There are many earth/water/climate related news stories which feature Native American and Indigenous People so it seemed right to have a section for these stories here.
The Standing Rock Tribe is building a wind farm so they can “leave a legacy on [their] native land” — and it will be a groundbreaking project in so many ways.
SAGE Development Authority (Strategic, Advancement, Goals, and the Environment), a public power authority created by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, is managing the development of the wind farm. Named Anpetu Wi (which translates to “the breaking of the new day” or “morning light” in the Lakota language), the 235-megawatt wind farm will be built on the Standing Rock Reservation, between Porcupine and Fort Yates, N.D., where many of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s Lakota and Dakota people live.
“The project represents a community development model to produce renewable energy that offers a path toward self-determination and sovereignty for Standing Rock and other Native nations,” SAGE said in a statement sent to Green Matters.
https://www.greenmatters.com/p/standing-rock-sioux-tribe-wind-farm
Amazing!
Imagine an off grid solar energy powering hydropanels to turn water vapor from the air into delicious, clean drinkable water. This technology just came to the Navajo reservation where it is desperately needed.
Source hydropanels are already well-established globally, with the technology currently supplying clean drinking water to tens of thousands of people in 45 countries through partnerships with governments, corporations, and development organizations.
There’s potential for this technology to go bigger still: Similar to cellular telephones and renewable energy technologies, the scalability of Source enables hydropanels to be deployed at small residential homes, roof-mounted on schools or community halls, and even in “water farms” adjacent to entire communities.
Loved This Article!
On winter nights for the past six years, a group of 20 people have rustled through dark, coniferous woods to emerge on a Canadian beach at the lowest possible tide, illuminated by a correspondingly full moon.
An elder offers a greeting to the place and a prayer, then the team of researchers, volunteers, and First Nations “knowledge holders” lights a warming fire and begins its work. At sites outlined by stones placed hundreds or even thousands of years ago, some begin raking, or “fluffing”, the top three inches of the beach, loosening rocks and mud - and a remarkable number of old clam shells.
When the tide comes back in, it will flush out any rotting organic matter, changing “some places that are compact and smelly into a good clam beach again”, says Skye Augustine, a member of the Stz’uminus First Nation.
This spot was once a clam garden, an ancient indigenous form of mariculture that coastal First Nations people have used for millennia. It is estimated that they once numbered in the thousands along the Pacific north-western coast, though ruins are all that’s left of most. In collaboration with the W̱SÁNEĆ and Hul’q’umi’num nations, Augustine has spearheaded the first formal clam garden rehabilitations at two sites in the Gulf Islands, in British Columbia, with dozens more to follow.
LInk to the entire article below.
Absolutely stunningly beautiful imagery created by a sacred ceremony by deeply connected and uniquly spiritual people
Touchs my soul every time I read about the ceremonies of the ancient ones in all the many cultures and tribes all over the world today
I am glad it resonated with you. This really spoke to me yesterday and I have been thinking about it this morning as well. Such care for the land.
In Arizona, the Tohono O’odham Nation has been very upset as the border wall which is being built right now on the AZ-Mexico border is decimating sacred Tohono O'odham places and burial grounds. It is also draining the natural water supply. There hav been many protests but they have gotten little media attention.
I have felt that AZ Senator Kirsten Sinema has been a do-nothing senator so far. I recently however got a poll from her office which included a number of questions on Native American issues which I found refreshing and hopeful. Now I have read in this article about how she has challenged Wolf during his senate confirmation hearing for head of Department of Homeland Security.
Sinema criticized the agency for rushing to construct the southern border wall before environmental assessment reports could be done and provided to Congress. She also accused the department of failing to communicate with local tribal leaders whose sacred sites are imperiled by the project.
But Wolf insisted that DHS, Customs and Border Protection and the Army Corps of Engineers were doing their part to minimize and mitigate damage to cultural resources along the southwest border, but the main goal is to build the wall.
Wolf said the department plans to deliver an environmental assessment of its actions on the wall to Congress in October, but did not specify when.
