
“I think John Kerry should be sitting in my office talking to me right now,” he said. “We need face-to-face consultation on this. We’re a sovereign nation.”
Premiering on Tulalip TV this week is a new episode of Native Report # 808.
Native Report is an entertaining, informative magazine style series that celebrates Native American culture and heritage, listens to tribal elders, and talks to some of the most powerful and influential leaders of Indian country today.
In this edition of Native Report we learn about “Spirit of the Ojibwe,” a special book devoted to the elders of the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation in Wisconsin. We visit the Chathlopotle Plankhouse, a traditional Chinookan-style cedar structure. And we learn about how the best practices toward revitalizing the Maori Language can also be applied to other language preservation efforts. We also learn something new about Indian country and hear from our elders on this edition of Native Report.
You will be able to watch Native Report Episode – 808 and many other Native programs on Tulalip TV, Channel 99 on Tulalip Broadband or Live on www.TulalipTV.com on a PC, Mac or any ‘Smart’ device such as phone or tablet.
Native Report – 808 can be watched at either of these times: 1:00 p.m. or 9:30p.m.
President Fawn Sharp of the Quinault Indian Nation says she is happy to participate on the Carbon Emissions Reduction Task Force Governor Jay Inslee created by executive order yesterday [April 29], but advises that “genuine state-tribal cooperation, communication and government-to-government relations will be essential to the success of any effort to address the many challenges posed by climate change.”
Sharp, who is also President of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, encompassing six Northwest states, and Area Vice President of the National Congress of American Indians, is the only tribal member of the Governor’s task force.
President Sharp said, “Climate Change is the greatest environmental disaster of our generation and its impacts are felt both near and far. The fact is that tribes have preceded other governments in addressing climate change issues, and it is time for our words to be heard, our warnings to be acknowledged and our programs to be recognized.”
She said the reason tribes have moved forward with programs to address the effects of climate change while other governments have been stymied is that it is embedded in the tribal culture to care for the land in a sustainable manner. “Stewardship of our natural resources and environment is something we learn at a young age. We understand the big picture—the economic, policy, environmental and cultural values of sustainability and the responsibility we all have to our children and future generations. Those are the values that must be prioritized if we are to meet the climate change challenge.”
In signing the order, the Governor outlined a series of steps to cut carbon pollution in Washington and advance development and use of clean energy technologies, and said, “This is the right time to act, the right place to act and we are the right people to act. We will engage the right people, consider the right options, ask the right questions and come to the right answers — answers that work for Washington.”
“Whether it’s the warming of the Pacific Ocean, Hurricane Sandy, the tornadoes across the country or the Oso landslide, the melting of our Mt. Anderson Glacier or the breaching of our Taholah seawall, the link to climate change is clear to us. It has been for a long time. And so is the absolute need to take action,” said Sharp.
“It’s a primary reason why I have agreed to work with the Governor on his Carbon Emissions Reduction Task Force. It’s a key reason why we have taken a strong stand against the proposal to build oil terminals in Grays Harbor and substantially increase the number and frequency of oil trains and tankers. It’s why we are reaching out to strengthen alliances with neighboring communities and entities of all kinds and it’s why we have been so heavily engaged in the effort to resolve the climate change challenge for many years — through political, education and habitat-related programs.
“Quinault is a nation of people who, like their ancestors for thousands of years, fish, hunt and gather. The core of our economy is based on health and sustainable natural resources—a clean and vibrant ecosystem. We are also a nation blessed with thousands of acres of forest land. We do not manage our forests to the detriment of our fishing and hunting, but the other way around. Managing holistically, with respect for our descendants, and their needs is the key. These are the lessons of our ancestors, lessons that oil tycoons and timber barons never learned to appreciate.
We are a people who are determined to practice good stewardship. Sometimes that means doing habitat work in the Quinault River, something we have done extensively for many years. Sometimes it means taking part in international climate change summits—providing a leadership role in such efforts as the United Nations’ Conference of Parties (COP 14) in Poznan, Poland in 2009 or the First Stewards Summit in Washington D.C.,” said Sharp.
