Tulalip News

Drought hits harder in already parched Indian Country

Originally published by Al Jazeera America.

by Kevin Taylor March 19, 2014 5:00AM ET

Concerns rise over failing fish populations, meaningless water rights and pushback from other governments

Trinity Lake is one of the largest reservoirs in California, and much of its water goes to the Central Valley and its agriculture. Reservations are often left dry. Photo: Tim Reed/USGS

Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series examining how drought affects Native Americans and their communities.

Drought maps this winter have shaded swaths of the American West in oranges and reds to signify severe, extreme and even exceptional levels of drought.

And exceptional drought gets attention, especially when it hits America’s vegetable basket, California’s Central Valley.

Speaker of the House John Boehner in January stood in his shirtsleeves in a dusty, bare field in Bakersfield. He supported a state bill that would quash salmon restoration in the San Joaquin River delta, joining the cry that scarce water should go to farms, not fish.

President Barack Obama, a month later, stood in his shirtsleeves in a dusty, bare field in nearby Fresno, offering $183 million in aid and announced an initiative on climate change to address larger issues affecting the three-year drought.

But living in the dry is nothing new for Native Americans in the West. Nor is being overlooked.

In wet years as well as dry, many American Indians live in chronic droughtlike conditions, thanks to decades’ worth of dams that hold water back or divert it from reservations which were usually sited on already marginal land.

“We are definitely one of the overlooked groups of people in the U.S.,” said Margaret Hiza Redsteer from her office in Flagstaff, Ariz. A member of the Crow Nation, Redsteer is a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and has been monitoring 18 consecutive years of drought conditions in the Southwest, primarily on Hopi and Navajo lands.

“The California drought is getting a lot of attention right now, and I keep thinking ‘You know, we’ve been facing this problem for a while now’ … [but] we don’t supply the food to the rest of the country, so people haven’t noticed,” she said.

The dry side of reservoirs

Her concerns are echoed in the Great Plains — where reservoirs behind federal dams have displaced Indians — and in Northern California, where once teeming salmon streams shrink as water is diverted south.

During the last century, California constructed a massive system of dams, reservoirs, tunnels and canals to funnel water to the Central Valley, which has become an industrial agriculture wonderland. According to the USGS California Water Science Center, Central Valley agriculture is a $17 billion per year industry that supplies a quarter of America’s food, including 40 percent of its fruits and nuts.

Lettuce, carrots, tomatoes and fruit take tremendous quantities of water, and the dry fields where Obama and Boehner were standing during their media events are often irrigated with water that comes from far away.

In fact, 557 miles to the north, amid the forested ridges that outline the sinuous Trinity River, Rod Mendes reflected about being on the dry side of the Central Valley Project dams.

People need to keep in mind, as [drought] legislation is drafted, that farms can be bailed out but fish populations can’t.

Dave Hillemeier

fisheries manager, Yurok Tribe

“For the most part, the Hoopa Indian Reservation is kind of in a drought situation all the time anyway,” said Mendes, who is writing an emergency drought plan for the tribe. “We have a lot of dams in the area. They control the flow of the river whether we’re in a drought year or not. We’re not getting the flows we were getting before the dams.”

A half-century of lesser flows has reduced coho salmon runs to the point they are on federal and state endangered species lists. Officials with both the Hoopa and Yurok tribes say they are concerned that California’s declaration of a drought emergency in January will make things worse by loosening environmental protections known as CEQA, California Environmental Quality Assurance.

“We’re concerned because during the process the tribes really haven’t been consulted with,” said Hoopa Valley tribal chairwoman Danielle Vigil-Masten. “All this legislation that’s getting put through really fast. They have legislation to increase water flows into the Shasta Reservoir. They have other bills to do with the Trinity River. We have to constantly go online and look and try to understand what the information is that we are reading. We have our attorneys on it.”

“People need to keep in mind, as [emergency drought] legislation is drafted, that farms can be bailed out but fish populations can’t,” said Dave Hillemeier, fisheries manager for the Yurok Tribe. “Once you lose the genetics that make up your fish population, they’re gone.”

Salmon returning from the ocean last year faced such obstacles as low flows in the Trinity and Klamath rivers, higher water temperatures, algae blooms from agricultural runoff and even dewatering — stretches that were sucked dry by irrigation or consumption.

“Too much water has been allocated to too many people,” said Konrad Fisher, executive director ofKlamath Riverkeeper. Along the Scott River, an important tributary of the Klamath, Fisher said, “an 18-mile stretch … was completely dry,” because of overappropriation of water rights.

Dry stretches strand returning salmon, keeping them from reaching spawning grounds.

Talking to the elders

Pressure on Northern California water may be especially dire this year. According to the California Water Science Center, “2013 was the driest calendar year for California in 119 years of recorded history.”

Foreshadowing a bone-dry 2014, snowpack in the north ranged from 22 percent to 25 percent of normal by late February. Snowpack provides about one-third of the water used by California’s cities and farms, the center said.

In the Southwest, “It’s a year without a winter here,” Redsteer said from her USGS office in Flagstaff. She has chronicled the worsening scarcity of water by setting up her own weather stations and interviewing up to 100 tribal elders about changes they observed during their lifetimes, which included winters without snow, summers without monsoons and vanishing streams, plants and animals.

One of the ways USGS geologist Margaret Hiza Redsteer tracks climate change is by talking to Navajo and Hopi elders. Photo: U.S. Geological Survey — One of the ways USGS geologist Margaret Hiza Redsteer tracks climate change is by talking to Navajo and Hopi elders. *Photo: U.S. Geological Survey*

Streams on the Navajo reservation have dried up one after another. Without moisture in the ground, perennial grasses don’t grow. Without grass cover, sand dunes begin to migrate and advance on dwellings, roads and grazing land. Dry riverbeds release fine sediment to the winds, and the airborne dust settles on the snowpack of the southern Rockies. Dust absorbs more heat from the sun and melts the snow more quickly.

