Grand Canyon is our home. Uranium mining has no place here, Guardian, Carletta Tilousi, 26 June 17, The Havasupai resided in and around Grand Canyon for many centuries. This region is sacred – that is why we oppose the pollution of our land and water.
The Havasupai – “people of the blue-green waters” – live in Supai Village, located at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Today our lives and water are being threatened by international uranium mining companies because the US government and its 1872 mining law permit uranium mining on federal lands that surround the Grand Canyon.
In 1986, the Kaibab national forest authorized a Canadian-based uranium company to open Canyon mine, a uranium mine near the south rim of Grand Canyon national park. The Havasupai tribe challenged the decision but lost in the ninth circuit court of appeals. Miners were just starting to drill Canyon mine’s shaft in 1991 when falling uranium prices caused the company to shut it down for more than two decades.
Havasupai ancestors share stories of the sacredness of the Grand Canyon and all the mountains that surround it. They have instructed us to protect the waters and the mountains from any environmental contamination. That’s why we stand firm against any uranium mining in the Grand Canyon region.…..
In 2012, we celebrated the Obama administration’s order that honored our request to stop thousands of unproven claims from going forward and to close the area to prospecting for uranium. Now, misguided politicians in Arizona’s Mohave County are asking Donald Trump to overturn the decision because they claim they need uranium mining to help grow their economy. We oppose their request because we don’t want them to pollute our blue-green waters.
Once again, our sacred water and lands are being attacked to profit other people. For this reason, the Havasupai people and citizens throughout the region have been gathering at Red Butte over the past two days to conduct prayer ceremonies and workshops, and to gain support and bring awareness to the poisonous legacy of uranium all around the Grand Canyon.
The Havasupai are resilient people. We have resided in and around the Grand Canyon for many centuries. This struggle is not about money to us, it is about human life.
Please stand with us to put an end to mining uranium in our home, which has always been the Grand Canyon.
Carletta Tilousi is a member of the Havasupai tribal council. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/26/grand-canyon-uranium-mining-pollution
June 28, 2017
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
indigenous issues, USA |
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A controversial plan to temporarily store more than three million pounds of spent nuclear fuel 100 feet from one of Southern California’s most popular beaches, San Onofre, is meeting with fierce resistance from local communities, including tribal members. The problem for the Native population is that while the formal decision-making process systematically involved a wide variety of stakeholders including local and state governments, community groups, environmentalists, academics, military, and business, education, and labor leaders, tribal governments were excluded.
The Backstory
Halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego, and with eight million people living within a 50-mile radius, the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) looms above what is otherwise a pristine stretch of coastline. It is surrounded by San Onofre State Park, one of the state’s busiest parks, which sits within the Camp Pendleton Marine Base. San Onofre is the traditional territory of the Acjachemen people, who know the area as Panhe. Prior to colonization, San Onofre was also territory shared by the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians (Luiseño). Both are state-recognized tribes. All these factors mean there are many different people with strong opinions about nuclear waste storage near their communities.
The aging “nuke plant,” as local residents call it, is owned primarily by Southern California Edison, and was permanently shut down in 2013 after a discovery that it was leaking radioactive gas. It is scheduled for full decommissioning; at issue is how and where to store the accumulated radioactive waste in the short term before a long-term plan can be worked out.
“To the best of our knowledge, our tribal government was never contacted by Edison,” Rebecca Robles, Acjachemen tribal member and co-director of the United Coalition to Protect Panhe, told ICMN. Other local tribal leaders declined to comment……
Spent fuel rods currently stored in cooling pools in SONGS’ two reactors need to be removed to dry storage, which according to studies is safer. SONGS planned to move more than 100 steel casks encased in concrete containers and bury them onsite just 100 feet from the high-tide mark in an area already plagued by erosion. In addition, ocean levels at that site are rising faster than expected, according to a recent study by the U.S. Geological Survey. Google Earth images highlight the reason that residents are so alarmed by the location of the storage, as the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
With increased awareness of the issue has come increased public criticism. Critics believe burying the waste so close to the beach in an earthquake-prone region is a recipe for disaster, in light of the 2011 Fukushima catastrophe, according to the Orange County Register.
They also believe that the 5/8-inch steel casks that SONGS plans to use are far too flimsy, according to a report by the citizen group San Onofre Safety.
Because SONGS is in the coastal zone it is subject to California Coastal Commission rules, and was granted a permit by the commission to temporarily store the waste for 20 years. In November 2015 the community watchdog group Citizen’s Oversight filed a lawsuit against the Coastal Commission, demanding that the permit be revoked and another site found, Reuters reported. Citizen’s Oversight and the state are now negotiating a settlement, Fox 5 News reported on April 7.
