NATIVE AM 2

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earlier = native americans

NATAM TAG

no merri

~ story 1 CENSOR

see black hill sioux

dapl dakota access ETP GRRENPEACE KASOWOTZ GIBSON DUNN

see idle no more 1st nations BC

html end hayne

ROB BISHOP HOMMELSTEIN FUCKED IN NAME OF HELPING OZONE

see state of exception

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NEW DOCU ON GOVT INTEL SPY DAPL ETC? 8 26 YT?

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Newsmax host claims Minnesota Senate candidate and Native American Peggy Flanagan “is not an Indian”

08/13/26

Senate candidate and Native American Peggy Flanagan “is not an Indian”

Flanagan is a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. Newsmax's Greg Kelly says “she passes herself off as an Indian — I have my doubts.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 08/13/26

Peggy Flanagan, the lieutenant governor of Minnesota, has spoken openly and repeatedly about how she is a citizen of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. She is also the daughter of the famed Native land rights and sovereignty activist Marvin Manypenny.

August 12, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports

GREG KELLY (HOST): She passes herself off as an Indian — I have my doubts. Is this Pocahontas 2? Sacagawea? Alright. Who is this person? This is Peggy Flanagan. She was the, or is the lieutenant governor up there in Minnesota. She is now the Democrat nominee to be the next U.S. senator.

...

KELLY: So this is a person who identifies as a Chippewa Indian, alright? But it's the same person I saw win last night, the primary, Peggy. Peggy is not an Indian, I don't care what they say, right? This is a — I mean, you know what it reminds me of a little bit? Pocahontas, right? Pocahontas 2. I think the name for, what's her name again? Peggy? Peggy. Sacagawea, can we call her Sacagawea? I don't know, maybe she's got 10%, 2%, 5%, it really shouldn't matter. And all of the advantages you get on certain applications. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder.

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Politico

https://www.politico.com › story › 2018/07/03 › utah-o...

Jul 3, 2018 — Utah oil and gas producers tried for years to get the EPA to exempt them from smog rules meant to prevent ailments like asthma. They finally got their relief.Read more

Updated: 07/03/2018

Utah oil and gas producers tried for years to get the EPA to exempt them from smog rules meant to prevent ailments like asthma.

They finally got their relief after Scott Pruitt took charge of the agency, newly released emails show.

To groups opposed to President Donald Trump’s policies, the records are yet another sign that Pruitt has transformed an agency created to protect the environment into a tool for granting favors to industry. They say that’s troubling even if it falls short of the overt collusion his critics have accused him of amid revelations about his ties to lobbyists who helped him arrange housing and travel.

“The public is being shut out of the decisions that affect the air we all breathe while polluters have Pruitt at their beck and call whenever they ask to throw out a life-saving protection,” said Matt Gravatt, the associate legislative director at the Sierra Club, which obtained the emails in a lawsuit over a public records request.

EPA’s aid for the oil and gas companies in Utah came after an industry lobbyist, Marc Himmelstein, a former American Petroleum Institute executive with longstanding connections to top GOP fundraisers, enlisted help from another like-minded Republican, House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah), who has pushed legislation to promote oil and gas development and ease permitting requirements.

Himmelstein coordinated a July 2017 phone call between the Utah lawmakers and Pruitt, offering specific talking points for Bishop to use, according to the records obtained in a lawsuit by the Sierra Club.

EPA was set to declare that the tribal land in the Uinta Basin in Utah was not meeting standards for smog, or ozone pollution. Once that happened, oil and gas producers wouldn’t be able to use a streamlined permitting process and would instead have to seek approval for each of the thousands of wells they aim to drill there.

“We ask the Agency to develop a streamlined permitting solution for future development of the Basin,” Himmelstein’s talking points for Bishop said.

In April, EPAproposed just that.

Himmelstein had also sent Pruitt’s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, marked-up regulatory text that he shared with Bishop to propose. And he said EPA would receive a letter from the office of Republican Gov. Gary Herbert. Herbert, who is aiming to increase energy production in Utah, had been focused on the issue already and did convey the industry concerns to Pruitt in a letter last summer, his office confirmed.

The governor’s letter of July 18, 2017, provided to POLITICO late Tuesday, nearly exactly matches the talking points and suggested regulatory text that the lobbyist gave Bishop and Jackson.

Himmelstein is a longtime Washington lobbyist and president of the energy lobbying firm National Environmental Strategies, which was previously caught in an ethics controversy over its ties to a former Interior Department official. He told Jackson he was working with QEP Resources Inc. and Newfield Exploration Co., two of the biggest drillers in the region that includes the companies’ leases in the Uintah and Ouray Indian reservations.

Himmelstein is also treasurer of the Conservative Leadership Alliance, a 501(c)(4) that spent $1.4 million on federal elections this year, according to OpenSecrets. And he is a lobbyist for FirstEnergy Solutions, which has been influential with the Trump administration in its bid to keep coal and nuclear plants online.

Pruitt’s critics have long complained the former Oklahoma attorney general was too closely tied to the oil and gas industry. Email records show senior staffers at EPA also exchange scores of messages with top lobbyists for the fossil fuel, agriculture and chemicals industries, and the newly released messages show the consideration top agency staffers gave to energy companies, who often complained that the Obama administration ignored their concerns.

Oil and gas development has been blamed for contributing to northeastern Utah’s ozone pollution, which can affect people suffering from bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma. A 2013 study of the area found that at least 98 percent of volatile organic compounds and 61 percent of nitrogen oxides — building blocks of ozone — come from oil and gas.

Himmelstein and representatives for the two companies did not respond to requests for comment. But Jackson told POLITICO that EPA was eager to help them because the Obama-era requirements would have unfairly limited oil and gas production on the tribal lands compared with other nearby operations.

Jackson said the stricter permitting process for oil and gas companies in Utah would have been “entirely unnecessary and entirely unfair.” EPA is likely to pursue a broader rewrite of the rule, in addition to the carve-out for the Uinta Basin, he added.

“Why are we disadvantaging Indian country?” he said, “That makes no sense.”

But Jackson has it backward, said Jon Goldstein, director of regulatory and legislative affairs for the Environmental Defense Fund.

“What’s unfair is asking people to continue to breathe unhealthy air that has consequences,” Goldstein said.

While Himmelstein wanted EPA to remove the stipulation that drillers in any tribal areas that failed to meet ozone requirements must apply for source-by-source permits, EPA instead drafted an amendment specific to the Uinta basin.

The amendment would provide a “permanent mechanism for streamlining construction authorizations” on the reservation, including in areas not meeting ozone standards, EPA’s fact sheet explains. It notes that EPA is also working on a rule for the reservation to reduce ozone-forming emissions “while allowing continued development of its oil and natural gas resources.”

Himmelstein, who has long been acquainted with Jackson and met socially on several occasions with him last year, first emailed the EPA chief of staff and then-White House special assistant on energy Mike Catanzaro in June 2017 about setting up a meeting with the two companies.

“We need your help,” Himmelstein wrote. “The Uinta Basin in Northeast Utah (Rob Bishop’s district) is going to be listed as an ozone non-attainment area later this year. It is a prolific oil and gas producing area that encompasses state, tribal and federal lands.”

Pruitt had agreed to meet with QEP when he spoke at the American Exploration and Production Council in late May, Himmelstein reminded in another exchange.

Bishop’s spokesperson said the lawmaker’s phone call to Pruitt was part the Natural Resources Committee chairman’s efforts to press for changes in permitting and air quality rules in the Uinta Basin.

“This is an issue that dates back many years. The Chairman had numerous similar conversations with Pruitt’s predecessor, Gina McCarthy. The issue has not been resolved and Chairman Bishop continues to advocate for reasonable regulatory reforms that will protect and enhance the lives of the people of Utah’s first congressional district,” Bishop’s spokesperson said.

Anthony Adragna contributed to this report.

Filed Under:

White House

EPA

Oil

Oil and gas

Donald Trump

Utah

Sierra Club

Scott Pruitt

AN 7 26

Trump is targeting American history itself in a new push that looks less like patriotism and more like political control.

Trump is specifically targeting the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, or ACHP, which *The New Republic's* Timothy Noah warns is at work trying to destroy historic preservation of national sites and even Native American tribes.

ACHP regulators deal specifically with Section 106 of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act, which requires federal agencies to consider how their projects might affect historic places before proceeding. So, if a project could damage or change a historic building, site or landmark, the ACHP steps in and works on ways to reduce harm. Trump, by contrast, wants to make huge changes that forever damage or eliminate historic landmarks, such as his bulldozing of the White House itself.

In his report, Noah said that Trump's ACHP is "reviewing" Section 106. The process of "reviewing" it is further along than Noah said he fully realized.

"Now the ACHP, which is under the firm control of President Donald Trump, has produced a draft notice of proposed rulemaking (text here and here) that would make it significantly easier for Trump 'to fast-track projects that destroy, or cause irreversible damage to, our historic places, with virtually no public oversight,' according to Sara Bronin, who chaired the ACHP under President Joe Biden. The ACHP is expected to publish the notice of proposed rulemaking by the end of this week," Noah wrote.

So far, Trump's plans have involved things like erecting his Arc de Trump, blocking Arlington National Cemetery and building the National Garden of American Heroes in West Potomac Park. However, projects like the East Wing prove he's fully prepared to take a wrecking ball to some of the most important public land in the United States.

"These regulatory changes would be like handing a box of matches to an arsonist," wrote Noah.

Greg Werkheiser, founding partner of Cultural Heritage Partners, told Noah, "We’ve never seen a proposal that would do this much damage to this much of the country’s history in one stroke.”

His group is currently dealing with litigation over Trump’s Kennedy Center overhaul, and Trump's idea to whitewash the grey Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

"Cultural Heritage Partners has set up an online war room to fight against the proposed Section 106 changes," Noah reported.

Bronin said, “I would encourage people not to get distracted by the types of projects that have been in the news, because these changes are geared toward a more systematic overhaul of the process” to “benefit some of the most destructive projects that are in the federal pipeline."

She explained that it isn't merely about building statues of himself in Washington; it's also about oil and mining operations in national parks protected by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

One case dates back to an effort by former GOP Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona, who slipped in a provision into a 2014 defense bill that moved an area of Arizona’s Tonto National Forest from ownership of the local indigenous community to an Australian mining company called Resolution Copper. The mining operation would "obliterate" the native community. The one thing standing in its way has been Section 106. However, the use of the term “geographically compact” is now preventing the land from being protected because it's so expansive.

Noah also said that the text claims “noncompact, unimproved natural features such as mountains, valleys, bodies of water or landscapes, including ethnographic landscapes, do not qualify as property for the purposes of section 106.”

It will likely grant Trump the license to dismantle the entire Oak Flat area, known as Chi’chil Biłdagoteel.

“These two words,” Bronin warned, “would greenlight a wave of destruction of our historic and culturally significant properties that we’ve never seen before.”

GMAIL DRILLED 5 26

IVe been thinking a lot about something the Oglala Lakota activist Nick Tilsen said to me in an interview for the story about him we’re publishing today on Drilled’s web site. We met in the office of the organization he founded, NDN Collective, in Rapid City, South Dakota last March. I was about to go pick up a flash drive from the Pennington County courthouse, containing body camera and surveillance video footage of the night a cop accused Tilsen of attempting to run him over.

He told me, “ I think that what people don't realize is when prosecutors and police bring politically motivated charges like this, it's often a narrative war.” I’ve been covering the criminalization of land and environmental defenders for a decade now, and that resonated.

You should go to Drilled’s web site, and read the story, but to summarize, in June 2022 Tilsen was attempting to observe as the officer questioned an Indigenous community member. Rapid City police have a reputation for discriminating against Indigenous residents, and Tilsen wanted to make sure the man wasn’t abused. He pulled into a parking spot where the cop was standing, and the officer accused Tilsen of trying to hit him. However, no charges were filed until a year later, four days before a protest that NDN Collective was planning, against racist policing. One day, the mayor gave a press conference calling the protest a public safety threat, and literally the next day Tilsen was accused of two felonies for the incident a year earlier. The case was finally dismissed this past March, after a trial ended with a hung juRY....

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AN 3 26

Hundreds of signs, merchandise and presentations by the National Park Service have been flagged by President Donald Trump’s administration for possible removal as part of its war against “ideological indoctrination.”

According to a NOTUS review of the material, an evaluation reveals that "in many instances, park staff acknowledged" the material was factual.

The removal reports were recently published online by an anonymous federal government employee and first reported by the Washington Post.

The removal requests were made to national parks, monuments and other sites. The order targets content that the administration deems “partisan” or “disparaging," according to Trump's executive order. Slavery, climate change and Native American issues were among the subjects to come under scrutiny.

The National Parks Conservation Association sued the Interior Department this month over removal of such content from park sites.

Whether the Interior Department and National Park Service subsequently reviewed each of the content reports isn’t clear. It has also avoided specifics on how much content is being removed or altered.

Molly Blake, a team member at Save Our Signs, told NOTUS the group has tracked hundreds of signs, displays and other material removed since Trump issued the executive order.

“The spreadsheet shows that the message that was sent is that we can’t talk about times in American history where people in power hurt other people. We can’t talk about times in American history where people’s civil rights were violated,” Blake said. “And that’s a really killing and disturbing development.”

A National Park Service spokesperson issued a statement calling such claims false.

The executive order has already had a chilling effect in some cases.

An exhibit at the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park that explores how people from different backgrounds can interpret archaeology in different ways was flagged as “factually accurite [sic], but submitting for review out of an abundance of caution,” the report said.

Another report that mentioned how Native American people were removed during development of the Transcontinental Railroad was also flagged, despite also being tagged as accurate by the reporting party.

“We understand a lot of folks are responding under duress, and I think that kind of comes out of some of the comments that have been leaked,” Blake said. “What I think is also just especially insidious is there’s no clear shared understanding of what it means to be quote-unquote ‘disparaging or inappropriate.’ And so then you get into these absurd situations where you’re reporting things that are historically accurate.”

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PRETTY OBLIQUE REF?

AN 7 25

Comments that Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) made about Indigenous people have recently resurfaced, and they could cause a headache for former President Donald Trump's campaign among Native American voters.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported Tuesday that when Vance argued last year against renaming the Wayne National Forest in Ohio, he referred to Native Americans as the "enemy." On another occasion, the GOP's 2024 vice presidential nominee called Indigenous People's Day — which some cities celebrate instead of Columbus Day — a "fake holiday."

Wayne National forest is named for Major General Anthony Wayne, who massacred Indigenous people during the Northwest Indian War, most notably during the Battle of Fallen Timbers in present-day Maumee, Ohio. When making his case against changing the name of the forest in spite of requests from Indigenous tribes, Vance wrote that "[Wayne] fought wars and won peace for our government, the government you now serve, and hewed Ohio out of rugged wilderness and occupied enemy territory."

Marin Webster Denning, who is a member of the Oneida tribe, said in an interview with the Journal-Sentinel that Native Americans are "not the enemy."

IFrame Content

"There is an occupation, and there are enemies, but revisions of history like this erase us," he said.

"Some people may view [Wayne] as a hero," Oneida activist and Milwaukee, Wisconsin resident Jacob Abrams told the paper. "[B]ut not for us."

Vance's disparaging comments about a holiday celebrating Indigenous culture in 2021 are also being scrutinized in the wake of the Ohio senator's selection as Trump's running mate. ICT Journalist Mary Annette Pember of the Red Cliff Ojibwe Tribal Nation in Wisconsin dug up a **tweet from Vance during President Joe Biden's first year in office in which the eventual Ohio seantor wrote: “Indigenous Peoples’ Day is a fake holiday created to sow division. Of course Joe Biden is the first president to pay it any attention."

"A half a millennium ago Columbus used technology developed in Europe to sail across a giant ocean and discover a new continent. Today we celebrate that daring and ingenuity," he wrote in a follow-up tweet. "Happy Columbus Day!"

Indigenous People's Day became a substitute for Columbus Day as knowledge of Columbus' brutal enslavement of Indigenous people in the Caribbean broke through into mainstream consciousness. Spanish Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas, who accompanied Columbus on several of his expeditions, described some of Columbus' atrocities in his journal.

"[Spaniards acted] like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola once so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred persons," he wrote in 1542. "And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house."

Vance's comments about Native Americans may hurt the Trump campaign's voter outreach efforts, particularly in Arizona. Biden won the Grand Canyon State by roughly 11,000 votes in 2020, largely due to turnout from Indigenous voters in Navajo country.

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7 25

ann-coulter-attacks-tribal-sovereignty-160127950

Opinion. Between 1492 and 1900, millions of Indigenous people across Turtle Island—a term many Native peoples use to refer to North America—died as a result of disease, violence, and forced displacement following European colonization. Scholars estimate between 4 million and 18 million Indigenous people perished during this period. By 1900, the Native American population in what is now the United States had fallen to approximately 237,000.

In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt wrote in the foreword of Edmund S. Curtis’s book, The North American Indian: “The Indian as he has hitherto been is on the point of passing away.” This served as both encouragement and endorsement for Curtis to photograph Native Americans, based on the belief that they were a “vanishing race.”

Apparently, the millions of Indians killed were not enough for right-wing conservative pundit Ann Coulter. Earlier this week, Coulter responded to a video clip of Diné professor Melanie Yazzie advocating for tribal sovereignty by posting on X (formerly Twitter): “We didn't kill enough Indians.”

This wasn’t random hate speech. Coulter was specifically attacking tribal sovereignty and our continued existence.

Her racist post was reportedly viewed over 10 million times.

In the clip, Yazzie, who spoke at a December 3, 2023 "teach in" in Minneapolis encouraged attendees to “lean into the fact that colonizers are scared” and argued that decolonization of the United States could address environmental and other concerns. Rather than engage with the substance of Yazzie’s tribal sovereignty comments, Coulter chose genocidal rhetoric.

Coulter’s since-deleted post drew immediate backlash from Native American tribal leaders and organizations, who denounced it as a dangerous incitement to violence against Native communities.

Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr. called Coulter’s post “beyond abhorrent” and dangerous hate speech designed to inflict damage on a marginalized community.

“The country frequently seems on the verge of political violence,” Hoskin said. “Coulter’s post implicitly encourages it.”

The National Indian Health Board issued a statement calling Coulter's language “violence—violence that echoes through generations, reopens wounds, and contributes to the devastating rates of depression, suicide, and trauma that too many of our Native youth are forced to carry.”

This language isn’t just hateful rhetoric. It echoes the genocidal violence Native Americans have endured for centuries since European contact. Her post brought me back to the images of frozen bodies at the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890.

A public figure casually suggesting that more Indigenous people should have been killed isn’t protected free speech — it’s incitement cloaked in historical erasure.

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an tom dispatch long

Trump's new greed deal the ultimate act of destruction the prophets have predicted - Alternet.org

apache stronghold

...

“The U.S. government is rushing to give away our spiritual home before the courts can even rule — just like it rushed to erase Native people for generations,” said Nosie of Apache Stronghold following the decision. “This is the same violent pattern we have seen for centuries.”

While Trump’s antagonism toward Native sovereignty isn’t surprising, it may be puzzling why his administration is so concerned with the nation’s supply of critical minerals like Oak Flat’s copper. As he’s made clear, Trump believes climate change to be a hoax invented by China, and he’s done his best to impede the growth of the renewable energy sector. Yet, like many of Trump’s other bombastic policy proposals, the undercurrents here appear more driven by ego than by ideology.

Trump’s Not Green But Greed New Deal

If Donald Trump has one defining trait, it’s his need to dominate in almost any imaginable situation. Illustrated by his falsehoods and refusal to acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, he not only hates losing (and that’s putting it mildly!) but also refuses to concede defeat. And one thing is certain: the U.S. is losing control over the world’s mineral resources to China.

When it comes to critical minerals, the Chinese not only control most of the mines but also maintain and operate the majority of the world’s processing facilities. No other country comes close in the race for critical minerals. China finances the majority of critical mineral projects worldwide, totaling $57 billion over the past 20 years. It holds 35% of the globe’s reserves, but is responsible for 70% of their extraction and 87% of their processing on this planet.

In contrast, the U.S. relies entirely on China and other places for 12 of the 50 minerals on its “List of Critical Minerals” and is more than 50% dependent on imports for 28 more. Those minerals include metals like aluminum, cobalt, graphite, and lithium. And being “critical” doesn’t mean they are in short supply. For instance, believe it or not, the U.S. already has an excess supply of copper, which makes the proposed mine at Oak Flat all the more unnecessary and insidious. Adding to the absurdity, China’s Chinalco conglomerate holds almost 15% of Rio Tinto, so mining Oak Flat will, in the end, still benefit the Chinese.

While Biden’s Department of Energy allocated $19.5 million to increase domestic production of such minerals, $43 million to enhance battery technologies for EVs, and another $150 million to build processing facilities, that amount pales in comparison to China’s $230 billioninvestment in its EV market from 2009 to 2023 alone. Unsurprisingly, China now accounts for 62% of the world’s EVs and 77% of the batteries that power them. And it’s not just about the green tech. All those minerals shipped from China (80% of the U.S. supply) are also used as components for Artificial Intelligence and in the work of carmakers, aerospace companies, the defense industry, and others.

We know Trump doesn’t care about the climate or green energy policies, which he’s called a “scam.” Still, he understands that whoever commands those resources has the power to navigate the future of the global economy. Today, 30% of the world’s energy is produced by renewables (up 10% since 2010). Although fossil fuels still dominate, green energy is set to grow 90% by 2030. Nothing that Trump does can alter this trajectory — and now he evidently wants in.

On April 24th, the Department of the Interior, after being prodded by Trump, announced that it would eliminate environmental reviews and fast-track the development of oil, gas, and critical minerals on public lands.

“The United States cannot afford to wait,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement. “We are cutting through unnecessary delays to fast-track the development of American energy and critical minerals — resources that are essential to our economy, our military readiness, and our global competitiveness.”

Burgum was sounding the alarm, even if there was no real bell to ring. After all, the U.S. already has more fossil fuels than it knows what to do with. Weeks earlier, amid Trump’s escalating tariff war, China had retaliated by threatening to end shipments of critical minerals to the United States, all but flatlining Trump’s hopes of reinvigorating the American manufacturing sector.

There were, however, a couple of problems with Burgum’s edict (and Trump’s emergency energy decree that preceded it). First, it takes a significant amount of time to get a mine up and running (on average, 16 years), and it’s not always environmental reviews that are to blame. You need to find the resource, gather investors, and build out the necessary infrastructure, which may include roads and other facilities. None of this will happen quickly enough to offset China’s threat, even without environmental reviews. Second, although the U.S. does have a wealth of critical minerals in its backyard, it doesn’t maintain the processing facilities needed to handle them. Mining a bunch of new metals without refinement centers is an exercise in futility, akin to pumping millions of gallons of oil without the refineries to turn it all into gasoline.

Even so, this reality hasn’t stopped the over-eager Trump, who worked to cut a deal with Ukraine for access to its mineral wealth and has his sights set on nabbing Greenland’s as well. No doubt, Elon Musk, who has long criticized the U.S. for lagging behind China when it comes to mineral dominance, has been advising Trump to get a move on, even if it’s too late.

That MAGA Energy

What such critical mineral mining means for the future of the climate remains uncertain. Yet, as Trump has made clear, his insistence that the U.S. should open public lands for exploration isn’t about reducing carbon emissions at all. In fact, he’s hellbent on increasing them. It’s about bolstering U.S. capitalism, enriching mining companies, and, well, Making America (and undoubtedly Donald Trump) Great Again....

kpfa 9 24 Fund Drive Special with Kathleen Duval | KPFA

native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal

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judd 2 25

A Texas county has mandated public libraries move a well-regarded children's book documenting the mistreatment of Native Americans in New England — Colonization and the Wampanoag Story — from the "non-fiction" section to "fiction." The decision was made after the government of Montgomery County, under pressure from right-wing activists, removed librarians from the process of reviewing children's books and replaced them with a "Citizens Review Committee." Colonization and the Wampanoag Storywas "challenged" by an unknown person on September 10, 2024. The Committee responded by ordering that the book be moved to the fiction section of public libraries in Montgomery County by October 17, 2024, according to public records obtained by the Texas Freedom To Read Project shared with Popular Information.

The author of Colonization and the Wampanoag Story is Linda Coombs, a "historian from the Wampanoag Tribe." Coombs spent three decades working at the Wampanoag Indigenous Program, an initiative to preserve the history of the Wampanoag people. The book is published by Penguin Random House, which describes the book as "[t]he true story of the Indigenous Nations of the American Northeast, including the Wampanoag nation and others, and their history up to present day."

Colonization and the Wampanoag Storytells the real story of the brutalization of the Wampanoag people by European settlers. An excerpt:

[C]ertain ship captain began kidnapping Wampanoag men and those of other tribal nations along the coast. Sailors invited them aboard their ships under the pretense of trading, then lifted anchor and sailed away. The men were prisoners, stolen from their families and homes.

They were taken to England and Spain to be sold into slavery and paraded through the streets as "novelties," something for the people of Europe to gawk at as curiosities — not as human beings. Imagine how these men must of felt when they realized their situation: they would never see their children, parents, wives, relatives or communities and homelands again. What a terrible shock for all their families when they realized their men were gone — just disappeared forever.

This is fact, not fiction.

