LAS VEGAS (AP) — Many experts believe online wagering is the future of gambling, but the casino industry is increasingly divided on the issue.
The latest evidence of the split came Monday as the Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling launched the first commercial in a six-figure campaign warning of the dangers of legalized Internet gambling. The coalition is emphasizing the possibility that criminals and terrorists may use online gambling to launder money.
The group has support from casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp. The GOP mega-donor is the 11th-richest American, according to Forbes.
Adelson has said he is willing to spend “whatever it takes” to stop the spread of Internet wagering.
Meanwhile, the casino lobby has made the legalization and regulation of online gambling its signature issue for the year. Major members including Caesars Entertainment Corp. and MGM Resorts International are taking steps to get into the market.
The battle is turning into a boon for lobbyists and public relations experts in Washington, D.C., and state capitals around the country.
Proponents formed their own group, the Coalition for Consumer and Online Protection, which is expected to launch its own six-figure ad campaign targeting federal decision makers.
“The coalition will operate exclusively at the federal level — encouraging Congress to embrace regulation as the best means to protect minors, detect money launderers and eliminate a dangerous black market,” American Gaming Association President Geoff Freeman said in an email to his board last week.
The new anti-online gambling ad features stock scary-voice narration and starts with a black and white shot of two men shaking hands in silhouette. “Right now, disreputable gaming interests are lobbying hard to spread Internet gambling across the country,” the ad warns.
Established casino companies have regarded the rise of Internet gambling warily, wondering whether it will cut into profits from brick-and-mortar casino companies or revive the specter of corruption that the industry worked so hard to shed in the 1980s and ’90s.
Some executives have decided that Internet gambling, or at least, Internet poker, can be properly regulated and boost the industry. But others have their doubts. Steve Wynn, CEO of Wynn Resorts Ltd., recently signaled that he had turned against online gambling for now.
Morgan Stanley has predicted that by 2020, online gambling in the U.S. will produce the same amount of revenue as Las Vegas and Atlantic City markets combined: $9.3 billion.
At least three congressional bills related to online gambling have been introduced this year. Two lawmakers introduced bills over the summer that would legalize some form of Internet gambling nationwide. This fall, Rep. Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington, introduced a bill that would tax federally sanctioned online wagering.
Gamblers wanting to bet from the privacy of their homes have had few options in recent years. The federal government cracked down definitively on Internet gambling in 2011. But the same year, the U.S. Justice Department issued a ruling making online gambling legal so long as it’s permitted on the state level.
Congress flirted with an online gambling bill in 2012, but industry infighting and partisan disagreement ultimately doomed it. When that legislation failed, states began moving ahead on their own.
Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware have legalized some kind of online gambling, and at least 10 other states are considering following suit, according to a survey conducted by Gambling Compliance, a group that tracks gambling-related legislation worldwide.
Source: Robert L. Walker Humans from the Clovis culture used characteristic stone points (brown) and rod-shaped bone tools.
The remains of a young boy, ceremonially buried some 12,600 years ago in Montana, have revealed the ancestry of one of the earliest populations in the Americas, known as the Clovis culture.
Published in this issue of Nature, the boy’s genome sequence shows that today’s indigenous groups spanning North and South America are all descended from a single population that trekked across the Bering land bridge from Asia (M. Rasmussen et al. Nature 506, 225–229; 2014). The analysis also points to an early split between the ancestors of the Clovis people and a second group, whose DNA lives on in populations in Canada and Greenland (see page 162).
But the research underscores the ethical minefield of studying ancient Native American remains, and rekindles memories of a bruising legal fight over a different human skeleton in the 1990s.
To avoid such a controversy, Eske Willerslev, a palaeobiologist at the University of Copenhagen who led the latest study, attempted to involve Native American communities. And so he embarked on a tour of Montana’s Indian reservations last year, talking to community members to explain his work and seek their support. “I didn’t want a situation where the first time they heard about this study was when it’s published,” he says.
Source: Montana Office of Public Instruction. Construction workers discovered the Clovis burial site on a private ranch near the small town of Wilsall in May 1968 (see ‘Ancient origins’). About 100 stone and bone artefacts, as well as bone fragments from a male child aged under two, were subsequently recovered.
The boy’s bones were found to date to the end of the Clovis culture, which flourished in the central and western United States between about 13,000 and 12,600 years ago. Carved elk bones found with the boy’s remains were hundreds of years older, suggesting that they were heirlooms. The ranch, owned by Melvyn and Helen Anzick, is the only site yet discovered at which Clovis objects exist alongside human bones. Most of the artefacts now reside in a museum, but researchers returned the human remains to the Anzick family in the late 1990s.
At that time, the Anzicks’ daughter, Sarah, was conducting cancer and genome research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and thought about sequencing genetic material from the bones. But she was wary of stoking a similar debate to the one surrounding Kennewick Man, a human skeleton found on the banks of the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington, in July 1996. Its discovery sparked an eight-year legal battle between Native American tribes, who claimed that they were culturally connected to the individual, and researchers, who said that the roughly 9,000-year-old remains pre-dated the tribes.
The US government sided with the tribes, citing the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The act requires that human remains discovered on federal lands — as Kennewick Man was — are returned to affiliated tribes for reburial. But a court ruled that the law did not apply, largely because of the age of the remains, and ordered that Kennewick Man be stored away from public view in a museum.
Sarah Anzick sought the advice of local tribes over the Clovis boy, but she could not reach a consensus with the tribes on what to do. She gave up on the idea, stored the bones in a safe location and got on with her other research.