“We’ll continue to abide by our responsibilities to make sure that we’re good stewards of the environment … but it’s been very clear that that is a national security issue and we’re going to continue to build that new border wall system,” Wolf said.
https://www.indianz.com/News/2020/09/24/cronkite-news-trump-nominee-defends-work-on-border-wall/
In secret tapes, mine executives detail their sway over leaders from Juneau to the White House.
This is some pretty big stuff, but this is 2020 and I wonder if it will get much media coverage. Glad The Washington Post picked it up. The video ( in the link below) is pretty damming.
A direct line to the White House, but routed through a third party to hide it from public view. Easy access to Alaska’s governor, as well as the state’s two U.S. senators. A successful push to unseat nine Republican state lawmakers who opposed their plan to build a massive gold and copper mine — the biggest in North America — near Bristol Bay in Alaska.
Those were some of the boasts made by two top executives of a company trying to build the Pebble Mine in videotapes secretly recorded by an environmental group and made public Monday. It was a rare glimpse into the private discussions surrounding the company’s heated campaign to win federal permits for the project, which environmentalists say will destroy a pristine part of Alaska and decimate its world-famous sockeye salmon fishery.
Well, this flew under the radar.
Sounds pretty upsetting to me.
In a little-noticed development last week that drew ire after being reported Monday, the Trump administration's EPA granted the state of Oklahoma wide-ranging environmental regulatory control on nearly all tribal lands in the state, stripping dozens of tribes of their sovereignty over critical environmental issues.
The federal law allowing states to seek environmental oversight in Indian Country was authored in 2005 by Oklahoma’s Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, a staunch ally of the oil and gas industry.
“The underlying law is a one-section provision surreptitiously inserted as a midnight rider in the massive (Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act) of 2005 that treats Oklahoma tribes differently than other tribes throughout the United States,” the Muscogee (Creek) Nation said in a statement. “Like the SAFETEA Act itself, this was a swift move meant to circumvent the federal government’s trust, duty and obligation to consult with the tribal nations concerned.”
@lovendures Thank you for sharing. Extremely upsetting. January can't come soon enough.
@lovendures so very upsetting and an evil act that will be righted in January. To live w this constant threat of helplessness and ever present dismissal is inexcusable. We stopped a similar threat to the Wampanoag tribe here on Cape Cod.
If you know of any info re emailing and/or numbers to call in protest, please pass it along. I’m happy to do my small part. I will research also when I get out from under our Outer Cape campaign to oust a convicted felon from cty govt. Ugh.
Hello neighbor! I lived in Plymouth between September 2019 and this past August, and I attended several of the virtual webinars the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe held about the federal effort to take control of their reservation land. (I'm in Rhode Island now, btw.)
You're right, this latest federal power grab in Indian Country will be one of those day 1 things that's reversed by the next administration
I heard about this, its being appealed by the current administration and it still in the courts, I could not find out when the case is scheduled to be heard. However given the current environment, we may be optimistic that the case will be heard after the new administration is sworn in. we can only hope..
https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/08/02/appeals-ruling-massachusetts-mashpee-wampanoag-case
The Department of the Interior is appealing a federal judge's ruling that blocked it from rescinding a reservation designation for land belonging to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe in Massachusetts.
The Cape Cod Times reports the appeal was filed Friday (August 21) in the U.S. District Court for the District on Columbia.
In June a federal judge stopped the federal government from rescinding its reservation designation.
"Without providing the Tribe with any warning, and without providing justification or reasoning, the Secretary's action, unfortunately, is consistent with this Administration's constant failure to acknowledge or address the history of injustice against our Tribe and all Native Americans, and its utter lack of interest in protecting tribal lands," Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council Chairman Cedric Cromwell said in a statement.
@coyote Hi Coyote! We’re in Eastham, moved permanently in ‘17. Always feel blessed to be in this healing natural place. I’m embarrassed to say we still haven’t visited Plymouth which was to be this year. p.s. I’ve been reading your inspirational and intriguing posts/visions/predictions/life experiences for a while now and am truly happy to “meet” you.
