Kim Kalliber, Author at Tulalip News

Extreme weather, more extreme greenhouse gas emissions beckon urgent activism

Patrick Bond; Source: Climate Connections

The northern hemisphere summer has just peaked and though the torrid heat is now ebbing, it is evident the climate crisis is far more severe than most scientists had anticipated. The latest report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – a notoriously conservative research agency – will be debated in Stockholm next month, but no one can deny its projections: “widespread melting of land ice, extreme heat waves, difficulty growing food and massive changes in plant and animal life, probably including a wave of extinctions.”

Even worse is coming, for a giant Arctic Ocean “belch” of 50 billion tonnes of methane is inexorably escaping from seabed permafrost, according to scientists writing in the journal Nature. North Pole ice is now, at maximum summer heat, only 40 per cent as thick as it was just 40 years ago, a crisis only partially represented in the vivid image of a temporary “lake” that submerged the pole area last month.

The damage that will unfold after the burp, according to leading researchers from Cambridge and Erasmus Universities, could cost $60 trillion, about a year’s world economic output. Global warming will speed up by 15-35 years as a result.

With these revelations, it is impossible to mask the self-destructive greed of fossil-fuel firms and their carbon-addicted customers. The ruling crew in the United States, Russia and Canada will enthusiastically let oil companies exploit the soon-to-be ice-free Arctic summers with intensified drilling, joined by unprecedented bunker-fuel-burning in the newly opening shipping lanes.

Heat blowback in the US, China and Durban

But the extreme weather that necessarily results has just hit China, whose world-record CO2 emissions – mainly a result of producing junk purchased by wealthier countries which have outsourced their industrial emissions to East Asia – generate as a byproduct not only thick layers of smog in the main cities. There were also scores of heat-related deaths earlier this month. Shanghai suffered 10 straight days above 38C, with temperatures in some places high enough to use a sidewalk to fry eggs and prawns.

In the second-biggest greenhouse gas emitter (and biggest historically), the western United States is suffering a brutal drought, so severe that 86 per cent of New Mexico’s water supply evaporated, extreme wildfires broke out – this week, for example, scorching Yosemite Park’s legendary redwoods and threatening San Francisco’s water supply – while California’s Death Valley temperatures soared to 50C.

The effects are highly uneven, with environmental-justice research now proving that as climate change hits US cities, the wealthy turn up the air conditioner while the poor – and especially black and Latino people – suffer in “heat islands”. Likewise, poor people in the Himalayan mountains died in their thousands as a result of last month’s floods.

In Alaska, a source of enormous oil extraction, record temperatures in the 30s left thousands of fish dead. The effect of global warming on the oceans is to push marine life towards the poles by seven kilometres each year, as numerous species attempt to find cooler waters.

The impact here in South Africa, from East London to Durban, was a disaster for the local fishing industry last month, as billions of sardines which annually swim to shore stayed away due to warmer waters.

Can shipping survive the climate chaos it causes?

And here along the Indian Ocean, more local climate damage comes from – and is also visited upon – the shipping industry. In the world’s largest coal export site, South Africa’s Richards Bay harbour, an idiot captain of the China-bound MV Smart (sic) tried to exit the port in 10-metre swells on August 20 with a load of nearly 150,000 tonnes of coal and 1700 tonnes of oil. He promptly split the huge ship in half on a sandbank.

This followed by hours the strategic offshore sinking of a Nigeria-bound cargo ship, Kiani Satu, which had run aground a week earlier, further down the coast, close to a nature reserve and marine protected area. As plans were made to extract 300 tonnes of oil from the boat, more than 15 tonnes spilled, requiring the cleaning of more than 200 oil-coated seabirds.

The maniacs whose ships now rest at the bottom of the Indian Ocean can identify with the fly-by-night owners of the MT Phoenix, after that ship’s willful self-destruction off the Durban north coast holiday resorts exactly two years ago. Taxpayers spent $4 million pumping out 400 tonnes of oil and then towing the Phoenix out deeper to sink. A few weeks ago, that salvage operation’s contested audit resulted in the implosion of the South African Maritime Safety Authority.

These are just some surface-level indications that our shipping industry is utterly ill prepared for the rise of both overall sea levels and the “monster waves” which accompany climate change. The Columbia University Earth Institute now projects “sea-level rise of as much as six feet globally instead of two to three feet” by 2100, with higher amounts (three metres) possible if further ice sheets crack from their foundations.

As Susan Casey, wrote in her book, The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean, “Given that 60 per cent of the world’s population lives within 30 miles of a coastline, wave science is suddenly vital science, and the experts are keenly aware that there are levees, oil rigs, shorelines, ships and millions of lives at stake.”

Her experts need to visit South Africa, because ours are apparently asleep at the wheel, as they now plan an extreme makeover of Durban’s harbour. The shipping mania that made China such a successful exporter – and wiped out so much of South Africa’s manufacturing industry – has generated vessels that can carry more than 10,000 containers (which in turn require 5800 trucks to unload), known as “super post-Panamax”. They are so named because the Panama Canal’s current limits allow only half that load, hence a $5.25 billion dig will deepen and widen the canal by 2015, with a $40 billion Chinese-funded competitor canal being considered in nearby Nicaragua.

