No Social Distancing or Mask Requirement at Trump's Mt. Rushmore Fireworks Event
01 July
Health + Wellness
A crowd awaits the evening lighting ceremony at Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota on June 23, 2012. Mindy / Flickr
Fire experts have already criticized President Trump's planned fireworks event for this Friday at Mt. Rushmore National Memorial as a dangerous idea. Now, it turns out the event may be socially irresponsible too as distancing guidelines and mask wearing will not be enforced at the event, according to CNN.
<p>The fireworks event at the iconic monument in South Dakota will be the first in more than a decade, and it will bring together thousands of supporters who will be crammed together in a fenced-in area for a view of the display. The event is happening as coronavirus cases are surging across the country, amidst a <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/drought" target="_self">drought</a> in South Dakota that makes the surrounding trees flammable, and during a national conversation about rethinking monuments with racist histories.</p><p>South Dakota's Republican Governor Kristi Noem said the people who attend the celebration will be asked to choose their own comfort level with social distancing and mask wearing. While masks will be handed out to anyone who wants them, they will not be required, according to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/s-dakota-gov-noem-says-we-will-not-be-social-n1232507" target="_blank">NBC News</a>.</p>
<p>"We will have a large event at July 3rd. We told those folks that have concerns that they can stay home, but those who want to come and join us, we'll be giving out free face masks, if they choose to wear one. But we will not be social distancing," Noem said on Fox News on Monday night, as NBC News reported. "We're asking them to come, be ready to celebrate, to enjoy the freedoms and the liberties that we have in this country."</p><p>She added that state officials have asked the people of South Dakota to practice personal responsibility. "Every one of them has the opportunity to make a decision that they're comfortable with," she said, as NBC News reported.</p>
<p>The unwillingness to mandate that people follow <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/visitors.html" target="_blank">CDC guidelines</a> and practice social distancing has drawn criticism from the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/indigenous-peoples" target="_self">Native American</a> community, which has suffered disproportionately from the coronavirus. Several groups led by Native American activists are planning protests for Trump's visit on Friday.</p><p>"Trump coming here is a safety concern not just for my people inside and outside the reservation, but for people in the Great Plains. We have such limited resources in Black Hills, and we're already seeing infections rising," said Oglala Sioux President Julian Bear Runner in an interview with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/01/mount-rushmore-donald-trump-sioux" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>.</p><p>"It's going to cause an uproar if he comes here. People are going to want to exercise their First Amendment rights to protest and we do not want to see anyone get hurt or the lands be destroyed," added Bear Runner.</p>
<p>Mt. Rushmore, which is carved into the Black Hills Forest, is still considered sacred land by the Sioux. Its construction and the visit from the U.S. president stand in clear violation of treaties that the Sioux people signed with the U.S. government, according to Bear Runner.</p><p>The land was granted to the Sioux in perpetuity, but the U.S. reneged on the deal when gold was discovered in the Black Hills in the late 1800s.</p><p>"The lands on which that mountain is carved and the lands he's about to visit belong to the Great Sioux nation under a treaty signed in 1851 and the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and I have to tell him he doesn't have permission from its original sovereign owners to enter the territory at this time," Bear Runner told The Guardian.</p>
<p>Trump, who has repeatedly refused to wear a face mask and encouraged states to reopen early before the virus was under control, tends to provoke the same behavior in his fans. The refusal to mandate social distancing guidelines stands in stark contrast to South Dakota's Department of Health <a href="https://doh.sd.gov/news/coronavirus.aspx#Avoid" target="_blank">website</a>, which says that in order to avoid the illness, people should "avoid close contact with people ... stay at home as much as possible," and "put distance between yourself and other people." It also says, "everyone should wear a cloth face cover when they have to go out in public," as <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/s-dakota-gov-noem-says-we-will-not-be-social-n1232507" target="_blank">NBC News</a> reported.</p>
<p>Asked to reconcile the difference between the governor of South Dakota and the guidelines from the CDC and the states' health department, Noem spokesman Ian Fury told CNN, "We're not anticipating that folks will be maintaining six feet of social distancing. We are encouraging attendees to follow CDC guidelines, extensive safety signage will be posted at the event, and masks will be available, but attendees will be exercising their personal responsibility in choosing to attend."</p>
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Demonstrators march down Pennsylvania Avenue near the Trump International Hotel during a protest against police brutality and the death of George Floyd on June 3, 2020 in Washington, DC. Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images
By John R. Platt
This year has brought us some brutal lessons so far, chief among them the fact that systemic racism drives or amplifies nearly all our societal and environmental ills.
Now is the time to listen to the people affected most by those problems of environmental justice and racism — and the activists working to solve them.
<p>Here's a good place to start: We've gathered 16 essential recent books on environmental racism and related topics from leading journalists and experts. Two of these are hot off the presses and scheduled to hit shelves this month, while the rest were pulled from <a href="https://therevelator.org/tag/revelator-reads/" target="_blank">previous "Revelator Reads" installments</a>. All provide vital insight into the problems that plague people and the planet, while also offering solutions for a more just future.</p><p>Since we're still in the middle of a pandemic — another problem made worse by racial injustice — it obviously remains challenging to visit local bookstores and libraries, so these links all go to publishers' sites, where you can order hard copies or e-books. You can also find enough information to order any of these books from local stores, which may offer delivery or curbside pickup.</p><p>This list is hardly exhaustive and pulls mostly from books published over the past two years, and it weighs a bit heavily on Indigenous authors and protests like Standing Rock. So please feel free to <a href="mailto:tips@therevelator.org" target="_blank">recommend</a> any insightful books we missed.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.newsociety.com/Books/E/Engage-Connect-Protect" target="_blank"><em>Engage, Connect, Protect: Empowering Diverse Youth as Environmental Leaders</em></a> by Angelou Ezeilo</strong></p><p>The founder of the Greening Youth Foundation provides a critique of the too-white environmental movement and a toolkit for engaging younger participants from African American, Latinx and Native American communities.</p><p><strong><a href="http://www.beacon.org/As-Long-as-Grass-Grows-P1445.aspx" target="_blank">As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock</a><em> </em><strong>by Dina Gilio-Whitaker </strong></strong></p><p>The history of Indigenous resistance may offer all of us the strength we need to keep fighting, from the coauthor of <em>"All the Real Indians Died Off" and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans</em>.</p><p><a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jamie-margolin/youth-to-power/9780738246666/" target="_blank"><em><strong></strong></em></a><a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jamie-margolin/youth-to-power/9780738246666/" target="_blank"><strong><em>Youth to Power: Your Voice and How to Use It</em></strong></a> <strong>by Jamie Margolin</strong> <u><strong><u><span></span></u></strong></u></p><p><u><strong><u><span></span></u></strong></u>An essential book by one of the country's most engaging youth activists. Margolin, a queer Latinx, cofounded Zero Hour and helped energize 2018's record-breaking Youth Climate March. Now she shares her experience and expertise — along with that of other young activists — and offers advice on everything from organizing peaceful protests to protecting your mental health in a time of crisis. Greta Thunberg provides the foreword.</p>
<p><em><strong><a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300743/environmental-justice-in-a-moment-of-danger" target="_blank">Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger</a> </strong></em><strong>by Julie Sze</strong><strong></strong></p><p>As we've seen many times over the years, activists standing up for environmental justice often face violent reprisal. This academic book examines the what Sze calls the "historical and cultural forces and resistance to violence, death, and destruction of lives and bodies" to reveal guideposts for future (and hopefully safer) action.</p><p><strong><a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300232158/climate-change-streets" target="_blank">Climate Change From the Streets</a><em> </em>by Michael Méndez</strong></p><p>Méndez argues that the climate crisis is also a crisis for public health, especially in lower-income communities of color, and that both problems can only be solved by addressing issues of environmental justice. His book — subtitled "How Conflict and Collaboration Strengthen the Environmental Justice Movement" — taps into Méndez's own research into California communities and grassroots activism to show how the problems that plague us can also bring us together — but only if we invite everyone to the table.</p><p><em><strong><a href="http://tupress.temple.edu/book/20000000009800" target="_blank">Latinx Environmentalisms: Place, Justice, and the Decolonial</a> </strong></em><strong>edited by Sarah D. Wald, David J. Vázquez, Priscilla Solis Ybarra and Sarah Jaquette Ray</strong><span></span></p><p>More than a dozen top minds come together to examine thoughts and cultural processes otherwise ignored by the environmental movement.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.littlebrownspark.com/titles/harriet-a-washington/a-terrible-thing-to-waste/9780316509428/" target="_blank"><em>A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind</em></a> by Harriet A. Washington</strong><br></p><p><span></span>This book will open your eyes, make you angry, and then point you toward solutions for ending the plague of pollution-related health problems in marginalized communities of color.</p><p><strong><a href="https://www.sevenstories.com/authors/65-aric-mcbay" target="_blank">Full Spectrum Resistance</a><em> </em><strong>by Aric McBay</strong></strong></p><p>This two-volume series provides a powerful primer for activism on social-justice and environmental issues, using examples from more than 50 resistance movements around the world. The first book discusses how to build movements, while the second examines strategies for change.</p><p><strong><a href="https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/indigenous-environmental-justice" target="_blank"><em>Indigenous Environmental Justice</em></a> edited by Karen Jarratt-Snider and Marianne O. Nielsen</strong></p><p>When pollution harms your physical, financial and spiritual health, it's more than an injustice. But that's what happens time and time again in Indian Country. This book addresses situations ranging from Standing Rock to uranium mining on Navajo and Hopi lands through lenses of colonization, sovereignty and — perhaps most importantly — victory.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/poisoned-water-9781547602322/" target="_blank"><em>Poisoned Water: How the Citizens of Flint, Michigan, Fought for Their Lives and Warned the Nation</em></a> by Candy J. Cooper with Marc Aronson</strong></p><p>We've already seen several bestselling and powerful books address the Flint water crisis, but this is the first one specifically written for young-adult readers. When you consider that kids were among the worst affected by the Flint tragedy, that makes this a story they need to read and understand — so they can grow up and help prevent it from happening to anyone else.</p><p><strong><span></span><a href="https://btlbooks.com/book/unearthing-justice" target="_blank"><em>Unearthing Justice: How to Protect Your Community From the Mining Industry</em></a></strong><strong> by Joan Kuyek</strong></p><p>Covering everything from how to stop a new mining project to figuring out how to clean up an abandoned mine, this important book offers activists a primer for taking on all manner of extractive industries that can harm human health and the environment.</p><p><strong><a href="https://ecwpress.com/products/whose-water-is-it" target="_blank"><em>Whose Water Is It, Anyway? Taking Water Protection Into Public Hands</em></a> by Maude Barlow</strong></p><p>One of the world's most notable water-justice activists provides a step-by-step guide to help communities keep themselves from going dry due to the actions of irresponsible companies and governments.</p>