Is it climate change? “That’s the $10 million question, and frankly it’s a question I don’t think you’ll ever be able to answer. It’d be like trying to claim which cigarette gave the person lung cancer,” Redsteer said.

What can be said, she added, is that drought conditions are intensified by warmer temperatures. Plants don’t remain dormant in winter anymore. They germinate and use up scant moisture. Higher temperatures increase aridity, which steals water from plants through evapotranspiration.

Use it or lose it

But haven’t indigenous cultures in the Southwest long adapted to arid climates?

“First of all, the traditional way of adapting to dry seasons was to move,” Redsteer said. These days, “If you have a reservation, and the reservation is established where there are the most limited water resources in the region, the odds of you being able to make it through dry seasons are stacked against you.”

Indeed, she said, census data shows the reservation population in decline even as there are more Navajo. “There is a notable emigration from the reservation and mostly it’s young people who are leaving because they can get jobs in cities,” she said. This is due in part from the limited, land-based economies on the reservation.

“There’s not a lot of alternatives out there,” Redsteer said.

When it comes to drought planning, she praised the Navajo and Hopi tribes but added, “What is it that we do after the first 10 years?” Redsteer asked. “People on the reservation use one-tenth of the water that people in Phoenix use every day. How do you conserve when you are already using so little? They don’t have lawns, they don’t wash their cars on a regular basis. It’s hard to say, ‘Well, we really need to conserve now,’” she said with a laugh.

And Phoenix, a desert city that glimmers with emerald golf courses and backyard swimming pools when seen from the air, highlights the archaic nature of water laws.

“One of the real ironies is that western water law is ‘use it or lose it’. Phoenix … to keep its Colorado River allocation, has to use that allocation or it will lose its rights to it. So in some ways there’s a disincentive to conserve,” Redsteer said.

The aftershocks of dam building resonate throughout Indian Country, even on the Great Plains.

“It is no coincidence that the major dams on the Missouri are on Indian reservations,” added Gary Collins. Collins is a member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe who has spent much of his career in natural resource and water issues.

“Actually, the tribes on the Missouri didn’t get the dams, they got the reservoirs,” said Bob Gough, secretary of the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy, based in Rosebud, S.D. “When the dams were built for flood control, it actually means the tribes were permanently flooded and someone else is in control. That’s what ‘flood control’ means if you are an Indian.”

An ugly history

Collins and Gough recently attended a drought-planning conference in Nebraska sponsored by the National Integrated Drought Information System.

Collaboration among tribes and federal and state agencies is welcome but is fraught with ugly history such as Indians being flooded out by dams. “It was forced displacement, and that provides the mistrust tribes have with the government,” Collins said.

Some tribes, such as those on Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation, have fought for more control by having their water rights adjudicated — which clarifies how much water a user has a right to use and who has priority during times of scarcity.

“It was 37 years in the courts,” Collins said. “We are constantly having pushback from non-Indian society wanting more of the tribes’ assets.”

Tribes are first affected and most affected. They are the ones on the ground who sustain themselves with subsistence hunting and fishing and gardening.

Gary Collins

Northern Arapaho tribe

With drought, Collins said, “Tribes are first affected and most affected. They are the ones on the ground who sustain themselves with subsistence hunting and fishing and gardening.”

Gough is among the lead authors of a chapter on the effects of climate change on indigenous people — the first time they have their own chapter — in the forthcoming third edition of the National Climate Assessment.

Among the observations: “A significant decrease in water quality and quantity caused by a variety of factors, including climate change, is affecting Native Americans’ and Alaska Natives’ drinking water supplies, food, cultures, ceremonies and traditional ways of life. Native communities’ vulnerabilities and lack of capacity to adapt to climate change are exacerbated by land-use policies, political marginalization, legal issues associated with tribal water rights and poor socioeconomic conditions.”

It often comes down to poverty, Gough said. “When you get to Indian Country, you see that these reservations have already been beset upon with with all sorts of vulnerabilities.”

Poverty often means that even if tribes have senior water rights, “they don’t have a lot of money for infrastructure to actually get the benefits of those water rights,” Redsteer said. It’s not uncommon for tribes to bargain away some of their rights to have water returned via someone else’s pipes.

“It doesn’t do any good to have water rights on paper,” she said.

Meanwhile, as they prepared for the predicted dry summer, people enjoyed the few days of late-winter rain that spattered Northern California.

“I love the rain. I went out and took a walk in the rain,” Yurok chairman O’Rourke said.

“I love the smell of rain,” Hoopa chairwoman Vigil-Masten said. “It seems that when it rains, we are all happy, really. Because you can see the water in the river start to increase.”

Collection of Native American paintings for sale

In this photo taken on March 10, 2014, Brad Hamlett owner of the Wrangler Gallery in Great Falls holds a painting by David Humphreys Miller. Hamlett's gallery is selling the Humphreys collection which includes 122 framed pieces, hundreds of photographs and negatives along with artifacts and notes of interviews Humphreys did with his subjects. (AP Photo/The Great Falls Tribune, Larry Beckner) NO SALESLARRY BECKNER — AP — In this photo taken on March 10, 2014, Brad Hamlett owner of the Wrangler Gallery in Great Falls holds a painting by David Humphreys Miller. Hamlett’s gallery is selling the Humphreys collection which includes 122 framed pieces, hundreds of photographs and negatives along with artifacts and notes of interviews Humphreys did with his subjects. (AP Photo/The Great Falls Tribune, Larry Beckner) NO SALES
LARRY BECKNER — AP

By JAKE SORICH, Great Falls Tribune

GREAT FALLS, Mont. — A collection of paintings, photos and sketches depicting some of the last pre-reservation Native Americans, including survivors of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, could sell for more this weekend than any of the other individual works during Western Art Week.