In addition to telling the history of the Wampanoag people, the book also includes several parables. But these sections are identified in italics. It does not change that it is a history book, which is why it is classified as non-fiction by the Library of Congress. The book's Library of Congress classification begins with "E99," the non-fiction classification for books about Native American peoples. It is also classified as non-fiction by Penguin Random House, the Houston Public Library, the Austin Public Library, and the Fort Worth Public Library.

The move to reclassify Colonization and the Wampanoag Storycomes after a controversial decision last March to remove librarians from the decision-making process when a children's book carried by Montgomery County is challenged. Previously, there was an advisory committee comprised of five librarians and five community members. As a result of the change, the librarians were removed from the Committee, and the determinations of the new Committee, which consisted of five non-librarians, became binding.

The change to the book review process was driven by a local right-wing group, Two Moms and Some Books. The group is led by Michele Nuckolls, a local mother. Nuckolls believes "children’s books with alternate gender ideology to be moved to the adult section." The group also is demanding more "conservative and Christian’s [sic] books in the public library." The group is especially enthusiastic about titles from Brave Books, which publishes children's books from far-right authors like Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Donald Trump's former press secretary Sean Spicer, and Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn. In case there is any confusion about the objectives of the group, its slogan is "Make Libraries Great Again!"

Before the change to the review process, Nuckolls expressed frustration that the local library system was not altering its holding to conform to her ideology. Nuckolls then successfully lobbied the Montgomery County Commission to change the policy and put non-librarians in charge:

“It’s been a long road,” said Michele Nuckolls, a Montgomery County mom who advocates for keeping the children’s section of local libraries safe and appropriate for kids.

“I first sounded the alarm about concerning children’s books at commissioners court a year ago,” Nuckolls told Texas Scorecard…

“I challenged two of the most alarming children’s books late last year and the committee head, a librarian, sent me a letter saying that they would stay right where they were,” said Nuckolls. “The old policy was not working.”

Under the new policy, once a children's book is challenged, it must immediately be moved to the adult section, with only adults allowed to access it. The book is then considered by the Citizens Review Committee at a meeting that is "closed to the public except for the Resident who made a formal request for review." The decisions of the Citizen's Review Committee are final, and there is no appeals process.

From the outset, critics of the new policy warned that it could be abused.

Teresa Kenney, a Montgomery County resident who owns an independent bookstore, submitted a public records request revealing the decision to reclassify Colonization and the Wampanoag Story. No explanation for the decision was provided.

The Committee's decision to reclassify Colonization and the Wampanoag Storymay have exceeded the Committee's authority. The new policy allows the Committee "to reassign the material to a more restrictive portion of the library" or "recommend removal of a material." There is no provision for changing the classification of a children's book from non-fiction to fiction. But with no appeals process, it's unclear whether the decision can be challenged.

At the October 8, 2024, meeting of the Montgomery County Commission, Kenney spoke about her ongoing concerns regarding the Citizens Review Committee. She asked the Montgomery County Commission to "return librarian oversight to the review process and open the meetings to the public for complete transparency." Her request was tabled.

Members of the Montgomery County Commission and the Citizens Review Committee did not respond to requests for comment.

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an 12 24

As lawmakers across the country consider requiring documented proof of U.S. citizenship to vote, Arizona’s voter roll provides clues as to which voters will struggle to provide it.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Voters living on Native land, on college campuses, and at the state’s main homeless campus are all disproportionately represented among voters in Arizona who haven’t provided proof of citizenship, according to a Votebeat analysis of the list of eligible voters who hadn’t provided proof of citizenship for the presidential election. Such voters also were three times less likely to vote this past November than voters who had provided proof of citizenship, the analysis found.

The data shows that, while GOP lawmakers pushing for a documentation requirement say they are attempting to prevent noncitizens from voting — a rare occurrence, according to all available evidence — the requirement in Arizona appears to be disenfranchising some Americans.

Arizona is the only state in the country currently limiting voting for those who don’t prove citizenship by providing a birth certificate or another qualifying document. Such voters can cast ballots in federal elections, but not state and local elections.

The voters who don’t provide such documents are marked as a “federal-only” voter and receive a ballot with just presidential and congressional contests. This applied to less than 1% of the state’s voter roll, or 34,933 out of around 4.4 million active voters eligible for this past November election.

In all other states, voters simply attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury. They don’t have to provide documents proving it.

Voters living on tribal land, college campuses, and at the state’s largest homeless campus frequently tell advocacy organizations that they aren’t able to provide documents proving their citizenship because they don’t have easy or immediate access to them when registering. And many college students and Native voters first register to vote at third-party registration drives away from home when they hadn’t necessarily planned to do so, and don’t follow up later to provide additional documentation.

Allie Redhorse Young, director and founder of Navajo advocacy group Protect the Sacred, said it’s just another barrier for Native voters who have long faced challenges voting.

“It’s pretty outrageous for the first people who lived in this country to have these challenges trying to vote,” Young said.

Here’s everything we know about who Arizona’s federal-only voters are, and where they live.

Federal-only voters are unlikely voters in Arizona

The vast majority of federal-only voters are on the list because they didn’t provide documentation of citizenship. But a minimal number are on the list because they haven’t provided proof of residency required under a new state law.

Together, the voters in Arizona who haven’t provided proof of citizenship or residency make up a tiny portion of the state’s voter roll.

These federal-only voters also voted far less often than registered voters in general.

Turnout from active voters who hadn’t provided documents proving citizenship in Arizona was about 19% in the November presidential election, compared to 79% turnout among other active registered voters.

Federal-only voters are spread out pretty evenly across the state with the vast majority of precincts having just a dozen or fewer.

But there are some places where they are more concentrated.

Many federal-only voters live on tribal land

Voters living on tribal land are more likely to find themselves on the federal-only list.

Of all active federal-only voters, 7.3% live in precincts on or close to reservations, whereas voters on tribal land make up only 2.5% of all registered voters, according to a Votebeat analysis. And only 3.6% of the voting-age population in the state is Indigenous, according to U.S. Census voter population estimates. Many of those people do not live on tribal land.

In particular, some precincts on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona saw higher per-capita rates of federal-only voters, compared to precincts in the rest of the state.

There are a few reasons why Indigenous voters may not provide proof of citizenship as often, according to Native voting advocates.

For one, there’s been a big push in recent years to get Indigenous voters registered to vote, so many organizations host voter registration drives at community events or at chapter houses on tribal land. If the voter doesn’t have documentation with them at those events, Young with Protect the Sacred said, it’s a long way back home to get it.

Young’s group hosts voter registration events on the Navajo Nation, including her highly publicized get-out-the-vote horseback rides.

“If they show up without this documentation, it’s likely they aren’t going to drive the 40 minutes and back again,” she said.

Young said the organizations hosting the drive must be clear to residents, before and during the event, that they need to provide this documentation. But she said she knows that some groups conducting voter registration drives on the Navajo reservation turn in incomplete or inaccurate forms.

Young also said many elders living on the reservation may not have documentation proving citizenship at all. Votebeat’s analysis confirmed that the federal-only voters in precincts containing tribal land are generally older than those elsewhere. In fact, 16% of federal-only voters on precincts containing tribal land were 65 and older, compared to 10% in the rest of the state.

Some of these older residents may not have an Arizona driver’s license, which can be used to prove citizenship if issued after 1996, and also may not have a birth certificate. They could potentially have a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood, which can also be used to prove citizenship. But, Young said, “it’s one of those documents you don’t have in your wallet.”

Of the federal-only voters who cast ballots in November, at least 8% live on or near tribal land, according to the analysis.

Many federal-only voters are on college campuses

There are just seven precincts, out of roughly 1,700 in the state, where more than 5% of voters cast federal-only ballots in November. They all either include parts of, or are adjacent to, college campuses.

At least 6% of people relegated to the federal-only voter roll live in just three precincts at the center of each of the state’s three public universities’ main campuses. That percentage doubles if expanded to include nearby precincts that include student housing.

Federal-only voters make up 29% of the voters in those three precincts, compared with 0.8% of the overall voter roll.

Student advocates believe they know why college students are landing on the list: Like tribal land, college campuses are targeted by organizations trying to register new voters in the state.

Kyle Nitschke, the organizing director of the Arizona Students’ Association, helps run some of those voter registration drives. Data from his past registration drives found that around 1 in 3 of the students registering have not been able to provide an in-state driver’s license or other form of citizenship proof on the spot at such events.

Nitschke said that’s because many students are originally from out of state, and these drives take place when they first move to Arizona to attend college. So they’re eligible to vote there, but may not have an Arizona-issued driver’s license or have their birth certificate handy.

Changes that went into effect this summer, under a new law requiring proof of residency and requiring state registration forms to be rejected outright if citizenship is not provided, made it even more complicated to get a new student full ballot status, Nitschke said.

Nitsche cautions other states against passing proof of citizenship laws, because he’s seen its impact on the college student population.

“It’s not about citizenship, like they say it is,” he said. “It’s an attack on student voters, and voters from out of state. It just doesn’t solve a problem.”

In the November election, around 7% of federal-only voters who cast ballots live in the three precincts at the center of the main college campuses.

Federal-only voters are often young and unaffiliated

In a potentially related finding, the data show that federal-only voters are generally younger than the voting-age population in the state.

People 18 to 24 years old are roughly 3.6 times as likely to be federal-only voters than people 25 and older.

The federal-only voters who voted in November also followed this pattern.

They’re also more likely to not belong to a political party, compared to all registered voters. That makes sense because these voters are younger, which means they are newer voters, and newer voters are generally less often affiliated with a major party.

But unaffiliated voters, generally, vote at lower rates, and the same was true for those on the federal-only list. Therefore, the political makeup of federal-only voters who actually cast ballots in November looked more like the political makeup of the general voting population.

Arizona doesn’t collect race or ethnicity information from voters when they register, so Votebeat was unable to analyze either.

But in testimony given during a trial on Arizona’s citizenship laws in 2023, Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida, told the judge that his analysis found that federal-only voters live in communities that are more diverse, compared to full-ballot voters. The average community for a registered voter in Arizona is 62.9 percent non-Hispanic white, he said, but the average community of a federal-only voter is 47.3 percent non-Hispanic white.

A hot spot on a homeless campus

The other hotspot precinct in the state containing a larger number of federal-only voters includes the state’s main homeless campus, Keys to Change, in downtown Phoenix. The campus has mailboxes that people can use as a mailing address.

There are 510 voters registered at the address, and around half of them, or 269, are federal-only voters, according to Maricopa County data.

Those 269 voters make up 40% of the 669 federal-only voters in the precinct.

Rick Mitchell, executive director of the Phoenix-based Homeless ID Project, said there are several reasons why someone experiencing homelessness might not have a state ID or birth certificate. His organization helps people get new documents, and store them.

Mitchell said people who have recently been evicted, who are aging out of foster care, or who are fleeing domestic violence are among those he helps obtain new identification. He also sees some people who have lost their documents as they move around or live on the street.

In 2023, his organization helped around 20 individuals a day get a birth certificate, and around 40 a day get a new state identification card.

When people come looking for help, they are often trying to get a new job, get housing, or get into school. While getting an ID, they will be asked through the Motor Vehicle Division if they want to register to vote.

Those people might then land on the federal-only list.

But only 19 people of the 669 on the list voted in the November election from the precinct where the homeless campus is located. It has one of the lowest federal-only voting rates in the state, despite having the fourth highest share of federal-only voters.

The people who Mitchell helps have other priorities, he said.

“If I have nothing, and I’m trying to get reestablished, voting isn’t one of them.”

Kae Petrin is a data reporter for Votebeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

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exxonknews gmail 12 24

Who’s funding this ‘newspaper’ mailed to potential jurors in Greenpeace’s trial?

A dark money trail linked to pipeline company Energy Transfer could be behind a mysterious mailer targeting North Dakota residents in the lead-up to its major trial with Greenpeace.

The following piece was co-published by DeSmog and ExxonKnews.

In early September, fossil fuel executive and Donald Trump megadonor Kelcy Warren quietly made a large donation to a political action committee few people have ever heard of. Warren is CEO of Energy Transfer, the company behind the infamous Dakota Access Pipeline, which in 2016 faced thousands of protesters including members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other opponents.

The timing is potentially significant because Warren made his $5 million donation to the super PAC called Turnout for America while his company pushed forward with a lawsuit against the nonprofit Greenpeace related to the Standing Rock protests.

Two weeks after receiving Warren’s contribution, Turnout for America paid $250,000 to Northern CB Corp. — an Illinois publishing and printing company — for “media services.”

One of the listed directors for Northern CB Corp. is Brian Timpone, a conservative businessman who owns Chicago-based company Metric Media, a Koch-linked network that runs more than 1,100 partisan websites masquerading as local news.

In October, residents in Morton County, where the Greenpeace trial is scheduled to take place, received a mailed publication called “Central ND News,” which featured articles decrying the Dakota Access protests and praising Energy Transfer. Central ND News is produced by Metric Media.

While news of this “weird” paper was first reported by Floodlight and the North Dakota News Cooperative, additional details related to Warren’s Super PAC donation are now being debated in the lawsuit itself.

Greenpeace is urging a North Dakota court to allow further investigation into who paid to send the publication attacking Dakota Access protestors to Morton County residents — and whether there was an attempt to exert “improper influence” over potential jurors in Energy Transfer’s favor.

“Given the importance of securing a fair and impartial jury … knowing who was directing these actions, to whom they directed the information, and why they did so are important issues to the fair administration of justice,” a Greenpeace brief shared with ExxonKnews and DeSmog reads.

A closely watched lawsuit

Energy Transfer’s $300 million lawsuit accuses the environmental group Greenpeace of unlawfully orchestrating protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016 and 2017, during which time hundreds of protestors were arrested near the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation — including climate activists and Indigenous water protectors.

Energy Transfer, which worked with law enforcement agencies to curtail the protests and used an international security firm to surveil and shift public opinion about the company’s opponents, claims that Greenpeace waged an “unlawful, malicious, and coordinated attack” to damage and defame the pipeline and the company itself.

**According to Greenpeace USA, Energy Transfer is suing the group because it “dared to uplift the Indigenous-led opposition movement at Standing Rock.”

The lawsuit could have implications for whether the fossil fuel industry is able to silence protesters as it embarks on major expansions, including the buildout of new gas and carbon dioxide pipelines, Gulf Coast LNG facilities, and petrochemical infrastructure. Experts and advocates say the case has all the hallmarks of a SLAPP, or strategic lawsuit against public participation — a larger legal tactic fossil fuel companies have been using to suppress dissent and drain their opposition of resources and time.

As the February 2025 trial draws near in the closely watched case, Greenpeace is now asking a state district court to grant an emergency motion to reopen discovery in the case, which would allow the environmental group to get more information about who funded the mailer to North Dakota residents.

In its new court filing, Greenpeace alleges that “there may have been improper influence over potential Morton County jurors through direct mailers containing negative reporting about Standing Rock protests that took place eight years ago, and benefits which Energy Transfer conferred on the local community six years ago.”

Greenpeace cites new details indicating that Kelcy Warren’s donation came around the same time as a surge of coverage from Central ND News targeting the Dakota Access protests. Central ND News began running a series on its website in August, called “On This Date in 2016.” The series contained six articles in August, three of which accused protestors of “unlawful” activities in their headlines. Subsequent articles in the series appeared a few times each month up until this week. There is no record of the paper covering those protests before this year.

The same day Turnout for America paid the Illinois publishing company, Central ND News published a story praising a donation that Energy Transfer made to a university in North Dakota six years ago. That story, written by C.D. Marsden (a name that Floodlight first found yields no results in a Google search), was featured in the October newspaper delivered to Morton County residents’ homes, juxtaposed with stories about Dakota Access pipeline protestors.

The 12-page paper included those stories in a section called “This Month in History: October 2016,” featuring one article titled “Area schools locked down as authorities respond to pipeline protests.” Another recounts the details of a felony arrest warrant accusing a pipeline protestor of charging a police officer on horseback.

“The purpose of that publication is quite clearly to remind people about what was happening eight years ago,” a lawyer for Greenpeace, Everett Jack, told the court at a December 9 hearing requesting the reopening of discovery. “We should be entitled to find out who made that decision.”

pix

One of Greenpeace’s lawyers — Derrick Braaten, who resides in Mandan, a city in Morton County — received the Central ND News at his home in October. The paper doesn’t appear to have any physical presence in North Dakota — it directed readers to the outlet’s website, and didn’t include any local advertisements, according to Greenpeace.*

Jack told Southwest Judicial District Court Judge James Gion that reopening discovery would allow Greenpeace’s attorneys to question the Texas-based printing company that sent the newspaper, FMC Printing. The group would seek to subpoena FMC Printing to determine whether the mailer was targeted only to Morton County residents, who directed that the mailer be sent there, and why. Depending on the results of that investigation, Greenpeace would consider requesting a change in venue for the trial.

“We’re filing this motion and seeking this discovery because I think this court would agree there’s nothing more sacred in the legal system than the right to a fair, impartial jury, and every lawyer knows that direct efforts to influenc[e] the jury pool are not okay,” Jack said.

‘Playing both sides’

Greenpeace has been fighting varying iterations of Energy Transfer’s case — which was originally filed under state and federal racketeering charges — for eight years, with individual Indigenous protestors and journalists also brought into the mix. This week, the Minnesota Supreme Court heard an appeal from Energy Transfer in its attempts to subpoena journalists who reported on the protests at Standing Rock, seeking to force them to produce confidential, unpublished material.

The Dakota Access pipeline began operating through North Dakota in 2017 after an executive action from then-President Trump. The pipeline, which protestors warned would threaten water supplies, sacred sites, and the climate, leaked 5 times in its first year of operation alone.

This fall, the day before the October mailing was sent, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed a new lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers arguing that the pipeline is operating illegally and should be shut down. Energy Transfer CEO Warren gave $5 million in campaign donations to Trump, who recently promised “fully expedited approvals and permits” to companies who invest $1 billion in the U.S.

:{Energy Transfer’s case, originally filed by the firm Kasowitz Benson Torres (long-time lawyers for Donald Trump), was taken over in 2023 by Gibson Dunn, a law firm with a record of “playing both sides” of the First Amendment on behalf of its corporate clients. }:{:Gibson Dunn}: lawyer Trey Cox represented Energy Transfer in its opposition to Greenpeace’s motion this week, arguing that juror questionnaires are the appropriate method to ensure a fair trial — and that whether or not Morton County residents received or read the newspaper was irrelevant.

ND Central News, he said, was a local newspaper that existed before the mailer was sent, and was simply covering matters involving a high-profile trial. Cox accused Greenpeace of trying to delay the trial date (which Greenpeace denied), and said its motion did not have “any basis in law or in fact.”

Energy Transfer, Metric Media, and Trey Cox did not respond to requests for comment.

“We don’t have any evidence that this newspaper in any way prejudiced potential jurors,” Cox told the court.

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10 24

ymail

Did you see the recent email from our ally in Congress, Representative Raúl Grijalva (R-AZ)? He’s urging his colleagues in Congress to reject a new giveaway to the fossil fuel industry: coal baron Senator Joe Manchin’s (I-WV) Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.

This legislation would weaken and even eliminate public input and community approvals for dirty energy projects on Native homelands. Already, the U.S. federal government has frequently failed to get the required consent of Tribal Nations before moving ahead with large-scale projects affecting Tribal lands and waters, like the Dakota Access Pipeline. The U.S. federal government owes Tribes Nation-to-Nation relationships where we co-manage our lands and waters. We can’t let corporate polluters and their government allies further desecrate Tribal sovereignty or Mother Earth.

After the *Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 was introduced, the group Appalachian Voices wrote:

*“The Energy Permitting Reform Act is a fossil-fuel industry wishlist. If lawmakers want to reform our energy permitting process, they should start by listening to the people living near these projects, not the fossil fuel industries that extract resources from those communities and leave them with polluted air and water. And they should follow the example of Rep. Raúl Grijalva’s A. Donald McEachin Environmental Justice For All Act, which is what permitting reform should look like.”

The A. Donald McEachin Environmental Justice For All Act would ensure that Native communities are part of the decision-making processes about our lands and waters, recognizing the Nation-to-Nation relationships that Tribes are owed. We need policies like that, not policies that threaten Mother Earth and undermine Indigenous peoples’ inherent and legal right to sovereignty....

As the ranking member of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Natural Resources Committee, I’ve worked with Tribes and Native-led groups like Native Organizers Alliance Action Fund on policies to protect sacred places and defend Indigenous sovereignty.

Right now, we’re trying to stop another dangerous policy from Big Oil and their polluter friends to fast-track approvals for dirty energy and mining projects.

Senators Manchin and Barrasso introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024, which would attack our bedrock environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act -- undermining the main tools that communities and Tribes can use to protect themselves from polluting projects.

We cannot allow the federal government to further silence Native communities, whose voices have already been suppressed throughout this country’s long history of laws and policies to deny Native and Tribal communities their rights. Tribes should have more input in crucial policy decisions that affect their lands and waters, not less....

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alt rt not stolen conquered

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On March 14, 2024, Pope Francis on Thursday encouraged a closer collaboration between Indigenous and scientific knowledge to address climate change, the loss of biodiversity, and threats to food and health security facing the world today.

The National Indian Health Board on Tuesday said the Pope’s acknowledgement is a step forward.

The Pope’s recognition of the value of Indigenous knowledge resonates deeply with the National Indian Health Board’s International work that has focused on defining and improving Indigenous Determinants of Health to improve the health and well-being of all American Indian, Alaska Natives, and Indigenous Peoples globally, the National Indian Health Board said in a press release.

Indian Country

“The National Indian Health Board has worked towards, and supports the Pope’s focus on a world view that incorporates Indigenous knowledge and determinants of health in the broader global efforts to mitigate climate change,” Stacy Bohlen, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, NIHB CEO said. “This is another acknowledgement that follows others on the international stage, that indigenous peoples hold game changing solutions to many modern problems through both longstanding knowledge and their experiences.”

The National Indian Health Boards has long recognized that Indigenous cultures hold valuable insights into sustainable living and environmental stewardship. Through millennia of living in harmony with nature, Indigenous communities have developed a profound understanding of ecological systems and the interconnectedness of all living beings.

“The culture of Indigenous people can heal the earth and its people,” William Smith, a citizen of the EYAK Tribe in the Alaska Village of Valdez and Chairman of NIHB said. “It is imperative that we elevate indigenous voices and incorporate their knowledge into global efforts to address the climate crisis.”

icwa

Berkeley Talks transcript: The future of the Indian Child Welfare Act

...So it's not just about ICWA, it's also about the nature of the relationship between the United States and tribal governments. It's not a racial classification. So we were very concerned that this argument would be picked up by the Supreme Court and that it had the potential not just to overturn ICWA, and to be clear that's what was being asked, but that it could eventually cause additional laws treating Indians differently and potentially overturning the very nature of what Indian law is in the United States. So that was really our concern. Obviously we wanted all of ICWA to be upheld, but we were particularly concerned, and particularly with this court, that they would find a racial classification to exist.

The lower court, the 5th Circuit Court, the briefing, the amicus briefs filed at the 5th Circuit give you a good understanding of just how many people were concerned about the potential of overturning ICWA. Over 480 tribal nations filed briefs with the court. Fifty-nine American Indian organizations filed briefs with the court and 26 states on behalf of the tribal nations or the United States in this case. So it was clear that this was a benchmark case in the coming and that there was a tremendous amount at stake.

The case was argued in November of 2022, and we received the decision near the end of the court's term just last June, and it was very painful time waiting for that decision and sort of trying to reckon with what would happen if ICWA was overturned. So each Monday or each day that the court released an opinion, had an opinion release day, many of us were refreshing our browser on SCOTUS blog or on the Supreme Court website just constantly refreshing our browsers because this case was so important that we wanted to know immediately what was the outcome and ICWA was upheld, and by a margin in that we did not predict. It was seven votes for ICWA and two votes against.

One of the concerns that folks had was we had two adoptive parents on the court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett. And we were concerned obviously that, as adoptive parents, they might perceive the issues in this case differently. But in fact, both Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett voted in favor of ICWA. There were two dissents by Justice Thomas and Justice Alito. Justice Amy Coney Barrett actually authored the decision with a very strong concurrence from Justice Neil Gorsuch. So we had Trump appointed attorneys that were voting in favor of upholding ICWA as a constitutional act of Congress.

The justices rejected the argument around congressional power. Arguing that Congress does have the power to pass ICWA. They also rejected the anti-commandeering argument, which was a 10th amendment argument and upheld ICWA. It also found, when it comes to equal protection, I guess I would say that, in my mind, I think the court sort of to use a football analogy sort of punted, they did not directly address the equal protection argument, which was the one we were most concerned about, and found that the plaintiffs lack standing to even raise the equal protection argument. So they did not decide the equal protection argument.

They punted and instead turned to standing and found that the plaintiffs did not have the requisite standing to raise these constitutional arguments. So it was a victory, but it was, and I don't want to minimize it because it was a tremendous victory, but we do still have now this sort of looming question as to whether or not this court would find other Indian legislation potentially in violation of the equal protection clause, because we don't have a finding here that this is a political classification. So for now, ICWA remains good law, and there are continued efforts to challenge and overturn the law ongoing in a variety of forums.