Decisions Made Without Tribal Input……. State law AB 52 requires consultation with tribal governments before it issues permits for development-related projects, prompting questions about why local Native nations weren’t consulted in this case……
It remains to be seen if or how the lawsuit negotiations will affect the location of the waste storage site. No matter what happens, however, this is only the beginning stage of the interim storage at SONGS and there will be a need for the Community Engagement Panel for years to come to monitor the issue. That means there is still plenty of reason for a tribal appointment.https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/environment/beachfront-nuclear-wastelandsouthern-california/
May 22, 2017
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
indigenous issues, USA, wastes |
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Mississippi Taxing – Nuclear Power And Accusations Of Racism, Forbes, Peter J Reilly , 14 May 17 Claiborne County, Mississippi is home to the Grand Gulf Nuclear Generating Station operated by Entergy. Having one of those things in the neighborhood is a little nerve wracking. The Nuclear Regulatory Agency defines a plume exposure pathway zone and a larger ingestion pathway zone in the vicinity of the plant, in the event something goes really wrong. On the upside, a power plant could mean a lot of tax revenue and Claiborne County shows up on lists as one of the poorest counties in the country.
Only under Mississippi law a county doesn’t get to tax a nuclear power plant. The state taxes the plant and divvies up the money among counties in the plant’s service area. Some residents claim that the reason for that law is that Claiborne County, home to Mississippi’s only nuclear power plant, has a population that is over 80% African American. That was what the lawsuit Doss v Claiborne County Board of Supervisors was all about. Spoiler alert – it did not go well for the disgruntled residents. As is common in these sort of cases, they foundered on the rock of standing.
Some History Claiborne County has significance in the history of the civil rights movement………
Racism. Voting rights legislation and enforcement had allowed African Americans to gain control of government in Claiborne County and the change in the law prevented them from having access to substantial revenue to improve infrastructure and spend on education. In the wake of Brown v Board of Education white Mississippians had largely abandoned the public schools for segregation academies. Professor Crosby, who was the only white student in her graduating class at Port Gibson High School tends to favor the racism narrative, although she has not studied the power plant issue closely.
Professor Andrew Kahrl of the University of Virginia whose research focuses on “the social, economic, and environmental history of land use, real estate development, and racial inequality in the 20th century United States” has little doubt. A recent article by Professor Kahrl in “The Power To Destroy: Discriminatory Property Assessments and the Struggle for Tax Justice in Mississippi” in the Journal of Southern History included a discussion of Evan Doss Jr.’s struggle to clean up discriminatory assessments in the seventies wrote me:
“As someone who has studied the history of taxation in Claiborne County, specifically, and in Southern states, in general, I can say that the state legislature’s decision in 1986 to strip this majority black county of its taxing authority over Grand Gulf was racially motivated. As my article shows, white-controlled local governments in Mississippi had, for generations, worked to prevent tax revenues from being used to the benefit of black communities as well as shifting the burden of local taxation disproportionately onto black taxpayers through various forms of discriminatory assessment and administration.
During the Jim Crow era, these practices thrived because disenfranchisement had rendered white lawmakers unaccountable to black citizens. Upon passage of the Voting Rights Act and black southerners’ concerted efforts to register to vote and run candidates for local office, white lawmakers devised a variety of techniques for limiting the powers of new black officeholders and prevent them from doing their jobs. This was the case with Evan Doss Jr., who ran for Claiborne County Assessor in 1971 on the promise to restore fairness to a notoriously discriminatory tax assessment process, and, upon assuming the office, was thwarted at every turn by the white-controlled board of supervisors and subject to incessant harassment for, as he put it, “being black and doing my job.” The completion of the Grand Gulf Nuclear Power Station in the early 1980s promised to be a game changer for the county, in that it would provide it with much-needed tax revenue that could be used to provide vital social services for its impoverished population and improve its chronically underfunded public schools. By then, African Americans held most of the county’s elected offices and were poised to play a decisive role in the allocation of local tax revenues.
The Current Case After nearly thirty years, the claims of racial bias still have not gotten a hearing. …….https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2017/05/14/mississippi-taxing-nuclear-power-and-accusations-of-racism/#58b1d4bd4919
May 15, 2017
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
indigenous issues, USA |
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Water is rallying cry for opponents at uranium-mine hearing, Rapid City Journal, Seth Tupper Journal staff, May 9, 2017 The spirit of a recent protest against a crude-oil pipeline energized opponents of a proposed southwest South Dakota uranium mine Monday during a public hearing.
