Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III turns out of the pocket during the first half of an NFL football game against the San Francisco 49ers in Landover, Md., Monday, Nov. 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
As a former student at Marysville-Pilchuck High School, home of the Tomahawks, Dr. Stephanie Fryberg remembers seeing a fellow student clad in a headdress of feathers and watching as other kids participated in the Tomahawk Chop.
Fryberg, a Native American and member of the Tulalip Tribe, said she always found those displays disturbing.
“I was an athlete in Marysville and I was definitely part of the sports culture, but I always felt weird about that,” said Fryberg, who received a PhD from Stanford University in 2003 and is today an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona, where she is also affiliate faculty for American Indian Studies (she is on leave in the current academic year).
“If you’d go and watch (those displays at Marysville-Pilchuck events),” Fryberg added, “you’d never see Native students participating.”
The use of Native American sports nicknames and mascots has been a controversial topic for many years, and one recently rekindled when President Barack Obama said he would “think about changing” the name of Washington’s NFL team, the Redskins, if he owned the ballclub.
“I don’t know whether our attachment to a particular name should override the real legitimate concerns that people have about these things,” Obama added in an interview with The Associated Press.
Fryberg agrees, and said she backs her position with research that proves those nicknames and mascots have a negative effect on the self-perception of Native American students. “I’m a scientist,” she said, “and from that level, absolutely, the data is concrete.”
Team names like Indians, Chiefs and Braves, among others, are “a stereotype that’s playing with someone’s identity,” she said.
Likewise, Fryberg finds the Redskins nickname particularly offensive “because it very much has race connotations, though that’s not my area of (research) expertise,” she said.
This issue has always been particularly relevant at Marysville-Pilchuck High School, which serves the Tulalip reservation. There have been periodic discussions over the years about dropping the Tomahawks nickname, and one of the most intense debates occurred in the 1980s when Marysville High School and Pilchuck High School merged to form Marysville-Pilchuck.
Some in the community urged the school board to use Pilchuck’s nickname, the Chargers, for the newly merged school. But among those arguing otherwise was Don Hatch, a member of the Tulalip Tribal Council and a man who later served 16 years on the Marysville School District board.
Hatch says that Native American nicknames and mascots “are not derogatory,” and he believes it so strongly that he purchased Redskins sweatshirts, hats and other team merchandise when he visited Washington while representing the Tulalip Tribal Council.
“I’m proud of the Redskins,” he said. “I support them, just like I do the Tomahawks. … I think it brings to light us as Indian people.”
Years ago, Seattle’s Blanchet High School considered changing its nickname from Braves. Hatch said he visited the high school and spoke to the students at an assembly, urging them to retain the nickname. His words evidently had an impact as Blanchet teams are still called the Braves.
Likewise, Marysville-Pilchuck remains the Tomahawks and that nickname is a tribute to the Tulalip history, culture “and pride we have,” Hatch said. Likewise, the school colors remain red and white, which is emblematic “of the red man and the white man,” he said.
Tulalip Tribes Chairman Mel Sheldon could not be reached for comment, but in a statement released by a tribal representative he said: “It’s time for sports teams to change mascot designations that use Native American names and cultural imagery. Stereotypes, no matter how innocent they seem, help to perpetuate certain perceptions about Native Americans that obscure our history, and the contributions we’ve made to American society.
According to Fryberg, those nicknames and mascots also demean the people they are purported to esteem. “People say they are honoring Natives,” she said. “No, they’re not.
“Given the difficulties Native students have had being successful in mainstream schools,” she went on, “I just don’t think it’s a place where we need to add one more stereotype and one more barrier for Native students to (overcome). … Negative stereotypes are playing with people’s identity, and at the end of the day, how many Native students have to say it bothers them before we care?”
The striking thing about this issue, of course, is how vigorously people disagree, including many Native Americans themselves. While some see nicknames like Indians, Chiefs, Braves and even Redskins as symbols of disrespect, others like Hatch believe those same nicknames help to preserve the historical dignity, pride and heritage of all Native Americans.
Keeping those nicknames “is very important,” he said. “And I’m proud to have (sports teams) named after our Indian people.”
Hitting the road this holiday? In some areas, winter weather means snow, sleet and ice that can lead to slower traffic, hazardous road conditions and unseen dangers. Are you prepared? According to a recent Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) survey, 52 percent of people reported having supplies set aside for use in a disaster.
If your travel needs call for driving in wintry weather, prepare your car for the trip by updating your vehicle emergency kit with:
• Booster cables;
• Blankets, hats, socks, and mittens;
• Road salt or sand; and
• A fluorescent distress flag.
While on the road, follow these driving techniques to ensure you reach your destination safely:
• Decrease your speed and leave plenty of room to stop;
• Break gently to avoid skidding;
• Do not use cruise control or overdrive on icy roads; and
• Turn on your lights to increase your visibility to others.