The Wrangler Gallery, located at 316 Central Ave., is seeking a buyer for the 122-piece David Humphreys Miller collection. Gallery owner Brad Hamlett says it is worth $3.8 million, according to an independent appraiser who looked at it recently.

It’s on display at the gallery throughout Western Art Week. The collection is owned by a family friend of the Millers who’s a representative with the Solomon Family Trust.

“This collection belongs in a museum where the public can access it and study it,” Hamlett said. “It’s also a very interactive exhibit. Native people come in to see it, and they may see members of their family who never had a photo taken of them, but they will remember them and start talking about their memories.”

Included in the collection are more than 50 sketches of the survivors from the Battle of the Little Big Horn and exclusive photos from the various Hollywood westerns Miller worked on with the Sioux Natives he brought to appear in the films. He would then collect the money given to the Natives and make sure they were given their fair shares once they returned to the reservation.

Some of the films Miller worked on as adviser include “Cheyenne Autumn” and “How the West was Won.” He worked on 25 films in total, bringing authentic Natives to play Indians in the films.

Miller, of Ohio, was 16 when he came to Montana and the Dakotas in 1935 to interview the surviving warriors who had wiped out the U.S. Army forces led by Gen. George Armstrong Custer in 1876.

He formed a lifelong relationship with the people. Over the course of his life, Miller learned 14 Indian languages, including sign languages, and was adopted into 16 different Indian families.

He also wrote two books about the battles titled “Custer’s Fall: The Indian Side of the Story” and “Ghost Dance.” Both books are on display in the exhibit.

In his artist’s statement, Miller wrote that he began his journey with the goal of finding out what happened from those who survived the battles. He said it was a long task that took many years to complete.

“I recall feeling a considerable sense of urgency when I began my quest. Will Durant has written that ‘no man in a hurry is quite civilized,'” he writes. “I was anything but civilized in my haste to find as many old Indian veterans of Little Big Horn as I could to straighten out history. The Indians almost certainly had never even heard of Durant, yet I found there was no way of hurrying them. The project of seeking them out, persuading them to pose for their portraits and interviewing them about their individual roles in the Custer Fight took a number of years —1935 through 1941 and 1946 through 1955 when the last survivor died.”

In 1972, Miller’s works won the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. Beyond the artwork, many of the old black-and-white photos in the collection are one-of-a-kind images.

Hamlett said they’ve recently had the curator from the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman at the gallery looking at the collection. He said the curator told him that just the photographs and negatives were worth $600,000.

Hamlett said the collection also includes several priceless artifacts, including the headdress of John Sitting Bull, the Northern Apache ghost dancer and stepson to the Sioux Chief Sitting Bull.

There also is a rare Ghost Dance Shield, given to Miller as a wedding gift July 4, 1954, by Sam Helper, who survived the Ghost Dance massacre, also known as the Wounded Knee massacre, in December 1890.

All of the artifacts were given to Miller as gifts and cannot be sold, Hamlett said, but will be given to a museum that might look to show the collection.

Some of the more interesting pieces featured in the 95 sketches and 25 oil paintings include:

. Black Elk, subject of the book “Black Elk Speaks,” the Sioux warrior who adopted Miller as his son;

. Chewing Black Bones, the Blackfeet warrior for whom the campground near St. Mary is named;

. Juniper Old Person, father of Earl Old Person, chief of the Blackfeet Nation; and Joseph White Bull, who told Miller that he killed Custer in hand-to-hand combat. The body was identified after the battle by an Indian woman who had been captured by Custer and bore him a son, White Bull told Miller.

Many of the portraits painted by Miller between 1935 and 1941 are of the 70 surviving Indian warriors from the Battle of the Little Bighorn quoted in “Custer’s Fall.”

A portion of the collection was shown at the University of Wyoming in 2012.

Barbara Koostra, director of the Montana Museum of Art and Culture at the University of Montana, said the museum would be interested in acquiring the exhibit but does not have the financial resources to buy it.

“A few years ago our museum made inquiries about this collection in terms of a potential gift. This is due to the fact we have no acquisition funding,” she said. “At that time, there was not a desire to gift the collection and it appears their desire to sell continues. We’d be extremely interested in such a collection coming to our public collection but are not in a financial position to acquire it in terms of a purchase.”

Similarly, the Montana Historical Society has viewed the exhibit but does not have the resources to purchase it, either.

“It’s appears to be a wonderful and important collection but not something that is on our priority list at this time,” Historical Society Director Bruce Whittenberg said.

The owner of the collection, who wished not to be identified, said Miller never sold any of his artwork. She said he saw it as a chance to tell the story of the Native people who survived these historically important battles by hearing it directly from them.

“He had a wonderful life and did what he wanted to do,” she said.

Hamlett said the gallery owner inherited the collection after the Millers died and wishes to sell it to help share Miller’s memory, and the historical importance of his paintings, with the world.

“She was one of (the Millers’) best friends and she had gone to the reservation with them from time to time and she knew how important their personal relationships with the native people were,” Hamlett said. “In fact, Miller actually was buried on the Sioux reservation.”

The Millers especially became close friends with Dewey Beard and his family. Beard was the last living survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn and the Battle of Wounded Knee. He lost his first wife, his parents and children in the battles.

The collection’s owner said Miller was accepted as a member of the family among people in the tribes he visited such as Beard and others.

Some other interesting aspects of Miller’s life include his work as host of the 1950s TV show “Cavalcade of Books,” in which he interviewed authors and speakers. It was on his show that he interviewed Richard Nixon. He also did portraits of famous Hollywood icons such as Charlton Heston and Milburn Stone.

Miller’s wife, Jan, worked as a researcher on the program “This Is Your Life.” Before meeting Miller, she was a reporter for a daily newspaper in New Orleans. She first met Miller when she interviewed him for a story. They met again a few years later and married shortly thereafter.

More than anything, however, Hamlett said Miller’s curiosity in the Northern Plains culture was by far the most enduring aspect of his life.