May 10, 2017
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
indigenous issues, USA, water |
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Areva pulls out of Baker Lake, Nunavut uranium mine remains mothballed, NUNATSIAQ ONLINE, Nunavut May 05, 2017 JANE GEORGE Areva Resources Canada, the proponent of the Kiggavik uranium project, has decided to close shop in Baker Lake and put its office building up for sale.
“After over 10 years exploring in the territory, studying the possibility of developing the Kiggavik Project and making numerous friends in the Kivalliq region, it’s time to say good bye,” the company said in an advertisement in the Nunatsiaq News print newspaper of May 5…..
The decision to sell the building comes after Areva opted to place its uranium mining project on hold.
That followed a 2015 recommendation from the Nunavut Impact Review Board that the project, 80 kilometres east of Baker Lake, should not proceed.
Then, in July 2016, the four federal ministers with authority over the project said they accepted the NIRB’s recommendation.
Kiggavik will remain in care and maintenance for an “indefinite period,” McCallum said May 4.
Meanwhile, its permits will be maintained and the property will be secured and visited once a year, he said.
The uranium mine to be located at two sites, Kiggavik and Sissons, would have comprised four open pits and an underground operation.
Areva said the project, with an estimated lifespan of about 12 years, would have been operating by some time in the 2020s or 2030s.
But opponents, such as the Nunavummiut Makitagunarningit group, said uranium mining posed a serious risk to the Kivalliq region’s caribou herds and that the environmental risks associated with the operation would outweigh its economic benefits.
While the mine would have cost $2 billion to build, McCallum said Areva had spent $80 million on developing the project, with $30 million going to northern contractors since 2006—numbers he recently shared in a meeting with the mayor of Baker Lake and the Kivalliq Inuit Association……The price of uranium currently stands at about $22 per pound—down nearly by half since 2013 and much lower than its high of more than $136 per pound in 2007. http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/65674areva_pulls_out_of_baker_lake_as_nunavut_uranium_mine_mothballed/#.WQzPWFlWLhM.twitter
May 8, 2017
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
business and costs, Canada, indigenous issues, Uranium |
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The Moapa went from suffering at the hands of coal to benefiting from the profits of renewables
Color Lines, Yessenia Funes APR 10, 2017 Tucked between scattered red desert rocks, the Moapa Band of Paiutes dwells on a little over 70,000 acres in southeastern Nevada. It’s a small tribe with a population of no more than 311, but those numbers
haven’t stopped its members from shutting down a giant coal generating station to protect their health and land.
While President Donald Trump is attempting to revive the coal industry, the Moapa Band has proven how dangerous that industry can be to health. Tribal members suffer from high rates of asthma and heart disease, though the tribe’s small size makes it difficult to accurately quantify. The coal-fired Reid Gardner Generating Station sits outside the Moapa River Indian Reservation, just beyond a fence for some tribal members who have had to deal with the repercussions of its air pollution and toxic coal ash waste for 52 years.
“The whole tribe was suffering from it,” says Vernon Lee, a tribal member and former council member who worked at the plant 15 years ago. “It’s just bad stuff. We all knew that.”
Coincidentally, the day after the station last stopped operating (on March 17), the Moapa Band of Paiutes launched the Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project, the first-ever solar project built on tribal land, in partnership with large-scale solar operator First Solar. Companies started approaching the tribe about leasing its land around the same time their organizing took off, and things essentially fell into place.
Despite all this—and the impending closure of the coal-fired Navajo Generating Station in Arizona, also run by NV Energy and impacting Navajo Nation members who work there or live nearby—President Trump is pushing forth with a coal-first energy agenda……..
the tribe’s prevalence of cardiovascular and respiratory issues are consistent with what is generally caused by air pollution, says C. Arden Pope III, an environmental epidemiologist who currently teaches economics at Brigham Young University but has served on the EPA Science Advisory Board and chairs the EPA Advisory Council on Clean Air Compliance Analysis.
Coal releases heavy carbon dioxide emissions, but it also emits a cocktail of pollutants dangerous to health: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, particulates and fly ash that is then placed into nearby ponds. Lee calls them “chemical soup ponds.” These pollutants can lead to respiratory issues, heart problems, as well as neurological and developmental damage.
Pope has examined the health of the Moapa Band. Back in 2012, he attempted to conduct a study on the tribe but was unable to establish conclusive findings because the tribe’s numbers are so small. Then, there was the issue of no valid control group because, as Pope put it, “they all lived so very close to the power plant that…they were all being exposed.”