Road conditions can change quickly! Should disaster strike when traveling, use the Disaster Reporter feature on the FEMA app to send photos of your location for first responders and response teams to view. You can also keep up with weather forecasts using your NOAA weather radio to plan ahead! Remember safety first. If weather conditions are too severe, it’s best not to drive.
Holiday Fire Safety
Each year fires occurring during the holiday season injure 2,600 individuals and cause over $930 million in damage in the United States. By following some of the outlined precautionary tips, individuals can greatly reduce their chances of becoming a holiday fire casualty.
Preventing Christmas Tree Fires:
• Select fresh trees –Choose a green tree with a sticky trunk and tight needles.
• Care for your tree – Keep it away from heat sources, and keep the tree stand filled with water. Take your tree down after two weeks.
• Dispose of your tree at the recyclers –Never put the tree or branches in the fireplace or woodstove.
Holiday Lights Safety:
• Maintain your lights –Inspect the lights, wires, sockets for wear and tear.
• Electrical Outlets –Don’t overload outlets or stretch lights to reach outlets.
• Periodically check the lights; they should not be warm to the touch.
• Turn the lights off when you’re not at home and before going to bed.
AMERIND Risk provides property, liability, and workers’ compensation insurance, for tribes, tribal governments, businesses and individual property coverage. AMERIND Risk’s purpose is to create affordable and sustainable insurance products and services for Indian Country. AMERIND Risk – the only 100% Native American owned and operated insurance provider in Indian country—”Tribes Protecting Tribes.”
Native American author, educator, activist, mother and grandmother Winona LaDuke, Anishinaabekwe, is calling on tribes to relocalize food and energy production as a means of both reducing CO2 emissions and of asserting tribes’ inherent right to live in accordance with their own precepts of the sacredness of Mother Earth and responsibility to future generations.
She said during a recent presentation on climate change at Harvard University, “We essentially need tribal food and energy policies that reflect sustainability. Tribes [as sovereign nations] have jurisdiction over food from seed to table and we need to take it or else USDA will take it…. The last thing you want is USDA telling you how to cook your hominy, that you can’t use ashes in it …. I am the world-renowned, or reservation-wide renowned, beaver tamale queen. So who’s going to come to my house and [inspect the beaver]? I don’t want USDA in my food. I want us to exercise control over our food and not have them saying we can’t eat what we traditionally eat.”
LaDuke was talking about tribal food sovereignty.
Winona LaDuke of White Earth, Jackie Francke of First Nations Development Institute and Julie Garreau, executive director of the Cheyenne River Youth Project, at the first meeting of the NAFSA founding council. (Courtesy First Nations Development Institute)
Neither the United States Department of Agriculture nor the Food and Drug Administration is likely to turn up in your family’s kitchen, but federal policies have a lot to say about what food products are allowed to get into that kitchen in the first place. Antibiotics and growth hormones in the meat supply, vast harvests of corn, rice or wheat cultivated from the same genetic stock, genetically modified organisms—be they corn or soy or fish–and preservatives added to food during processing are primarily under the control of the USDA and FDA. As are the regulations about what foods can be served by tribes at day care centers, schools and senior centers, not to mention those on how food intended for commercial markets must be grown and processed.
Of particular concern right now is the 2011 federal Food Safety Modernization Act, which increases regulation and oversight of food production in an effort to prevent contamination. If the rules pertaining to the law are not changed in response to public comments, some of the federal government’s regulatory and inspection responsibilities will devolve to state governments, a direct threat to tribal sovereignty, according to First Nations Community Development Institute Senior Program Officer Raymond Foxworth, Navajo. “The [historic] loss of food system control in Indian Country is highly correlated with things like the loss of land, the loss of some aspects of culture related to agricultural processes, and … some pretty negative health statistics [including obesity, diabetes and lifespan]. It’s our belief that food sovereignty is one solution to combat some of these negative effects, be it the negative health statistics, the loss of culture or the loss of land.”
Harley Coriz, director of the Santo Domingo Senior Center, inside of the center’s new greenhouse. (Courtesy First Nations Development Institute)
The institute has been instrumental in establishing the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance under its Native American Food System Initiative. The alliance will be a national organization focused on networking, best practices and policy issues. The founding members of NAFSA “have been working on trying to pressure the FDA into initiating tribal consultations related to FSMA.”
The alliance, in the works for more than a decade, recently got start-up funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. FNCDI contracted with the Taos County Economic Development Corp. to coordinate its establishment. Directors Pati Martinson and Terrie Bad Hand convened a group of 16 people who have been working on food systems at the grassroots level to form a founding council. That group had its first face-to-face meeting in October.
