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.”