Posting Your Hike on Instagram? Now You Can Tag Your Location’s Indigenous Name
24 May 2018
Adventure
"These are lands that have been stewarded by indigenous people for thousands of years, and now it's a responsibility of everyone to take that into consideration." @nativesoutdoors / Instagram
By Isabelle Morrison
Public spaces are for everyone, but how we perceive them and interact with them is contextual. Some activists are making their statements on the public canvas all around the world. And it's catching on.
<p>Len Necefer fell in love with mountain climbing after moving to Colorado, but he noticed that information about the national parks he visited did not include indigenous history, despite Native people being the first occupants of those areas. </p><p>Soon, he discovered a way to reclaim indigenous lands.</p><p>In 2017, Necefer, a member of the Navajo Nation, began posting photos of Native people participating in outdoor recreation to his Instagram account, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/nativesoutdoors/" target="_blank" title="">@NativesOutdoors</a>. One day, he posted a photo of a woman standing on the summit of Longs Peak, with the geotag "Neníisótoyóú'u," the mountain's Arapaho name.</p><div id="7f9ba" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="X8VB071576662416"><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-version="4" style=" background:#FFF; border:0;
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<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BeR7Y8tl2s0/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif;
font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;
word-wrap:break-word;" target="_top">NativesOutdoors on Instagram: “Big ego in the mountains means big problems in the mountains. Bailing off a mountain is still a worthwhile lesson & time well spent. This…”</a></p>
</div></blockquote></div><p>Since then, through a combination of scholarly research and gathering traditional indigenous knowledge, Necefer has created indigenous place-name geotags for more than 40 mountains, most in Colorado.</p><p>"For a lot of folks, even myself, the education we receive about indigenous history in this country is pretty inadequate," Necefer said. "It does not talk about the immense suffering and displacement that occurred, especially on public lands. People are curious and want to know, and I think this is one way that can happen.</p><p>"These are lands that have been stewarded by indigenous people for thousands of years, and now it's a responsibility of everyone to take that into consideration."</p><div id="1d67d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="X9NSAS1576662417"><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-version="4" style=" background:#FFF; border:0;
border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15);
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<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BYBxxn5l2qb/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif;
font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;
word-wrap:break-word;" target="_top">NativesOutdoors on Instagram: “These mountains, have, and continue to be, stewarded by indigenous people. Our public lands are also the repositories of thousands of years…”</a></p>
</div></blockquote></div><p> <em>Reposted with permission from our media associate </em><em><a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/affordable-housing/posting-your-hike-on-instagram-now-you-can-tag-your-locations-indigenous-name-20180523" target="_blank">YES! Magazine</a>.</em></p>
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Enbridge Dealt New Setback After Judge Pushes Back Decision on Line 3 Pipeline
28 December 2017
Popular
Enbridge's Line 3 pipeline. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau approved the Canadian portion of the project not long after Donald Trump took the White House. Marc Chalifoux / Epic Photography for the Government of Alberta / Flickr
Environmentalists are cheering after an administrative law judge delayed approval of Enbridge Energy's controversial Line 3 replacement pipeline in northern Minnesota.
The decision from Judge Ann O'Reilly comes after state regulators deemed the environmental impact statement for the proposed multibillion-dollar project as “ inadequate" and directed revisions on the document.
<p style="">
<a href="https://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/12/27/ruling-delays-decision-on-line-3-pipeline-project" target="_blank">Minnesota Public Radio</a> reported that O'Reilly is weighing whether a new Line 3 is needed in the state, and if so, what the pipeline route should be.
</p><p style="">
<span></span>Minnesotans are best served, the judge said, "by investing a few extra weeks now to ensure that the law is followed and a comprehensive review of the project is conducted before a final decision is rendered in this important case."
</p><p style="">
<span></span>Enbridge wants to replace its aging Line 3 pipeline with a new pipeline along a different route across northern Minnesota. The Canadian energy company <a href="https://www.enbridge.com/Line3ReplacementProgram.aspx" target="_blank">said</a> the new Line 3 will "provide much needed incremental capacity to support Canadian crude oil production growth, and U.S. and Canadian refinery demand." If approved, the $7.5 billion Line 3 would be the largest project in Enbridge's history, which would carry nearly <a href="http://www.pinejournal.com/news/4269303-enbridge-line-3-review-released-public-comment" target="_blank">32 million gallons</a> of oil every day.
</p><p style="">
Though lesser known, Line 3 is facing a growing
<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/dakota-access-pipeline" target="_blank">Dakota Access</a>-like <a href="https://ecowatchroar-secure.rebelmouse.com/core/dashboard/editor/protests%20against%20the%20lines%20have%20been%20on%20the%20rise" target="_self">opposition</a>, with protests against the project on the rise. Line 3 critics, including environmentalists and several Native American tribes, worry that the major <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/tar-sands">tar sands</a> project could cause a devastating spill across important waterways, wetlands and sacred lands, and worsen <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/">climate change</a>.
</p><p style="">
<a href="http://www.honorearth.org/" target="_blank">Honor the Earth</a>, a Native-led organization protesting the project, <a href="http://www.honorearth.org/line_3_factsheet" target="_blank">said</a>: "The proposed new route endangers the Great Lakes, home to one fifth of the world's fresh water, and some of the most delicate soils, aquifers and pristine lakes in northern Minnesota, It also threatens critical resources on Ojibwe treaty lands, where tribal members retain the rights to hunt, fish, gather, hold ceremony, and travel."
</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzAxNTM2MC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwMzcyNDgxNX0.FQmFEMaRs7V6JYke1Jcl4fg0bCZh5kLYXJ8uF1nW_PA/img.png?width=980" id="f58ec" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5a1ed93c2736cc39ddc8a87e84d311bc" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Honor the Earth</small>
</p><p style="">
Enbridge was disappointed by the judge's ruling. Spokesperson Shannon Gustafson said the revisions to the environmental impact statement were "very simple follow ups" but added that the "cumbersome nature of the process could take until the second quarter of 2018 to finalize."
</p><p style="">
According to Minnesota Public Radio, state regulators had wanted a final decision on Line 3 by April 2018, but O'Reilly's ruling could push that decision to June 2018 or even later.
</p><p style="">
"It's very disappointing to see yet another in an endless string of delays imposed on a project that will create jobs, protect the environment and provide access to the fuel that drives our economy and society," Nancy Norr, a spokesperson for Jobs for Minnesotans, which supports the pipeline, told Minnesota Public Radio.
</p><p style="">
But Margaret Levin, state director for the
<a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/minnesota" target="_blank">Sierra Club North Star Chapter</a>, praised the decision, and said the judge "should take the time necessary to make a thorough and well-informed decision on Line 3."
</p><p style="">
"It is the responsibility of our government to adequately understand and weigh the environmental and cultural impacts of a project like this when making a decision," Levin said.
</p><p style="">
Check out this Honor the Earth video below to learn about the growing movement against Line 3:
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MUST-SEE VIDEO: 5 Threats Today to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante After Trump's Decision
14 December 2017
Popular
While we fight to defeat President Trump's attacks on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, these are some of the real, on-the-ground threats we must keep at bay.
Following the lead of Native American tribes, The Wilderness Society and other groups have filed lawsuits against President Trump for violating the Antiquities Act when he essentially eliminated Bears Ears and greatly reduced Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.
