Notices by Toastie (toastie@journa.host)

Reporting on Indigenous issues can be uniquely challenging because western journalism puts a premium on transparency --- but sometimes I see and hear things the public is not supposed to know.

Here's a behind the scenes look at the green colonialism reporting I've been doing with HCN and ProPublica.

#Indigenous #Journalism #GreenColonialism #AmWriting

https://www.hcn.org/issues/56-10/how-do-you-describe-a-sacred-site-without-describing-it/

90% of liquid fuel in #Oregon arrives through an industrial neighborhood in NW #Portland. This neighborhood is a mashup of rickety, aging fuel tanks, pipeline terminals from refineries, and tanker cars carrying fuel away.

If/when an earthquake hits, this critical energy infrastructure hub, just north of downtown, will likely dump 193.7 million gallons of oil into the Willamette and Columbia Rivers --- potentially the worst environmental disaster in US history.

https://www.hcn.org/issues/56-9/preventing-the-next-fukushima/

In December of 1886, Afro-Indigenous anarchist Lucy Parsons said that if American cops, judges and newspapers continue to refer to freedom as "anarchy," and if capitalism continues on its course, "it will be the death knell of America’s liberty. You and your children will be slaves. You will have liberty if you can pay for it."

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1886-lucy-parsons-i-am-anarchist/

Earlier this year HCN and ProPublica investigated a solar development threatening tribal cultural resources on Badger Mountain in Eastern #Washington.

Today's news: the solar developer, Avangrid Renewables, has paused permitting operations on Badger Mountain in part to reevaluate tribal input.

#Indigenous #GreenColonialism #PNW #Climate #RenewableEnergy

https://www.hcn.org/articles/washington-solar-project-paused-amid-concern-about-indigenous-sites/

Hear me out.

SimRez.

After a 3 year investigation, the federal government has acknowledged that it invested $23.3B (adjusted) on a boarding school system to break up #Indigenous families and communities, and destroy language and culture.

The report suggests that the US should invest that same amount of money in family reunification, language revitalization, and Indian education to help repair the havoc wreaked by 400 schools from 1871 to 1969, which killed at least 973 children.

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/30/nx-s1-5051912/interior-dept-report-indian-boarding-schools

Iron Gate Dam is now under demolition on the Klamath River in Northern #California.

"We make this place all new again in service of all the spirit people that exist on this earth, both human and non-human ancestors and relations," said Karuk elder Leaf Hillman.

Just a reminder that dam removal efforts began two decades ago with #Indigenous people having bake sales and getting laughed at in the face of monumental economic and political forces.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2024/05/02/demolition-starts-on-iron-gate-dam-one-of-the-last-klamath-river-dams/73528152007/

Kamala Harris's record on #Indigenous issues is mixed.

As the #California AG she opposed tribal applications to put land into trust, and argued a case against the Big Lagoon Rancheria which could've opened past land-to-trust transfers across Indian Country to litigation. Then she pivoted, and during her 2020 presidential campaign she promised to assist tribes in restoring their lands. She also created the first #ICWA Compliance Task Force to protect Native kids.

More:

https://www.hcn.org/articles/what-a-kamala-harris-presidency-could-mean-for-the-west/

Project 2025 will have extensive impacts on lands, waters, wildlife and tribes in the West.

In fact, the entire energy section was written by Kathleen Sgamma, of oil and gas industry group Western Energy Alliance.

Here are some highlights:

-Expanding oil and gas extraction onshore and off
-Delisting grizzlies, wolves
-Un-protecting wetlands from farmers
-Increasing timber sales on public lands
-Moving the BLM (again) and the American Indian office to the West

More 👇

https://www.hcn.org/articles/project-2025s-extreme-vision-for-the-west/

"We need not only an end to the world order set up by Western hegemony but an end to the appreciation of the West... Abandoning the sycophantic enthralment with their architecture, croissants smeared with contraband West African chocolate, and end to lusting after their fashion brands."

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/5/20/the-future-is-post-western

The latest in my ongoing #GreenColonialism investigation: a federal agency has moved forward with a renewable energy development on Yakama sacred lands, despite not having consulted with the Yakama Nation.