“I think he had a sincere interest in history and he wanted to find out what happened, and the only ones who could tell him were the Indians,” Hamlett said. “There’s no other collections like this one, historically or artistically, especially because he used the oral history of these people that would be gone if he hadn’t come along and wrote it down and showed these people through his art.”

Information from: Great Falls Tribune, http://www.greatfallstribune.com

Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2014/03/19/3042447/collection-of-native-american.html#storylink=cpy

TV show to profile late Alaska serial killer

By RACHEL D’ORO, Associated Press

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — An upcoming special episode of Investigation Discovery’s “Dark Minds” TV series says it has new information about confessed Alaska serial killer Israel Keyes, including the identity of a potential victim.

Keyes was believed to have killed at least 11 people before committing suicide in his Anchorage jail cell 15 months ago while awaiting a federal trial in the rape and strangulation murder of his last known victim, Samantha Koenig. The 18-year-old Anchorage woman was abducted in February 2012 from the local coffee stand where she worked.

The two-hour, season-opening “Dark Minds” episode scheduled to air April 2 reports what it says are new details about the Koenig case. The episode, which includes dramatizations by actors, also suggests a man who disappeared from Washington’s Olympia National Park in 2004 — Gilbert Gilman — was an undisclosed victim of Keyes, who had been in the region to participate in a marathon. And it claims Keyes identified himself as a bisexual and a necrophiliac.

Series creator and host M. William Phelps told The Associated Press that he spent more than a year investigating Keyes, interviewing people including authorities, a serial killer he calls “Raven,” a criminal profiler, people who knew Keyes, as well as former Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Warner, who was present during many of Keyes’ interviews with the FBI.

“It really exhausted me, emotionally and physically, this case,” Phelps said Wednesday. “I was just living it 24/7.”

After the Koenig kidnapping, Keyes reportedly sipped wine in a toolshed outside his home, telling his victim there exactly what he planned to do before he sexually assaulted and killed her, leaving her body in the shed before embarking on a cruise the next day. The series also claims Keyes later sewed open the eyes of the dead and frozen victim to make her look alive as he photographed her with a new copy of a local newspaper.

Authorities have already revealed that Keyes wrote a ransom note on the back of the photo, demanding that $30,000 be placed in Koenig’s account. He texted a message, directing the family to a dog park where the note could be found. Her family deposited money from a reward fund.

Keyes also said he robbed banks to help pay for his travels to find random victims.

Keyes, the second eldest in a large family, was homeschooled in a cabin without electricity near Colville, Wash., in a mountainous, sparsely populated area. The family moved in the 1990s to Smyrna, Maine, where they were involved in the maple syrup business, according to a neighbor who remembered Keyes as a nice, courteous young man.

After leaving the Army, Keyes worked for the Makah Indian tribe in Washington, then moved to Anchorage in 2007 after his girlfriend found work here. A self-employed carpenter and handyman, he was considered competent, honest and efficient. He had a young daughter who lived with him and his girlfriend in Anchorage.

Keyes was arrested in Lufkin, Texas, about six weeks later after using Koenig’s debit card. Three weeks after the arrest, Koenig’s dismembered body was found in a frozen lake north of Anchorage.

The FBI and other authorities have been able to link Keyes to the only three victims he named — Koenig and an Essex, Vt., couple, Bill and Lorraine Currier, who disappeared in 2011. In months of interviews with authorities after his arrest last year, Keyes toyed with investigators, doling out snippets and clues about other possible victims across the country as he demanded a promise that he would be executed rather than spend his life in prison.

Keyes never disclosed much information about the other crimes, trying to keep as many details as possible out of the media so his daughter wouldn’t be able to find any information up on the Internet or his mother wouldn’t have a heart attack reading what he did.

The FBI has publicly released a timeline of travels and crimes by Keyes, hoping to shed light on unsolved killings in the nation. Authorities have been trying to determine whether Keyes was involved in the 2009 disappearance of a New Jersey woman, Debra Feldman, who was last seen at her Hackensack home.

Anchorage-based Special Agent Kevin Donovan with the FBI said Wednesday he didn’t immediately know the status of the New Jersey case. He also said authorities have received information about cases that could be tied to Keyes and are following up on it. But he said he wouldn’t characterize any of it as strong leads.

“We are still looking for any additional information from the public or from law enforcement that might help us identify additional victims,” he said.

At the end of the upcoming episode, Phelps urges viewers to help solve mysteries that remain about Keyes and his unknown victims.

“I hope the families can have some answers from this,” he said. “That’s my goal.”

Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2014/03/19/3043377/tv-show-to-profile-late-alaska.html#storylink=cpy

New Emergency Room Guidelines Help Washington Save Millions, Cut ER Visits

ER visits dropped 10 percent in teh last fiscal year, due in part to a set of best practices around emergency room care, says a new report.Credit UMHealthSystem / Flickr — ER visits dropped 10 percent in teh last fiscal year, due in part to a set of best practices around emergency room care, says a new report.
Credit UMHealthSystem / Flickr

By Gabriel Spitzer, KPLU

Washington’s Medicaid program saved more than $33 million last year, and a new report gives much of the credit to a big push to reduce emergency room visits.

ERs are a great place to treat real emergencies, but a very expensive place to do run-of-the-mill medical care. So the Health Care Authority, the agency that runs Medicaid, partnered with the Washington State Hospital Association, the Washington State Medical Association and others to adopt seven best practices aimed at ensuring ERs are used for their intended purpose.

They include things like keeping tabs on frequent ER users, referring people to primary care doctors and tightening up policies around prescribing narcotics.

The HCA’s chief medical officer Daniel Lessler says one crucial practice is sharing patient information among ERs, which can reduce costly duplications.

“A patient who is seen in an emergency room for a headache and got a head CT comes in with the same complaint to another emergency room three days later. Without that information, they probably are going to repeat the work-up,” Lessler said.

In fiscal year 2013, ER visits dropped by 10 percent. Visits by those frequent users dropped even more, as did the rate of visits resulting in a scheduled drug prescription.

