Former Osage chief says film will force state to come to terms with its troubled past

By: Carmen Forman 

( Florida Phoenix) – OKLAHOMA CITY — Although many Oklahomans were long ignorant about how white settlers systematically murdered members of the Osage Nation for their oil wealth in the 1920s, “Killers of the Flower Moon” will mark a milestone in how the state addresses its complex and painful history.

The Friday release of the film that shines a spotlight on that dark chapter in Oklahoma will force a deeper conversation about the state coming to terms with its past, said former Osage Nation Principal Chief Jim Gray.

“This history’s been buried just like the Black Wall Street massacre,” he said. “There’s a lot of unfortunate events that have happened in Oklahoma’s past that a lot of people, especially people who live in Oklahoma, just do not know. If it wasn’t for this book and this movie, I don’t think anybody would know this story outside of Osage County.”

“Killers of the Flower Moon,” which will be screened in movie theaters across the world, tells the true story of the Reign of Terror — in which non-Native Oklahomans killed members of the Osage Nation to claim their land and mineral rights that held the key to immense riches.

The Martin Scorsese film is an adaptation of David Grann’s bestselling nonfiction book that taught many Oklahomans about the Osage murders for the first time.

Gray and Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell, formerly the state’s tourism secretary, drew parallels between the release of the film and the state coming to grips with the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Many Oklahomans didn’t know the full story behind the Tulsa Race Massacre or didn’t talk openly about the incident until the city marked the 100th anniversary of the 1921 tragedy in which a white mob destroyed the affluent Black neighborhood of Greenwood in north Tulsa.

The nation turned its attention to Tulsa in 2021 when the city marked the massacre’s centennial with a series of events that included a visit from President Joe Biden.

The nation will once again turn its attention to Oklahoma upon the release of “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

The 2023 film “Killers of the Flower Moon” starring Lily Gladstone, left, and Leonardo DiCaprio depicts the true events of the Osage Reign of Terror in 1920s Oklahoma. (Photo provided)

Addressing history

Pinnell said he grew up five minutes from the site of the massacre but never learned about the incident in school. Now, Oklahoma is addressing that history head on, he said.

There is a growing cultural tourism movement for civil rights trails and other historical sites that tell the unvarnished truth about the past, he said.

“What you saw with telling the whole story of the race massacre is that it opened up opportunities for the businesses all along Main Street in Black Wall Street and the new Greenwood Rising Museum,” Pinnell said. “It’s not just a mural anymore. It has to be more than that. And with “Killers of the Flower Moon,” I would say it has to be more than just a movie and a book.”

Gray, who led the Osage Nation from 2002 to 2010, is the great grandson of Henry Roan, whose murder is addressed in Grann’s book and depicted in the movie.

The Osage Nation has about 24,000 enrolled members. Roughly half of them live in Oklahoma.

Filmed in parts of northeastern Oklahoma, “Killers of the Flower Moon” stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, and Robert De Niro. At least 24 members of the Osage Nation and their supporters were murdered during the Reign of Terror, although the death toll is presumed to be much higher.

Scorsese and others producing the film worked closely with members of the Osage Nation, including Gray, to tell the story of the serial murders in a culturally sensitive manner.

When the movie premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this summer, Osage Nation Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear said his people still suffer from the tragedy “to this very day.” But he said working with Scorsese and his team “restored trust” that the director would tell the story appropriately.

Oklahoma Film and Music Office Director Jeanette Stanton praised the director for working closely with members of the tribe to ensure the film’s authenticity.

“Obviously, it’s a story that needs to be told,” she said. “It’s part of our history.”

Gray said it can be difficult to talk about the Reign of Terror when Oklahoma’s 38 other Native American tribes have similarly horrific stories.

Trail of Tears

The federal government forced the Five Tribes to move from their ancestral homelands to Oklahoma before it became a state through a series of arduous marches known as the Trail of Tears.