So I think when we talk about the future of the Indian Child Welfare Act, obviously for now it remains good law, but the Supreme Court did not address the equal protection argument leaving it potentially open for future cases to address. I think the main movement right now in the aftermath of this victory is to encourage state governments to adopt language like ICWA that would apply to their own state courts. Now, federal ICWA does definitely apply, especially as confirmed by Brackeen, but were there to be a congressional act or a new case that suggested ICWA was no longer good law.

Or was a violation of equal protection, states that have their own language regarding the Indian Child Welfare Act would continue to be able to do the things that ICWA does even if something were to happen to the federal law. In addition, state governments have the ability to add even more protections for Native children being placed in out-of-home care. So the ACLU who filed an amicus brief on behalf of the government in this case and other civil rights organizations are encouraging states to consider adopting their own versions of ICWA that would apply in cases in state court.

There are currently about 17 states that have their own ICWA laws. They may mirror the federal law or they may add additional protections or provisions on top of what the federal law requires. And the National Conference of State Legislatures is the entity that tracks state legislation in this area.

Also, the Indian Law Clinic at Michigan State University School of Law also has comprehensive charts, Excel spreadsheets that look at what state legislation is doing with regards to ICWA. So you can see a certain geographical pattern appear here when we look at the states with ICWA laws and states without ICWA laws. So there are efforts underway in many of these states that don't have an ICWA law to encourage them to pass their own version and thereby perhaps skirting around any new legislation from Congress that would limit ICWA provisions or other federal courts, which may take a different stance or try to distinguish itself from the Brackeen case.

So this is really, I think, where the movement is right now as we continue to fight states, some states with ICWA, this is an ongoing sort of political campaign to ensure that ICWA remains good law and that children remain with tribal citizens as their parents.

For those of you who are interested in learning more about the Indian Child Welfare Act, I think that the best source for a lot of this information is the National Indian Child Welfare Association, NICWA.org. They provide training, sample legislation, background information, frequently asked questions, section that goes through a lot of the nuances and the particularities of ICWA, hoping and helping state court judges understand the law and the responsibilities that they have.

...

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1 24 email

Makah Indian Tribe and Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe — two federally-recognized sovereign Native Nations that have lived in present-day northwest Washington State for millenia — are suing ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, and other fossil fuel companies for lying about the harms of fossil fuels and the climate damages their communities are now facing.

“We are facing hundreds of millions of dollars in costs to relocate our community to higher ground and protect our people, our property, and our heritage,” said Charlene Nelson, chairwoman of the Shoalwater Bay Tribe. “These companies need to be held accountable for that.”

Read our full_blog post here_, and follow us on_Twitter_and_Instagram_for more climate accountability news.

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an raw 11 22

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis received a fact-check on an outlandish claim about United States history that he made at his only debate with Democratic challenger Charlie Crist.

"You have people that are teaching — and actually his running mate has said this in the past — that teaching the United States was built on stolen land," DeSantis said. "That is inappropriate for our schools; it's not true."

PolitiFact, a nonprofit operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, reached out to the DeSantis campaign for documentation that the statement was not true, but did not receive a response.

"We reached out to historians of Native and non-Native descent. All of them said it is well documented that the U.S. acquired Native American land through dubious treaties and, at times, forcefully confiscated ancestral territories to bolster the country's expansion," PolitiFact reported. "Sometimes the U.S. and Native American tribes struck treaties that defined boundaries and determined land sale prices and forms of compensation. Other times, tribes signed land-ceding agreements under duress."

DeSantis was not just wrong about U.S. history, but was also specifically wrong about Florida.

"Andrew Frank, a Florida State University professor who specializes in the history of the Seminoles, said the U.S. annexed much of Florida through treaties that a majority of the tribal leaders opposed," PolitiFact reported. "The U.S. military drove out more than 3,000 Seminoles from the state, according to the Florida Department of State. Around 300 members of the tribe remained in Florida."

The fact-check ranked DeSantis' claim as "Pants on Fire!"

"Historians of Native and non-Native descent said DeSantis' characterization is wrong. It's well-documented that the U.S. repeatedly made treaties with Native Americans and then violated them using force and other means to accommodate non-Native settlement. Courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have time and again affirmed that as fact," PolitiFact reported. "DeSantis' claim is wildly historically inaccurate."

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story 1

col day white supr dunk wedge

// rachel campos-d

https://www.mediamatters.org/jesse-watters/fox-news-host-mocks-american-indigenous-populations-not-having-strong-borders-when

col day?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/fox-news-host-suggests-native-americans-have-a-history-of-alcoholism-and-government-dependency/

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an 4 22

In Maine, the Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous, and Tribal Populations has released a report that describes some newly uncovered documents having to do with Native American matters — including 80-year-old state government documents from 1942. One of the report’s authors was Donna Loring, former tribal advisor forDemocratic Gov. Janet Mills. And according to Bangor Daily News reporter Jessica Piper, the documents “reveal how lawmakers brushed off obligations to tribes and laid out goals of assimilation and buying back land effectively aimed at eliminating their presence.”

The report is named “One Nation, Under Fraud: A Remonstrance.” In addition to Loring, its authors include attorney Joseph Gousse and Eric Mehnert, chief judge of the Penobscot Nation.

“We really meant this to be a historical document just telling the simple truth about things, no matter how hard it is to take,” Piper quotes Loring as saying. The report, according to Piper, laments that in the past, Maine’s policies with Native Americans amounted to “an official policy of fraud and cultural genocide.”

Describing the 1942 government documents that were uncovered, Piper explains, “It was 1942, and the Maine Legislature was considering a bill that would have attempted to strip Penobscot and Passamaquoddy women of tribal membership if they married non-tribal men. The conversation in a committee room soon evolved into a broader discussion of the ‘Indian situation.’ Asked by a legislative advisor whether there was money Maine owed the tribes, Attorney General Frank Cowen said the amount was ‘some millions.’ He said it was ‘fairly apparent’ in the state’s history that tribes ‘were robbed left and right.’”

Maine achieved statehood in 1820, when it became the 23rd state in the U.S. Before that, what is now Maine was part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; Portland was Portland, Massachusetts, and Bangor was Bangor, Massachusetts. Boston, Portland and Bangor were in the same commonwealth before 1820; Boston remained in Massachusetts in 1820, while Portland and Bangor became part of the new state of Maine. And in the new state, Native Americans were victimized just as they were victimized in many other parts of the U.S.

“The Penobscot Nation…. takes its name from events in 1833, when Penobscot members protested the sale of four townships that had been reserved for the tribe under a treaty signed shortly after Maine achieved statehood,” Piper notes. “Timber was an economic powerhouse for the new state, with the townships near the convergence of the east and west branches of the Penobscot River eyed for harvesting. The state said the tribe agreed to sell the land for $50,000. Members said that was not true.”

Piper continues, “Dozens signed onto a protest document sent to the governor and other key officials saying that the purchase was carried out under circumstances of ‘fraud (and) deception’ and the deed should be nullified. The (Maine) Legislature rejected the protest and the tribe’s claim to the land. It is one of several historical episodes cited in the report to illustrate what the authors identify as a ‘history of fraud’ in the state’s dealings with the tribes.”

The authors of the new report from the Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous, and Tribal Populations compare the 1942 documents with “the Nixon tapes” — which shows how damning they consider them to be.

“Following the bill discussion during which Cowen had told lawmakers the tribes were owed millions, a legislative committee commissioned an analysis of the state’s obligations to tribes,” Piper writes. “It found several cases — some dating back more than a century — in which the state broke promises to the tribes by either failing to pay for land supposedly purchased from them or not giving them access to land they had rights to under treaties. That analysis also identified instances of state mismanagement of money intended for tribal trust funds.”

Piper adds, “The (Maine State) Legislature nevertheless decided in cases where it owed the tribes, it could pay the money back without interest or adjusting for inflation. Loring, Gousse and Mehnert write that the decision to pay far below what tribes were owed effectively amounted to ‘another robbery.’ But the financial decisions are only a part of what makes the transcripts Nixonian in nature, they argue.”

According to Piper, “Within the 1942 debate about what is financially owed to the tribes, lawmakers also laid out goals of assimilation, buying land from reservations and limiting intermarriage. In those moments, the authors wrote, the state ‘admitted to genocidal acts and intentions.’”

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https://www.pomolandback.com/ michael hunter chiar

Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF, also known as "the Jackson") is a 48,652 acre Public Forest in Mendocino County, CA managed by Cal Fire. Under the Guise of Developing “Sustainable Forest Management” Policy and Practices, it is subjected to routine logging and land degradation.

kpfa 4/15/22 coyote band heya heya logging

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https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/genocide-denial-racist-myths-and-fight-against-canceling-columbus-look-0

no lnx ,ammy

Genocide denial, racist myths, and the fight against canceling Columbus: A look at One America News’ anti-Indigenous coverage

Over the past nine months, OAN has disseminated racist, revisionist content about Indigenous people in Canada and the United States. AT&T is responsible.

WRITTEN BY BEATRICE MOUNT

PUBLISHED 11/24/21

Note: The subjects discussed in this article may be triggering for some readers. If you need immediate care or long-term support, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition has compiled a culturally sensitive resource kit.

Since February, right-wing cable outlet One America News Network has revived some of its favorite white nationalist conspiracy theories, bigoted lies, and racial epithets in a series of incendiary segments targeting Indigenous people of North America. Hosts, reporters, and guests have thrown fit after fit about small recognitions made in 2020 and 2021 to acknowledge the whitewashed history of colonization, power imbalances, and racist depictions of Indigenous people in North America.

In June, the network turned to full-fledged genocide denialism after ground-penetrating radar uncovered over 1,300 unmarked graves of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children killed under Canada’s residential school policy. Canada's 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission called the residential school system a "cultural genocide" of Indigenous people, and the federal government formally apologized for it in 2008.OAN downplayed this history and dismissed the discovery of the graves as an “excuse” for “an anti-Christian crusade.”

In October, OAN used Indigenous Peoples Day to praise Christopher Columbus and Europeans for “civilizing” the “savages.” And throughout the nine-month period, OAN figures regurgitated right-wing talking points about “social justice warriors” forcing sports teams to change their names from racist slurs and “erasing” Columbus from our calendars.

Meanwhile, a Reuters investigation revealed that telecom giant AT&T had played a key role in creating and funding the far-right network, with 90% of OAN's revenue reportedly coming from its AT&T contract.

Less than a month later, in November, AT&T Vice President Tom Brooks (a member of the Kanien'kehà:ka nation) renewed his company's commitment to “support Indigenous peoples” for Native American Heritage Month. That marked AT&T’s latest commitment to support Indigenous people via nonprofit fundraising, policy research and advocacy, and its Inter-Tribal Council of AT&T employees.

But the company can't have it both ways: AT&T cannot support Indigenous rights in one breath while funding OAN in the next.

As we recognize National Native American Heritage Month, here’s a look at how OAN has attacked Indigenous people so far this year -- all enabled by AT&T’s continued support for the network

Key narratives

OAN denied the history of genocidal policies used to assimilate Indigenous children

In the 1800s, governments in the U.S. and Canada partnered with churches to force Indigenous children into boarding schools under a genocidal assimilation policy with the explicit goal to “kill the Indian, save the man.” An estimated minimum of 6,000 Indigenous children died from injuries, illness, abuse, and neglect sustained in Canada’s system alone. Countless more children disappeared alongside their languages, cultures, and traditional teachings. By the time Canada shuttered the last of these schools in 1996, the residential school system left behind an ongoing, traumatic legacy extending far beyond the immediate survivors of the cultural genocide.

This traumatic legacy made headlines earlier this year after the discovery of over 1,300 bodies on the sites of former residential schools in Canada. In the U.S., the story prompted Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (a member of the Pueblo of Laguna) to order the first comprehensive federal review of American residential schools with an explicit “emphasis on cemeteries or potential burial sites.” While imperfect, this order is a significant first step in America’s own slow reckoning with its genocidal assimilation policies -- one that OAN seems intent to undermine by spreading disinformation to its viewers.

Led by Tipping Point host Kara McKinney, OAN treated the discovery of more than a thousand Indigenous children’s graves as a lie meant to target churches, drawing a tenuous connection between the discoveries and a string of church vandalism and arson across Canada.

On July 12, McKinney called the reporting on mass graves of Indigenous people at former residential schools an “odious lie” used to “excuse” the “desecration of holy grounds.”

On July 23, McKinney asserted that the media had “exaggerated” its coverage of residential schools, stating, “Just like the history of slavery in America gets overexaggerated in some cases in order to be weaponized to reorder society to this day -- they make everything about race -- the same thing is happening with these schools in Canada.”

Days later, OAN irresponsibly blamed Canadian church fires on “activists seeking revenge for Indigenous students,” comparing them to “American churches [that] were burned down or vandalized” by “George Floyd protesters” in 2020. (Though some suspects have since been arrested and charged for the Canadian fires, authorities there have yet to discuss their possible motivations.)

In a Tipping Point segment promoting her deceptive YouTube video “The Canadian Mass Grave Hoax,” alt-right troll Lauren Southern downplayed the discoveries at former residential schools, saying, “If you scratch past the surface, none of it is true.” She later claimed that “it is a far stretch to say a pit of murdered children with thousands of bodies across Canada and a gravesite that the markers have been lost -- a massive stretch, and one that ... led to mass hatred and hate crimes and terrorism, quite frankly, across Canada.”

OAN mocked Indigenous Peoples Day

OAN was outraged after President Joe Biden issued a proclamation officially recognizing October 8 as Indigenous Peoples Day. The move neither removed nor replaced Columbus Day, which is still a federally recognized holiday. Instead, it simply shifted focus onto the Indigenous community by creating what the Indigenous Peoples’ Initiative calls a “more powerful, more accurate, and more inspiring narrative about the contemporary Native experience” than the whitewashed history of colonization long perpetuated by Columbus Day.

That didn’t stop OAN from calling the move a leftist attempt to divide America. OAN hosts and guests accused Biden of “trying to erase Italian Americans,” whitewashed and defended genocide, and used derogatory terms to refer to Native Americans.

Host Stephanie Hamill discussed the “divisive” decision with Andre DiMino, executive board member of the Italian American One Voice Coalition, who portrayed the recognition of Indigenous Peoples Day as Democrats “trying to revise history and attack western culture by starting at the foundation, which was the uniting of the continents by Columbus.” DiMino whined that Indigenous people were taking Italian Americans’ holiday even though they already have “August 9, the day after Thanksgiving, and the whole month of November.”

Host Natalie Harp cited Indigenous Peoples Day as proof that “the people running our country, they do hate America at this point.” Her guest, conservative columnist Lee Smith, claimed the new holiday was part of “a campaign of demoralization” by Democrats to tell other Americans “that we will replace you with whoever we can drop into the country at any particular time” -- a direct reference to the white nationalist “great replacement” conspiracy theory.

After accusing Indigenous groups of cannibalism during her October 11 program, McKinney contradicted Columbus’ own accounts of enslaving and brutalizing Indigenous people, asserting that he “actually treated native peoples with great respect for his time" and “actively punished his own crew members when they abused and hurt the native peoples.”

After repeatedly referring to Native Americans as “savages,” host Dan Ball asked, “What if Christopher Columbus had not found and tried to colonize this land? What if European settlers ... did not come to America and civilize the Native Americans? … If this land was left to tribes that were warring for the last 500 years, what would this land look like?” These types of rhetorical questions are predicated on racist myths about Indigenous people that continue to perpetuate systemic health, economic, political, and social inequalities.

OAN attacked Indigenous activism and spread racist misconceptions about Native Americans

OAN regularly derided historic figures and activism and ensuing media coverage, paying particular attention to the Washington Football Team’s decision in July 2020 to stop using its previous racist moniker after decades of Indigenous activism against harmful and racist naming practices in sports. Hosts and guests referred to the team by the defunct name well into 2021.

OAN segments consistently criticized and undermined the historic nomination of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, claiming the media focused too much on “the fact she’s the first Native American named to a Cabinet position” instead of her supposedly “radical environmentalist agenda” to fight "so-called climate change.”

In an August 5 segment that repeatedly referred to the Washington Football Team by its racist former name, two OAN news hosts mocked Indigenous concerns and suggested that the Pittsburgh Pirates would be the next sports team to cede to “the left” and change its moniker “because a group of pirates are very upset about that.”

On the July 23 edition of The Real Story, American Principles Project President Terry Schilling told Indigenous people to “stop taking everything so personally” as “it’s a total honor to name your team after the Indians, or [the Washington Football Team’s former name], or the Cherokees, or the Chiefs or whatever” because they were “very tough adversaries” who “we had to fight … in America for 400 years.”

Over a graphic stating “No Whites Allowed,” Ball suggested applying to a reparations fund meant for Black and Indigenous Californians “because I have Native American on my dad’s side, with probably more than Pocahontas,” referring to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), “but if I describe myself as an Indigenous person then I could apply to this.” His guest, former Trump adviser Harmeet Dhillon, said that this reparations policy is an example of “the ultimate racial privilege, really.” (Under current Federal enrollment guidelines, tribes do not consider a vague Indigenous ancestor or DNA test as valid proof of Native ancestry. Furthermore, using tenuous claims of Indigenous identity to avoid accountability for racist policies and beliefs is racist.)

On September 29, Tipping Point guest Christopher Check, president of Catholic Answers, downplayed Franciscan monk Junipero Serra’s brutal treatment toward Native American people, calling the colonizer a “saintly man that wanted nothing more than the best thing for natives of California, that eternal salvation." As Bad Indians author Deborah Miranda (Ohlone Costanoan Esselen nation) told KQED, “Serra did not just bring us Christianity. He imposed it, giving us no choice in the matter. He did incalculable damage to a whole culture.”

Sumantra Maitra, a senior contributor to The Federalist, used the October 11 edition of McKinney’s show to call the landback movement “a prelude to violence” and said that “the logical endpoint to that rhetoric is taking that land back, and taking that land back would've mean a reconquest,” explicitly comparing it to the Balkan genocides of the 1990s. Maitra’s comments grossly mischaracterize the landback movement, which is the latest social media-focused iteration of a broad political movement calling for settler governments to return land stewardship to Indigenous peoples.

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// pilgrim puritan thxgiving

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/pilgrims-legacy/

the conv

peter C. Mancall, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

The 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims' voyage to Plymouth will be celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic with a “remembrance ceremony" with state and local officials and a museum exhibit in Plymouth, England. An autonomous marine research ship named “The Mayflower" has been equipped with an AI navigating system that will allow the ship to trace the course of the original journey without any humans on board.

Yet as a scholar of early 17th-century New England, I've always been puzzled by the glory heaped on the Pilgrims and their settlement in Plymouth.

Native Americans had met Europeans in scores of places before 1620, so yet another encounter was hardly unique. Relative to other settlements, the colony attracted few migrants. And it lasted only 70 years.

So why does it have such a prominent place in the story of America? And why, until recently, did the more troubling aspects to Plymouth and its founding document, the Mayflower Compact, go ignored?

Prophets and profits

The establishment of Plymouth did not occur in a vacuum.

The Pilgrims' decision to go to North America – and their deep attachment to their faith – was an outcome of the intense religious conflict roiling Europe after the Protestant Reformation. Shortly before the travelers' arrival, the Wampanoag residents of Patuxet – the area in and around modern day Plymouth – had suffered a devastating, three-year epidemic, possibly caused by leptospirosis, a bacterial disease that can lead to meningitis, respiratory distress and liver failure.

It was during these two crises that the histories of western Europe and Indigenous North America collided on the shores of Massachusetts Bay.

Despite a number of advantages, including less competition for local resources because of the epidemic, Plymouth attracted far fewer English migrants than Virginia, which was settled in 1607, and Massachusetts, which was established in 1630.

The Pilgrims, as they told their story traveled so they could practice their religion free from persecution. But other English joined them, including some migrants seeking profits instead of heeding prophets. Unfortunately for those hoping to earn a quick buck, the colony never became an economic dynamo.

A shaky compact

Plymouth nonetheless went on to attain a prominent place in the history of America, primarily due to two phenomena: It was the alleged site of the first Thanksgiving, and its founders drafted the Mayflower Compact, a 200-word document written and signed by 41 men on the ship.

Generations of American students have learned that the Compact was a stepping stone towards self-government, the defining feature of American constitutional democracy.

But did Plymouth really inspire democracy? After all, self-governing communities existed across Indigenous New England long before European migrants arrived. And a year earlier, in 1619, English colonists in Virginia had created the House of Burgesses to advance self-rule in North America for subjects of King James I.

So American self-government, however one defines it, was not born in Plymouth.

The Mayflower Compact nonetheless contained lofty ideals. The plan signed by many of the Mayflower's male passengers demanded that colonists “Covenant & Combine ourselves into a Civil body politic, for our better ordering, & preservation." They promised to work together to write “laws, ordinances, Acts, constitutions." The signers pledged to work for the “advancement of the Christian faith."

Yet as the years after 1620 bore out, the migrants did not adhere to such principles when dealing with their Wampanoag and other Algonquian-speaking neighbors. Gov. William Bradford, who began writing his history of Plymouth in 1630, wrote about the Pilgrims arriving in “a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men" even though Patuxet looked more like a settled European farmland. The Pilgrims exiled an English lawyer named Thomas Morton, in part because he believed that Indigenous and colonists could peacefully coexist. And in 1637, Plymouth's authorities joined a bloody campaign against the Pequots, which led to the massacre of Indigenous people on the banks of the Mystic River, followed by the sale of prisoners into slavery.

The Compact was even used by loyalists to the British crown to argue against independence. Thomas Hutchinson, the last royal governor of Massachusetts, pointed to the Pilgrims as proof that colonists should not rebel, highlighting the passage that defined the signers as “loyal subjects" of the English king.

History told by the victors

After the American Revolution, politicians and historians, especially those descended from Pilgrims and Puritans, were keen to trace the origins of the United States back to Plymouth.

In the process, they glossed over the Pilgrims' complicated legacy.

In 1802, the future President John Quincy Adams spoke at Plymouth about the unique genius of the colony's founders and their governing contract. He announced that the Pilgrims would arrive at the biblical day of judgment “in the whiteness of innocence" for having shown “kindness and equity toward the savages."

In the mid-19th century, the historianGeorge Bancroftclaimed that it was in “the cabin of the Mayflower" where “humanity recovered its rights, and instituted government on the basis of 'equal laws' for 'the general good.'"

Nineteenth-century anniversary celebrations focused on the colonists, their written Compact, and their contribution to what became the United States. In 1870, on the 250th anniversary, celebrants struck a commemorative coin: one side featured an open Bible, the other a group of Pilgrims praying on the shoreline.

Missing, not surprisingly, were the Wampanoags.

A more nuanced view of the past

By 1970, the cultural tide had turned. Representatives of the Wampanoag nation walked out of Plymouth's public celebration of Thanksgiving that year to announce that the fourth Thursday in November should instead be known as the National Day of Mourning. To these protesters, 1620 represented violent conquest and dispossession, the twinned legacies of exclusion.

The organizers of an international group called “Plymouth 400" have stressed that they want to tell a “historically accurate and culturally inclusive history." They've promoted both the General Society of Mayflower Descendants and an exhibit featuring 400 years of Wampanoag History. Unlike earlier generations of celebrants, the organizers have acknowledged the continued presence of Native residents.

Prior celebrations of Plymouth's founding focused on the Pilgrims' role in the creation of the United States. By doing so, these commemorations sustained an exclusionary narrative for over two centuries.

Perhaps this year a different story will take hold, replacing ancestor worship with a more clear-eyed view of the past.

wow rep in shitter when eei bails? tho rep it what it's all about; interesting to see if 180 like corp pledge on sedition caucus

facing so

The public outrage over the riot at the U.S. Capitol is hurting RAGA's fundraising. Popular Information reports that the University of Phoenix is demanding its $50,400 donation back, while DoorDash, Edison Electric Institute, Facebook, Lyft, RIAA, and Smithfield Foods said they are suspending further contributions to RAGA. The Cherokee Nation has also announced it's withdrawing its $150,000 donati

https://theconversation.com/truth-and-healing-commission-could-help-native-american-communities-traumatized-by-government-run-boarding-schools-that-tried-to-destroy-indian-culture-169240

Many events these days begin with land acknowledgments: earnest statements acknowledging that activities are taking place, or institutions, businesses and even homes are built, on land previously owned by Indigenous peoples.

And many organizations now call on employees to incorporate such statements not only at events but in email signatures, videos, syllabuses and so on. Organizations provide resources to facilitate these efforts, including pronunciation guides and video examples.

Some land acknowledgments are carefully constructed in partnership with the dispossessed. The Burke Museum at the University of Washington in Seattle describes this process:

“Tribal elders and leaders are the experts and knowledge-bearers who generously shared their perspectives and guidance with the Burke. Through this consultation, we co-created the Burke’s land acknowledgement.”

That acknowledgment reads:

“We stand on the lands of the Coast Salish peoples, whose ancestors have resided here since Time Immemorial. Many Indigenous peoples thrive in this place—alive and strong.”

Land acknowledgments have been used to start conversations regarding how non-Indigenous people can support Indigenous sovereignty and advocate for land repatriation.

Yet the historical and anthropological facts demonstrate that many contemporary land acknowledgments unintentionally communicate false ideas about the history of dispossession and the current realities of American Indians and Alaska Natives. And those ideas can have detrimental consequences for Indigenous peoples and nations.