The ER reforms probably aren’t the only reason for those changes and the cost savings. Lessler says other changes over the same period, like moving people to managed care, probably get some credit.

A large study in Oregon recently found that expanding Medicaid to more people increased ER use, rather than decreasing it as hoped. That finding is controversial, but Lessler notes that Washington’s ER reforms put it in a good position as the state adds hundreds of thousands to the Medicaid rolls as a result of the Affordable Care Act.

The HCA and its partners plan to detail the findings at a noon announcement Thursday.

Buffy Sainte-Marie on Tar Sands: ‘You’ve Got to Take This Seriously’

Image source: twitter.com/BuffySteMarie'If you really want to see something historic in your life, go to Fort McMurray and just bear witness to what they're doing,' says legendary musician-activist Sainte-Marie. — Image source: twitter.com/BuffySteMarie
‘If you really want to see something historic in your life, go to Fort McMurray and just bear witness to what they’re doing,’ says legendary musician-activist Sainte-Marie.

David P. Ball, ICTMN

For decades, Buffy Sainte-Marie has been an artistic trailblazer. The Sixties folk explosion saw the Canadian-born Cree songwriter confront the colonial status quo with hit songs like “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” as well as the anti-war anthem “Universal Soldier.” Sainte-Marie, who is currently based in Hawaii, is gearing up to record her first album of new material since 2008 (more on that later), and took a few minutes to share her thoughts on a number of topics with ICTMN.

We’ve seen your Tweets (@BuffySteMarie) about the oil sands, or tar sands as they’re sometimes called — what’s your take on the situation?

Almost a year ago I went to Fort McMurray (Alberta) and I was just devastated with what’s going on there. Just devastated. I just told everybody I could: “You’ve got to take this seriously.” Even since I was there, other people have really stepped forward in their own ways, Neil Young in particular. He’s caught a lot of criticism because he didn’t involve me, Susan Aglukark or other Native people. Neil came to the induction ceremony in Nashville, at the Musicians Hall of Fame, and I told him I’d seen some of the criticism and not to listen to it at all! Because it’s so important, it has to be everybody doing whatever they can, whenever they can, and being effective at whatever level they can be. You reach people your way, I do it my way and Neil does it his way. But people have to see it.

It’s really worth a trip to Fort McMurray just to see it with your own eyes. If you really want to see something historic in your life, go to Fort McMurray and just bear witness to what they’re doing. It’s never going to return, and this is the future of the planet if the present people are allowed to stay in charge. We are allowing them to stay in charge. We are allowing it. That’s why we have wars. We have to be really vigilant and supportive of one another, because it has to stop. There’s no turning back.

Neil Young toured with the First Nation that’s experiencing high cancer rates from the tar sands. And yet he also caught criticism when people said, “Oh, he’s just an outsider, he lives in California — what right does he have to criticize this?”

(Laughs). Because it’s not only about Canada, that’s why! Good for Neil for stepping up. Everybody should be stepping up at whatever their most effective level is. It’s not just about Native people and it’s not just about Canada. Just the weather changes are indicative: people just gotta wake up.

Have the issues changed over time, or is it still the same root issues as in your songs “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” or “Universal Soldier”?

The root issue is always the same. It’s about corporate greed in charge of all of our energy. That’s the root issue. But in the 1500s it was gold and silver in Central America, and then coal, oil, and now uranium. I have a song that’s going to be on the album I’m recording now called “The Uranium War.” It has a line:

Coal and oil and hey, now uranium
Keep the Indians under your thumb
Pray like hell when your bad times come
Get ’em up, rip ’em up, strip ’em up
Get ’em with a gun.

So the violence that occurs, and has been occurring against Indigenous People in the world because of resources has now become obvious to the non-indigenous people too. There are now more people understanding how devastating the misuse of resources not only can be, but just plain is.

Let’s talk about the Longest Walk. Richie Havens passed on last year, and you were a long supporter of the Longest Walk and affirming treaty rights. Could you offer some thoughts on him, his passing and his legacy?

He and I kind of emerged around the same time — the summer of 1963-4. We would see each other over the years. He came and visited me in Hawaii a few times. We were good friends. He was such an incredible interpreter of other people’s songs, and such a good guy. Pete Seeger too — he just did so much for the world through music, in ways both subtle and big. You know, heaven must be a great place, because there’s a lot of people going there!

Pete Seeger with Buffy Sainte-Marie. Source: twitter.com/buffystemarie

You were with Pete Seeger at Clearwater Fest last summer. The photos were just beautiful, you guys having a lovely hug.

He was just really, really special, huh?

Do you ever feel nostalgic for that era, when you all emerged almost at once? It must have been such a different energy because it was also a social movement as well as being about music.

It was, but I’ve been waiting for it to come back. And I think it has. For me, the Internet is like the Sixties. It used to be, in the Sixties, all kinds of music was available to you, but it was kept away. You had to go with this label and that genre. It really became a very narrow-minded corporate world. They’d sign 90 artists and shelve 90 others. It used to be so unfair. But now you can hear all kinds of music, and everybody can get played, publish a song, or share things on the Internet. It’s such a wonderful time that we’re living in. You shouldn’t discount it or think that the Sixties were better. The Sixties were about a true student movement. And now there’s another true populist movement, so let’s do what we can, while we can.

To learn more about Buffy Sainte-Marie, visit her official site BuffySainte-Marie.com.

Trash from the K-Cups sold last year would circle the Earth almost 11 times

Patrick Gensel

By Holly Richmond, Grist

K-Cups seem like the complicated Starbucks order of today: an expensive, caffeinated way to express your oh-so-unique taste and personality. Who needs to run out for a tall caramel macchiato when you can make a single serving of Wolfgang Puck’s Jamaica Me Crazy medium roast in the comfort of your kitchen?