“We have to make peace with this past of ours and, in some way, move forward with the knowledge that something’s happened that should never be repeated,” Gray said.

Local historian and attorney Bob Burke said allegations of non-Natives breaking the law to steal money from Indigenous Oklahomans in the years after statehood are not new.

Although not taught in schools, Oklahoma’s history is full of stories about the estates of Native American children being stolen and efforts to appoint guardians for Indigenous adults who became wealthy due to oil, he said.

Kate Barnard, Oklahoma’s first commissioner of charities and corrections and the first woman to win statewide elected office, investigated hundreds of cases of wrongdoing involving appointed guardians who stole from the Native children they were supposed to protect, Burke said.

“This part of Oklahoma history is sad and unsettling,” Burke said. “If the movie causes Oklahomans to pause and reflect upon what happened to our fellow citizens a century ago, that is good.”

This story is republished from the Oklahoma Voice, an affiliate, like the Phoenix, of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

 

Carmen Forman

Carmen covers state government, politics and health care from Oklahoma City. A Norman native, she previously worked in Arizona and Virginia before she began reporting on the Oklahoma Capitol.

 

Via Florida Phoenix

Published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

The legislation, which will allow a five-day public comment period, would remove a tribal ban on same-sex marriage.

By: Kalle Benallie, ICT – J

 

( Source New Mexico ) – The fight to have same-sex marriage recognized by the Navajo Nation continues during Pride Month.

Navajo Nation Council Delegate Seth Damon signed and sponsored legislation that would recognize same-sex marriages within the Navajo Nation during the Navajo Nation Pride opening ceremony on June 23.

“The prohibition against same-sex marriages does not uniformly welcome or support the well-being of all Diné,” Damon said. “The purpose of the legislation I’m sponsoring is to ensure that all Diné are welcome within the four sacred mountains and to recognize all marriages within the Navajo Nation.”

The legislation also amends other provisions within the Navajo Nation Code to conform with this repeal, but the traditional Navajo wedding ceremony involving a man and woman shall remain unchanged.

Since 2005, same-sex marriages have been prohibited when the Navajo council overwhelmingly voted to pass the Diné Marriage Act, even a second time to override a presidential veto of the act.

At the time, same-sex marriages were prohibited throughout the country, although there was a growing sentiment to legalize marriages for all. This led to a number of regional ordinances designed to define marriage as between one man and one woman. President George W. Bush would even lean on the definition during his re-election campaign in 2004.

This spurred the Navajo council to pass its Dinė Marriage Act, which has remained intact, even after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015.

“We feel it’s in the best interest of the Navajo Nation to repeal Title 9 so that everyone can enjoy the full benefits of legal recognition of their marriages within the Navajo Nation, whether our relatives are heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transgender, non-gender specific, two-spirit, or Nádleehí,” Damon said in a press release.

However, some progress has been made in recognizing the tribe’s LGBTQ+ citizens with the 24th Navajo Nation Council passing a resolution in 2020 to establish Diné Pride Week to be held every third week in June to protect Navajo Nation citizens from discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and marital status among other things.

“We see ourselves as sacred human beings,” Alray Nelson, Diné PRIDE co-founder and executive director, said. “And with that knowledge, we teach every LGBTQ young person not only is the Navajo Nation on the right side of history, but its leaders also support our community.”

Navajo Nation Council Delegate Seth Damon (far right) sponsored and signed Legislation 0139-23, which aims to repeal Title 9 of the Navajo Nation Code to recognize same-sex marriages. Damon is joined by former 24th Council Delegate Eugene Tso (left). (Photo courtesy of Navajo Nation Council Communications)

Eugene Tso, a former Navajo Nation Council delegate, joined Damon at the signing ceremony. He introduced similar bills in June 2022 and in March 2022. The March bill was voted down in its early committee meetings, ultimately never passing.

“We live with people we love. There should be no discussion about it when this legislation comes to the floor,” Tso said in a statement. “Why would you debate it? This is who we are. We’re Diné.”

Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren was in attendance at the legislation signing where along with Navajo Nation Vice President Richelle Montoya and Navajo Nation Council Speaker Crystalyne Curley became the first Navajo leaders to proclaim June 18-25 as Navajo Nation Pride Week.

He acknowledged what Damon introduced and said “…it will be up to everyone here to submit their comments for its passage.”

The legislation began its five-day public comment period on June 23 and will end before tribal council committees will hear it on June 29. Comments can be emailed or mailed. More information is here.

Kalle Benallie, ICT

Kalle Benallie, Navajo, is a reporter-producer at Indian Country Today’s Phoenix bureau. Follow her on Twitter: @kallebenallie or email her at kbenallie@indiancountrytoday.com. Benallie was once the opening act for a Cirque Du Soleil show in Las Vegas.

Via Source New Mexico

Published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

By Nick Engelfried | –

Climate protesters gathered at the State Capitol in Portland, Oregon in 2019 to protest the later canceled Jordan Cove LNG export terminal. (Facebook/Rogue Climate)

( Waging Nonviolence ) – On Monday, people across the Pacific Northwest convened online and at two in-person gatherings for a “people’s hearing” on what has become the latest front in the resistance to large fossil fuel projects in the region: a proposed massive capacity expansion of the Gas Transmission Northwest, or GTN, pipeline. Operated by Canadian corporation TC Energy, GTN connects to natural gas fracking fields in British Columbia and stretches across 1,354 miles of Idaho, Washington and Oregon. It is already one of the largest existing fossil fuel pipelines in the region. However, a new proposal called GTN Xpress would see the volume of gas flowing through GTN expand dramatically by 150 million cubic feet per day, an amount roughly equivalent to 26,000 barrels of oil.

“The same company that’s behind the Keystone and Keystone XL pipelines now wants to use GTN Xpress to increase its transport of fracked gas into the Pacific Northwest,” said Audrey Leonard of Columbia Riverkeeper at the hearing. “We’re fighting this dangerous proposal because our climate cannot afford to lock in more fossil fuels.”

Activists and concerned members of the public assembled for the hearing at in-person locations in Phoenix, Oregon and Sandpoint, Idaho, or tuned in via Zoom to register their concerns. Comments recorded from the event will be delivered to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, which is soon expected to make a decision on whether or not GTN Xpress can move forward. The people’s hearing — convened in response to the fact that FERC has declined to hold any official public hearings on GTN in the Northwest — put a spotlight on how energy companies are trying to get around grassroots opposition to fossil fuels in the region and how activists are fighting back.

In fact, the natural gas industry’s focus on expanding the capacity of the existing GTN pipeline can in many ways be seen as a response to activists’ successful efforts to oppose new fossil fuel infrastructure in the region. Since the beginning of last decade, climate groups, Indigenous nations and their allies have defeated over 20 proposed new fossil fuel transportation projects in the Northwest, including coal and oil export terminals, natural gas pipelines and methanol plants.

The efforts of climate activists have contributed to establishing Oregon and Washington State’s reputations as places where new climate-wrecking projects will be challenged through the official permitting process, lawsuits and even with direct action. That development is one of the great climate success stories to come out of the region in recent years — however, it is now provoking a new response from industry, as companies like TC Energy shift their focus to trying to expand existing projects.

A new kind of pipeline fight

“Unlike with new pipeline projects, GTN Xpress doesn’t need many permits from state or local government,” said Maig Tinnin of Rogue Climate in Southern Oregon. “The decision on permitting is really up to FERC, which has a history of rubber-stamping fossil fuel projects. That makes this a different kind of animal from other pipeline fights we’ve been part of.”

Although GTN Xpress wouldn’t require laying any new pipe, the impacts for communities along the pipeline route would still be profound. The proposed expansion involves building a new gas compressor station in northern Oregon and upgrading existing stations in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. This would increase the volume of gas TC Energy can send through the pipeline, leading to greater potential for leaks and other accidents. In a worst-case scenario, a major gas explosion along the pipeline route could cause widespread destruction in areas ill-equipped to respond to such an emergency.