In 2009, archaeologist Michael Waters, of Texas A&M University in College Station, contacted Anzick with the idea of sending the remains to Willerslev’s lab. (In early 2010, the lab published one of the first genome sequences of an ancient human, a 4,000-year-old resident of Greenland; see M. Rasmussen et al. Nature 463, 757–762; 2010.) “I said, ‘I will allow you guys to do this, but I want to be involved,’” recalls Anzick, who has published more than a dozen papers in leading journals.
In Copenhagen, she extracted DNA from fragments of the boy’s skull ready for mitochondrial genome sequencing, which offers a snapshot of a person’s maternal ancestry. Back in Montana months later, she received the sequencing data and discovered that the genome’s closest match was to present-day Native Americans. “My heart just stopped,” she says.
Right to remains
After Willerslev’s team confirmed the link by sequencing the boy’s nuclear genome (a more detailed indicator of ancestry), Willerslev sought advice from an agency that handles reburial issues. He was told that, because the remains were found on private land, NAGPRA did not apply and no consultation was needed. Despite this, Willerslev made his own attempt to consult local tribes. This led to a meeting in September at the burial site, with Anzick, Willerslev and their co-author Shane Doyle, who works in Native American studies at Montana State University in Bozeman, and is a member of the Crow tribe.
“That place is very special to me, that’s my ancestral homeland.”
“That place is very special to me, that’s my ancestral homeland,” says Doyle. He told Willerslev and Anzick that they should rebury the child where he was found. “I think you need to put the little boy back where his parents left him,” Doyle recalls telling them.
Doyle and Willerslev then set off on a 1,500-kilometre road trip to meet representatives of four Montana tribes; Doyle later consulted another five. Many of the people they talked to had few problems with the research, Doyle says, but some would have preferred to have been consulted before the study started, and not years after.
Willerslev says that researchers studying early American remains should assume that they are related to contemporary groups, and involve them as early as possible. But it is not always clear whom to contact, he adds, particularly when remains are related to groups spread across the Americas. “We have to engage with Native Americans, but how you deal with that question in practice is not an easy thing,” he says.
Hank Greely, a legal scholar at Stanford University in California who is interested in the legal and ethical issues of human genetics, commends the approach of Willerslev’s team. But he says that there is no single solution to involving Native American communities in such research. “You’re looking to try to talk to the people who might be most invested in, or connected with, particular sets of remains,” he advises.
Dennis O’Rourke, a geneticist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, who studies ancient DNA from populations native to the islands around Alaska, notes that indigenous groups have varying concerns: some want remains reburied, others do not, for instance.
The Montana tribes overwhelmingly wanted the Clovis boy’s bones interred. Plans for a reburial ceremony, possibly at an undisclosed site, are now being hashed out, with the Crow Nation playing a lead role. It is expected to take place in the spring, after the ground thaws.
The Navy is blaming a failed pump for its spill of nearly 2,000 gallons of oily wastewater into Puget Sound.
Tom Danaher, spokesman for Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, said the Navy was using a pumping system on one of its piers to remove oily bilge water from a vessel late Monday.
An electrical ground prevented the pump from automatically shutting off when a 4,000 holding tank was filled –- and because the operation was not attended, it took about 20-30 minutes before naval staff realized that oil-contaminated waste-water was pouring into the sound, Danaher said in an interview Wednesday.
“So the pumps did not get the signal that the tank was full. The tank overflowed,” he said. “When the people on the pier saw the overflow, we stopped all pumping and started our cleanup.”
The cleanup expanded Wednesday to include the deployment of surveyors who are walking the beaches around Puget Sound’s Hood Canal where the spill occurred, Danaher said.
Mark Toy, a spokesman for the Washington Department of Health, said his agency is continuing to advise against shellfish harvesting in the area affected by the spill
“While at this time there’s not any evidence that shellfish have been affected, we’ve taken the precaution of advising against harvesting from the area,” he said.
Initially, the Navy had indicated the spill involved 150-200 gallons but since then, the unified spill command – including the Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Washington Department of Ecology – have agreed the spill involved nearly 2,000 gallons.
Containing the spill has involved the use of booms to absorb the oily sheen. Danaher said the cleanup has been “like chasing a ghost.”
“Because it’s oily waste, it’s about 95 percent water and that makes it very difficult to absorb and it moves very fast because it’s so light,” he said.
Initially, Navy personnel were skeptical about Washington Department of Ecology reports that the spill had traveled about 10 miles to the Hood Canal Bridge. But then they looked at the state agency’s aerial photographs of the sheen on the water surrounding the bridge.
Danaher described his own reaction to seeing the photos this way:
“Well, there’s good chance it’s probably related to this spill. I wouldn’t know what else to say. I wouldn’t say well, no, that wasn’t it. Some guy dumped his motor boat oil.”
About 12,600 years ago, when ice sheets still covered parts of North America, a baby boy lived, died and was buried in a rocky grave in a field in western Montana.
A new whole genome sequencing of this infant — the oldest genome sequence of an American individual — identifies his community as ancestors of Native Americans who live on the continent today.
“We found the genome of this boy is more closely related to Native Americans today than to any other peoples anywhere else,” Eske Willlerslev, of the University of Copenhagen, who led an international team on this study published in the Thursday issue of Nature, told reporters during a teleconference.
The new study adds to archaeological evidence that Native Americans are descendants of humans that migrated from Asia through Siberia, and thrived across North America 13,000 years ago.
MIKE WATERS At the Anzick site, a pole marks location where the burial was found.
The infant boy was discovered in 1968 by construction crews on private property belonging to the Anzick family. He was named Anzick-1, and identified as a member of the ancient Clovis people — a group that appeared between 13,000 and 12,600 years ago, and crafted strikingly distinctive spear tips made from stone.
