Tag Archives: native-american

Bernie Sanders among 2020 candidates joining the first-ever Native American political forum

by Glinda6958 Posted on July 29, 2019

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Bernie Sanders among 2020 candidates joining the first-ever Native American political forum

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The Department of Interior is a hostile place to work if you’re Native American.

by TerrencHazeltin Posted on April 4, 2018

On Monday, EPA chief Scott Pruitt announced that he’s trashing federal standards that aim to bring the average vehicle to 55 miles per gallon by 2025.

Pruitt also said he may tear up a decades-old waiver that allows California to set its own pollution and gas-mileage standards above the federal government’s. Because so many car buyers live in California, most automakers comply with the state’s higher standard.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is ready to fight back. “The Trump Administration’s assault on clean car standards risks our ability to protect our children’s health, tackle climate change, and save hardworking Americans money,” he said in a statement. “We’re ready to file suit if needed to protect these critical standards and to fight the Administration’s war on our environment. California didn’t become the sixth-largest economy in the world by spectating.”

Pruitt said that the standards were unrealistic, and that it didn’t make sense for California to set the default rules: “Cooperative federalism doesn’t mean that one state can dictate standards for the rest of the country,” he said in an EPA statement.

While the statement says that the California waiver is being “reexamined,” it sounds like Pruitt may have already made up his mind.

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The Department of Interior is a hostile place to work if you’re Native American.

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After farmed salmon break-out, Washington state says: “Please, go fishing.”

by AudryCrotty Posted on August 24, 2017

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative announced yesterday that it plans to curb power plant emissions by 30 percent between 2020 and 2030.

The participating states — Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont — will finalize the agreement on Sept. 25. According to the Washington Post, Massachusetts wanted to set the bar higher by “reducing carbon emissions 5 percent a year. But Maryland balked and threatened to pull out of the pact, saying it would lead to higher energy costs for consumers.”

The agreement caps the emissions from the power generation only (unlike California’s system, it does not include other industry, transportation, or agriculture), and allows those electricity generators to buy and sell emissions rights. This latest move simply lowers the cap.

Even though Washington, D.C., tends to suck up all the oxygen in the conversation, local and regional leaders are trying different approaches to suck all the carbon out of the economy. In these statehouses, it’s a lot less hot air, and a lot more action.

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After farmed salmon break-out, Washington state says: “Please, go fishing.”

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Native Americans Are Taking the Fight for Voting Rights to Court

by CarynX74xvmpk Posted on March 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday night, the long lines of Arizona primary voters highlighted the potentially disastrous fallout from a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The specter of a new disenfranchisement controversy was all too familiar for a group of people who have been fighting for their right to vote in Arizona and much of the West for years: Native Americans. “What’s happening in Indian Country is reflective of what’s happening nationwide,” says Daniel McCool, political science professor at the University of Utah and coauthor of the book Native Vote.

Earlier this month, Indian Country Media Network reported that Native American and Alaska Natives have flagged voting-related problems in 17 states, via litigation or tribal diplomacy with local officials. For example, in Alaska—which will hold its Democratic caucuses Saturday—Alaska Natives scored a victory in September 2014, when a federal judge concluded that state election officials violated the Voting Rights Act when they failed to translate voting materials for Alaska Natives in rural sections of the state. After nine months of talks, they reached a settlement to get election pamphlets translated into six dialects of Yup’ik and Gwich’in through 2020, granting them language assistance ahead of the caucuses this weekend.

9 Facts that Blow Up the Voter-Fraud Myth

Meanwhile, congressional efforts to protect voting rights for Native Americans and Alaska Natives have come to a halt. Last July, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) announced a bill that would prevent states from moving polling places to inconvenient locations, banishing in-person voting on reservations, and altering early voting locations. The bill, inspired by a voting access case in Montana that compelled three counties to open satellite offices on reservations, has stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Here are a few other cases to keep in mind:

Poor Bear v. Jackson County: In September 2014, members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe from the Pine Ridge Reservation filed a lawsuit against Jackson County, South Dakota, alleging that county officials refused to create a satellite office where Sioux residents could register and file in-person absentee ballots. For tribal citizens, the closest place to submit their absentee ballots is the county auditor’s office in Kadoka, a town that’s 95 percent white and roughly 27 miles away. (Native Americans must travel twice as far as white residents in the county to submit ballots in person, according to the lawsuit.) Voters can also submit absentee ballots by mail, but they have to submit an affidavit to prove their identity if they lack a tribal photo ID card, a potential hardship for Native American voters.