“GTN passes very near to residential areas and tourist attractions in Idaho,” said Helen Yost, an organizer with Wild Idaho Rising Tide. “In the community of Sandpoint, it goes directly under the parking lot at the base of the popular Schweitzer Ski Resort. This project is a dire threat to the Idaho tourism and recreation industries if anything goes wrong.”

Then there is the climate impact of transporting and burning so much extra gas, a process expected to result in 3.47 million metric tons of new carbon emissions per year, equivalent to adding 754,000 new cars to the roads. It is this danger to the climate, more than anything, that has galvanized opposition to GTN Xpress — not only from grassroots organizations but from top elected officials in a region that is doing more than almost any in the country to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels.

A region transitioning to renewables

“All along the pipeline route, our Northwest communities are already seeing the impacts of climate change,” Tinnin said. “The climate crisis is here now, and we’re trying to make the changes needed to prevent it from getting worse. GTN Xpress would undermine those efforts.”

Tinnin was inspired to get involved in climate organizing after devastating wildfires swept through Southern Oregon in 2020, destroying more than 2,300 homes and forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate. In addition to longer, more intense fire seasons, the Northwest has suffered in recent years from record-smashing heat waves and reduced snowpack that contributes to lower water flow in streams used by salmon. For over a decade, activists have fought back by working to stop new fossil fuel projects and close existing coal-fired power plants. More recently, these efforts have been bolstered by a raft of groundbreaking climate policies enacted by state and local government decision makers.

In 2019, Washington’s legislature passed what was at the time one of the strongest renewable energy laws in the country, mandating electric utilities source 100 percent of their energy from carbon-free sources by 2045. In 2021, Oregon passed its own, even more ambitious law requiring all renewable electricity by 2040. Both states have taken a variety of other steps to curb their carbon emissions, including incentives for home renewable energy installations, efficiency standards for buildings and appliances and regulations to encourage the shift to electric vehicles.

Last November, the Washington State Building Code Council passed one of the nation’s strictest regulations to prevent natural gas hookups in new residential buildings, a move coming on the heels of similar standards for commercial structures. If implemented as planned, these policies will result in dramatically reduced demand for fossil fuels, including natural gas, over the next couple of decades.

Oregon and Washington policymakers’ push for renewable energy also aligns with the goals of many Indigenous governments. For example, the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission has announced its own vision for a renewable energy future in the region and opposes the GTN expansion. “This project threatens our way of life,” said Alysia Aguilar Littleleaf of Littleleaf Guides, an Indigenous-owned flyfishing guiding business on the Warm Spring Reservation. “Our guide service allows us to continue living off the land and sustain ourselves as Indigenous tribal members. GTN Xpress puts that in danger.”

Such concerns have prompted high-ranking elected officials to raise objections to the pipeline expansion. Last summer, the state attorneys general of Oregon, Washington and California filed a motion requesting FERC deny GTN Express’ permit, arguing the project’s draft environmental impact statement fails to adequately consider climate impacts and a lack of public need for the project. Both of Oregon’s U.S. senators, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, also oppose GTN Xpress.

Yet, despite such wide-ranging opposition, the fate of efforts to stop the pipeline expansion remains unclear. This underscores the difficulties involved for grassroots organizations seeking to pressure a remote federal agency with little built-in accountability to the broader public.

Growing the fossil fuel resistance

“There are challenges involved in grassroots organizations in the Northwest trying to interact meaningfully with federal agencies based on the other side of the country,” said Yost of Wild Idaho Rising Tide. “Still, we believe FERC has a responsibility to consider whether the GTN expansion and its global impacts are truly in the public interest.”