Quinault Nation established a comprehensive set of climate change policies in 2009, before Congress considered introducing its national policies. We have advocated and advanced our climate change-related interests locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. “We have asked the President and Congress to understand the connection between climate change and such impacts as the decline of our Blueback salmon run and the destruction that is now occurring with shellfish and other species in the ocean due to acidification and hypoxia. Other tribes have worked alongside us, pushing for action by the State of Washington, the United States and the United Nations, for many years. It is our heritage, and right, to do so,” said Sharp.
“We believe it’s time to call to end the nonsensical debate in the Legislature and in Congress about whether it exists. It does, and it is very serious.
“Year in and year out we are all facing the deadly consequences of a century of environmental contempt, and ignoring that fact will not make the challenge go away. It is time for people to treat our natural environment with the respect it deserves,” she said.
The Port of Vancouver on Wednesday released an updated version of its lease for the Northwest’s largest oil-by-rail transfer terminal, featuring fewer censored details but maintaining redactions of key issues the port considers sensitive.
The port released the updated version of its lease (429 pages in electronic format) with Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies in response to multiple requests made in April by various parties, including the Columbian and The Oregonian newspapers, Theresa Wagner, the port’s communications manager, said Wednesday.
In the original version of the lease, the port had kept secret a total of 22 pieces of information. In the updated rendition, the port revealed 11 of those 22 pieces of information, Wagner said.
One revelation: The port is allowed to terminate the lease if Tesoro and Savage fail to launch construction within four months after both parties are presumed to have fulfilled certain other contractual obligations.
Previously, the port had censored the companies’ construction timeline.
Still kept a secret, however, are the number of months — since the effective date of the lease — the port and companies have to cancel the lease early if either party fails to meet their contractual obligations.
Exactly how those obligations, known as “conditions precedent,” work isn’t entirely clear. An obvious allowed reason for cancelling the deal is if Tesoro and Savage fail to obtain permits from state regulators.
The companies submitted their permit application to the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council on Aug. 29, seeking to handle as much as 380,000 barrels of oil per day for eventual conversion into transportation fuel. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has the final say over the project.
Another disclosure the port made Wednesday: If Tesoro and Savage move a certain average volume of oil per day for 30 months after they start making rent payments to the port, then the companies get to keep exclusive rights to run an oil terminal at the port.
The port, under that scenario, wouldn’t be able to lease property to a new tenant who also wants to handle crude oil.
Previously, the port had censored how long the companies would have to maintain certain oil volumes to keep their exclusivity rights.
However, the oil volumes — and the date on which the companies start paying rent to the port — are still unknown, because the port kept them redacted in the updated version of its lease.
The port also maintained redactions of the amounts of wharf and dockage fees it will charge Tesoro and Savage. Those unknown fees are in addition to lease revenue that’s already known: The agreement involves 42 acres and is worth at least $45 million to the port over an initial 10 years.
The port is maintaining certain redactions under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, saying that if certain pieces of information were made public, it would harm the port in various ways, including damaging its competitiveness and its ability to negotiate
Wagner said the port chose to reveal certain pieces of information because they’ve either become known from the Tesoro-Savage permit application or by way of public presentations given by the companies.
However, a Vancouver city attorney has questioned the port’s redactions. In a Feb. 18 email to the port, two weeks after he’d received and reviewed the lease, Bronson Potter, chief assistant city attorney, wrote that it’s “doubtful that any of the information redacted would qualify as being a ‘trade secret.’?”
The port’s lease also gives Tesoro and Savage first rights on leasing additional property to expand if the average amount of oil moved by the first facility exceeds certain barrels-per-day targets. Those targets remain unknown, because the port kept them secret in the updated version of its lease.
Tesoro and Savage would have to seek another round of permits to expand or build another facility.
The Passamaquoddy Tribe’s battle with the State of Maine over Native fishing rights became an interstate issue recently when New York State authorities lodged multiple felony poaching charges against a Passamaquoddy fisheries official who is helping the Unkechaug Indian Nation implement its eel management plan.