Still, Pope did collect a lot of data, and the health impacts were enough for him to have a strong opinion about how the generating station was impacting their health: “Do I think that the exposure to air pollution likely had adverse impacts on their health? The answer to that is yes.”
And he says that their high rates of respiratory and cardiovascular issues are in line with greater empirical research on air pollution. Without a conclusive study, however, it was difficult for government officials to take tribal members seriously.
“But we wouldn’t care,” chairwoman Simmons says. “We smelled it and felt it.”
Then, in 2010, they met Vinny Spotleson, who was working with the Sierra Club at that time. That changed everything.
It all started with letters. That’s how tribal members first thought they’d give the EPA and state agencies like the state’s Division of Environmental Protection a piece of their mind. “People wrote [many] letters,” Simmons tells me, adding that they never got a response.
When they met Spotleson in 2010, Simmons realized that they finally had the support needed to be taken seriously by officials. Before then, Simmons says government agencies would shoot back with numbers from air quality reports she and other Moapa people didn’t fully understand. But Spotleson introduced them to lawyers and scientists. From there, all the Moapa had to do was tell their stories. Simmons remembers Spotleson telling her, “Just say how you feel, and they’ll never be able to prove you wrong.”……
with the help of the Sierra Club, the Moapa Band of Paiutes entered into a legal battle against the Bureau of Land Management for approving the expansion project in Moapa Band of Paiutes, et al v. BLM, et al. Part of their campaign involved growing public awareness. The residents in Las Vegas whose homes were powered by the plant had no idea where it was or that it even existed—much less what it was doing to the Moapa.
“We did see a lot of people in the community, in Las Vegas, in southern Nevada, really engaging and making this campaign their own,” says Elspeth DiMarzio, another Sierra Club campaign organizer who worked with the Moapa. “Once they were aware of the issue, they could see that their neighbors in Moapa were suffering because of an energy that they were receiving.”……
the tribe ultimately lost that case in 2013—but they didn’t lose everything.
Legislators introduced Senate Bill 123 in February 2013, which would require certain utilities (like NV Energy, the one behind Reid Gardner) to reduce their coal-based greenhouse gas emissions by eliminating at least 800 megawatts of electricity by 2019 and replacing part of that lost energy with 350 megawatts of renewable energy like solar or wind. This came after these three years of organizing by the Moapa and its allies.
By April, NV Energy gave its support for SB 123. In June 2013, the bill became law—with a stamp of approval from NV Energy and the Moapa.
The plant shuttered for good March 2017…….
The tribe now leases its land to Capital Dyanmics, which owns the Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project. The plant provided 115 construction jobs for tribal members and employs two permanently as field technicians.
The power goes to Los Angeles, and the tribe receives revenue from leasing their land. But they’ve been discussing and attempting to find bidders for two other solar projects with the thought of launching one that would bring that power into their homes.
They have a new revenue stream and are still deciding on the best way to use it. “We’ve never been in this position before or had these [solar] projects before,” Simmons says. “It’s hard to take off and start spending everything we do have because we want to plan and spend accordingly.”
The Moapa went from suffering at the hands of coal to benefiting from the profits of renewables……http://www.colorlines.com/articles/how-one-small-tribe-beat-coal-and-built-solar-plant
April 12, 2017
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
indigenous issues, renewable, USA |
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Uranium leaves legacy of contamination for Navajo Nation http://www.heraldextra.com/news/state-and-regional/uranium-leaves-legacy-of-contamination-for-navajo-nation/article_8c4df54f-426c-5647-8779-15049d913308.html Apr 2, 2017 SHIPROCK, N.M. (AP) — For more than a decade, about 20 gallons of uranium-contaminated groundwater have been pumped per minute into a disposal pond from beneath a tailings site on the eastern edge of the Navajo Nation.
April 7, 2017
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
indigenous issues, Uranium, USA, water |
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Native American uranium miners and the Trump budget, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Robert Alvarez, 30 Mar 17, For minimum wage or less, they blasted open seams, built wooden beam supports in the mine shafts, and dug out ore pieces with picks and wheelbarrows. The shafts penetrated as deep as 1,500 feet, with little or no ventilation. The bitter-tasting dust was all pervasive, coating their teeth. They ate in the mines and drank water that dripped from the walls and, sometimes, developed chronic coughs. And much worse.