This is why, in a move that surprised many non-Indigenous anthropologists to whom land acknowledgments seemed a public good, the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists requested that the American Anthropological Association officially pause land acknowledgments and the related practice of the welcoming ritual, in which Indigenous persons. The pause will enable a task force to recommend improvements after examining these practices and the history of the field’s relationship with American Indians and Alaska Natives more broadly.

We are three anthropologists directly involved in the request — Valerie Lambert of the Choctaw Nation and president of the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists; Michael Lambert of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and member of the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists; and EJ Sobo, an American Anthropological Association board member charged with representing interests such as those of the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists. We’d like to further illuminate this Indigenous position, not from the association’s perspective but from our perspective as scholars....

vid

William Bauer, professor of history at the University of Nevada Las Vegas where he is the Director of American Indian & Indigenous Studies. He is also a citizen of the Round Valley Reservation in northern California. He is the co-author of the book :{We Are the Land: A History of Native California:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:. Previously he also wrote such books as :{California Through Native Eyes: Reclaiming History,:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: and We Were All Like Migrant Workers Here: Work, Community and Memory on California’s Round Valley Reservation, 1850-1941.

https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-august-10-2021/

We Are The Land: A History Of Native California | KALW

May 11, 2021 — On this edition of Your Call, we're speaking with William J. Bauer, co-author of We Are the Land: A History of Native California, ...

asked for ppe covid $?

https://theintercept.com/2021/08/27/enbridge-line-3-pipeline-police-training-intelligence/

a corp can substitute video for a live cop in tresspass law?!

intercept 921 eileen brn?

POLICE RESPONSIBLE FOR public safety surrounding the construction of an oil pipeline in Minnesota have repeatedly denied having a close relationship with Enbridge, the company behind the controversial energy project. According to records obtained by The Intercept through public information requests, however, Enbridge has provided repeated trainings for officers designed to cultivate a coordinated response to protests.

By the time construction on Line 3, a tar sands oil pipeline, began last December, a working relationship had been established between Enbridge and police officers. A public safety official even invited the company’s Line 3 security chief to regular intelligence sharing meetings. In one case, the official passed along intelligence to Enbridge’s security chief for Line 3: a list of people who attended an anti-pipeline organizing meeting.

Line 3 opponents have long raised concerns about payments made to law enforcement by Enbridge to cover pipeline-related policing. A special account set up by the state of Minnesota has distributed $2.3 million in Enbridge funds to public safety agencies so far.The records shed new light on the level of close coordination between law enforcement agencies and the Canadian oil company to police the Indigenous-led movement to stop Line 3.

:{

“Local law enforcement has become the brutal arm of a Canadian corporation.”

}:

“Local law enforcement has become the brutal arm of a Canadian corporation,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund’s Center for Protest Law and Litigation and an attorney representing opponents of the pipeline. “It’s highly inappropriate for law enforcement to target people based on First Amendment activity, collect identity information and then deliver that information to their political opponents.”

The effort to halt the Line 3 pipeline is the latest flashpoint in the movement to end development of new fossil fuel infrastructure amid a growing climate crisis. In Minnesota, members of the Indigenous-led resistance, known as water protectors, have turned to tactics that directly disrupt construction, sometimes trespassing on private property, blocking roads, or locking down to pipeline company equipment.

"Community police and sheriff deputies are responsible for public safety,” Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner told The Intercept. “Our security call the police when a disturbance occurs. Officers decide when an individual is breaking the law — or putting themselves or others in danger.”

How law enforcement responds to the protest movement is a matter of training and discretion.The documents obtained by The Intercept suggest that Enbridge has stepped in to influence officers’ choices.

Water protectors point to the close working relationship between Enbridge and law enforcement to explain escalating police tactics, with rubber bullets and other “less-lethal” weapons deployed in recent weeks.

Plans to Coordinate

Emails between Enbridge and members of the Northern Lights Task Force — a group consisting of sheriffs and public safety officials coordinating plans for expected protests against Line 3 — describe several joint training exercises and other coordination meetings set up by the energy firm. The largest of the trainings was in Bemidji, Minnesota.

In October 2020, according to emails, Enbridge organized an all-day training at the company’s Bemidji Emergency Operations Center. According to an email sent a day before the event, dozens of Enbridge employees, public safety officials, including local sheriffs along the pipeline route, and an FBI agent were invited to attend. A primary goal for the event: “Coordination between Line 3 project team and L.P.” — an acronym that typically refers to “local police.”

Indigenous Water Protectors Face Off With an Oil Company and Police Over a Minnesota Pipeline

The email sent out ahead of the training included a series of “Incident Briefing Maps” laying out scenarios where Enbridge and law enforcement might need to coordinate a response. The various scenarios had something in common: They all involved protests.

The list of scenarios — which were drawn up by the Response Group, a controversial crisis management firm that works for the energy industry — laid out four possible events: demonstrators blocking traffic, the breach of a construction site, “swarming” of a pipeline hub while streaming on social media, and project opponents locking themselves to the gate of an Enbridge office.

Training participants would be asked to come up with a plan to respond to each of the scenarios, as well as to develop an “Information and Communication Strategy” to keep government agencies, the public, and the media informed of what was happening, according to a list of exercise objectives. Enbridge planned to discuss providing local law enforcement with a project radio, according to an email describing the exercise.

It wasn’t the first conversation of its kind. In advance of a smaller version of the exercise, back in April, members of the Northern Lights Task Force filled out a questionnaire for Enbridge. The public safety officials noted that it was a “priority” for law enforcement to obtain access to Enbridge security camera feeds. It also referenced the possibility of placing an Enbridge liaison inside the two law enforcement emergency operations centers, as well as a law enforcement liaison in Enbridge’s emergency operations center.

The Northern Lights Task Force’s communications team did not answer a detailed list of questions. Aitkin County Sheriff Dan Guida, a member of the task force, said his office never received a project radio nor saw other agencies with one. Guida said that the scenarios served to show law enforcement how Enbridge runs its emergency operations center. “It was for Enbridge to learn. We didn’t get trained by Enbridge,” he said, adding that law enforcement might carry out a similar exercise with a bank. “We assisted them and told them this is how we do it, you do your own thing.”

It’s not clear how many officers attended the trainings offered by Enbridge. Clearwater County Sheriff Darin Halverson was copied on the invite and RSVP’d that he would attend an additional Enbridge security exercise as well as a “sensitive security information” meeting. He told The Intercept that he did not attend any of the gatherings.

Sharing Intelligence

By the time construction on Line 3 began, a comfortable working relationship appeared to have been established between Enbridge and some of the public safety agencies invited to the company’s meetings. Public officials repeatedly expressed interest in exchanging information on pipeline opposition with Enbridge.

In December 2020, a St. Louis County sheriff’s deputy distributed language to be used by officers issuing dispersal orders during protests against Line 3 and also sent a list of potential charges that could be applied to pipeline protesters. Another officer responded, noting that it would be legal to arrest water protectors even if they trespassed without a law enforcement officer present. “Hopefully Enbridge security would be videotaping when able,” the officer said. Other documents affirmed that Enbridge security would be wearing body cameras.

The Northern Lights Task Force, the group of public safety officials, occasionally suggested that Enbridge should be excluded from planning, the documents show. In November 2020, Guida, the Aitkin County sheriff, copied Enbridge public information officers on an email about the task force’s public messaging strategy. Another sheriff advised that the corporate representatives did not belong in the group: “It is not a good idea to have Enbridge employees in our group, but they would certainly be good contacts to have to know what info is being put out,” wrote Carlton County Sheriff Kelly Lake. (Guida told The Intercept he copied Enbridge on the email so that law enforcement and the company could avoid mixed or duplicate messages.)

In other cases, public safety officials actively sought out Enbridge security to assist with law enforcement officers’ efforts, inviting an Enbridge representative to share space and attend meetings. St. Louis County Emergency Management Coordinator Duane Johnson copied Enbridge’s security lead for the Line 3 project on an email inviting first responders to work out of the law enforcement emergency operations center as they monitored intelligence on a potential direct action the next day. “There is considerable intel on something brewing tomorrow. Let me know if you’d like to come over and work out of the EOC tomorrow just in case something pops,” the official wrote, referring to the emergency operations center.

In another email, Johnson requested that Enbridge’s Line 3 security lead attend regular intelligence meetings. “We have missed you on our 0900 intel meetings. Is there another time that would work better for you?” asked the emergency management coordinator in a January 2021 email. “It would be nice to have someone from your company on.”

The Enbridge security officer was kept in the loop. The next day, Johnson copied him on another email, forwarding a list of names of water protectors who had attended a “Line 3 Organizing Meeting” the night before.

“It was all I really got from last night,” Bruce Blacketter, emergency management director for the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, wrote to Johnson in the forwarded email. “Well, this and a slight ‘back of the head’ headache from the musical performances and guided breathing/stretching exercises.”

St. Louis County did not respond to a request for comment, and the Fond du Lac Band declined to comment.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/supreme-court-indian-tribes/

sovereign

CNN's Rick Santorum: "We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans but candidly there isn't much Native American culture in American culture"

alexh no lnx twt

During former President Donald Trump's four years in the White House, conservative pundit Charlie Sykes was among his most persistent critics on the right — and during the 2020 election, Sykes enthusiastically supported now-President Joe Biden. Three months into Biden's presidency, Sykes laments the GOP's ongoing Trumpification in an April 28 column for The Bulwark. And the Wisconsin resident cites the vote audit in Maricopa County, Arizona as a glaring example of the "season of crazy" that is plaguing the Republican Party.

Republicans in the Arizona State Senate recently ordered an audit of the vote in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix — hiring the Florida-based firm Cyber Ninjas to conduct the audit and using One America News (a cable television channel that prides itself on being to the right of Fox News) for the livestream. The presidential election results in Arizona have long since been thoroughly vetted and certified by Arizona's conservative Republican governor, Doug Ducey, but the April 2021 audit plays well to the QAnon crowd and far-right conspiracy theorists who buy into Trump's debunked and baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Sykes writes, "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Arizona election audit, which is surely one of the most guano-soaked bits of weirdness in our never-ending season of crazy…. They ordered the 'audit' despite the fact that three previous recounts had shown no problems and no evidence of fraud. Despite that, the GOP senators insisted on a hand recount of 2.1 million ballots cast in the county that represents two-thirds of the vote statewide.... Predictably, the 'audit' has so far been a clusterfuck."

The conservative pundit adds that although the Arizona audit is a ridiculous waste of time, far-right conspiracy theorists are taking it quite seriously.

Sykes explains, "The Arizona story is worth keeping an eye on for at least two reasons: (1) It will likely be used to feed the Big Lie and sundry conspiracy theories, and (2) it is an indication of the metastasizing crazy in the GOP."

Sykes discussed the Arizona audit during an April 26 appearance on MSNBC:

The Arizona audit isn't the only GOP "craziness" that Sykes discusses in his column. The conservative pundit also attacks Republicans for their "bullshit narrative" that Biden is declaring war on meat consumption and slams former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's recent comments on Native Americans.

Santorum, during a speech for Young America's Foundation, made some clueless comments on U.S. history and told attendees, "We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here…. I mean, yes, we have Native Americans, but candidly, there isn't much Native American culture in American culture. It was born of the people who came here pursuing religious liberty to practice their faith."

In response, Sykes writes, "Maybe Santorum could come to Milwaukee, named after the Algonquin word 'Millioke,' or Waukesha, from the Potawatomi word for 'fox,' here in Wisconsin, originally 'Meskonsing,' to discuss his understanding of the nullity of Native American culture. If he wants, he could also read up on the origins of corn, and peanuts, and cranberries."

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north Dakota is facing the world’s worst outbreak as Native communities condemn the COVID response

Democracy Now

November 18, 2020

As COVID-19 rampages through the U.S., we look at how the rapid spread of the disease is affecting Native American communities, which have already faced disproportionate infection and death rates throughout the pandemic. "We're having a lot of people perish.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/texas-leads-fight-to-end-protections-for-native-american-children/

TMX Pipeline Threatens First Nations People. It Must Be Stopped.

truthout 1020

https://truthout.org/articles/the-tmx-pipeline-threatens-first-nations-people-it-must-be-stopped/

https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/07/21/three-percenters-militia-bakken-oil-oneok-domestic-terrorism

no lnx pix twt quite long

Whose Allegiance? Three Percenters Militia Working in Bakken Oil Patch Raises Concerns of Domestic Terrorism Risk

By Justin Nobel • Tuesday, July 21, 2020

The Three Percenters, a loosely organized group of far-right militants, appear to have established a significant presence in North Dakota’s Bakken oilfield, one of the most productive oilfields in the nation. “There is a lot of membership in the oil and gas industry up there,” says Matt Marshall, a Three Percenter running for state legislature in Washington. “The fact that you have a lot of Three Percenters working in the oilfields of North Dakota is not surprising.”

The Three Percenters are so named for the dubious historical claim that only three percent of American colonists took up arms in the Revolutionary War. Their adherents have frequently been involved with incidents of ?armed protests, hate speech, and ?threatening behavior across the U.S., and the group’s members have shown up prominently at recent protests related to both pandemic response measures and police brutality.

In April, Marshall, wearing a colonial tricorn hat with bullets strapped to the side, and a Hawaiian shirt, helped lead a coronavirus stay-home order protest at his state’s capitol in Olympia, Washington. Hawaiian shirts are described by the Anti-Defamation League as a coded reference to coming civil war, although Marshall denies the link.

He says he is aware of Three Percenters who are working in oilfields in Colorado, Texas, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Alaska. And also according to Marshall, top officials with two North Dakota chapters, the North Dakota United Patriots Three Percenters and North Dakota Three Percenter Originals, work in the oil and gas industry.

“We are mostly blue-collar workers who want to put in a hard day’s labor, support our family, pay a limited amount of taxes to get the services we require and at the end of the day be left alone,” says Marshall. “I don’t think there is any concern about having a bunch of threepersworking in that industry,” referring to an alternate name for the group.

But points of significant concern emerged in a multi-month DeSmog investigation that involved interviews with former Department of Homeland Security and FBI officials, and local residents of North Dakota, who live in a state still pumping out more than a million barrels of oil a day.

According to a whistleblower who contacted DeSmog, Three Percenters have established a prominent presence at a Bakken oil and gas facility regarded as critical infrastructure by the Department of Homeland Security. Militia-related patches, flags, and artwork have popped up across the Bakken oil patch, and a thriving gun culture among its workers has led to a Mad Max-mentality of chaos plaguing residents of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

While federal security agencies and their partners have prioritized focus on the energy industry and produced a raft of reports in the past two decades on other risks to the nation’s critical infrastructure, such as cyber security, natural disasters, and environmental activism, right-wing militia groups appear to be escaping close scrutiny.

“It certainly seems like a security vacuum,” Michael German, a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice, told DeSmog when informed about our reporting. German is a former FBI special agent who specialized in domestic terrorism and covert operations. “The FBI characterizes itself as a domestic terrorism agency and has been outspoken about prioritizing ecoterrorism as a threat, which is ridiculous because there are no deaths with any of the environmental threats,” he said. “Yet somehow there does not appear to be an attempt to find out what the infiltration is of anti-government militia groups, and that is problematic.”

At the same time, state legislators across the country, backed by the notoriously ultra-conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, have been devising laws to target environmental activists as terrorists.

“The FBI’s approach of de-emphasizing investigations of white supremacist and right-wing militia violence while targeting resources at social justice movements and calling that extremism has existed for some time,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) National Security Project.

“What militias like this do is conduct surveillance and find facilities they will either need to take over or attack when ‘shit hits the fan.’”

It’s an approach that continues to play out at this very moment. In the midst of protests against the police killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans, President Trump has fanned the flames with tweets about “shooting” looters, calling MAGA supporters into action, and saying he intends to designate the amorphous leftwing anti-fascism movement Antifa as a terrorist organization.

Meanwhile, reports of right-wing militia members bringing weapons to protests allegedly in order to transform this moment into civil war have surfaced online. On May 31, Marshall’s group sent perhaps a dozen members to a small town north of Seattle in response to rumors of an Antifa threat that never materialized. And neo-Nazis, through online networks, have suggested to followers that with police forces spread thin, the present moment would be an ideal one to strike energy infrastructure targets.

DeSmog’s investigation indicates a culture of guns and paranoia has worked its way deep into the heart of America’s third richest oilfield.

Domestic Terrorism Experts Troubled by Militia’s Oilfield Presence

Paul Lehto is a 54-year-old former plant operator at the Lonesome Creek Gas Processing Plant, outside Watford City, North Dakota. During his tenure there in 2016, he says coworkers would “talk about automatic weapons all the time,” gather in common spaces to watch social media videos that featured demonstrations of people firing sub-automatic machine guns, leave articles of clothing with Three Percenter insignia lying around the workplace, and regularly wear the militia’s notorious patches, which typically contain the Roman numeral III, sometimes placed over a darkened American flag. During one conversation, he says a coworker spoke about hijacking a commercial jet.

Although Lehto says the comment may well have been in jest, it conveyed a “habit of thinking” that was worrisome and was part of his decision to eventually leave his job at the natural gas processing plant. “The constellation of issues around being a Three Percenter was probably the number one topic of conversation at work,” says Lehto. “These guys are basically supportive of the idea of some sort of eventual civil war in the United States of America.”

Paul Lehto

Paul Lehto, a ONEOK gas plant employee from 2015 to 2016, shown in 2019. Credit: DeSmog]

Daryl Johnson, an expert on right-wing militia groups who from 2004 to 2010 served as the Department of Homeland Security’s senior domestic terrorism analyst, told DeSmog that this was the first information he has received of right-wing militia presence in the oil and gas industry. He was deeply alarmed.

“These are operationally minded people with a paranoid worldview that believe at some point there is going to be a societal collapse,” said Johnson, who authored the 2012 book, Right-Wing Resurgence: How A Domestic Terrorist Threat Is Being Ignored. “What militias like this do is conduct surveillance and find facilities they will either need to take over or attack when ‘shit hits the fan.’ When they are working, they are also thinking about what else they would need to do to bring the plant to its knees. They may follow the order of their commander or act on a lone wolf instinct, and their allegiance lies not with their employer but with the militia, although they might think they are doing something righteous and good for the country.”

Lehto says that during the day shift, more than half of the 20 to 25 workers stationed at Lonesome Creek would either be wearing Three Percenter regalia and openly supportive of the militia, or be workers that he considered to be sympathizers. Three Percenters came to work there from North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas, says Lehto.

“I heard one Three Percenter expressing frustration and astonishment that HR did not hire his recommendation for a fellow Three Percenter, saying, ‘He is qualified, he has a great resume, and he is a Three Percenter, I just don’t understand why they turned him down,’” says Lehto. “Implied was that he had prior success with this.”

On the night shift Lehto managed the $600 million plant with just two other workers, one of whom was an active Three Percenter, the other a sympathizer. “I was just being constantly reminded of the Three Percenter presence,” says Lehto.

Protester at a confederate memorial in Louisiana waves a Three Percenter flag]

New Orleans, August 19, 2017. A man waves a Three Percenter flag as counter-protesters and protesters clash at the conclusion of the march organized by Take ‘Em Down NOLA,” an event held in solidarity with Charlottesville, days after the deadly Unite the Right rally. Credit: ©2020 Julie Dermanksy]

“I find it concerning that it is not just one, or two, or three, it is more like half the plant that are Three Percenters or supporting them rhetorically,” says Johnson. “There is a threat capability calculation we use in intelligence —capability plus intent equals threat,”he continued. “The Three Percenters definitely have capability, and they definitely have made their intent known, and the fact that they have access is even more concerning. Having the insider knowledge of how that plant operates, where that gas comes from and where it is going is all information an adversary can use for maximum threat and maximum damage. They can sabotage the plant or pipelines running from it, which may not cause a lot of deaths but can disrupt the energy supply.”

Furthermore, added Johnson, “There is also a counterintelligence threat. They have intel on critical infrastructure that, shall the need arise, they can share with people who don’t need to know.”

A 2008 Department of Homeland Security report on insider threats to critical infrastructure says insider motivations can come from, “some combination of: revenge for a perceived wrong; radicalization for advancement of religious or ideological objectives; or simple illicit financial gain.” Companies who run infrastructure like energy pipelines may misunderstand insider risks and have a financial incentive to downplay them. “Insider incidents can cause lost credibility with shareholders, employees, and customers, and negatively effect to [sic] shareholder values,” the report states. “It appears corporate leadership neither completely appreciates the risk nor realizes the potential consequences.”

The Lonesome Creek plant is operated by the Oklahoma-based oil and gas service company, ONEOK, and came online in 2015 to process the growing surge of natural gas and natural gas liquids being pumped from the booming Bakken oilfields. The plant, like all gas processing plants, is considered “critical infrastructure” by the Department of Homeland Security.

This designation goes back to the Patriot Act of 2001, which defines the term as “systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.”

ONEOK headquarters in Tulsa, OK

ONEOK is headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Credit: Joseph Wingenfeld, CC BY 2.0]

A risk assessment of the Lonesome Creek Plant by ONEOK says a “worst-case scenario” would involve “a release of 368,536 pounds of flammable mixture” from a large storage tank and generate a wave of destruction more than a half-mile in radius.

While the risk assessment states that ONEOK has “numerous controls to prevent such releases and to manage their consequences,” they are not described in the document. Silverio Caggiano, an Ohio Fire Chief who works regularly with the oil and gas industry and has more than two decades of experience related to Hazardous Materials and Weapons of Mass Destruction, laid out reasons for continued concern. “You would need to have a pretty good background in chemistry to do something specific with a certain gas based on its properties, but if you’ve got a bunch of guys there that are all in cahoots and they decide they want to take shit out, they can pretty much do anything they want,” said Caggiano. “A person working within the system knows how the system runs.”

“From a security standpoint the Three Percenters are probably among the most worrisome groups … it is not whether there will be a right-wing attack, it is when.”

In replies to specific questions by DeSmog, ONEOK did not describe what the “numerous controls” were at the Lonesome Creek facility intended to prevent a “worst-case scenario,” nor did the company respond to requests to speak with present workers at the plant. “ONEOK expects all of our employees to know and abide by our company policies and to embrace the company’s core values of Ethics, Quality, Diversity, Value and Service,” the company explained, in a statement to DeSmog. “ONEOK’s Violence-Free Workplace Policy prohibits violence, violent acts, and threats of violence. ONEOK has implemented numerous safety and security practices to safeguard our facilities and to comply with applicable law. Clearly, the scope and nature of many of these practices and safeguards must remain confidential. We support, cooperate, and frequently coordinate with federal, state, and local law enforcement to anticipate and plan for potential security events. Furthermore, ONEOK has worked with several state legislatures to enact legislation to protect energy infrastructure from hostile actions.”

But Michael German, the Brennan Center for Justice fellow and former FBI special agent, pointed out that this legislation is typically enacted with environmentalist protest groups in mind, not militia-minded employees.

The American Legislative Exchange Council has crafted a “model” bill based on Oklahoma’s HB 1123, which calls for citizens to receive a felony sentencing, $100,000 fine, and/or 10 years in prison if their actions “willfully damage, destroy, vandalize, deface, or tamper with equipment in a critical infrastructure facility.” The bill has been replicated across the country including in Ohio, Alabama, Kentucky, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Iowa, where reporting by DeSmog in 2018 revealed that corporate backers included Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, and many other oil and gas and pipeline companies.

People opposing the Dakota Access pipeline gather at Standing Rock in North Dakota, December 4, 2016.

Opponents of the Dakota Access pipeline gather at Standing Rock in North Dakota, December 4, 2016. Credit: Joe Brusky, CC BY-NC 2.0]

The FBI told DeSmog that the agency meets frequently with members of the private sector to make them aware of potential threats and to provide information on how to enhance their security.

“We have no comment on threats to specific industries or any groups,” said an FBI spokesperson. “Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on individuals who commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security. The FBI can never initiate an investigation based solely on an individual’s race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or the exercise of First Amendment rights.”

However such statements go against research done by the ACLU, which unearthed records indicating that in the early 2000s the FBI targeted environmental groups, animal rights groups, and anti-war groups in a way that violated their First Amendment rights. A review of these episodes, published in 2010 by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, concluded that while the FBI did not target groups for investigation based on First Amendment activities, the basis for opening some of the investigations for certain individuals was “factually weak,” the FBI “extended the duration of investigations involving advocacy groups or their members without adequate basis,” and “in a few instances the FBI improperly retained information.”...

The government’s apparent lack of attention on the issue is of concern to other watchdogs. “The U.S. government increasingly acts like a tool of fossil fuel companies and oligarchs,” Basav Sen, Director of the Climate Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive Washington, D.C. think tank, wrote last October. He added, “the slide into extractivist authoritarianism in the U.S. is part of a worldwide trend.”

Sen pointed to a number of issues that promoted a linkup between the fossil fuels industry and the far right. Each group favors a hands-off approach to government meddling and regulation. And in a trend that has become more pronounced under the Trump administration, with its constant mention of the nation’s newfound fracking-led oil and gas dominance, support of the fossil fuels industry has been promoted as patriotic duty. Oil and gas industry workers are made to feel they are part of a great mission, says Sen, and those who critique them, such as pipeline protesters or climate marchers, are sworn enemies, or even terrorists. This enables the federal government to place individuals on watchlists and, as seen with Indigenous-led protests at Standing Rock and elsewhere has helped to encourage a dangerous operating environment in which federal law enforcement has relied on outside groups, including actual militia members, to help with security work and law enforcement.