<p style="">An intense and <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/12/4/16733798/utah-national-monument-trump-bears-ears-staircase-escalante" target="_blank">precedent-setting</a> legal battle is ahead, and it could drag on for a while. With the support of our members and other <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/public-lands">public lands</a>-loving Americans, we expect to win. </p><p style="">But while we battle it out in court, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante will be opened to the scourges of development and visitor misbehavior, among other things. Moving beyond the rhetoric and political gestures, here are a few of the actual, on-the-ground threats to these public lands, beginning with the most imminent.</p><p style=""><strong>1. More roads and reckless motorized use </strong></p><p>The land cut out of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments will remain public, but it will not enjoy as high a level of protection as before Trump's decision. One of the most immediate concerns in these areas is re-opened roads and reckless all-terrain vehicle (ATV) use. Motorized vehicles will now be allowed on <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/what-happens-now-that-trump-has-said-hell-scale-back-bears-ears-and-grand-staircase-escalante" target="_blank">any road that existed prior to the establishment</a> of the monuments. </p><p style="">That may end up being <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2017/11/20/what-does-kane-county-want-in-a-redrawn-grand-straircase-escalante-monument/" target="_blank">hundreds of roads</a>, thanks to an oft-exploited <a href="http://www.hcn.org/issues/49.14/latest-utah-road-claims-on-public-lands" target="_blank">law passed in 1866</a>. Utah county governments have used the statute to claim that derelict or disused old settler trails count as current roads. This has included more than <a href="https://suwa.org/issues/phantom-roads-r-s-2477/" target="_blank">1,400 miles of routes claimed within Bears Ears</a> and 2,000 miles of routes within Grand Staircase-Escalante. So we could see huge swaths of wildlands suddenly overrun by vehicles now that the monument boundaries have been drastically contracted, isolating the still-protected sites as small, disconnected islands amid oceans of disruptive traffic.</p><p style=""><strong>2. Increased destructive "treatments" that tear up the land </strong></p><p style="">The Trump administration's new declarations specify they "may allow for active, science-based vegetation treatment" in both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. This will likely lead to a range of destructive activities meant to replace native plants with perennial grass cover. One of the most viscerally upsetting is so-called "chaining," in which bulldozers drag enormous chains across the desert to uproot trees.</p><p style="">Research suggests this practice—which is likely to be among the first undertaken in the newly un-protected landscape—can <a href="http://www.greatoldbroads.org/wp-content/uploads/formidable/44/Redmond-et-al.-2013-Effects-of-chaining-in-GSENM-less-pinyon.pdf" target="_blank">suppress tree growth in the area</a> for decades after the fact, especially impacting the piñon pine. <a href="http://www.greatoldbroads.org/wp-content/uploads/formidable/44/Redmond-et-al.-2013-Effects-of-chaining-in-GSENM-less-pinyon.pdf" target="_blank">Chaining also reduces biocrust</a>, a thin layer of organisms on the soil surface that help maintain the desert ecosystem, and leads to <a href="http://www.greatoldbroads.org/wp-content/uploads/formidable/44/Redmond-et-al.-2013-Effects-of-chaining-in-GSENM-less-pinyon.pdf" target="_blank">increased wind and water erosion</a>. </p><p style=""><strong>3. Damage to Native American cultural sites </strong></p><p style="">With Trump's decision, priceless archaeological and cultural sites in <a href="http://wilderness.org/blog/looters-vandals-threaten-some-americas-great-archaeological-sites-bears-ears" target="_blank">Bears Ears will be vulnerable to looting and vandalism</a>, as they were for years prior to monument designation. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/08/climate/bears-ears-monument-trump.html" target="_blank">Rock art, cliff dwellings and other cultural sites now fall</a> outside the monument boundaries, meaning less oversight for a piece of public land already extremely short on staff. A similar situation faces Grand Staircase-Escalante.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNjg5NjM2NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNDk5MDc2N30.g_ew5LPX4UDHjWj9nMy6QLdqyO-6yMjQW4_4sNBOV70/img.jpg?width=980" id="28911" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="eb272a57ded6757986dbf47624fa63d7" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Bob Wick (BLM) / Flickr</small></p><p style="">The proclamation for Bears Ears also called for changes in the commission overseeing the monument that <a href="https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900005561/tribes-monument-co-management-proposal-is-slap-in-the-face.html" target="_blank">tribes say excludes key voices while elevating those hand-picked by anti-public lands interests</a>. An attorney with the Native American Rights Fund characterizes a bill that more or less codifies Trump's decision as an attempt "to dilute and silence the tribal voice." It is unclear what exactly this will mean for the monument, but it's safe to say it won't involve more buffers and protection for critical tribal sites.<br></p><p style=""><strong>4. Fossils exposed to vandalism (and important research halted)</strong></p><p style="">There are estimated to be more than 3,000 "scientifically important" fossil sites in the full Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and Trump's cuts would <a href="http://vertpaleo.org/Society-News/SVP-Paleo-News/Society-News,-Press-Releases/Grand-Staircase-Escalante-and-Bears-Ears-National.aspx" target="_blank">leave out more than 400 of them</a>, including many potential <a href="https://medium.com/westwise/meet-the-dinosaurs-of-grand-staircase-escalante-a-national-monument-president-trump-is-threatening-852822ac8ae6" target="_blank">dinosaur</a> finds and a large section of <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=51948" target="_blank">Triassic petrified forest mentioned in President Bill Clinton's original proclamation</a> establishing the monument. Bears Ears has not been studied as extensively by paleontologists, but is considered ripe with potential; Trump's virtual elimination of that monument will strip protected status from a <a href="http://vertpaleo.org/Society-News/SVP-Paleo-News/Society-News,-Press-Releases/Grand-Staircase-Escalante-and-Bears-Ears-National.aspx" target="_blank">major Triassic bone bed, among other sites</a>. </p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNjg5NjQwMy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxODM3MTI4Mn0.5H0-pSUw6qMV0BooUYJoIhEzzk3bnD_IUmZL1s-w3is/img.jpg?width=980" id="3a368" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d9adc7fa633c376b61069c25bd1f5851" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">A dinosaur skeleton unearthed at Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, now exhibited at the Natural History Museum of Utah.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Charles (Chuck) Peterson / Flickr</small></p><p style="">This is why, in addition to Native American groups and The Wilderness Society, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology is among those groups suing Trump over his monument cuts. Paleontologists worry that with former monument-protected land <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/qa-why-fossil-scientists-are-suing-trump-over-monuments-downsizing" target="_blank">reverting to a less protective level of "multiple use"</a> management, <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2017/12/10/scientists-decry-trumps-move-to-strip-fossil-treasures-from-utahs-grand-staircase-monument/" target="_blank">mining and other activities will come to take precedence</a> over fossils. In the meantime, fossils will be exposed to vandalism, which is <a href="http://wilderness.org/blog/dinosaur-national-monument-vandalized-public-lands-still-risk" target="_blank">already a huge problem at some national monuments</a> and would be even more so for tracts of land that lack that level of staff and resources.<br></p><p>Cuts will also <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-trump-national-monuments-20171026-htmlstory.html" target="_blank">interfere with research</a> and perhaps even halt some projects entirely (a great deal of funding that led to major fossil finds in Grand Staircase-Escalante <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/qa-why-fossil-scientists-are-suing-trump-over-monuments-downsizing" target="_blank">came through the monument</a>, including the resources to airlift a rare, <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2017/10/15/nearly-complete-tyrannosaur-fossil-airlifted-from-utahs-grand-staircase/#gallery-carousel-8175144" target="_blank">nearly complete tyrannosaur skeleton</a> out of a now de-designated monument area earlier this year). </p><p style=""><strong>5. Uranium and coal mining in formerly protected lands </strong></p><p style="">As has been extensively reported, Trump's monument attacks are likely motivated by a push to drill and mine in and around Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. In the case of Bears Ears, a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/uranium-firm-urged-trump-officials-to-shrink-bears-ears-national-monument/2017/12/08/2eea39b6-dc31-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html?utm_term=.a7e66f61a35f" target="_blank">uranium company lobbied the Trump administration</a> to exclude potentially ore-rich areas from the new monument boundaries, as becomes glaringly obvious with a glance at the map:</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNjg5NjUzMi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NDcwNDY0NX0.q8HpvM-5sJgmq5rwxLbw3js65JNgZgwS8Sh7Xjv20gM/img.jpg?width=980" id="949e9" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="19b2e8fca00851800ed550a11c6880d1" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
</p><p>The price of uranium is currently too low to expedite mining on the land, but that is not a permanent state. Similarly, while the area formerly protected as Bears Ears is not considered a high-potential spot for oil and gas drilling at the moment, that could easily change with <a href="http://www.hcn.org/articles/monuments-what-national-monument-protections-do" target="_blank">market fluctuations and the development of new technologies</a>. </p><p style="">Meanwhile, Trump's contracted borders for Grand Staircase-Escalante carefully tiptoe around <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coal">coal</a> deposits (see below), opening the door for coal mining operations on former monument lands. That could mean thousands of acres dug up and stripped, waterways polluted with soil and contaminants and <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildlife">wildlife</a> driven away by dust and noise pollution. </p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNjg5NjUzMC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwODk1MTk2Mn0.r3vNHvyM9VjrnPbNnucq1nwQixz-b5kE6ywePOmzoWc/img.jpg?width=980" id="50ac9" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="92cf1d573364417d099d347b3415f928" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
</p>
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How Trump’s Dismemberment of Bears Ears Was Driven by Racism, Grave Robbery and Mormon Beliefs
06 December 2017
Popular
Bears Ears National Monument Valley of the Gods. Bob Wick / BLM
By John Dougherty
President Trump's visit to Salt Lake City Monday to sign two orders slashing the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments also included a meeting with Mormon religious leaders who shared "Church doctrine" with the president before he signed the controversial proclamations.
Trump's unprecedented, two-million-acre cut in public land protection was spurred by Mormon political leaders, including Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, and supported by the entire Utah congressional delegation, Utah governor and Utah legislature.
