Protecting Sacred Sites

February 15, 2007 Listen to the Show

Environmental Justice & Indigenous Rights: Battling Climate Change and Protecting Sacred Sites

Native Activists Rally to Protect Sacred Medicine Lake in CA
Native American organizers and allies are fighting to protect Medicine Lake – a sacred place near Mount Shasta in the Highlands of Northern California. The Bureau of Land Management, California Energy Commission and Calpine Energy have been trying to build geothermal power plants in the area since the 1980s. Native peoples who are opposed to the power plants and their supporters are planning a protest next Tuesday, February 20th at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Office in Alturas, California. The BLM is planning to appeal a 9th Circuit court ruling on Medicine Lake.
Mark Lebeau, a citizen of the Pit River Nation and Co-Chair of Advocates for the Protection of Sacred Sites.
For more Info: www.treatycouncil.org , Video Link: Pit River Nation Fights For Their Land, www.ienearth.org

U.S. Energy Policy and Climate Change – and the Harmful Impacts on Indigenous Peoples
The debate on global warming seems to have finally ended thanks to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which recently concluded there was a 90 percent chance human actions have been a major contributor to global warming. The panel of 2,500 scientists predicted more drought, heat waves and a slow gain in sea levels, even if greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels used in power plants, factories and cars are capped. So now the question is what do we do? Which is what legislators, government officials and business leaders from the 20 largest energy-consuming countries were asking and discussing yesterday at a Capitol Hill meeting. There were representatives from the G8 – or Group of 8 industrialized nations - Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, the United States, Canada and Japan. There were also representatives from China, India, Mexico, South Africa, and Brazil, which together produce 75% of the world’s greenhouse gases. The world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases is the United States. Yesterday corporate moguls, policy experts and U.S. senators told the world forum the US must take the lead on global warming, especially if it wants to encourage China and India to follow suit. But as world leaders struggle to find ways to collaborate, there are still voices going unheard. Indigenous peoples in Canada, the US and throughout the Americas hold valuable land and water resources that have long been exploited by the provincial, state and federal governments and by corporations trying to meet the energy needs of an industrialized world. Indigenous peoples have disproportionately suffered impacts due to the production and use of energy, yet are among those who benefit least from these energy developments.
Jihan Gearon, Native Energy Organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network. Jihan is originally from Fort Defiance, AZ, which is on the eastern side of the Navajo Nation. She studied Energy Science and Technology at Stanford University and began her environmental justice career at Redefining Progress as a Program Associate for the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative (EJCC). At the EJCC, she worked with a broad coalition of people of color, low-income, and Indigenous communities and organizations on climate justice issues. For more information: Indigenous Environmental Network – www.ienearth.org

December 21, 2006 Listen to the Show

Dine Blockaders Vow Continued Resistance Against New Power Plant; The Skulls & Bones Society: Holocaust Deniers and Cultural Appropriators

Dine Blockaders Vow Continued Resistance Against New Power Plant
“This project is an act of terrorism and cultural genocide.” Today is day 10 of the Desert Road Blockade, where the Dooda Desert Rock Committee is resisting plans for a new coal-fired power plant proposed by the company Sithe Global Power and the Dine Power Authority. The resisters halted work on the project last week by blocking access to the site of the proposed power plant. Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley unexpectedly visited with the protestors on Monday, but they said he was unresponsive to their needs. Shirley says the proposed $3 billion coal-fired power plant is desperately needed to provide jobs and revenue for the tribe. Many of the Navajo Nation's residents live without electricity and running water and jobs are scarce. Shirley says the Desert Rock Energy Project would be one way to help the situation. However, there are many in the nation who disagree. Critics point out the proposed Desert Rock Energy Project would be the third such power plant on the reservation, and that it won’t improve conditions, but make them worse. Early Wednesday morning, the resisters of the Doodá Desert Rock Blockade were served with several Temporary Restraining Orders and an immediate injunctive relief on behalf of the Diné Power Authority/Sithe Global.
Dailan J. Long, media spokesperson for Diné CARE, Doodá Desert Rock Committee.
For more information go the Resistors’ blog: www.desert-rock-blog.com
Or to provide support: Dailan Jake, Media Contact DineCARE/Dooda Desert Rock Committee 505.801.0713 (cell) dailanjake@dartmouth.edu (e-mail)