“As we head toward a renewable world and fossil fuels become less competitive, it makes perfect sense that the global elite and fossil fuels industry will turn to the far right, whether indirectly or directly, for protection,” says Sen. “The fossil fuels industry is going to need escalating levels of subsidies to survive, and one form of subsidy is this massive tax-funded private security force.”

Perhaps nowhere has the use of mercenary-like private security forces been more heavily employed than against Indigenous communities in the United States.

“If you throw a Three Percenter patch on you can stand in a government building with an assault rifle all damn day and nobody will bother you.”

Michael German, the former FBI agent and security expert, says this is already occurring.

“What we saw in North Dakota during Standing Rock is groups organized as professional companies doing security work for law enforcement agencies,” says German. “This is quite troubling. Furthermore, there have been situations, such as happened at a rally in 2017 in Portland, where militia members have actually been caught on film helping Department of Homeland Security officials arresting counter protesters.”

Tensions with Oilfield Workers at the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation...

https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/25/keystone-xl-protests-pipeline-activism-environment

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Keystone XL: police discussed stopping anti-pipeline activists 'by any means'

This article is more than 7 months old

Revealed: records show law enforcement has called demonstrators possible ‘domestic terrorism’ threats

Demonstrators against the Keystone XL pipeline walking to a federal courthouse in in Rapid City, South Dakota, in June.

Demonstrators against the Keystone XL pipeline walking to a federal courthouse in in Rapid City, South Dakota, in June. Photograph: Adam Fondren/AP

Sam Levin and Will Parrish

Published onMon 25 Nov 2019 06.00 EST

US law enforcement officials preparing for fresh Keystone XL pipeline protests have privately discussed tactics to stop activists “by any means” and have labeled demonstrators potential “domestic terrorism” threats, records reveal.

Internal government documents seen by the Guardian show that police and local authorities in Montana and the surrounding region have been preparing a coordinated response in the event of a new wave of protests opposing the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which would carry crude oil from Canada to Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska.

Civil rights organizations say the documents raise concerns that law enforcement is preparing to launch an even more brutal and aggressive response than the police tactics utilized during the 2016 Standing Rock movement, which drew thousands of indigenous and environmental activists opposed to the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) to North Dakota.

At Standing Rock, law enforcement organized repeated rounds of mass arrests and filed a wide array of serious charges in local and federal courts against activists. Police also deployed water cannons, teargas grenades, bean bag rounds and other weapons, causing serious injuries to protesters.

The documents are mostly emails from 2017 and 2018 between local and federal authorities discussing possible Keystone protests. They show that police officials are anticipating construction will spark a sustained resistance campaign akin to the one at Standing Rock and that police are considering closing public lands near the pipeline project.

The new records have come to light as the Keystone pipeline project has overcome numerous legal hurdles with help from the Trump administration, and as the project’s owner, TC Energy (formerly TransCanada), is moving forward with initial construction efforts.

Among the major revelations in the documents:

Officials at a 2017 law enforcement briefing on potential Keystone XL protests said one key tactic would be to “initially deny access to the property by protestors and keep them as far away [from] the contested locations as possible by any means”, according to an email summary from a US army corps of engineers security manager in Nebraska in July 2017.

Officials with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said in 2017 that the bureau had 10 armed officers in Montana and was prepared to “work with local [law enforcement] to deny access to federal property”. In 2018, army corps officials were also in discussions with the Montana disaster and emergency services department to discuss ways to “close access” to lands near the pipeline route, including areas typically open for hunting and other activities.

A “joint terrorism task force” involving the US attorney’s office and other agencies, along with federal “counterterrorism” officials, said it was prepared to assist in the response to protests and a “critical incident response team” would be available for “domestic terrorism or threats to critical infrastructure”.Authorities have also pre-emptively discussed specific potential felony charges that protesters could face, noting that a “civil disorder” statute was used to prosecute activists at Standing Rock.

Authorities have been preparing for possible protests in the Fort Peck area, home to a Native American reservation and indigenous people opposing the project.

“There is a lot of muscle behind this effort to make sure that Keystone is constructed,” said Alex Rate, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana, which obtained the documents through records act requests and shared them with the Guardian. “There are historically marginalized communities, primarily indigenous folks, who have grave concerns about the impact of this pipeline on their sovereignty, their resources, their religion and culture. They have a first amendment right to assemble and make their viewpoints heard.”

Revealed: how the FBI targeted environmental activists in domestic terror investigations

7. As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, From Colonization to Standing Rock by Dina Gilio-Whitaker

“This book covers the 500-year history of Native American resistance to colonialism and ecocide. It contextualized my environmental work as part of a struggle that has been taking place in the Americas since European contact, and it made me feel more connected to the larger Native American environmental movement as a cohesive whole both over time and across cultures and places. For Native people, this book is a reminder of how connected and similar our environmental justice struggles have been. This is especially important because the climate crisis requires cooperation across cultures and locations in an unprecedented way.”

—Shaylon Stolk, Indigenous (Scottish/Wayúu) renewable energy scientist and organizer with Extinction Rebellion justice; based in occupied Duwamish land (Seattle)

6/20

Native American Tribes’ Pandemic Response Is Hindered by Inequities

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

#3 ny nj navajo (frack and coal air pollution?

https://ecowatch.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=214ab5fbb3f6015d74ffab4ec&id=9b9df2bc17&e=c2e8fdabfa

next line 3 fight cheyenne?

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D**ecision expected soon on Dakota Access Pipeline challenge**

Our fights go forward, with some adjustments for the pandemic. Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman delivered a powerful argument over the telephone on behalf of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe this week as part of our long-term effort to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline. The notorious oil pipeline crosses the Tribe’s ancestral lands and poses a significant risk of an oil spill....

https://www.drillednews.com/post/indigenous-women-accuse-credit-suisse-of-rights-violations-for-continuing-to-bankroll-fossil-fuels

Karen Savage

Three Native American women have accused the global banking giant Credit Suisse of violating the human rights of Indigenous peoples, and have asked the firm to stop financing companies that are building and maintaining two oil pipelines in the United States.

In a formal complaint filed in January with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the women said that Credit Suisse failed to ensure that the companies working on the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana, as well the multi-state Dakota Access Pipeline, followed the organization’s guidelines for consulting with and seeking consent from nearby Indigenous communities regarding the pipelines. They also charged that by continuing to finance fossil fuel companies, Credit Suisse is worsening the climate crisis.

The complaint comes after two years of discussions with Credit Suisse, said Osprey Orielle Lake, executive director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network, which partnered with two other groups to file it on the women’s behalf, Divest Invest Protect and the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona. In keeping with OECD protocol, the women’s names have not been released publicly.

"Every time we met with them they would say, ‘We are not investing in projects, we are only investing in the overall corporate structure of that company and giving them money — we have no say where that money goes.’ We are saying that's ridiculous. ” Lake said. “You cannot give to a company that is committing Indigenous or human rights violations and lift your hands and say, 'We have nothing to do with this because we're not involved with that project directly.'”

Credit Suisse did not respond to a request for comment about the complaint.

Environmental groups have criticized international lenders, including Credit Suisse, for continuing to finance fossil fuel companies and projects. According to _{a report released in 2019}_ by the Rainforest Action Network and other advocacy groups, Credit Suisse provided fossil fuel companies with nearly $57 billion in financing between 2015 and 2018, putting it in the top twenty global lenders to the sector.

The OECD, a 36-nation trade and organization that sets guidelines for “responsible business conduct,” requires all member countries to receive and review formal complaints alledging that companies have failed to follow OECD standards for human rights, workers rights, and the environment. According to OECD Watch, a human rights watchdog group, communities and non-governmental organizations have filed over 300 such complaints since 2000.

This is not the first complaint to the OECD regarding Credit Suisse. In 2017, the Society for Threatened Peoples, an international human rights organization, _{filed a similar complaint}_ over Credit Suisse’s financing for three firms developing the Dakota Access Pipeline: Energy Transfer Partners, Energy Transfer Equity, and Sunoco Logistics.

The three companies came under fire in 2016 for rerouting the pipeline's Missouri River crossing from a site near the predominantly white city of Bismarck, North Dakota, to a site_{just upstream}_ from the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. In response to intensifying anti-pipeline protests near the new site, the firms hired a_{paramilitary security contractor}_, TigerSwan, which used sometimes-violent_{counterterrorism tactics}_ against water protectors from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other Native American nations, as well as other protesters.

“Both the government and private sector enlisted and sanctioned dangerous and dehumanizing tactics through a taxpayer-funded, militarized law enforcement with documented human rights abuses,” Dave Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux,_{said in a statement in late 2016. }_“The aggressive acts of these forces have caused severe injuries and endangered the safety of thousands of peaceful protectors who share our goal of protecting the water.”

To resolve that complaint Credit Suisse agreed to ensure that its corporate customers would obtain the “free, prior, and informed consent” of Indigenous peoples “when there is credible evidence that the proceeds of a project-related transaction are used for activities which may negatively impact an area used or traditionally claimed by an Indigenous community.” Under international treaties such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous peoples have the right to be informed of proposed projects that could affect them or their historic territories, negotiate the conditions of such projects, and give or withhold consent for them at any time.

In practice, however, Indigenous communities worldwide face ongoing struggles to uphold those rights.

The agreement is a good first step but includes a giant loophole, according to Lake, because it only applies to Credit Suisse’s_{project-related financing}_, or funding provided for specific projects, like pipelines or other infrastructure. It doesn’t include_{corporate finance}_, which companies use for general operating expenses.

Lake said by continuing to provide the companies with general funding despite the evidence of abuses related to the Dakota Access Pipeline, Credit Suisse allowed the same companies to again_{harm Indigenous peoples}_ and the environment in 2018, during construction of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana. The pipeline runs under Bayou LaFourche, the source of drinking water for about 300,000 people, including the United Houma Nation and several south Louisiana parishes.

Protests against Bayou Bridge, led _{by four indigenous women}_, were met with _{many of the same brutal tactics}_ as those used a year and a half earlier in North Dakota.

"Part of the reason that we included Bayou Bridge is that even after we met with them twice — and we're talking about high-level meetings with representatives from Credit Suisse with delegations of four or five women at the time, representing the Dakota Access Pipeline, clearly explaining violations that occurred, both human Indigenous rights violations, as well as environmental and climate issues — there was no action,” Lake said. “That allowed some of the same companies that they were financing to continue and go on to the next project, which was Bayou Bridge.”

The companies are now planning an expansion of the Dakota Access Pipeline, but have again failed to obtain consent from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, said Lake.

At a November hearing of the North Dakota Public Service Commission, Jon Eagle Sr., the historic preservation officer for the Standing Rock Sioux, _{testified that the tribe does not support expansion of the pipeline}_. “Tribal members live every day under the risk of an oil spill that would harm the waters that sustain our people, our economy, and our spiritual lives,” Eagle told the commission. “An oil spill would foul the water that we drink, that we rely upon for our Treaty-protected subsistence hunting, fishing, and traditional plant gathering, and that provides irrigation for our farming and other economic ventures.”

Lake said Credit Suisse’s continued financing of the companies behind the pipelines is further evidence that both its internal guidelines, as well as the resolution of the 2017 complaint, have not led to recognition and observance of Indigenous rights.

“They have not responded in any regard to what the Standing Rock Sioux have made clearly as a statement over and over and over again,” she said. “Now is the time for banks to move toward a just and sustainable future for all where the rights of Indigenous people are upheld and we protect our climate and communities.”

120 huffpo

The Lakota historian is among those using the Green New Deal to raise a decolonization movement.Nick Estes Is Elevating Indigenous Voices In The Climate

Nick Estes Is Elevating Indigenous Voices In The Climate Justice MovementThe Lakota historian is among those using the Green New Deal to raise a decolonization movement.Written by Alexander C. Kaufman, Photography by Steven St. John

n December 1890, The New York Times cheered the police who killed Sitting Bull, the famed Lakota chief who resisted the United States’ invasion of his people’s land, as having “made a good Indian of him” by gunning down him and his fellow “savages” who resisted arrest.

To Nick Estes, not much has changed in the last 129 years.

The Lakota historian and organizer, whose book “Our History Is the Future” established him as one of the nation’s leading scholars on the burgeoning intersection of Indigenous rights and climate movements, said you only need to look at how the country’s newspaper of record covered the ouster of Bolivian leader Evo Morales in November.

The South American nation’s first Indigenous president, who made sweeping reforms to recognize and aid the country’s pre-colonial ethnic groups, resigned under pressure from the military following accusations of election fraud.

In his place, a right-wing Christian nationalist from

the country’s white minority declared herself

president and began a brutal crackdown on

Indigenous protesters. Yet even as the civilian

death toll rose, the Times and other major U.S.

media outlets resisted watchdog groups’ calls to

use the word “coup,” going as far as to declare in

one analysis that “the Cold War binary of ‘bad’

coups and ‘good’ popular revolts no

longer applies.” ...

https://www.huffpost.com/feature/culture-shifters

DEM Wisconsin Governor Signs Bill Criminalizing Pipeline Protesters

Wisconsin’s Democratic Governor Tony Evers has signed a bill making it a felony to trespass on the grounds of an oil or gas pipeline. Critics say the bill was inspired by ALEC — the American Legislative Exchange Council — and pushed through the Wisconsin legislature by the American Petroleum Institute. Opponents of the law include members of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, whose reservation is crossed by the Enbridge Line 5 tar sands oil pipeline.The tribe’s chair, Mike Wiggins, said, “Over and over, we’ve seen peaceful, nonviolent protests met with militarization, threats of violence and actual violence from some of these corporate mechanisms.”

TOPICS:

intercept 1119

trump Says Native American Heritage Month Is Also for the White Men Who Stole Their Land

Natasha Lennard

1119

My name is Wendsler Nosie Sr. I'm the former chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe and a member of Apache-Stronghold.

Five years ago, powerful politicians knelt at the altar of greed and arranged permits for Resolution Copper, a multinational corporation, to drill and extract copper beneath sacred holy lands of the Apache.

For thousands of years, Apaches have come to Oak Flats to pray. Today, we face the possibility that our holy ground will become a giant crater.

We condemn the immoral, racist, and unconstitutional seizure and sale of Oak Flat.

Oak Flat is one of the most holy places in the Apache religious tradition, likened to how Christians and Jews regard Mt. Sinai. Resolution Copper's plan would create a crater below Oak Flat two miles wide and 1,000 feet deep.

**The U.S. Forest Service**has moved forward with an environmental impact statement and has refused to consider the Apaches' religious freedom claim, which would stop this destructive mining project. They have declared war on our religion. And a threat to the practice of any religious tradition in the United States is a threat to U.S. Constitution and the religious liberty of all people of faith.

The forces that seek to exploit Apache holy land for profit are the same forces that pass racist voter suppression laws, militarize our borders, deny health care to millions, poison our water, and pretend to promote a "pro-life" agenda. This is why we call for a moral revolution of values with the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.

our children's trust

juli---v

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiuhtezcatl_Martinez

obama, RS, mtv

https://theintercept.com/2019/09/23/indigenous-climate-green-new-deal/

no lnx

Indigenous People Are Already Working “Green Jobs” — but They’re Unrecognized and Unpaid

Nick Estes

September 23 2019, 4:46 a.m.

[pix Catcher Cuts The Road, an Iraq War veteran, leads a protest march to a sacred burial ground at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota, Sept. 9, 2016. A federal judge on Friday denied the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's efforts to halt the construction of a pipeline skirting the northern edge of the reservation on Friday; on the same day, the government ordered a the pipeline company to pause its work. ]

A GROWING CLIMATE consciousness has spurred popular support for a Green New Deal complete with calls for “green jobs” to aid in the transition away from fossil fuels. It’s a welcome development, but it’s also important to recognize the old labor of ecological stewardship — particularly that being carried out by Indigenous land defenders and Water Protectors.

“There’s an idea that we’re out there as paid activists. Wouldn’t that be great?” Anne Spice, a Tlingit researcher and land defender who has been living at Unist’ot’en Camp for several years while finishing her doctoral degree, said with a chuckle.

“There’s an idea that we’re out there as paid activists. Wouldn’t that be great?”

Founded in 2010 on unceded Wet’suwet’en land, Unist’ot’en Camp, some 750 miles north of Vancouver, Canada, aims to block the Coastal Gas Link pipeline, known as CGL, which is being constructed by TC Energy, the firm formerly known as TransCanada. But that’s not the camp’s only purpose: It was also founded to help bring the land and the community back to health after a period of intense logging that threatened moose hunts and salmon runs, elements of a land-based economy threatened by the oil pipeline.

“We are consistently doing the very thing CGL and RCMP” — the Royal Canadian Mounted Police — “are failing to do, which is ask for permission to enter territories and to gather and harvest,” Spice told me. It’s hard, meticulous work grounded in Indigenous culture and maintaining good relations, and not the quick techno-fixes some people are calling for in climate action.

The sort of land defense undertaken in the camp opens up a larger discussion about what “green jobs” are already being performed by Indigenous peoples to save our Earth — and the kind of value we assign to them.

[Climate Crimes

Read Our Complete Coverage]

Similar to how women and non-men have been historically tasked with doing the unpaid labor of housework and child-rearing, the relationship Indigenous caretakers have with the land, water, air, and nonhuman world is typically not viewed as productive. The financial, service, industrial, or technology sectors usually define what counts as a “job” — and it’s frequently bound up with polluting. Rarely is Indigenous caretaking defined as work. Yet, like unwaged caregiving work, land defense and water protection are undervalued but necessary for the continuation of life on a planet teetering on collapse.

Despite preserving the very elements needed to sustain life — such as clean air, water, and land — from settler states, repression against Indigenous peoples protecting their territories runs rampant.

[Related

On the Front Lines of Bolsonaro’s War on the Amazon, Brazil’s Forest Communities Fight Against Climate Catastrophe

This summer, wealthy Brazilian agribusiness figures intentionally burned large swaths of the Amazon, which produces 20 percent of the planet’s oxygen, to make way for cattle, farming, and mining industries. The infernos coincided with crackdown by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s government on Indigenous people and Afro-Brazilians protecting the forests. While North American settler governments have condemned the burning down of the Amazon as an affront to all humanity, they have themselves sewn the same seeds of destruction against Indigenous caretakers.

[pix 13 August 2019, Brazil, Brasilia: Indigenous women are taking part in a protest against right-wing President Bolsonaro's environmental policies and the loss of their traditional settlements. Bolsonaro wants to make greater economic use of the Amazon region in particular and allow further deforestation. Photo:

THE NORTH AMERICAN oil boom, in particular, has intensified militarized assaults on Indigenous land and water in the service of protecting the expansion of oil and gas drilling, as well as pipelines.

The most spectacular confrontation with U.S. law enforcement and private security contractors occurred at Standing Rock in 2016 and 2017, when Water Protectors protested the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline threatening Mni Sose, the Missouri River. Infrared footage of the protests captured by police drones, which was leaked by themedia collective Unicorn Riot, conjures scenes familiar to the U.S. war on terror. In the video clips, tented dwellings are the only objects that distinguish Water Protectors from the horrific, but recognizable, aerial perspective of a drone stalking military-age youth in Yemen or partygoers at a wedding in Afghanistan — the collateral damage of U.S. “surgical” strikes.

Organized labor has been on both sides of Indigenous blockades. At Standing Rock, on September 3, 2016, unionized pipeline workers plowed through Indigenous burial sites with Caterpillar earthmoving equipment. It was the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, a federal holiday honoring working people who were beaten, shot, and killed to win an eight-hour workday. In an effort to break the temporary blockade, private security unleashed attack dogs on Water Protectors attempting to halt the desecration.

Not all unionized workers fought on the side of the industry. There were also members of the National Nurses United embedded with the Standing Rock camp medics, providing expertise, resources, and care — in other words, solidarity — to Water Protectors injured by chemical weapons or riot police.

“It’s important to get settler workers to recognize Indigenous land stewardship as labor in a tactical sense,” said Harsha Walia, an organizer based in Vancouver, British Columbia, who has written extensively about organized labor and Indigenous and migrant movements. “When an Indigenous blockade goes, we must recognize it as a picket line that should not be crossed.”

Walia pointed to the Mount Polley mine disaster in 2014, when a toxic process-water pond spilled into a nearby lake and river, as an example of working-class solidarities. Following the spill, Secwepemc land defenders blockaded the site to prevent miners from reopening the copper and gold mine. Walia helped liaise between the Secwepemc defenders and the miners. “These are Indigenous land defenders protecting their Indigenous economies,” she recalled telling the miners. There wasn’t an automatic affinity, she said, but there was a working-class understanding: “You don’t cross a picket-line whether you agree with it or not.”

Hundreds of people gathered in support of the Unist' ot' en camp and Wet' suwet' en people during their standoff near Houston, B.C. as they protest against the LNG pipeline during a rally at Legislature in Victoria, B.C., on Tuesday, January 8, 2019. (Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press via AP)Hundreds of people gather in support of the Unist’ot’en Camp and Wet’suwet’en people during a rally at Legislature in Victoria, B.C., on Jan. 8, 2019. Photo: Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press via AP

WE SHOULDN’T ASSUME such solidarities are automatic or guaranteed. In fact, the influx of extractive workers — nearly all men — have long been decried as legitimate threats to Indigenous communities.

“We need to protect home,” said Cheyenne Antonio. She referred to a voluminous past of sexual violence used as a tool for conquest by settlers: “We’ve lived this history before.” Antonio lives in an energy sacrifice zone, an area earmarked for extractive industry with little or no other investment in the local community.

For nearly a century, her home in the Eastern Agency of the Navajo Nation has been heavily mined for coal and oil — and, more recently, for uranium and gas. Wooden oil derricks from the 1920s, pumpjacks, and modern fracking rigs dot the landscape, showing the successive waves of resource development. A new fracking boom threatens the place known as Greater Chaco Landscape, a place of origin for many Indigenous peoples in the Southwest and Latin America, and the Diné people who currently call it home.

The land is not only contaminated but also fragmented. A hodgepodge of extractive zones corresponds to a complex patchwork of legal jurisdictions in the “checkerboarded” area. In this part of the Navajo Nation, the Dawes Act, which subverted traditional land tenure systems in favor of allotting private property, parceled out land to individual Navajos and either sold off the “surplus” to white settlers or turned it into federal or state land. The fracking industry has exploited these divisions, and oil workers have exploited the loopholes of jurisdiction. This includes violent crimes against Indigenous women: According to a recent survey by a national non-profit dedicated to Indigenous health and social care, New Mexico ranked No. 1 in cases of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls, and third in the nation for oil production. Antonio can’t help but see a relationship between the statistics.

For her, there’s also a class division evidenced in the way traditional economies are devalued.“A lot of the community members are seen as too rez or too rugged,” she said. “But they know the land. They know how to protect it. They know how to survive on it. And they’re not wrong. Those ways are still alive.”

“Indigenous people are not the alternative, we’re just in the way.”

Antonio is critical of a Green New Deal; she thinks more has to be done. Her ideas go beyond sustaining current levels of energy consumption when her 90-year-old grandmother has lived without running water her entire life. “It’s easier for our Native nations and the state of New Mexico to lease land for oil and gas development than it is for my grandmother to get clean drinking water,” she said. “What is it going to take for our people to get water first before these corporations and settlers?”

Some settler governments have proposed “transition” plans that would continue extractive industry practices and fossil fuel economies while claiming to build cleaner economies. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for instance, has said he plans to use Canada’s oil and gas development as a way to build out a “green economy.” But some, like Anne Spice, the Tlingit researcher, see little hope in in these efforts, saying they don’t adequately address Indigenous land rights and caretaking economies.

“Indigenous people are not the alternative, we’re just in the way,” Spice said. The Wet’suwet’en territory she helped protect has been invaded by police and pipeline workers whose presence has disrupted the local Indigenous economy of hunting and gathering, which act as primary sources of food.

Coastal Gas Link, the pipeline threatening the territory, is part of the carbon infrastructure Trudeau’s government sees as a necessary step to build Canada’s low-carbon transition economy — and to achieve that goal, as of right now, Indigenous land-based economies are on the chopping block.

Both Antonio and Spice fear that if Indigenous caretaking isn’t taken seriously in current “green jobs” plans, then not much changes. “And now, we’re not only in the way of oil and gas expansion,” Spice told me, “we’re also in the way of transitioning to a green economy.”

https://theintercept.com/2019/08/25/border-patrol-israel-elbit-surveillance/

...

Building the Virtual Wall

Long before President Donald Trump called for the construction of a “big, beautiful wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border, there was the idea of a “virtual wall.” In 2006, Congress authorized the construction of 700 miles of fencing to be accompanied by a vast buildup of surveillance equipment and border guards in more remote terrain.

