Approval of a federally funded project to determine whether Hopi tribal land would work for carbon storage has been rescinded by the Hopi Tribal council.

The Hopi site was one of only two in Arizona deemed suitable for carbon storage testing, according to an Associated Press story.

“They felt very uncomfortable with what the project entailed, liability, possible question marks as to what the impact would be to the tribe,” says Hopi Chairman Le Roy Shingoitewa:

The tribe had secured a $5.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for the project and was working with a group of researchers with the West Coast Carbon Regional Sequestration Partnership, or WESTCARB, Roberson said. The partnership, led by the California Energy Commission, is one of seven across the country created to look at opportunities to keep carbon dioxide emissions out of the atmosphere because it traps heat.

WESTCARB eyed the Colorado Plateau as a potential carbon storage site because of its rock formations that have few faults and the area’s coal-fired power plants, said Rich Myhre, outreach coordinator for WESTCARB.

The power plants are among the largest producers of carbon dioxide emissions, and future climate legislation could force the regulation of such discharges. Four coal-burning plants lie in northeast Arizona — one that is fed by coal mined from the Hopi and Navajo reservations — and generate about 40 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.

“I made a choice not to subject our people to an experimental project on our own lands,” says Hopi lawmaker Leroy Sumatzkuku. “We have to take a stand in protecting our valuable natural resources.”

Gwen Florio

The Arizona Daily Sun in Flagstaff details the story:

Five Hopi tribal members have been federally charged with taking two golden eagles without having a permit.

According to information from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Flagstaff, all five were involved in taking two eaglets on May 8 from their nest at Elephant Butte on the Navajo Nation.

Apparently, one of the five who was to receive a permit to gather the eaglets on May 10 told the others that it was all right to collect the eaglets on May 8. According to tribe’s Cultural Preservation Office, no permission was granted to collect the eaglets early.

When questioned by authorities, one of the defendants stated that there is much competition for eaglets among Hopi collectors.

Eugene Mansfield, Brendan Mansfield, Eldrice Mansfield, Emmett Namoki and Lucas Namoki Jr. have all been charged with counts of unlawfully taking, possessing and transporting the eaglets. They were formally read the charges against them Tuesday in U.S. Magistrate Court in Flagstaff. Their next court appearance is Sept. 22.

Conviction for possession and transportation of the birds carries a penalty of $100,000 and up to a year in prison. Conviction for taking the birds carries a penalty of $15,000 and up to six months in prison.

Question of race complicates crime-fighting on Indian reservations
Today, the Associated Press examines what it calls “the complex legal system used to mete out justice on American Indian reservations – a system that relies largely on race to determine jurisdiction, and then charges police and prosecutors with the sometimes delicate task of determining a person’s race.” As BJ Jones, director of the Tribal Judicial Institute at The University of North Dakota law school, tells the AP’s Sudhin Thanawala, “The whole flaw in the system is that it’s premised upon being an Indian defendant or Indian victim, and yet we have no clear-cut definition of who an Indian is.”

Art through American – and Native American – eyes
The title of a show at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey, “Engaging With Nature: American and Native American Artists (A.D. 1200-2004),” says it all. The show features works by, among others, Tewa-Hopi artist Dan Namingha and Kay WalkingStick, who is Cherokee-Winnebago and, says the New York Times, suggests “a different set of possibilities” when it comes to looking at the natural world.

Victoria University sees huge growth in indigenous programs
On the good-news front, there’s a story from Indian Country Today on the growth of Native programs, student enrollment and staff at Victoria University. Hans Tammemagi writes that “By about 2000, a critical mass was reached, and that has grown so today there are 17 full-time Native staff and about 30 part-time or sessional staff. The enrollment of Native students is a good measure of the University of Victoria’s success. A decade ago, there were 72 indigenous students. Today, there are approximately 750, of which 100 are in post-graduate programs.” Emblematic of that growth is the First Peoples House, an architecturally stunning replica of a longhouse that is home to many of the programs.