The first of those stone tools were discovered in Clovis, New Mexico, but then unearthed all across North America. But these tools seem to be all this that this group left behind.
Because the “Clovis points” are so similar to the flint tools found at the Solutré site in France, dating back to about the same time, some researchers have proposed that the Clovis — and ancestors of Native Americans — were Europeans who migrated across the Atlantic from Europe.
But Anzick-1’s genome analysis supports a different theory: His ancestors came from Asia, and travelled into North America through Siberia. “The boy is part of a larger story,” Michael Waters, a geoarchaeologist at the Texas A&M University, and a member of the crew, said during the teleconference,
The researchers compared the Clovis infant’s DNA to several other modern and ancient genomes, including a 4,000-year-old sample from Greenland and a 7,000-year-old sample from Spain, a 24,000-year-old sample from another young lad who was buried on the banks of Lake Baikal in Siberia, Russia. Anzick-1’s closest relationship was with the Siberian youth — who, researchers showed in February this year, is genetically linked with Native Americans today.
Also, Anzick-1 is most closely genetically related to tribes living in North America, but also to Native Americans in Central and South America. An older lineage split, some time between 13,000 and 24,000 years ago into two, his sequencing data indicates: One that gave rise to the Clovis and Native Americans today, and a second lineage, from which the Central and South American tribes descended.
“The Anzick family is directly ancestral to so many peoples in the Americas. That is astonishing,” Willerslev said.
SARAH ANZICK A large biface made of brown chert along with the beveled end of an osseous rod.
“I think it’s highly significant piece of work,” John Johnson, curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, told NBC News. Johnson, who was not involved with the work, added that “There is a need for continued sampling of living Native Americans to get a more complete look at genetic diversity.”
Sarah Anzick, who was a young girl when the Clovis boy was discovered on her family property, traveled to Copenhagen and contributed to the research. “This has been a labor of love for me and been done outside of my day job and separate from my professional career,” Anzick, who is a molecular biologist at the Rocky Mountain Labs, said during Tuesday’s teleconference.
Tribes living in Montana have been among the first to know the story told by Anzick-1’s DNA. For the last several months, the Willerslev has traveled through Montana and been sharing the results of his crew’s analysis with members of Native American tribes.
“This discovery confirms that tribes never really doubted,” Shane Doyle, a professor of Native American History at Montana State University who is a co-author on the study and a member of the Crow tribe, said. He’s had conversations with more than 100 members, and the main reaction has been: “We have no reason to doubt that we’ve been here for this long.”
In cooperation with local tribes, the group is planning to return Anzick-1 to his grave, in the late spring of this year.
“This boy has gifted us far more than anyone has every dreamed off, and it’s time to put him to put him to rest again,” Doyle said.
WASHINGTON – Restore America’s Estuaries has released the findings of a groundbreaking study that confirms the climate mitigation benefits of restoring tidal wetland habitat in the Snohomish Estuary, located within the nation’s second largest estuary: Puget Sound. The study, the first of its kind, finds major climate mitigation benefits from wetland restoration and provides a much needed approach for assessing carbon fluxes for historic drained and future restored wetlands which can now be transferred and applied to other geographies.
The Study, “Coastal Blue Carbon Opportunity Assessment for Snohomish Estuary: The Climate Benefits of Estuary Restoration” finds that currently planned and in-construction restoration projects in the Snohomish estuary will result in at least 2.55 million tons of CO2 sequestered from the atmosphere over the next 100-years. This is equivalent to the 1-year emissions for 500,000 average passenger cars. If plans expanded to fully restore the Snohomish estuary, the sequestration potential jumps to 8.8 million tons of CO2 or, in other terms, equal to the 1-year emissions of about 1.7 million passenger cars.
“The study is the first to provide a science-based assessment of climate benefits from restoration at scale. The findings are clear: restoring coastal wetlands must be recognized for their ability to mitigate climate change,” said Jeff Benoit, President and CEO of Restore America’s Estuaries. “The report adds to our list of science-based reasons why restoration is so critical.”
“Healthy estuaries mean healthy economies,” Representative Rick Larsen, WA-02, said. “I have long advocated to restore our estuaries because of the critical role they play in supporting recovery of fisheries. This new study shows that estuary restoration can play a big role in countering climate change too.”
“It is very fitting that we are implementing some of the world’s leading Blue Carbon research here in Puget Sound,” said Steve Dubiel, Executive Director of EarthCorps. “We have always known that wetlands are a kind of breadbasket, thanks to the salmon and shellfish they support. Now we are learning that they are also a carbon sponge.”
In addition to the climate benefits outlined by the study, healthy and restored estuaries act as spawning grounds and nurseries for commercially and recreationally important fish and shellfish species, provide storm buffers for coastal communities, filter pollutants, and provide habitat for numerous species of fish and wildlife, as well as recreational opportunities for hundreds of millions of Americans annually.
“This study illustrates the contribution of tidal wetland restoration to reduce global warming,” said Dr. Steve Crooks, Climate Change Program Manager for Environmental Science Associates and lead author on the study. “From this analysis we find wetlands restoration in Puget Sound likely to be highly resilient to sea level rise while at the same time continuing to sequester carbon within organic soils. Similar opportunities will exist in other coastal regions of the U.S.”
“This report is a call to action. We need to invest more substantially in coastal restoration nationwide and in science to increase our understanding of the climate benefits which accrue from coastal restoration and protection efforts,” said Emmett-Mattox, Senior Director for Restore America’s Estuaries and co-author on the study. “Sea-level rise will only make restoration more difficult and costly in the future. The time for progress is now.”
