In Indian Country Today, Winona LaDuke writes about the potential of American Indian communities having a shot at self-determination.

She was twice Ralph Nader’s running mate for the presidency and vice-presidency.

She writes that native communities need to make decisions about their future and questions such as whether they will continue to rely on the outside industrial economy for food, energy, and other basic needs or will they look to create their own local economies as one means of determining our own destinies?

She says that if natives do not act, they will be caught in a very difficult place as indigenous peoples.

She notes that climate change is already being felt in native communities.

She thinks that natives can act on this issue by assessing their current economies. American Indians spend nearly half of the average tribal economy outside the reservation on energy and food. She argues that this creates a huge economic leakage of resources from reservations to non-Indian communites. She wants natives to set a goal to re-localize tribal economies by developing energy efficiency, renewable energy, and sustainable food sources.

The press is reporting that the United Nations has made an announcement that could be embarrassing to Americans.

A U.N. inspector will be “traveling to a South Dakota Indian reservation to examine dismal housing conditions among the poorest of our poor.”

Raquel Rolnik, the inspector, will visit the Pine Ridge reservation in the Black Hills area and will make a report on what he finds to the international agency.

According to a Minnesota paper “in 2000 the U.N. declared that the right to adequate housing is a human right. Then, in 2007, after 20 years of debate, it approved a Declaration on the Right of Indigenous Peoples.” It stated that treaties between a nation and its indigenous peoples may be considered matters of international concern.

The Pine Ridge reservation is said to be like most hard-core pockets of poverty with shabby, overcrowded, pest-ridden, dilapidated homes, many of which lack plumbing and other modern conveniences. Unemployment is estimated as high as 75 or 80 percent and 60 percent of the housing stock is substandard.

Bill Means, a native of the Pine Ridge reservation who serves on the International Indian Treaty Council, said, “We hope that the inspector’s visit will expose the atrocious conditions on the reservation that the U.S. allows to happen. The reason for asking the U.N. to help is that we can’t get that type of attention in Washington … We are looking for policy change. Real change. Not just more promises.”

The report to the U.N. on housing conditions in the Pine Ridge reservation will be especially embarrassing because the United States has a record of providing millions of dollars of financial aid to impoverished communities all over the world.

A Brazilian organization reports that Guarani Kaiowá teachers who were missing have now been found dead in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul.

Citizens of the indigenous comunity Po´i Kuê reported that on November 4, the bodies of the missing teachers were found. Olindo Verá and Genivaldo Verá disappeared on October 30 when a group of armed men attacked the community. The community is near the city of Paranhos, in Mato Grosso do Sul.

The two teachers were part of 25 indigenous people who had returned to their ancestral land on October 29. The following day, a group of armed men came by truck and began shooting at the community, harassing them and trying to force them out of the area.

This area is one of the 26 indigenous lands in Mato Grosso do Sul that are supposed to be studied by the Federal Authority of Indigenous Affairs, FUNAI, in order to be demarcated for natives. The task force for this study had been installed in June 2008 already, but political pressure in combination with threats and physical harassment by armed men made their work impossible.

This attack is the latest in a series of violent events reported from Mato Grosso do Sul. One week ago, indigenous Terrena people tried to occupy a part of their traditional land in the municipality of Sidrolândia and were expelled by force and several were injured.

In the beginning of October, a Guarani kaiowá community was evicted from lands they had reoccupied two years ago, and which should have been studied and demarcated by the Funai by court order. Though the area is still to be demarcated, armed guards of the ranch set fire to the village, destroying the housing material and belongings that the community had not managed to move yet.

This report comes from: Paul Wolters / Marcy Picanço Cimi – Assessoria de Comunicação
(61) 2106 1650/ 9979 7059 www.cimi.org.br

An Alaskan newspaper reports that American Native groups are looking for support from international partners.

Tribal Chief Gary Harrison of Chickaloon and other tribal leaders had a chance to meet with Venezuela’s ambassador to the United States last week in Anchorage.

Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez Herrera used his brief visit to Alaska to announce that his country will renew its free home heating fuel program for 2009-2010, and to talk about the strengthened position of indigenous peoples in South American governments. Alaska, rich in oil resources and native peoples, has more in common with Venezuela than any other state, stated a press release issued in advance of the trip.

Speaking at the University of Alaska Anchorage on Friday, Alvarez told audience members it is time to move away from democracy of the elite to a form of democracy that is representative as well as participatory. Its aim, he said, should be to correct inequality and fight social exclusion. World leaders must adjust their vision to a new reality, Alvarez said; indigenous people may be a threat to governments that wish to dominate, but they are no threat to governments that are genuinely interested in finding a new way of dealing with problems.

Alvarez offered two examples. In Bolivia, everyone — regardless of race — is required to learn one of 26 native languages. Education and support are offered to ensure every resident fulfills their obligation to learn one of the languages, he said. And in Venezuela, native Venezuelans have a constitutionally-guaranteed right to select their own members, via their own rules, for representation on the national assembly — Venezuela’s single-chamber congress. The arrangement, Alvarez said, ensures political voice.

Alvarez also noted that his country has made a concerted effort to ensure part of that nation’s oil wealth goes directly to fight poverty — to provide access to food, education and health care. What would happen, he asked, if oil companies across the world used a portion of their profits to fight poverty worldwide?

The Canadian press is reporting that Canada is taking its seal hunt dispute with the European Union to the World Trade Organization.

Trade Minister Stockwell Day announced that Ottawa has formally requested WTO consultations on Europe’s ban of Canadian seal products. This is apparently the first stage in the world body’s dispute-settlement process.

Minister Day says the regulation, adopted by 27 European countries earlier this year, is a violation of the EU’s trade obligations. The ban is to come into force next August.