A key component of that effort, known as SBINet, was canceled after five years and more than $1 billion in expenditures. In the wake of that failure, CBP turned to Elbit, based in Haifa, Israel, awarding it a $145 million contract in 2014 to develop the integrated fixed towers in southern Arizona. In addition to fixed and mobile surveillance towers, other technology that CBP has acquired and deployed includes blimpsoutfitted with high-powered ground and air radar, sensors buried underground, and facial recognition software at ports of entry. CBP’s drone fleet has been described as the largest of any U.S. agency outside the Department of Defense.

The surveillance has had an acute impact on borderland communities, including on the Tohono O’odham reservation. Drones fly overhead, and motion sensors track foot traffic. CBP checkpoints monitor people traveling between the reservation and cities such as Tucson and Phoenix. Vehicle barriers, surveillance cameras, and trucks have appeared near burial grounds and on hilltops amid ancient saguaro forests, which are sacred to people on the reservation.

Nellie Jo David, a Tohono O’odham tribal member who is writing her dissertation on border security issues at the University of Arizona, says many younger people who have been forced by economic circumstances to work in nearby cities are returning home less and less, because they want to avoid the constant surveillance and harassment. “It’s especially taken a toll on our younger generations.”

Border militarism has been spreading worldwide owing to neoliberal economic policies, wars, and the onset of the climate crisis, all of which have contributed to the uprooting of increasingly large numbers of people, notes Reece Jones, a University of Hawaii-Manoa geography professor who studies borders and migration.

...

ew 819

819 ew

A Nebraska court has granted a victory to the owner of the Keystone XL pipeline, removing one of the last major challenges in the project's way.

The state's Supreme Court on Friday ruled unanimously that the state's Public Service Commission had acted in the public interest in approving an alternate route for the pipeline in November 2017. Challengers to the project say that the approval of an alternate route did not include appropriate input from landowners and tribes, who filed a motion with environmental groups to intervene.

"The Nebraska decision to approve the KXL route is not a surprise, but we had hoped they would be courageous to protect the earth, water, and wishes of the indigenous people and our allies," Yankton Sioux member Faith Spotted Eagle said in a statement released by 350.

...

Indigenous and Green Groups Fighting Against Pipeline Urge 2020 Democrats to Take 'NoKXL Pledge'

aha based on brazil fail tip pt: // ecosystem health and indig cult heath/ languages;indig and native Am ppl is EJ intensified; colonialism; they are the poorest, least educated but/and thus pay largest price in terms of toxic load; hit 1st and worst by AGW, but had the least to do with causing and the MOST to do with PROTECTING (defenders killed at high rates eg berta C]. killed at high rates b/c the CAN be: racism plus greed: those ppl do not know the true value of assets; they are block progress and prosperity. who will miss a murdered defender? if police on take and courts corrupt, no justice for them, and no incentive to stop killing them.[NB missing native women around man camps, a throwback to wild west gold rush? toxic masculinity, low density of women].

chipewa WI

line 5 enbridge

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25072019/oil-spill-risk-bad-river-tribe-lawsuit-enbridge-pipeline-remove-wisconsin-michigan

https://theconversation.com/populist-alliances-of-cowboys-and-indians-are-protecting-rural-lands-114268

The sea of red on recent election maps make it look like rural areas are uniformly populated by Republicans. And conventional wisdom suggests that those Americans are largely conservative populists who question many government regulations and do not welcome cultural diversity.

But the growing influence of Native American nations in some rural areas is starting to change that picture. Empowered by their treaty rights, they are beginning to shift the values of their white neighbors toward a populism that cuts across racial and cultural lines to challenge large corporations.

I’m a geographer who studies the relationships between tribes and rural white farmers, ranchers and fishers. In my book “Unlikely Alliances: Native Nations and White Communities Join to Defend Rural Lands,” I relate what I learned through dozens of interviews with Native Americans and their non-Native allies who described how the tribes are fusing the power of their sovereignty with the populist grievances of the tribes’ historic enemies.

By teaming up to defend the place they all call home, they are protecting their lands and waters for all.

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/3/headlines/report_disappearance_and_murder_of_1000s_of_indigenous_women_a_canadian_genocide

In Canada, a national inquiry found that the disappearance and murder of thousands of indigenous women and girls over decades amounts to a “Canadian genocide.” The report, which was obtained by CBC News ahead of its official release today, says that “We do know that thousands of Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual) have been lost to the Canadian genocide to date” and are the result of “state actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies.”

TOPICS:

Native Renewables: Powering Up Tribal Communities

omfg

STAND DOWN

National Guard Pulls Missile Launchers Away From Standing Rock Protesters

A day after The Daily Beast reported heavy-duty weapons were brought to the Dakota Access Pipeline sight, they’ve been removed—for now.

David Axe

01.18.176:05 PM ET

https://www.thedailybeast.com/national-guard-pulls-missile-launchers-away-from-standing-rock-protesters

North Dakota National Guard is withdrawing the two unloaded missile launchers it had stationed near the Dakota Access Pipeline construction site in order to “observe” peaceful protestors, which The Daily Beast first reported on Tuesday.

“Its removal demonstrates our commitment to deescalating any tensions its presence may have caused,” Guard spokesman William Prokopyk said in a statement.

Two Avengers launchers, Humvee trucks with rotating turrets that can be armed with guns and eight Stinger surface-to-air missiles, were deployed a day after protestors from the nearby Standing Rock Indian Reservation had spotted one of them deployed on private land overlooking a pipeline work site.

Several of the protestors were arrested for trespassing.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied Dakota Access, LLC an easement to extend its pipeline under Lake Oahe, which lies on federal land and borders Standing Rock. Dakota Access has vowed to continue building the 1,200-mile oil pipeline, most likely on private land in Morton County.

Jon Ziegler, a self-described “citizen journalist” covering the Standing Rock movement, described the Avenger as an “anti-drone missile system.”

On Oct. 23, 2016, the Morton County Sheriff’s Department announced it had shot down an activist’s drone after it had approached a police helicopter “in a threatening manner” —an accusation the drone’s operator denied.

But Prokopyk said Army Guardsmen—who have deployed alongside local police to guard the pipeline—were using the unloaded Avengers strictly as observation platforms. The Avengers boast sophisticated night-vision equipment that many other Guard vehicles lack.

“It was employed for over a month in a passive role to observe areas within Morton County where numerous incidences of criminal trespass and mischief have occurred,” Prokopyk said of the pair of Avengers.

“In the same vein as when we used unarmed Blackhawk helicopters to put out a fire near the protest camp in October of 2016, the unarmed Avenger was used in an observation only role to support public safety in southern Morton County.”

Not only were the Avengers not armed while stationed near the work site—there aren’t even any missiles for the vehicles anywhere in North Dakota, Prokopyk explained. “All munitions are strictly controlled by the United States Army.”

Prokopyk denied that authorities sent in the Avengers in order to intimidate anti-pipeline activists.

“If they were placed to intimidate anyone, it wouldn’t have taken a month for someone to notice them.”

The North Dakota Guard selected the Avengers for the “observation” mission not only because of the launchers’ night-vision equipment, but also owing to their enclosed, heated cabins, Prokopyk said. Taking into account wind chill, winter temperatures in North Dakota can dip below negative 40 degrees.

Having withdrawn the Avengers, Guardsmen will continue monitoring protestors using handheld night-vision equipment, Prokopyk said.

“Good thing we’re in a heat wave,” he added. “It’s almost 30 degrees!”

favreau pod save am

crooked media native am

https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/news/crooked-media-launches-this-land-podcast-cherokee-host-rebecca-nagle-asks-who-owns-oklahoma-J1rfQFS44Uarsyl-nxJMIA/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Country_Today

Indigenous land and water protectors in Austin, Texas, briefly disrupted the state legislature on Tuesday when they unfurled two banners in the Texas State House of Representatives and shouted, “Kill the bill! Save the land!” The action was intended to stop the passage of House Bill 3557, which would increase the seriousness of violations that interfere with “critical infrastructure,” such as pipelines, by elevating them from misdemeanors to felonies.

behind the bastards payday loans

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/05/whats-behind-lobbyist-attempts-to-block-casinos-on-native-land

Donald Trump threw his weight against a bipartisan House bill last week that would affirm the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s right to 321 acres of land in Massachusetts.

The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act, or H.R. 312, was introduced by Rep. William Keating (D-Mass.) and co-sponsored by both Republicans and Democrats. Supporters of the act said entitling the 2,600-member tribe to promised, federally recognized land upheld tribal sovereignty and protected the tribe’s economy by enabling the tribe to build a casino on the land.

The House voted in favor of the bill, moving the tribe one step closer to building a $1 billion proposed casino on the land. But the president’s opposition warrants a look into his past links to casino magnates and the gambling industry. The bill now heads to the Republican-controlled Senate.

Trump made known his opposition to the bill in a tweet on May 8, calling it “a special interest casino Bill” and urged Republicans to back out, leading the House to temporarily delay the vote. The president has a long history of challenging tribes’ right to build and operate casinos on reservations.

The chaos that transpired over the legislation exemplified the gaming industries’ complex and costly tug-of-war over casino regulations on tribal land. This is not the first time interest groups, lobbyists or the president have challenged tribes’ protected federal status as sovereign nations to block the construction of competitive casinos.

Significant funding flows into the political fight from all sides. Last year, gambling groups spent a total of $32.53 million, deploying over 300 lobbyists. The Arizona-based Gila River Indian Community led the pack with $2.58 million in spending. Federal lobbying in the gaming industry precipitously increased 112 percent between 2000 and 2018.

Tug-of-war over casino regulations

Federally recognized tribal nations have the right to self-determination and the ability to oversee their own internal affairs on reservations, including the construction of casinos in many states across the U.S.

But gaming facilities on reservations are not immune from federal regulations.

Some tribes must establish compacts, or agreements, with states before building casinos. These states then claim a percentage of the profits from the casinos. The National Indian Gaming Commission, established in 1988, is tasked with monitoring casinos on reservations too.

The ambiguity that can come with federal oversight has often resulted in tension between casinos, Congress and tribal nations over what rules to play by. When it comes to fine-tuning regulations, lobbyists play a significant role.

The Mashpee Wampanoag were among the first Indigenous people to come in contact with colonizers in the seventeenth century. Of the 69 tribes that once composed the Wampanoag Nation, the Mashpee Wampanoag remain one of three surviving tribes today, following decades of colonization and genocide. Despite its over 12,000-year history, the tribe continues to live without a reservation.

The U.S. government did not “re-acknowledge” the Mashpee Wampanoag as a tribe until 2007, well after the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Last year, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke determined the Department of Interior would not consider the 150 acres of land in Mashpee and 170 acres of land in Taunton, Massachusetts as the Mashpee Wampanoag’s reservation, reversing an Obama-era decision.

“If a federally recognized tribe does not have land over which to exercise its tribal authority, then what good is the government authority you have?” said Kathryn Rand, dean and professor of law at the University of North Dakota. “You have to have a place to exercise that authority.”

Rand, who also co-founded the Institute for the Study of Tribal Gaming Law and Policy, said the rescinding of the tribe’s land dealt a blow to their proposed casino and sent the economy into a tailspin.

“The tribe started work on its casino, including seeking financing,” she said, “When the [DOI] Secretary changed his mind, the tribe was left with overwhelming debt.” She estimated the debt at $440 million.

The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe saw the proposed casino as a key “economic driver.” Casinos can provide needed revenue for public services and other vital infrastructure on reservations, at times accounting for a sizeable portion of a tribe’s revenue.

This is not the first time Congress has stepped in to preserve a tribe’s reservation from being taken away.

In 2015, Gun Lake Tribe underwent a similar struggle. Congress introduced and eventually passed the Gun Lake Trust Land Reaffirmation Actto affirm that the land could be held in federal trust, but not without a grueling fight. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled the decision constitutional in 2018.

Steven Light, co-founder of the Institute for the Study of Tribal Gaming Law and Policy and professor at University of North Dakota, said “it is arguably not the best thing for Congress to be legislating on bills specific to one tribe or another because what that suggests is that sovereignty [can be] compromised and politicized.” Instead, the DOI’s responsibility is to fulfill the federal government’s promises to all tribes, he said.

Lobbyists representing Twin River Worldwide Holdings welcomed the DOI’s decision to un-acknowledge the land previously considered the Mashpee Wampanoag’s reservation. The private company has two casinos — Twin River Casino Hotel and Tiverton Casino Hotel — near the disputed site in Rhode Island. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who co-sponsored H.R. 312, said that Twin River was adverse to the competition from the new casino, according to the Washington Post.

Twin River paid revolving door lobbyist Matt Schlapp, who is the chairman of the American Conservative Union and a devout Trump supporter. The opposition’s ties to Trump go even deeper. The president of Twin River once served as an executive at one of the casinos owned by Trump in Atlantic City too, based on findings published by the Washington Post.

Schlapp leads the lobbying firm Cove Strategies, which Twin River Management Group paid $30,000 in 2019 for lobbying related to the bill. Schlapp’s wife, Mercedes, holds a position in the White House as the director of strategic communications.

Twin River Management Group also paid the firm Black Diamond Strategies $30,000. Although there is no record indicating he lobbied on H.R. 312, revolving door lobbyist Rick Wiley is a political consultant with Black Diamond Strategies and played an influential role in Trump’s campaign as the political director during the presidential primaries. Doug Davenport, a former strategist for Trump’s campaign, lobbied on behalf of Black Diamond Strategies as well.

Rep. Keating called out Trump’s “well-documented alliance with the [Rhode Island] casino lobbyist” in a tweet last week.

Tribes also have accelerated their involvement in federal lobbying. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe spent $150,000 on lobbying in this year. Last year, they spent $420,000.

“In the American political system, money talks,” Light said. “Political responsiveness is generated through access and influence, which is linked to fiscal resources and lobbying.”

In testimony before the House Subcommittee on Indigenous Peoples of the U.S. last month, Mashpee Wampanoag Vice Chairwoman Jessie “Little Doe” Baird said that the loss of the Mashpee Wampanoag’s status had devastated their economic development.

“The damage done to our Tribe during the years in which the status of our reservation has been thrown into doubt is beginning to reach catastrophic levels,” Baird said.

The denial of land rights to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe harkened back to termination policies in the mid-twentieth century when the federal government terminated the status of numerous American Indian tribes and nullified preexisting promises to tribes bound by treaty, said Rep. Raúl Grijalva(D-Ariz.) said on the House floor.

That said, money from casinos is not a panacea for the steep economic hurdles many tribal nations face. Some Indigenous leaders have called for alternate revenue streams given the limitations of the gaming industry.

Nor do all tribal nations have a casino. Of the 567 federally recognized tribes, about 42 percent operate gaming facilities, according to 2016 data from NIGC. That means the majority — 329 tribes — have no casinos.

Not all casinos are created equal either, and profit varies widely depending on location and tribe. Of all the gaming revenue audits obtained by the NIGC in 2017, 57 percent of casinos brought in under $25 million.

Lobbyists put ‘political pressure’ on DOI

The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe is not the only tribe to run into issues with the DOI and lobbyists.

Last year, the Mashantucket Pequots Tribe filed a lawsuit against the DOI and MGM Resorts International alleging that the agency intentionally delayed any decision over a proposed casino. This would be the third casino owned by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe. The Mohegan Tribe, also located in Connecticut, joined the lawsuit.

MGM Resorts International, a company with plans to build a casino in Springfield, Massachusetts, lobbied against the construction of the the Mashantucket Pequots’ proposal, and may have been influential in the DOI’s lack of a clear verdict, according to an investigation of Zinke’s calendar by Politico.

Judge Rudolph Contreras allowed the lawsuit to proceed in February, stating that the “plaintiffs have plausibly alleged that significant political pressure was brought to bear on the issue and the Secretary may have improperly succumbed to such pressure.”

MGM Resorts International spent a record-breaking $1.9 million lobbying on issues related to gambling in 2018, up from $570,000 just two years before. The company paid Ballard $80,000 during the first quarter this year. Last year, he received $320,000.

MGM’s registered lobbyists include Brian Ballard who served as a fundraiser for Trump’s presidential campaign in Florida and later became a member of Trump’s transition team. Filings show MGM Resorts paid Ballard Partners $80,000 in the first quarter this year for lobbying on issues related to gambling on tribal land.

Revolving door lobbyist Gale Norton, who served as Interior Secretary in the George W. Bush administration from 2001 and 2006, lobbied for MGM Resorts International about the “Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan Connecticut gaming amendments,” according to lobbyingrecords. She also served as counsel for Shell Oil.

Spending on lobbyists by the Mashantucket Pequots Tribe decreased from $380,000 in 2004 to just $84,000 in 2018.

The motivations behind steady efforts by lobbyists to challenge tribe’s right to hold federal land in trust can extend well beyond the gambling industry. Federally recognized tribal land accounts for about 2 percent of the country’s land, but holds about 20 percent of gas and oil. When a lobbyist successfully chisels away at tribal rights to self-determination over their own affairs, fossil fuel interest groups inch closer to accessing tribal land.

In 2016, Energy Transfer Partners lobbied to extend a $3.8 billion pipeline through sacred land on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota, despite widespread resistance from Indigenous organizers.

Trump eventually reversed the Army Corp of Engineers’ decision to halt construction of the controversial Dakota Access pipeline, made under the Obama administration. The case is now stuck in the courts.

Trump has a lengthy history with casinos. Trump owned casino ventures, including Trump Castle, Trump Plaza and Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City in the 1980 and 90s. All ended in bankruptcy but Trump walked away with significant profit.

Currently, the Mashantucket Pequots Tribe owns two casinos, one of which Trump attempted to block in his days as a casino owner. In 1993, Trump challenged the constitutionality of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in court in an attempt to eliminate competition from the the Mashantucket Pequots Tribe’s Foxwoods Resort Casino. Trump sued the federal government, arguing he was being discriminated against.

“I love to compete but I like to compete on an equal footing. I’m competing and paying hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes,” said Trump during a hearing. All the same, a New York Times report later uncovered that Trump claimed $814 million in losses while forking over no money in income taxes.

Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics.

For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center: info@crp.org

Populist alliances of ‘cowboys and Indians’ are protecting rural lands

Zoltan Grossman, Evergreen State College

By appealing to the hearts and minds of their white neighbors, Native Americans are carving out common ground. Together, these different groups are building unity through diversity.

Trump Pushes a New Pipeline Permit as Floods Devastate Native American Tribes

Alleen Brown

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/federal-judge-issues-latest-rebuke-of-trumps-attack-on-public-lands/

no lnx twit

Green groups on Saturday celebrated the latest federal ruling aimed at preventing President Donald Trump from rolling back environmental regulations that were put in place by his predecessor.

Judge Brian Morris issued a ruling late Friday stating that the Interior Department broke federal law when it lifted former President Barack Obama’s moratorium on coal mining in public lands.

Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who resigned last December due to multiple ethics scandals, did not order adequate studies of the environmental impact of coal, Morris said. The Trump administration had claimed the plan was “a mere policy shift” in order to avoid having to order such reviews.

Morris refuted this claim, saying Trump had initiated a “major federal action” without taking the necessary precautions required by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970.

The judge said he would hand down another ruling in the coming months on whether to reinstate Obama’s 2016 moratorium.

“This is a victory for communities whose land, water, and way of life is threatened by new coal mining,” said Jenny Harbine, an attorney with Earthjustice, who argued the case on behalf of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and several climate action groups. “It’s time we put their health and safety ahead of coal industry interests.”

...

3 yr anniv

https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-april-1-2019/

estes interview

promise to protect nokxl training

native SD, new anti activist laws?

npr

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/06/700013728/our-history-is-the-future-puts-standing-rock-in-broader-native-american-story

Modern Indigenous American history is a history of resistance. It's often assumed that Indigenous resistance to white settlers and enterprisers is often considered an act of self-defense, when it was — and is — also a battle between starkly different value systems.

For the Oceti Sakowin, or Sioux Nation, resistance is not just based on a claim to land that invaders have sought to usurp and exploit; it's also about what "land" means. In Our History Is The Future,Nick Estes poignantly describes an idea of what land means from an Indigenous perspective:

"During the last ice age, massive glaciers carved up the land. After the ice retreated, it left rolling hills and tunneling valleys that became buffalo roads, where herds that once blackened the plains traveled during seasonal migrations to and from water. The buffalo followed the stars, and the people followed the buffalo."

In this scene, land means interconnectedness, humility before the sublime rhythms of the earth.

The book's primary purpose is to situate the resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) at Standing Rock in the broader story of Indigenous American resistance (specifically Indigenous people of the central plains) to land incursion and dispossession. And Estes succeeds more often than not throughout the book by balancing an emphatic but accessible tone with academic (but not too academic) scrupulousness.

He writes about Indigenous forms of resistance that resorted to force when necessary, and negotiation and the courts when possible, even if, in the end, all often proved futile. For the people of Standing Rock and Indigenous people more broadly, DAPL was yet another violation of sovereignty by outsiders with an entirely different notion of what land means. To white settlers and enterprisers by and large, land meant power and property and corresponding violence in the service of wealth, resulting in the widespread annihilation of Indigenous peoples and their cultures.

The book also provides specific historical context for notions of land and property that animated white settlers and enterprisers. Former Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall articulated the precarious status of Native Americans in the 1823 decision, Johnson vs. M'Intosh. Estes relates that "Indigenous people, [Marshall] ruled, only possessed 'occupancy' rights, meaning their lands could be taken by powers that 'discovered' them: 'The Doctrine of Discovery'." To unpack this decision, Estes cites Onondaga international jurist Tonya Gonnella Frichner, who argues that the "newly formed United States needed to manufacture an American Indian political identity and concept of Indian land that would open the way for the United States in its westward colonial expansion."

Estes deserves praise for having written a very well-paced, highly detailed, morally urgent book in which he keeps his eye trained on the profound injustice he catalogs, condemns, and portrays, really, as beyond immediate redress. Although he traces Indigenous resistance back to the first white settlers, his focus is particularly sharp in his recounting the resistance at Standing Rock, the central form of opposition around which the book makes its case. At Standing Rock, and in the history of Oceti Sakowin resistance, existential threat has permeated a broader struggle of ideas, it should be said, not sought out by Indigenous people, but, rather, thrust upon them.

Again, it comes down to what "land" means. Tasunka Witko, also known as Crazy Horse, once said "my land is where my dead lie buried." And Estes echoes this sentiment and its betrayal in the context of Standing Rock:

"Because Native people remain barriers to capitalist development, their bodies needed to be removed — both from beneathand atopthe soil — and therefore eliminating their rightful relationship withthe land."

For instance, the changing of the course of the DAPL by the Army Corps of Engineers was an early perceived affront to the dignity of Standing Rock's land and people. The Army Corps planned to shift the pipeline's course from upriver of the capital of North Dakota, Bismarck, to upriver of the Standing Rock Reservation, or Sioux County, where 47 percent of the population lives in poverty. Estes writes:

"In its environmental analysis, the Army Corps had concluded that the Bismarck path crossed a 'high consequence area', which meant that the spill would have an adverse effect. Not once did it mention Standing Rock, for which a spill half a mile upriver was of no consequence to the Army Corps."

In August of 2018, AP reported that in "its initial analysis of the Missouri River crossing that skirts the northern edge of the Standing Rock Reservation along the North Dakota-South Dakota border, the Corps studied the mostly white demographics in a half-mile (0.8-kilometer) radius, which the agency maintained is standard. But if the Corps had gone another 88 yards (80 meters) — not quite the length of a football field — the study would have included the reservation." There's a clear disparity of concern here, one could argue, and it's exceedingly hard to characterize it as a mere oversight concerning vulnerable people and their land.

The protests at Standing Rock eventually developed into a full-fledged city of sorts, with Indigenous people not just from the plains states, but from all over. It was an Indigenous utopia of resistance. Estes describes it as such:

"All one had to do was walk through the camp to witness that dream. Flag Row — a half-mile procession of more than 300 Indigenous national flags that lined each side of the road — cut through the heart of the camp. Starting at the north gate, where new arrivals checked in with camp security, it was the 'main drag' of the 'Indian city' — the tenth-largest city in North Dakota at its peak. Alcohol and drugs were strictly prohibited. Media were required to report to the media tent. No photographs of children, or of anyone, were permitted without consent. Nor was the recording of prayers or ceremonies."

This was not only a protest; this was a community of collective resistance and cooperation pitched against the forces of greed and exploitation. And it was, in Estes' words, "Indigenous generosity — so often exploited as a weakness — that held the camp together."

Our History Is The Futurepoints a way forward, with solidarity and without sentimentality, to an idea of Indigenous land alive with ancestry and renewal. Standing Rock is the model for the present, bound to the past, to reckon with the future.

Now, as the Trump Administration has reauthorized not only the Dakota Access pipeline but also the Keystone XL pipeline, Indigenous people, their water, their lives, are once more under direct threat — their land once again imperiled by forces more concerned with the land's uses than its meaning.

Though the resistance at Standing Rock is very recent history, it is also the future.

nick estes kpfa event mod dunbar-oriz 3/19?

Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance

https://www.amazon.com/Our-History-Future-Indigenous-Resistance/dp/1786636727

there there novel oakland?

booktv

https://www.c-span.org/video/?458645-1/the-heartbeat-wounded-knee

https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-march-21-2019/

A conversation with Ojibwe author and anthropologist David Treuer about the alternative narratives he has uncovered on the struggles of his people. Treuer presents a counter narrative to the history we have been told about Native Americans. He points out about native life: “…we are not dead, life is not awful, it’s also not wonderful, it’s complicated”

Guest: David Treuer is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California. And is author of several novels and non-fiction books including his latest The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee:Native America from 1890 to the Present.

https://www.amazon.com/Heartbeat-Wounded-Knee-America-Present/dp/B07MNHQKVW

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer ...