<p><u><strong><a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/standing-with-standing-rock" target="_blank"><em>Standing With Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement</em></a> </strong></u><strong>edited by Nick Estes and Jaskiran Dhillon</strong></p><p><u><strong></strong></u><em>An essential volume to understand the history and significance of the famous resistance action, combining everything from essays and interviews to poems and photography.</em></p><p><strong><span></span><a href="https://us.orcabook.com/One-Earth-P12339.aspx" target="_blank">One Earth: People of Color Protecting Our Planet</a><em> </em><strong>by Anuradha Rao</strong></strong></p><p>This book for pre-teen readers delivers 20 short biographies of activists around the world who are working to save everything from trees to dolphins to people. In the process, it hopes to inspire the next generation of activists — especially those who might not have seen themselves represented in the still all-too-white environmental movement.</p><p><strong><a href="http://www.soulfirefarm.org/media/farming-while-black/" target="_blank">Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land</a><em> </em>by Leah Penniman</strong></p><p>A how-to guide for ending racism and injustice in our country's food system, both on farms themselves and in nutrition-starved African American communities. Bonus: The same techniques improve the soil, treat livestock humanely, preserve rare plant varieties and provide benefits for the climate.</p><p><strong><span></span><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622853/who-killed-berta-caceres-by-nina-lakhani/" target="_blank"><em>Who Killed Berta Cáceres? Dams, Death Squads and an Indigenous Defender's Battle for the Planet</em></a> by Nina Lakhani</strong></p><p>Honduran indigenous leader and activist Berta Cáceres won the prestigious Goldman Prize in 2015 — one year before she was murdered for her work trying to stop a hydroelectric dam from destroying a sacred river. This powerful book tells the story of her life and death, a tragedy echoed in the murders and assaults committed against hundreds of environmental defenders every year.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://therevelator.org/author/john/" target="_blank">John R. Platt</a> </em><em>is the editor of <em>The Revelator</em>. An award-winning environmental journalist, his work has appeared in <em>Scientific American</em>, <em>Audubon</em>, <em>Motherboard</em>, and numerous other magazines and publications. His "Extinction Countdown" column has run continuously since 2004 and has covered news and science related to more than 1,000 endangered species. He is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists and the National Association of Science Writers. John lives on the outskirts of Portland, Ore., where he finds himself surrounded by animals and cartoonists.</em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://therevelator.org/environmental-justice-books-june-2020/" target="_blank">The Revelator</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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How an Environmental Justice Documentary Is Building Solidarity in the Midst of the Racial and Health Crisis
23 June
Sponsored
Indigenous leaders, environmental groups, interfaith and divestment coalitions are hosting online events, utilizing the film to support frontline and impacted communities. Courtesy / The Condor & The Eagle
By Tracy L. Barnett
A soon-to-be-released feature film exemplifies how independent media initiatives can be powerful tools for social and environmental justice organizing. Challenging the isolation and impotence that many are feeling in the face of the current health and racial crises, the internationally acclaimed documentary The Condor & The Eagle and its impact campaign "No More Sacrificed Communities" bring us together in these challenging times – reminding us of our deep interconnectedness with the Earth and one another.
<p>As we work to prevent the spread of COVID-19, environmental racism is presenting a deadly parallel threat for Indigenous peoples across North and South America, who continue to defend the lands and waters, protecting their communities from extraction and the pandemic. Meanwhile, the climate crisis has not paused as we battle racialized violence and COVID-19. On the contrary, as countries ease restrictions, emissions levels have rebounded to just 5% lower than last year at this time, and experts warn that we could be facing increased emissions by year's end. Meanwhile those at the front lines of the struggle for climate justice are battling disproportionately high rates of infection from Covid-19 while facing heightened risks of violence and illness from the extractive industries.</p>
<iframe title="vimeo-player" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/359405536" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
A PROFOUND WORK OF CLIMATE JOURNALISM
<p>Oscar-winning editor and producer Douglas Blush says: "This documentary takes the struggle for climate justice beyond the standard borders of separate nations using thrilling cinematography, deeply personal stories and the urgency of tomorrow's headlines. <em>The Condor & The Eagle</em> is both a profound work of climate journalism and an exhilarating, emotional adventure film."<br></p><p>The recent burning of the Amazon, the mega-fires in Australia, and the current political climate bode ill for our planet's future habitability. But there is hope. This internationally acclaimed documentary chronicles the ongoing collective climate awakening and the imperative of urgent change. The film asks how social change happens, and explores best practices for building effective social movements, led by the most affected. As world climate scientists predict unprecedented global catastrophe, <em>The Condor & The Eagle</em> features Indigenous women leaders at the head of an unparalleled global response.</p>
<p>Four Indigenous leaders embark on an extraordinary transcontinental adventure from the Canadian boreal forests to deep into the heart of the Amazonian jungle to unite the peoples of North and South America and deepen the meaning of "climate justice." <em>The Condor & The Eagle</em> offers a glimpse into a developing spiritual renaissance as the film's four protagonists learn from each other's long legacy of resistance to colonialism and its extractive economy.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQwODM0Ny9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwNzYxNzU5MH0.Oo9RwKPqrIS9q6Iz8Y2n0S9sxXZNQGiJOvfrAhwRI1U/img.png?width=980" id="bb09c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1a78d9f6c7bf91cd36016a49392517f5" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Casey Camp-Horinek, Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, left, with Melina Laboucan_Massimo, Lubicon Cree First Nation of Alberta, in the front row of the half-million-strong People's Climate March in New York, 2014. Screenshot / The Condor & The Eagle
IMPACT CAMPAIGN: "NO MORE SACRIFICED COMMUNITIES"
<p>Indigenous leaders, environmental groups (including Amazon Watch, Sierra Club, Extinction Rebellion), divestment and interfaith coalitions (including Interfaith Power and Light, Unitarian Universalists) are <a href="https://thecondorandtheeagle.com/events/" target="_blank">hosting impressive online events</a>, presenting the film to large audiences along with a live-screen discussion with film and movement protagonists. In the weeks and months ahead, the film's impact campaign, "No More Sacrificed Communities," will explore how media highlighting the voices from impacted communities can compel a shift from witnessing environmental destruction to practical actions for sustainable, community-based initiatives.</p> <p>Each of more than a dozen online events is hosted by a different organization and offers the opportunity to raise funds for key environmental justice groups and impacted communities that are leading the charge against destructive fossil fuel projects.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQwODM1NS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NTY1OTE4MH0.Z6ZOvelXtSKYGx_LNFr4MyUq6JtvMnTJxECCHLfKsko/img.png?width=980" id="fc2b5" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4271ef679acb20176c4ba3d69d20652e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
At the Red Nation International Film Festival. Left to right: Festival director Joanelle Romero, co-director Clement Guerra, film protagonist Bryan Parras, Executive Producer Jacqueline Garcia and Impact Partner Kat Lo, Eaton Workshop.
INTERNATIONAL FILM RELEASE
<p>Since its premiere at the Woodstock Film Festival in October 2019, <em>The Condor & the Eagle</em> has been selected by more than 50 film festivals and has won 12 awards, most notably Best Environmental Documentary at the 2019 Red Nation International Film Festival in Beverly Hills, California.<br></p> <p>The film's international release date is set for Wednesday, July 1, and it will be available for rent on the <a href="https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the-condor-and-the-eagle/" target="_blank">Films For Action</a> website. That day also marks the film's Latin American premiere with "<a href="https://event.webinarjam.com/register/93/xyg1yuw9?fbclid=IwAR2pNe5jKZJ3jXlmHROc8ifD1JtxQkKNG1QB2xx41WST7XrL7knai_kGnHU" target="_blank">Defending the Defenders of the Mother Earth / Defendiendo las Defensoras de la Madre Tierra</a>," a bilingual screening event featuring Bertha "Bertita" Zúñiga Cáceres of Honduras, daughter of the environmental martyr Berta Cáceres, and the director, among others.</p>A MESSAGE FROM THE FILMMAKERS
<p>The film was directed and produced by Clement Guerra, a 37-year-old French international marketing manager, and his German wife Sophie. The couple left their comfortable careers in Europe and took their savings to live in a camper van and spend five years documenting the Indigenous-led climate justice movement.</p><p>"We don't want to be 'extractivist' filmmakers, but rather ones who work hand-in-hand with communities," Clement told The Esperanza Project in a recent interview, <a href="https://www.esperanzaproject.com/2020/native-american-culture/the-condor-the-eagle-takes-flight/" target="_blank"><em>The Condor & The Eagle' Takes Flight</em></a>. "On a personal level, this whole experience helped us face our own privilege, and we quickly realized that the pollution outside reflected the ego-toxicity we are carrying on the inside. We have been conditioned to believe that we are skin-encapsulated egos, that we are each an 'I' separate from every other 'I.' Thanks to our journey and the process of making this film, we came to realize that we all depend on each other; we are not separate."<br></p><p>You can support the team impact work <a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=W44L44WM4ELDW&source=url" target="_blank">HERE</a>.</p><iframe title="vimeo-player" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/417898062" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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Dyed wool at a weaver's home in the Oaxaca region of Mexico. Wolfgang Kaehler / LightRocket / Getty Images
By Tracy L. Barnett
High up in the southern sierra of Mexico's state of Oaxaca, an innovative nonprofit business inspired by Mohandas Gandhi is helping Indigenous Zapotec families to weather the economic storm that COVID-19 has brought to the Mexican countryside.