<p style="">It remains unknown what was discussed when Trump met with the top leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the closed meeting.</p><p>But if Trump had also chosen to sit down with experts such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_W._Murphy_(anthropologist)" target="_blank">Thomas Murphy</a> and <a href="https://shashjaa.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Angelo Baca</a>, two scholars of American Indian descent who were raised Mormon, he surely would have heard a different perspective on Mormon doctrine from the one offered by church leaders.</p><p style="">Trump would have heard how latent racism, a history of grave robbery beginning with LDS founder Joseph Smith, disrespect of tribal sovereignty and a belief in divine right to the land are at the heart Utah's relentless drive to seize control of federal <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/public-lands">public lands</a>, particularly Bears Ears.</p><p style="">Murphy and Baca co-authored a 2016 academic paper, "<a href="https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/opth.2016.2.issue-1/opth-2016-0054/opth-2016-0054.pdf" target="_blank">Rejecting Racism in Any Form: Latter-day Saint Rhetoric, Religion and Repatriation</a>," on the history of Mormon theology and its impact on indigenous people.</p><p style="">The paper provides an indigenous interpretation of Mormon history and details how religious scripture has been used to marginalize American Indians, justify the looting of artifacts, and reject tribal sovereignty and rights to petition the federal government to create <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/national-monuments">national monuments</a> such as Bears Ears.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNjUyNzUxNC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMTQ0OTA2NX0.Bc_QW57THF9PJTYZUc-aMOpTr-SvTXqxWe4rq-1UFB4/img.jpg?width=980" id="24c63" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="bf239a271ed56830356d4160a8712f02" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Bob Wick / BLM</small></p><p style="">The paper acknowledges that the LDS Church has <a href="https://www.lds.org/church/news/church-statement-against-racism-encourages-tolerance-and-love-following-violence-in-virginia?lang=eng" target="_blank">issued statements</a> condemning all forms of racism. But the scholars argue that until the church takes tangible steps to compensate for the racist tenets it held to in the past—steps like returning indigenous artifacts and body parts taken from grave sites—its rejection of racism will continue to ring hollow.</p><p>"A fundamental problem for the Latter-day Saint aspiration to move beyond all forms of racism is that the foundation events of this new world faith began with looting indigenous artifacts and graves made possible through the theft of indigenous lands," they wrote in the paper.</p><p>"Racism, as experienced by indigenous peoples under colonialism, has often included differential standards in the treatment of the dead and the artifacts they left behind as well as religious justifications for the usurpation of lands," the paper continues. "Mormon scriptures produced in part through the desecration of graves continue to denigrate American Indians and Africans cursed by God with dark skin, while paradoxically claiming that God is 'no respecter of persons.'</p><p>"For nearly two centuries these sacred texts have been central to the acquisition of wealth and power in the LDS Church, much of it gained at the expense of indigenous peoples. If racism is truly to be rejected in all of its forms then the LDS Church needs to consider repatriation of indigenous body parts, burial goods, sacred artifacts and stolen lands as an active way to change the current structures of domination and realize its egalitarian aspirations."</p><p style="">The paper chronicles the early history of Mormon founder Joseph Smith in the "money-digging business" in and near Palmyra, New York, in the early 19th century. The business included looking for artifacts in indigenous burials. In 1823 an angel purportedly guided Smith to gold plates, which have never been presented, buried in a hillside near Palmyra.</p><p style="">The gold plates, according to Mormon doctrine, were inscribed with the history of the former inhabitants of North America written in an unknown language described as "reformed Egyptian." The purported translation, said by Smith to have been conducted with a "seer stone"—rocks considered sacred gifts from God—placed in the bottom of a hat, became the Book of Mormon.</p><p>Smith would later similarly translate Egyptian papyri that LDS members in Kirkland, Ohio, purchased in 1835 from a businessman who was touring the country displaying mummies and other artifacts. The translation, completed in 1842, became the canonical Mormon text, the Book of Abraham, <a href="https://www.lds.org/topics/translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham?lang=eng" target="_blank">according to the LDS church</a>.</p><p>"The Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham both owe their origins to the practice of grave-robbery, an offense not just today but also at the time of their production," stated Murphy's and Baca's paper.</p><p style="">Murphy is chairman of the anthropology department at Edmonds (Washington) Community College and gained national prominence in 2002 when he published a <a href="http://www.academia.edu/11588731/Lamanite_Genesis_Genealogy_and_Genetics" target="_blank">research paper</a> on DNA analysis that debunked a fundamental Mormon belief that American Indians <a href="https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1659&context=msr" target="_blank">descended from Israelites</a>. The church ordered him to renounce his paper or face excommunication. He refused, and the church backed down and suspended its excommunication proceedings.</p><p><a href="http://therevelator.org/american-indians-unite-bears-ears/" target="_blank">Baca is a filmmaker</a> and doctoral student at New York University who produced a <a href="https://shashjaa.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">documentary</a> on Bears Ears.</p><p style="">Murphy is of Mohawk descent and Baca is Navajo and Hopi.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNjUyNzU4Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MzA0MTI0OX0.g18Yyuqd9hN1Hh-J8xoY7e553rnDC_ljPfsz0cz0ySw/img.jpg?width=980" id="b5e99" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="52d6481daad6a563d5cd2a3135ffba23" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Thomas Murphy</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">John Dougherty</small></p><p style="">"The presumption of the right of the settler colonists (to the land) is not unique to Mormons," Murphy told The Revelator. But, he said, what's unique to Mormon settler colonists is that they use scripture to justify their actions.</p><p style="">"When you add a divine sanction to it you get an element of righteous zeal that I think is playing out" in the intense opposition to Bears Ears National Monument from Utah's elected leaders, nearly all of whom are Mormons, he said. "There's not just a righteous zeal, but there's a righteous fury."</p><p>The anger is rooted in the fact that the tribes bypassed state and local government and requested President Obama make Bears Ears a national monument. This action came only after years of being closed out on discussions in Utah Rep. Rob Bishop's <a href="https://www.utahpli.com/" target="_blank">Public Land Initiative</a> that failed to get out of the House Natural Resources Committee in 2016.</p><p style="">"When the tribes tried to protect these cultural and natural resources by bypassing the local governments and going to the federal government, the Mormons were able to see this as federal overreach instead of seeing it as a tribal sovereignty issue," Murphy said.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNjUyNzYxMi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMzYxMjc1NH0.YBpay7LNk0SuTO878YrUs7kEx-nZzd_tJq1eO8udwuM/img.jpg?width=980" id="df9e7" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f8ef10db9314f01b3cdf678d95480b32" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Bob Wick / BLM</small></p><p style="">Trump and his Interior Sec. <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/ryan-zinke">Ryan Zinke</a> seized on the Utah political leaders' rhetoric of the monument designations as a "federal land grab" meant to "lock up" economic resources. Both monuments include lands that were already controlled by U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, undercutting the federal overreach claim.</p><p style="">When viewed from the American Indian perspective, Trump's decision to gut Bears Ears is another ugly chapter beginning with the white settler colonists who stole their land and killed and displaced millions of their people. The indigenous people that were left after the genocide were confined to reservations where their languages were banned, children sent away to boarding schools, and their indigenous societies were isolated and cut off from commerce and communication with other tribes.</p><p>And now, after five tribes (Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute and Unitah Ouray Ute) with a history of conflict came together to successfully petition the federal government to create Bears Ears to protect significant cultural resources, Trump has reneged on a previous president's pledge to preserve the land.</p><p>"I'm approving the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase recommendation for you, Orrin," Trump told Hatch in an October phone call, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/27/politics/trump-bears-ears-hatch-utah/index.html" target="_blank">according to CNN</a>. According to Hatch the majority of Utah residents, including American Indians, supported reducing the size of Bears Ears.</p><p>Murphy said Hatch is "lying" about tribal support, which is supported by the fact that at least five tribes are preparing to file a joint lawsuit seeking to block Trump's downsizing of Bears Ears.</p><p style="">"(Hatch) seems to be taking on sort of Trumpesque political move of claiming native support for his actions" while ignoring opposition from non-Mormon Indian leaders, Murphy said. "They are being entirely dismissed in favor of one or two Navajo that happened to be Mormon that are supporting this."</p><p>Murphy is referring to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xx1wS23yj0" target="_blank">San Juan County, Utah Commissioner Rebecca Benally</a> who is also a Navajo and is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xx1wS23yj0" target="_blank">a vehement opponent</a> of Bears Ears. Six of the seven Utah Navajo chapter houses support Bears Ears, as does <a href="http://utahdinebikeyah.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/NNChapter-Resolutions-Letters-to-Zinke-9-28-17.pdf" target="_blank">the Navajo Utah Commission</a> and the Navajo Nation.</p><p style="">Murphy said some Mormons tend to dismiss the legitimacy of non-Mormon American Indians positions because they are often associated as descendants of the Lamanites, who were <a href="https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/book-mormon-second-nephi-doctrinal-structure/7-lamanite-mark" target="_blank">"cursed" by God with dark skin</a> because they had become wicked, according to LDS teachings. The Lamanites, according to LDS teachings, are the Israelites who are said to have colonized North America around 600 B.C.</p><p style="">"The book of Mormon story gives Mormons license to dismiss native voices and their legitimacy because they see that indigenous people of once having a right to the land, they lost through their own wickedness," Murphy said. Not only were the Lamanites considered wicked, they also annihilated a subset of the original Israelite colonists called Nephites, who were white. LDS teachings assert that "there was an ancient white civilization that was destroyed by the ancestors of the American Indians."</p><p style="">Murphy said Mormon founder Joseph Smith attributed the great cultural artifacts found in North America, including the earthen mounds built by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mound_Buildershttps:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mound_Builders" target="_blank">the Mound Builders</a>, to the white Nephites rather than to the ancestors of American Indians. Combine this with Smith's history of grave robbing and Murphy said it's not surprising that some Mormons don't see anything wrong with collecting ancient artifacts off public land, even if it violates federal law.</p><p style="">"They don't see themselves as stealing from Native Americans because they see Native Americans as usurpers of what once belonged to white people," Murphy said. "And that's the story that comes out of the Book of Mormon."</p><p style="">Bear Ears is estimated to have more than 100,000 significant cultural sites. Many sites have already been looted as part of a lucrative <a href="http://therevelator.org/fight-bears-ears-two-towns/" target="_blank">trafficking business</a> that has proliferated in southern Utah for more than a century. Some of the most notable artifacts are on display at the <a href="https://stateparks.utah.gov/parks/edge-of-the-cedars/" target="_blank">Edge of Cedars State Park and Museum</a> in Blanding, Utah.</p><p style="">In a written statement to The Revelator, Baca said: "American Indians are not cursed with a dark skin. We are not morally and ethically cursed by God because we are brown and indigenous." He called on Mormons to "educate themselves on American Indian history, culture and language."</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image" style="">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNjUyNzYxNC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNDQ5OTg5MH0.EfDFaPbwGvDCLG-AivNB9eIprgCqD4TedCsa0OO2MCQ/img.jpg?width=980" id="1f88a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="aadf71b7115294e7c8db7e3230f39c4d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Angelo Baca</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">John Dougherty</small></p><p style="">Baca asked Mormons to truly move past the "racism and discrimination coded as law and order in a deeply unjust-settler-historical system."<br></p><p style="">He sharply criticized Mormon leaders for hosting Trump. "I believe they have sacrificed their own Mormon values and beliefs in supporting a morally and ethically questionable man."</p><p style=""><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="http://therevelator.org/trump-bears-ears-indigenous-scholars/" target="_blank">The Revelator</a>.</em></p>
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Native American tribes are voicing concerns and demanding input on regulations on fossil fuel development in a New Mexico county, in the latest wave of tribal voices growing louder on oil and gas development across the country.
Sandoval County, home to 12 Native tribes, will hold a final vote in January on a draft ordinance to regulate oil and gas development in the county. In packed public meetings over the proposed ordinance last week, tribal leaders called out the lack of tribal input in the draft ordinance and raised concerns over the ordinance's lack of protections for water, air and land resources.