Saving Canada’s indigenous languages should be campaign priority
Andrea Bear Nicholas, who chairs Native Studies at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, Canada, has a piece published on the CBC website about the importance of saving Native languages, something she considers “essential to our survival as First Nations.” And Bear Nicholas, who is Maliseet, suggests that New Brunswick follow the lead of the Yukon and Northwest territories by passing legislation that protects indigenous languages

Whew! Shiprock Navajo Fair is still on
The Navajo Times brings the news that despite controversy over a lack of transparency concerning financial data, the Shiprock Navajo Fair will go on as planned the first weekend of October. The fair draws as many as 120,000 people. “Nobody can stop it,” fair board vice president Charley P. Joe tells the Times’ Erny Zah.

Gwen Florio

A plan to make snow at the Arizona Snowbowl resort outside Flagstaff has brought objections from the Hopi Nation and other tribes.

Now, a decision on whether to allow the plan to go forward has been postponed by the Flagstaff City Council – although the council says it will likely issue a decision by week’s end.

Joe Ferguson and Cyndy Cole of the Arizona Daily Sun write about the latest development, which involves a proposal to make snow from drinking water, rather than treated effluent as originally planned.

Although business people largely support the plan, Native Americans say that any unnatural use of water is wasteful.

“To the Hopi people, water is precious. To use water unwisely is harmful to other people,” Hopi Chairman Le Roy Shingoitewa told council members.

Gwen Florio

Dollmaker focuses on portraits of Alaska Native people
Alaska’s Mary Ellen Frank is in Sitka this weekend for the 2010 International Conference on Russian America. Frank’s contribution? She’s a dollmaker, whose work, along with that of other dollmakers on both sides of the Pacific, is featured at the Sitka Historical Museum. As the Anchorage Daily News writes, Frank walks a fine line because she is not Native, but her internationally renowned dolls are portraits of Alaska Native people. It’s important, she says, to get permission from both individuals and tribes before making each doll. See more of her work on the Juneau Artists website.

New bill address Missouri River dams that flooded Indian Reservations
A half-century ago, something called the Pick-Sloan Program built a number of dams along the Missouri River, flooding lands of seven Indian reservations, destroying homes, farmland and hunting areas. Rob Capriccioso of Indian Country Today writes that “It is estimated that Lakota, Dakota and Nakota tribes lost 202,000 acres overall, which means the dams destroyed more Native American land than any other public works project in the history of the nation.” Now Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., has introduced a bill that hopes to resolve the problems caused to those tribes.

Hopi Nation, other tribes, fight fake snow on sacred Arizona peaks
The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the ongoing fight by the Hopi Nation and other tribes against snowmaking on the San Francisco Peaks at the Snowbowl ski resort outside Flagstaff, Ariz. The Navajo, Hopi and 11 other tribes view the peaks as sacred and that any moisture there should occur naturally. The Flagstaff City Council will address the issue tomorrow, according to the Daily Sun newspaper in Flagstaff, which has a full report.

Red Spirit Fashion Show part of cross-cultural effort at Central States Fair
It was the first Unity Day at the 2010 Central States Fair in South Dakota, but it won’t be the last, the Rapid City Journal writes. Among the offerings at the event designed to promote cross-cultural understanding was the Red Spirit Fashion Show featuring contemporary clothing by Native American designers. Native Sun News publisher Tim Giago says Unity Day will be a part of next year’s fair. Giago helped organize South Dakota’s year of Reconciliation 20 years ago in an effort to improve troubled relations between the state’s Native and non-Native people. Now, as then, says Carmen Yellow Horse, it’s important that “we start a conversation.”

Gwen Florio

This story comes from Felicia Fonseca, based in the Southwest for the Associated Press, who writes frequently on Native issues:

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — An American Indian lacrosse team’s refusal to travel on passports not issued by the Iroquois confederacy goes to the heart of one of the most sensitive issues in Indian Country — sovereignty.

The rights of Native nations to govern themselves independently has long been recognized by federal treaties, but the extent of that recognition beyond U.S borders is under challenge in a post-Sept. 11 world.

After initially refusing to accept Iroquois-issued passports because the documents lack security features, the State Department gave the team a one-time waiver.