Native American uranium miners were essential to the United States’ efforts to create a nuclear arsenal. From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, Indian people dug up approximately four million tons of uranium ore—nearly a quarter of the total national underground production in the United States used in nuclear weapons. As they did so, they were sent into harm’s way without sufficient warning, becoming the workers most severely exposed to ionizing radiation in the US nuclear weapons complex. After more than a century, the legacy of US uranium mining lingers. More than three billion metric tons of mining and milling wastes were generated in the United States. Today, Navajos still live near about one third (approximately 1,200 out of 4,000) of all abandoned uranium mines in the United States.
Only after concerted efforts by Navajo activists to spur congressional investigations in 1993 and 2006 did the US government promise to remediate abandoned mines and ascertain their health impacts. But more than a century after the government issued the first uranium mining leases on Navajo land, the Trump administration has proposed deep cuts in the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget—upward of 30 percent overall—putting that cleanup effort in peril.
America’s Indian miners were never warned of the hazards of radioactivity in the mines, where they inhaled, ingested, and drank uranium dust. The water in the mines was especially dangerous; it contained high quantities of radon—a radioactive gas emanating from the ore. Radon decays into heavy, more radiotoxic isotopes, called “radon daughters,” which include isotopes of polonium, bismuth, and lead. The alpha particle emissions of radon daughters are considered to be about 20 times more carcinogenic than x-rays. If they lodge in the respiratory system, especially the deep lung, radon daughters emit energetic ionizing radiation that can damage cells of sensitive internal tissues.
And of course, the miners brought the uranium dust home, along with their contaminated clothing.
A known danger, hidden. …..
How the Trump budget threatens uranium mine cleanup. Even though there is a significant body of evidence, spanning decades, of deliberate negligence by the US government, federal courts have denied claims by the uranium miners and those exposed to radioactive fallout from Nevada nuclear weapons testing on the grounds of sovereign immunity. “[A]ll the actions of various governmental agencies complained of by plaintiffs were the result of conscious policy decisions made at high government levels based on considerations of political and national security feasibility factors,” is how one federal judge put it.
After several decades of considerable effort by miners and their families, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in October 1990. The Act offered a formal apology for sending people into harm’s way and provided a one-time compensation to each victim in the amount of $150,000. But the financial compensation came too late for many who had died. And it would never be enough to compensate for illness and death that could have been prevented.
An estimated 30,000 Navajos are now living near abandoned uranium mines. The EPA has found that, because of their traditional lifestyle, Indian people are the group most vulnerable to environmental contaminants. The Navajo nation and the US Justice Department have reached settlement agreements in two uranium-related lawsuits since 2014; the settlements total about $1.5 billion, which would go toward remediating 144 of the most troublesome mines. But there’s a rub: The degree and extent of mine cleanup depends on tribal assistance funds and oversight by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The budget plan that the Trump administration recently released makes deep cuts in the EPA workforce, in EPA programs to ensure compliance with the cleanup agreements, and in funding for the Navajo nation to carry out its responsibilities to oversee the process. This makes it clear that addressing the sacrifices made by the Indian people for the nuclear arms race are being put at the bottom of the list of Trump administration priorities. http://thebulletin.org/native-american-uranium-miners-and-trump-budget10657?platform=hootsuite
March 31, 2017
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
environment, indigenous issues, USA |
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“You’re talking about communities that have been in place for generations, and live off the land and the waters, and they are seeing and experiencing the changes first and foremost,”
Climate Change Forces Northwest Natives From Their Ancestral Homes,Truth Out March 24, 2017By Zoe Loftus-Farren, Earth Island Journal Fawn Sharp grew up in Taholah village, a small community on the Quinault Reservation nestled between the mouth of the Quinault River and the Pacific Ocean. She spent her childhood summers surrounded by water, splashing in Lake Quinault on the eastern edge of the reservation, and hiking along the local beaches near the village, scouring the rocks for starfish and other treasures. In the mornings, she was often up before the sun, out fishing with her grandparents on the river.
Decades after she left home for college, Sharp is back on the reservation, this time living near the lake, some 35 miles from her childhood home in Taholah. Now she goes by President Sharp, and leads both the Quinault Indian Nation and the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians.
Since returning, Sharp has faced the kinds of tough issues that might have seemed outlandish, or even inconceivable, during her childhood. She’s seen the tribe’s salmon runs in sharp decline. She’s observed the rapid retreat of nearby glaciers. And she’s watched her childhood home, Taholah, endure dangerous flooding during increasingly harsh storm surges. Continue reading →
March 27, 2017
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
climate change, indigenous issues |
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Silence:Largest march for native rights in DC ignored by the White House and mainstream media http://americanindiansandfriends.com/main-feed-news/silence [Excellent photos] – See more at: http://americanindiansandfriends.com/main-feed-news/silence#sthash.inDWHgGX.dpuf The White House didn’t comment nor answer to the tribe’s request. There were a few mainstream Media sources that relayed the event, but the most important information was from social media sites, Twitter and Facebook.