<p style="">Santo Domingo Pueblo Gov. Robert Coriz, who says he was one of the leaders not consulted on the ordinance, told the AP the decision must be based "on honest, open, respectful communication" with tribes.</p><p style="">As reported by the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/tribal-leaders-take-aim-at-oil-and-gas-development/2017/11/21/89cfe42a-cf0c-11e7-a87b-47f14b73162a_story.html?utm_term=.9344e5b943b0" target="_blank">Washington Post</a>:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"At a contentious meeting late last week, Ahjani Yepa of Jemez Pueblo spoke about the connection between her people and the land, spurring fellow activists in the crowd to raise their fists in solidarity.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">'As with many cultures and religions, we do not have a book to guide us. The land is our Bible. Once it is gone, you cannot print another copy,' she told members of the Sandoval County Commission."</p><p style=""><strong><span></span>For a deeper dive:</strong></p><p style=""> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/tribal-leaders-take-aim-at-oil-and-gas-development/2017/11/21/89cfe42a-cf0c-11e7-a87b-47f14b73162a_story.html?utm_term=.9344e5b943b0" target="_blank">AP</a>, <a href="https://www.abqjournal.com/1094210/overflow-crowd-weighs-inon-new-oil-gas-ordinance.html" target="_blank">Albuquerque Journal</a>, <a href="http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/sandoval-county-officials-get-earful-on-oil-gas-drilling/article_8a1a2b3b-8c92-5a54-b8ce-3e5b3cba0f44.html" target="_blank">Santa Fe New Mexican</a></p><p style=""><em>For more </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/climate-change-news/" target="_blank"><em>climate change</em></a><em> and </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/business/renewables/" target="_blank"><em>clean energy</em></a><em> news, you can follow Climate Nexus on </em><a href="https://twitter.com/ClimateNexus" target="_blank"><em>Twitter</em></a><em> and </em><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClimateNexus/" target="_blank"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>, and sign up for daily </em><a href="http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa" target="_blank"><em>Hot News</em></a><em>.</em><br></p><p style=""><br></p>
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By Kelly Hayes
In October of 2016, I wrote a piece called How to Talk About #NoDAPL: A Native Perspective. I had visited the Standing Rock camps twice at that point, at the request of local youth who coordinated skill shares for Water Protectors, and I had written extensively about the movement. About a year later, I was asked to share my thoughts on the documentary, Awake, A Dream from Standing Rock.
But how does one critique a dream? A dream isn't bound by timelines or historical nuance. It's as much feeling as fact, and the lines between the two often blur.
<p style="">As the name implies, <em>Awake, A Dream of Standing Rock,</em> is a series of images and reflections, unbound by the conventions of documentary storytelling. The film's dream-weaving approach at times works masterfully, capturing sounds and images that should be preserved in crisp, heartbreaking detail. In other moments, the film veers between the poetic and the historic with such ease that I was left wondering whether some viewers would know the difference.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xMjYwMDQ2MC9vcmlnaW4uZ2lmIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1Njg1MjYzOH0.hcR59dP_cTnu9vV9PuN-_djYG6ectkhgtv5KNNq58Is/img.gif?width=980" id="64a34" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="15e5d46e34c350b197c06c7ec05362fe" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"></p><p style="">The film's first chapter was directed by <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/community/josh_fox/">Josh Fox</a>, who exposed the environmental toll of fracking in <em>Gasland</em>. The footage expands upon familiar scenes, invoking imagery that elicits every emotion it intends to. Co-writer Floris White Bull's poetic narration is penetrative and well-paced. But poetry does have its limitations. One can hardly complain because, as the title warned, <em>Awake</em> is a dream of Standing Rock, not a hard timeline, or an exploration of the complex lessons it taught.<br></p><p style="">But hybridizing poetry and history is risky. When a narrator veers between poetic flourish, such as White Bull's characterization of the camp as a place without hate or fear, and factual details, about police attacks and pipelines, edges can blur.</p><p style="">The film's second section is both breathtaking and essential. Without narration, the images and activities of the people being filmed tell their own story, and the footage provides a haunting sense of what it was like to be on the ground in Standing Rock, during that sprawling movement moment.</p><p style="">As someone who was deeply connected to these events but not a long term resident of the camps, I was grateful for the moments captured in Part II. During a sequence where Water Protectors knelt in prayer on Backwater Bridge, I could feel the holiness of the moment, and I could even remember how the cold air felt in my throat as I walked on that bridge.</p><p>And when Protectors were attacked on the bridge with water cannons, I relived every emotion I experienced that night, knowing my friends were on that bridge, soaking and battered, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.</p><p style="">At that point, I messaged some of my friends who were traumatized by police in Standing Rock to offer a trigger warning.</p><p style="">The film's third and final section was directed by Native filmmaker and activist Myron Dewey, of <a href="http://www.digitalsmokesignals.com/" target="_blank">Digital Smoke Signals</a>. The importance of Dewey's work as a documentarian is inarguable. But as a direct action educator and organizer, I must disagree with his initial commentary in <em>Awake</em>.</p><p>In Part III, we are presented with text summaries of some of the legal history at work. Next we hear Dewey's take on events. Dewey's first major assertion is that Morton County Police had initially been friendly to protesters, and only turned violent after the desecration of sacred ground by Energy Transfer Partners.</p><p style="">In truth, police frequently approach protesters respectfully, at first, with tensions mounting as movements grow, threatening the status quo with their potential.</p><p style="">Further, attributing police violence to desecration de-contextualizes Native struggle from the realities of policing and resistance. People who brave the frontlines of liberation struggles are routinely battered in the U.S., whether they are challenging pipelines, <a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/the-never-ending-indian-wars-20170124" target="_blank">police violence</a>, or any other oppressive instrument or practice. Native people <a href="http://inthesetimes.com/features/native_american_police_killings_native_lives_matter.html" target="_blank">are killed by police at a higher rate than any other group</a>, and our movements have always been met with violence and repression. It would be ahistorical to assume that police would have continued to treat Water Protectors gently as the movement grew, if not for the desecration.</p><p style="">The fear of what Water Protectors might accomplish caused law enforcement to show its true character in Standing Rock. From dogs and water cannons to <a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/NSA-spying-program-what-s-at-stake-for-climate-movement" target="_blank">COINTELPRO</a> tactics that aimed to escalate tensions between Protectors, what police unleashed in Standing Rock was an unsurprising culmination of a history of violence toward Natives. No new violation of the sacred was needed to trigger this violence that has recreated itself since first contact.</p><p style="">Police who approached with a smile, and even joined round dances in the early days of the movement, were two-faced foes—always one order away from everything that followed. To deny this not only separates us from history, but from other justice movements in which people have been brutalized when they raised their hopes and voices too high.</p><p style="">To his credit, Dewey does capture the intractable nature of law enforcement in Standing Rock, highlighting the lack of accountability and, ultimately, the impunity with which police harassed and harmed Water Protectors, while criminalizing Protectors for minor or even wholly imagined legal offenses.</p><p>As someone who believes in the importance of frontline storytelling, I appreciate <em>Awake</em> for what it uplifts. Despite my narrative disagreements with the film, I think it's an important effort, that should be seen—especially for the film's second section.</p><p>It is the hope of any movement moment that it be remembered, and carried by many voices, which will mean the offering of many perspectives. If the viewer understands <em>Awake</em> as a puzzle piece in a much larger picture, in which many complexities go untouched, it will aid in their understanding.</p><p>But it is also crucial that the viewer understand the film as a dream, a vision, and a re-remembering, not a historical or social analysis of a movement and its many moving parts.</p><p>At their best, the Standing Rock camps were still rife with contradiction and difficulty. They had no uniformity of belief with regard to tactics or strategy. In truth, no such uniformity is possible in such an unprecedented convergence. Native peoples are not exempt from any of the difficulties that the tactic of occupation can bring. Factions form. Conflicts unfold. Participants butt heads over tactics and strategies—and some will invariably confuse the two.</p><p style="">The Standing Rock I knew was not a mystical place with a uniform perspective. It was a complex place—an experiment in love, hope, courage, and solidarity, unlike anything our peoples had experienced. It was full of beauty and catastrophe. It was bitingly human because we are human. And, as is often the case, the magic was in the mess.</p><p style="">At the film's end, the legacy of Standing Rock is addressed, with White Bull telling us that "what started in Standing Rock is now all over the world." A number of struggles and global movements are highlighted, in quick succession, in a narrative that seemingly attributes those movements to the momentum of Standing Rock. In some cases, the participants in those movements actually call themselves "Water Protectors," in the spirit of Standing Rock. But some of those struggles, like the fight against oil companies in the Amazon, substantially predate the Standing Rock encampments. It's important for us to acknowledge this, both out of respect for those movements, and as a challenge to those who viewed Standing Rock as something wholly new or unusual.</p><p style="">The story of Standing Rock—of state violence merging with corporate interests, of human potential and human destruction—is not an original concept. It has many iterations, across history and around the world. Standing Rock is no less special for this. If anything, I hope the unacquainted will take it as an invitation, to study the struggles they may have missed, and to join the fray when called.</p><p style="">Watch the trailer below:</p>
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="efa56f9924bec853bd6fa631d3ca9ac6"><div class="fb-video" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/EcoWatch/videos/1503143433031922/" data-allowfullscreen="true"></div></div>
<p style=""><em>Kelly Hayes wrote this article for </em><a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/" target="_blank" title="">YES! Magazine</a><em>. </em><em>Kelly is a queer Native writer, organizer, and movement photographer. She is also a direct action trainer and a co-founder of The Chicago Light Brigade and the direct action collective </em><a href="http://liftedvoices.org/" target="_blank">Lifted Voices</a><em>. She is </em><a href="http://www.truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/50459" target="_blank">a contributing writer at Truthout</a><em> and blogs at </em><a href="https://transformativespaces.org/" target="_blank">TransformativeSpaces.org</a><em>, where </em><a href="https://transformativespaces.org/2017/08/13/on-getting-our-shit-together-a-letter-to-the-left/" target="_blank" title="">this article</a><em> originally appeared, about U.S. movements and her work as an organizer against state violence.</em><br></p><p style=""><em>This article was funded in part by a grant from the Surdna Foundation. <em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/new-documentary-remembers-standing-rock-in-beauty-and-catastrophe-20171023" target="_blank">Yes! Magazine</a>.</em></em></p>
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By Conor Mihell
At dawn, I launch my kayak and paddle into a velvety expanse of turquoise water. Here, in northern Michigan's Straits of Mackinac, Great Lakes Michigan and Huron meet like the middle of an hourglass. To the east, the rounded form of Mackinac Island is the centerpiece of an archipelago in Lake Huron.