This report was a collaborative effort of Restore America’s Estuaries, Environmental Science Associates (ESA), EarthCorps, and Western Washington University. Lead funding was provided by NOAA’s Office of Habitat Conservation and additional support was provided by The Boeing Company and the Wildlife Forever Fund.
“Coastal Blue Carbon Opportunity Assessment for Snohomish Estuary: The Climate Benefits of Estuary Restoration” full report is available here, and the Executive Summary is available here.
Officials are responding to a spill of oily bilge water in Washington’s Puget Sound. The spill occurred at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor and has spread 10 miles north to Hood Canal.
State agencies estimate that up to 2,000 gallons spilled Monday when a ship was pumping out oily discharge at the naval facility. The pier-side transfer system failed and overflowed.
Initially the Navy estimated that 150 gallons spilled, but by Tuesday other agencies were disputing that amount.
The Washington Department of Ecology has conducted fly-overs and said that the sheen has spread as far as the Hood Canal Bridge, 10 miles north of the base.
The Navy did not immediately respond to requests for an interview.
There were no documented impacts to wildlife as of Tuesday afternoon, but the Department of Health advised against harvesting shellfish from the affected area.
Snohomish County Elections has released the preliminary results for the Feb. 11 Special Election.
Marysville School District Proposition 1, the replacement Educational Programs Maintenance and Operations Levy has received 4,253 “Yes” votes (54.33 percent) and 3,575 “No” votes (45.67 percent).
Marysville School District Proposition 2, the new Technology Levy, has received 4,370 “Yes” votes (55.80 percent) and 3,462 “No” votes (44.20 percent).
Lakewood School District Proposition 1, the bond to renovate Lakewood High School, has received 1,208 “Approved” votes (57.28 percent) and 901 “Rejected” votes (42.72 percent).
Nisqually elder Billy Frank Jr., a lifelong fisherman who led the battle for Treaty Indian fishing, speaks to an audience of tribal leaders past and present, activists, but most of all friends, remembering the Boldt Decision with stories. Photos of “The Old Swede,” as Billy called Judge Boldt, hung as a backdrop in memory of his momentous decision. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
By Andrew Gobin, Tulalip News
When do your rights expire? When do the terms of treaties cease? Never. The Boldt Decision sought to resolve these questions. In 1970, at the height of tensions between Puget Sound tribes and the State of Washington, the United States on behalf of the tribes filed suit against the State of Washington for violating the tribes’ treaties. More than three years later Judge George H. Boldt, who heard U.S. v. Washington and for whom the decision is named, handed down his decision in favor of the tribes, reaffirming the treaties and rights secured to Indians therein. Forty years later, tribal leaders from Puget Sound tribes, activists, and other notable people involved in the battle for Treaty Indian fishing rights gathered February 5th and 6th in Squaxin Island to remember the fight to protect their right, to discuss the importance of the Boldt Decision and all that it accomplished, and to reaffirm the commitment to continue the fight.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the State of Washington began filing injunctions, blocking Indian fisheries in the name of conservation. Indian people throughout the Puget Sound, though, continued to fish, practicing their culture and feeding their families, risking arrest and violence from state law enforcement.
Billy Frank Jr., Nisqually elder and prominent figure throughout the Boldt Decision, said, “We came down to the river, and they [the cops] had confiscated everything. ‘Where are our nets? Our boats?’ I thought. ‘How are we supposed to feed our families?’”
“We had to fish at night, which was dangerous. But we had to fish at night because it was illegal. What could we do? It was our way of life, we couldn’t stop,” recalled Hank Adams, a Native American activist from the Assiniboine Sioux tribe. Adams fished with Billy Frank and his family on the Nisqually River.
Frank championed the fight for treaty rights, with many leaders at that time rallied behind him and his family. Their traditional fishing grounds, Frank’s Landing, became ground zero in the battle for Treaty Indian fishing. Frank’s Landing played host to many fish-ins in protest of the injunctions, which gained national attention. Tribal leaders were joined at fish-ins by members of AIM (The American Indian Movement) and celebrities, such as renowned stage and screen actor, Marlon Brando. Most fish-ins ended in mass arrests. One famous photograph shows Brando packing two salmon up the bank at Frank’s Landing, only to be arrested with other participants.
Puyallup Elder and fisherwoman, Ramona Bennet, recalls being arrested on several occasions.
“They heard we were fishing, and the pigs [cops] come down to arrest us. Women, children, men, they didn’t care, they arrested all of us, whole families. One of the pigs went over to my mom, knee deep in fish in the back of a pickup. She told them, ‘You want my fish? HERE!’ and she picked up a fish and slapped that pig upside the head.”
Because of the tensions at Frank’s Landing, not every fish-in ended in arrest. Hank Adams remembers how nervous Thurston County Sheriffs were, not wanting to escalate the dispute.
“One day we were fishing, and Billy went up the [Nisqually] river to check the net. The Sheriffs launched two air boats at the rail bridge upriver and were comin’ for Billy. I was at his sister’s place. He come tearin’ down the river shouting, ‘Get the gun!’ So I grabbed the rifle and headed out the door. I ran down the bank and came to a clearing and ran into some other law enforcement. There was an old burnt out car, so I ran and jumped down behind it. I used my army training and used the butt of the rifle to break my fall, and when I did that the rifle went off. At the same time my hand slipped off the butt of the gun and hit what Billy tells as a broken beer bottle, but it was a Pepsi bottle. So I cut my hand on the neck of that Pepsi bottle and was bleeding everywhere. But when that gun went off, the guys in those airboats hit the deck and flew right on past Billy, and he hit the bank and was unloading his fish. Next thing we know, there’s about 30 Thurston County Sheriffs cars and some state troopers pulled up, guns drawn, and the chief jumps out in front and says, ‘Hold your fire, put your guns down, everyone just calm down.’ He come over and looked at me and my hand, ‘Come on over here I got a first aid kit in the truck,’ he said. He got me all bandaged up, the bandages were all bloody, it really just looked terrible. The newspapers the next day said, ‘Mystery surrounds evening events at Frank’s Landing. No arrests were made, though Native Activist Hank Adams sustained some sort of injury.’”