Most ports around the world are following suit, including here where $25 billion is anticipated from national, provincial and municipal subsidies and loans for South Durban’s port/petrochemical complex – the origin of our status as the most polluted African suburb south of Nigeria. The project is mainly managed by Transnet, a huge (but hot-to-privatise) transport state-owned agency, and is the second main priority in the the African National Congress government’s National Development Plan, which claims that from handling 2.5 million containers in 2012, Durban’s productivity will soar to 20 million containers annually by 2040 – though these figures certainly don’t jell with the industry’s much more conservative projections of demand.

More examples of state planning hubris: Transnet’s $2.3 billion doubling of the Durban-Johannesburg oil pipeline is still not complete, but already massive corruption is suspected in the collusion-suffused construction industry, given that early costings were half the price. And notwithstanding their “aerotropolis” fantasies, Durban’s King Shaka International Airport and the speedy Johannesburg-Pretoria-airport Gautrain are both operating at a tiny fraction of the capacity that had been anticipated by state planners. The 2010 Soccer World Cup sports stadiums are such blatant white elephants that even arrogant local soccer boss Danny Jordaan felt compelled to apologise.

Climate denialists from Durban to Deutschland

One reason they breed is that climate is not being factored into any of these carbon-intensive white elephants, as I have learned by fruitlessly offering formal Environmental Impact Analysis objections. As a result of a critique I offered last November, Transnet’s consultants finally considered prospects that sea-level rise and intense storms might disrupt the Durban port’s new berth expansion.

But Transnet’s study on sea-level rise by Christopher Everatt and John Zietsman of ZAA Engineering Projects in Cape Town is as climate-denialist as the consultancy report last year by the South African Council on Scientific and Industrial Research’s Roy Van Ballegooyen. I do understand that – like the dreaded AIDS-denialism of a decade ago – the allegation of climate-denialism is a strong insult these days. But what else would you call a November 2012 report (mainly by Everatt) that cites five studies to claim we will suffer only a maximum 0.6 metre maximum sea-level rise this century, but based on data from 1997, 2004, 2006 and 2008 reports. Five years old information is, in this field, ridiculously outdated.

In South Africa, de facto climate denialists are now led by a South African Communist Party leader: minister of trade and industry Rob Davies. Last week, Davies pushed through cabinet approval to build yet another coal-fired power plant plus permission to frack the extremely water-sensitive Karoo, “Land of the Great Thirst” in the original inhabitants’ San language.

Awful precedents Davies tactfully avoided mentioning include the massive environmental damage and the corruption, labour-relations and socio-ecological crises at South Africa’s main coal-fired powerplant construction site, Eskom’s $10 billion Medupi generator which at 4800 megawatts will be the world’s third largest. Medupi was meant to be generating power in 2011, but due to ongoing conflict, may finally be finished only in mid-2014.

Eskom’s main beneficiary, also unmentioned by Davies, is BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining house, a firm at the centre of South Africa’s crony-capitalist nexus dating to apartheid days. Eskom now subsidises this Australian company with $1.1 billion annually by gifting it the world’s cheapest electricity.

Another de facto climate denialist is the German development aid minister, Dirk Niebel, an opponent of Ecuadoran civil society’s plan to save the Yasuni National Park from oil exploitation. According toNiebel, “Refraining from oil drilling alone is not going to help in forest preservation.” Of course not, but it could have been a vital step for Germany to make a downpayment on its huge climate debt to the victims of extreme weather.

The Yasuni campaign to “leave the oil under the soil” is excellent, and while there, deep in the Amazon on the Peruvian border two years ago, I witnessed the Oilwatch network mobilising to expand the idea(even to Durban where oil prospecting recently began offshore). Oilwatch generated a “Yasunization” strategy for other fossil fuels, also promoted by the Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade scholar-activist network based in Barcelona. Network leaders Joan Martinez-Alier and Nnimmo Bassey are also heartbroken at Yasuni’s apparent demise.

The government of Rafael Correa – trained in the US as an economist – always had the intention to sell Yasuni into the global carbon markets, a self-defeating strategy given the markets’ tendency to both fraud and regular crashing; carbon prices today only about a quarter of what they were two years ago.

So now, because the erratic Correa doesn’t have his hands on the cash yet, in part because he failed to address world civil society to put pressure on governments, Ecuador’s PetroAmazonas and China’s PetroOriental will go ahead and drill. A fresh campaign has been launched to halt the extraction, starting with one letter after another from Accion Ecologica, the eco-feminist lobby that initiated the project, joined by the eloquent leader of the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador, Carlos Perez Guartambel.

Climate activist counter-power gathers

Yasuni is a critical place to draw the line, for it is probably the world’s most biodiverse site. But there are other vulnerable points of counter-power, too, as across the world, many more defenders of nature come forward against rapacious fossil-fuel industry attacks.

South Africa has not been particularly climate-conscious, because the thousands of recent social protests are mainly directed against a state and capitalists which deny immediate needs, from municipal services to wages. Still, in Johannesburg, the Anglo American Corporation and Vedanta coal-fired power plant witnessed a protest of 1000 community and environmental activists last month.

Surprisingly, a Pew Research Centre poll found that 48 per cent of South Africans worry “global climate change” is a “major threat”, followed by “China’s power and influence” (40 per cent) and “international financial instability” (34 per cent). Across the world, 54 per cent of people Pew asked cited climate change as a major threat, the highest of any answer (in second place, 52 per cent said “international financial stability”). Only 40 per cent of the US populace agreed, putting it at seventh place.