Native American tribes and their supporters headed to the US capital for four days of demonstrations against the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline and to raise awareness of other issues affecting Native Americans.
Activists from indigenous tribes from across America had set up a teepee encampment next to the Washington Monument, before marching on Trump Tower and the White House
The protests follow a year-long battle by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and environmentalists against the construction of the controversial Dakota Access pipeline and the desecration of tribal lands.
The Washington DC protests, organised by Standing Rock along with the Indigenous Environmental Network and the Native Organisers Alliance, have asked the Government to require tribal consent when considering major infrastructure projects crossing through their lands.
But there was silence
-Dallas Goldtooth, an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network,said: “Our plan here is to really be a central hub for a lot of information of ongoing issues going on across quote-on-quote Indian country.
– See more at: http://americanindiansandfriends.com/main-feed-news/silence#sthash.inDWHgGX.dpuf
”This is also a space for a lot of tribal representatives, frontline grassroots leaders to do some workshops, presentations about issues that are affecting their land, their homelands, their peoples and just to be a hub to really organise and celebrate.”
The White House did not comment.
– See more at: http://americanindiansandfriends.com/main-feed-news/silence#sthash.inDWHgGX.dpuf
March 15, 2017
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
indigenous issues, media, USA |
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Researchers with the Navajo Birth Cohort Study aren’t looking for simple answers about how uranium exposure affects health. We already know—and have known for decades—that contact with uranium can cause kidney disease and lung cancer.
This study is the first to look at what chronic, long-term exposure from all possible sources of uranium contamination—air, water, plants, wildlife, livestock and land—does down through the generations in a Native American community.
Since the study began in 2012, over 750 families have enrolled and 600 babies have been born to those families, said Dr. Johnnye Lewis, director of the Community Environmental Health Program & Center for Native Environmental Health Equity Research at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center and NBCS principal investigator.
We’re collecting a huge amount of data,” Lewis said. “At this point … all of our results are preliminary, [but] what we do know is that if we look at uranium in urine in the Navajo participants we see higher concentrations than we would expect based on the U.S. population as a whole… [In babies,] we are seeing a trend that uranium levels in urine increase over the first year.”
The Navajo Nation overlies some of the largest uranium deposits in the U.S. Between 1944 and 1986, miners extracted nearly 30 million tons of uranium from Navajo Nation lands. Navajo miners did not have protective suits or masks; they took their work clothes home for laundering; they and other community members used rocks from the mines to build their homes.
When the Cold War ended, most of the uranium mines on Navajo were abandoned—not covered, or sealed, or remediated, just left as they were with waste piles exposed to wind and rain and accessible to anyone, including children.
Today, more than 500 open abandoned uranium mines are spread across the Navajo Nation and uranium dust, particles and radiation continue to be released into the environment.
The questions the NBCS seeks to answer are complex. Uranium does not exist in isolation at the mine sites, so the study is looking at 36 different metals associated with uranium. “We do that because when you look at uranium waste, it’s not just uranium that’s in the waste,” said Lewis. “None of the variables that we look at, none of the causes or the outcomes that we look at are on-off binary sort of things. What we look at is as concentrations of uranium or other metals changes, can we see changes in responses?”
Researchers have also been alarmed by the findings that levels of iodine and zinc are lower than they should be in the study group. Iodine levels are about 40 percent below the World Health Organization sufficiency level, and 61 percent of the mothers in the study have zinc levels below the WHO sufficiency level. “Iodine deficiencies [are] very, very important because iodine is really critical for normal organ development and neurodevelopment,” said Lewis. “And we worry about zinc because we have some evidence that it may be involved in the repair process when you have exposure to some of the metals that we look at. [A lack of zinc] actually inhibits the body’s ability to fix damage to DNA.”
Documenting these deficiencies would make the NBCS worthwhile “even if we learn there are absolutely no [long-term health] effects from uranium,” Lewis said. “Whatever we find out is going to be important.”
Two other endeavors resulting from the study are already in the works, and both will be hugely important to the well-being of Navajo families in the future.
The project has just won Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program funding from the National Institutes of Health. The project is looking at kids all across the U.S. to try to understand how their environment influences their health. It will eventually include 50,000 children and at least two cohorts will be from Native American communities, Lewis said. “We’re just really pleased that they’re including Native Americans.”