According to an Ojibwe creation story, this is Mishee Makinakong, the Great Turtle, whose surfacing shell became a refuge for plants and animals as floodwaters surged in the days before time. Today, droves of ferries buzz to and from the island, a bustling summer tourist destination replete with kitschy fudge shops and horse-drawn carriages.
<p>I'm paddling south, dwarfed by the Mackinac Bridge, a monolithic five-mile-long ribbon of green steel and gray concrete that connects Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas. Lake Michigan sprawls westward. Its watery horizon shows the telltale dance of rising winds just as a wave splashes over my deck, reminding me to put away my camera. This isn't a place to multitask.</p><p>Currents deflect my course as I approach a towering bridge support. It's like paddling on the ocean, with steep waves and a strengthening tidelike flow. I angle my bow to compensate. Whitewater reflects from the concrete pillar, and eddies swirl in its wake. Even on this sunny June morning, the conditions hint at a destructive violence that makes me nervous.</p><p style="">Almost directly beneath my kayak runs Enbridge Line 5, twin 64-year-old <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/pipelines">pipelines</a> at the bottom of the lakebed. Line 5 transports 23 million gallons of oil and natural gas liquids daily for 645 miles through Wisconsin and Michigan to Canada. Enbridge, the Canadian oil transportation giant, operated Line 5 inconspicuously until 2010; that's when its sister pipeline, Line 6B, ruptured, pouring a million gallons of <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/tar-sands">tar sands</a> bitumen into the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Michigan. It was the largest land-based oil spill in U.S. history. Suddenly, the peril posed by vintage infrastructure carrying petrochemicals through the heart of North America's greatest supply of freshwater loomed very large.</p><p style="">University of Michigan hydrologist Dave Schwab has concluded that the Straits of Mackinac is "the worst possible place for an oil spill in the Great Lakes." At any given time, one million gallons of petroleum products are contained in the 20-inch pipes that run along the lakebed. If one ruptured, oil would disperse with the currents that slosh back and forth through the straits. In Schwab's worst-case scenario, 720 miles of lakeshore would be devastated.</p><p style="">The U.S. <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/epa">Environmental Protection Agency</a> predicts that in the event of a spill, no more than 40 percent of the oil could be recovered by deploying booms and "in-situ burning"—lighting surface slicks on fire, a technique used in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The success rate would plummet in the winter, when the Straits of Mackinac are sheathed in feet of ice. This apocalyptic vision was enough to convince more than 60 municipalities and all 12 of Michigan's Native American tribes that Line 5 should be decommissioned. Even Republican state attorney general Bill Schuette called for a timeline to shut down the pipeline.</p><p style="">"We know that Line 5 will ultimately be decommissioned," said David Holtz, the Sierra Club's Michigan Chapter chair and the coordinator of Oil and Water Don't Mix, a grassroots coalition of pipeline opponents with 30,000 supporters. "The only question is, will it be decommissioned before or after it ruptures?"</p><p style="">Line 5 is a product of the post–World War II construction boom, when oil companies installed pipelines across the country to fuel an increasingly global economy. "Michigan was the shortest path to get oil to market," Holtz explained. "We get all the risk; Enbridge gets the reward."</p><p style="">For Enbridge's part, spokesperson Michael Barnes said that Line 5 is "vital to the people of Michigan, who need energy to heat their homes and power their industries." (Holtz contends that the company has never documented this claim.) In the five years following the Marshall disaster, Barnes said, the company spent nearly $5 billion on maintenance, inspection, and leak detection: "This is the largest, most comprehensive and sophisticated maintenance and inspection program of any pipeline system in the world."</p><p style="">As for the underwater pipelines at the Straits of Mackinac, Barnes said, "Recent inspection reports show that Line 5, from an engineering and integrity perspective, is like new and in excellent condition."</p><p style="">Retired Dow chemical engineer Ed Timm has taken it upon himself to debunk such rosy claims. Timm, a resident of nearby Harbor Springs whose dark ponytail and youthful swagger belie his 72 years, started studying the pipeline and checking out Enbridge's claims out of curiosity. He dug up early construction journals documenting the hasty process whereby pipelines were "pulled," as the engineers called it, across the straits. He plotted modern imagery alongside original blueprints to show how lakebed sediments have shifted drastically over time, placing stress on sections of pipe. And he tabulated modern-water-current data to prove that the Straits of Mackinac are capable of producing double the 2.25-mile-per-hour currents envisioned by the original plans.</p><p style="">Timm also discovered a 2016 technical report that he calls a "smoking gun." The operating-easement agreement for Line 5 between Enbridge and the state of Michigan mandates that there be no unsupported spans longer than 75 feet. According to engineer Mario Salvadori, who reviewed the design, "The pipe must not be allowed to span a valley of more than 140 feet." But the 2016 report, conducted by the Ohio-based engineering firm Kiefner and Associates, mentions unsupported spans of up to 286 feet, indicating that over time the pipeline has shifted from its moorings. Timm showed me a graph of how the pipeline's resiliency diminishes across increasing lengths of unsupported spans. Just like a bent paper clip, he said, a pipeline with inadequate support will become fatigued as it flexes back and forth in moving water. "At that distance a steel pipeline basically turns into a noodle." </p><p style="">For Native Americans in the Great Lakes region, Line 5 touches a cultural nerve. The area a spill might affect coincides with tribal fishing areas and encompasses the watery heart of the indigenous creation story.</p><p style="">On Lake Michigan's east shore, the Grand Traverse Band operates a couple dozen boats, whose captains and crews make their livelihoods fishing year-round, said Desmond Berry, the band's natural resources manager. Fish is a staple of the indigenous diet and is recognized in the tribe's traditional clan system. "We are a fish nation," Berry said.</p><p style="">The Grand Traverse Band is one of five Chippewa and Ottawa tribes with commercial operations in the Mackinac Straits area. They harvest more than three million pounds of whitefish and lake trout annually. Commercial and recreational fishing on the Great Lakes contribute $2.5 billion to Michigan's economy, with tourists spending $660 million annually in the counties straddling the Straits of Mackinac, supporting 7,500 local jobs. "If there were a spill," Berry said, referring to the slogan on the state's license plate, "'Pure Michigan' would cease to exist."</p><p style="">Safeguarding freshwater was at the core of efforts to stop the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/dakota-access-pipeline">Dakota Access Pipeline</a> at Standing Rock and is also at the root of Native American opposition to Line 5. Little Traverse Bay Bands member Jannan Cornstalk takes her responsibility as a water protector seriously. "Women have the ability to bring life into the world through our bodies," she said. "An embryo is held in a sack of water inside of us. That's our connection to the water."</p><p style="">Cornstalk was shocked when she learned about the sunken pipelines at Mackinac Straits. Since 2015, she's organized Labor Day demonstrations to coincide with a popular Mackinac Bridge walk, which includes canoe and kayak flotillas and, this year, an arts and culture festival. "I believe our water is in crisis," she said, pointing to the contaminated <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/drinking-water">drinking water</a> in Flint, which led to a federal state of emergency in 2016. "Clean water is a basic human right. Without it we are nothing."</p><p style="">The water calms and my mind wanders as I paddle back to shore. After the flood in the Ojibwe creation story, Sky Woman, the mother of humanity, settled on the Great Turtle's back and summoned the animals to help rebuild the earth. One at a time, the strongest swimmers—Beaver, Fisher, Marten, and Loon—plunged into the water, diving deep in search of soil. Each returned to the surface empty-handed and ashamed.</p><p>Then diminutive Muskrat volunteered. The other animals snickered, but Muskrat dove in anyway and stayed underwater an exceedingly long time. "The Muskrat floated to the surface more dead than alive, but he clutched in his paws a small morsel of soil," recounted the late Ojibwe historian Basil Johnston. "Where the great had failed, the small succeeded."</p><p style="">Sky Woman spread the modicum of soil on the turtle's back and infused the new world with the breath of life. Turtle Island grew, teeming with grasses, flowers and trees. Finally, Sky Woman gave birth to the first Anishnabeg—the people—whom she instructed to live in harmony with all of creation, living and yet unborn.</p><p style="">The Mackinac area exerts an energy that pulls at the conscience of indigenous people and newcomers alike. A 2016 poll revealed that nearly two-thirds of Michigan voters do not support oil pipelines in the Great Lakes. Holtz hopes the state government will soon have a moment of reckoning like he did five years ago, when he represented the Sierra Club in an initial meeting to discuss Line 5 with other environmentalists. Holtz had recently retired from a career in media and "wasn't looking for a fight." Then he spent an autumn weekend alone at the straits. "I drove across the bridge and looked over the water," he recalled. "I decided I didn't want to be responsible for not stopping an oil spill in a beautiful, wonderful place that I love. I don't want that to be my legacy."</p><p style=""><span></span><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2017-6-november-december/feature/aging-oil-pipeline-underneath-great-lakes" target="_blank">SIERRA</a> magazine.</em></p>
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Dakota Access Pipeline to Remain Operational During Environmental Impact Study
12 October 2017
Climate
Construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline near New Salem, North Dakota. Tony Webster / Flickr / CC. BY 2.0
On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) can continue operating pending an environmental review by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe sued the Corps in July 2016, arguing that the pipeline destroyed sacred sites and threatens the water quality of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation that sits downstream of the site where the pipeline crosses the Missouri River in North Dakota.