<p>San Sebastian Rio Hondo, a Zapotec highland village like many others, has traditionally supplemented its agrarian way of life through the wool industry. Long famous for its rich tradition of Indigenous handwoven textiles, Oaxaca has nevertheless fallen on hard times, along with most of rural Mexico, partly because of policies promoting urbanization and undermining the traditional rural way of life.</p><p>In San Sebastian, the hardship has been severe: <a href="http://www.microrregiones.gob.mx/catloc/LocdeMun.aspx?tipo=clave&campo=loc&ent=20&mun=347" target="_blank">as of the 2010 census</a>, 55% of the population lived in extreme poverty, more than a third had not completed primary school, and more than two-thirds did not have a high school education. Unemployment continues to be high, compelling a high rate of migration out of the state and out of Mexico. Among the women, job opportunities were practically nonexistent.</p><p>This was the context that Eliseo "Cheo" Ramírez was born into. In his parents' and grandparents' time, villagers grazed sheep and helped cover expenses by making woolen textiles. In the 1970s and '80s, however, the Mexican government initiated a program to plant pine trees for lumber, and the pastures and native forests began to shrink. The industrial clothing industry began producing cheap synthetic yarns. Spinning and weaving, once a staple in every home, fell by the wayside. The children of weavers and farmers began making their way north to work in the U.S. as meatpackers and migrant farmworkers.</p><p>Ramírez' prospects for employment were so grim that he set off from home in 2006 at age 16 for the U.S., crossing the Sonoran Desert and nearly dying of thirst. The experience proved so traumatic that he never made the attempt again. Now 32, he has good reason to remain home: he's the chief operating officer and head of sales and part of the core team of <a href="https://khadioaxaca.com/" target="_blank">Khadi Oaxaca</a><a href="https://khadioaxaca.com/" target="_blank">,</a> a farm-to-garment nonprofit textile enterprise aiming to regenerate the village way of life in a sustainable way. He no longer harbors illusions of an American Dream; his dream nowadays is to help generate opportunities that keep more of his people at home with their families.</p><p><span></span>Khadi Oaxaca follows what is known as the Gandhian economic model in three ways: It focuses on producing gainful employment for many instead of big profits for a few; it strives to build local autonomy and resilience at the village level, building in a cash supplement that supports the traditional agrarian life; and it follows the Gandhian strategy of making clothing from scratch, with workers spinning their own thread from organically grown cotton. And now, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic causing jobs to dry up everywhere, this handspun thread has become a lifeline for the local economy.</p>
<p>Khadi Oaxaca is the brainchild of the Mexico-educated son of a U.S. industrialist, Mark "Marcos" Brown, and with his wife, Kalindi Attar. Brown had traveled to San Sebastian as a teenager in 1974 and developed a lifelong relationship with the village. He later spent time in India, where he learned about khadi, a handspun cloth that became a cornerstone of the Indian independence movement. He lived for two years in Gandhi's ashram, studying under one of the Mahatma's last living disciples, and learned about how Gandhi's satyagraha movement used khadi as a sign of Indian national pride and resistance to the exploitative practices of the British clothing industry.</p><p><a href="https://www.esperanzaproject.com/2020/latin-america/mexico/a-little-bit-of-gandhi-in-oaxaca/" target="_blank">As Brown studied Gandhi's movement</a>, the connections to the <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2018/05/31/why-fast-fashion-needs-to-slow-down/" target="_blank">wasteful global "fast fashion" industry</a> quickly became apparent, in the ways it has contaminated the planet and degraded the lives of millions of sweatshop workers. He vowed to live his values, learning to spin and to weave, making his own clothing, and thinking of ways in which khadi might serve the poverty-stricken people of the Oaxaca countryside that he'd come to love.</p><p>So when Brown returned to San Sebastian in 2010, he brought with him a charkha, or Gandhian spinning wheel, and a plan. Less than 1% of the thread market was handspun at that time—a dramatic contrast to his first visit in the 1970s, when many families spun their own woolen thread. In 2010, a kilogram of thread, the quantity per month that average households can spin in their spare moments, sold for just 400 pesos—about USD $18, nowhere near enough to incentivize the practice of spinning.</p><p>"Gandhi would say, you have to create a thread standard—like the gold standard used to be," Brown said. "The idea of a standard is that a woman can spin and actually survive on that spinning; she can make enough for her family to live on and meet their basic needs. Can you imagine that, spinning, where the standard can meet your basic needs of survival, where it takes you out of hunger? And that gives you a sense of security and well-being?"</p><p>Brown put the village carpenter to work duplicating the charkha. He found a supply of organic cotton, and he set about teaching the young Ramírez and his wife, Felipa, how to spin. Brown then put Ramírez in charge, and soon a team of 20 women—mostly grandmothers—were spinning, a loose affiliation of home-based businesses now seeing their labor turned into a variety of textiles and sold across Mexico and the United States. The revenue flows back to the spinners, weavers, embroiderers, and other artisans working in the village, and to the cotton growers they purchase from on the coast.</p><p>Remigio Mestas, a Zapotec textile artist, entrepreneur and cultural promoter in Oaxaca working to revive the Indigenous textile traditions, agreed to buy all the thread the women produced, which he supplied to weavers who sell through his stores. That was the beginning of a business that now, a decade later, helps to sustain nearly 500 people in the village, including cotton growers, spinners, clothing designers, and marketers. </p>
<p>"It's a very interesting and laudable project," Mestas said. "It could be an example for many; if it were to spread, it could address our problems of unemployment and hunger in the countryside."</p><p>Mestas also connected the group with Margaret MacSems, who co-founded a project with Mixtec farmers on the coast working to revive native coyuchi cotton production. MacSems would eventually join the Khadi Oaxaca team, becoming director of sustainability, thus connecting the enterprise with coyuchi farmers. Mestas also put Brown in touch with teachers who trained Ramírez and others how to weave with the upright pedal loom, and how to work with natural dyes.</p><p>The team has been able to raise the pay rate from 400 pesos per kilo of handspun thread to 1,500 pesos, or nearly $70 in today's dollars—a standard that makes a meaningful difference in a village economy. The thread has become the foundation of a cottage industry, now employing 350 spinners.</p><p>In the past few years, Khadi Oaxaca had seen an exponential growth in sales. Attar, as head designer, and Ramírez attended fashion expos, where she was struck by the way people would react to their displays. "They'd walk right past top designers and stop at our little stand," Attar said. "It's been amazing to me the way people have responded. It seems that doing every part of the process by hand is such an attractive quality for people."</p>
<p>"As (Gandhi) would always say, when we talk about village economics, if it comes from a place of nonviolence, of a truly sacred economics, then you don't need any commercialism; you don't need to market that which has its essence and its beginning in goodness," Brown said.</p><p>Now, however, the pandemic has shut down not only the expos but the entire Mexican tourism industry, which is what drew shoppers to the tourist-destination boutiques across Mexico that featured Khadi Oaxaca's unique products. That's put the group's model to the test. Less fabric is being woven, and Khadi isn't stocking finished garments, is reducing work for the sewers, stitchers, and embroiderers, and the group's core staff took a pay cut to reduce the economic impact on the artisans. Only the spinning hasn't been cut back; rather, Khadi has expanded its roster of spinners by 100 people.</p><p>The company quickly started expanding its online presence. Ramírez began posting photos of the existing stock on an already lively Instagram account, and orders began to flow in from the United States. Online sales jumped from an average of $1,300 USD per month before the pandemic to $6,500 in May. And international sales shot up from 5% of the total before the outbreak to 60% now, mostly from the U.S., MacSems said.</p><p>That growth has all come about through Khadi's Instagram account, which isn't a sales portal. The next projects are an online catalog and a shopping cart on the company website, and working to expand their presence on other social media.</p>
<p>Despite the cutbacks, 20 families are supporting themselves weaving cloth with upright pedal looms—fathers such as Juvenal García, who used to spend his days cutting down the pine forests in the region for lumber, and Carlos Vargas, who used to travel to the U.S. for seasonal landscaping work. Even if they had wanted to leave home, the pandemic shut down those options; but both said they much prefer to stay home and work with their families.</p><p>The largest part of the operation, however, is still the spinning. The network of spinners now extends far beyond San Sebastian into the rancherías, the tiny rural settlements where families still live in the traditional agrarian way. For Eugemia Velázquez, a 38-year-old mother of six, Khadi has provided a degree of dignity and comfort that were previously unthinkable. Before she started spinning for Khadi, Velázquez was a wool artisan like her mother and grandmother; she knitted little hats, dolls, and tortilla warmers, and every two weeks would leave them with the street vendors in the next town, who would pay her a small advance and then pay the rest later if the pieces were sold. But sometimes, none of them did, making her family's economic situation precarious.</p><p>These days, Velázquez has been content knowing that she can deliver a pound of thread every two weeks and earn enough to buy her children school supplies and other items she can't make or grow herself. </p>
<p>Sales doubled at Khadi from 2018 to 2019, and that was without even concentrating on online sales. This has been possible, Brown said, in part because people are willing to pay the actual cost to produce ethically and regeneratively fabricated products, and also because Khadi Oaxaca has been able to receive grants from private foundations in the U.S.</p><p>Based on the growth in sales before the outbreak of COVID-19, the business was on track to be independent of grant funding by mid-2022; now that's less certain, MacSems said. Overall sales have plummeted 56% since February. But she said she's optimistic, given the potential of online sales and the burgeoning interest in this kind of project. Meanwhile, during the pandemic, thread production has doubled, with some families saying it's their only source of income. Grant funding has allowed Khadi Oaxaca to continue buying the thread that has become a mainstay for local families.</p><p>"What we've found is that it is possible to care for each aspect of the supply chain, be ecologically mindful, empower local communities and create unbelievably beautiful textiles," Attar said. "COVID is painfully helping us globally to wake up to the fact that our Earth is indeed suffering; we are all interdependent. Our goal is to be a model and live the change we want to see in the world. May we look toward great souls like Mahatma Gandhi for guidance."</p>
<em><span></span></em><em><a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/authors/tracy-l-barnett/" target="_blank">TRACY L. BARNETT</a> is a Mexico-based freelance writer and the founder of The Esperanza Project, a magazine covering social movements in the Americas.<br/><br/></em><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2020/06/17/coronavirus-mexico-indigenous-families-handspun-thread/" target="_blank">Yes! Magazine</a>.</em><u><em></em></u><table><tbody></tbody></table>
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A scene from Unceded Territories, an immersive virtual reality experience created by Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun and Paisley Smith. youtu.be
Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun does not use email or text. In the Coastal Salish communities from which he hails, he has been known as a painter and a dancer since the 1980s. Yet, he has been exploring the "virtual reality renaissance"—the technology that allows you to figuratively step into a computer-generated 3D world—since it made its soft debut in the '90s.