The Centers for Disease Control funding for the NBCS only allows families to be followed for up to one year. This new funding, which extends over 5 years after a 2-year initial period, will allow the researchers to go back and look again at each child on an annual basis and do much more detailed developmental assessments. In the process, they will be able to develop an assessment that takes into account Navajo parenting styles and create an instrument that is valid specifically for Navajo children, unlike standardized developmental assessments that are devised based primarily on the dominant culture’s parenting practices.
To accomplish that, “we put together a clinical team that is going to be training our Navajo staff to deliver these developmental assessments. It will be a long process of working together. They’ll be trained and then they will shadow the clinical team so that they get a lot more experience off Navajo before ever coming back here and then when they come back they’ll each be partnered with either a neurodevelopmental expert or psychometrician … who will be hired through the program. They will initially shadow them and then be shadowed by them to ensure that we have consistency.
“So at the end of seven years what we’re going to have is a really great team of professional evaluators who will be staying on Navajo and who will provide that new service” to Navajo families, Lewis said.
The NBCS is a collaborative effort of the University of New Mexico’s DiNEH Project, Center for Disease Control/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (CDC/ATSDR), Navajo Area Indian Health Service, and the Navajo Nation Division of Health, and the Southwest Research and Information Center.
Women between the ages of 14 and 45 who have lived on the Navajo Nation for five years, are pregnant and will deliver their babies at hospitals in Chinle, Gallup, Shiprock, Ft. Defiance and Tuba City are eligible to participate in the study. Call 1-877-545-6775 for information.
March 13, 2017
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
health, indigenous issues, Reference, USA |
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Pope says indigenous people must have final say about their land Francis echoes growing body of international law and standards on the right to ‘prior and informed consent’, Guardian, David Hill, 21 Feb 17, In the 15th century papal bulls promoted and provided legal justification for the conquest and theft of indigenous peoples’ lands and resources worldwide – the consequences of which are still being felt today. The right to conquest in one such bull, the Romanus Pontifex, issued in the 1450s when Nicholas V was the Pope, was granted in perpetuity.
How times have changed. Last week, over 560 years later, Francis, the first Pope from Latin America, struck a rather different note – for indigenous peoples around the world, for land rights, for better environmental stewardship. He said publicly that indigenous peoples have the right to “prior and informed consent.” In other words, nothing should happen on – or impact – their land, territories and resources unless they agree to it.
“I believe that the central issue is how to reconcile the right to development, both social and cultural, with the protection of the particular characteristics of indigenous peoples and their territories,” said Francis, according to an English version of his speech released by the Vatican’s press office.
“This is especially clear when planning economic activities which may interfere with indigenous cultures and their ancestral relationship to the earth,” Francis went on. “In this regard, the right to prior and informed consent should always prevail, as foreseen in Article 32 of the [UN] Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Only then is it possible to guarantee peaceful cooperation between governing authorities and indigenous peoples, overcoming confrontation and conflict.”
Francis was speaking to numerous indigenous representatives in Rome at the conclusion of the third Indigenous Peoples’ Forum held by the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development…….. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/andes-to-the-amazon/2017/feb/20/pope-indigenous-people-final-say-land
February 22, 2017
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
2 WORLD, indigenous issues, Religion and ethics |
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U.S. officials on Tuesday announced the cancellation of the final two oil and gas leases in a wilderness area bordering Glacier National Park that’s sacred to the Blackfoot tribes of Montana and Canada. Christian Science Monitor, Matthew Brown Associated Press JANUARY 10, 2017 BILLINGS, MONT. —U.S. officials on Tuesday announced the cancellation of the final two oil and gas leases in a wilderness area bordering Glacier National Park that’s sacred to the Blackfoot tribes of Montana and Canada, more than three decades after the tribes said the leases were illegally sold…….http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2017/0110/Thirty-years-later-Blackfoot-tribes-see-environmental-win-on-sacred-grounds
January 13, 2017
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
Canada, indigenous issues, USA |
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Indigenous leaders shocked, again, by repeated exclusion from Trudeau’s climate talks, National Observer By Elizabeth McSheffrey December 16th 2016 After excluding them from a critical discussion on indigenous people and climate change earlier this year, both the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP) hoped it was a mistake Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would not repeat.
But one week after his second annual meeting with First Ministers and indigenous leaders on clean growth and climate change, the two national aboriginal organizations have been disappointed again.
“I don’t think it’s a tough decision for the prime minister to have two more representatives sitting at the table,” NWAC president Francyne Joe told National Observer. “He states he’s a feminist, he states indigenous relations are high priorities for his government, and yet he’s specifically excluding a national indigenous group that has been recognized by the courts. Why?”