The county commission declined to approve the office because “it believed funding was not available,” despite a Help America Vote Act plan that allowed the county to use state funds to create the office. After residents filed for a preliminary injunction, the commission agreed to open a temporary satellite voting office in the runup to Election Day 2014. Last November, in an agreement with South Dakota’s secretary of state, the Jackson County Commission approved a satellite site through 2023.

Brakebill v. Jaeger: In January, seven members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians filed a lawsuit against North Dakota state secretary Alvin Jaeger, alleging that the strict requirements under the state’s voter ID law imposed a discriminatory burden on Native Americans. When the state enacted House Bill 1332 in April 2015, it limited the forms of permissible identification at voting booths, required forms of identification to display the voter’s home address and date of birth, and eliminated a provision that allowed voters to use a voucher or affidavit if they failed to bring an ID. The lawsuit alleges that the bill “disenfranchised and imposed significant barriers for qualified Native American voters by establishing strict voter ID and residence requirements.”

According to the lawsuit, Native Americans in North Dakota have to travel an average of nearly 30 miles to obtain a driver’s license. The lawsuit also claims that many Native Americans lack tribal government IDs with residential addresses, which is an alternative form of ID under state law. In February, Jaeger tried to get the case tossed out, arguing that the voter ID law was constitutional. The judge has yet to decide.

Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission v. San Juan County: Less than two years ago, prospective Navajo Nation voters in San Juan County, Utah—where Native Americans are nearly 47 percent of the population—had to travel an average of two hours to submit a ballot in the predominantly white city of Monticello, without access to reliable public transportation. That’s because in 2014, according to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and others in late February, the county closed polling places and switched over to mail-in ballots, placing a “disproportionately severe burden” on Navajo residents. The county has yet to respond in court to the case.

It wasn’t the first time San Juan County has been sued for violating the Voting Rights Act. In fact, the Navajo Nation claimed in a previous lawsuit that the county commission “relied on race” when it decided not to change the boundary lines for a largely Native American district in 2011, three decades after they were initially drawn. In February, US District Judge Robert Shelby ordered the county to redraw its election district lines after he ruled that its current boundaries, which were set after a settlement with the Justice Department in the 1980s, were unconstitutional.

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Native Americans Are Taking the Fight for Voting Rights to Court

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There Are 1,401 Uninspected High-Risk Oil and Gas Wells.