Among the founding council members is Dana Eldridge, Navajo, formerly on the staff at Diné College and now an independent consultant and would-be farmer, who has done extensive work in analyzing food systems for the Navajo Nation. One of her main concerns is genetically modified organisms. GMOs, she says, threaten both the ownership of Native seeds and the spiritual aspects of food. “Corn is very sacred to us—it’s our most sacred plant. We pray with corn pollen–in our Creation story we’re made of corn—so what does it mean that this plant has been turned into something that actively harms people?”
Children at the Akwesasne Freedom School in New York near the Canadian border work in the their gardens in a farm-to-school project led by Kanenhi:io Ionkwaiontonhake. Much of the food grown in the gardens goes directly to the school for meals. Two teachers even instruct the older kids in the pre-K through grade 8 school in how to can and store their food, according to Elvera Sargent, Mohawk, who has been at the school since 1995 and who is a member of the NAFSA founding council. (Courtesy Akwesasne Freedom School)
Eldridge says food sovereignty is also important because it is a way to begin to address the trauma colonization has inflicted on Native people. “What I’ve learned during this food research is you can’t produce food by yourself. You need people, you need family, you need community and relationships, so a lot of it is about rebuilding community and reconnecting with the land and I think that’s a very important healing process for our people.”
The Taos County Economic Development Corp. has found that one way to keep USDA and FDA out of your kitchen is to invite them in. When regulators amped up their enforcement of regulations in relation to Native commercial food enterprises in northern New Mexico, TCEDC built a 5,000-square-food commercial kitchen where people could process their crops and learn directly from USDA inspectors what the regulations were. Says Martinson, “The food center was our way of modeling and bringing forward local healthy food through helping those people become actual businesses and entrepreneurs.” In 2006, TCEDC added a mobile slaughtering unit. Housed in a tractor trailer truck, the MSU travels out to small ranches where USDA inspectors oversee the slaughter of livestock—”bison, beef, sheep, goats and the occasional yak,” says Bad Hand–intended for commercial sale. The meat is then brought back to the center for cutting and packaging, again under federal oversight.
There is an irony to all this federal oversight of food production in sovereign Native nations, says Martinson. Traditional Native food growing, harvesting and processing principles kept people healthy for millennia before USDA even existed. The food contamination that FSMA is intended to prevent is a consequence of the industrialization of food production. “All these scares that you hear about, e. coli or salmonella making people really sick, if you trace those back, they come from huge packing plants, from industry.
A young girl at Cochiti Youth Experience (at Cochiti Pueblo) working in the garden. (Courtesy First Nations Development Institute)
“One of the things that I think Native people recognize and have passed down culturally is that you need to have human beings within food production ecosystems for all of those reasons—safety, quality, a relationship with your food. The principles of safe food are indigenous and inherent in Native communities,” Martinson says.
The answer to “What’s for dinner?” has profound implications for the well-being of Native American tribes. Tribal food sovereignty could mean the difference between continuing to retain (or regain) language, land, religious precepts, traditional lifeways and physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health or losing them.
Festivities will include medicine making classes, ornamental decorating workshops, gingerbread house workshops, local vendors, food and beverages and much more!
There’s a beauty in the breath of horses, fall mornings’ breath seen in the air, and the smell and sound of horses. We rode horses from the Headwaters of the Mississippi along the proposed route of a new oil pipeline that would cross the reservation. It was the third of a series of rides on oil pipeline routes.
The rides were sponsored by Honor the Earth, along with the Horse Spirit Society, Owe Aku and the White Earth Land Recovery Project. Those rides took us on the Alberta Clipper proposed expansion route (from Superior, Wisconsin, to the Red Lake Reservation), and to the proposed Keystone XL route in the Dakotas, where riders from White Earth Reservation joined with the Lakota to ride between Wanbli and Takini or Bridger on the Cheyenne River Reservation. Then we came home, to our own reservation, where a new pipeline is proposed to cut near our largest wild rice lake.
“We are not protesters, we’re protectors,” said Michael Dahl, leader of the third ride. That is true.
Michael Dahl, leader of the third ride. (Photo: Suze Leon)
We called this the triple crown of pipeline rides. What’s at stake is a lot of water and a lot of risk. In the Dakotas it is a land without a single pipeline across it and one large aquifer, the Oglala.
“We can buy bottled water, and drink it, “ Percy White Plume pointed out. “The buffalo and horses cannot.”
This is a good point. So it was that 15 riders braved some harrowing terrain, a land littered with 100,000 dead cattle from a freak September blizzard, (frozen dead on the sides of roads, gullies and the like) and rode the proposed Keystone XL route.
In Minnesota it is wild rice, water and oil. The Enbridge pipeline corporation is proposing to both expand a present oil sands pipeline, the Alberta Clipper, doubling its capacity and making it the largest tar sands pipeline in the U.S. That has its own risks—such as those of carrying dilbit, a highly corrosive substance, in a pipeline that is monitored remotely from Edmonton, Alberta. Enbridge also wants to construct a 610-mile pipeline from near Tioga , North Dakota, to Superior, Wisconsin. This is the same oil as the 800,000 gallons that devastated a Tioga farm field in North Dakota in early October. That pipeline was six inches in diameter; the proposed pipeline is 30. The proposed Sandpiper pipeline would carry 375,000 barrels of oil and cross through the White Earth reservation and the 1855 treaty area.