A pattern of exclusion
Both NWAC and CAP have been considered among the five major organizations representing aboriginal people in Canada since the days of the Kelowna Accord, along with the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), the Métis National Council (MNC), and the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK).
Only the last three however, were granted an audience with Trudeau and the premiers during climate discussions in Vancouver in March, and again, in Ottawa last Friday. NWAC and CAP were also left out of a meeting on advancing reconciliation with the prime minister on Thursday that was attended by leaders of AFN, ITK, and a Métis representative from Manitoba………
According to a recent report by Health Canada, some Canadians are more exposed than others to the health risks associated with climate change, particularly northern residents, children and seniors, and those who are chronically ill, homeless, low income, or living off of the land.
ndigenous people, especially women and girls, fall into many of these categories, and some even fall into all of them. Roughly 17 per cent of aboriginal women live in poverty, face food insecurity, and struggle to access the public services that could help them, according to a 2012 report by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development,
“Indigenous women have been experiencing gender oppression within not just Canadian society, but within our own aboriginal societies,” said Joe of NWAC. “So sometimes I think our views are not going to be as well-represented by these male-dominated indigenous groups.
“If you have an aboriginal woman who has lost her right to status because of the Indian Act’s sex discrimination or her mother married off-reserve, never once did that aboriginal woman give up her indigenousness, interest or rights being represented by these groups, and yet these groups do not consult her on the issues that are going to affect her and her children.”………….. http://www.nationalobserver.com/2016/12/16/news/indigenous-leaders-shocked-again-repeated-exclusion-trudeaus-climate-talks
December 21, 2016
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
Canada, indigenous issues |
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How a high school student helped block Quebec’s uranium industry Financial Post, Damon van der Linde, Dec. 15, 2016, MISTISSINI, Que. — Hunting grouse on a snowy road that cuts through the forest north of his home in the Cree community of Mistissini, Justice Debassige reflects on why, as a 17-year-old high school student in 2012, he started a petition against a uranium exploration project 215 kilometres away.
“I read research on how it damages the land and the water, so that was what drew me in,” he said, while searching for birds down the road towards the now-shuttered site owned by Boucherville, Que.-based Strateco Resources Inc. “It’s something to really think about when we’re out here.”
Debassige said he couldn’t have imagined at the time that his petition would be the catalyst for a complete moratorium against exploration of the radioactive mineral across Quebec, result in a $200-million lawsuit by Strateco Resources against the government and pit the federal nuclear safety agency against a provincial environmental commission.
But it did, and The Matoush Project — named after the Cree family that traditionally use the land for hunting, fishing and trapping — in northern Quebec’s Otish Mountains has lost its glow…….
Debassige and two other classmates collected about 200 signatures from students and staff in opposition to the project, which caught the attention of Shawn Iserhoff, Mistissini’s youth chief at the time. He raised the concerns with the Mistissini Band Council and in the spring of 2012, Strateco arranged two days of hearings in the community………
“The traditional Cree way of life is based on the land,” said Thomas Coon, former president of the Cree Trapper’s Association, in an office that has a map showing how the entire vast territory is covered by family trap lines that are passed down through generations.
“As much as possible we try to avoid any dangerous, damaging project. With uranium, it’s damage that can never be repaired.”…….
As Strateco’s stock plummeted, anti-uranium activism grew in both the Cree and environment organizations. A group of Cree youth garnered media attention in late 2014 by walking 850 kilometres from Mistissini to Montreal and the movement also drew support from the global anti-nuclear activists. ……. the MiningWatch Canada advocacy group argues uranium’s current lack of social acceptability is based on the long-term risks of storing millions of tonnes of the radioactive mining waste.
“If the industry can show that they can handle the waste with a risk factor that is acceptable, maybe the social acceptability will change in the future, but at the moment it’s not there,” said Ugo Lapointe, spokesperson for MiningWatch in Quebec………
Debassige, now 22, won a Nuclear-Free Future Award in 2015 on behalf of the Mistissini youth for his efforts against uranium development on Cree land. Today, bringing home two birds he shot for his family’s dinner, he still doesn’t think the potential economic benefits of uranium mining are worth risking what he and his community already have.
“There’s vast open space where I can possibly one day teach my children what my father taught me: how to survive out on the land,” he said. “We’re connected to the land spiritually, physically, mentally and emotionally.”
December 16, 2016
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
Canada, indigenous issues, opposition to nuclear |
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