Except all those little plastic cups add up to some massive trash. Ten and a half loops around the equator, in fact, according to Mother Jones. Kind of ridic for a company owned by a fair-trade, organic coffee brand, no?

Plus, the No. 7 plastic blend is BPA-free, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe. Even if all that plastic magically disappeared into the ether on disposal, its manufacture could be making workers sick, writes MoJo:

One concern with this plastic mix is the presence of polystyrene, containing the chemical styrene, which Hoover warns is especially worrisome for workers. A possible carcinogen, styrene can wreak havoc on the nervous systems of those handling it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…

Keurig would not tell me what types of plastic go into its #7 blend, saying the information was proprietary, nor would it confirm or deny the presence of polystyrene in the mix.

If that weren’t bad enough, Keurig taxes you for being bad at math: K-Cups cost you more than twice what a bag of beans does — about $50 a pound. Damn, son! If you refuse to surrender your Keurig, reusable filters or biodegradable pods are the way to go.

First-time offenders learn accountability through diversion program run by tribal elders

Tulalip tribal elder and Elders Panel member William Shelton, now deceased, explains how the diversion program works to the Indian Law & Order Commission in their visit to Tulalip Tribal Court in September 2011. Photo/ Brandi N. Montreuil, Tulalip News — Tulalip tribal elder and Elders Panel member William Shelton, now deceased, explains how the diversion program works to the Indian Law & Order Commission in their visit to Tulalip Tribal Court in September 2011.
Photo/ Brandi N. Montreuil, Tulalip News

By Brandi N. Montreuil, Tulalip News

TULALIP, WA – The 2012 Annual Tulalip Tribal Court Report states 415 criminal cases were heard in court. Included in that 415, are 24 newly filed criminal alcohol charges and 69 disposed, meaning judicial proceeding have ended or a case that has been resolved. Also counted in that 415, are 76 newly filed criminal drug cases and 126 disposed. Helping to tackle these numbers is a group of volunteer Tulalip elders, who are teaching offenders accountability in a traditional way, and saving the court thousands of dollars.

In it’s sixth year, Tulalip Tribal Court’s Elders Panel is a diversion program that uses traditional Tulalip culture and the wisdom and experiences of Tulalip elders to reach first-time offenders and eliminate re-offending.

The panel meets every two weeks with non-violent first-time offenders, ages 18-42, who have been charged with minor criminal offenses such as possession of alcohol or marijuana, or criminal mischief. Currently the panel consists of Donald Hatch Jr., Lee Topash , Dale Jones, Arthur Hank Williams Sr., Eleanor M. Nielson, and Katherine M. Monger.

Enrollment in the program is voluntary but comes with a large incentive to complete it. Defendants receive deferred prosecutions on their criminal charges for the length of their enrollment in the program, usually a year. Upon successful completion of the program, charges are dismissed. This is the one of the largest incentives a diversion program can offer a first-time offender; it is a chance to rebuild a life.

“If many of these offenders went through the regular process they would be in jail,” said Topash about the opportunity the program provides for participants. “We don’t cut them any slack. The one thing we encounter is attitude, especially with the young folks, they try and get things by us, but they quickly realize what it’s all about.”

The panel requires defendants to actively engage in their community and culture to learn the impact their actions create, not just in their life, but the lives of their family members and community members. Requirements include regular appearances before the panel, writing letters of apology, community service, substance abuse treatment, curfews, UA’s, anger management classes, mental health evaluations, and no new violations. Cultural participation can include family research and traditional spiritual activities.

“Coming here, has been the best thing for me,” said a current client. “If I hadn’t come here I would have lost my kids. I struggled at the beginning and I slacked off. I didn’t take it seriously and didn’t finish all my community service hours and I had to go to jail for a few days. Listening to the girls in jail it made me think about the opportunity I have in this program. I didn’t want to be in there. This program has changed me a lot and I am grateful, because this is the longest that I have been clean and sober in a long time.”

According to court estimates, the panel typically handles 10 cases a year, saving the court an average of $20,000 a year in judicial and probation time, including jail cost, which can run the Tribe $67.92 a day for each incarcerated tribal members, sentenced through Tulalip Tribal Court, and a $97 booking fee.

“There are costs that we cannot measure in terms of costs to society when young offenders are before Elders Panel and follow the sanctions sentenced by Elders Panel, and are not committing any new crimes,” said Tulalip Tribal Court Director, Wendy Church.

“We like to play the role of the grandfather and grandmother because we want to give advice that a grandfather or grandmother would give,” said Hatch about the cultural approach portion of the program.

Many of the positive changes in a defendant’s behavior early on in the process can be attributed to regular meetings. In small communities such as tribal communities, it is not unusual for participants to be familiar with elders on the panel. This eliminates the clinical judicial feel experienced in typical judicial diversion programs. This can be considered the program’s greatest keys to success.

“Indian people traditionally do not have good feelings about court systems,” explained Tulalip chairman, Mel Sheldon Jr. “This program shows the young people that we all make mistakes but here are ways to recover from them.”

Although some offenders will re-offend, Elders Panel sees an 87 percent success rate in participants.

“The loss of this program would be huge in this community,” said Hatch. “We have saved the Tribe close to a million dollars over the past six years. If we were not here a lot of our children would be in the court system and it would increase the cost to the court and to the Tribe. We would also lose all the good work through community service that helps our community, but more importantly we would lose helping our people.”

In 2009, the Tulalip Tribal Court’s Elders Panel was recognized by the Washington State Bar Association (WSBA) for the Local Hero’s Award. The WSBA Board of Governors searches statewide for noteworthy programs that have made substantial contributions to their communities, this recognition is bestowed upon non-lawyers.

For more information about the Elders Panel or to volunteer to be on the panel, please contact Tulalip Tribal Court at 360-716-4773.