by Myrna Posted on June 23, 2014

The government is failing to conduct key safety inspections on new oil and gas wells on federal and Native American land. Oil covers the ground after a 2010 well blowout near Cheyenne, Wyoming. The state leads the nation for uninspected wells on federal land. (The inspection status of this particular well is unknown.) AP Johnson County, Wyoming, is the kind of remote, quiet Western community where life revolves around cattle—it was the site of an infamous 19th-century armed battle between cowboys and suspected cattle rustlers. The county ranks only 11th statewide for oil production, but it holds the No. 1 ranking nationwide for a more ignominious distinction: It has 249 new, high-risk oil and gas wells that the federal government has failed to inspect for compliance with safety and environmental standards. Johnson County may have the most uninspected wells, but it’s far from the only place where the problem exists. In fact, of all 3,486 oil and gas wells drilled on federal and Native American land from 2009 to 2012 that were identified by the Bureau of Land Management as high risk for pollution, 40 percent were not inspected at the most important stage of their development, according to records the BLM provided to Climate Desk. “In a perfect world, we’d love to get to all those wells,” said Steven Wells, chief of the BLM’s Fluid Minerals Division. “Unfortunately we’ve been fighting an uphill battle. We hope that at some point we’ll be able to catch up.” The map and chart below identify where these wells are located, by county: In May, the Government Accountability Office estimated that an even larger share of new wells on federal land—57 percent—were not inspected. While the revised 40 percent figure, which was first reported by the Associated Press, is lower, it’s “still not a very good number,” acknowledged BLM spokesperson Bev Winston. Between 2009 and 2012, the BLM tagged 3,486 new oil and gas wells as “high-priority,” meaning they are deserving of special scrutiny because of their proximity to ecologically sensitive areas like watersheds and forests, or because they tap into geologically volatile formations that increase the likelihood of an explosion or toxic gas leak. The data includes both conventional and unconventional wells and does not indicate how many of the wells were hydraulically fractured, or fracked. According to the GAO report, the agency’s own rules call for all high-priority wells on federal and Native American land to be inspected during the drilling stage. That’s the only time when key facets of a well’s construction—whether the well casing is properly sealed, or whether a blowout preventer is correctly installed, for example—can be adequately inspected. Once the well is drilled, retroactive inspection becomes difficult or impossible, according to a BLM engineer. Because the window for drilling inspections at any given well opens and closes so quickly, the BLM is often spread too thin to get to all of them, the engineer said. Some wells receive inspections later on to check the functioning of their machinery, but the drilling stage is the only opportunity to scrutinize a well’s construction. Wells agreed that BLM field offices are forced to triage their inspection efforts due to a shortage of boots on the ground. The staffing problem has only gotten worse in recent years, he said, as federal budget cuts have coincided with aggressive efforts by the booming energy industry to hire the best engineers away from government jobs. “We’re scattered, and you can’t be everywhere at once,” Wells said. Wyoming led the nation with the highest proportion of uninspected wells. Although the state was one of the nation’s top oil producers from 2009 to 2012, 45 percent of its new, high-priority wells drilled during that window were not inspected. Wyoming is the state with the most BLM-managed wells, Wells said, so “just by sheer numbers, they have the most number of wells to miss.” See the article here: There Are 1,401 Uninspected High-Risk Oil and Gas Wells. Related ArticlesWhy David Brat is Completely Wrong About Climate ScienceHurricane Cristina Just Set A Scary RecordHere’s What the Battle Over Iraqi Oil Means for America

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There Are 1,401 Uninspected High-Risk Oil and Gas Wells.

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Meet the Native American Woman Who Took on the Washington Football Team

by LucianaCurrie Posted on June 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, the US Patent and Trademark Office terminated six federal trademark registrations held by Washington’s pro football team. The PTO’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ruled that the team’s name cannot be protected, because it disparages Native Americans and federal law bans the trademarking of offensive language.

The decision is a victory for Amanda Blackhorse, a 32-year-old member of the Navajo Nation who became the face of the legal fight to revoke Washington’s trademarks starting in 2006. She was leading protests of the name when the law firm Drinker Biddle & Reath asked her to become the lead of five petitioners in its case against the Washington football team.

Blackhorse spoke to Mother Jones Wednesday about the ruling, the other professional sports teams in her crosshairs, and her own run-ins with racist Washington football fans.

Mother Jones: So you must be pretty excited today, right?

Amanda Blackhorse: We started this campaign eight years ago. So yes, today, it’s pretty overwhelming, but in a good way. When you’re part of a case that takes years and years and years, you wait all this time, and now it’s finally here, it’s just a tremendous victory. Not just for the five of us who were the petitioners but for the native country as a whole.

I hear the owners are going to file an appeal. I was hoping that maybe they would listen to us, and the majority of Native American people who have spoken out on this, and said, “We’re done fighting this thing.” But apparently they want to continue to stand their ground with this. And we’re the same way. We know we’re living in a time when calling someone the R-word is absolutely offensive.

MJ: Why did you get involved with protests of the name in the first place?

AB: Someone once told me—and then I thought about it differently—that mascots are meant to be ridiculed. Mascots are meant to be toyed with. They’re meant to be pushed around and disrespected. To have stuff thrown at them. That’s what I feel like happens at these games. There’s a lot of ridicule of Native American people. You have people walking around in face paint, fake war paint on their cheekbones, feathers in their hair.