Enbridge is facing some obstacles.
“This is land that has been in my family for decades. It is prime Red River valley agriculture land. It was handed down to me by my mother and father when they passed away, and I’m intending to hand it down to my children when I pass away…. My wife and I have … told our children that we will pass this on. Of course, if 225,000 barrels of oil bursts through this thing, that certainly is the end of this family legacy. —James Botsford, North Dakota landowner and Winnebago Supreme Court Judge in Enbridge Sandpiper right of way
The Enbridge North Dakota company asked Botsford if they could survey his land.
“I told Enbridge … I am not going to give you permission,” Botsford said. “You are going to have to take it.”
So Enbridge filed a restraining order against Botsford, “denying me the private use of my own land,” he said. In fact, Enbridge told the court, “Unless defendant is restrained and enjoined from preventing or interfering with access to the property … Enbridge will be irreparably harmed.”
Enbridge told Botsford that the company’s rights trumped his rights. Enbridge seems pretty comfortable with that position, particularly ever since the Canadian corporation magically became a North Dakota utility. This metamorphosis allows the corporation to have eminent domain rights within the state. That occurred a decade ago and has served Enbridge well.
The company, however, has not been so lucky everywhere. In June 2013 the British Columbia government denied Enbridge permits for the Northern Gateway pipeline, citing environmental, safety and economic concerns about the corporation. That was in addition to massive opposition by First Nations. In Minnesota, Enbridge needs to get 2,000 rights of way for its pipeline proposal, and a certificate of need approved at the Public Utilities Commission. Those are all being challenged.
“Farmer Steven Jensen said the smell of sweet light crude oil wafted on his (rural Tioga) farm for four days before he discovered the leak, leading to questions about why the spill wasn’t detected sooner.” —Reuters on the 865,000-gallon spill in North Dakota in October 2013
Right now most of the oil moving in this country, from the Bakken fields, basically the Ft. Berthold reservation, goes by rail. That’s up to 380,000 rail cars projected to move this year. That is perhaps why Warren Buffett purchased the Burlington Northern Railroad; because he saw that the money was in the landlocked oil. The problem is that the oil is moving faster than regulation, with safety especially lagging as companies seek to extract as quickly as possible, before rules are imposed.
This past summer, four square blocks of the town of Lac Megantic, Quebec, blew up as a train’s braking systems failed. The train was carrying Bakken oil. Forty-three people were virtually vaporized in an explosion that baffled Canadian authorities. They had never seen anything like it.
Bakken oil, the stuff they want to put in the Sandpiper line, seems to be very volatile, sort of like a bomb in a pipeline. Which seems a bit worrisome. It’s even more worrisome given that the North Dakota accident (the 835,000-gallon spill) was attributed to lightning. Now, I’m not sure, but I think that lightning and an extremely volatile substance may be a very bad idea in a pipeline. That is the Sandpiper line.
The Sandpiper pipeline proposal.
The other Minnesota line—the Alberta Clipper—holds 440,000 barrels per day of tar sands oil. The Enbridge proposed expansion to 880,000 barrels per day would make that the largest tar sands pipeline.
Tar sands oil is both controversial for its origin and controversial for its transport and increased risk. Meanwhile the Keystone XL pipeline is facing huge opposition from farmers, ranchers, environmentalists and the Lakota Nation. In mid-November, Cheyenne River reservation leaders sent TransCanada’s representatives off the reservation, in an abrupt meeting.
Enter the Pig
Enbridge’s pipelines are largely monitored by the company. That is, if you don’t count the 135 federal inspectors who are responsible for 2.5 million miles of pipeline. Those inspectors, working for the U.S. Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHSMA), were on furlough when the 835,000-gallon Tioga spill happened, but it didn’t matter because remediation was in company hands.
It turns out there’s a piece of equipment called a “pig” (a pipeline inspection gauge actually), which goes through the lines to check them for structural problems. Sort of like a pipeline colonoscopy. This pig hasn’t worked out too well, it seems.
According to Enbridge’s company data, between 1999 and 2010, across all of the company’s operations, there were 804 oil spills that released 161,475 barrels (approximately 6.8 million gallons) of hydrocarbons into the environment. This amounts to approximately half of the oil that spilled from the oil tanker Exxon Valdez after it struck a rock in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in 1988. The single largest pipeline oil spill in U.S. history was the Kalamazoo spill, which was an Enbridge line.
“Federal regulators are investigating the 2010 rupture of Line 6B, part of the Enbridge-operated Lakehead pipeline system,” Michigan lawmakers testified. “The National Transportation Safety Board found Enbridge knew of a defect on the pipeline five years before it burst open and spilled around 20,000 barrels of oil into southern Michigan waters.”