Brandi N. Montreuil: 360-913-5402; bmontreuil@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov

DOI Announces $3.2 Million in Grant Awards For 21 Tribal Energy and Mineral Development Projects

By Transmission & Distribution World Magazine

Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell has announced that $3.2 million has been awarded to 21 tribal projects to assist in developing energy and mineral resources, including $655,000 to the Crow Tribe to advance a hydroelectric project that will provide low-cost clean power to tribal members and encourage business on Crow lands.

Secretary Jewell, who serves as Chair of the White House Council on Native American Affairs, announced the grants during a visit to the Crow Reservation in southeastern Montana. Jewell was joined by Senator Jon Tester, the new chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Larry Roberts.

Jewell is making a three-day visit to Montana, meeting with tribal and business leaders, ranchers, hunters and anglers and other stakeholder groups to discuss the economic value of public lands to local communities, the importance of the Land and Water Conservation Fund in expanding access to hunting and fishing areas, and public-private partnerships that protect public lands, such as the Blackfoot Challenge for the southern part of the Crown of the Continent ecosystem.

The $655,000 grant to the Crow Tribe will allow completion of all technical, environmental, engineering and economic analyses required for an 8 to 12 megawatt hydroelectric project at the Yellowtail Afterbay Dam on the Crow Reservation. This will allow the Tribe to seek power purchase agreements and financing to build the facility, which will provide electricity to its members and invite industry to the reservation with the certainty of reliable, sustainable and clean low-cost power. The project is also expected to improve the Big Horn River’s downstream fishery by reducing excessive nitrogen and oxygen levels.

In 2009, Senator Tester introduced and then successfully helped pass the Crow Tribe Water Settlement Act that authorized the Crow to develop hydropower at the dam.

As Chair of the White House Council on Native American Affairs, Secretary Jewell leads a comprehensive Federal initiative to work more collaboratively and effectively with Tribes to advance their economic and social priorities. Informed by consultation with the Tribes and reflective of tribal priorities, the Interior Department’s FY2015 budget requests $2.6 billion for Indian Affairs, $33.6 million above the 2014 enacted level, to sustain the President’s commitment and honor Interior’s trust responsibilities to the 566 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes.

Recognizing this commitment to tribal self-governance and self-determination, the budget fully funds contract support costs that Tribes incur as managers of the programs serving Native Americans.

A full list of the 21 projects receiving grant awards for energy and mineral development is available here and includes six for mineral extraction, two for oil and gas production and 13 for renewable energy, including wind, hydropower, geothermal and biomass proposals.

Funding for construction of the Crow hydropower project was authorized in the Crow Water Rights Settlement that President Obama signed on Dec. 8, 2010. In March 2011 Crow tribal members voted to ratify the Settlement legislation and the Crow Tribe-Montana Water Rights Compact. The Settlement legislation provided the Tribe with the authority to develop hydropower at Yellowtail Afterbay Dam along with some funding to assist in the development along with other energy development on the Reservation. The Grant announced today is an additional and needed boost to the Tribe as it works to develop hydropower.

Together, the Settlement Act and the Compact quantified the Tribe’s water rights and authorized funding of $131.8 million for the rehabilitation and improvement of the Crow Irrigation Project and $246.4 million for the design and construction of a Municipal, Rural and Industrial (MR&I) water system to serve numerous reservation communities.

The Crow Reservation is the largest of seven Indian reservations in Montana, encompassing 2.3 million acres and home to 13,000 enrolled Crow tribal members.

Pause Is Seen in a Continent’s Peopling

Beringia map, courtesy of Illinois State Museum

The New York Times

By NICHOLAS WADEMARCH 12, 2014

Using a new method for exploring ancient relationships among languages, linguists have found evidence further illuminating the peopling of North America about 14,000 years ago. Their findings follow a recent proposal that the ancestors of Native Americans were marooned for some 15,000 years on a now sunken plain before they reached North America.

This idea, known as the Beringian standstill hypothesis, has been developed by geneticists and archaeologists over the last seven years. It holds that the ancestors of Native Americans did not trek directly across the land bridge that joined Siberia to Alaska until the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. Rather, geneticists say, these ancestors must have lived in isolation for some 15,000 years to accumulate the amount of DNA mutations now seen specifically in Native Americans.

Archaeologists examining deep sea cores from the Bering Strait believe that a special ecological zone known as shrub tundra existed there during the Last Glacial Maximum, an exceptionally cold period that lasted from about 30,000 to 15,000 years ago. Though often referred to as a bridge, the now sunken region, known as Beringia, was in fact a broad plain. It was also relatively warm, and supported trees such as spruce and birch, as well as grazing animals.

Writing in the journal Science last month, John F. Hoffecker, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado, summarized the evidence for thinking the Beringian plain was the refuge for the ancestral Native American population identified by the geneticists. “The shrub tundra zone in central Beringia represents the most plausible home for the isolated standstill population,” he and colleagues wrote.

Dr. Hoffecker believes that the ancestral Native Americans could have kept warm with fires of animal bones and wood, and that their range was restricted by the availability of wood. “The paleoecological data is consistent with the idea of a refugium, and the wood might be a key variable,” he said in an interview.

Linguists have until now been unable to contribute to this synthesis of genetic and archaeological data. The first migrations to North America occurred between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago, but most linguists have long believed that language trees cannot be reconstructed back further than 8,500 years. Vocabulary changes so fast that the signal of relationship between two languages is soon swamped by the noise of borrowed words and fortuitous resemblances.

But in 2008, Edward Vajda, a linguist at Western Washington University, said he had documented a relationship between Yeniseian, a group of mostly extinct languages spoken along the Yenisei River in central Siberia, and Na-Dene.

The Na-Dene languages are spoken in Alaska and western Canada, with two outliers in the American Southwest, Navajo and Apache. His assertion that the two families of languages had descended from a common tongue implied that he was seeing back in time at least 12,000 years or so, to the arrival of Na-Dene speakers in North America.