Yet even in the belly of the beast, more people seem to be mobilising, and there are growing connectivities in the spirit that what happens in Yasuni is terribly important to the First Nations activists of western Canada (one of the finest blog sites to make these links is http://climate-connections.org/).

For example, fossil fuel projects have been fought hard in recent weeks by forces as diverse as Idaho’sNez Perce Native Americans, Idle No More and Wild Idaho Rising Tide; by Nebraska farmers; by activists from the filthy oil city of Houston who are contesting a new coal terminal; and in Utah where not only have conservationists sued to halt drilling of an 800,000-acre tar sands field stretching into Colorado and Wyoming, but 50 activists physically blocked tar sand mining and construction at two sites last month.

350.org’s Bill McKibben recently mentioned the “Summerheat” rebirth of US climate activism, “from the shores of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, where a tar-sands pipeline is proposed, to the Columbia River at Vancouver, Washington, where a big oil port is planned, from Utah’s Colorado Plateau, where the first US tar-sands mine has been proposed, to the coal-fired power plant at Brayton Point on the Massachusetts coast and the fracking wells of rural Ohio”.

The growing movement has had results, says McKibben, in part through civil disobedience: “In the last few years, it has blocked the construction of dozens of coal-fired power plants, fought the oil industry to a draw on the Keystone pipeline, convinced a wide swath of US institutions to divest themselves of their fossil fuel stocks, and challenged practices like mountaintop-removal coal mining and fracking for natural gas.”

This is encouraging partly because summertime is a lull when it comes to challenging power in many parts of the world. Meanwhile, our political winter was mostly spent wondering whether the crucial Congress of South African Trade Unions would remain aligned to the government or split in half. The more enlightened wing would logically move towards environmental, community and social struggles, leaving behind the likes of Rob Davies, just as US progressives (should) have shed any last illusions about slick Barack Obama.

But not far from Durban, 100 years ago next month, Mahatma Gandhi began preparing a non-violent mass assault on a white-owned coal mine in support of both Indian women’s right to cross a regional border and workers’ wage demands. The idea known as satyagraha (truth force) went from theory to practice, as militant passive defiance gained concessions that, 80 years later, helped free South Africa from apartheid. This time, there’s no 80-year window; we all have to rise to the challenge as fast as do the thermometer and the greenhouse gas emissions.

The Dream of Martin Luther King Jr. & Jobs in Indian Country

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

Fifty years ago this week, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a dream that many American Indians, along with other ethnic groups, continue to hope for.

It would be interesting to track American Indian unemployment since the March on Washington August 28, 1963, and compare it to the rates for African Americans and the country as a whole (national unemployment for 1963 was 5.7 percent). Unfortunately, it is not possible, as the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics seems not to have reported this stat on Native populations until 2003.

As King said in 1963, “It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned,” still holds true today.

Since 2003 (also the first year that Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders weren’t lumped into the “Asian” category) American Indians have consistently tracked slightly behind African Americans for the dubious honor of the racial group with the most unemployment. (A BLS study reports white and African American unemployment back to 1972, Hispanics back to 1973, and Asians to 2000.)

For 2011, the latest year in the BLS study “Labor Force Characteristics by Race and Ethnicity,” one in seven American Indians (14.6 percent) were unemployed, according to BLS. African Americans showed 15.8 percent unemployment, while Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (who include native populations on Guam and American Samoa) came in at 10.4 percent, higher than the national average of 8.9 percent.

The BLS measures national rates. Unemployment rates on individual Indian reservations can be much higher. In 2010, 47 percent of people on the Navajo reservation were unemployed, according to the tribe. At the Pine Ridge reservation of the Oglala Lakota Nation in South Dakota, 80 percent are unemployed, according to the tribe.

The Indian employment situation since the recession ended in 2009 has been mixed. Indian unemployment for 2011 was down from 15.1 percent in 2010 but actually up from 2009, which was at 13.3 percent.

The BLS said American Indians and Alaska Natives made up about one percent of the labor force in 2011, and Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders less than one percent. In terms of participation in the labor force, an interesting mix was recorded. Indians had the lowest participation in the work force in 2011, 59.2 percent, while Native Hawaiians had the highest, 69.4 percent—higher even than the white population, which registered 64.5 percent.

Indian participation in the workforce has decreased from 64.4 percent in 2003, while it has increased for Native Hawaiians during that same time period. It was 68.9 percent in 2003.

Indians also brought up the rear in the category of the percentage of the population employed, at 50.5 percent. Native Hawaiians were first in this category as well, at 62.2 percent (that’s also higher than the one for whites, which is 59.9 percent).

Breaking out unemployment by numbers, 1.2 million of a 2 million “civilian noninstitutional population” of Indians were in the labor force in 2011. Of that number, one million were employed (564,000 men and 464,000 women) and 172,000 were unemployed. BLS found 816,000 Indians were not in the labor force. Unemployment for Indian men in 2011 was 15.4 percent and 13.7 percent for Indian women.

For Native Hawaiians, 393,000 of a labor force of 439,000 (total population was 633,000) were employed in 2011, according to BLS. Men had a higher unemployment rate, at 11.4 percent. Native Hawaiian women had an unemployment rate of 9.3 percent.