<p>In 2019, Yuxweluptun fell in with Paisley Smith, a filmmaker and virtual reality director who, like Yuxweluptun, comes from the unceded territories of the <a href="https://coastvoice.wordpress.com/2017/07/23/squamish-musqueam-and-tsleil-waututh-first-nation-culture-and-language/" target="_blank">Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh</a> First Nations, in what is today known as British Columbia.</p><p>Together, they created <u><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNxnSaVO3VU" target="_blank">Unceded Territories</a></u>, an immersive and provocative virtual reality experience that drops the viewer into a world designed in Yuxweluptun's style. Surrounded by his '80s-style visuals, you are then encouraged to design the world as you want by throwing oil paint onto the screen with abandon. Only once you've reached the end of the virtual adventure do you realize the running oil has left a trail of destruction in its wake, and that there is no turning back from this changed environment.</p><p>By combining Smith's virtual reality filmmaking with the '80s-style visuals of Yuxweluptun's paintings, Unceded Territories explores the intersection of environmentalism and Indigenous rights. It is just one example of the many ways Indigenous artists across the Americas are engaging technology and other works to draw attention to their culture and the environmental challenges confronting their communities, which are on the front line of climate change.</p><p>"How do I teach people to love the land?" asks Yuxweluptun, whose paintings tell stories about Indigenous human rights and climate change. "You can't use my story and blame me for that. You can't blame me for global warming."</p><p>In the past, establishments outside of Indigenous communities rarely took note. Now, with social media, awareness is no longer limited to those directly affected, he says.</p>
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f44fc9a12d287e773a01dc2e4cfa635a"><iframe lazy-loadable="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cNxnSaVO3VU?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p> Virtual reality, Yuxweluptun says, is another medium for someone like him to express his ideas in more ways than just on a one-dimensional canvas. "Not everybody can do it, because you have to be able to think in a certain way," he says. "It's a different way, other than painting or making a sculpture."</p><p>Here are the stories of four other groups of Indigenous artists using technology and art to tell their communities' stories.</p>
The Condor and the Eagle
<p>Bryan Parras has been working in radio in the Houston market since the early 2000s and, as time passed, saw how social media made storytelling more accessible to everyone—including those in marginalized communities.</p><p>In 2014, Parras met a European couple, Sophie and Clément Guerra, who had come to the United States to support the climate movement and who quickly became entangled in the Indigenous movement as well. Eventually, they began work on <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7757874/" target="_blank">The Condor and The Eagle,</a> an independent documentary about four Indigenous leaders on a transcontinental adventure. Journeying from the Canadian plains, through the U.S and deep into the heart of the Amazonian jungle, they battled Big Energy while working to unite the peoples of North and South America and deepen the meaning of "Climate Justice."</p><p>Parras, himself of mixed Indigenous descent, is no stranger to filmmakers and reporters who come into Indigenous communities to observe, but without getting their actual input. "It's another form of extraction, right? Cultural extraction," he says.</p><p>It's why Parras, was the documentary's campaign producer, acted as a bridge between the filmmakers and his community, so that Indigenous communities portrayed in the film would be included in the editing process as well. "What may not be written in the history books are now archived in this story," he said.</p><span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7e42f930bcbabcc50e96fe72da091581"><iframe lazy-loadable="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YSMutzSW7gQ?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>Since its premiere at the Woodstock Film Festival in October 2019, The Condor and the Eagle has been selected by more than <a href="https://thecondorandtheeagle.com/" target="_blank">50 film festivals and won 12 awards</a>. The most notable one is Best Environmental Documentary at the 2019 Red Nation International Film Festival in Beverly Hills, California.</p>
Wenazìi K’egoke; See Visions
<p>Casey Koyczan is Tlicho Dene from the Northwest Territories of Canada. When he collaborates on virtual reality exhibits, he brings what he calls a "Northern aesthetic"—visuals of the remote landscape of the Northwest Territories of Canada. His latest project is <u><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_-rHnn-YZ8" target="_blank">Wenazìi K'egoke; See Visions</a></u>, a three-chapter virtual reality experience that takes you into a dreamlike interpretation of encounters with animal spirits of the North.</p><p>See Visions uses stark colors to evoke the feeling of walking through the snow under an aurora borealis. Koyczan considers the animals depicted in this atmosphere-heavy video to be its most important features. "It's all about being involved in the North," he says. "It reinforces the subtle notion that we are on their territory."</p><p>See Visions debuted in a prototype version in 2019 at the annual ImagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival in Toronto, a global hub for Indigenous-made media art. Koyczan and his partner on the project, Travis Mercredi, are now developing it for length and interactivity.</p><span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e14560de3ad5d7db995fe320ca64b0f1"><iframe lazy-loadable="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D_-rHnn-YZ8?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
<p>It's the kind of work ImagineNATIVE envisioned when it began featuring virtual reality projects in 2017, with the idea of depicting the world for Indigenous communities 150 years into the future. The idea, Koyczan says, is that although their current reality is not ideal, Indigenous communities will survive. "Thriving in this society hasn't been laid out yet," Koyczan said. "It's really cool to depict these things. How things could be."</p><p>Although he studied fine arts in college, Koyczan decided he preferred shaping things with his hands. He often builds installations that allow him to project each of his projects from his laptop—creating a physical aspect for further immersion. He also creates the music for his projects, playing several instruments in a style he calls "electro-rock."</p><p>About his and Mercredi's work, Koyczan says, "We feel it's providing accessibility and insight into a portion of our landscape and aesthetic as new media artists."</p>
Three Sisters
<p>In 2019, the Dundas West Art Museum in Toronto hosted an art exchange that allowed one Canadian artist to travel to Chile to paint a mural, while Chilean artist, Paula Tikay, went to paint in Canada.</p><p>"At the end of [painting] a mural, one leaves and leaves [their] work for the people who transit those places," says Tikay, who is Mapuche, the largest Indigenous group in Chile. "They are like small messages that can identify and rescue stories from places. They are like gifts that appear for the inhabitants of that space."</p><p>Dundas West Art Museum is Toronto's <a href="https://www.kickstartbia.ca/innovation-stories/dundaswest" target="_blank">first open-air street art museum</a>. The neighborhood of Dundas West has long been connected with Chile since Chileans began moving there as refugees of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in the 1970s.</p><p>Tikay's contribution to the museum is a Three Sisters mural, depicting three Indigenous women who represent the three main agricultural crops of Indigenous groups in the Americas.</p><p>Three Sisters is the name given to climbing beans, maize, and squash that are/were grown together in an agricultural strategy called companion planting. It's a historical reminder that European settlers learned to plant crops on American soil from its Indigenous people.</p><p>Tikay calls it an honor to use her art to remind people of that, especially because it was also practiced in her ancestral southern Chile. </p><span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6f040ac7ae059ec5bb1fc944c1897119"><iframe lazy-loadable="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UU-L1dEhI2M?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
My Louisiana Love
<p>The Houma Nation sits on the Mississippi Delta; the wetlands there were struck by both Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the BP oil spill five years later. These disasters, both natural and manmade, slowly chip away at the way of life of the Houma people, making them less able to hunt, trap, and fish.</p><p>In 2015, Monique Verdin co-produced the documentary, <u><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2290531/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm" target="_blank">My Louisiana Love,</a></u> which traces her journey back to her home in the Houma nation and focuses on her community's struggle with decades of environmental degradation.</p><p>It has recently been made available on PBS again.</p><p>Verdin herself expressed surprise at its rerelease. "I didn't think it would be relevant at the time," she says, "but it's even more relevant now."</p><span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d2e15f3cec2f7a69836db64ef5353021"><iframe lazy-loadable="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-o7hL7pDNtM?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>In telling this larger social and economic story, Verdin makes the film semi-autobiographical by displaying her and her family's struggles, which include the death of her father. "With my father gone," she says in the narration, "I had lost another piece of my Louisiana."</p><p>She is working to address some of the issues highlighted in the documentary. She is part of <a href="https://anothergulf.com/aboutus/" target="_blank">Another Gulf is Possible</a>, a grassroots collaborative, led by women of color, that is doing resistance work against corporations searching for oil in the region while reviving Indigenous methods of living off the land sustainably.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/authors/demi-guo/" style="" target="_blank">Demi Guo</a> is an NYC journalist with bylines in WNPR and National Geographic.</em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from </em><em><a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2020/06/15/indigenous-artists-climate-technology/" target="_blank">YES! Magazine</a>.</em><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/r/entryeditor/2646208694#/" target="_self"></a></p>From Your Site Articles
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Federal Judge Orders Trump Admin to Give Native Americans Their Withheld Stimulus Money
18 June
Politics
A family that has no running water sits outside their home in the Navajo Nation town of Thoreau, New Mexico on May 22, 2020. MARK RALSTON / AFP via Getty Images
Frustrated and disgusted that it has taken so long for the Department of the Treasury to distribute Federal stimulus funds to Native American tribes, a federal judge ordered Secretary Steve Mnuchin to distribute the money immediately, according to HuffPost.
