"It's pretty clear that someone didn't want the community to read the news this week," wrote Ouray County Plaindealer co-publisher Erin McIntyre in an email to readers. "I'll leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions on which story they didn't want you to read."
This week the Ouray County Plaindealer, a newspaper serving the southern #Colorado mountain community of Ouray, published rape allegations by a 17 year old girl who said the attacks took place at the police chief's house.
On publication day, in all of the newspaper racks around Ouray, the print editions MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARED.
Personal remark: the County Plaindealer is a completely badass, hard-as-nails name for a newspaper. Perfect for a since-1877-in-the-Rockies paper. Fuck yeah, #journalism.
Before the Boldt decision, Native fisherpeople had to fish at night and hide their catches. Some were jailed more than 50 times.
Ramona Bennett, a Puyallup tribal elder and former council member and chairwoman who's now 85, jumped at a cop who was trying to arrest her and sent him rolling down the levee into the river.
This is Bennett getting arrested during the fish wars:
Like other treaty rights, the right to fish is not GIVEN by the United States. It's a right the tribes already have, and have always had. It's one of the rights that the US has promised not to take away. It's a debt.
“This one of them pointed a gun at me and the barrel was like that big,” Bennett said shaping her hands to a wide circle. “And pulled the trigger. And I thought I was dead. And there was a [expletive] gas canister and it just hit me and bounced around to the ground, and I kicked it back and pulled his gas mask. And that started a wonderful game of kick the canister, because once I did it, everybody started doing it.”
Absolute legend. You simply cannot win against Indigenous women. Don't try.
Fishing is important for sustenance, but it's also critical for preserving culture. Destruction of Indigenous foodways forces assimilation into capitalism, and attacks the physical health of communities. Keeping these foodways intact is one way Native people stay Native.
The Boldt decision isn't perfect --- it says Natives only have a right to 50% of salmon in the water.
And that half is dwindling, because industrialization, habitat loss and degradation, climate change and other factors are pushing salmon towards extinction.
So as Boldt turns fifty, it's a good time to think about what other changes need to be made to ensure the future of Indigenous cultures, foodways, treaty rights, salmon, and ecosystems.
In the 1960s and '70s, cops were brutalizing #Indigenous people in the #PNW ...for fishing.
But fishing is a treaty-protected right. People stood up for it. Elders call this era the Fish Wars.
In 1974 the issue went to the Supreme Court. After 3 years of discovery and pretrial, Judge George Boldt heard the case and ruled that the state of #Washington must respect the Indigenous right to fish.
The Boldt decision changed the landscape. It turns 50 next month.
I'm proud to announce that today the staff of High Country News magazine have launched a union!
We are calling on HCN leadership for voluntary recognition. You can help support us by sharing on socials, following @hcnunion, and signing our letter of support here: https://hcnunion.org/support/
Since 1970, High Country News has produced independent journalism for and by as well as about communities in the Western US, first as a newspaper covering public lands and now as a magazine with an expanded focus on Indigenous affairs, climate change and environmental and justice issues. In recent years, HCN has made noticeable strides toward better supporting its own employees, many of whom are longtime residents of the region.
We join our colleagues at prestigious publications, including Grist and ProPublica in unionizing as part of an industry-wide reckoning with the toll that journalism takes on employees, the high workloads employees are expected to shoulder, and the distance the industry still needs to go to support and serve communities of color.
However, much remains to be done to make HCN a more just, anti-racist, diverse and sustainable workplace, and staff deserves a stronger voice in its continued evolution. We believe a union is the best way to achieve that, and so it is with pride that we — local and dispersed members of the editorial, development, marketing and communications, art and customer service departments — have all united to organize with the Denver Newspaper Guild/CWA Local 37074 and form the High Country News Union.
We recognize and are proud of the work that HCN is doing to serve Indigenous communities and diversify its staff. We also believe the organization needs to improve its support for employees, especially for BIPOC employees, who experience high rates of turnover.