So maybe the pig was mute. I don’t know. What I do know is that there are a lot of pipelines, and no one seems to be monitoring them.
In 2012 the PHSMA ordered Enbridge to submit plans to improve the safety of the entire Lakeland System. Meanwhile, Canada’s National Energy Board has stated that Enbridge is not complying with safety standards at 117 of its pumping stations. The board is analyzing concerns and solutions.
New Project/New Plan
Enbridge’s pipeline wish list, some of it granted.
Pipeline safety is increasingly under scrutiny, even as it becomes more mechanized. The pipeline safety system itself, however, is not local.
“This line—the Sandpiper line—the plan is that it will be operated from the control center in Estevan, Saskatchewan, … northwest of Minot, across the Canadian border,” Greg Sheline of Enbridge explained. From there, “that information gets reported back to the control center, so that the operators can monitor the operation.”
This of course does not sit well with those whose lives depend on the vigilance of this remote, robotic system.
“We don’t know if any of those lines will hold, and Enbridge has not proven itself to be a safe part of our environment,” said Dahl. “Our lakes and wild rice beds will be here forever, but if there’s an oil spill they will be destroyed, and Enbridge will not be here. They are a 50-year-old Canadian corporation, and we are a people who have lived here for ten thousand years.”
Enbridge’s expansions are intended to feed into a set of pipelines in the Great Lakes region. The Minnesota lines are intended to snake through and around tribal reservations and wild rice beds to a refinery in Superior, Wisconsin. From there Enbridge hopes to ship forth that oil, through pipelines, to a proposed 17 refinery expansions.
Many of these pipelines are more than 50 years old, including a precarious link in the straights of Mackinac. That link in particular is making a lot of people nervous. An underwater spill in the straights would, according to scientists, spill a million gallons before it could be stopped.
The Certificate of Need, or Was It Greed?
The expansion is predicated on “need,” or a certificate of need. In Enbridge’s application before the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, access to a stable supply of oil is the primary measure of need.
Need is subjective. It turns out that the world’s largest oil reserves are in the western hemisphere, in Venezuela—followed by Saudi Arabia—and then the Alberta tar sands. Venezuela is a country that has demanded a fair price for oil and has used that oil to develop its infrastructure. If there were such thing as an example of “fair trade” oil, this would be it.
In fact, a good chunk of Venezuelan crude has historically come back to tribal reservations. More than 223 of them have benefited from Venezuelan petroleum company Citgo’s largesse in communities that suffer from fuel poverty. As that country’s exports to the U.S. decline, this will likely be affected. In turn American corporations, driven by some hostile historic foreign policy, do not, it seems, want to pay a fair price for oil from that country. Hugo Chavez should rest in peace.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, in February 2013 Venezuelan crude oil and byproduct shipments to the U.S. dropped by 33 percent from 2012 levels. These sales had been paid in cash, so the loss deprives Venezuela of cash flow.
The interests of greed are large. The Koch brothers (two of the wealthiest Americans, worth $36 billion apiece) make much of their money on the oil market (a.k.a. derivatives) and have some very large interests in the Keystone XL pipeline. The brothers also own Minnesota’s Flint Hills refinery, which processes 25 percent of Canada’s tar sands oil in the U.S. They may profit considerably if a certificate of need is awarded for all these pipelines. Or as investigative reporter Greg Palast explains, “Koch brothers could save two billion dollars a year if they can replace Venezuelan heavy crude with Canadian tar sands—one of the dirtiest sources of carbon emissions on the planet.”
This past fall Venezuela faced serious economic woes from a loss of oil exports. Instead of developing a country, it seems that Suncor, Exxon, Mobil, Tesoro and Enbridge are facilitating the long-term destruction of Native territories from the Upper Missouri to the Athabasca River. There is, in short, no shortage of western hemispheric oil. There is only the greed-driven destruction of territories and communities whose people will neither benefit, nor control the process.
I’m done riding pipelines for the winter, I think. And I, like my fellow Mississippi Band of Anishinaabe members, intend to stay here, in our homeland at the headwaters. I am pretty sure we aren’t interested in sharing that with an oil company.
I’m off the horse, but I’m not done talking about pipelines. In the meantime, our horses are going to hope there’s water to drink and that their hooves will touch land not tainted with oil.
courtesy PETA/Status of Bear Welfare in Cherokee North Carolina Report, pg 47 Bears kept in cement pens at the Cherokee Bear Zoo, which is being sued by tribal elders for inhumane conditions, including inadequate shelter and lack appropriate shade.