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/.../the-heartbeat.../9781594633157/

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:{Get news about History :{books:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, authors, and more ..... who wants to better understand how :{Native Americans:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: have struggled to preserve their :{tribes:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: and cultures, ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Missing: kpfa ‎| ‎Must include: ‎kpfa

A Counter Narrative Of Native American History KPFA - Letters And ...

https://player.fm/series/kpfa-letters-and-politics/letters-and-politics-march-21-2019

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:{Mar 21, 2019 - And is author of several novels and non-fiction :{books:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: including his latest The :{Heartbeat:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:of Wounded Knee: :{Native America:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: from 1890 to the ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Missing: indian ‎| ‎Must include: ‎indian

Native American History Re-Envisioned in 'The Heartbeat Of Wounded ...

https://www.kqed.org/.../native-american-history-re-envisioned-in-the-heartbeat-of-w...

:{:(style="text-align:left;border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{Jan 25, 2019 - In his new :{book:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, "The :{Heartbeat:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: of Wounded Knee," anthropologist ... with :{Native Americans:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: by writing "adamantly, unashamedly, about :{Indian:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Missing: kpfa ‎| ‎Must include: ‎kpfa

mojo

Center for Public Integrity.

The remnants of an abandoned gold and silver mine scar the Little Rocky Mountains just south of the Fort Belknap Indian Community in Montana, bleeding polluted orange water into streams that meander through the reservation. Warren Morin remembers drinking the once-pristine water while he was growing up in the 1970s. Now it’s so acidic it makes his skin burn and turn red on contact.

Pegasus Gold Corp., a Canadian company that owned that mine and several others in the state, went bankrupt and folded 20 years ago. That left a legacy of water pollution and a cleanup bill nearing $100 million—with no end in sight.

“They took the heart of the mountains away from us,” said Morin, chair of the tribal council’s natural resources committee.

Pegasus isn’t an isolated case. Especially in the drought-prone West, the outdated and opaque regulatory system meant to ensure money is available to restore water and land at gold, copper and other hardrock mines often falls short. Regulators with insufficient funding are tasked with cleaning up a mess left years ago by now-defunct companies. The agencies that required those firms to set aside money underestimated how much it would take, in some cases acquiescing to companies pressing for lower amounts.

Pollution seeping from these mines regularly contaminates waterways. There’s often no end date to treatment costs, billions of dollars of which have been shouldered by taxpayers.

Contributing to this situation is Zortman-Landusky, the mine abutting the Fort Belknap reservation that’s the most troublesome of three former Pegasus operations. Brook trout began dying off when miners blasted the mountains to expose ore and have since disappeared from large swaths of the streams, locals said. Beavers and frogs are gone, too. Arsenic and other heavy metals stain water at a nearby treatment plant unnatural colors.....

https://www.utne.com/politics/what-white-supremacists-know-zm0z19szhoe

More than 4,400 African-American men, women, and children were hanged, burned alive, shot, drowned, and beaten to death by white mobs between 1877 and 1950. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, in Montgomery, Alabama, is a sacred space for truth-telling and reflection about racial terror in America and its legacy.

The United States has been at war every day since its founding, often covertly and often in several parts of the world at once. As ghastly as that sentence is, it still does not capture the full picture. Indeed, prior to its founding, what would become the United States was engaged—as it would continue to be for more than a century following—in internal warfare to piece together its continental territory. Even during the Civil War, both the Union and Confederate armies continued to war against the nations of the Diné and Apache, the Cheyenne and the Dakota, inflicting hideous massacres upon civilians and forcing their relocations. Yet when considering the history of U.S. imperialism and militarism, few historians trace their genesis to this period of internal empire-building. They should. The origin of the United States in settler colonialism—as an empire born from the violent acquisition of indigenous lands and the ruthless devaluation of indigenous lives—lends the country unique characteristics that matter when considering questions of how to unhitch its future from its violent DNA.

The United Sates is not exceptional in the amount of violence or bloodshed when compared to colonial conquests in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and South America. Elimination of the native is implicit in settler colonialism and colonial projects in which large swaths of land and workforces are sought for commercial exploitation. Extreme violence against noncombatants was a defining characteristic of all European colonialism, often with genocidal results.

Rather, what distinguishes the United States is the triumphal mythology attached to that violence and its political uses, even to this day. The post–9/11 external and internal U.S. war against Muslims-as-“barbarians” finds its prefiguration in the “savage wars” of the American colonies and the early U.S. state against Native Americans. And when there were, in effect, no Native Americans left to fight, the practice of “savage wars” remained. In the twentieth century, well before the War on Terror, the United States carried out large-scale warfare in the Philippines, Europe, Korea, and Vietnam; prolonged invasions and occupations in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic; and counterinsurgencies in Columbia and Southern Africa. In all instances, the United States has perceived itself to be pitted in war against savage forces.

Appropriating the land from its stewards was racialized war from the first British settlement in Jamestown, pitting “civilization” against “savagery.” Through this pursuit, the U.S. military gained its unique character as a force with mastery in “irregular” warfare. In spite of this, most military historians pay little attention to the so-called Indian Wars from 1607 to 1890, as well as the 1846–48 invasion and occupation of Mexico. Yet it was during the nearly two centuries of British colonization of North America that generations of settlers gained experience as “Indian fighters” outside any organized military institution. While large, highly regimented “regular” armies fought over geopolitical goals in Europe, Anglo settlers in North America waged deadly irregular warfare against the continent’s indigenous nations to seize their land, resources, and roads, driving them westward and eventually forcibly relocating them west of the Mississippi. Even following the founding of the professional U.S. Army in the 1810s, irregular warfare was the method of the U.S. conquest of the Ohio Valley, Great Lakes, Southeast, and Mississippi Valley regions, then west of the Mississippi to the Pacific, including taking half of Mexico. Since that time, irregular methods have been used in tandem with operations of regular armed forces and are, perhaps, what most marks U.S. armed forces as different from other armies of global powers.

By the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829–37), whose lust for displacing and killing Native Americans was unparalleled, the character of the U.S. armed forces had come, in the national imaginary, to be deeply entangled with the mystique of indigenous nations — as though, in adopting the practices of irregular warfare, U.S. soldiers had become the very thing they were fighting. This was part of the sleight of hand by which U.S. Americans came to genuinely believe that they had a rightful claim to the continent: they had fought for it and “become” its indigenous inhabitants.

....

Irregular military techniques that were perfected while expropriating Native American lands were then applied to fighting the Mexican Republic. At the time of its independence from Spain in 1821, the territory of Mexico included what is now the states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, and Texas. Upon independence, Mexico continued the practice of allowing non-Mexicans to acquire large swaths of land for development under land grants, with the assumption that this would also mean the welcome eradication of indigenous peoples. By 1836 nearly 40,000 Americans, nearly all slavers (and not counting the enslaved), had moved to Mexican Texas. Their ranger militias were a part of the settlement, and in 1835 became formally institutionalized as the Texas Rangers. Their principal state-sponsored task was the eradication of the Comanche nation and all other Native peoples in Texas. Mounted and armed with the new killing machine, the five-shot Colt Paterson revolver, they did so with dedicated precision.

Having perfected their art in counterinsurgency operations against Comanche’s and other Native communities, the Texas Rangers went on to play a significant role in the U.S. invasion of Mexico. As seasoned counter-insurgents, they guided U.S. Army forces deep into Mexico, engaging in the Battle of Monterrey. Rangers also accompanied General Winfield Scott’s army and the Marines by sea, landing in Vera Cruz and mounting a siege of Mexico’s main commercial port city. They then marched on, leaving a path of civilian corpses and destruction, to occupy Mexico City, where the citizens called them Texas Devils. In defeat and under military occupation, Mexico ceded the northern half of its territory to the United States, and Texas became a state in the Confederate cause. After the Civil War, the Texas Rangers picked up where they had left off, pursuing counterinsurgency against both remaining Native communities and resistant Mexicans.

The Marines also trace half of their mythological origins to the invasion of Mexico that nearly completed the continental United States. The opening lyric of the official hymn of the Marine Corps, composed and adopted in 1847, is “From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.” Tripoli refers to the First Barbary War of 1801–5, when the Marines were dispatched to North Africa by President Thomas Jefferson to invade the Berber Nation, shelling the city of Tripoli, taking captives, and blockading key Barbary ports for nearly four years. The “hall of Montezuma,” though, refers to the invasion of Mexico while the U.S. Army occupied what is now California, Arizona, and New Mexico, the Marines invaded by sea and marched to Mexico City, murdering and torturing civilian resisters along the way.

So what does it matter, for those of us who strive for peace and justice, that the U.S. military had its start in killing indigenous populations, or that U.S. imperialism has its roots in the expropriation of indigenous lands?

It matters because it tells us that the privatization of lands and other forms of human capital are at the core of the U.S. experiment. The militaristic-capitalist powerhouse of the United States derives from real estates (which includes African bodies, as well as appropriated land). It is apt that we once again have a real estate man for president, much like the first president, George Washington, whose fortune came mainly from his success speculating on unceded Indian lands. The U.S. governmental structure is designed to serve private property interests, the primary actors in establishing the United States being slavers and land speculators. That is, the United States was founded as a capitalist empire. This was exceptional in the world and has remained exceptional, though not in a way that benefits humanity. The military was designed to expropriate resources, guarding them against loss, and will continue to do so if left to its own devices under the control of rapacious capitalists.

When extreme white nationalists make themselves visible — as they have for the past decade and now more than ever with a vocal white nationalist president — they are dismissed as marginal, rather than being understood as the spiritual descendants of the settlers. White supremacists are not wrong when they claim that they understand something about the American Dream that the rest of us do not, though it is nothing to brag about. Indeed, the origins of the United States are consistent with white nationalist ideology. And this is where those of us who wish for peace and justice must start: with full awareness that we are trying to fundamentally change the nature of the country, which will always be extremely difficult work.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is Professor Emeritus in Ethnic Studies at California State University. She is author of Indigenous People’s History of the United States and Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment. Reprinted from Evil Empire: Reckoning with Power, a special edition journal published by Boston Review, which is an independent and nonprofit public space for robust discussion of ideas and culture.

===

https://www.ecowatch.com/military-largest-polluter-2408760609.html

Whitney Webb

Last week, mainstream media outlets gave minimal attention to the news that the U.S. Naval station in Virginia Beach had spilled an estimated 94,000 gallons of jet fuel into a nearby waterway, less than a mile from the Atlantic Ocean.

While the incident was by no means as catastrophic as some other pipeline spills, it underscores an important yet little-known fact—that the U.S. Department of Defense is both the nation's and the world's, largest polluter.

Producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined, the U.S. Department of Defense has left its toxic legacy throughout the world in the form of depleted uranium, oil, jet fuel, pesticides, defoliants like Agent Orange and lead, among others.

In 2014, the former head of the Pentagon's environmental program told Newsweek that her office has to contend with 39,000 contaminated areas spread across 19 million acres just in the U.S. alone.

U.S. military bases, both domestic and foreign, consistently rank among some of the most polluted places in the world, as perchlorate and other components of jet and rocket fuel contaminate sources of drinking water, aquifers and soil.Hundreds of military bases can be found on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) list of Superfund sites, which qualify for clean-up grants from the government.

Almost 900 of the nearly 1,200 Superfund sites in the U.S. are abandoned military facilities or sites that otherwise support military needs, not counting the military bases themselves.

"Almost every military site in this country is seriously contaminated," John D. Dingell, a retired Michigan congressman and war veteran, told Newsweek in 2014. Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina is one such base. Lejeune's contamination became widespread and even deadly after its groundwater was polluted with a sizable amount of carcinogens from 1953 to 1987.

However, it was not until this February that the government allowed those exposed to chemicals at Lejeune to make official compensation claims. Numerous bases abroad have also contaminated local drinking water supplies, most famously the Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa.

[Between 1946 and 1958, the U.S. tested 66 nuclear weapons near Bikini atoll. Populations living nearby in the Marshall Islands were exposed to measurable levels of radioactive fallout from these tests. National Cancer Institute map]

In addition, the U.S., which has conducted more nuclear weapons tests than all other nations combined, is also responsible for the massive amount of radiation that continues to contaminate many islands in the Pacific Ocean. The Marshall Islands, where the U.S. dropped more than sixty nuclear weapons between 1946 and 1958, are a particularly notable example. Inhabitants of the Marshall Islands and nearby Guam continue to experience :{an exceedingly high rate of:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{ cancer:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:.

The American Southwest was also the site of numerous nuclear weapons tests that contaminated large swaths of land.Navajo Indian reservations have been polluted by long-abandoned uranium mines where nuclear material was obtained by U.S. military contractors.

One of the most recent testaments to the U.S. military's horrendous environmental record is Iraq. U.S. military action there has resulted in the desertification of 90 percent of Iraqi territory, crippling the country's agricultural industry and forcing it to import more than 80 percent of its food. The U.S.' use of depleted uranium in Iraq during the Gulf War also caused a massive environmental burden for Iraqis. In addition, the U.S. military's policy of using open-air burn pits to dispose of waste from the 2003 invasion has caused a surge in cancer among U.S. servicemen and Iraqi civilians alike.

While the U.S. military's past environmental record suggests that its current policies are not sustainable, this has by no means dissuaded the U.S. military from openly planning future contamination of the environment through misguided waste disposal efforts. Last November, the U.S. Navy announced its plan to release 20,000 tons of environmental "stressors," including heavy metals and explosives, into the coastal waters of the U.S. Pacific Northwest over the course of this year.

The plan, laid out in the Navy's Northwest Training and Testing Environmental Impact Statement, fails to mention that these "stressors" are described by the EPA as known hazards, many of which are highly toxic at both acute and chronic levels.

The 20,000 tons of "stressors" mentioned in the Environmental Impact Statement do not account for the additional 4.7 to 14 tons of "metals with potential toxicity" that the Navy plans to release annually, from now on, into inland waters along the Puget Sound in Washington state.

In response to concerns about these plans, a Navy spokeswoman said that heavy metals and even depleted uranium are no more dangerous than any other metal, a statement that represents a clear rejection of scientific fact. It seems that the very U.S. military operations meant to "keep Americans safe" come at a higher cost than most people realize—a cost that will be felt for generations to come both within the U.S. and abroad.

Reposted with permission from our media associate MintPress News.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/white-kentucky-teens-surround-and-harass-native-american-veteran-during-dc-indigenous-peoples-march/

A now-viral video is shining light on repulsive actions by the next generation of MAGA supporters. Students from Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky were apparently in Washington D. C. to take part in the anti-choice “March for Life.” That’s where they came across Omaha Nation elder and American military veteran Nathan Philips. And that’s when these very Christian high school students decided that the best thing they could learn in the nation’s capital was how to express bigotry and hate.

Philips was present to take part in the Washington version of the Indigenous Peoples March, which was organized by the Indigenous Peoples Movement. Other events for January 18th were taking place around the world, from Asia to South America and Oceania to Africa. To accommodate two groups protesting in Washington on the same day, the Indigenous Peoples March moved the location of their rally at the last moment.

However, that didn’t stop Philips from coming to the attention of the Covington students. As the Indigenous Peoples March was drawing to an end, the group of 50-70 uniformly white students, wearing Trump-brand MAGA hats and wielding cellphone cameras, came into the area, and surrounded Philips, effectively blocking his march progress as they mocked his chant and drumming, and taunted him over an extended period. Witnesses describe them as standing inches away from Philips and others, screaming insults, bumping into people, singing over chants, and laughing in people’s faces.

It’s even worse when you see the full mob effect. pic.twitter.com/Oe7Zn5srOB

— Lulu Says (@lulu_says2) January 19, 2019

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/1/22/i_was_absolutely_afraid_indigenous_elder

also whiskey rebellion

https://freedomroad.us/who-we-are/ruth-anna-buffalo/

North Dakota Republican Who Sponsored Law Disenfranchising Native Americans Loses Election — to a Native American

Tuesday night in North Dakota, Democrats faced a stinging blow with the loss of Sen. Heidi Heitkamp.

A bipartisan problem-solver, Heitkamp did a lot in her time in the Senate — she expanded the Violence Against Women Act to cover Native American tribes, sponsored a bill to help farmers hurt by tariffs, and heroically stood up for women by voting againstBrett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court. She was unseated by GOP Rep. Kevin Cramer, a hard-right ideologue who has suggested attempted rape isn't a crime. The loss was broadly expected, as she was badly trailing in polls for weeks.

But further down the ballot, North Dakota Republicans paid a steep price for the lengths they went to to defeat her.

Shortly after Heitkamp first won her seat in 2012, carried to a narrow victory by Native American voters, GOP lawmakers in North Dakota retaliated by passing a voter ID bill making it almost impossible for Native Americans on tribal lands to vote. The law required them to use an ID card bearing a residential street address — even though most people in tribal communities do not have a street address. The law was initially blocked by a federal judge, but allowed to take effect on appeal.

But North Dakota Republicans didn't anticipate what a massive backlash there would be to their skullduggery. Immediately after the Supreme Court let the law take effect, furious Democratic activists all over the country crowdfunded a massive effort to get street addresses and updated ID cards for Native Americans in the state.

The effort was so successful that on Election Day, Native turnout was actually *higher* than 2012 in several places. The high turnout was not enough to save Heitkamp, as the state's electorate has shifted significantly right of where it was six years ago — but at the legislative level, angry Native voters flipped at least three red seats blue, including state House Majority Leader Al Carlson.

In the most poetic justice of the night, Randy Boehning, a GOP state representative in Fargo who sponsored the Native American disenfranchisement law in the first place, was unseated by Democrat Ruth Anna Buffalo — a Native American.

It is hard to call the midterm results in North Dakota a positive thing for Democrats. But even though they lost the Senate race, they can take satisfaction in knowing that the Republican law passed to deny Native Americans the vote was an utter failure that woke a sleeping giant — and may have done the GOP more harm than good.

Republican Official Unleashed a Racist Attack Against a Candidate Who Could Be the First Native American Woman in Congress

By Matthew Chapman, AlterNet

A Kansas Republican wrote a toxic screed against congressional candidate Sharice Davids. READ MORE»

murkowski

native am key to her write-in win, pressure on brett k

https://www.alternet.org/lisa-murkowskis-facebook-page-flooded-rape-threats-and-accusations-after-no-vote-kavanaugh

https://YYY.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/20/keystone-pipeline-protest-activism-crackdown-standing-rock

will parrish and sam---

no lnx

"Treating protest as terrorism': US plans crackdown on Keystone XL activists

Documents suggest an aggressive response to possible protests against the oil pipeline amid fears of another Standing Rock

Will Parrish and Sam Levin

Thu 20 Sep 2018 04.00 EDT Last modified on Thu 20 Sep 2018 11.39 EDT

Protests at Standing Rock during the resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock]

Angeline Cheek is preparing for disaster. The indigenous organizer from the Fort Peck reservation in Montana fears that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline could break and spill, destroy her tribe’s water, and desecrate sacred Native American sites.

But environmental catastrophe is not the most immediate threat.

The government has characterized pipeline opponents like her as “extremists” and violent criminals and warned of potential “terrorism”, according to recently released records.

[Life on the Keystone XL route: where opponents fear the ‘black snake’

The Pipeline Would Increase Tar Sands Exports

In anticipation of the decision, pipeline opponents blocked one of the streets outside the Public Utility Commission's building in St. Paul on Thursday with a sign reading "Expect Resistance."

When it became clear that the commission would approve the pipeline, Tania Aubid, a member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, stood and shouted, "You have just declared war on the Ojibwe!" the Associated Press reported from the scene.

Enbridge spokesperson Jesse Semko declined to comment on the decision, saying the company was waiting until after the hearing.

The new pipeline would allow for a significant increase in exports of Canadian tar sands crude oil, which is difficult to extract, costly to transport and has a high carbon footprint compared to other crude oil. Currently2.5 million barrels of tar sands crude is exported from Canada each day, and the region has an oil glut exacerbated by years of opposition to building new pipeline capacity.

...

ponca land back

https://www.ecowatch.com/nebraska-farmers-keystone-xl-2578444895.html

doctrine of discovery doc, lakota

https://kpfa.org/episode/talkies-may-16-2018/

'Salmon People: The Risks of Genetically Engineered Fish for the Pacific Northwest' Film Premieres

In 2015, the FDA approved genetically engineered salmon, the first ever GE animal to be approved for human consumption anywhere in the world. The Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians called for sufficient consultation with Tribes to assess the environmental impact of GE salmon production, a legal requirement the FDA did not honor.

What Standing Rock Gave the World

By Jenni Monet

At the height of the movement at Standing Rock, Indigenous teens half a world away in Norway were tattooing their young bodies with an image of a black snake. Derived from Lakota prophecy, the creature had come to represent the controversial Dakota Access pipeline for the thousands of water protectors determined to try to stop it.

It was a show of international solidarity between the Indigenous Sami and the Lakota. "They got tattoos because of the Norwegian money invested in the pipeline," said Jan Rune Måsø, editor of the Sami news division of Norway's largest media company, NRK.

Rune Måsø said the story about the tattoos was just one of about a hundred that his team of journalists covered over the course of the months-long pipeline battle in North Dakota. One of them, "The War on the Black Snake," was awarded top honors at a journalism conference held in Trømsø in November. That story revealed large investments Norwegian banks had made to advance the $3.8 billion energy project, spurring a divestment campaign by the Sami Parliament.

The backstory can be told simply. As early as April 2016, Indigenous activists protested the pipeline's threat to the Standing Rock Sioux's primary water supply, the Missouri River. While battles were fought in federal courts, representatives of hundreds of Indigenous groups from around the world—the Maori, the Sami and the Sarayaku, to name a few—arrived. Temporary communities of thousands were created on the reservation borderlands in nonviolent resistance against the crude oil project. Police arrested more than 800 people, and many water protectors faced attack dogs, concussion grenades, rubber bullets and, once, a water cannon on a freezing night in November. Last February, armored vehicles and police in riot gear cleared the last of the encampments. Recently, investigative journalism by The Intercept has documented that the paramilitary security firm TigerSwan was hired by DAPL parent Energy Transfer Partners to guide North Dakota law enforcement in treating the movement as a "national security threat."

Oil now flows through the pipeline under the Missouri.

But this Indigenous-led disruption, the awakening resolve that was cultivated at Standing Rock, did not dissolve after February. Rather, it spread in so many different directions that we may never fully realize its reach. The spirit of resistance can easily be found in the half-dozen or so other pipeline battles across the United States. Beyond that, the movement amplified the greater struggle worldwide: treaty rights, sacred sites and the overall stand to protect Indigenous land and life.

To be sure, post-colonization has always demanded acknowledgment of Indigenous autonomy. It's what spurred months of international advocacy when Haudenosaunee Chief Deskaheh attempted to speak before the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1923. He wanted to remind the world that European colonizers had honored Iroquois Confederacy nationhood upon entering treaty agreements under the two row wampum.

The stand at Standing Rock, then, was not anything new—just more modern.

Google the words "the next Standing Rock" and you get a smattering of circumstances, mostly posed in the form of a question: Bears Ears, Line 3, Yucca Mountain. "The Next Standing Rock?" the headlines ask.

The story of White Clay, Nebraska, is indicative. When the last tipis came down at Standing Rock, Clarence Matthew III, a middle-aged Sicangu Lakota man better known by his camp nickname, Curly, spared little time migrating to the South Dakota–Nebraska border. There, another fight for justice was mounting, for families living on the neighboring Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. This one focused on a decades-long dispute over beer sales targeted at Native American customers mostly prone to alcohol addiction.

Demands turned to broader issues: investigation of dozens of unsolved crimes in White Clay against Native Americans. "Once we got down there, they started telling us about the problems they've had, more than just alcohol, the murders, the rapes, and everything that was on the bad side of that alcohol problem," Matthew said. "It just broke my heart to hear all that."

Matthew had been caretaker of one of the main communities at Standing Rock, and he settled right in at Camp Justice at the edge of Pine Ridge. He was there with his "water protector family," others who have adopted camping as an active form of protest.

For all the momentum that the resistance at Standing Rock brought, the Indigenous rights movement in the 21st century faces increasing challenges. Tribal nations tread cautiously under the administration of Donald Trump. Internationally, the militarized protection of extractive energy projects and theft of land persist, despite glaring media attention paid to the rising number of Indigenous peoples killed or jailed for their activism in the face of it.

In a final push for re-election last fall, Standing Rock's Dave Archambault II gave what would be his last interview as chairman to tribal radio station KLND. Archambault used the airtime to speak matter-of-factly about how the movement had shifted the tribe's potent public image away from the reservation. "It used to be cool to be Indian; now it's cool to be from Standing Rock.:

"This movement was significant, not just for Standing Rock, but for all of Indian Country and around the world. We made some noise and now we're starting to see other Indigenous communities rise up and say, Let us all speak now, and it's pretty powerful and moving," he said.

Less than a week later and on the same day that the state of North Dakota accepted a $15 million gift from Energy Transfer Partners, Archambault was unseated by former council member Mike Faith, who has said publicly that he believes the overall movement hurt Standing Rock's economy and neglected daily life for tribal members.