These encounters happened on a daily basis, as the state held their injunctions to be valid, and acted accordingly. Tribal families experienced hardships as heads of household were jailed repeatedly. The tribes stood firm on the treaty, fighting to protect their fishing rights, and ultimately their sovereignty.
Frank said, “Who do I go to? Do I go to the governor? Do I go to the congress? Nobody listens…oh you’re all just Indians.”
In 1970, with the state continuously challenged by the tribes, the United States as the trustee of the tribes filed suit against Washington in Federal District court, Judge George H. Boldt was assigned to the case.
Members of Judge Boldt’s family attended the celebration and were honored for his memory. His daughter, Virginia Riedinger, had this to say.
“My father grew up in Chicago with nothing but the American dream. His father moved them to Montana where he finished high school. He put himself through college, and graduated with a law degree from the University of Montana in 1926. After practicing law for more than 15 years, he enlisted to serve this country in WWII at an age that was unheard of, especially as a volunteer. When he returned he became a trial lawyer in Tacoma Washington, and was later appointed by President Eisenhower as the Federal District Court Judge in 1953, where he spent more than 25 years on the bench.
As a judge, my father held true to the laws of this country. He believed in the law, and was known for his hard decisions and expedited court processes. He often was recruited to assist in other courts across the nation that were backlogged with cases. One thing was constant, my father always did what he knew was right and I never knew him to look back with regret or doubt.”
Members of Judge Boldt’s family that attended the 40th Anniversary Celebration of the Boldt Decision. His daughter, Virginia Riedinger (center) spoke about her father and the toll the Boldt decision took on him and his family. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
As the case continued, and later was decided, Judge Boldt and his family were subjected to vicious public attacks on his reputation. A photo displayed throughout the celebration captured a burning effigy of the Judge, strung up in a tree outside the District Courthouse, all wrapped up, presumably, in an Indian fishing net. Even so, Boldt remained undeterred in his will to uphold the law.
For more than three years the case went on, hearing from both sides. The case was rather unique in some aspects, as the question of fishing rights had not been previously understood from a legal perspective. There was limited legal precedent that reaffirmed the treaties and preempted state laws. For this case, the information had to be more in depth. Charles Wilkinson, a law professor at the University of Colorado and well-known legal scholar, gave a powerful speech about the Boldt Decision.
“Judge Boldt, ruling on the basis of justice in its most luminous dimensions rather than on the strenuous hearsay and other technical objections of the state’s attorneys, accepted the elders’ testimony into evidence and listened raptly.
Ask people who saw all or most of that trial, and they will tell you that the elders’ testimony brought the whole story together. Judge Boldt had worked hard and open-mindedly on this case and, by the time the elders took the stand, he had acquired an expansive knowledge of Indian law, and all the testimony already heard may have caused him to have his final ruling in mind. But the straightforward, utterly authentic words and bearing of the traditional Native people made his decision of February 12, 1974 inevitable.”
Charles Wilkinson delivered a powerful speech on Judge Boldt, his decision on U.S. v. Washington, and what it means for Federal Indian Law today. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
Relying on testimony of the elders, along with the vast ethnographic work of scholars, such as Dr. Barbara Lane, who were called as expert witnesses, Judge Boldt looked critically at the language of the treaty. He handed down his decision in 1974 in favor of the tribes, holding the United States accountable to the promises of the Stevens Treaties of the Washington Territory, including the Treaty of Point Elliot, the Treaty of Point No Point, and the Treaty of Medicine Creek.
What did the decision mean? Was it truly a victory? At the time, not all tribal people saw it as such.
“I cried when I heard the decision. ‘We lost half our fish!’ I yelled,” said Bennet.
Others saw it as a great victory, for Washington tribes, for fishing, and treaty rights, and for tribes across the nation. The decision reaffirmed the treaties and recognized the sovereignty of tribes.
Wilkinson said, “Make no mistake about it: the transcendent contribution of the Boldt Decision was to uphold the treaty rights of the Northwest tribes. But it was also a national case about national commitments and values.”
Because the state refused to act on the decision, continuing attempts to block Indian fisheries, Judge Boldt exercised continuing jurisdiction, rarely used, which maintains the court’s control over decisions, to ensure the decision was implemented. Judge Boldt was committed to upholding the law and his decision, and his continuing jurisdiction is still in effect today.
The fight continues, though today the questions have shifted. What does it mean to have a treaty right to fish? Boldt’s decision recognized tribes as sovereign, and having a shared right to the salmon resource naming them as co-managers and regulators of the resource, but what does that mean? The fight for Treaty Indian fishing was about bringing the past forward, the fight today is about protecting the future of the resource.
Frank said, “We have to protect the salmon. Look at California. The tribes there have the first water right, but there is no water. We have a right to the salmon, but if there are none, what kind of right we got?”
Billy Frank Jr. adresses the current issues tribes face. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
Recently, what’s known as the Culvert Case held the state accountable for making streams in developed areas passable to salmon. The State Fish Consumption Rate, which affects water quality and pollution, says that, on average, citizens consume eight ounces of salmon a month, about the size of one U.S. quarter a day. For Puget Sound tribes, salmon is a staple both in diet and culture. Today, it remains central to tribal economies as it has historically, even pre-contact. If the consumption rate stands, more pollutants would be allowed to go into the water, meaning more salmon die off.