<p>The judge said that the Native Americans should have received their portion of the CARES Act months ago when other Americans received theirs.</p><p>The decision from U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta was particularly critical of Mnuchin's decision to hold back $679 million in funding set aside for tribes while waiting on a decision in another case that will determine whether tribal businesses are eligible for the funding, as <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/503175-judge-orders-mnuchin-to-give-tribes-full-stimulus-funding" target="_blank">The Hill</a> reported.</p><p>"Continued delay in the face of an exceptional public health crisis is no longer acceptable," said Mehta, who gave Mnuchin until Wednesday to disburse the funds, as <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tribes-covid-relief-treasury-department_n_5ee9093fc5b674996b9be1d9" target="_blank">HuffPost</a> reported.</p><p>"The Secretary has now taken more than twice as much time as Congress directed to distribute all CARES Act funds," Mehta wrote, referring to the $2.2 trillion March legislation that earmarked $8 billion for tribal governments, according to <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/503175-judge-orders-mnuchin-to-give-tribes-full-stimulus-funding" target="_blank">The Hill</a>. "The 80 days they have waited, when Congress intended receipt of emergency funds in less than half that time, is long enough."</p>
<p>The money is desperately needed, as the Navajo Nation saw the largest spike in COVID-19 cases per capita in the nation and access to clean water and reliable healthcare remain limited for many tribes.</p><p>As a result of the delayed payments, the Navajo Nation has not been able to develop adequate COVID-19 response and protection plans, like hazard pay for employees and sanitation of buildings and businesses on the largest reservation in the country, according to Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez, as <a href="https://www.indianz.com/News/2020/06/17/we-got-these-monies-late-trump-administr.asp" target="_blank">IndianZ</a> reported.</p><p>Nez stressed that the delay is significant since the CARES Act requires the tribes' money to be spent by Dec. 31.</p><p>"There's a timeline on this," Nez said, as as <a href="https://www.indianz.com/News/2020/06/17/we-got-these-monies-late-trump-administr.asp" target="_blank">IndianZ</a> reported. "We need to get those dollars to all the tribes across the country so they can help their citizens. We are wanting to use these dollars for the immediate needs."</p>
<p>When Congress set aside $8 billion for tribes when it passed the CARES Act stimulus package in late March, it directed the Treasury Department to distribute the money by April 26. That never happened. In late May, Treasury distributed about half the money, while most of the remaining money was sent out last Friday, as <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tribes-covid-relief-treasury-department_n_5ee9093fc5b674996b9be1d9" target="_blank">HuffPost</a> reported.</p><p>"Sovereign Nations shouldn't have to fight for money that Congress approves, ever. It's shameful that a judge has to force the Treasury to do their job," Rep. Deb Haaland, a New Mexico Democrat and co-chair of the Congressional Native American Caucus, said on Twitter, as <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/503175-judge-orders-mnuchin-to-give-tribes-full-stimulus-funding" target="_blank">The Hill</a> reported.</p>
<p>Much of the delay is attributed to the Treasury Department's overwhelming incompetence in dealing with Native American tribes and its initial maneuver to distribute stimulus money to Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs).</p><p>ANCs, which are not government entities, have enormous land holdings and secure significant profits from timber and oil sales. Judge Mehta blocked the Treasury Department from giving money to them.</p><p>According to <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/503175-judge-orders-mnuchin-to-give-tribes-full-stimulus-funding" target="_blank">The Hill</a>, ANCs have appealed and the case is still unresolved, but Mehta said Mnuchin has not been directed to reserve any funding for them.</p><p>"That amount is being withheld of the Secretary's own accord," Mehta wrote in his decision. "The Secretary's withholding of $672 million 'to resolve any potentially adverse decision in litigation' ... simply cannot be justified."</p>
<p>Lawmakers praised Mehta's decision and expressed anger that the Treasury Department has treated Native Americans so dismissively.</p><p>"The Court is absolutely correct: this administration has and continues to do 'irreparable harm' to Indian Country as it inexplicably holds back funds that Congress intended to get to Tribal governments urgently," Sen. Tom Udall, a New Mexico Democrat and vice chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, told <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tribes-covid-relief-treasury-department_n_5ee9093fc5b674996b9be1d9" target="_blank">HuffPost</a> in a statement. "It continues to be a shameful scandal that the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/">Trump administration</a> has dawdled with this funding while people in Native communities are getting sick and dying, and while businesses and essential services are shuttering."</p><p>"It is unconscionable that it has taken court action to force this administration to distribute relief to Tribal governments as Congress intended and the law requires," said Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat and chairman of the Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples of the United States on the House Natural Resources Committee, as <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tribes-covid-relief-treasury-department_n_5ee9093fc5b674996b9be1d9" target="_blank">HuffPost</a> reported.</p>
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As Amazonian Wildfire Season Approaches, We Must Protect the Vulnerable Forest
15 June
Insights + Opinion
NASA satellite image showing fires raging across the Amazon rainforest on Aug. 11, 2019. NASA
By Daniel Ross
The wildfires that tore across Australia were as devastating as they were overwhelming, scorching some 15 million hectares of land, killing 34 people and more than 1 billion animals. In terms of its apocalyptic imagery — sweeping infernos torching great swaths with unerring speed — Australia's wildfires were hauntingly reminiscent of the fires that roared through the Amazon rainforest over the past year. Indeed, more than 80,000 fires hit the region during 2019, according to the Brazilian government.
<p>Though many months have now passed since global media focused on the unfolding disaster in the Amazon — one of the world's most <a href="https://phys.org/news/2019-11-forests-amazon-important-carbon.html" target="_blank">important carbon sinks</a> — the problem has far from disappeared. Indeed, as the region gears up toward its next Amazon wildfire season, the causes underpinning the problem — like illegal logging, encroachment from agribusinesses and profit-driven government policies — remain very much at play.</p><p>And though uncertainty surrounds some of the short- and long-term impacts of increased commercial activity in the Brazilian Amazon, the consequences on a rapidly warming planet are stark indeed. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51464694" target="_blank">New research</a> suggests that some <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/deforestation">deforested</a> regions of the rainforest are exhaling more carbon dioxide than they're taking in.</p>
<p>What's more, experts and environmentalists are quick to point the finger of blame toward a principal factor: a government presided over by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whose tenure has been characterized by aggressive deregulation and increased commercial exploitation of the Amazon's resources.</p><p>"The impact is obvious: We have much more deforestation," said Philip Fearnside, an ecologist at the National Institute for Research in Amazonia in Brazil, earlier this year. Even before Bolsonaro took office officially, Fearnside <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-brazils-new-president-poses-an-unprecedented-threat-to-the-amazon" target="_blank">sounded the alarm</a> about the Brazilian president's intentions in the Amazon. And with Bolsonaro well into the second year of his tenure, "he's made good on those promises," Fearnside added.</p><p>Indeed, in the year ending on July 30, 2019, more than <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/brazil-revises-deforestation-data-amazon-rainforest-loss-topped-10000-sq-km-in-2019/" target="_blank">10,000 square kilometers</a> of Brazilian Amazon rainforest were lost through deforestation — an amount last topped in 2008, according to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research. The number of active fires in August 2019 was three times higher than in 2018 and the highest number since 2010. The broad ramifications of these trends are far from clear-cut.</p>
<p>According to Jos Barlow, a professor of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/conservation">conservation</a> science at Lancaster University, England, "<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.14872" target="_blank">different fire types have very different behaviors</a>," with varying severities of impact. While "understory" forest fires have the smallest flame heights and burn slowly across the forest floor, for example, "they also have long-lasting impacts, killing around 50 percent of all trees, with mortality occurring for many years after the fire," Barlow wrote in an email.</p><p>And so, "How long will it take for forests to recover biomass and primary forest species composition?" Barlow asked. "Will they fully recover, or will they be locked into a lower biomass state?"</p><p>Then there's the potential impact on the climate. For the first six months of 2019, deforestation and fires in the Brazilian Amazon released as much as <a href="https://whrc.org/new-data-brazilian-amazon-fires-have-released-104-141-million-metric-tons-of-co2/" target="_blank">141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide</a>, according to research led by the Woods Hole Research Center. As César Terrer, a postdoctoral scholar in Earth system science at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences, explains it, the destruction of the Amazon through logging and wildfires means "we're also limiting the potential of current plants to continue storing CO2."</p>
<p>Terrer led a <a href="https://news.stanford.edu/press/view/29425" target="_blank">study</a> using anticipated carbon dioxide levels for the end of the century and found that plant biomass should increase by 12 percent as a result — an increase that would help enable plants and trees to store more carbon dioxide. "A 12 percent increase is huge," Terrer said in a phone interview. "For the Amazon in particular, that's more than 15 billion tons of carbon," he added, explaining that this amount is equivalent to "all the carbon stored in all the trees in all the forests" in the United States. "They could store all that additional carbon for free, if we let them be."</p><p>The problem? That 12 percent increase is predicated upon current plant biomass levels remaining as they currently are. Instead, "we're increasing deforestation rates in the Amazon, which is hugely important for the climate," Terrer said. "I'm strongly concerned."</p>