The BLS report includes many other categories of analysis, but in many categories, Indians and Native Hawaiians are just skipped. These include earnings, education, occupation and industry, and families and mothers. One analysis which ignores Natives starts by saying “Among the major race and ethnicity groups,” indicating they are considered not a major group. Sometimes Natives get lumped into “other groups.”

Like Census Bureau counts of Indian populations, some dispute the accuracy of the BLS unemployment figures. According to the National Congress of American Indians, “The BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] concept of unemployment is different than that used by BLS and Census. Persons are considered “unemployed” by BIA if they are available for work, but not employed. This approach is a more realistic one in view of the economic circumstances in reservation areas than is the definition of unemployment in the BLS and Census Bureau data which requires that a person be “actively seeking work” to be designated unemployed.”

NCAI says unemployment in Indian areas “often stands at above 50 percent.” The advocacy group says “tribal nations continue to experience unemployment rates well above the national average, and rates of unemployment are exacerbated by economic conditions, endemic poverty, inadequate infrastructure, and marginal education opportunities.”

NCAI points to two particular pieces of pending legislation—the American Jobs Act and the reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act—as potentially being helpful to combat Indian unemployment if they are signed into law. And both could be a decent honor to the 50th anniversary of the job march on Washington D.C.

Warm Springs Tribes cancel off-reservation casino

Source: Indianz.com

The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs voted during a recent Tribal Council meeting to officially end its pursuit of the Bridge of the Gods Resort and Casino in Cascade Locks. For all intents and purposes, the casino was a dead deal in 2010, when Gov. John Kitzhaber took office for a third term.

The proposed 600,000-square-foot facility on 60 acres of Port of Cascade Locks land was a lightning rod of controversy during its decade of life — which never matured from its planning stage to its implementation stage. The casino would have been located on a subtly beautiful tract of land between Interstate 84 and the Columbia River, near the Forest Lane exit.

A couple of years ago the casino’s environmental impact assessment was approved by the federal government and sent to the Department of the Interior for review. That’s where it sat for a year. Then, in January 2012, the Cascade Locks Port Commission allowed the deadline to expire for an option agreement on port land the tribes had wanted to purchase for the casino and resort. In the meantime, the tribal council built Indian Head Casino on Highway 26 in Warm Springs.

Tribal Journeys: Canoe Trips to Our Native Past, and Future

Gyasi Ross, Indian Country Today Media Network

Television, Edward Curtis photographs and romance novel covers have collectively painted the accepted images of Native people.

As a result of these images, a lot of peoples’ image of a Native person is that of a person who rides horses, comes from one of the Dakotas or Montana, and dances with wolves at pow-wows. Heck, even many Native people have the Dances With Wolves image embedded in our own heads (thus why the Hollywood Indian-complex consists of guys walking around LA and Santa Fe with their hair flying about, John Redcorn-style, because presumably that’s what casting agents/hippie chicks are looking for. NOTE: Skins on the Plains do not wear their hair like that!! It’s too damn windy!), and so the default “Native” image is that of a pow-wow dancer, Plains Indian-style.

I grew up at pow-wows; they are beautiful, important and fun (oh the stories I could tell!).

Yet, if you don’t have that look or participate in those pow-wows, folks question your credibility as a Native person. And pow-wow dancing/Plains-style phenotype is definitely a very valid expression of pan-Native culture (I submit that almost every Skin who was raised in a Native family has been to a pow-wow at some point!), yet it is not the only expression of pan-Native culture.

Random White Guy At Pow-wow to His Wife: “Gee honey, that doesn’t look like any Indian I’ve ever seen.”

Random White Guy’s Wife: *thinking* Yes, you’re right. Because if he looked like any of the ones that I’ve seen on my romance novels, he would be big and brown and muscular and on a big ol’ horse…and he’d pull me away and hold me captive! “No, he doesn’t honey.”

One such pan-Native event that has been growing in popularity and is redefining what it means to be, look, and celebrate being Native is something called “Tribal Journeys” on the Pacific Northwest Coast. Like pow-wows, Tribal Journeys blends many Northwest coastal, New Zealand, Canadian and Alaska Native tribes, tribal practices, songs, dances and foods into a pretty amazing stew and makes something beautiful out of it. The Journey began in 1989 as equal parts political protest, but also an attempt to recapture parts of the Coastal Native way of life that have been overlooked and/or forgotten for a long time. Also, like pow-wows, Tribal Journeys had very modest beginnings, and has steadily gotten bigger and more structured every single year; the host Tribe incurs a lot of expense putting this huge event together that attracts over 15,000 people a day to the host community. Whereas the original “Paddle to Seattle” had 18 canoes, now there are over 100 canoes that make the trek.

It’s grown. And is growing.

Like most truly unique events, words don’t do Tribal Journeys justice. Yet, here’s the basic idea behind it: Tribal Journeys retraces the paths, practices, and protocols of those that went before us, seeing through the eyes of our ancestors. As Chief Si’ahl (commonly referred to as “Seattle”) said, “Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors.” This happens by individual families canoeing from one Native homeland to the next, asking permission to enter those homelands. Historically, it was very important to ask permission and to state whether you were friend or foe—if not, there could be very serious consequences. There are many canoe families on Tribal Journeys—this is historically correct since one tribe could have many different canoe families, since many Native communities were not simply one community. Instead, most “tribes” had many villages and smaller sub-groups that usually spoke a common language.