But according to Fred Moore III, the Passamaquoddy Tribe’s Fisheries Committee Coordinator who was charged, the fight for Native fishing rights is soon to become a bigger issue than the battles in Maine and New York.
Moore, his two sons and five other Native men, including citizens of the Unkechaug, Shinnecock, Mohawk and Anishinaabe nations, were charged with possession of American eels in excess of the New York State limit; possession of undersized American eels, and not having a state-issued food fish permit. All three charges are considered felonies because the value of the eels in the group’s possession was more than copy,500. They were also given misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to commit a crime and using an eel trap with a mesh size smaller than the minimum limit allowed, according to Lisa King, spokesperson for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), in an e-mail response to an ICTMN request for comment.
King said the eight men “surrendered themselves” to DEC officers on April 8. She did not respond to questions seeking the state’s position on tribal sovereignty and aboriginal fishing rights. The men are scheduled for arraignment on June 25.
The Passamaquoddy Tribe has been locked in battle with the State of Maine for the past two years over the tribe’s treaty and aboriginal right to fish for elvers, tiny baby American eels also known as glass eels. Citing concerns about the dwindling number of American eels available, the state wants to limit the number of permits the tribe issues. The tribe says every member has an inherent right to fish, but its conservation plan limits the total amount of elvers the tribe can harvest. Ironically, until this year the state limited the number of permits it issued but allowed an unlimited harvest of baby eels. This year under threat from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) to shut down the fishery, the state has caught up to the Passamaquoddy’s traditional conservation knowledge and reduced and limited the total allowable catch.
Moore, who is working at Unkechaug under tribal authority, told ICTMN that the matter of Native fishing rights is soon to become a central issue for eastern coastal nations. The Penobscot Nation is already embroiled in a federal lawsuit against the State of Maine over hunting and fishing rights. The lawsuit is supported by the Interior Department, which has entered the case as both intervener and plaintiff, and the Passamaquoddy Tribe is thinking about intervening, Moore said. In an interview with ICTMN, Passamaquoddy Chief Clayton Cleaves at the tribe’s Sipayik community, said the council will also consider a separate legal action.
“What we’re doing here is providing Unkechaug with technical assistance in implementing their eel management plan,” Moore said. “But we’re also here to assist other tribes in formulating a position for a class action suit against the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. The ASMFC has an American eel management plan that deals purely with member states and only references Native Americans. We don’t want equal status [with states]—want to be exempt from inadequate management mechanisms which cater to the economic interests of competing jurisdictions. We can’t have any part of it because they‘re completely inconsistent with indigenous culture.”
The ASMFC, created in 1942 by Congress, represents 15 Atlantic coastal states with a stated mission of “promoting and protecting Atlantic coastal fishery resources.” Each state has three representatives on the commission: the director of the state’s marine fisheries management agency, a state legislator, and an individual appointed by the state governor to represent “stakeholder interests,” according to the organization’s website. The United South and Eastern Tribes’ 26 member tribes, whose aboriginal and reservation territories are predominantly along the Atlantic coast, are not represented on the commission.
Moore said he wasn’t fishing on the night of March 28 when the men were ticketed for violations, but that the group had fishing permits issued by Unkechaug. The DEC was alerted to the group’s activities in a creek on Long Island’s east end and waited in the weeds for the tribal members to come back and start emptying their nets of elvers, Moore said.
“They were aware that the Unkechaug had issued permits, but they made a policy statement by charging us and basically treated these folks like they’d just robbed a 7-11 at gunpoint,” Moore said. “And to be branded as poachers is laughable—Passamaquoddy has offered the state assistance in apprehending poachers.”
If DEC authorities hadn’t “pounced” on the group, Moor added, they would have seen the men stock most of the elvers above artificial barriers—which is one of the conservation techniques he is implementing for the Unkechaug.
Unkechaug Chief Harry Wallace called the charges “ridiculous…. It was a multi-tribal project, and the whole idea is to restore the fishery all along the northeast coast,” he said. “If we don’t do it the whole fishery will be destroyed if they [the state] continue their practice.”