<p>After the turn of the century, Brazil appeared to be wrestling the problem of a shrinking Amazon. Between 2004 and 2012, Brazil employed an action plan instituting a number of key provisions, including an expanded network of protected areas alongside market incentives and disincentives, like a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/194008291300600308" target="_blank">successful deforestation moratorium</a> agreed to by nearly all soybean processors and exporters in Brazil. Deforestation rates during that time <a href="https://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/deforestation_calculations.html" target="_blank">plummeted</a>.</p><p>But 2012 marked a turning point. Since then, deforestation has been ticking upwards — 2016, for example, saw a <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/business-as-usual-a-resurgence-of-deforestation-in-the-brazilian-amazon" target="_blank">29 percent increase</a>.</p><p>The administration under Bolsonaro has used that fact to justify its policies in the Amazon, said Fearnside. "There were lots of things happening before Bolsonaro took office, but Bolsonaro has certainly increased that [deforestation] substantially," Fearnside said, pointing to the myriad ways his actions have played out.</p>
<p>The current Brazilian president has taken various measures to weaken the country's environment ministry — the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) — not least of all by tapping Ricardo Salles to lead it. Salles has called <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-change">climate change</a> an "innocuous" and "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/10/environmental-fines-are-ideological-says-brazil-minister-ricardo-salles" target="_blank">secondary</a>" issue, and has characterized the rate of illegal deforestation in the Amazon as near "<a href="https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/ambiente/2019/07/ricardo-salles-afirma-que-amazonia-ja-tem-desmatamento-relativo-zero.shtml" target="_blank">zero</a>." The director of Brazil's Space Research Institute was fired when the agency's own calculations — which illustrated a <a href="https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/scienceandhealth/2019/08/amazon-deforestation-in-july-increased-278-over-same-period-in-2018.shtml" target="_blank">278 percent increase in deforestation</a> last July — disproved Salles's claims.</p><p>The environment ministry has also stepped back its regulatory oversight. Though <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/environmental-conservation/article/brazils-new-president-and-ruralists-threaten-amazonias-environment-traditional-peoples-and-the-global-climate/F5C1E42BF9F6E6BDDB957B87601FC4F7/core-reader" target="_blank">95 percent of the deforestation</a> that occurred in the first three months of Bolsonaro's tenure was illegal, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/environmental-conservation/article/brazils-new-president-and-ruralists-threaten-amazonias-environment-traditional-peoples-and-the-global-climate/F5C1E42BF9F6E6BDDB957B87601FC4F7" target="_blank">no offenders</a> were punished. Indeed, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/28/world/americas/brazil-deforestation-amazon-bolsonaro.html" target="_blank">New York Times analysis</a> found that IBAMA's enforcement actions fell by 20 percent during the first half of 2019, as compared with the year prior. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/02/war-for-survival-brazils-amazon-tribes-despair-as-land-raids-surge-under-bolsonaro" target="_blank">Increased land</a> raids have impacted Indigenous populations in particular.</p><p>"President Bolsonaro of Brazil is encouraging the farm owners near our lands to clear the forest," <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/02/amazon-destruction-earth-brazilian-kayapo-people" target="_blank">wrote</a> Raoni Metuktire, chief of the Indigenous Brazilian Kayapo people. "And he is not doing anything to prevent them from invading our territory."</p>
<p>Some of Bolsonaro's actions have been met with opprobrium among certain sectors of Brazil's corporate class. Blairo Maggi, a billionaire soybean producer and former agriculture minister, has warned of international condemnation of the government's excursions into the Amazon. "The farmers, associations and industry will have to redo what has been lost," he told <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/world/americas/amazon-fires-bolsonaro-photos.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>. "We retreated 10 steps; we will have to work to get back to where we were."</p><p>Nevertheless, "there are large parts of the agribusiness that are on the other side," said Fearnside, pointing to the <a href="https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1415-43662020000100008&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en" target="_blank">thriving soybean industry</a> in Matopiba, a vast region spanning four Brazilian states. And where is this produce going? In 2017, <a href="https://www.globalcanopy.org/sites/default/files/documents/resources/Brief_DM_soy_final.pdf" target="_blank">92 percent</a> of the soybeans grown for the domestic market in Brazil were used to feed livestock to supply the world's demand for meat.</p><p>"The soy farmers there are all on the bandwagon of denying climate change, which is incredible given that climate change is likely to wipe out their soybean business there," Fearnside said.</p><p>With Bolsonaro only about one year and a half into his presidency, Fearnside is understandably concerned about his remaining tenure and describes the actions already undertaken as having opened up a Pandora's box. This includes the <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/latest/2020/01/wildfire-pollution-worsens-air-quality.aspx" target="_blank">human health impacts</a> from wildfire-created air pollution on both nearby and <a href="https://www.enn.com/articles/61766-brazilian-wildfire-pollution-worsens-air-quality-in-distant-cities" target="_blank">distant</a> urban centers — even intensifying <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50573623" target="_blank">glacier melt in the Andes</a>.</p><p>Other experts agree with Fearnside. According to Jos Barlow earlier this year, all indications suggested that 2020 would be "even worse." That prophecy is proving true, with deforestation <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/brazil-revises-deforestation-data-amazon-rainforest-loss-topped-10000-sq-km-in-2019/" target="_blank">rates currently on pace</a> to surpass last year's.</p>
<p><em>An earlier version of this article first appeared on </em><a href="https://truthout.org/articles/as-amazonian-wildfire-season-approaches-we-must-protect-the-vulnerable-forest/" target="_blank"><em>Truthout</em></a><em> and was produced in partnership with </em><a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/earth-food-life/" target="_blank"><em>Earth | Food | Life</em></a><em>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Chief Wilma Mankiller of the Cherokee Nation. Peter Turnley / Corbis / VCG / Getty Images
By Mark Trahant
Around the world, statues are coming down. Civil War generals. Mass murderers. And Christopher Columbus.
<p>In every case, far more stone monuments remain than are removed. A survey by the Southern Poverty Law Center found some 1,800 named memorials honoring Confederates. Add to that union generals. And military leaders from the American Revolution, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.</p><p>The generals are men of course. One study said there is a "staggering lack of public statues of women." A database in <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2016/03/i-sorted-uk-s-statues-gender-mere-27-cent-are-historical-non-royal-women" target="_blank">the New Statesman in the U.K</a>. and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/why-the-dearth-of-statues-honoring-women-in-statuary-hall-and-elsewhere/2011/04/11/AFx8lgjD_story.html" target="_blank">The Washington Post in the U.S</a>. found only 13% and 7% of statues in these countries depict historical women as opposed to historical men.</p><p>So what's next? How do we make the stone-tablet version of our history more representative of the actual history?</p><p>Wednesday, President Donald Trump nixed the idea of renaming military bases to make the country more reflective. </p><p>"These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom," Trump tweeted. "Therefore, my Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations. Our history as the Greatest Nation in the World will not be tampered with. Respect our Military."</p><p>A few statues of American Indians and Alaska Natives are spread out across the country. In fact: Some of the most representative locations are Congress and a few state legislatures. In the U.S. Capitol (standing alongside Andrew $%!* Jackson, colonizer Junipero Serra, would-be dictator Huey P. Long and missionary killer Marcus Whitman) there is <a href="https://www.aoc.gov/art/national-statuary-hall-collection/kamehameha-i" target="_blank">Kamehameha I,</a> <a href="https://www.aoc.gov/art-by-state/new-mexico" target="_blank">Po'Pay</a>, <a href="https://www.aoc.gov/art/national-statuary-hall-collection/will-rogers" target="_blank">Will Rogers,</a> <a href="https://www.aoc.gov/art/national-statuary-hall-collection/sakakawea" target="_blank">Sakakawea</a>, <a href="https://www.aoc.gov/art/national-statuary-hall-collection/sarah-winnemucca" target="_blank">Sarah Winnemucca</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_Bear" target="_blank">Standing Bear</a> <a href="https://www.aoc.gov/art/national-statuary-hall-collection/chief-washakie" target="_blank">Washakie</a> and <a href="https://www.aoc.gov/art/national-statuary-hall-collection/sequoyah" target="_blank">Sequoyah</a>. </p><p>So at least 4% scoundrel (certainly could have added more names to that side of the ledger) and 8% Indigenous.</p><p>Let's play "what if?" What if the rest of the country was like that? Who should we be honoring?</p><p>Imagine the 20th century and the Native leaders that could be honored on civic plazas, in front of city halls or on university campuses. (Yes, there are a few now, but we are talking numbers. At least 2% of all the statues. And even better is the 7% goal set by Congress' own example.)</p><p>The list could include:</p>
<p><strong>Vine Deloria Jr.</strong>, Standing Rock. It's hard to chronicle Vine Deloria in terms of his importance to the country and to Native America. He was a thinker. An architect of change. And, always, a writer. When it comes to honoring the past, Custer Died For Your Sins defines the possible. "Crazy Horse never drafted anyone to follow him. People recognized that what Crazy Horse did was for the best and was for the people," Deloria wrote. "When Crazy Horse was dying, having been bayoneted in the back at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, Crazy Horse said to his father, 'Tell the people it is no use to depend on me any more.'</p><p>"Until we can once again produce people like Crazy Horse, all the money and help in the world will not save us. It is up to us to write the final chapter of the American Indian upon this continent."</p><p>Deloria could have been writing about himself.</p><p><strong>Lucy Covington</strong>, Colville. She was a rancher-turned-politician who led the fight against the failed policy of termination in the 1960s. Termination was an idea to save money by ending the federal government's relationship with tribes. (She would sell a cow to pay her way to Washington.) One of the tools that she used in this fight: a tribal newspaper. She started Our Heritage, a newspaper with the mission of informing tribal members about the issues. She would lead a quiet campaign to quell what she called the "present fever and fervor for termination."</p>
<p><strong>Howard Rock</strong>, Inupiat. He was the legendary founder and editor of The Tundra Times. He once called his newspaper an "unselfish venture." The Tundra Times was essential reading for anyone and everyone interested in Alaska issues. Rock maintained a nonpartisan editorial position but endorsed individual candidates based on Native issues. He also wrote about Native culture, and the newspaper carefully followed and reported on the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act developments until the legislation became law in 1971.</p><p><strong>Annie Dodge Wauneka</strong>, Navajo. She became a nurse caring for patients during an influenza pandemic. She had the flu when she was young and gained enough antibodies to be immune. Later she traveled door-to-door on the Navajo Nation explaining tuberculosis. She was the first woman member of the Navajo Nation Council. And she was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom.</p>