The grisly scene could have been straight out of a horror movie. Bears kept in deep concrete pits devoid of soil, grass or any other environmental essentials. Distressed bears pacing in circles, their teeth broken from attempts to chew through the metal cages. Months-old baby bears, which otherwise would stay with their mothers for well over a year, instead separated and put into bird cages to entertain the crowds, forced to live on dog kibble and Hawaiian Punch.
This was a bear’s life at the Cherokee Bear Park, and it is the sight that traumatized Eastern Band of Cherokee Tribal Elders Amy Walker and Peggy Hill, they say. The two are suing the Cherokee Bear Zoo on the Cherokee Reservation, citing consistent and repeated violations of the federal Endangered Species Act. The suit was filed on December 3 in U.S. District Court in Bryson City, North Carolina.
The park is one of three on the Cherokee reservation, one of which was shut down earlier this year by the federal government for similar treatment of the animals. Though authorities closed Chief Saunooke Bear Park last January, according to the Huffington Post, Cherokee Bear Park and a third one, Santa’s Land, remain open.
“It’s shameful that the Cherokee Bear Zoo is still displaying intelligent, sensitive bears in tiny concrete pits,” said Walker. “It’s obvious to anyone who sees them that these bears are suffering, and they will continue to suffer every day until they are sent to a sanctuary where they’ll finally receive the care they need.”
In the lawsuit, which names Barry and Collette Coggins of the Cherokee Bear Zoo as plaintiffs, the Davis and Whitlock firm in Asheville, North Carolina cite the Cherokee Bear Zoo as having “barren and archaic concrete pits which significantly disrupt and impair the grizzly bears’ normal and essential behavioral patterns, resulting in inhumane living conditions.”
According to Cheryl Ward, who was called upon as a consultant on the case for Walker and Hill and is a leader of the Coalition for Cherokee Bears, cries to tribal officials have gone unheard for some time regarding the deplorable conditions of these parks.
“More than EIGHT months ago the tribal elders, along with other enrolled tribal members, urged the Tribal Council and Principle Chief Hicks to take action on behalf of these bears,” said Ward in an e-mail to ICTMN.
“Tribal officials have had ample opportunity to take meaningful action to help these suffering animals and they have failed, but the elders are not giving up,” she wrote. “The bears are entitled to the protections they are afforded under federal law and they deserve to be sent to a reputable sanctuary where they can finally be bears.”
Ward also expressed gratitude that Chief Saunooke Bear Park, which had housed 11 bears in conditions similar to those at Cherokee Bear Park, was closed down and that in June the bears were relocated to a 50-acre animal sanctuary in Texas. The USDA had suspended the park owner’s license and fined them $20,000 for inhumane living conditions.
In May 2010, enrolled members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee along with Delcianna Winders, director of captive animal law enforcement for the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), had met with the USDA to file complaints and submit a comprehensive report on the three bear parks, all in Cherokee, South Carolina. The report, Status of Bear Welfare, was authored by four experts on bear habitats and care, including Debi Zimmerman, an animal behaviorist with several decades of experience in animal husbandry.
About two months after the group’s meeting with the USDA, the federal agency traveled to the facility and issued a violation.
“The USDA confirmed that Chief Saunooke deprives the bears in its concrete pits of even their most basic needs, all the way down to proper food and shelter,” Winders said in a statement at the time.
“I just want people to be aware that these bears are being held in conditions that are like the 1950s—people in accredited facilities are not keeping bears like this in any way at all,” Winders told ICTMN on December 3. “The bears are being deprived of everything that is important to them.”
The scene immediately reminded Zimmerman of a horror movie, she told ICTMN. Speaking from her office in Ontario, Canada, Zimmerman said PETA had hired her to survey Chief Saunooke Bear Park and report on the conditions. When she walked into the facility, she said, Silence of the Lambs, in which a victim is held captive in a dark pit by a serial killer, leapt to mind.
“It is hard to shock me because I evaluate the conditions animals live in. But I have to say walking in and seeing this was a surprise,” Zimmerman told ICTMN. “The character in that movie was sensory-deprived, and it was a hideous situation. It is the same for these animals…. I cannot overstate how un-stimulating this was. Bears can’t live in a pit any more than that woman [character] could live healthfully in a pit. It was simply a bear in a pit—there’s nothing else.”
Zimmerman saw behaviors consistent with neglect, including pacing and head-swinging. Bears were also rubbing themselves raw, producing open and oozing sores. Young bear cubs paced frantically.
“Their pace showed the degree to which they were stressed,” Zimmerman said. “They are at a stage when their brains are developing quickly, and when you put a brain that needs complexity into a sensory-deprived environment, there is heightened stress and the need to get out of there.”
In October the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) filed a lawsuit against the USDA , claiming the agency had failed to protect bears that were suffering in the roadside zoos. The previous year, PETA had purchased billboards in the area calling the roadside zoos “prisons,” and PETA spokesperson Bob Barker had also spoken out against the enclosures.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs say the suit is unfounded. Mark Melrose of Melrose, Seago & Lay, who represents the Cherokee Zoo owners, said the owners will move to dismiss the case because the plaintiff’s complaint “lacks factual and legal basis.”