There are many stops during this Journey. The travelling time of the journey is anywhere from a week to two-and-a-half weeks. Every single tribal homeland you pass, you ask permission and come ashore. Once ashore, that particular Native community takes care of you, feeds you and gives you someplace to sleep (camping style!!). That night, there’s an exchange of songs, dances and stories in a time called “protocol.” Of course, this isn’t the traditional name for this time or practice, yet this English name is appropriate because it implies a time of order, to pay attention and give thanks. While the Tribal Journeys itself was created in 1989, the protocol portion of the event is a variation of the ancient coastal tradition of potlatching.

There is a goal, a final destination. Ultimately, all the canoe families will gather at a place (the host Tribe) where a whole bunch of Natives gather together and party (in a safe, respectful and drug and alcohol free way) for a week or so…exchange songs, dances, speeches, and generally have a good time. During the immediately past Tribal Journey, the host Tribe—the Quinault—took the Journey back to its potlatch roots and let the protocol go around the clock. Also, like the ancient potlatches, the Quinault gifted individuals with some pretty spectacular gifts—tons of stuff, but they also gave away ten hand-carved canoes, which took about 9 months to carve.

Pretty powerful stuff.

Speaking for myself, honestly after two weeks of camping, I’m pretty darn happy to get back to the conveniences of home and watch some River Monsters or Ancient Aliens. Our ancestors lived a life with a lot less distractions. Still, it’s a beautiful event…and not only because of the songs and the dances and the opportunity to see through the eyes of our ancestors. While those reasons are certainly important and are surely enough to attend Tribal Journeys all by themselves, there is more to it than that. That is, I think it’s also important for folks—non-Natives AND Natives alike—to understand that not all Natives look alike, or have the same stories or practices.

That’s only in Hollywood.

Please check out this link for information on the next Tribal Journey, the Paddle to Bella Bella (Canada): thecnsc.org/CNSC_Site/Bella_Bella.html

Photo by Miranda Belarde-Lewis

‘Early fall’ is Walmart date for Marysville store opening

Christina Harper / Special to The HeraldGwyn Porras (left) and Roderick Brogan stock shelves at the new Walmart store on Highway 9 at Highway 528 in Marysville. — Christina Harper / Special to The Herald
Gwyn Porras (left) and Roderick Brogan stock shelves at the new Walmart store on Highway 9 at Highway 528 in Marysville.

Christina Harper, Herald Business Journal

MARYSVILLE — Walmart staff members insist that there is no fixed date for the grand opening of the new 147,000-square-foot Marysville store. Judging by the huge Halloween section overflowing with scary monsters and black-and-orange garb, shoppers can safely bet that the one-stop shopping experience on the corner of Highways 9 and 528 will be ready to roll back prices in the next few weeks.

“Early fall,” said Sonia Smith, manager at the new store.

With 270 full- and part-time workers on board, the store now is being set up. Staff are stocking baby formula is on the shelves, setting up electronics and emptying dozens of cardboard boxes.

Kayla Corley of Marysville will switch to part-time work from full-time once the store opens.

“This is my second day,” Corley said.

Corley previously worked at the Tulalip Quil Ceda Village Walmart then took time off to have her children. After an eight-year break, she is back and happy to be employed in sporting goods.

“It’s a good company to work for,” Corley said. “Good benefits.”

Rumors abound that the Tulalip Quil Ceda Village Walmart will close once the Marysville store is up and running. The Quil Ceda store is not closing, Smith said.

The Marysville store took eight months to build and includes a garden center, food, pharmacy and firearms. The store also has a sewing and craft section with bolts of fabric that can be measured and cut.

“Customers are asking for it,” Smith said.

Freezers light up as shoppers approach pizza and other frozen food displays adding to Walmart’s commitment to energy saving and sustainability, Smith said.

There is no tire and lube section, but inside the store, shoppers can stop for a sandwich at Subway or a trim at the Smart Style hair salon.

Walmart has long been criticized for stocking shelves with goods from China. This long-term relationship could mean that company’s recent commitment to “Made In America” goods, which Walmart hopes will bring more manufacturing jobs to the United States, might be met with skepticism.

But Smith is one of many Walmart employees involved with a local vendor program where people who have ideas for locally made goods they want to see on shelves can contact her at the Marysville store. Local goods including “Big Foot” mugs and caps are likely to prove popular with shoppers, Smith said.

For Roderick Brogan, of Everett, and Gwyn Porras, of Marysville, Walmart is a new venture. The two will be working in the store on Walmart.com, checking for website orders and getting them ready for customer pick-up.

As the men sorted socks from boxes and hung them on wire hangers, they each said they were excited about opening day. Whenever that is.

“It might be crazy,” Porras said. “But I am looking forward to it.”

Southeastern Michigan Indians Receive Gifts Chrysler’s Mopar Group

Pietro Gorlier, CEO and President Mopar, delivered hundreds of baby supplies and a cash donation to Sue Franklin of Southeastern Michigan Indians Inc. that were collected and then unloaded by employees from Chrysler's Mopar. — Pietro Gorlier, CEO and President Mopar, delivered hundreds of baby supplies and a cash donation to Sue Franklin of Southeastern Michigan Indians Inc. that were collected and then unloaded by employees from Chrysler’s Mopar.