<p><strong></strong><strong>Jackson Sundown</strong>, Nez Perce, born as Waaya-Tonah-Toesits-Kahn. He was a champion rodeo rider who became a folk hero because of his performance in the 1916 Pendleton Round-Up.</p><p><strong>Elizabeth Peratrovich</strong>, Tlingit. She championed equal rights for Alaska Natives. She is credited for persuading lawmakers to pass the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945, the first anti-discrimination law in the United States. Every year on Feb. 16, Alaska celebrates Elizabeth Peratrovich Day.</p>
<p><strong></strong><strong>Billy Frank Jr.</strong>, Nisqually. Frank was a tribal leader who fought for treaty rights, and that included defying the state of Washington on the river. He said: "I was not a policy guy. I was a getting-arrested guy." But those arrests led to something. He became friends with those who shackled him. He was appointed to offices by the same governors who once had him arrested. He convinced the entire establishment in the Pacific Northwest that he was, indeed, right—and that folks were better off joining him in his cause.</p><p>And because of Billy Frank Jr., the salmon survive today and have returned to streams where they were once extinct. And the tribal communities of the Northwest are stronger in so many ways.</p><p><strong>Wilma Mankiller</strong>, Cherokee. She was the first woman elected as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. In a speech at <a href="https://www.seattlepi.com/search/?action=search&channel=local%2Fopinion&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22Emory+University%22" target="_blank">Emory University</a>, she told a story about the United States sending a negotiation team to meet the Cherokees and draft a treaty. One of the initial questions was: "Where are your women?" Cherokee women often accompanied their leaders at important ceremonies and negotiations—and it was inconceivable that the representatives from the federal government would come alone. How can you negotiate anything with only half your people or half a way of thinking? Mankiller was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.</p>
<p><strong>Helen Peterson</strong>, Cheyenne and Lakota. She was the long-serving executive director of the National Congress of American Indians during much of the termination era. But that was her second career. Before that, she was an expert in Latin America, promoting human rights for farm workers and other Latin Americans. In 1949 she represented the United States at an international conference in Peru. She was a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, who encouraged her to move to Washington, D.C. "The Indians are their own best spokesmen, their own best diplomats; but they can exercise these roles effectively only in proportion to their opportunities to exchange information and to use their combined strength and concerted voice," she wrote in an article calling for more participation by Native people in elections. Her son, Max Peterson, put Helen Peterson's career in perspective when she died. "During those times, there were no women in power, really," he said in the Denver Post. "Her accomplishments don't sound like much now because a lot of women are doing the same things, but back then, doing those things were a big deal. She went to Washington as a lobbyist. That was an exclusively male area, and she managed to do a great job on behalf of Indian legislation and Indian rights."</p><p><strong>Forrest Gerard</strong>, Blackfeet. Gerard was one of the first American Indians to work on Capitol Hill and helped guide the Senate past the policy of termination into tribal self-determination. He worked for U.S. Sen. Henry Jackson and the Interior Committee where the "golden era" of Indian policy bills rolled off a legislative assembly line, the Indian Finance Act, the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, and the Indian Health Care Improvement Act.</p><p>This list, of course, is not the end—only the beginning. Because in a country of this size and diversity it makes little sense to cling to statues that honor only a few, including historical figures unworthy of such acclaim. There remains a richer story that has yet to be told, chapter by chapter, stone by stone, and generation by generation.</p>
<p class=""><em><a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/authors/mark-trahant/" target="_blank">Mark Trahant</a> is editor of Indian Country Today and a Professor of Journalism at the University of North Dakota. He is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and has written about American Indian and Alaska Native issues for more than three decades. Trahant is a YES! contributing editor.</em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from </em><em><a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2020/06/11/columbus-statue-indigenous-history/" target="_blank">YES! Magazine</a>.</em><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/r/entryeditor/2646173192#/" target="_self"></a></p>From Your Site Articles
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The Sumas Pump Station on June 13, 2020, prior to clean-up. Transmountain
Canada's Trans Mountain pipeline spilled as many as 190,000 liters (approximately 50,193 gallons) of crude oil in Abbotsford, British Columbia (BC) Saturday, reinforcing concerns about the safety of the pipeline's planned expansion.
<p>Chief Dalton Silver of the Sumas First Nation told <a href="https://bc.ctvnews.ca/mobile/trans-mountain-oil-spill-released-roughly-150-000-litres-of-oil-company-says-1.4983835" target="_blank">CTV News</a> that the spill occurred on his reserve on fields over an aquifer that supplies his nation with <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/drinking-water" target="_self">drinking water</a>. It marks the fourth time in 15 years that the pipeline has spilled on his community's land.</p><p>"We cannot continue to have our land desecrated by <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oil-spill" target="_self">oil spills</a>," he said in a <a href="https://www.ubcic.bc.ca/stop_tmx_devastating_trans_mountain_pipeline_spill_reinforces_urgency_to_halt_further_expansion" target="_blank">statement</a> issued by the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) Sunday.</p>
<div id="82ac1" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ac200d03077ca023966ba862e3cfdef5"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1272235491601989632" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Stop TMX: Devastating Trans Mountain Pipeline Spill Reinforces Urgency to Halt Further Expansion: “Trans Mountain p… https://t.co/ONHM3G30Ub</div> — UBCIC (@UBCIC)<a href="https://twitter.com/UBCIC/statuses/1272235491601989632">1592159552.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>The spill occurred early Saturday morning at the pipeline's Sumas Pump Station, Trans Mountain told <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/trans-mountain-pipeline-spill-abbotsford-150000-190000-litres-1.5611973" target="_blank">CBC News</a>. The company said no construction work related to the pipeline's expansion was being done at the time of the spill.</p><p>Instead, the spill appeared to have been connected to a fitting on a smaller piece of pipe attached to the main line, the company said in a <a href="https://www.transmountain.com/news/2020/statement-from-trans-mountain" target="_blank">statement</a>.</p><p>"The cause of the incident is under investigation and that will continue," company spokesperson Ali Hounsell told CTV News. "At this time, it's believed to be a failure of a small-diametre, one-inch piece of pipe."</p><p>The company estimated that between 940 to 1,195 barrels (or 150,000 to 190,000 liters) of oil was released and fully contained.</p>
<div id="3cd98" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="120d2d202c4507d1e916ba246dac3556"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1272267142516191234" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Update from Trans Mountain: Company estimates btwn 940 and 1195 barrels of oil was lost in spill at Sumas Pumping S… https://t.co/MU30LHnAEd</div> — Ben Miljure (@Ben Miljure)<a href="https://twitter.com/CTVNewsBen/statuses/1272267142516191234">1592167099.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>"Clean-up is well underway with trucks and crews working around the clock," the company said in a Sunday afternoon statement. "The free-standing oil has been recovered and is being transported to an approved facility for disposal. The site has permanent groundwater monitoring in place and air monitoring continues. Monitoring has not identified any risk to the public or community."</p><p>The pipeline was initially shut off in response to the spill, but restarted around 2 p.m. local time Sunday.</p><p>The company said it was working with local authorities and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/indigenous" target="_self">Indigenous</a> communities on the clean-up, but Silver told <a href="https://www.citynews1130.com/2020/06/14/trans-mountain-restart-surprises-sumas-chief/" target="_blank">CityNews 1130</a> he had not received timely, accurate updates about the amount spilled or the company's restarting plans.</p><p>"That they're up and running Sunday afternoon, my sister just read that to me off her phone. That was the first I heard of it, so there you go with the openness and transparency," Silver said. "I would really rather hear it from those at the incident command post."</p>
<p>Many Indigenous communities, environmental groups and the BC government oppose the expansion of the pipeline, which would <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trans-mountain-pipeline-expansion-2645043384.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" target="_self">triple</a> the oil it carries from Alberta's tar sands to the Pacific coast. They are <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trans-mountain-pipeline-kinder-morgan-2570751996.html" target="_self">concerned</a> about its impact on the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a>, Indigenous sovereignty, local water supplies and endangered orcas that would be harmed by increased tanker traffic.</p><p>Oil spills have also remained a persistent worry for pipeline opponents.</p><p>"We conducted our own assessment of Trans Mountain using leading science and Tsleil-Waututh's Indigenous law that concluded that oil spills are inevitable, can't be fully cleaned up, and have devastating effects," Chief Leah George-Wilson of Tsleil-Waututh Nation said in the UBCIC statement. "This most recent spill is another reminder that the risk is too great to accept. The Trans Mountain pipeline has already spilled more than 80 times since it began operating. This is why we continue to fight the Trans Mountain Expansion in the courts."</p>
<p>The BC Ministry of Environment told CBC News that Saturday's spill was "deeply concerning."</p><p>"Our government maintains that the TMX project poses unacceptable risks to our environment, our coast and our economy," the ministry in a statement.</p><p>Meanwhile, BC Indigenous communities pledged continuing opposition.</p><p>"The price of oil has plummeted due to decreased demand caused by COVID-19, and yet another pipeline spill is like a nail in the coffin for investors," UBCIC Vice President Chief Don Tom said in a statement. "The ongoing demonstrations across Turtle Island right now show that people are ready to stand up and defend their beliefs including upholding Indigenous Title and Rights. I have no doubt this will extend to the widespread opposition that already exists to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion."</p>
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BHP Billiton's iron ore plant with excavators and stockpiles of iron ore in Western Australia. John W Banagan / Stone / Getty Images
Anglo-Australian mining company BHP said it would pause plans to destroy 40 Aboriginal heritage sites as part of its expansion of an iron ore mine in Western Australia (WA).