@deborah.carey I didn’t realize there was another round of opposition but am not surprised. Ugh. I usually see updates on our Indivisible Outer Cape fb pg, of which I am a member. So many freaking fires to put out. Aaaaarrrgggghhhh! We WILL be victorious!
Biden and Harris went to Arizona and met with many different tribal leaders from a variety of Indian Nations.
SO many wonderful things happened in this meeting.
Here is a bit, more at the link below.
Hopi Tribal Chairman Timothy Nuvangyaoma said, "it spoke volumes that they chose to meet with tribal nations, with some of the tribal leaders here in Arizona, to understand and maybe learn a little bit more about some of the impacts on us."
Biden's plan offers proposals to remedy health care disparities, address climate change, restore tribal lands and clean up hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines. Biden would also work to ensure Native peoples' right to vote, protect cultural areas and increase resources to make tribal communities safer.
“The United States of America was founded on the notion of equality for all,” the document begins. “We've always strived to meet that ideal, but never fully lived up to it. Throughout our history, this promise has been denied to Native Americans who have lived on this land since time immemorial.”
Biden also promised to appoint more Native people to high-level government positions beyond the usual Indian agencies
I love these kinds of stories
Swift foxes have been absent from the shortgrass prairie of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in northern Montana for more than half a century. But last month, that changed when the Assiniboine (Nakoda) and Gros Ventre (Aaniiih) Tribes of Fort Belknap reintroduced 27 swift foxes to the reservation, restoring a piece of the Great Plains ecosystem and a part of the tribes’ natural heritage.
For the tribes of Fort Belknap, restoring and maintaining their natural environment has been a priority for decades. The tribes reintroduced buffalo to the reservation’s 675,147 acres of prairie in the 1970s and the herd, centered around a 22,000-acre plot at Snake Butte, is now close to 800 strong. Fort Belknap also brought back black-footed ferrets via reintroductions in the 1990s and early 2000s.
“We don’t look at animals as just four legged or winged, we look at them as family,” says Fox. “For us it was like part of our family was missing all those years. Bringing the buffalo, the black-footed ferret and now the swift fox back, bringing those family members back home, connects us to our history with this land. It gives us a lot of pride as Natives.”
This has the potential of being really good news. It is long over due.
Sovereign will chronicles the lives, loves and loyalties of a sprawling Indigenous family struggling to control the future of their tribe against outside forces and themselves.
This collaborative and groundbreaking project offers a different perspective into the lives of Native people and emphasizes the importance of representation both on and off screen.
(Part One)
Who are our water and earth protectors?
Many are Indigenous People. But there are others.
The Wilderness Society has been one for quite some time. I will periodically get emails from them about important issues they want to bring to the collectives attention in the hopes that they will contact the appropriated political representative or corporation to either take or not take action. I received a plea today which I found interesting. It was to act and urge Chevron to NOT build an oil rigs in the Arctic Refuge which the Lame Duck Trump Administration wants to open up.
As you read it, notice how many different types of groups are now joining to together to do the right thing for the Arctic refuge which is so sacred. Indigenous people, environmental organizations and even major banks are making their voices heard. Not only will the opening of the refuge endanger the land and water, it will likely destroy wildlife. No matter how "safe" the oil corporations claim their profession is, they ALWYAS have spills. Our indigenous people will suffer great harm as well as their lands connect to these regions and they have many sacred lands which will be destroyed as well. .
I ask all of you. Keep informed. Act. Spread knowledge. Learn about ALL environmental issues.
Do not allow yourself to be burnt out right now. There are things we can do at this moment to help our Mother Earth and all those for whom she lovingly provides a home. We don't need to place our bodies between machines and the land to help as those brave water protectors did at Standing Rock. But it is our moral imperative to act. So I ask you, educate yourself, pay attention and take some sort of action.
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