Frank said, “They’re poisoning the water. It’s poisoned. The salmon that come out of the Nisqually River, half of them are dead before they reach the Narrows [in Tacoma].”
The tribes have won the Culvert Case, and continue to work on others.
In recognition of all the ancestors, the empty chair sat at the front of the room to remind people they are still here. The basket was filled with names of people who have passed on, who fought through the Boldt Decision. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
Throughout the celebration, an empty chair sat near the front. It was a symbol of all the ancestors of the tribes that fished the Puget Sound, as well as those warriors of the Boldt Decision that have passed on; Guy McMinds, Bernie Gobin, Vernon Lane, and Chet Cayou Sr., to name a few. The importance of this chair is immense. It represents the passing of the torch to the younger generation. The celebration of the Boldt Decision was to remind the younger generation about the importance of the treaty, how hard their elders fought to protect it, and how hard they need to continue to fight for the treaty, for their sovereignty, and for their culture.
Youth from all the different tribes that attended the Boldt 40 celebration were honored and thinker, as well as reminded of their responsibility to pick up where the elders are leaving off. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
Andrew Gobin is a reporter with the See-Yaht-Sub, a publication of the Tulalip Tribes Communications Department. Email: agobin@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov Phone: (360) 716.4188
More than 30 tribal leaders, juvenile court judges, child advocates, juvenile justice system experts and community members from the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community testified today in the second public hearing of the Advisory Committee of the Attorney General’s Task Force on American Indian and Alaska Native Children Exposed to Violence. The hearing focused on how juvenile courts and other programs within tribal juvenile justice systems address the impact of children’s exposure to violence.
“Too many native children encounter violence in their homes and communities that can disrupt a path to living healthy adult lives, and we must do all that we can to protect these young people,” said Associate Attorney General Tony West. “By intervening early, we can help these children avoid a fate involving courts and the corrections system.”
During the hearing, experts explained how children entering tribal, state or federal justice systems are screened and treated for trauma from previous exposure to violence. They also discussed a variety of issues facing Native children in juvenile justice systems, including the availability of legal representation, tribal court transfer of juvenile cases to adult courts, culturally sensitive programs and services that divert youth from entering the juvenile justice system.
“The long-term impact of a child’s exposure to violence depends heavily on how law enforcement officials, prosecutors, defenders, judges, and corrections professionals handle that child’s case,” said Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Justice Programs Karol V. Mason. “Through the work of the task force, we hope to find ways to make the justice system a force for positive change in a young person’s life.”
The Attorney General’s Task Force on American Indian and Alaska Native Children exposed to violence is comprised of a federal working group that includes U.S. Attorneys and officials from the Departments of the Interior and Justice and an advisory committee of experts on American Indian studies, child health and trauma, victim services and child welfare and law.
The 13-member advisory committee is co-chaired by former U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan and Iroquois composer and singer Joanne Shenandoah. The advisory committee will draw upon research and information gathered through public hearings to draft a final report of policy recommendations that it will present to Attorney General Eric Holder by late 2014.
Attorney General Holder created the task force in April 2013 as part of his Defending Childhood initiative to prevent and reduce children’s exposure to violence as victims and witnesses. The task force is also a component of the Justice Department’s ongoing collaboration with leaders in American Indian and Alaska Native communities to improve public safety.
The advisory committee held its first public hearing Dec. 9, 2013, in Bismarck, N.D. and will hold additional public hearings, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. and Anchorage, Alaska.
The Office of Justice Programs (OJP), headed by Assistant Attorney General Karol V. Mason, provides federal leadership in developing the nation’s capacity to prevent and control crime, administer justice and assist victims. OJP has six components: the Bureau of Justice Assistance; the Bureau of Justice Statistics; the National Institute of Justice; the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; the Office for Victims of Crime and the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking. More information about OJP can be found at www.ojp.gov.
In WHITE EARTH NATION, Minn. — Lisa Brunner remembers the first time she saw her stepfather beat her mother. She was 4 years old, cowering under the table here on the Ojibwe reservation, when her stepfather grabbed his shotgun from the rack. She heard her mother scream, “No, David! No!”
“He starts beating my mother over the head and I could hear the sickening thud of the butt of the shotgun over her head,” Brunner said. “Then he put the gun back on the rack and called her a bitch. He slammed the bedroom door and sat down on the squeaky bed. And then I heard the thud-thud of his cowboy boots as he laid down, squeaking again, and he went to sleep.”
There were many more beatings over the years, Brunner said. Twenty years later, she said, she was brutally assaulted by her own husband on this same Indian reservation, an enormous swath of Minnesota prairie that has seen its share of sorrow for generations.
An estimated one in three Native American women are assaulted or raped in their lifetimes, and three out of five experience domestic violence. But in the cases of Brunner and her mother, the assailants were white, not Native American, and that would turn out to make all the difference.
President Obama, joined by Vice President Biden, members of women’s organizations, law enforcement officials, tribal leaders, survivors, advocates and members of Congress, signs the Violence Against Women Act in March. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press)
For decades, when a Native American woman has been assaulted or raped by a man who is non-Indian, she has had little or no recourse. Under long-standing law in Indian country, reservations are sovereign nations with their own police departments and courts in charge of prosecuting crimes on tribal land. But Indian police have lacked the legal authority to arrest non-Indian men who commit acts of domestic violence against native women on reservations, and tribal courts have lacked the authority to prosecute the men.
Last year, Congress approved a law — promoted by the Obama administration — that for the first time will allow Indian tribes to prosecute certain crimes of domestic violence committed by non-Indians in Indian country. The Justice Department on Thursday announced it had chosen three tribes for a pilot project to assert the new authority.