“The Cherokee Bear Zoo is closely regulated and monitored by federal agencies and state and local authorities and is in compliance with all existing regulations and laws and is operating lawfully,” Melrose told the Citizen Times.
Nevertheless, a petition against the Cherokee Bear Park has garnered well over 5,000 signatures from all over the world with its demand that the park be shut down. Over the past several years, many organizations have attempted to close down all three bear parks.
“The elders want ALL the roadside zoos shut down and the animals moved to reputable sanctuaries,” said Ward.
Previously Eastern Band Chief Michell Hicks released a statement saying he wanted to give private zoo owners the opportunity to create a wildlife preserve on the reservation.
The Cherokee Bear Zoo’s owners did not respond to ICTMN’s repeated requests for comment.
Twobills in the Senate would require the country to get at least 25 percent renewable electricity by 2025, but neither has a chance in hell of making it to Obama’s desk. Thanks, Republicans! So the president is doing what he can without approval from Congress: requiring the federal government to get more of its power from renewable sources.
President Obama says the U.S. government “must lead by example” when it comes to safeguarding the environment, so he’s ordering federal agencies to use more clean energy.
Under a presidential memorandum out Thursday, each agency would have until 2020 to get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable supplies. …
Agencies are supposed to build their own facilities when they can, or buy clean energy from wind farms and solar facilities. …
The memo also directs federal agencies to increase energy efficiency in its buildings and its power management systems.
The U.S. government currently gets about 7.5 percent of its electricity from renewables, so the new goal would almost triple that percentage.
With today’s memorandum, Obama follows through on a promise he made in his big climate speech in June. We’re looking forward to him keeping the rest of the promises from that speech.
MARYSVILLE — The cold weather shelter at the Damascus Road Church in Marysville received its first guest during its opening night, from 8 p.m. on Dec. 2 to 7 a.m. on Dec. 3.
Jason Brower, the service and missions deacon for the Damascus Road Church, noted that the shelter would be open every night during the week, from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m., but added that the shelter still needs churches to partner in providing volunteers for Wednesday evenings. He praised Pastor Victor Rodriguez and his fellow members of the Marysville Free Methodist Church for their able staffing of the shelter’s inauguration.
“It was exciting to see the cold weather shelter open up, even with the Seahawks playing on national TV,” Rodriguez said. “Several volunteers mentioned they were DVRing the game, and didn’t want any game updates.”
More than 20 volunteers staffed the shelter during its intake period of 8-9:30 p.m., most of whom came from the Marysville Free Methodist Church.
“It was great to see so many volunteers come out to get some on-the-job training,” Rodriguez said. “As we met folks from other churches, you could feel the camaraderie grow, as we worked together on this initiative.”
Even before their guest registration opened, the crew of 20-plus volunteers helped set up the shelter from 7-8 p.m. Rodriguez credited Marysville Police with helping to get the word out about the shelter, and with sending several officers over to tour the shelter around 9:30 p.m.
“We had homemade soup, which was a delicious treat,” Rodriguez said. “The planning paid off, as things ran smoothly.”
If the cold weather shelter hadn’t been open that evening, Rodriguez reported that its first guest would have slept in his car that night. Instead, not only did the shelter provide him with a warm, safe place to sleep, insulated from the freezing temperatures outside, but shelter volunteers also served him a hot dinner and breakfast.
“He was very appreciative of the shelter,” Rodriguez said. “Even with only one guest, it was gratifying to see the shelter open up, after about a year of planning and working to get everything in place. It’s a joy, in keeping with the spirit of Christ and Christmas, to see so many people in our wonderful Marysville community coming together, to share compassion in this tangible way. We look forward to seeing a need met in our city, so that anyone who needs to get out of freezing weather for a night of shelter can find it here.”
Rodriguez praised Brower and Jon Baylor, another member of the Damascus Road Church who’s helping to coordinate the cold weather shelter, for the parts they’ve played in making it possible. As for Baylor, he expects the shelter will serve many more people in need this winter.
“At about 7:30 a.m. [on Dec. 3], I heard a homeless man tap on the window as I was getting ready to lock up,” Baylor said. “He asked about the shelter, and whether it would be open every night at the same place. I told him that we would be open, at the Damascus Road Church, every night the temperature hit freezing. He was very excited, and told me he would be there that night, along with some other people. He said he was going to spread the word.”
The Marysville cold weather shelter is open at the Damascus Road Church, located at 1048 State Ave., from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. when nighttime temperatures are 32 degrees or colder. Dinner is served and admission is allowed until 9:30 p.m., after which the shelter locks down, with breakfast following from 6-7 a.m.
Space at the shelter is limited to 24 spots. For more information, call 360-659-7117, or email Brower at jbrowerus@yahoo.com or Baylor at jonbaylor67@hotmail.com.