They cornered the Yakama Nation with an impossible choice: give up confidential cultural information, or waive the right to consult. Some experts say this is a disingenuous tactic, showing the lack of teeth tribal consultation really has.

#Indigenous #Washington

https://www.hcn.org/issues/56-7/how-federal-rules-and-a-lack-of-protection-for-sacred-indigenous-sites-left-the-yakama-nation-with-an-impossible-choice/

There are fewer than 1,213 daily local newspapers left in the U.S.

The number of partisan-backed outlets designed to look like impartial news outlets has officially surpassed them.

https://www.axios.com/2024/06/11/partisan-news-websites-dark-money

h/t @Prosaic
#USPol #Journalism #news #misinformation

It's like this:

Co-stewardship < co-management < #LandBack

Right now the BLM has a co-management agreement with the US Forest Service on the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation's sacred land, but the tribe itself is not included as a decision maker.

Research shows that more tribal autonomy results in better cared for lands.

https://grist.org/indigenous/the-key-to-better-climate-outcomes-respecting-indigenous-land-rights-and-autonomy/

The Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation successfully protected a piece of sacred #Indigenous lands in northern #California from wind energy development by petitioning the federal government to include it in an existing national monument.

But they also want a co-stewardship or co-management agreement with the feds.

Although they're sometimes used interchangeably, "co-stewardship" and "co-management" are different. Management means decision making power. Stewardship doesn't.

https://grist.org/indigenous/difference-between-co-management-and-co-stewardship-national-monument/

One example of federal and tribal co-management is Bears Ears National Monument, where tribes and agencies are working to draft a new management plan that includes (and might even center) Indigenous needs, like the preservation of dark skies for ceremony.

Tribal leaders from five tribes worked for years to get the Bears Ears co-management agreement. It's not the first of such agreements, but it's something of a test case for how this can work.

https://www.hcn.org/articles/as-national-monuments-multiply-bears-ears-forges-forward/

Anti-camping ordinances and sweeps are pushing unhoused people into increasingly marginal spaces, exposed to extreme weather.

Officials in cities like Ontario, #California, can be hostile, by, for example, removing park gazebos.

But CA is prone to cycles of drought and heavy rainfall. And when the rain hits, like it did in Nov. 2022, it can be fatal to people living around culverts and drainage.

#Climate #housing

https://www.hcn.org/issues/56-6/californias-homelessness-and-climate-crises-leave-unhoused-communities-vulnerable-to-floods/

Quentin Fears, a soft-spoken 51 year old, has lived in and around a flood-control channel that runs under Interstate 10 for around a decade. That day in November, he rescued a friend he saw floating away on a mattress.

“I’ve seen on TV where there’s a fire or storms or whatever and you see that they’re warning everybody, and they never warned us at all,” said Naranjo. “They should have gotten us out in time.”

Today, Fears still lives in the same spot. “There’s nowhere to go,” he said.

Here's some artwork memorializing the late Poopsie, Maddie and Jojo.

(Side note: how often do you see a national magazine running a photo of graffiti not as pearl clutching about urban decay, but as artwork memorializing community members? You do me proud, HCN.)

That November, the sudden rain washed away around 10 people, killing three:

Anthony “Poopsie” Ray Lopez, Madeline Velasquez and Josephine Guadalupe Dominguez.

“I miss them,” said Pandora Naranjo, a friend.

Matt Fowle, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania who tracks deaths among unhoused people in the U.S., found a 141% increase in mortality from environmental causes across 22 localities between 2011 and 2020.

He said those deaths are preventable with some planning.

1924: an #Indigenous man hunts a deer on treaty-reserved land. Gets criminally convicted.

The ruling said tribal nations are not sovereign or independent, "the Indians being mere occupants of the land.”

The hunter died decades ago. The family member who continued his case died in 2007. But a tribal attorney kept pushing to get the unjust, demeaning conviction reversed.

On Thursday, nearly a century later, the #Washington state Supreme Court admitted it was wrong.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/wa-supreme-court-reverses-century-old-yakama-decision-an-injustice/