The creek is in Unkechaug aboriginal territory, where members exercise aboriginal fishing rights, Wallace said.
New York State allows a massive taking of eels six inches and longer, but prohibits the taking of elvers. The tribe has imposed a moratorium on the taking of adult eels, each of which can spawn tens of millions of elvers, Wallace said.
“Our goal is to restore 50 percent of what we take. We put them above a manmade obstruction so their chances of survival are enhanced,” he said. “This is a Native practice.”
To date, the Nation has successfully stocked more than 10,000 glass eels into Mill Pond and East Mill Pond at the headwaters of the Forge River adjacent to the Unkechaug Indian Reservation near Mastic, New York, said Wallace, adding that the DEC violated its own policy by filing felony fishing charges against Nation members and employees operating under the authority of the Unkechaug Nation American Eel Management and Restoration plan without first consulting the Nation.
“After being advised that Unkechaug eel restoration activities were being conducted under license issued by the Nation, ranking officers and representatives of the DEC acknowledged that they were aware of the license but refused to void the charges,” Wallace said. “Instead, DEC officials made racially disparaging remarks concerning the inherent rights and responsibilities of Native Americans, insisting that the Unkechaug eel fishery is a front for the illegal exportation of glass eels to other states.”
The Nation is contemplating legal action against the state, Wallace said.
On April 17, Chief Clayton Cleaves and Chief Joseph Socobasin of the Passamaquoddy communities at Sipayik and Motahkomikuk, respectively, wrote a letter of “support and commitment” to Wallace.
“Please be assured that your efforts to secure the rights and interests of your people while ensuring the sustainability of the American eel within their natural range will benefit all Native people on the east coast, including others who do not understand the cultural and spiritual relationships we have developed over several millennia of existence within our territories,” they wrote.
The chiefs said they are committed to working with Unkechaug “in defense of the marine environment, its resources and fishing rights of indigenous people.”
U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, April 30, 2014
U.S. SENATE – Today at a U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing Chairman Jon Tester and Vice Chairman John Barrasso called for increased energy development on tribal lands.
The hearing was held to consider ways to improve the ability of Indian tribes to responsibly develop their natural resources, including the Indian Tribal Energy Development and Self-Determination Act Amendments of 2014 (S. 2132). This bill is intended to remove the burdensome and lengthy approval processes that currently cause potential development partners to look elsewhere for energy projects.
In 2005, Congress enacted legislation to allow tribes to develop their energy resources without the Secretary of the Interior’s approval of individual projects, provided the tribe had an approved Tribal Energy Resource Agreement (TERA).
“Sadly, however, the Energy Policy Act has not been successful,” said Kevin Washburn, Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior. Washburn added that since promulgation of the Department’s TERA regulations in 2008, the Department has not received a single TERA application.
Tester, who is working to revive the recently expired Indian Coal Production tax credit said, “Energy development has the potential to provide stable economic environments for tribes, their members and surrounding communities. There is no entity better qualified to oversee and manage tribal resources than the tribes themselves. We need to simplify and expedite the TERA process, but also further promote the development of alternative energy sources such as solar, biomass and hydroelectric projects.”
Barrasso said, “Energy development on tribal lands is critical for economic growth and job creation in Indian Country. By streamlining the approval process, this bill will give folks in Indian Country the tools they need to spur economic growth and create good paying jobs in their communities.”
James M. “Mike” Olguin, Acting Chairman of the Southern Ute Indian Tribal Council, said, “The tragic consequence of no approved TERAs and a continued reliance upon federal supervision has been the incredible lost opportunities to develop Indian energy resources during the period between 2005 and today.”
Michael O. Finley, Chairman of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, said, “Potential partners and development capital sit on the sidelines because it takes years to get anything approved by the Department of the Interior. Indian Country needs an institutionalized answer to the ongoing challenge of burdensome bureaucratic processes and delay of tribal energy leasing and permitting.”