The controversy over GTN is not the first time Northwest climate activists have struggled to influence FERC, an agency many climate groups say is beholden to fossil fuel interests. In 2020, the agency approved the Jordan Cove LNG export terminal in Southern Oregon, which climate groups had been fighting for more than a decade. In a major climate victory, Jordan Cove’s developer later withdrew its permit application after failing to obtain key approvals from Oregon state agencies. However, the fact that states have little authority to stop GTN’s expansion gives climate groups and their allies more limited options for stopping the project.

Even so, FERC’s soon-to-be-announced decision on GTN Xpress is unlikely to be the last word on the project, regardless of the outcome. “Thousands of people have already weighed in to FERC by signing petitions, submitting comments and calling on the agency to do its job by listening to Northwest communities,” said Dan Serres of Columbia Riverkeeper, an organization that has played a key role in the regional fossil fuel resistance. “All along the pipeline route we’re raising the alarm about GTN Xpress, and we’re not going to stop.”

Exactly what the next stage of the resistance to GTN Xpress looks like remains to be seen. However, developers of other major fossil fuel projects in the Pacific Northwest have been met with large protests and even civil disobedience. Climate groups can also petition FERC for a rehearing or challenge the pipeline expansion in court, which would further delay work on the project and allow additional time for organizing.

“At a time when our region is moving away from fossil fuels, the gas industry is trying to push its stranded industry on the Northwest with GTN Xpress,” Yost said. “If FERC rubber stamps this project, we’ll keep fighting it.”

Correction 2/18/2023: Audrey Leonard is with Columbia Riverkeeper, not Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Nick Engelfried is an environmental writer, educator, and activist living in the Pacific Northwest. He is the author of Movement Makers: How Young Activists Upended the Politics of Climate Change.

Via Waging Nonviolence

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The popular story about Thanksgiving is an environmental parable that we would do well to remember today. It was a harvest festival in 1621, participated in by the 50 (out of 100) survivors at Plymouth Plantation and 90 members of the Wampanoag tribal confederation. A Patuxet, Tisquantum (known as Squanto) served as an interpreter.He had been in British captivity more than once, and had learned some English. He returned from Europe in 1619 after having escaped, only to find that smallpox had wiped out his village. He shared with the undocumented aliens arriving in Wampanoag territory the local techniques of fishing and corn farming. In some subsequent years there were droughts that threatened the colony.

The pilgrims faced a harsher climate than had Leif Erikson when he came to North America during the European medieval warming period. From 1550 to 1850, temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere fell by an average of about 1.3 degrees F (a little less than 1 degree C.). This fall in temperature, caused by low volcanic activity in those centuries and sometimes by a lack of sunspots, was exacerbated in the 1500s and 1600s by a slight decrease in atmospheric carbon of 6 to 10 parts per million. Stanford University geochemist Richard Nevle has argued that the great die-off of Native Americans, who were exposed to European diseases for which they had no antibodies, contributed to this decrease of carbon dioxide and fall in temperature. They ceased burning trees for fuel, and the forests recovered, with millions of new trees absorbing CO2. Science News explains: “By the end of the 15th century, between 40 million and 100 million people are thought to have been living in the Americas. Many of them burned trees to make room for crops, leaving behind charcoal deposits that have been found in the soils of Mexico, Nicaragua and other countries.” About 500 years ago, this charcoal accumulation plummeted as the people themselves disappeared. Smallpox, diphtheria and other diseases from Europe ultimately wiped out as much as 90 percent of the indigenous population. That is, the cold winters that challenged the English immigrants (and which they played down in their letters back home) had in part been caused by the very European influx of which they were a part!

Just as the pilgrims got through the grim winters of the Little Ice Age in the North Atlantic by listening to the advice of the Wampanoag, so we would do well to heed those indigenous voices speaking with wisdom about our own climate crisis.

Deb Haaland, our first indigenous Secretary of the Interior, said in an interview with ABC News Live: “I can’t speak for every tribe or even my tribe, but I can make sure that tribal leaders have a seat at the table . . . Climate change is bearing down upon us, that indigenous knowledge about our natural world will be extremely valuable and important to all of us.”