<p style=""><a href="https://earthjustice.org/documents/legal-document/court-opinion-re-vacatur" target="_blank">In the ruling</a>, the court found that shutting down the pipeline would not cause major economic disruption, as DAPL claimed. However, the court found a possibility that the Army Corps would be able to justify its decision not to do a full environmental review, and hence refused to shut down the pipeline while that process was underway. The Corps estimated that the new environmental review will be completed by April 2018. </p><p style="">"This pipeline represents a threat to the livelihoods and health of our Nation every day it is operational," said Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Mike Faith. "It only makes sense to shut down the pipeline while the Army Corps addresses the risks that this court found it did not adequately study. From the very beginning of our lawsuit, what we have wanted is for the threat this pipeline poses to the people of Standing Rock Indian reservation to be acknowledged. Today, our concerns have not been heard and the threat persists."</p><p style="">In June 2017, Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the initial approval of the Dakota Access Pipeline—a 1,170 mile oil pipeline owned by <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/energy-transfer-partners">Energy Transfer Partners</a> (ETP)—<a href="https://earthjustice.org/features/dapl-ruling-what-was-decided-what-s-next" target="_blank">did not undergo adequate study of its environmental consequences</a>. The judge found particular parts of an initial study addressing "impacts of a spill on hunting rights, fishing rights and environmental justices" deficient and ordered a new report to address those risks.</p><p style="">Judge Boasberg asked the attorneys to submit new arguments on whether the pipeline should remain operational during the new environmental review. On Wednesday, the judge agreed with Energy Transfer Partners that it should not be shut down.</p><p style="">"Today's decision is a disappointing continuation of a historic pattern: other people get all the profits, and the Tribes get all the risk and harm," said Jan Hasselman, Earthjustice Attorney representing the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. "The court already found that the Corps violated the law when it issued the permits without thoroughly considering the impact on the people of Standing Rock. The company should not be allowed to continue operating while the Corps studies that threat."</p><p style="">The Court expressed a willingness to consider other restrictions or measures to protect the Tribe while pipeline operations continue, and invited further briefing. The Court also set a status conference to discuss next steps in the case, for Oct. 18. </p><p style="">Earlier this year, the pipeline experienced leaks on three separate occasions after <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/">President Donald Trump</a> directed the Army Corps to issue the necessary permits to complete the project. The pipeline became fully operational in June and is carrying crude oil from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to a refinery and connecting pipeline in Illinois. </p>
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The Energy East Pipeline Is Dead, but Three Tar Sands Pipeline Projects Remain
11 October 2017
Energy
Massive pipelines would transport millions of barrels of oil per day from the Athabasca tar sands mines. howlcollective / Flickr, CC BY
By Ron Johnson
Last week, energy company TransCanada pulled the plug on its 2,800-mile Energy East Pipeline and Eastern Mainline projects, which would have shipped 1.1 million barrels of crude oil from the Athabasca tar sands to refineries in eastern Canada. The move was celebrated as a victory by environmentalists and Indigenous people pushing for a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
"This is a tremendous battle victory in the greater fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground and for climate justice for Indigenous nations," Dallas Goldtooth, an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network's Keep It In The Ground project, said in a statement.
<p style="">The announcement, Goldtooth said, "supports the validity and strength of an Indigenous rights-based approach to win these battles. All along the Energy East pipeline route First Nations took a stand to defend their inherent rights, protect their water and Mother Earth and resist the colonial actions of Canada and its oil regime."</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed"></p><div id="cf261" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="WYS2NQ1576662969"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="916424123911491584" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">TransCanada Terminates Energy East Pipeline https://t.co/TGs1QvRyuI @Greenpeace @Sierra_Magazine</div> — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)<a href="https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/916424123911491584">1507327512.0</a></blockquote></div><p></p>
<p style="">But the work is far from over—three other massive tar sands <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/pipelines">pipeline</a> projects representing millions of barrels of oil per day loom in the distance.<br></p><p>Depending on who you talk to, there are a few explanations for TransCanada ending the billion-dollar Energy East project, which happens to be the second major pipeline project to be cancelled following the end of the $7.9-billion Northern Gateway pipeline in 2016. Theories include relentless resistance, especially from Indigenous communities whose traditional territories and waters were located on or near the pipeline route, as well as over-regulation by various levels of government and forecasts of a continuing dip in global oil prices and production that made the project less economically attractive.</p><p style=""><a href="http://www.treatyalliance.org/" target="_blank">The Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion</a>, a coalition of First Nations and Native American tribes across North America, attributed the pipeline's demise to grassroots activism.</p><p>"Both the Northern Gateway fight and this Energy East one show that when First Nations stand together, supported by non-Indigenous allies, we win," Grand Chief Serge Simon of the Mohawk Council of Kanestake said on behalf of the Treaty Alliance.</p><p>TransCanada, however, said the decision to abandon the project had less to do with the protests and land claims and more about not wanting to deal with a more stringent and unclear regulatory framework.</p><p style="">In <a href="https://apps.neb-one.gc.ca/REGDOCS/Item/Filing/A86594" target="_blank">a letter</a> (pdf) to the National Energy Board upon cancellation of Energy East, TransCanada explained that "there remains substantial uncertainty around the scope, timing and cost associated with the regulatory review of the Projects." It said that due to "the existing and likely future delays resulting from the regulatory process, the associated cost implications and the increasingly challenging issues and obstacles facing the Projects, the Applicants will not be proceeding."</p><p style="">There is little doubt that since the 2016 election of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canada has stepped up its regulatory and environmental assessment efforts. Trudeau's government made <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/paris-agreement-trudeau-sign-1.3547822" target="_blank">serious commitments</a> under the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/paris-agreement">Paris agreement</a> on <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/">climate change</a> as well as to the <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-afn-indigenous-aboriginal-people-1.3354747" target="_blank">rights of the country's First Nations</a>. For instance, the government required that both the upstream and downstream greenhouse gas emissions be considered during the approvals process for Energy East, and for all other pipeline projects in the country.</p><p>Proponents of Energy East, including the opposition Conservative Party of Canada, criticized Trudeau's government for bungling the pipeline project by piling too many reviews and regulations on TransCanada, and costing the country thousands of jobs and a massive injection into the economy. "Terrible news this morning about Energy East pipeline. Make no mistake, Justin Trudeau is to blame," was the word from newly elected Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer, the day the news became public.</p><p style="">But Jim Carr, Canada's minister of natural resources, defended the government's position. "TransCanada Pipelines' decision to cancel the Energy East Pipeline project was a business decision," he said in a statement, emphasizing that three additional pipeline projects are currently either under construction or close to it: TransCanada's <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/keystone-xl">Keystone XL</a>; Enbridge's Line 3 replacement project between Hardisty, Alberta and Superior, Wisconsin and American energy infrastructure company Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.</p><p>"Our government has two major export pipelines that are now under construction, and a third is expected to start soon," he said. "The Trans Mountain expansion and Line 3 projects alone represent over $11.6 billion in investment and will support thousands of jobs."</p><p>Global oil prices have indeed weakened since 2014, and as a result the forecast for future oil production has been lowered to the point where if all pipelines were built, there would be competition to keep them all at capacity. According to University of Alberta's <a href="https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/how-donald-trump-killed-the-energy-east-pipeline/article36527153/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&cmpid=rss1&click=sf_globe" target="_blank">Andrew Leach</a>, Canada will have more than enough pipeline capacity to handle future growth if the last three pipelines are completed. One of the pipelines is TransCanada's Keystone XL, so why would the company want two of its own pipelines competing against each other? Or so the theory goes.</p><p style="">This is exactly why anti pipeline activists are cautioning against complacence. "It will be a hollow victory if either Kinder Morgan, Line 3 or Keystone XL are allowed to steamroll over Indigenous opposition and serve as an outlet for even more climate-killing tar sands production," Chief Simon said.</p><p>Grassroots activists in Nebraska and Western Canada that will have much to say before any of these remaining pipelines gets built.</p><p>In Nebraska, a regulatory body that will rule on the fate of the Keystone XL project this November. But even if approved, local activists have <a href="https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1AQ28P-OCABS" target="_blank">vowed to continue fighting</a> it..</p><p>Meanwhile, despite being all but approved by the government, Kinder Morgan faces serious opposition to its Trans Mountain expansion, especially from British Columbia First Nations who have not given consent to the pipeline crossing traditional and unceded territories. Seven First Nations, two environmental groups and the cities of Burnaby and Vancouver have mounted a legal challenge against Trans Mountain and the case is currently being heard in court. And given that the new provincial government in BC won the election in part because of a commitment to fight the Kinder Morgan project, the fight seems set to intensify as all sides dig in for the final showdown. </p><p>As hard as the oil companies push their agenda, there will be those who stand up and resist.</p><p style="">With President <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/">Donald Trump</a> rewriting the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-denier">climate change denial</a> handbook and pushing dirty <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coal">coal</a> like it's a new miracle energy source, the world is waiting to see what happens in Canada. Will the Trudeau government greenlight the exploitation of the country's massive fossil fuel reserves and move us farther and faster towards catastrophic climate change or will it be climate smart and stick to its Paris promises?</p><p style="">As Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, said: "The climate math is sadly simple—the carbon contained in Alberta's tar sands must stay there. Nothing else that Canada could do to help stabilize Earth's climate matters anywhere near as much."</p><p style=""><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/the_energy_east_pipeline_dead_but_three_tar_sands_pipeline_projects_remain/" target="_blank">Earth Island Journal</a>.</em></p>
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The Little Missouri River at the Little Missouri National Grasslands, North Dakota. Zero_MSN / Flickr
By Rosalyn R. LaPier
The environmental group Deep Green Resistance recently filed a first-of-its-kind legal suit against the state of Colorado asking for personhood rights for the Colorado River.
If successful, it would mean lawsuits can brought on behalf of the river for any harm done to it, as if it were a person.