Source: Native News Network

CENTERLINE, MICHIGAN – It was like Christmas in the summer as hundreds of baby supplies were delivered to Southeastern Michigan Indians Inc. (SEMII).

The items, donated by Chrysler Group LLC employees, were collected and delivered by employees from Mopar, Chrysler Group’s service parts and customer care brand. Donated supplies included baby clothes, books, toys, strollers, diapers, and bottles. The Chrysler Foundation, the charitable arm of Chrysler Group, also provided a $7,500 grant to assist SEMII with the purchase of additional items for infants.

“All of these items will be put to good use by families in our community,”

said Sue Franklin, Executive Director of SEMII.

“We are grateful to all of the people at Chrysler and Mopar for their time, effort and donations.”

As part of a company wide effort with United Way, Mopar continues its work with SEMII, which is located two blocks from Mopar’s main parts distribution facility in Center Line, Michigan. The organization provides social services to Native Americans and Macomb County, Michigan residents.

Last year, Mopar volunteers repainted the organization’s cultural center and sponsored a “Dress for Success” clothing drive to provide professional attire to those in need.

“At Mopar, our mission is to fully support our customers and our brands,”

said Pietro Gorlier, President and CEO, Mopar.

“With that same passion, we want to support people in our community and make a difference.”

“It’s always very heartwarming to lend a hand to our neighbors, especially when they’re young children with a world of possibilities ahead of them,”

said Jody Trapasso, President, The Chrysler Foundation.

Oneida Indian Nation Student Enjoys Exploring All that Stanford Has to Offer

Source: ICTMN

Stanford University freshman Mark Berger isn’t exactly sure what he wants to major in just yet, but that’s ok. The university doesn’t require that he make that decision until the end of his sophomore year.

“I don’t know what I want my career to be but I’m interested in science, technology, engineering, and math [STEM] education for Native and other minority students,” he told Indian Country Today Media Network.

Right now, Mark is enjoying exploring his many options, both in the classroom and out, at the university in Stanford, California.

The 19-year-old Oneida Indian Nation member is looking into joining Stanford’s chapter of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society as well as the Model United Nations program. He’s also interested in a program where university students travel to San Jose to tutor Native grade school students.

“There is a tremendous amount of opportunities at Stanford and I am going to explore as much as possible until I find what interests me the most,” Mark said.

He’s not new to Model United Nations programs either. While a sophomore at Manlius Pebble Hill School in Dewitt, New York he won an international award for delegate excellence while in Montreal, Canada for a Model U.N. event. He traveled all over North America with the program as well and served as undersecretary general for his school’s Model U.N. conference during his senior year.

“I helped coordinate and plan a conference attended by over 300 delegates from upstate New York,” he said.

And upstate New York is where his heart is and where he plans on coming back to, regardless of what career he ends up pursuing.

He has always been involved with his tribe and doesn’t plan on stopping just because he decided to move across the country to attend college.

Mark has been involved with the Oneida Nation’s Youth Work Learn Program since he was 13 and has spent the last three summers working at Four Directions Productions as an intern.

“Working at Four Directions has been an amazing opportunity that has allowed me to work with many talented people on a variety of projects,” Mark said. “As an intern I worked closely with the cinematography department where I helped film footage of the PGA Tour, the Notah Begay III Foundation Challenge, and a variety of documentary pieces for the Oneida Indian Nation. I was also able to learn a little bit about computer animation from the animation department at Four Directions Productions, which works on turning Oneida legends into short animated films. It ultimately sparked my interest in how technology can be used in education and cultural preservation.”

His advice to other Native American students is to “take school seriously and give one hundred percent in everything you pursue,” he said. “Also go to the library and read a lot of books about whatever you’re interested in. The ability to teach yourself, no matter what the subject, is an incredibly valuable skill and being a strong reader is the keystone to that skill.”

Former Oakland Raiders CEO says Redskins’ name must go

Source: ICTMN

Amy Trask, CBS analyst and former CEO of the Oakland Raiders, told Sportsillustrated.com she thinks it is time to say goodbye to the Washington Redskins’ offensive logo.

“It is unacceptable to use a derogatory term when referring to any person or any group of people,” Trask said in a follow up interview with Peter King on Si.com.

Trask’s remarks were also featured on Ten Things I Think I Think with Greg A. Bedard.

“If we wish to inspire people to consider one another without regard to skin color, then it is antithetical to refer to any person or any group of people by skin color,” she told Bedard. “The Washington Redskins have an opportunity to do something meaningful.”

Trask said that she understands the costs associated with changing a business name, but elaborated: “sometimes there are costs associated with doing something important.”

In a separate interview on Si.com with Peter King, Trask said that she does not speak for the Native American community, but for herself.

“My belief is premised on the following: we should not consider skin color when interacting with any person or group of people,” she said.

Trask added that the Redskins have an opportunity to make a powerful statement and changing the team name is the way to go.

Freezing Your Asterisk Off: Farmers’ Almanac Predicts Cold, Cold Winter

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

With yet another heat wave set to descend before summer releases its grip, the last things we may want to think about are puffy coats and long johns.

But that is what’s in store for winter 2013–14, according to predictions from the Farmers’ Almanac released officially on Monday August 26.

