The National Wildlife Federation released a report this week detailing its findings that tribes are more adversely affected by climate change than other groups.
The findings from “Indian Tribes, Climate-Induced Weather Extremes, and the Future for Indian Country” cite a heavy tribal dependence on natural resources as the cause of the more severe impact, a NWF press release said.
Because Tribes are heavily dependent on natural resources, severe weather events like droughts, floods, wildfires, and snowstorms make tribal communities particularly vulnerable and impact American Indians and Alaska Natives more than they impact the general population.
As temperatures rise, the report found, the chance of natural disasters and prolonged negative climate occurrences increases hardships for Native people.
The reports lists several specific threats:
- Extreme droughts weaken trees’ ability to resist pests and to curb erosion and siltation. On the nation’s 326 reservations, there are approximately 18.6 million forested acres. Droughts also lower water levels and impair agricultural productivity.
- Water scarcity in the West further complicates Tribes’ unresolved water rights claims.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is forming a new National Tribal Toxics Committee to offer tribes greater opportunities for input on hazardous chemicals and pollution prevention.
The move stems from Administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s priority to build strong federal-tribal partnerships and expand the conversation on environmental justice, the White House announced Dec. 21.
“The administrator has made environmental justice a priority,” EPA Senior Advisor for Environmental Justice Lisa Garcia said at the EPA’s 2010 National Training Conference on the Toxics Release Inventory and Environmental Conditions in Communities, attended by the Native Sun News. Part of that is “improving our partnerships with tribal leaders and governments,” she said.
These corraled wild horses at the Yakama Indian Nation were likely headed to Mexico or Canada for slaughter. (ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES)
A horse summit that kicks off Tuesday in Las Vegas is looking to bring parties together to find solutions to the ever-growing problem wild horses are bringing to wild lands around the Northwest. Representatives from various tribal groups are going to be a big part of that process.
Examples of tribal lands becoming overrun with horses in recent years have jumped as the horse population grows.
This Seattle Times article details the hurdles to wild horse population control – elements that include the fact that horses have no natural predators and market prices for their meat are in the tank.
The amount of compromise that can be struck to stop overcrowding may also be tricky due to intense opposition from animal rights groups. A congressional ban on spending federal money to pay inspectors of horse carcasses intended for human consumption, primarily overseas, killed the industry, the Times reports.
Populations have been building ever since, as the bottom fell out of the market that helped tribes and other horse managers keep numbers in check. Today, horses are trucked to Canada and Mexico for slaughter, and many more are overpopulating public and tribal lands, to the detriment, land managers say, of wildlife, native plants and the health of the range. . .
The Yakama reservation offers a good look at the problem. There, wild horses pour over the backcountry of the reservation, fast, liquid — and in growing numbers. Their beauty is part of the problem, stoking a mystique around wild horses that has made them a hard problem to talk about.
Like feral cats, the horses multiply at a prodigious rate: With no natural predators, and these days, no market for purchase, the herds are estimated at about 12,000 animals and growing.
That’s up from about 500 animals in the 1950s; 2,500 in the 1990s, and more than 4,500 in 2006. Carrying capacity of the tribe’s rangeland was about 1,000 horses in 2007, and it’s significantly less than that today, because of continued degradation from overgrazing, said Jim Stephenson, big-game biologist and wild-horse project leader for the Yakama Nation.
Indigenous Environmental Network posted a news release today about its protest of tar sands and fossil fuel pollution at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico:
Over twenty people with color-coded T-shirts that spelled out the words “Shut Down the Tar Sands” in both English and Spanish gathered in front of the Maya building to directly deliver their message to UNFCCC delegates. Participants included Indigenous community representatives from fossil fuel impacted community across Canada and the U.S., many carrying personal banners linking tar sands with the destruction of their territories.
Melina Laboucan-Massimo of the Lubicon Cree comes from a community impacted by tar sands. “We have seen the destruction of our lands happen right before our eyes. Our water is being contaminated and we are seeing droughts throughout the region. My family used to be able to drink from our watershed, and now within my lifetime we can no longer do so.
Young and old people alike have developed respiratory illnesses as neighboring plants emit noxious gases into the air. First Nations and farming communities have reported health effects to the wildlife and livestock. The area is drastically changing – I fear for the future of my homeland.”
The tar sands are the fastest growing source of GHG emissions in Canada. Unless Canada changes track emissions from the tar sands industry are set to triple to over 120 millions tones. Clayton Thomas-Muller of the Indigenous Environmental Network said, “Our communities demand real solutions to address the climate crisis and that means shutting down the tar sands and a moratorium on new fossil fuel development.”
Potential locations for a wind turbines studied in a feasibility study commissioned by the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). (Photo courtesy of Boreal Renewable Energy Development)
The winds that blow over the expanses of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) tribal lands near Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., could be very lucrative.
As the Martha’s Vineyard Times reported this week, a large-scale study concluded that the tribe could use turbine projects to harness wind power.
But tribal council members were also made aware of the possible obstacles to the proposal.
The study scrutinized several possible configurations of a utility scale wind energy project on tribal lands, MVT reported. The potential projects range from one 225-kilowatt turbine at an installed cost of $1.9 million, to two 1.5 megawatt turbines at an installed cost of $5.3 million.
While the study found potential “economic” and “environmental” benefits to be high, pitfalls like ownership, permitting and financing were also noted.
No tribal council votes has taken place.