Your team name may be the Braves—which is another stereotype, that we’re warlike and stoic—but the point is, no matter what your intentions are, when you make a Native American person your mascot, you have no control over what happens at that stadium. And Native Americans lose control over what our image is.

MJ: I heard that one of your first protests, at a Washington-Chiefs game in Kansas City, was a pretty nasty experience.

AB: Oh, yes. People yelled, “Go back to your reservation!” “We won, you lost, get over it!” “Go get drunk!” And so many different slurs. People threw beers. That, to me, was shocking. I’ve experienced racism in my lifetime, but to see it outwardly, in the open, and nobody did anything? It was shocking.

That was the game where there was a port-a-potty in the shape of a teepee.

MJ: Has anyone ever called you the R-word, or have you heard it used against another Native American?

AB: No, and I’ve never heard a Native person call another Native person a redskin. I’ve been called a “stupid Indian.” I’ve been called a “savage” and a “squaw.” Not too long ago, there was a person who wrote a letter to the editor in our local newspaper, the Navajo Times, and this guy wrote in there that he’s “tired of the drunken redskins.” So people do continue to use that slur to this day. I couldn’t believe that was even printed.

MJ: How has it felt seeing so many lawmakers and news outlets side with you and condemn Washington’s team name in recent years?

AB: It’s tremendous. It’s great. I’m hoping that more of the NFL community would speak out, but it’s so great to see after all these years how this movement has grown. But Native Americans still need to demand respect for ourselves. That’s the point here. We need to stand up for ourselves in the general population and not allow people to push us around and stereotype us.

MJ: Would you like to see other teams change their names? Take the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks, for example. It’s not a slur, but…

AB: Yes—it’s not a slur but it’s an appropriation of our culture. Any team name that references Native Americans, I think should go. No matter which way you swing it, you as a team owner and we Native Americans have no control over the type of imagery fans are going to seize on at your games.

I think that the Cleveland Indians logo is one of the most disrespectful representations of a Native American man out there. It’s awful. It’s cartoonish.

MJ: What would you say to Dan Snyder, who owns the Washington football team?

AB: I feel like no matter what we say to him, they’re not going to budge. The change will come from the political process. And some of it has to come from his fan base. From people in the area. I’m way out here in the middle of the Navajo Nation.

We knew early on that there was a lot of money at stake for the team. That this was all about money. And money talks. Snyder acts like he’s invincible. No matter what we say, I don’t think he’s going to change the name unless he’s forced to.

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Meet the Native American Woman Who Took on the Washington Football Team

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Watch: John Oliver Destroys Washington’s Racist Football Team Name With New Video

by RoseS35zsysbowu Posted on June 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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Last week, a Native American tribe in Northern California ran a new TV ad during the NBA Finals that targeted the racist name of the Washington football team. “Unyielding. Strong. Indomitable,” a narrator intones at the end. “Native Americans call themselves many things. The one thing they don’t?” The ad then cuts to a picture of a helmet with the team’s logo.

On Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, John Oliver used President Obama’s first visit to American Indian land to segue into the battle over the R-word. “For the average American,” he joked, “that ad should tug at 1/16th of your heartstrings and make the rest extremely guilty.” But then Oliver & Co. went a step further: They made their own anti-Redskins video. Watch the whole segment here:

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Watch: John Oliver Destroys Washington’s Racist Football Team Name With New Video

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The Next Cliven Bundy Showdown

by ShannaNeedham Posted on May 9, 2014

Mother Jones

It looks like a new front has opened up in Cliven Bundy‘s war against the US government.

This Saturday, angry residents of San Juan County, Utah, plan to illegally ride their ATVs through Utah’s Recapture Canyon—an 11 mile-long stretch of federal land that is home to Native American archeological sites—because they don’t think that the federal Bureau of Land Management should have designated that land off-limits to motor vehicles. The protest was meant to be a local affair. But on Thursday, Bundy, the rancher who wouldn’t pay the feds grazing fees and sparked a gun-drenched showdown in Nevada, called on his supporters to join the anti-government off-roading event, E&E Publishing’s Phil Taylor reported. Bundy, whose crusade against the federal government became tainted by his racist comments, is looking to spread the cause from cattle to cross-country cruising.