Many linguists accepted Dr. Vajda’s analysis, despite its time depth. He relied heavily on structural features of language, which turn out to be more resistant to change than vocabulary. In particular, he looked at Yeniseian and Na-Dene verbs, since languages in both groups have a template of fixed positions before and after the verb for specifying various attributes.

Building on Dr. Vajda’s success, two linguists, Mark A. Sicoli of Georgetown University and Gary Holton of the University of Alaska, have assessed the relationship of the two language families based on shared grammatical features, rather than vocabulary.

In a paper published in the journal PLoS One on Wednesday, they report their surprising finding that Na-Dene is not a descendant of Yeniseian, as would be expected if the Yeniseian speakers in Siberia were the source population of the Na-Dene migration. Rather, they say, both language families are descendants of some lost mother tongue. Their explanation is that this lost language was spoken in Beringia, and that its speakers migrated both east and west. The eastward group reached North America and became the Na-Dene speakers, while the westward group returned to Siberia and settled along the Yenisei River.

The Na-Dene migration from Beringia came after the main migration of 15,000 years ago, but the relationship between the two populations remains to be settled. “There may have been multiple streams of people moving out of that single source at different times,” said Dennis H. O’Rourke, an anthropological geneticist at the University of Utah.

If Yeniseian represents a return migration from Beringia, the question of the source population in Siberia of Native Americans is thrust back into obscurity. “If Yeniseian is off the table as a back-migration, there is no other candidate,” Dr. Sicoli said.

Several Yeniseian languages are known only from czarist fur tax records. Pumpokol, Arin, Assan and Kott have not been spoken for two centuries. The only surviving language, Ket, has fewer than 200 living speakers.

Interior Announces More Than $100 Million in Purchase Offers to Nearly 16,000 Landowners with Fractionated Interests at Pine Ridge Reservation

Offers Aim to Consolidate Fractionated Lands for Tribal Development; Will Be Valid for 45 Days as Part of $1.9 Billion Land Buy-Back Program

Office of Public Affairs – Indian Affairs

Office of the Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs

U.S. Department of the Interior

WASHINGTON, DC – In another step to fulfill President Obama’s commitment to strengthen Indian communities, the U.S. Department of the Interior today announced that the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations (Buy-Back Program) has sent purchase offers to nearly 16,000 individual landowners with fractionated interests in parcels on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Totaling more than $100 million, these offers will provide landowners the opportunity to voluntarily sell their fractionated interests, which would be consolidated and held in trust for the Oglala Sioux Tribe of the Pine Ridge Reservation.

“The success of the Buy-Back Program is vitally important to the future of Indian Country,” said Kevin K. Washburn, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs. “Consolidating and returning these lands to tribes in trust will have enormous potential to unlock tribal community resources. While we know that it will be a challenge to reach all landowners, we are committed to exhausting all efforts to make sure that individuals are aware of this historic opportunity to strengthen tribal sovereignty by supporting the consolidation of tribal lands.”

The goal of the Buy-Back Program is to strengthen self-determination and self-governance for federally-recognized tribes. The Program implements the land consolidation component of the Cobell Settlement, which provided $1.9 billion to purchase fractionated interests in trust or restricted land from willing sellers at fair market value. Individuals who choose to sell their interests will receive payments directly in their IIM accounts. Consolidated interests are immediately restored to tribal trust ownership for uses benefiting the reservation community and tribal members.

Land fractionation is a serious problem across Indian Country. As individually-owned lands are passed down through several generations, they gain more and more owners. Many of these tracts now have hundreds and even thousands of individual owners. For many of these owners with fractionated interests, the land has very little practical value. Because it is difficult to gain landowner consensus on the use of these lands, the parcels often lie idle and cannot be used for any beneficial purpose.

The Pine Ridge Reservation is one of the most highly-fractionated land ownership locations in Indian Country. The vast majority of landowners with purchasable interests have received offers– and have been located in 46 states across the country.

Interior has worked cooperatively with the Oglala Sioux Tribe over the past several months to conduct outreach to educate landowners about this unique opportunity, answer questions and help individuals make a timely decision about their land. Many owners have already been paid in response to offers delivered in December 2013.

Early purchases from willing sellers at Pine Ridge have resulted in the consolidation of thousands of acres of land for the tribe and in payments to landowners exceeding $10 million. While the amounts offered to individuals have varied, some owners have received more than $100,000 for their interests. On average, payments to individuals have been made within seven days after Interior received a complete, accepted offer package.

Purchase offers are valid for 45 calendar days. Owners must accept and return current purchase offers for fractionated lands on Pine Ridge by May 2, 2014.

For information about outreach events at Pine Ridge where landowners can gather information in order to make informed decisions about their land, contact the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s Buy-Back Program at 605-867-2610.

Landowners can contact their local Fiduciary Trust Officer or call the Trust Beneficiary Call Center at 888-678-6836 with questions about their purchase offers. More information is also available at:http://www.doi.gov/buybackprogram/landowners.

Sellers receive fair market value for their land, in addition to a base payment of $75 per offer, regardless of the value of the land. All sales will also trigger contributions to the Cobell Education Scholarship Fund. Up to $60 million will go to this fund to provide scholarships to Native American students. These funds are in addition to purchase amounts paid to individual sellers, so contributions will not reduce the amount paid to landowners for their interests. The Scholarship Fund will be governed by a board of trustees and administered by the American Indian College Fund in Denver, Colo., with 20% going to the American Indian Graduate Center in Albuquerque, N.M.

Interior holds about 56 million acres in trust or restricted status for American Indians. The Department holds this land in more than 200,000 tracts, of which about 93,500 – on nearly 150 reservations – contain fractional ownership interests available for purchase by the Buy-Back Program. There are more than 245,000 landowners, holding more than 3 million fractionated interests in parcels, eligible to participate in the Program.

Individual participation is voluntary. A decision to sell land for restoration to tribes does not jeopardize a landowner’s ability to receive individual settlement payments from the Cobell Settlement, which are being handled by the Garden City Group.