The Skulls & Bones Society: Holocaust Deniers and Cultural Appropriators
Bush family’s stranglehold on the remains of Geronimo. The great grandson of the Apache leader Geronimo has appealed to the White House hoping to recover the remains of his famous relative - stolen more than 90 years ago by a group of Yale students – the Skull and Bones Society. The story that members of Yale University's secret Skull and Bones society took the remains - including a skull and femur - from the burial site in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, has long been part of the university's lore. But a university historian recently recovered a letter from 1918 that appears to support the story that members of the society did indeed take the remains while serving with a group of army volunteers from Yale, stationed at the fort during the First World War. The students - among them, President Bush's grandfather Prescott - apparently returned with the remains and kept them in their society's headquarters at the university in New Haven, Connecticut. The society's initiation rite reportedly involves kissing a skull, referred to as "Geronimo", usually held in a glass case. We speak with a scholar who has researched this story.
Jim Craven, a Blackfoot scholar from Montana, Professor of Economics at Clark College, Vancouver, WA.
For more information: www.aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com
Or email Craven: Omahkohkiaayo@peoplepc.com

August 3, 2006 Listen to the Show

Indigenous Border Rights; Summit of Nations at Bear Butte; Mercury Contamination Violates Food Rights

Human Rights Violations at the US - Mexico Border
We look at the struggle Indigenous people from several nations are facing at the US-Mexico border, which is framed as a human rights issue. The Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras (Indigenous Alliance Without Borders) was formed to defend the right of passage on ancestral lands of Indigenous peoples. Matus says Indigenous peoples in Mexico, primarily subsistent farmers with few means, can not meet the requirements of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to cross the border, and he discusses how they are being prevented from meeting with family and at ceremonial gatherings. Yaqui, O'odham, Cocopah and Kickapoo cross the international border from California to Texas to visit family members and attend ceremonies. The Yaqui, O'odham and Cocopah have lived here, in the Sonoran Desert, since time immemorial.
Jose Matus, Director of the Indigenous Alliance Without Borders / Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras, Yaqui ceremonial leader and border rights activist.

The Summit of Indigenous Nations Convenes to Protect Bear Butte and Challenge Treaty Laws
We get an update on the battle to save Bear Butte from the world's largest biker bar... Across the Great Plains over 30 indigenous Nations acknowledge the sacredness of Bear Butte and it’s surrounding area, the Black Hills. It is a mountain inhabited by spirits and spiritual powers that are well known to the native people of the Great Plains. But now, plans to build an enormous biker bar near the sacred mountain are forcing the Great Plains people to take up a fight. The plan is to attract the more than 600,000 bikers attending the “Sturgis Bike Rally” that begins this weekend. Arizona businessman Jay Allen has already broken ground for a 150,000 square foot chunk of asphalt for trucks and for bikers to drink at his bar. A 30,000 seat amphitheater is also in the works. Traditional Indian people have been fighting to save the mountain for centuries. In 1876 Chief Sitting Bull gathered over 6,000 Indians at the Butte to urge them to defend the sacred lands. Chief Crazy Horse spoke from the mountain to remind his people that the Paha Sapa is not for sale. Hundreds of indigenous people from many places are now gathered at a campsite there.
Carter Camp, indigenous activist at the Bear Butte encampment www.defendbearbutte.org

Mercury Contamination: Violating Subsistence Rights
From July 6th to 9th, hundreds of Indigenous people gathered in the beautiful homeland of the Leech Lake Anishinaabe Nation for the 14th Protecting Mother Earth Conference hosted by the Indigenous Environmental Network. People from Indigenous Nations and communities throughout the Americas discussed the challenges they face in the protection of their and our homelands. Mineral extraction, toxic contamination, unsustainable energy and climate change were some of the many issues discussed. At the top of the list of dangers lingering in Indian country, was Mercury contamination. Indigenous activists are calling for a UN special rapporteur to investigate how mercury contamination in the US is a violation of subsistence rights and the right to clean healthy food. We hear a discussion on this in two communities far apart – in Alaska and in Minnesota.
Faith Gemmill, Coordinator REDOIL (Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands), Fairbanks, AK.
Art Cloud, Red Lake Nation member