While the law has been praised by tribal leaders, native women and the administration as a significant first step, it still falls short of protecting all Indian women from the epidemic of violence they face on tribal lands.
The new authority, which will not go into effect for most of the country’s 566 federally recognized Indian tribes until March 2015, covers domestic violence committed by non-Indian husbands and boyfriends, but it does not cover sexual assault or rape committed by non-Indians who are “strangers” to their victims. It also does not extend to native women in Alaska.
Proponents of the law acknowledge that it was drawn narrowly to win support in Congress, particularly from Republican lawmakers who argued that non-native suspects would not receive a fair trial in the tribal justice system.
For their part, native women say they have long been ill-served by state and federal law. U.S. attorneys, who already have large caseloads, are often hundreds of miles away from rural reservations. It can take hours or days for them to respond to allegations, if they respond at all, tribal leaders say. Native women also have to navigate a complex maze of legal jurisdictions.
“There are tribal communities where state police have no jurisdiction and federal law enforcement has jurisdiction but is distant and often unable to respond,” said Thomas J. Perrelli, a former associate attorney general who was one of the administration’s chief proponents of the amendment. “There are tribal communities where the federal government has no jurisdiction but state law enforcement, which has jurisdiction, does not intervene. And there are still other tribal lands where there is a dispute about who, if anyone, has jurisdiction. All of this has led to an inadequate response to the plight of many Native American women.”
More than 75 percent of residents on Indian reservations in the United States are non-Indians. In at least 86 percent of the reported cases of rape or sexual assault of American Indian and Alaska native women, both on and off reservations, the victims say their attackers were non-native men, according to the Justice Department.
Main Street in Mahnomen, Minn. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
Heavy snow slides off grain and seed storage units on the White Earth Nation reservation. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
‘Not enrolled’
The loophole in the American Indian justice system that effectively provides immunity to non-
Indians is the story of a patchwork of laws, treaties and Supreme Court decisions over generations.
At the root of the confusion about Indian jurisdiction is the historical tension over Indian land. As American settlers pushed Native Americans off their tribal lands and then renegotiated treaties to guarantee tribes a homeland, large areas of the reservations were opened for white families to homestead.
That migration led to the modern-day reservation, where Indians and non-
Indians often live side by side, one farm or ranch home belonging to a white family, the next one belonging to an Indian family. It is a recipe for conflict over who is in charge and who has legal jurisdiction over certain crimes.
“The public safety issues in Indian country are so complicated,” said Deputy Associate Attorney General Sam Hirsch, one of the Justice Department officials who focus on tribal justice issues. “No one would have ever designed a system from scratch to look like the system that has come down to us through the generations.”
Over the past 200 years, there have been dramatic swings in Indian-country jurisdiction and the extent of tribal powers.
In 1978, in a case widely known in Indian country as “Oliphant,” the Supreme Court held that Indian tribes had no legal jurisdiction to prosecute non-
Indians who committed crimes on reservations. Even a violent crime committed by a non-Indian husband against his Indian wife in their home on the reservation — as Brunner said happened to her on the White Earth Nation reservation — could not be prosecuted by the tribe.
The court said it was up to Congress to decide who had that authority.
“We are not unaware of the prevalence of non-Indian crime on today’s reservations, which the tribes forcefully argue requires the ability to try non-Indians,” the court said. “But these are considerations for Congress to weigh in deciding whether Indian tribes should finally be authorized to try non-Indians.”
Congress took no action for 35 years.
As a result, native women who were assaulted were often told there was nothing tribal police could do for them. If the perpetrator was white and — in the lingo of the tribes — “not enrolled” in the tribal nation, there would be no recourse.
“Over the years, what happened is that white men, non-native men, would go onto a Native American reservation and go hunting — rape, abuse and even murder a native woman, and there’s absolutely nothing anyone could do to them,” said Kimberly Norris Guerrero, an actress, tribal advocate and native Oklahoman who is Cherokee and Colville Indian. “They got off scot-free.”
In 2009, shortly after taking office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was briefed by two FBI agents on the issue of violence on Indian reservations.
They told him about the soaring rates of assault and rape and the fact that on some reservations, the murder rate for native women is 10 times the national average.
“The way they phrased it was, if you are a young girl born on an Indian reservation, there’s a 1-in-3 chance or higher that you’re going to be abused during the course of your life,” Holder said in an interview. “I actually did not think the statistics were accurate. I remember asking, ‘check on those numbers.’ ”
Officials came back to Holder and told him the statistics were right: Native women experience the highest rates of assault of any group in the United States.
“The numbers are just staggering,” Holder said. “It’s deplorable. And it was at that point I said, this is an issue that we have to deal with. I am simply not going to accept the fact it is acceptable for women to be abused at the rates they are being abused on native lands.”
Measuring tape
Diane Millich, left, joins Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and Deborah Parker, vice chairwoman of the Tulalip Tribes of Washington state, at the bill-signing ceremony in March. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Diane Millich grew up on the Southern Ute Indian reservation, nestled in the mountain meadows of southwestern Colorado. When she was 26, she fell in love and married a non-Indian man who lived in a town just beyond the reservation.
Not long after they were married, Millich’s husband moved in with her and began to push and slap her, she said. The violence escalated, and the abuse, she said, became routine. She called the tribal police and La Plata County authorities many times but was told they had no jurisdiction in the case.
One time after her husband beat her, Millich said, he picked up the phone and called the sheriff to report the incident himself to show that he couldn’t be arrested, she said. He knew, she said, there was nothing the sheriff could do.
“After a year of abuse and more than 100 incidents of being slapped, kicked, punched and living in terror, I left for good,” Millich said.