The difference of opinion between the two leaders is a conflict that often lies at the heart of tribal community: protecting the Earth or protecting the Indigenous peoples.

On the eve of Thanksgiving 2017, when the Keystone pipeline ruptured and spilled 210,000 gallons of oil in neighboring South Dakota, the newly elected Faith remained notably silent while water protectors responded with outrage, most loudly, closest to home.

"Ironically, this week most Americans will be sitting down and giving thanks when last year at this time my people were being shot, gassed, and beaten for trying to keep this very thing from happening," Chairman Harold Frazier from the neighboring Cheyenne River Sioux tribe said in a statement. Like Archambault and other tribal leaders, Frazier was arrested for participating in the Standing Rock occupation.

Leadership in the Indigenous world is not only a difficult balance, but also dangerous.

In Honduras, activist Bertha Zuniga Cáceres is fighting for Indigenous rights in one of the most militarized regions in the world. She is the daughter of Berta Cáceres, the Indigenous Lenca woman who was assassinatedafter leading a successful campaign to halt construction of the Agua Zarca Dam. Now she is seeking justice for her mother's death.

The 26-year-old Cáceres is also campaigning to suspend all U.S. military aid to Honduras. In July, she survived an attack by a group of assailants wielding machetes. Just weeks earlier she had been named the new leader of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, the nonprofit organization formerly led by her mother.

"Many organizations, many NGOs, many Indigenous groups are struggling in how to sustain the work that they are doing in the face of these attacks," said Katharina Rall, a researcher for Human Rights Watch.

Last year, after the military-style assaults on the camps at Standing Rock, Human Rights Watch expanded its agenda to include a program focused on the environment as a human right. "The fact that we now have an environment and human rights program at our organization is a reflection of this reality that a lot of people face," Rall said.

Meantime, the organization Global Witness reports that it has never been deadlier to take a stand against companies that steal land and destroy the Earth. In 2016, the watchdog group found that nearly four activists a week are murdered fighting against mining, logging, and other extractive resource development.

As disturbing as this reality is, it is unsurprising then to recall the military-style violence at Standing Rock: the rows of riot police pointing their guns at unarmed activists standing in the river; tanks shooting water in freezing temperatures at a crowd of people gathered on a bridge. In this one regard, Standing Rock was not unique in the world. It had become crucially important. Americans saw the global struggle faced by the estimated 370 million Indigenous people—the violence, stolen resources, colluding corporations and governments that go hand in hand with protecting the Earth.

Sustaining this awakening is the next great task.

Climate change poses one of the most serious reminders of why the sacred fires ignited at Standing Rock must continue to burn: Indigenous peoples and their knowledge and value systems matter.

At November's COP23 climate conference in Bonn, Germany, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim was dressed in traditional Mbororo regalia when she stood in a conference hall demanding that Indigenous knowledge systems be properly acknowledged in Paris Agreement negotiations. The girl who once tended cattle in the region of Chad bordering northeastern Nigeria has now become a bridge for her people and government officials making decisions impacting the fragile ecosystem of Lake Chad, the lifeline for the Mbororo.

"Traditional knowledge has kept us from century to century to be in harmony with Mother Earth," Ibrahim said. "These knowledges will make for all the difference, but we cannot wait years and years, because climate is changing, and it's impacting the Earth."

Other members of the Indigenous Caucus at Bonn say inserting traditional knowledge into the climate talks doesn't go far enough. Jannie Staffansson, a representative of the Saami Council, wants what Chief Deskaheh had petitioned to the League of Nations nearly a century earlier: sovereign recognition for Indigenous Peoples on an international scale. It would allow equity at the negotiating table—a level playing field to fairly deal with the consequences of a warming planet in the face of land grabs and natural resource extraction.

"Why is it always that Indigenous peoples need to pay for other people's wealth?" said Staffansson. She paused to check the Snapchat account she had been using to engage with a young Sami audience while at COP, a demographic similar to the teens who got tattoos of the black snake.

"I had friends that went to Standing Rock," said the 27-year-old. "I was envious of their trip to support self-determination. Self-determination and a just transition is what we have to take into account."

"We need climate justice in everything we do."

West's Largest Coal-Fired Power Plant Confirms Shutdown Plan, Miners Fight to Save Jobs

Coal miners and supporters, many of them members of the Navajo and Hopi tribes, rallied in Phoenix Tuesday to protest the impending shutdown of the West's largest coal-fired power plant.

While Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke expressed his continued support for keeping the Navajo Generating Station open in a brief statement Tuesday, owners of the plant say they still are planning to take it offline in 2019 due to price pressures from natural gas.

The future of the plant, which provides more than 800 jobs to primarily Navajo and Hopi workers as well as tribal royalties, has proved a flash point for national and regional energy policy and raised larger questions on how Native communities will handle ties to fossil fuel industries as the economy changes. "I understand, we understand, you understand the challenges," Navajo Nation Council Speaker LoRenzo Bates said in a speech at the rally. "There's your jobs, the revenue, the economy, the water, but it goes beyond that. If NGS does shut down ... those jobs are going to be very hard to replace."

As reported by the Arizona Republic:

"The plant is owned by SRP, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Arizona Public Service Co., NV Energy and Tucson Electric Power.

So far there are no publicly identified potential buyers for the coal plant. SRP officials say that without a buyer, they are beginning the shutdown, which will force Kayenta Mine to close as well.

'It's closing,' SRP President David Rousseau said. 'Absent a unicorn energy company dropping in ... '

Some of the speakers Tuesday said that President Donald Trump and Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke could help prevent the coal plant's closure.

But so far, the government has presented no plan to do so.

'We haven't gotten any indication the government is going to fund that kind of infrastructure investment,' SRP's Rousseau said.

...

http://www.alternet.org/environment/many-native-communities-are-being-forced-relocate-due-climate-change

DAPL standing rock

https://shadowproof.com/2017/05/18/federal-government-trying-imprison-six-water-protectors/

In February, a federal grand jury issued indictments of four Standing Rock water protectors on charges of Federal Civil Disorder and Use of Fire to Commit a Federal Crime.

The federal investigators accused the four men—James White, Brennan Nastacio, Dion Ortiz, and Brandon Miller-Castillo—of involvement in setting three highway barricades on fire, which obstructed police during a highly-militarized October 27 raid of the “Front Line Camp” just north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.

Another water protector, Michael Markus, was indicted on identical charges on January 24, and his case has been combined with those of the other four men. Prosecutors are also pursuing three federal felonies against a 38-year-old Oglala Sioux woman namedRed Fawn Fallis. They accuse her of firing a gun during her arrest, even as multiple police officers had her pinned face-down on the ground. Fallis’ arrest also occurred on October 27.

These cases likely mark the first time that United States authorities have pursued felonies against individuals involved in demonstrations against fossil fuel infrastructure.

All six people facing the charges are indigenous. Under sentencing guidelines, Red Fawn Fallis faces 25 years or more in prison. The other federal defendants—Markus, White, Nastacio, Ortiz, and Miller-Castillo—face up to fifteen years.

Starting in August of last year, indigenous people and their allies devoted months to attempting to block the construction of the 1,172-mile Dakota Access Pipeline, which runs through four Midwestern states near North Dakota’s Standing Rock Sioux reservation and underneath their main water source, Lake Oahe.

The project sparked opposition in communities spanning the pipeline route, including in Iowa and Illinois. In North Dakota, police carried out over 700 arrests. State prosecutors have since brought felony charges against more than 100 people.

But the federal cases are arguably more serious, since they entail prosecutions by some of the U.S. government’s most elite attorneys and may result in lengthy prison sentences. The cases are also likely to exert a chilling effect on indigenous-led resistance to resource extraction and fossil fuel infrastructure.

In fact, in each case, the U.S. Attorneys for the District of North Dakota filed a most unusual charge: federal civil disorder.

“Nobody I’ve worked with previously has ever seen that charge,” the Water Protector Legal Collective’s Sandra Freeman, an attorney for Michael Markus, said in an interview. “It comes from a law that is usually only invoked when the federal government decides to prosecute people involved in resistance.”

The National Lawyers Guild’s Bruce Ellison, the lead attorney for Red Fawn Fallis, agrees. He says he has only encountered federal civil disorder charges “a few times” before, including during federal prosecutions of American Indian Movement (AIM) activists who reclaimed Wounded Knee as part of an armed stand-off with federal and local police on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1973.

Ellison is a long-time attorney for AIM political prisoner Leonard Peltier.

Records obtained via an open records request indicate high-level operatives within the U.S. domestic security state were involved in coordinating the enormous law enforcement mobilization against Standing Rock “water protectors” from last summer through early March of this year.

These records, which will be the subject of future stories, show officers from numerous federal agencies—the FBI, Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Marshal’s Service, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for North Dakota—coordinated with state and local police as part of an inter-agency “intelligence group” that monitored Standing Rock protests in real-time, with a focus on ferreting out “instigators” and “leaders of the movement.”

Among those who helped orchestrate this multi-agency intelligence effort wasNational Security Intelligence Specialist Terry W. Van Horn of the U.S. Attorney’s Office—the same entity now prosecuting Fallis, Markus, White, Nastacio, Ortiz, and Miller-Castillo.

The intelligence-gathering operation in which Van Horn participated appears to have been coordinated by the State and Local Intelligence Center, one of numerous law enforcement “fusion” centersset up by the US Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the September 11th attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

Supporters of the six federal defendants, as well as others facing possible prison and jail sentence, say that their court cases are a major front in the struggle for indigenous self-determination and against resource extraction.

“The government is looking at how to deal with calls for indigenous self-determination and resistance to resource extraction nationally, and the people facing these charges could become symbols of their ability to carry out that repression,” Ellison contends.

The October 27 Raid On Front Line Camp

The six federal prosecutions all stem from a highly-militarized October 27 raid of the “Front Line Camp,” or “1851 Treaty Camp,” which occupied some of the last remaining ground in the pipeline’s construction.

The camp was located on unceded Dakota territory, which was affirmed in the 1851 Ft. Laramie Treaty to be part of the Standing Rock Reservation. It was later stripped away under an 1889 statute from Congress.

Over 300 police officers—some carrying M16 rifles and clad in flak vests—advanced down North Dakota Highway 1806 toward Oceti Sakowin camp, the main nerve center of the water protectors’ resistance to the pipeline.

The police were flanked by aMaxxPro Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle (MRAP) designed to withstand bombing attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. A Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), an extremely loud device used for crowd control, was mounted atop the MRAP. Snipers occupied positions on surrounding hills.

In the course of the raid, the police police fired tear gas and concussion grenades and peppered the water protectors with rubber-tipped bullets and bean bag pellets, causing dozens of injuries.

Four officers broke from the line to tackle and arrest Red Fawn Fallis, a Denver resident and lifelong member of the Colorado chapter of the American Indian Movement, whose family hails from the Oglala Sioux reservation at Pine Ridge in South Dakota.

As Fallis struggled under the weight of her arresting officers, at least two gunshots went off alongside her. According to an affidavit filed by the Pennington County Sheriff’s Department in North Dakota, a deputy “saw a gun in Fallis’ left hand and wrestled it away from her.”

The Pennington County Sheriff’s Department claims Fallis was arrested for “being an instigator” and “acting disorderly.”

According to attorneys for protesters, “instigator” and “camp leader” have emerged as keywords in both state and federal prosecutions.

Fallis was initially charged with attempted murder, but a state judge removed that charge from the docket, and she is now being accused of three federal felonies. They include “possession of a firearm by a convicted felon” and “discharge of a firearm in relation to a felony crime of violence.”

According to numerous accounts, Fallis was a widely-respected coordinator at the Sacred Stone Camp, another major gathering place for prayerful opposition to the pipeline, and had played an instrumental role in the movement as a whole.

“Red Fawn was the kind of person who was down to help with anything at any time,” says one camp participant who asked not to be identified. “She was integral to the camp.”

Many water protectors and members of Fallis’s family have organized a support campaign for her. They stridently maintain her innocence.

Glenn Morris, a leader of the Colorado chapter of the American Indian Movement, released a statement on behalf of Fallis’s family this past November, saying she is “an intelligent, informed and determined Oglala Lakota woman, who has defended the rights of native peoples and nations, in multiple circumstances.”

Water Protector Facing Federal Felony Charges For Disarming DAPL Contractor

One of the other people facing federal felony charges, Brennan Nastacio, became a hero to water protectors for his dramatic role in disarming a DAPL security worker, who had enteredOceti Sakowin camp—a base of prayer and opposition to DAPL—wielding an AR-15.

The security guard, Kyle Thompson, drove into the camp and claimed to be a water protector, according to a camp security guard. He had a long-nosed semi-automatic rifle and a 30-round clip seated in the passenger seat of his truck.

Nastacio spent nearly a half hour pleading with Thompson to abandon the weapon while also calming other “water protectors,” who were clamoring around him. Thompson, who works for Texas-based Leighton Security, finally handed the gun over to Bureau of Indian Affairs officers, who arrested him. Soon after, Thompson’s truck was driven to a barricade and set on fire.

North Dakota prosecutors declined to charge Thompson instead charging Nastacio with felony terrorizing of Thompson because he briefly walked toward him with a hunting knife during the incident.

In a January YouTube video, Nastacio noted his goal was “the protection of everybody at the camp,” and that he was concerned Thompson himself would be shot by the police. Thompson claims he came to the camp to investigate vandalism to a DAPL vehicle.

Ironically, on the same day as Nastacio helped disarm the Dakota Access security worker, a security firm hired by Dakota Access collected the aerial surveillance photos that now form a major basis for federal prosecution of him, as well as of Miller-Castillo, Ortiz, Markus, and White, court records show. (*Note: This public-private “fusion” model of law enforcement that played out at Standing Rock will be the subject of future stories.)

Ellison, Fallis’s attorney, is attempting to introduce evidence that demonstrates the dubious role the FBI has played in the charges against Fallis.

Terry VanHorn of the U.S. Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.

The Role Of The FBI In Suppressing Opposition To The Pipeline

Police in North Dakota went to enormous lengths to portray many anti-DAPL protesters as violent criminals for their role in the protests.

More recently, the allegations against Fallis, Nastacio, Markus, White, Ortiz, and Miller-Castillo have become fodder for domestic security agency warnings about potentially violent threat posed by protests against other fossil fuel infrastructure.

A Department of Homeland Security report, published by the conservativeWashington Examiner on April 18, spells out the possibility that “environmental rights extremists” and “anti-government militia” may muster up attacks on the in-construction Diamond Pipeline extending from Oklahoma to Tennessee.

The report states that “[p]rotests surrounding the DAPL have resulted in the arrest of hundreds of individuals for allegedly committing criminal acts,” and that “[o]ne individual was charged with attempted murder for allegedly discharging a firearm at officers during removal efforts.”

But water protectors and their advocates point out that the real criminals at Standing Rock were the police and the oil companies’ private security firms, who consistently used violent repression to sabotage constitutionally-protected political activity.

Meanwhile, the federal government has failed to hold the police accountable for a single act of violence.

Drone footage captures police spraying Dakota Access Pipeline protesters with a water cannon.

On a single night in November, the police injured more than 300 unarmed and generally highly-restrained protesters by spraying water on them amid freezing temperatures and firing rubber bullets and concussion grenades.

A police officer struck 21-year-old Sophia Wilansky with a concussion grenade that nearly severed her forearm. A fellow water protector named Steve Martinez drove her to the hospital, where she underwent emergency surgeries in an effort to save her arm.

On the day after Wilansky nearly lost her arm, seven FBI agents—including two clad in Joint Terrorism Task Force jackets—came to her hospital room and collected articles of clothing and shrapnel freshly dislodged from her arm. They also subpoenaed hospital visitor logs and videos of her room.

The JTTF visit “created a chilling atmosphere where anyone who’s a protester is under suspicion of being a terrorist,” Sophia Wilansky’s father, Wayne Wilansky, says.

The same grand jury that has indicted Fallis, Markus, Nastacio, White, Ortiz, and Miller-Castillo on felony charges subpoenaed Steve Martinez soon afterward. The subpoena implied that a federal investigation of the extremely far-fetched claim that Wilansky’s injury was caused by an improvised explosive was underway, and that Martinez was a subject of that investigation simply because he had driven Wilansky to seek medical attention.

It ordered Martinez to produce, among other things, “photos and SD cards; written statements; and any other information in [his] possession.”

Martinez appeared before the grand jury on January 4th and was asked a single question: “When did you arrive in North Dakota?” He immediately invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify.

In a written statement, Martinez, who is partly of Pueblo and Apache ancestry, called the grand jury “a fishing expedition to find out information about the water protector movement, and organizations and people related to it,” and asserted that “to comply with this subpoena would violate my spiritual duty to protect my loved ones.”

Martinez was expected to begin a jail sentence for contempt of court on March 1, but in late February, the U.S. Attorney’s office unexpectedly withdrew its subpoena of him, meaning he’s free for now. About 20 supporters nevertheless gathered in front of the courthouse on March 1 holding up banners with slogans, such as “The Frontlines Are in the Courtroom.”

The Water Protector Legal Collective, the Freshet Collective, and other volunteer-driven collectives have provided legal support and advice for the water protectors now slogging through various court cases.

Notwithstanding the temporary victory in Steve Martinez’ case, members of the collectives say they intend to continue support for those whose sacrifices made the water protector movement possible in their various courtroom-related struggles.

The History Of The Federal Civil Disorder Charge

The civil disorder statute used against the six federal defendants can be traced to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in 1968, which spurred Congress to pass the US Civil Rights Act one week after his death.

It was passed in the aftermath of riots across the country in protest against substandard living conditions in segregated Black communities. The best known section of the act is Title VIII, known as the Fair Housing Act, which was designed to end residential segregation and promote racial integration. But a little-remembered section of the bill, Title X, is known as the Civil Obedience Act.

U.S. Senator Russell Long of Louisiana, an avowed segregationist, was the amendment’s main author and offered it as a quid pro quo for his support of the legislation as a whole.

The amendment created stiff penalties for such activities as “interfering with law enforcement officials during the course of civil disorder.”

Long previously offered up the Civil Obedience Act as an amendment to a bill that would have specified punishments for violence against civil rights workers in the Deep South.

Biographer Michael S. Martin recalled in his book, “Russell Long: A Life in Politics,” a speech Long made to the Senate floor, in which he described the pro-civil rights worker legislation as “a bill to aid and abet H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael,” in reference to leaders of the Black Power movement. He also claimed the people the bill supported were “known to stir up hatred and ill will among people of their race and put cities to the torch.”

In response, Long proposed the Civil Obedience Act as a means to “strike the very thing which really concerns the people of this country: the rights and the safety of 200 million Americans whose property and whose very lives have been seriously endangered.”

Nearly a half-century later, the federal government is using this same racially-charged legislation to pursue felony charges against six indigenous people at Standing Rock.

Ellison recalled one of the few previous times he encountered Federal Civil Disorder charges was during prosecutions of AIM activists in the 1970s. He experienced first-hand the murderous FBI-coordinated counter-insurgency campaign against AIM at Pine Ridge, he noted, whereby a paramilitary organization known as the Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOONs) went on a rampage of beatings and assassinations of AIM leaders and supporters.

Federal prosecutions are viewed as one aspect of an escalating effort by domestic security agencies, police, politicians, and fossil fuel industries to break the spirit of resistance movements nationwide.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said more than 30 separate anti-protest bills were introduced since November 8, representing “an unprecedented level of hostility towards protesters in the 21st century.”

“The government is looking at how to deal with protests nationally, and these federal prosecutions are certainly a part of that,” Ellison concluded.

Will Parrish is a California-based investigative journalist who focuses on militarism, climate change, and social movements.

http://www.alternet.org/activism/indigenous-woman-facing-federal-charges-protesting-dakota-access-pipeline

In an escalation of the criminalization of protesters, an indigenous woman is facing several federal charges for her involvement in the Standing Rock protests last fall. Red Fawn Fallis, 38, a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe, has been indicted on three federal charges, including possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, discharge of a firearm and federal civil disorder—a charge that is rarely pursued.

Bruce Ellison, the lead attorney for Fallis, told Mint Press News he has only handled federal civil disorder charges a few times before, such as when activists from the American Indian movement were facing federal prosecution in the 1970s.Ellison previously represented Leonard Peltier, another well-known indigenous activist from the American Indian movement.

Sandra Freeman, an attorney at the Water Protector Legal Collective, also told Mint Press News that federal civil disorder charges are rare.

“Nobody I’ve worked with previously has ever seen that charge,” she said. “It comes from a law that is usually only invoked with the federal government decides to prosecute people involved in resistance.”

The federal charges against Fallis stem from a massive raid on the Front Line Camp north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation on Oct. 27, 2016 that resulted in a clash between peaceful indigenous activists and heavily armed police. During the raid, officers fired tear gas, concussion grenades, rubber bullets and bean bag pellets against the unarmed water protectors, causing a multitude of injuries.Human rights groups like the United Nations have since condemned these violent police actions against water protectorsand said that they are “contrary to the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.”

As law enforcement officers continued attacking water protectors and activists, four officers arrested Fallis and tackled her to the ground. Two gunshots went off beside her as she struggled. Local authorities contend that Fallis possessed a gun at the time and fired three gunshots at police during the raid. A statement from the Pennington County Sheriff’s Department says Fallis was arrested for “being an instigator” and “acting disorderly.”Upon her arrest, Fallis was initially charged with attempted murder. That charge has since been dropped by a state judge.

Fallis was not the only indigenous activist arrested for her participation in the Standing Rock protests last year. Authorities have arrested hundreds of people since the protests against the pipeline began, and about 141 people alone were arrested at the October 27 raid. Since these mass arrests, about 100 were indicted under felony charges by state prosecutors. Several reports have also surfaced about the crowded conditions of jail cells housing the activists.

The charges Fallis faces could set a dangerous precedent on the criminalization of protests, as law enforcement may feel emboldened to arrest more protesters. Reports from The Intercept reveal a coordinated effort between private security firm TigerSwan, law enforcement and agents from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Secruity, the Department of Justice, the Marshals Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to mitigate Standing Rock protests through surveillance and counterterrorism measures. Since November, more than 30 anti-protest bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the country, according to the ACLU, reflecting even more efforts to stifle social movements by directly targeting protesters. Several protesters who demonstrated against President Trump's inauguration are also facing hefty charges in court.

Fallis is currently awaiting her next court date on July 17 in Bismarck, North Dakota, and her family and supporters have started an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds to pay for the legal fees. The campaign is trying to raise $500,000 for further legal fees, and has collected about $15,000 so far.

Many Native American activists have disputed the charges against Fallis, arguing that she was not holding a gun and that she is innocent. According to reports from The Guardian, Fallis was a respected figure in the Sacred Stone Camp and a passionate activist in the fight against construction of the pipeline. Friends and supporters said Fallis would often provide medical attention to protectors during encounters with police.

“Anyone at the camp that needs help, she’s always been the one to stand up,” Mia Stevens, 22, a member of the International Indigenous Youth Council and longtime friend of Fallis, told The Guardian. “She wouldn’t do nothing like that. Where is the proof?”

http://www.globalpossibilities.org/trump-is-audaciously-trying-to-privatize-native-american-land/

Each and every day, we the people are forced to endure something profoundly horrific being committed by Trump. And since Republicans only concern is maintaining their tenuous grip on power, they could care less what damage their president does tho their constituents. We’ve already seen scientific, environmental, and social groups get slaughtered by this one sociopaths desire to do everything to enrich himself and his amoral wall street pals. Now it seems it’s Native American Tribes’ turn.

Trump began mobilizing to pursue the privatization of Indian lands back in October of last year with the formation of his 27 member Native American Affairs Coalition. The Coalition is chaired by so-called Cherokee Rep. Markwayne Mullin. Much like termination policy that took place more than 60 years ago, the Coalition feels that impoverished tribes are overwhelmed by federal regulations that impede self-reliance and prosperity. Therefore, all tribal lands should be privatized so that American Indians can pursue development projects that lift them out of poverty.

Featured image via CounterCurrentNews

The map above shows the amount of Naive American land being controlled by the federal government, which will be endangered by Trump’s “America First” energy policy that seeks to give industry a free pass to drill on many of these lands.

According to Trump’s America Firstenergy policy:

Sound energy policy begins with the recognition that we have vast untapped domestic energy reserves right here in America. The Trump Administration will embrace the shale oil and gas revolution to bring jobs and prosperity to millions of Americans. We must take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own.

Making matters worse, Trump picked Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke for Secretary of the Interior, the very agency overseeing the Borough of Indian Affairs. Much like every amoral pick Trump has chosen to run major governmental departments, Zinke is notorious for being a deceptive con man. For example, Scientific American rates Zinke as a “mixed bag” with a very anti-environment, pro-industry voting record. So it’s as likely that he will be an asset to Native American affairs as HHS Secretary Tom Price is for sick Americans.

Trump has had a very spotty past with Native America tribes.

In 1993, Donald Trum before a House subcommittee that the mafia was running rampant on Native American gaming casinos. Here, he bickers with members of Congress about taxes, the FBI and if certain tribes “look Indian.”

In short, we’re seeing yet another example of Trump trampling on the rights of Native Americans.

Michael Hayne is a progressive comedian, writer and voice artist. Follow him