The team maintained that traveling on anything other than an Iroquois-issued passport would be a strike against the players’ identity. But the British government wouldn’t budge in denying team members entry into England without U.S. or Canadian passports, leading the Iroquois Nationals to withdraw Friday from competing at the World Lacrosse Championships in Manchester in the sport their ancestors helped create.

“Any documents or IDs we put forth recognizing our members should also be recognized by the federal government and other governments,” argued Sanford Nabahe, a member of the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone, who — like many in the American Indian community — closely followed the Iroquois’ passport dispute. “The (federal) government has given us that autonomy.”

The Iroquois, whose members mostly live in New York, Ontario and Quebec, along with the Hopi and Western Shoshone are among the few American Indian nations in which members have had a form of their own passports.

The understanding that the Iroquois Confederacy’s lands are independent from the U.S. is taught early on in school, team member Gewas Schindler said Thursday as the team waited out the dispute in New York.

“You know that as a young person that you are sovereign, that you are not part of the United States,” he said. “We were the first people here.”

But some say the team’s adamant position went too far.

Read the rest of this entry »

The nearly 300-foot-high natural stone arch in Utah known as Tsé Naní’áhí (it’s called Rainbow Bridge in English) is one of the country’s most remote national monuments, demanding a 14-mile hike to reach it.

On May 30, representatives of the five tribes who hold it sacred – Navajo, Hopi, San Juan Southern Paiute, Kaibab Paiute and White Mesa Ute – held a ceremony to honor the centennial of its being named a national monument, the Navajo Times reports here.

As Cindy Yurth writes, the arch was considered to be connected with powerful deities who controlled the weather.

Now, there’s a move to remove the arch from U.S. government control and put it back in the hands of the Navajo.

Alex Bitsinnie, the president of Navajo Mountain Chapter, says the timing is good.

“For 100 years, we’ve had to put up with our offerings being disturbed by tourists,” Bitsinnie tells Yurth. “With the move by the tribe to take over Canyon de Chelly, maybe we can include Rainbow Bridge in those negotiations.”

While those negotiations are going on, a new National Park Service plan for the arch includes keeping the site off-limits to tourists while medicine men conduct ceremonies there and limiting foot traffic to 40 visitors at a time. The National Park Service will also look into complaints by locals that loud planes, including military jets, are flying too close to the area.

The National Park Service web page on Rainbow Bridge, here, urges visitors to “please visit Rainbow Bridge in a spirit that honors and respects the cultures to whom it is sacred.”

Gwen Florio

Relief is coming slowly to the Navajo and Hopi reservations, still struggling to recover from snowstorms and subsequent impassable roads two weeks ago (See video above). People aren’t the only ones suffering. Animals are, too. Now there’s some help for them. Here’s the entire story from the Associated Press:

SPRINGERVILLE, Ariz. (AP) — Authorities say 1,000 bales of hay grown on two Arizona Game and Fish Department wildlife areas in the White Mountains will soon be helping feed starving livestock on the Hopi and Navajo reservations.

Gov. Jan Brewer issued a declaration of emergency for Apache, Coconino, Gila, Maricopa and Navajo counties after the January storms. That enabling the Game and Fish Department to extend a helping hand to these neighboring Indian communities in northern Arizona.

Wildlife officials say the cultivated grass was grown on the Sipe White Mountain and White Mountain Grasslands wildlife areas near Springerville in Apache County. Livestock on both the Hopi and Navajo lands are in dire need of sustenance and apparently available hay is in short supply.

More than $1.4 million has been spent so far on relief efforts for the Navajo and Hopi Nations, cut off by storms that dumped as much of 5 feet of snow in some places.

To make matters worse, continuing bad weather frequently grounds relief helicopters – and daytime flooding has made even some of the plowed roads impassable.

Emergency authorities say the relief flights will continue whenever possible this week until conditions improve.

A staging area outside Kykotsmovi on the Hopi Nation has stockpiles of MREs (meals ready to eat) ready for delivery whenever the helicopters can fly, according to the Arizona Republic.

Gwen Florio