On January 25, 2013, the Oregon Department of Justice announced that a Coos County judge had earlier sentenced a man to five years of probation and fined him $2,000 for intentionally disturbing a Coos County archaeological site.

According to the state:  "David Gieselman repeatedly excavated Native American archaeological objects from a site on the north shore of Coos Bay despite multiple warnings that it violated the law. Coos County Circuit Court Judge Michael Gillespie also ordered Gieselman to forfeit 12 tribal artifacts in his possession and prohibited him from entering any Oregon state park for five years.

. . .

"Because they tell a significant part of Oregon’s story, these resources are important to Oregon’s tribes and all Oregonians," said Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum. "The Oregon Department of Justice is committed to working closely with the tribes to vigorously enforce the laws protecting these sites."

Oregon laws provide that "a person may not excavate, injure, destroy or alter an archaeological site or object or remove an archaeological object located on public or private lands in Oregon unless that activity is authorized by a permit issued in accordance with State law."

Officials of the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians observed Gieselman digging at the site in February and May 2010 and warned him against collecting. That same year, the Oregon State Police searched his house and found 180 artifacts.

Gieselman was spotted again by Oregon State Police at the same site in February 2012 and he had 12 artifacts on his person. 

A 6-person jury found Gieselman guilty of the charges on Jan. 11.

The site was a gathering place for Native Americans where they fished and may have built canoes. Tribal archaeologists and the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department determined that the artifacts collected by Gieselman were traditional tribal tools.

Oregon law puts tight protections on archaeological sites. It is a violation of state law to knowingly dig in an archaeological site even if the landowner has given permission. 

As I have commented before, I'm always bothered by the fact that almost none of these cultural vandals ever receive any jail time.

Read more:  http://www.doj.state.or.us/releases/Pages/2013/rel012513.aspx

One way to protect things you care about is to own them, I guess. American Indian tribes have pushed the federal government to protect many areas in the United States that have sacred meaning to tribes. Such cases have had mixed successes in protecting the areas and allowing Indian access and use. The Devil's Tower or Bear Butte in Wyoming and Natural Rainbow Arch in Arizona are two examples.

Recently, the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe, located on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state, purchased the site of a sacred 150-foot tall rock and 62 acres around the Tamanowas Rock for $600,000. The Tribe will prohibit rock climbing on the rock.

Tribal oral histories regarding the rocks include them being used as outlooks for hunting mastodons and being an anchoring point during floods, or possibly tsunamis. 

Read more in News From Indian Country, Jan. 2013, at 11.

In early January, the United State Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of an Indian Child Welfare Act case. The Act was enacted into law in 1978 based on serious concerns about the overwhelming removal of Indian child from their families and communities based on misguided and ethnocentric views of state agencies about American Indian families and cultures. Congress also broke new ground in the Act and stated that tribal governments had an interest in Indian children and in striving to keep those future citizens of the tribes within their communities and cultures and to be raised by Indian families.

The Court is hearing an appeal by Matt and Melanie Capobianco, from North Carolina, about a 3-year old Cherokee girl they adopted from Oklahoma. The North Carolina courts held that the adoption was in violation of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act and the child had to be returned to her Indian father. 

The Act has only been considered once before by the Supreme Court, in 1989, in MIssissippi Band of Choctaw Indians v. Holyfield, 490 U.S. 30 (1989). In that case, the Court strongly upheld the Act.  

The news continues daily about the Idle No More movement, primarily centered in Canada to resist the Harper government's recent moves.

Here's some commentary from a Huffington blog post.

The author also concludes:  "The stakes couldn't be higher, for Canada and for the world. Much of this uprising began when Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper rammed through Parliament an omnibus bill gutting environmental reviews and protections. He had no choice if he wanted to keep developing Canada's tar sands, because there's no possible way to mine and pipe that sludgy crude without fouling lakes and rivers. (Indeed, a study released a few days ago made clear that carcinogens had now found their way into myriad surrounding lakes)."