She added, “Indian tribes have been on this continent for millennia, for tens of thousands of years . . . They know how to take care of the land … that’s knowledge that’s been passed down for generations and generations.”

Haaland had been a Congressional representative from New Mexico, and is from the Laguna Pueblo tribe, who speak the Keresan language– an isolate unrelated to any other known language. This rareness is likely a sign of its antiquity.

Haaland’s Department of the Interior is facing a severe challenge in helping people in the West cope with a mega-drought that has afflicted the US Southwest for two decades. While you would expect a few dry spells time to time in the more arid areas of the Southwest, there would not be a severe mega-drought if it had not been for humans burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon dioxide, a deadly heat-trapping gas, into the atmosphere.

Haaland said in a speech in Denver, “Drought doesn’t just impact one community. It affects all of us, from farmers and ranchers to city dwellers and Indian tribes . . . We all have a role to use water wisely, manage our resources with every community in mind, work collaboratively and respect each other during this challenging time.”

She has taken steps to increase the amount of renewable energy produced on public land in the Southwest. She is a big booster of solar energy in particular.

Like the Wampanoag wisdom that got the Pilgrims through the frigid New England winter, so Haaland and other Native voices can be our salvation.

Haaland pledged a whole-government approach to addressing the climate crisis and established a task force to coordinate climate responses throughout the Department of the Interior.

The reference was a relatively old one. It was attributed to former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during an interview in his office in Ramallah where he was forcefully confined and surrounded by the Israeli military that had re-invaded the populous Palestinian city. The head of the PLO and president of the Palestinian Authority said that, despite Israel’s attempt to eradicate the Palestinian people, they remain steadfast. “[Israel had] failed to wipe us out,” said Arafat. “We are not Red Indians.”

Although Arafat’s intention was not to degrade or insult Native American communities, the statement, often taken out of context, hardly reflects the deep solidarity between Palestinians and national liberation struggles, including indigenous struggles around the world. Ironically, Arafat, more than any Palestinian leader, forged ties with numerous communities in the Global South and around the world. A generation of activists linked Arafat to their initial awareness, then involvement in, Palestine solidarity movements.

What surprised me is that the comment about Palestinians not being “Red Indians” in Istanbul was quoted repeatedly and, occasionally, solicited applause from the audience. This only stopped when the convener of the conference, a well-regarded Palestinian professor, declared frustratingly, “They are neither ‘red’ nor Indian.” Indeed, they are not. Actually, they are the natural allies of the Palestinian people, like numerous indigenous communities, who have actively supported their struggle for freedom.

Via Pixabay.

The seemingly simple incident or poor choice of words, however, represents a much greater challenge facing Palestinians as they attempt to reanimate a new discourse on Palestinian liberation that is no longer hostage to the self-serving language of the PA elites in Ramallah.

For several years, a new generation of Palestinians has been fighting on two different fronts: against Israel’s military occupation and apartheid, on the one hand, and PA repression on the other. For this generation to succeed in reclaiming the struggle for justice, they must also reclaim a unifying discourse, not only to reconnect their own fragmented communities throughout historic Palestine, but also to re-establish solidarity lines of communication across the globe.

I say “re-establish”, because Palestine was a common denominator among many national and indigenous struggles in the Global South. This was not a random outcome. Throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s, fierce wars of liberation were fought across continents, leading in most cases to the defeat of traditional colonial powers and, in the likes of Cuba, Vietnam and Algeria, to true decolonisation. With Palestine being a compounded case of western imperialism and Zionist settler-colonialism, the Palestinian cause was embraced by numerous national struggles. It was, and remains, a raw example of western-supported ethnic cleansing, genocide, apartheid and hypocrisy, as well as awe-inspiring indigenous resistance.