“The ‘Days of Shivery’ are back!” proclaimed a statement from the Farmers’ Almanac (not to be confused with The Old Farmer’s Almanac). “For 2013–2014, we are forecasting a winter that will experience below average temperatures for about two-thirds of the nation. A large area of below-normal temperatures will predominate from roughly east of the Continental Divide to the Appalachians, north and east through New England. Coldest temperatures will be over the Northern Plains on east into the Great Lakes. Only for the Far West and the Southeast will there be a semblance of winter temperatures averaging close to normal, but only a few areas will enjoy many days where temperatures will average above normal.”

Further, the Southern Plains, Midwest and Southeast will have more precipitation than normal, the Almanac’s prognosticators said. This means a plethora of snow for the Midwest, Great Lakes and parts of New England. There will be mixes of rain and/or snow just south of that, in southern New England, southeastern New York, New Jersey and the Mid-Atlantic region, the statement said. Uncharacteristically, the Pacific Northwest may be drier than usual.

“Significant snowfalls are forecast for parts of every zone,” the Almanac said, predicting especially heavy winter weather during the first 10 days of February 2014—meaning that the Superbowl, scheduled to be played outdoors at the MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands in New Jersey, may be more of a “Storm Bowl,” as Almanac managing editor Sandi Duncan told the Associated Press.

“This particular part of the winter season will be particularly volatile and especially turbulent,” the statement said.

As it has since 1818, the Almanac makes predictions by triangulating the positions of the planets, sunspot activity and cycles of the moon.

Trafficking Native Children: The Seamy Underbelly of U.S. Adoption Industry

Suzette BrewerTulsa attorney Don Mason, a member of the Delaware Tribe of Oklahoma — Suzette Brewer
Tulsa attorney Don Mason, a member of the Delaware Tribe of Oklahoma

By Suzette Brewer, ICTMN

Jeremy Simmons was heartbroken, baffled and confused. He had been living with his girlfriend, Crystal Tarbox, in Mannford, Oklahoma, when she became pregnant in August, 2012. But in March of this year, he says she moved out when she was seven months pregnant. Without a trace, she was gone.

For the next two months, Simmons, 27, searched for Tarbox, who was 23 at the time and already the mother of two small children. Worried about her and their unborn baby, he says he asked everyone he knew about her condition and whereabouts, and tried every possible means to find her. Her relatives, who are members of the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, were also unaware of what was about to happen.

But Tarbox, like Christy Maldonado, the birth mother of Baby Veronica, had disappeared, refusing any contact or financial help from Simmons. As Baby Veronica’s case, Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, was being discussed at the U.S. Supreme Court, Simmons was driving around northern Oklahoma looking for his pregnant girlfriend, completely unaware of what was transpiring without his knowledge or consent.

RELATED: The Fight for Baby Veronica: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and all Baby Veronica coverage.

Baby Veronica Case: Capobianco Expert Recants Damning Report on Father

It was not until two days after his daughter, Deseray, was born in May that Simmons, who is non-Indian, learned the truth from the baby’s maternal grandmother. Janet Snake called Simmons to alert him that his daughter had been put up for adoption and pleaded with him to find a lawyer to put a stop to it.

Simmons contacted Tulsa attorney Don Mason, who is not only a battle-hardened veteran family law practitioner, but also a member of the Delaware Tribe of Oklahoma. He serves as chief judge in their the Delaware Tribal Court in Bartlesville and is also chief public defender in Pawnee Nation Tribal Court in Pawnee, Oklahoma. Mason is an expert on the Indian Child Welfare Act and its application in Oklahoma, which has 39 tribes and the second largest tribal population in the United States. On his client’s behalf, he filed a suit, Simmons v. Tarbox, to halt the finalization of the adoption and bring Deseray back to Oklahoma from South Carolina, where she has been living with an adoptive couple who do not have the legal authority or a court order to retain her.

“My client was cut off, lied to, left out of the loop, and never received any notice at all regarding the whereabouts of his child and the intent to remove her from the state of Oklahoma to South Carolina in this illegal adoption. His parental rights have been completely denied and abrogated by all of the attorneys and their clients in this case,” says Mason. “The only reason I got involved was because Deseray’s Indian grandmother called him to give him the heads up and asked him to intervene.”

Tarbox’s family concurs that they were also caught off-guard, having been kept in the dark about her plans to give the child up for adoption without first notifying Simmons or seeking placement with another family member. “We had no idea what was going on and we were not notified that she had even had the baby until May 15, which was two days after she was born,” says Jana Snake, Tarbox’s sister, who is fully supporting Simmons in his quest to obtain custody of his daughter. “She cut us off and didn’t tell anybody what she was doing. But I knew that [this adoption] wasn’t right. It was illegal and I knew the tribe needed to be notified. So I told my mom to call him and call the tribe to stop it, but it was already too late.”

By the time Simmons was even able to dial Mason’s phone number, Baby Deseray had already been spirited away to South Carolina, a state known to be a safe haven for quickie private adoptions to wealthy couples seeking domestic babies in the United States. Time Magazine ran a feature story in 1984 entitled “Newborn Fever—Flocking to an Adoption Mecca,” in which South Carolina’s questionable adoption practices are described as “a unique blend of tax laws, aggressive lawyers and open-minded newspapers.” Home studies, it says, are “are routinely waived by South Carolina’s lenient family-court judges.”