<p style="">In the past, several environmental groups in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/21/ganges-and-yamuna-rivers-granted-same-legal-rights-as-human-beings" target="_blank">India</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/10/bolivia-enshrines-natural-worlds-rights" target="_blank">Bolivia</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/sep/24/equador.conservation" target="_blank">Ecuador</a>, <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/40786-colombia-grants-legal-rights-to-the-polluted-atrato-river" target="_blank">Colombia</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/14/world/what-in-the-world/in-new-zealand-lands-and-rivers-can-be-people-legally-speaking.html?" target="_blank">New Zealand</a> have successfully sought protection for rivers and landscapes based on this argument. As a <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-makes-a-mountain-hill-or-prairie-a-sacred-place-for-native-americans-73169" target="_blank">Native American scholar</a> of environment and religion, I seek to understand the relationship between people and the natural world.</p><p style="">Native Americans view nature through their belief systems. A <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/rivers">river</a> or <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/water">water</a> does not only sustain life—it is sacred.</p><p style=""><strong>Why is water sacred to Native Americans?</strong></p><p style="">In the past year, the Lakota phrase "Mní wičhóni," or "Water is life," became a new national protest anthem.</p><p style="">It was chanted by 5,000 marchers at the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/american-indians-to-march-on-white-house-in-rally-for-rights/2017/03/10/8b327e84-04e3-11e7-ad5b-d22680e18d10_story.html?utm_term=.af983e52c1a2" target="_blank">Native Nations March</a> in Washington, DC this spring, and during protests last year as the anthem of the struggle to stop the building of the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/dakota-access-pipeline">Dakota Access Pipeline</a> under the Missouri River in North Dakota.</p><p>There was a reason: For long years, the Lakota, the Blackfeet and the other Native American tribes understood how to live with nature. And it was based on the knowledge of how to live within the restrictions of the limited water supply of the "<a href="http://www.lib.msu.edu/branches/map/US/800-c-reg4-D-1823-400/" target="_blank">Great American desert</a>" of North America.</p><p style=""><strong>Water as sacred place</strong></p><p style=""><strong></strong>Native Americans learned both through observation and experiment, arguably a process quite similar to what we might call <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/science/">science</a> today. They also learned from their religious ideas, passed on from generation to generation in the form of stories.</p><p style="">I learned from my grandparents, both members of the Blackfeet tribe in Montana, about the sacredness of water. They shared that the Blackfeet believed in three separate realms of existence—the earth, sky and water. The Blackfeet believed that humans, or "Niitsitapi," and Earth beings, or "Ksahkomitapi," lived in one realm; sky beings, or "Spomitapi," lived in another realm; and underwater beings, or "Soyiitapi," lived in yet another. The Blackfeet viewed all three worlds as sacred because within them lived the divine.</p><p style="">The water world, in particular, was held in special regard. The Blackfeet believed that in addition to the divine beings, about which they learned from <a href="http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Invisible-Reality,677467.aspx" target="_blank">their stories,</a> there were divine <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/animals/">animals</a>. The divine beaver, who could talk to humans, taught the Blackfeet their most important religious ceremony. The Blackfeet needed this ceremony to reaffirm their relationships with the three separate realms of reality.</p><p>The Soyiitapi, divine water beings, also instructed the Blackfeet to protect their home, the water world. The Blackfeet could not kill or eat anything living in water; they also could not disturb or pollute water.</p><p style="">The Blackfeet viewed water as a distinct place—a sacred place. It was the home of divine beings and divine animals who taught the Blackfeet religious rituals and moral restrictions on human behavior. It can, in fact, be compared to Mount Sinai of the <a href="https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Exodus-Chapter-1/" target="_blank">Old Testament</a>, which was viewed as "holy ground" and where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments.</p><p style=""><strong>Water as life</strong></p><p style="">Native American tribes on the Great Plains knew something else about the relationship between themselves, the beaver and water. They learned through observation that beavers helped create an ecological oasis within a dry and arid landscape.</p><p>As Canadian anthropologist R. Grace Morgan hypothesized in her dissertation "<a href="https://era.library.ualberta.ca/files/df65vb64j#.WMxDHW_yvX4" target="_blank">Beaver Ecology/Beaver Mythology</a>," the Blackfeet sanctified the beaver because they understood the natural science and ecology of beaver behavior.</p><p>Morgan believed that the Blackfeet did not harm the beaver because <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/leave-it-to-beavers-leave-it-to-beavers/8836/" target="_blank">beavers built dams</a> on creeks and rivers. Such dams could produce enough of a diversion to create a pond of fresh clean water that allowed an oasis of plant life to grow and wildlife to flourish.</p><p>Beaver ponds provided the Blackfeet with water for daily life. The ponds also attracted animals, which meant the Blackfeet did not have to travel long distances to hunt. The Blackfeet did not need to travel for plants used for medicine or food, either.</p><p>Beavers were part of what ecologists call a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/trophic-cascade" target="_blank">trophic cascade</a>, or a reciprocal relationship. Beaver ponds were a win-win for all concerned in "the Great American desert" that <a href="https://theconversation.com/give-beavers-permanent-residence-wed-be-dam-stupid-not-to-55256" target="_blank">modern ecologists and conservationists</a> are beginning to study only now.</p><p>For the Blackfeet, Lakota and other tribes of the Great Plains, water was "life." They understood what it meant to live in a dry arid place, which they expressed through their religion and within their ecological knowledge.</p><p style=""><strong>Rights of rivers</strong></p><p style="">Indigenous people from around the world share these beliefs about the sacredness of water.</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed"></p><div id="436e1" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="A9OB5F1576662350"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="842698301967360001" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">World's First River Given Legal Status as a Person https://t.co/9zr1Sbgx7B @GreenpeaceAustP @Green_Europe</div> — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)<a href="https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/842698301967360001">1489749906.0</a></blockquote></div><p></p>
<p style="">The government of New Zealand recently recognized the ancestral connection of the Maori people to their water. This past spring, the government passed the "Te Awa Tupua <a href="http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2016/0129/latest/DLM6830851.html?src=qs" target="_blank">Whanganui River Claims Settlement</a> Bill," which provides "personhood" status to the Whanganui River, one of the largest rivers on the North Island of New Zealand. This river has come to be recognized as having "all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person"—something the Maori believed all along.<br></p><p style="">The U.S. does not have such laws. This new lawsuit hopes to change that and give the Colorado River "personhood" status. Indigenous people would add, a river is more than a "person"—it is also a sacred place.</p><p style=""><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-native-americans-a-river-is-more-than-a-person-it-is-also-a-sacred-place-85302" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</em></p>
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Mogun Frejo outside his home in Stillwater, OK and Morgun Frejo at Pawnee Camp in Oceti Sakowin at Standing Rock. Joseph Rushmore
By Liz Blood
A little over a year ago, Morgun Frejo, a member of the Pawnee, Otoe-Missouria, Navajo nations, began camping at Oceti Sakowin at Standing Rock. The Missouri River is sacred to both his Pawnee and Otoe-Missouria tribes and Frejo recalls elders in both tribes telling him stories of its importance as a child.
He lived at Standing Rock from mid-August 2016 to late February 2017, just before the camp was evicted and closed by the National Guard and local law enforcement.
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed"></p><div id="74300" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="UFMLNU1576663796"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="835128065424519169" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Tom Goldtooth: 'They Cannot Extinguish the Fire That #StandingRock Started' https://t.co/dVzhsGhjKZ @IENearth @StandingRockST @MarkRuffalo</div> — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)<a href="https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/835128065424519169">1487945021.0</a></blockquote></div><p></p>
<p style="">When I first saw Frejo, he was working camp security at the main gate—informing people no weapons or alcohol were allowed in the camp. Occasionally, security volunteers were asked to close the gate, or only let in a certain amount of people. They also escorted people out of camp when needed, and walked with participants in the marches.<br></p><p> "The main focus was the safety of everyone participating in a march," said Frejo. "So, we acted as a kind of wall between the people there and the cops, to make sure no one on our side started anything, like an agitator. We made sure we were there in unity. There would be some people who went to a march ready to be pepper-sprayed. Masked up, not showing skin, looking suspicious—when everyone else would be moms, children, elders, people in their regular clothes."</p><p>In September 2016, Frejo was arrested, along with his uncle and several others. The police had pictures of Frejo walking away from some construction material with equipment that he could have used to lock himself to it. He was charged with disorderly conduct, criminal trespassing, conspiracy to commit reckless endangerment (a class C felony), and conspiracy to obstruct government function. Morgun maintains he never locked himself to any machinery. His court date was scheduled for August 18, but the charges were dropped a few days before he was scheduled to appear.</p><p style="">I met Frejo when I was reporting on Standing Rock for <a href="http://www.thetulsavoice.com/November-B-2016/Mni-Wiconi/" target="_blank">The Tulsa Voice</a>. He was tight-lipped that day; he didn't seem to care to talk to me or the photographer accompanying me. The acquaintances who introduced us said Frejo had been a lot of help working security at camp.</p><p>One night in November, not long after I returned home from Standing Rock, a helicopter circled the area of Tulsa that I live in. My eyes snapped open in the dark. I lay there anxious. I thought of the people still camped in the cold by the river. They experienced that every single night, for most hours of the night, for months on end. Floodlights poured into camp, helicopters and small planes circled over it—intimidation and sleep deprivation tactics. I was there only two nights. How would any of them feel when they ever heard a helicopter at night again?</p><p>When I heard that Frejo had returned to Oklahoma after Standing Rock was shut down, I wanted to ask if he was open to speaking to me. He was the only person I knew of who had been there for nearly the entire arc of the camp. What the rest of the world watched transpire on poor cell phone videos and in Facebook updates he had experienced in person.</p><p style="">Frejo and I talked about what was life changing—good and bad—about Standing Rock, what changed while he was there, and what survives after the physical camp is gone.</p><p><strong>LIZ BLOOD:</strong> Over the time you were at Standing Rock, between August 2016 and February 2017, how did you see the camp change? </p><p><strong>MORGUN FREJO:</strong> I saw a lot change. The first sight of it, all the teepees and the camps … it was a beautiful sight to see all those tribes and nations come together. The grass was like up to above our knees and a little lawnmower was going around camp so people could make little camps. Towards the end of that month into September I was seeing more and more people coming, seeing different areas being occupied by different tribes.