Credit KUOW Photo/Ashley Ahearn Tribal treaty fishing rights give Washington tribes the opportunity to weigh in on, and even block, projects that could impact their fishing grounds.
Dozens of crab pot buoys dot the waters around Lummi tribal member Jay Julius’ fishing boat as he points the bow towards Cherry Point – a spit of land that juts into northern Puget Sound near Bellingham, Wash.
It’s a spot that would be an ideal location to build a coal terminal, according to SSA Marine, one of two companies that hopes to build a terminal here. If the company has its way, up to 48 million tons of coal could move through these waters each year aboard more than 450 large ships bound for the Asian market.
SSA Marine has its eye on Cherry Point because it’s surrounded by deep water with quick access to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean.
But if the Lummi and other tribes exercise their fishing rights, there may not be any coal ships servicing American terminals in these frigid Northwest waters.
“I think they’re quite disgusting,” Julius said when asked how he feels about the terminal backers’ efforts to make inroads with the Lummi. “It’s nothing new, the way they’re trying to infiltrate our nation, contaminate it, use people.”
Credit KUOW Photo/Ashley Ahearn
Aboard a Lummi fishing boat just south of the Canadian border near Cherry Point.
‘People Of The Sea’
One out of every ten members of the Lummi Nation has a fishing license. Ancestors of the Lummi, or “People of the Sea” as they are known, and other Salish Sea peoples have fished the waters surrounding Cherry Point for more than 3,000 years. Today Lummi tribal officials are sounding the alarm about the impacts the Gateway Pacific Terminal could have on the tribe’s halibut, shrimp, shellfish and salmon fishery, which is worth a combined $15 million annually.
Tribal treaty fishing rights could play a major role in the review process for the Gateway Pacific Terminal. According to the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, nine tribes’ treaty fishing grounds would be impacted by the Gateway Pacific Terminal and the vessel traffic it would draw.
In the mid-1800s, tribes in this region signed treaties with the federal government, ceding millions of acres of their land. Native American populations plummeted and the survivors were relegated to reservations.
They insisted on reserving the right to continue to fish in their usual and accustomed fishing areas. It is an extremely important part of the treaty.
The tribal leaders of the time did a smart thing, said Tim Brewer, a lawyer with the Tulalip tribe in northwestern Washington: “They insisted on reserving the right to continue to fish in their usual and accustomed fishing areas. It is an extremely important part of the treaty.”
But those fishing rights weren’t enforced in Washington until the Boldt Decision, a landmark court decision in 1974 that reaffirmed tribal fishing rights established more than a century before.
“If a project is going to impair access to a fishing ground and that impairment is significant that project cannot move forward without violating the treaty right,” Brewer said.
Since the Boldt Decision, tribes have been fighting for their treaty rights.
In 1992, the Lummi stopped a net pen fish farm that was proposed for the waters off of Lummi Island by a company called Northwest Sea Farms.
But agreements have been made in other situations. The Elliott Bay Marina, the largest, privately-owned marina on the West Coast, was built in 1991 within the fishing area of the Muckleshoot tribe. It took 10 years of environmental review. The Muckleshoot fought the project but ultimately came to an agreement with marina supporters.
When Dwight Jones, general manager of the Elliott Bay Marina, was asked if he had any advice for companies that want to build coal terminals in the Northwest, he laughed.
“I’d say good luck,” Jones said. “There will be a lot of costs and chances are the tribes will probably negotiate a settlement that works well for them and it will not be cheap.”
Jones said the owners of Elliott Bay Marina paid the Muckleshoot more than $1 million up front and for the next 100 years will give the tribe 8 percent of their gross annual revenue.
“Anyone who’s in business can tell you that 8 percent of your gross revenues is a huge number,” he said. “It really affects your viability as a business.”
Credit KUOW Photo/Ashley Ahearn
A gathering of coal export opponents last summer at Cherry Point. The event was part of an anti-coal totem pole journey led by the Lummi Nation. Its tribal members fish at Cherry Point.
Starting Negotiations
SSA Marine and Pacific International Terminals – the companies that want to build the terminal at Cherry Point – have lawyers and staff members working to negotiate with the Lummi to build the terminal. The companies declined repeated requests for interviews.
Last summer, Julius and the rest of the Lummi tribal council sent a letter opposing the coal terminal to the US Army Corps of Engineers. The federal agency will have final say over the key permits for the coal terminal.
In the letter the Lummi lay out their argument, which centers around threats to treaty fishing rights and the tribe’s cultural and spiritual heritage at Cherry Point.
But there’s a line at the end of the letter, which legal experts and the Army Corps of Engineers say leaves the door open for continuing negotiation on the Gateway Pacific Terminal: “These comments in no way waive any future opportunity to participate in government-to-government consultation regarding the proposed projects.”