These practices, say legal experts, have led to a deeply dark underbelly in the U.S. adoption industry that is little different than human trafficking, and in direct violation of the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. “There’s no question that this is human trafficking at its worst. It’s the selling of infants and children to the highest bidder,” says Mason. “These kids generate huge legal fees in the process and there is a lot of fee splitting among attorney and adoption practitioners in keeping the assembly line moving.”

Tulsa attorney Mike Yeksavich handled the adoption of Baby Deseray in collaboration with the law firm of Bado and Bado, an Edmond, Oklahoma-based adoption team. Together, the two law firms coordinated the adoption with attorney Raymond Godwin and Nightlight Christian Adoptions in Greenville, South Carolina. Godwin is also the attorney who handled Veronica’s adoption to Matt and Melanie Capobianco in 2009. Veronica’s adoption, which also went through without notification to the birth father, Dusten Brown, or the Cherokee Nation, has become the most expensive, litigious custody battle in U.S. History.

Indian Country Today Media Network has also learned that in addition to the fact that no Interstate Custody for the Protection of Children (ICPC) paperwork was filed in the case prior to Deseray’s removal from the state, Yeksavich also took the additional step of having himself appointed as the legal guardian of the baby to ensure her speedy adoption in South Carolina. Additionally, Paul Swain, the Tulsa attorney representing the Capobiancos in Oklahoma, also represents Godwin.

Bado and Bado, according to the Oklahoma Bar Association website, has had numerous complaints filed against it and was publicly reprimanded by the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys Board of Trustees in 2009 for the mishandled adoption of a Native child to a Kentucky couple.

In their review, the board demanded then that the firm “cease and desist” from the following: Conduct in which they represented themselves as an adoption agency, and not an adoption law firm; providing legal advice and counsel to birth mothers while also representing adoptive parents; holding out employees as “independent contractors”; permitting non-lawyers to practice law or explain legal issues to clients or other parties; involving themselves excessively with birth mothers whom they do not represent; and neglecting to promptly address tribal enrollment, in addition to other sanctions.

Bado and Bado could not be reached for comment by deadline on this story.

It’s the lack of oversight on the adoption industry, combined with acts of this nature, say legal experts, that led to the legal Gordian’s Knot that became the highly contentious and emotional Baby Veronica case that went to the Supreme Court.

In fact, Indian Country Today Media Network has learned that Raymond Godwin allegedly told another lawyer in South Carolina, who declined to be identified, that he placed “upwards of 50 Native American children from North Dakota” last year alone. In that conversation, Godwin said that Indian children are easier to place, “because they’re lighter-skinned.”

Even worse, says Mason, is the blatant marketing and selling of Indian children by lawyers who make anywhere from $25,000 to copy00,000 in legal fees for these children. “Anyone can do the math and realize that this is an enormous industry in the trafficking of Indian children,” says Mason. “And they’re preying on poor, uneducated Native women who are in poverty and have no idea what’s going on and don’t know any better, which is precisely why ICWA was enacted in the first place. They are predators who do everything in secret to prevent the biological fathers and the tribes from blocking the flow of income they receive off these adoptions.”

Mason says that before Simmons had even received notice on this case, Yeksavich had already filed a motion in Oklahoma County in early July to dismiss the case in Oklahoma courts. Godwin filed a motion for adoption proceedings in South Carolina at the same time in a coordinated effort to push the adoption through. Simmons was only notified of the proceedings in South Carolina on July 24 for the adoption hearing in South Carolina on July 25, which he had no way or means to attend with less than 24 hours to respond to a court action a thousand miles and five states away. As was the case for Baby Veronica’s father, Dusten Brown, the wheels had already been set in motion months before to cut him completely out of his daughter’s life.

Experts say that by the very nature of complicated and conflicting interstate laws and procedures that adoption attorneys are able circumvent not only mainstream adoption law, but the federal laws involving the Indian Child Welfare Act, as well, which has lead to chaos and confusion for judges, attorneys, birth parents and adoptive couples who may be located in multiple jurisdictions. “I came into this case trying to put the brakes on,” says Mason. “But by the time I even got a hold of it, an Order of Dismissal had already been pushed through without anyone knowing about it. Yeksavich never even gave notice of his intent to dismiss and rushed this right past the judge’s desk.”

Mason says it was a family court judge in South Carolina who finally caught on to what was happening. “To the credit of the South Carolina judge, they realized that no ICPC paperwork had been filed and refused to finalize the adoption,” says Mason. “Under the law, this child has been illegally kidnapped from Oklahoma and the judge there appointed Shannon Jones to represent my client there.”

Jones, who also represents Dusten Brown in South Carolina family court, has a thorough understanding of the Indian Child Welfare Act. She is also an expert in the Uniform Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act.

In the meantime, Mason says he intends to pursue full custody for Jeremy Simmons, even if he has to file an adoption action in Creek County, Oklahoma court for Deseray to be adopted by her father. “These shady adoption practices have to stop,” says Mason. “It is the buying and selling of human beings, which is unconscionable in its vast application in the United States. Its tentacles reach far and wide and one of the only good things to come out of Adoptive Couple is that Dusten Brown has brought to light the shady practices of an adoption industry that actively worked against his parental rights from the beginning. To his everlasting credit, he dug in and fought and he should be commended for that.”