</p><p>Then there was the incident <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06092016/dakota-access-pipeline-construction-standing-rock-sioux-oil-protest-injunction-judge" target="_blank">when they dug up those graves over the hill from camp</a>. That was one of the first turning points. We had heard they can't go there, they can't bulldoze there, that they were still getting their papers. They were told there were burial sites up there. But they went up there and tore it all up.</p><p>A few of us jumped over the fence. My uncle got taken down by one of the security guards; that's when everyone just kind of rushed in, to not only protect him but just push off the workers there. I remember walking where they turned up the ground. A bunch of the worker's trucks were stuck in that mud. People started surrounding them and telling them to leave. One guy almost hit a woman. He got stuck and gunned it and almost hit her.</p><p style="">I was right behind the first row of people just going face to face with those dogs. The way the handlers were using them, they were trying to attack us. I wasn't surprised or scared—it was almost calming. I felt like I'd been in that situation before, but I never have in my life. I talked to others and my uncle about it and he said it's in our genetics—it's in our DNA because of when our ancestors went through it. The best way I can describe is the colonizers, they had dogs. They terrorized villages. They used dogs to attack people. That experience is embedded along with all of the other tragedies and misfortune we've been dealt. We've been dealing with this for hundreds of years. So even though we were scared, we were comfortable.</p><p>Then, in October, there were more people in camp. There were more police. They were militarized. I won't say they were antagonizing us but they knew where to push our buttons, not as individuals but like as a camp, also.</p><p style="">Camp shifted <a href="http://bismarcktribune.com/news/state-and-regional/charges-from-north-camp-raid-pose-difficulties-for-legal-defense/article_0de882ca-79fe-5dc9-9986-97410536ce81.html" target="_blank">the day north camp got raided</a>. A lot of people got arrested. That camp was treaty land that was promised to the tribe. That's why people moved up there. But where that was also a protected route for the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/dakota-access-pipeline">pipeline</a>, so it was also a blockade camp.</p><p>They rounded those people up like cattle—pulling them out of their teepees. I had family that got arrested there. Some got pulled out of a prayer circle. A lot of their sacred items got desecrated. It's saddening to know how Martin County and whoever else handled what is held sacred and precious. I heard stories of them desecrating it with urine, dumping it all on the ground as if it was already trash.</p><p>When Thanksgiving came around, that's when it started getting colder. Month by month, what I noticed personally, was the spirituality—people were coming for the wrong reasons.</p><p><strong> BLOOD:</strong> This was a change you were seeing?</p><p><strong>FREJO:</strong> Yeah. Why I went there was for that water, you know, because that water is us, we are that water. We are made of it. I wanted to go there and pray with that water because not only is the Missouri a powerful river—but me, as a Pawnee and Otoe-Missouria Indian in Oklahoma—that same river that flows up north flows through here. It's a sacred river to us, too.</p><p>But some that came for that call they put out—we need more people, we need more bodies, come stand on the front line, show your support that way—that's when the mentality of camp teetered. Before it was about spirituality, listening to the elders, following a protocol of being visitors, respecting their tribe.</p><p>Then it goes to we have to stop this pipeline. That was always the goal but spirituality was a main factor. It turned into yelling on the front lines, calling cops names, pigs, cussing them out. Before October, there was none of that.</p><p style="">There was chanting of Mni Wiconi, you know, water is life. Spirituality, prayers and singing. Then to have to wear a ballistic vest, or walk up with a plastic shield, or goggles and a face mask so you won't get sprayed in your face with mace or a rubber bullet, you know. People were saying Morton County had the OK to use live rounds, live ammo—instead of pepper spray. That's what was being spread around the front line. I think that's when people started bringing in ballistic vests. Being on those front lines, just being there, made you a target. It wasn't about being ready to take them on, it was about being ready for whatever they were going to do.</p><p>The spirituality of it was lost more and more in the sight of the people that were there. That's one of the major changes I saw. It was a lot of factors … the police escalating things, us, or certain individuals in camp that took it upon themselves to think that they were doing something justly. The cold coming in, elders leaving—or elders going so they could stay safe, you know. I think most of the camp wasn't fully prepared for winterizing.</p><p><strong>BLOOD:</strong> How are you dealing with not being there—a place where everyone was there for, if not the same, at least a similar reason?</p><p><strong>FREJO:</strong> It's an adjustment. It's a big adjustment. Just yesterday me and my girlfriend were cooking and she mentioned it to me. She was like, "I miss that propane"—like the smell of propane, having to make sure if the tank was empty to change it out. And having a big camp bonfire, like a campfire any night or any moment for no reason. I miss it a lot. Not only focusing on like stopping the pipeline but just being there, being unified with other people for the same cause of clean water. Everyone there not judging. We knew what we were doing and we weren't distracted.</p><p><strong>BLOOD:</strong> This is something that, when you're just out experiencing the world now, you flash back to?</p><p><strong>FREJO:</strong> Yeah, it's like a—it's a form of PTSD. When I was up there I got arrested, me and my uncle, and we went through our own trauma up there. </p><p>I've talked to my grandpa, who served in Vietnam. He went through crazy things. He was MIA for a while as a POW, and he escaped. After I got arrested, I went back home for a couple of weeks in October and I was talking to him and he said, "What you went through, a normal citizen that wouldn't happen to. What you went through, you're basically a warrior, a soldier now."</p><p>The way I did it is kind of frowned upon in my family's eyes because I went to jail. But they understand. They also shifted to see me as a man. They said it was good and bad. And it was along the lines of what would give you PTSD. He told me it wasn't like what he did, but it was affecting me, taking a toll. </p><p style="">Even seeing a small airplane or helicopter kind of makes me uneasy, but at the same time I miss that sound because we heard it all day and all night at that camp. One of the major things that used to kind of get me was the sound of a drum, hearing that outside of camp brought up a lot of feelings.</p><p> I'm still working through my own things. From talking to other people that were up there, it's not only things like that that trigger, it's that feeling of loneliness or depression … not feeling useful or having a purpose anymore because at camp everyone had a purpose.</p><p><strong>BLOOD:</strong> So even the feeling can then be triggering. Is that what you're saying?</p><p><strong>FREJO:</strong> Yeah. That's what hits me personally and some others that I know … that everyone's just kind of feeling useless or empty or just alone like no one understands. I still deal with the depression of missing camp, not knowing how to deal with society.</p><p style="">My anxiety builds up over time and sometimes hits me a lot, like for a night. That feeling of being paranoid. I try not to be mad at myself for feeling like that. I think, I'm out of camp so I shouldn't feel like this anymore. But I'm starting to realize every person who went to camp, no matter what they heard or saw or experienced—we won't fully heal from that, because we're still feeling what our ancestors felt. It's like coming to terms and being at peace, and understand all that, to try to find a healthy way to let it go or deal with it.</p><p>Just about every time I open up Facebook, you know, I'm seeing someone that I know from camp posting about what they're going through and they're wondering if everyone else or anyone else feels like that. It's an epidemic that we all have. Everything that happened up there takes a toll and it's gonna take time to heal.</p><p style="">Thinking about it now, it's crazy to think about two or three days of not really eating, drinking, or barely sleeping. I reflect and know I did that for the right reasons. I wasn't out partying or going on a bender. I wasn't thinking about eating or drinking water, either, but when I did I loaded up because I didn't know when the next time would be. But I didn't worry about it, either.</p><p>You know, what I was a part of up there in Standing Rock, it woke up the world. There's other camps everywhere now. There's people taking on big oil companies. There's marches. There's rallies. People are waking up to what has been happening here in Oklahoma for over a decade. </p><p><strong>BLOOD:</strong> Where are you at right now?</p><p style=""><strong>FREJO:</strong> I'm working on myself—emotionally, physically and spiritually, and knowing what I can do and when I can do it. I know that, how many people have seen the light on what's going on and what's happening. It's an amazing feeling to know that there's so many people, not only in the U.S., but all over the world, that come up with inventions or a new way to get away from fossil fuels. I feel small but at the same time I'm part of something way bigger.</p><p>I have to take a step back. I know that I can't do much or I can't do what I truly want until I know that me and what I hold dear to me are ready. So I'm kind of keeping an eye on everything, but at the same time trying to take time for myself to make sure I heal and just be ready for whatever opportunities I have in the future.</p><p style=""><strong>BLOOD:</strong> How are people who are now gone from camp continuing to support each other?</p><p><strong>FREJO:</strong> Keeping in touch with other protectors or other people from camp. I think that's one of the major ones. A lot of them are … just continuing the fight, going wherever they can or showing support where they can. I think a lot of them are trying to keep that momentum. But it's really hard because just that feeling of, you know, no on will understand. No one gets it.</p><p>But at the same time, it's up to the individual to either reach out or accept someone trying to support them … I know what else is out there. When they don't take that road they go to self comforting, what they know. It could be alcohol, drugs, self harm or harming others. That's a big problem, too, because a lot of natives, not only on reservations or in a small town, sometimes where we live, it's just overbearing. It's depressing … there's a lot of suicides. Just that hope, you know, of what it was like in camp. And then you go back to where you're from and there are people that, you know, they're like, "Why'd you go up there?" That doesn't involve us. It's really rough.</p><p>But as water protectors, and as a human race—have that compassion of reaching out to someone. They may look like they're having a good time or they're enjoying themselves but who knows what they're feeling on the inside … they could have a whole story that no one knows about.</p><p>Here, I walk to the gas station, or Wal-Mart, or the store and no one makes eye contact. They've got their ear buds in. No one wants to give you the time of day to look at you. But at Standing Rock man, you'd wake up, get out of your tent, someone's walking by—hey, good morning, how you doing? Even when everybody just woke up … you could walk around camp and someone would offer you coffee and you'd sit there and get to know them.</p><p>That's a major difference I'm still trying to get used to. Because before Standing Rock I was like that, you know, I wouldn't look at people. I'd just do what I had to do and then leave … but after Standing Rock I look at people, I'll give 'em like a little nod and be like, "Hey, how ya doin?"</p><p style=""> That little interaction of just saying hi or smiling at someone, you know? Maybe they're going through a rough day. I know when someone does that back I feel better. I like seeing someone else smile. Maybe they'll do it to the next person. Just that little happiness makes the world a little bit better.</p><p style=""><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/standing-rock-one-year-later" target="_blank">SIERRA</a> magazine.</em></p>
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