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<p>The plans were first revealed by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/11/bhp-to-destroy-at-least-40-aboriginal-sites-up-to-15000-years-old-to-expand-pilbara-mine" target="_blank">The Guardian Australia Wednesday</a> and come on the heels of the controversial <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/rio-tinto-ancient-aboriginal-site-2646131338.html" target="_self">destruction</a> by rival mining company Rio Tinto of 46,000-year-old Aboriginal rock shelters at Juukan Gorge.</p><p>The traditional owners of the 40 sites are the Banjima people, who wrote in December that they would "suffer spiritual and physical harm if they are destroyed," The Guardian reported.</p>
<p>"[We are] worried about the cumulative impact of so many sites being the subject of a single notice for destruction and that not one of the sites is deemed worthy of protection in situ by BHP," the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/indigenous" target="_self">Indigenous</a> title holders wrote.</p><p>BHP won approval to destroy the sites from WA Aboriginal Affairs Minister Ben Wyatt on May 29, days after the blasting of the Juukan Gorge sites, Australia's <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-11/bhp-halts-aboriginal-site-destruction-after-rio-tinto-protests/12345566" target="_blank">ABC News reported</a>.</p>
<p>At least 40, and as many as 86 sites, were identified in BHP's application to expand its $4.5 billion South Flank iron ore mine in Pilbara, WA, according to The Guardian.</p><p>An archeological survey conducted by the company revealed rock shelters between 10,000 and 15,000 years old and evidence of human presence in the area dating back approximately 40,000 years. The documents revealed by The Guardian also show the company was aware of Aboriginal opposition to the sites' destruction.</p><p>The company wrote it had "taken into account the views and recommendations provided by the Banjima representatives during the consultation and inspection," but it was "not reasonably practicable for BHP to avoid the eighty-six (86) potential archaeological sites."</p>
<p>While the Banjima people wanted the sites preserved, section 18 of the Western Australian Aboriginal Heritage Act prevented them from formally registering their opposition because they had already signed an agreement with BHP to support the mine in exchange for financial and other benefits.</p><p>After the news broke, BHP first said Wednesday it had a good working relationship with the Banjima, but made no mention of changing its plans, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/bhp-gets-approval-to-destroy-40-aboriginal-heritage-sites-just-days-after-rio-tinto-controversy-20200611-p551nl.html" target="_blank">The Sydney Morning Herald reported</a>. Then, on Thursday, it said it would pause the destruction of the sites.</p><p>"We will not disturb the sites identified without further extensive consultation with the Banjima people," BHP said in a statement reported by ABC News. "That consultation will be based on our commitment to understanding the cultural significance of the region and on the deep respect we have for the Banjima people and their heritage. This will include further scientific study and discussion on mitigation and preservation."</p>
<p>In response, the Banjima Native Title Aboriginal Corporation published a statement saying they "do not support the destruction of sites of cultural significance," as ABC News reported.</p><p>"We stand with all Aboriginal traditional owners and particularly our Pilbara brothers and sisters, the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura, at this time in our abhorrence at the destruction of the Juukan rock shelters, and those suffering the threat of or having recently experienced similar site destruction," the statement said.</p>
<p>The actual destruction by Rio Tinto and the destruction threatened by BHP have focused attention on the need to reform the Western Australian Aboriginal Heritage Act to give Aboriginal groups more control over their heritage sites.</p><p>WA Senator Pat Dodson told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/11/bhp-agrees-not-damage-40-aboriginal-heritage-sites-without-consulting-traditional-owners-pilbara" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> Thursday that there should be a freeze on section 18 approvals until the law was updated.</p><p>"I think this should be an absolute moratorium," Dodson said.</p>
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Honduran Lenca women take part in a protest demanding justice in the murder of Honduran activist Berta Caceres on the second anniversary of her death on March 2, 2018 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. ORLANDO SIERRA / AFP / Getty Images
By Rachel Ramirez
Adán Vez Lira, a prominent defender of an ecological reserve in Mexico, was shot while riding his motorcycle in April. Four years earlier, the renowned activist Berta Cáceres was shot dead in her home in Honduras by assailants taking direction from executives responsible for a dam she had opposed. Four years before that, Cambodian forest and land activist Chut Wutty was killed during a brawl with the country's military police while investigating illegal logging.
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<p>These are some of the most prominent examples of violence faced by environmental activists in recent years — but, according to a new report, they are not unusual. As police crack down on protests demanding justice and equity in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in the U.S., it's clear that activism in general comes at a heavy price. Environmental activists specifically — particularly indigenous activists and activists of color — have for years faced high rates of criminalization, physical violence, and even murder for their efforts to protect the planet, according to a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378020301424?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">comprehensive analysis</a> by researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, which was released last Tuesday.</p><p>The researchers analyzed nearly 2,800 social conflicts related to the environment using the <a href="https://ejatlas.org/" target="_blank">Environmental Justice Atlas</a> (EJAtlas) database, which they created in 2011 to monitor environmental conflicts around the world. The study, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, found that 20 percent of environmental defenders faced criminal charges or were imprisoned, 18 percent were victims of physical violence, and 13 percent were killed between 2011 and 2019. The likelihood of these consequences increased significantly for indigenous environmental defenders: 27 percent faced criminalization, 25 percent were victims of physical violence, and 19 percent were murdered.</p>
<p>"We can think of this as compounded injustice, highlighting the extreme risks vulnerable communities opposing social and environmental violence against them face when they stand up for their rights," one of the study's researchers, Leah Temper, told Grist.</p><p>Environmental defenders, as the researchers defined them, are individuals or collectives that mobilize and protest against unsustainable or harmful uses of the environment. Examples of the sort of conflict covered by the study are the construction of <a href="https://grist.org/justice/tracing-the-path-of-dominion-energys-atlantic-coast-natural-gas-pipeline/" target="_blank">pipelines on tribal lands</a>, illegal mining in the <a href="https://grist.org/justice/deforestation-oil-spills-and-coronavirus-crises-converge-in-the-amazon/" target="_blank">Amazon rainforest</a>, <a href="https://grist.org/article/at-the-edge-of-the-arctic-circle-oil-drilling-threatens-the-indigenous-gwichin/" target="_blank">oil extraction in the Arctic</a>, and the <a href="https://grist.org/justice/as-coronavirus-ravages-louisiana-cancer-alley-residents-havent-given-up-the-fight-against-polluters/" target="_blank">construction of fossil fuel refineries</a>.</p><p>The analysis draws on last year's report from the human rights and environmental watchdog organization Global Witness, which found that <a href="https://grist.org/article/the-deadliest-environmental-causes-in-2018-protesting-mining-agribusiness-dams/" target="_blank">at least 164 environmental activists were killed</a> in 2018 alone. The Philippines was named the deadliest country in the world for environmental defenders, who have been <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/08/03/747833494/the-dangers-of-environmental-activism-in-the-philippines" target="_blank">called</a> terrorists by President Rodrigo Duterte.</p>
<p>In fact, not long after these findings, 37-year-old Brandon Lee, an American environmental activist who was in the Philippines on a volunteer mission, was shot four times in Ifugao province by unknown assailants after his group, the Ifugao Peasant Movement — a farmers group opposing a hydropower project — had been labeled an "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/08/philippines-us-rights-volunteer-branded-enemy-of-state-shot-outside-home" target="_blank">enemy of the state</a>" across social media by propagandists. As of April, Lee was <a href="https://www.kqed.org/news/11813954/sf-activist-shot-in-the-philippines-recovering-in-hometown-but-cant-find-affordable-housing" target="_blank">recovering</a> in his hometown of San Francisco, but he remains paralyzed from the chest down.</p><p>The lead author of last week's study, Arnim Scheidel, said he hopes that the analysis gives lawmakers and the public a better understanding of the causes of the violence that protesters still face around the world.</p><p>"Globally, indigenous peoples suffer significantly higher rates of violence in environmental conflicts," Scheidel said. "Being aware of these connections may help to connect struggles against various forms of racism worldwide. Protest is key for the success of such struggles, particularly when using diverse channels and building on broad alliances."</p>
<p class=""><em>This story originally appeared in</em> <em><a href="https://grist.org/" target="_blank">Grist</a> </em><em>and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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