The brutality, she said, increased after she filed for a divorce.
“Typically, when you look backwards at crimes of domestic violence, if less serious violence is not dealt with by the law enforcement system, it leads to more serious violence, which eventually can lead to homicide,” said Hirsch, the deputy associate attorney general.
One day when Millich was at work, she saw her ex-husband pull up in a red truck. He was carrying a 9mm gun.
“My ex-husband walked inside our office and told me, ‘You promised until death do us part, so death it shall be,’ ” Millich recalled. A co-worker saved Millich’s life by pushing her out of the way and taking a bullet in his shoulder.
It took hours to decide who had jurisdiction over the shooting.
Investigators at the scene had to use a measuring tape to determine where the gun was fired and where Millich’s colleague had been struck, and a map to figure out whether the state, federal government or tribe had jurisdiction.
The case ended up going to the closest district attorney. Because Millich’s husband had never been arrested or charged for domestic abuse on tribal land, he was treated as a first-time offender, Millich said, and after trying to flee across state lines was offered a plea of aggravated driving under revocation.
“It was like his attempt to shoot me and the shooting of my co-worker did not happen,” Millich said. “The tribe wanted to help me, but couldn’t because of the law. In the end, he was right. The law couldn’t touch him.”
Section 904
Last year, Millich and other American Indian women came to Washington to tell their stories to congressional leaders. They joined tribal leaders in lobbying for the passage of the 288-page reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which included language proposed by the Justice Department that for the first time would allow tribal courts to prosecute non-
Indians who assaulted native women on tribal lands. It would also allow the courts to issue and enforce protective orders, whether the perpetrator is Indian or non-Indian.
Opponents of the provision, known as Section 904, argued that non-native defendants would not be afforded a fair trial by American Indian tribes. In the case of Alaska, the Senate excluded Native Alaskan women because of especially complicated issues involving jurisdiction.
At a town hall meeting, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said that “under the laws of our land, you’ve got to have a jury that is a reflection of society as a whole.”
“On an Indian reservation, it’s going to be made up of Indians, right?” Grassley said. “So the non-Indian doesn’t get a fair trial.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), another opponent, said the Violence Against Women Act was “being held hostage by a single provision that would take away fundamental constitutional rights for certain American citizens.”
The bill passed the Senate last February but was held up by House Republicans over Section 904. They argued that tribal courts were not equipped to take on the new responsibilities and non-Indian constituents would be deprived of their constitutional rights without being able to appeal to federal courts.
“When we talk about the constitutional rights, don’t women on tribal lands deserve their constitutional right of equal protection and not to be raped and battered and beaten and dragged back onto native lands because they know they can be raped with impunity?” Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) argued on the floor.
Underlying the opposition, some congressmen said, was a fear of retribution by the tribes for the long history of mistreatment by white Americans.
With the support of Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the Chickasaw Nation, the House accepted the bill containing Section 904 on a vote of 229 to 196. On March 7, President Obama signed the bill with Millich, Holder and Native American advocates at his side.
The Justice Department has chosen three Indian tribes — the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona, the Tulalip Tribes of Washington state and the Umatilla tribes of Oregon — to be the first in the nation to exercise their new criminal jurisdiction over certain crimes of domestic and dating violence.
“What we have done, I think, has been game-changing,” Holder said. “But there are still attitudes that have to be changed. There are still resources that have to be directed at the problem. There’s training that still needs to go on. We’re really only at the beginning stages of reversing what is a horrible situation.”
Lisa Brunner and her daughter, Faith Roy, fold clothes at home on the White Earth Indian reservation in Minnesota. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
‘Sliver of a Full Moon’
Last summer, several Native American survivors of domestic violence from around the country put on a play, “Sliver of a Full Moon,” in Albuquerque. The play documented the story of the abuse and rape of Native American women by non-Indians and the prolonged campaign to bring them justice.
Using the technique of traditional Indian storytelling, Mary Kathryn Nagle, a lawyer and member of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, wove together their emotional tales of abuse with the story of their fight to get Washington to pay attention.
Millich and Brunner played themselves, and actors played the roles of members of Congress, federal employees and tribal police officers who kept answering desperate phone calls from abused native women by saying over and over again, “We can’t do nothin’, ” “We don’t have jurisdiction,” and “He’s white and he ain’t enrolled.”
Lisa Brunner, seated, with her daughters Samantha, left, and Faith Roy. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
Brunner portrayed herself in a play that told the story of the abuse and rape of Native American women by non-Indians and the campaign to bring them justice. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
By that time, Brunner’s intergenerational story of violence and abuse had taken a painful turn. Her youngest daughter, 17, had been abducted by four white men who drove onto the reservation one summer night. One of them raped her, Brunner said.
It was the real-life version of author Louise Erdrich’s acclaimed fictional account of the rape of an Ojibwe woman by a non-Indian in her 2012 book, “The Round House.” In both the real and the unrelated fictional case, the new congressional authority would not give the tribe jurisdiction to arrest and prosecute the suspects, because they were not previously known to the victim.
Last week, inside her home on the frigid White Earth Nation, which was dotted by vast snowy cornfields and hundreds of frozen lakes, Brunner brought out a colorful watercolor she had painted of three native women standing in the woods under a glowing full moon. The painting was the inspiration for the title of Nagle’s play, she said, but it’s also a metaphor for the new law.
“We have always known that non-
Indians can come onto our lands and they can beat, rape and murder us and there is nothing we can do about it,” Brunner said. “Now, our tribal officers have jurisdiction for the first time to do something about certain crimes.”
“But,” she added, “it is just the first sliver of the full moon that we need to protect us.”