PLO factions, intellectuals and activists were known and respected worldwide as ambassadors of the Palestinian cause. Three years after his assassination by the Israeli spy agency Mossad in a Beirut car bombing, Palestinian novelist Ghassan Kanafani was awarded posthumously the Annual Lotus Prize for Literature by the Union of Asian and African Writers as a delineation of the common struggle between peoples of both continents. Palestine has not only served as a physical connection between Asia and Africa, but also as an intellectual and solidarity connection.

Arab countries which also fought their own painful but heroic national liberation wars played a major role in the centrality of Palestine in the political discourses of African and Asian countries. Many non-Arab countries supported collective Arab causes, especially Palestine, at the UN; pushed for the isolation of Israel and backed Arab boycotts; and even hosted PLO offices and fighters. When Arab governments began changing their political priorities, these nations, sadly but unsurprisingly, followed suit.

The massive geopolitical changes after the Cold War, in favour of the US-led Western camp, had a profound and negative impact on Palestine’s relations with the Arab states and the rest of the world. It also divided the Palestinians, localising the Palestinian struggle in a process that seemed to be determined and defined mostly by Israel alone. Gaza was placed under a seemingly permanent siege; the West Bank was splintered by numerous illegal Jewish settlements, the apartheid wall and military checkpoints; Jerusalem was swallowed whole; and Palestinians in Israel became victims of a police state that defines itself primarily on racial grounds.

Abandoned by the world and their own leadership, oppressed by Israel and bewildered by remarkable events beyond their control, some Palestinians turned against one another. This was the age of factionalism. However, Palestinian factionalism is bigger than Fatah and Hamas, Ramallah and Gaza. Equally dangerous to the self-serving politics are the numerous provisional discourses that it espoused, neither governed by any collective strategy nor an inclusive national narrative.

When the PLO was ousted from Lebanon following the Israeli invasion and deadly war in the 1980s, the nature of the Palestinian struggle was transformed. Headquartered in Tunisia, the PLO was no longer able to present itself as a leader of a liberation movement in any practical sense. The Oslo Accords of 1993 resulted from this political exile and subsequent marginalisation. It also accentuated an existing trend where an actual war of liberation turned into a corporate form of liberation, hunger for funds, false status and, worse, a negotiated surrender.

This much is now familiar and acknowledged by many Palestinians. Less discussed, however, is that nearly forty years of this process has left Palestinians with a different political discourse than that which existed for decades prior to Oslo.

Undoubtedly, Palestinians are aware of the need for a new liberation — and liberated — language. This is not an easy task, nor is it a randomly generated process. The indoctrination that resulted from the Oslo culture, the factional language, the provincial political discourse of various Palestinian communities, left Palestinians with limited tools through which to express the priorities of the new era. Unity is not a political document. Neither is international solidarity. It is a process that is shaped by a language which should be spoken collectively, relentlessly and boldly. In this new language, Palestinians are Native Americans, not “Red Indians”; not because of their supposed propensity to be “wiped out”, but in their pride, resilience and continued quest for equality and justice.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

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(Cronkite News ) – PHOENIX – For many years, Tsegi Canyon on the Navajo Nation struggled: Its dry walls and streambanks were eroding, exposing crumbling red soil to the desert sky. Its springs were drying up; native plants were few and far between on the canyon floor, often replaced by invasive weeds.

This land, beautiful and remote, was tired, said Nicholas Chischilly, a wildlife technician with the Navajo Nation Climate Change Program, which operates under the tribe’s Department of Fish and Wildlife.

There’s a lot of history there, he said, and secluded Tsegi Canyon, – 13 miles from Kayenta near the Navajo National Monument – is one of the few places on the reservation where water flows year round.

Chischilly recalls hearing elders tell stories about days long past, when knee-high grass kept sheep and cattle healthy and fat across the vast nation.

Last summer, officials with the Resources and Development Committee of the 24th Navajo Nation Council, Bureau of Indian Affairs staff and community members toured the Navajo Nation looking at the impact of drought and overgrazing on the land. (Photo courtesy of Nicholas Chischilly)

But in recent years, he said, entering Tsegi Canyon was like going into another world.