“I can only comment for myself, I can’t speak for the tribe,” (Tribe planner Durwood) Vanderhoop said. “But I think the tribe has tried to get the message out that the tribe is not necessarily against wind. We need to decide whether this is right for us, right culturally.”
A Rueter Business and Financial report this week noted a new list of groups raising voice against the oil sand projects in Alberta. In particular, several First Nations from Canada and tribes in the multi-state area of the United States where the proposed TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, which would pipe heavy crude for miles and miles, have banded together to voice concern about the project.
All agree the tar sands mining in Alberta is causing health problems throughout the area. They also wonder if pipelines are the best and safest way to move the oil. The joint councils have taken their concerns to Washington, D.C., and several environmental groups are also joining the chorus of concern.
The combined groups are hoping to raise awareness about things like pipeline safety and gain increased oversight over huge projects like the Keystone pipeline.
Marty Cobenais, a member of the Red Lake Band of the Chippewa and a Minnesota-based organizer with the network, is doing much of the groundwork.
Tribes have varying reasons for rejecting the pipeline, Cobenais said, including that it potentially threatens the enormous Ogallala Aquifer or desecrates sacred lands on traditional homelands.
He estimates there are 15 to 20 tribal councils along the 1,375-mile section that starts in Montana and stretches through South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
“We want the Canada and U.S. tribes to stand in unity to fight this,” Cobenais said, adding that this is a prime opportunity to stand behind President Obama’s public statements about the need to wean the U.S. from fossil fuels. “We can’t allow a divide-and-conquer mentality to prevail.”
The tribes are rallying with green groups that are calling for pipeline standards to be upgraded and public notification to be expanded. Specifically, they are addressing safety issues, among them pipeline lifecycles, rules for abandonment, waivers for the thickness of steel pipes and maximum pumping pressure.
“When the pipeline can no longer be used, are they going to be removed?” Cobenais asked. “Right now abandoned pipelines are filled with what they call nontoxic chemicals, even though they haven’t disclosed what they are. We want them taken out. Otherwise, you have toxic waste fields crisscrossing America.”
The Toronto Globe & Mail has Q&A with “Avatar” director James Cameron, who toured the oil sands in Alberta for three days this week and then joined First Nations leaders to ask Canada to protect the area from development.
The aboriginal community of Fort Chipewyan is downstream from the oil sands. The Lubicon Cree First Nation, Mikisew Cree First Nation, Duncan Lake First Nation and the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation are among those directly affecged by development there.
Cameron’s actions weren’t universally welcomed. As the Globe & Mail points out, the Edmonton Sun ran Cameron’s photo under the headline “Dipstick!” and also wrote an editorial calling him a hypocrite.
And Montana’s governor, Brian Schweitzer, took a poke at Cameron, accusing him of “blowing smoke,” according to the Associated Press.
“Any of these people who say they don’t like the oil sands, you ought to ask them if they’ll invite you to their house, and unless they’re living naked in a cave and eating nuts, they are totally dependent on petrol,” Schweitzer said.
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.”
Stan Beardy, Grand Chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation (WildlandsLeague.org photo)
Members of a group representing First Nations living in Ontario say the province’s proposed Far North Act to protect a vast swath of boreal forest north of the 50th Parallel will infringe upon their treaty rights.
If the measure, slated for final reading in the legislature this week, is approved, “there will be conflict in the north,” Stan Beardy, grand chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, told Canadian Press.
He says the main problem is that the act, which would apply to 42 percent of Ontario’s land, gives the government veto power.
“It imposes a massive, interconnected protected area over our homelands without compensation and without our consent,” he says. “We will oppose it by any means necessary. There will be no certainty for the government or for investors.”
Artist rendering of the new Port of Nanaimo cruise ship terminal building. The building will consist of 13,289 sq. feet of CBSA inspection and office space. (Nanaimo Port Authority)
First Nations vow to block Nanaimo terminal
The Snuneymuxw First Nation says it will turn to the courts in its flight to block construction of a $22-million cruise ship terminal at Nanaimo, near Vancouver. Chief Doug White tells the Vancouver Sun he will go to mediation because the Nanaimo Port Authority is not taking seriously his people’s concerns over the protection of the Nanaimo River Estuary.
Navajo Supreme Court suspends college president
Dine College president Ferlin Clark has been ordered to suspend work until Sept. 21, under a Navajo Supreme Court ruling last week. The Navajo Times reports that the court also released a has released the 172-page investigate report on Clark’s conduct that confirms allegations of “pervasive harassment” and favoritism.
Program helps Native American engineers
North and South Dakota are taking part in a five-year program that aims to recruit American Indian students to become engineers are hoping some of them will return home to help their communities, according to the Rapid City Journal in South Dakota. A $4.8 million National Science Foundation grant funds the program to link four-year engineering schools with community colleges.
Play based on Louise Erdrich novel debuts
Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theater last night debuted “The Master Butchers Singing Club,” a play based on the novel of the same name by heralded Anishinaabe author Louise Erdrich. As the Associated Press writes, “the stage adaptation of Erdrich’s novel is by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright Marsha Norman. It follows the lives of numerous residents of a small North Dakota town between the first and second World Wars.” Read more at Playbill.com.
Not making this up – Whale rescue film touted as romantic comedy
From the Anchorage Daily News’ rural blog, The Village, comes a delicious tidbit about how Universal Pictures is promoting its whale-rescue movie that will feature several Alaska Natives Seems like the movie will more true to Hollywood than true to life.