Animal rights groups have protested the annual hunt, saying it is cruel, poorly monitored and provides little economic benefit. Seal hunters and Canadian authorities say the hunt is sustainable, humane, and provides income for villagers in isolated northern indigenous Inuit communities.

Climate change may be only the latest of many challenges facing Indian country, but it is having devastating effects in parts of the far North. At least one Native village is currently faced with inundation by melting polar ice and is suing the energy companies it says are responsible.

John Echohawk, executive director of the Native American Rights Fund, said the village of Kivalina, Alaska, located on the Chukchi Sea, is suing energy companies for contributing to the public nuisance of global warming it says is going to force the community to relocate to avoid being flooded out.

Indian Country Today reports that the Village’s case may be strengthened by a ruling Sept. 21 from the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. In that case, the federal appeals court upheld the claim by eight states and the City of New York and others in a suit against six power companies which operate fossil fuel-fired power plants in 20 states. The plaintiffs contend that the plants contribute to the damage caused by climate change.

Legal experts warn, however, that utilities in similar cases could return to the lower courts to defend against the charge they are contributing to a public nuisance in the form of global warming, or they could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Too, a district court in California on Sept. 30 dismissed a lawsuit by the Native Village of Kivalina against ExxonMobil Corp. on issues of the litigants’ standing to bring suit and the nature of the political question, according to the Constitutional Accountability Center.

Ice melt in the Arctic is already changing the migration patterns of animals that people hunt, and some parts of the Russian tundra are flooding, said panelist Alexander Arbachakov, a forestry/wildlife expert and member of the Shor tribe of Siberia. Another panelist, Samuel Nnah Ndobe, Center for Environment and Development, Cameroon, said vast forests in the Congo on which indigenous populations and their cultures depend could disappear with climate change.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Tohono O’odham Nation of Arizona have agreed to develop a Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) that will utilize an Enhanced Tribal Card (ETC).

The ETC will verify tribal citizenship and identity for the purpose of entering the United States by land or sea.

“This agreement will strengthen safety along our borders while providing Tohono O’odham members a secure and standardized ID card,” said Secretary Napolitano. “In the months ahead, we will continue to build upon these efforts—from secure identification to preparing for emergencies—with our tribal partners across the country.”

The agreement reflects Secretary Napolitano’s commitment of close coordination with tribal partners across the United States on security initiatives and underscores the mutual commitment of DHS and the Tohono O’odham Nation to enhance border security and combat threats of terrorism and transnational crime through secure identification.

Since January, CBP has also signed agreements with the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho, the Pascua Yaqui of Arizona and the Seneca Nation of New York. CBP is currently working with approximately 25 additional tribes across the country on the ETC initiative.

There are over 28,000 enrolled citizens of the Tohono O’odham Nation. The Nation’s lands contain 75 miles of the international border in south-western Arizona and extend into Mexico, covering an area the size of Connecticut.

Get the entire press release.

A group of Oneida Indian Nation employees is launching a get out the vote effort for next Tuesday’s elections, and they are targeting an Oneida county legislator who has opposed the Nation on numerous issues.

“There has been a lot of opposition in my community against the Nation, which is my employer,” said Kelli Bradley, a legal administrator for the Nation. “I would like to have someone put into office who is willing to work with us and make things better.”

About 5,000 people work for Nation enterprises.

Bill Banning, director of security for the Nation’s Turning Stone Resort and Casino, is involved in the get out and vote effort. The Clinton resident said he believes the Nation is “very misunderstood.”

“We need some legislators who aren’t so easily swayed,” he said, “who are willing to work within the community, and the Nation exists within the community.”

Get the full story.

In American politics (and maybe all politics everywhere), it seems that large amounts of cash and/or a large voting bloc is what gives groups and persons political power and influence.

American Indian tribes possess a potentially large voting bloc but historically Indian people have not voted in high numbers. There are several instances, however, where the Indian vote in a state or federal election has been the deciding factor. In just recent years, the American Indian vote in Washington state was crucial in Maria Cantwell’s defeat the incumbent Senator Gorton by just a few thousand votes, and in reelecting South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson by about 300 votes in 2006. Gubernatorial elections in Alaska in 1995(?) and in New Mexico were also decided by Indian voters.

It looks like the Seneca Nation is taking this lesson to heart in its dispute with New York over taxing cigarette sales on the Seneca Reservation.

The upstate New York press is reporting that the Seneca Nation is expanding its strategy to block tax collection efforts on its cigarette operations by using campaign cash contributions to target state politicians who openly oppose the tribe.

The Senecas are launching efforts to help defeat three Senate Republicans whom they call “hostile to the nation’s interests” for pushing collection of what lawmakers say could be as much as $1 billion a year in cigarette tax revenues on Indian retail sales.

The Senecas last month reportedly adopted a resolution to funnel campaign cash to “any candidate who is supportive of the Nation’s treaty rights” and who plans to challenge any senator on its target list.

A New York newspaper reported the comments of Oneida Indian Nation Representative Ray Halbritter that racism still exists in America in sometimes subtle, and not so subtle, formats.

Halbritter spoke at the annual Freedom Fund dinner hosted by the Utica/Oneida County N.Y. Branch of the NAACP on Sunday night.

He said that while minorities have achieved significant accomplishments — such as inaugurating President Barack Obama — there are more obstacles to overcome.

“Racism and discrimination are not relics of the past,” Halbritter said. “Racism of today has gone underground.”

Richard Brown of Utica, who attended the dinner, called Halbritter’s speech “absolutely amazing,” noting that he was especially impressed with the theme of unity among minorities that Halbritter incorporated into his remarks.