“We don’t expect any violence,” San Juan County Sheriff Rick Eldredge told the Denver Post last week. Others aren’t so sure, especially since the out-of-staters in attendance could help rile things up—which is what happened during the Bundy stand-off. “This may blow up to be significantly more than they thought,” Bill Boyle, a resident of San Juan and publisher of the San Juan Record newspaper told the Post. “I think there are those who would like everyone with an AK-47 to be here.”

San Juan County residents who plan to attend Saturday’s event are Bundy supporters and Ted Nugent fans, according to an analysis of their Facebook pages by the Denver Post. They also hate President Barack Obama and Senate majority leader Harry Reid, according to the newspaper, which reports that “BLM employees in San Juan County have had windows shot out of their homes and their yards torn up by ATVs in the middle of the night.”

The BLM made the Recapture Canyon land off limits in 2007 because ATVs were damaging the land and folks were vandalizing Native American sites. San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman, who is organizing Saturday’s protest, does not believe the feds have the authority to protect cultural resources. He says the goal of the ride is to reassert county jurisdiction in the face of federal “overreach,” according to the Salt Lake Tribune. Federal overreach was the theme that Bundy’s champions in the national conservative media repeatedly pressed—until Bundy’s racist comments became news.

Local officials do not have a good estimate of how many mad-as-hell ATV riders will show up to zoom through sacred Native American land on Saturday. But the BLM has decided to stand back and avoid a conflict for now, as it did several weeks ago on the Bundy ranch in Nevada. Utah’s BLM director Juan Palma, however, said there will nonetheless be consequences for the anti-government activists. “The BLM-Utah has not and will not authorize the proposed ride and will seek all appropriate civil and criminal penalties against anyone who uses a motorized vehicle within the closed area,” he said in a statement.

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The Next Cliven Bundy Showdown

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Washington NFL Team’s New Native American Foundation Is Already Off to a Great Start

by CarriNDQ Posted on March 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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The CEO of the Washington football team’s recently unveiled Original Americans Foundation also runs an organization that was criticized in a federal investigation for wasting nearly $1 million and providing “no benefit” after receiving a Bureau of Indian Affairs contract.

Gary Edwards, who was announced as head of the team’s foundation this week, is CEO of the National Native American Law Enforcement Association. In 2009, the NNALEA won a contract with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to “recruit for and hire critically needed law enforcement officers (police, corrections, and criminal investigator positions) to work in Indian Country.” According to a 2012 investigation into the contract, first reported by USA Today, NNALEA produced 748 applicants for law enforcement positions—only about 4 percent of which were Native American. Even worse, not a single applicant was qualified, meaning the $967,100 in funds amounted to absolutely nothing.

The investigation mostly comes down hard on Bureau of Indian Affairs officials for allowing Edwards to negotiate the terms of the contract into something essentially useless. While the contract’s original language called for “500 qualified Native American law enforcement applicants,” according to the investigation, it was later modified to “500 pre-screened potential applicants,” effectively removing the requirements that the NNALEA provide applicants who are Native American and qualified for law enforcement jobs. In its invoices to the Bureau, NNALEA reported holding a recruiting event at the 2009 Crow Fair Celebration and placing ads in South Dakota’s Aberdeen News, though according to the investigation an official who attended the fair saw no recruiting booth or NNALEA representatives, and the Aberdeen News had no record of NNALEA ever ordering the ads.

“The NNALEA believes it met and exceeded all of its obligations under the contract with the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Office of Justice Services, and subsequently was paid after the contract was completed,” Edwards said in a statement released Thursday night.

See the full investigation below:

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NNALEA contract investigation (PDF)

NNALEA contract investigation (Text)

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Washington NFL Team’s New Native American Foundation Is Already Off to a Great Start

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