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mckibben/idle-no-more–think-occup_b_2448552.html?utm_hp_ref=green

The Canadian Broadcasting Company reported on Dec. 21 on the ongoing work of the new movement called Idle No More.

The CBC called it a movement that is Idle No More.  http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/12/20/f-vp-rice-idle-no-more.html

The CBC claims that thousands of people have rallied in small communities and big cities, and put on impromptu round dances at shopping centers.

The Idle No More movement only began earlier this month.  It was apparently originated by a small group of Canada's First Nations people, almost as an exercise in social media.  It seems similar to the Occupy Wall Street movement that swept the United States and the world last year.

Indigenous Canadians were frustrated with a lack of consultation on treaty problems and unilateral Canadian governmental decisions on natural resources and the environment.  So indigenous peoples are saying they will no longer sit idly by while these things are being pushed through.

Only a handful of First Nations leaders have stepped up to support the movement so far. 

The most prominent is Theresa Spence, the chief of the Attawapiskat in Northern Ontario.  She has been on a hunger strike for over two weeks in the hope of meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to address issues like the extent of poverty in First Nation communities.

Harper hasn't committed to meeting her yet.

This article states that Idle No More has grown from a group of native women in Saskatchewan, mostly lawyers and academics.

According to an article in Indian Country Today, the Idle No More movement has burst onto the political scene since beginning on December 10. The article states that a "second wave of Idle No More protests swept across Canada on Friday December 21, with support events held across the U.S. and as far away as Europe and New Zealand . . . ."

Attawapiskat First Nation Chief Theresa Spence has also entered her 16(?)th day of a hunger strike that she vows to see through to the end.  She is demanding, I believe, that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper meet directly with Indigenous leaders over C-45.

"Thousands of people turned out for social media-organized flash mobs—seemingly spontaneous assemblies in malls and other public places—in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and beyond, and rallies . . . ."

Apparently, the movement began due to the Canadian federal omnibus budget bill C-45, which was passed into law the week of Dec. 22.  But the protests are also aimed at the living and human rights issues that aboriginal peoples are subjected to.

The C-45 law, apparently, reduces the number of referendum votes needed to allow First Nations' reserve lands to be used for development, and guts waterways protection.

The Canadian Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AAND) denied that the government is attempting to extinguish or terminate indigenous rights.  “In fact, it was First Nations themselves who asked for these changes so that they could better use First Nations lands to improve the economies and self-sufficiency of their communities,” Jan O'Driscoll, spokesman for Minister John Duncan, told ICTMN. “There is a misconception that these amendments will allow a First Nation community to 'sell-off' First Nations land. This is false. These amendments are only about leasing and have nothing to do with surrendering reserve lands, and [they] allow First Nations to economically benefit from their lands and to manage them according to their by-laws. Any lands designated will still require chiefs and councils to consult their community members and gain their permission to take advantage of these new provisions.”

Read more: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/article/idle-no-more-sweeps-canada-and-beyond-aboriginals-say-enough-enough-146516

The Cayuga Museum of History and Art, in Auburn, NY, returned 21 objects of spiritual significance to the Onondaga Nation.  The objects are 19 masks and 2 wampum articles associated with burials.  

According to the Nation's press release:  "The 1990 Federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) mandates that federally funded museums return Native American “cultural items” to the lineal descendants or culturally-affiliated groups of the people who created them. . . . Even though the Cayuga Museum is not federally funded and so not mandated by NAGPRA law, it has previously returned items to the custody of many Native American nations throughout the country. The Haudenosaunee items remained in the Museum collection because the Museum’s mission is the history and culture of this region. The nature of the items returned was such that they cannot ethically be displayed in a museum exhibit, so the Cayuga Museum Board of Trustees decided to transfer these sacred Haudenosaunee objects to the care of the Onondaga Nation."

As a friendly gesture, Onondaga Faithkeeper Tony Gonyea made a replica of one of the repatriated objects for the Museum to display and it was presented to the Museum on December 19, 2012t.