“The stream banks were collapsing. Plant life was barely holding on. The families who live there told us about thousand-pound sections of cliff that fell off,” Chischilly said. “We’ve also heard that the canyon has been eroding so fast that a lot of people thought that if their elders were to come back to the area, they would not recognize it.”

But in a place where “the land makes the people,” that is changing despite a host of challenges, from language barriers to decades of broken promises.

Starting in 2018, the exhausted canyon was finally allowed to rest, and a pilot project by Fred Phillips Consulting started restoration work. Fences were erected and livestock relocated. Native plants were reintroduced to restore the riparian area.

Two years later, Fred Phillips Consulting and volunteers from the Navajo Nation Climate Change Program put up more fencing, and they built Zuni bowls and employed other water management techniques to redirect and preserve streamflow.

Volunteers from the Navajo Nation Climate Change Program and a consulting firm put up fences and built Zuni bowls like this one in Tsegi Canyon to help improve water management in the canyon. (Photo courtesy of Nicholas Chischilly)

Tsegi Canyon is just one example of how the Navajo Nation is trying to restore the land and address a climate that’s relentlessly heating up and drying out the planet.

Such efforts can be complicated given the intersection of Indigenous knowledge, long-held traditions and a small window of time to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change.

Yet those traditional values and working with indigenous knowledge are a crucial part of limiting climate change, according to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its latest assessments of the world’s climate.

On the Navajo Nation, efforts to restore Tsegi Canyon are an example of how the people can repair the land but also prepare for climate change.

“Cattle occasionally break in because they see how good the grasses are and how much healthier the streamflow is,” Chischilly said. “Our ecological restoration work has enabled the land to heal. It’s a testament to giving caring Mother Nature a chance and to rebound if you give her enough time and resources.”

It’s hard to piece together a timeline of how long the land in Tsegi Canyon has struggled, Chischilly said, but Navajo elders are the best recordkeepers in such issues.

“They are the people with the most useful and available resources in terms of knowing what happens to the land because many of them are farmers and ranchers,” Chischilly said. “So just based on that knowledge, it has been the last 30 to 40 years that have most negatively affected the canyon.”

Many Navajo elders have the perspective that climate change is a natural cycle, said Keith Howard, another wildlife technician with the tribal Climate Change Program.

“We’ve also heard that the canyon has been eroding so fast that a lot of people thought that if their elders were to come back to the area, they would not recognize it.”

-Nicholas Chischilly, Navajo Nation Climate Change Program wildlife technician

“When we tell the story of the Navajo Nation, there were times where the Earth was destroyed by fire or water, but it rejuvenated itself,” Howard said. “The animals and people returned. But we’re trying to convey that because Earth’s population is growing so big and we are consuming so much energy, the human process has outstripped the natural process.”

Chischilly and Howard stress that it’s a challenge to communicate the idea of rapidly accelerating climate change while helping people maintain their livelihoods, including ranching, while the megadrought continues.

“It’s a combination of cultural issues,” Chischilly said. “It’s a combination of traditional values, a combination of different people’s perspectives, Navajo and non-native. And so it gets complicated quickly.”

For decades, the Navajo Nation has dealt with severe drought and the ongoing threat of wildfires. With each passing year, Chischilly said, these conditions are getting worse.

“We get verbal accounts of these things going on, like wildlife migrations out of drought-stricken areas,” he said. “We’re also seeing a lot of young pine and juniper tree die-offs in our nation.”

When Navajo work the land, it can get emotional quickly, Chischilly said, because they don’t separate themselves from Nahasdzáán – Mother Earth.

“Growing up in a drought-stricken environment, where your parents and grandparents are concerned about feeding livestock, hauling water, and you are introduced to this at a young age, there is little room to be excited or happy,” he said. “It wears on the body and soul.”

Chischilly said the Navajo Nation Climate Change Program aims to help with this. “We are trying to spark a lot of interest in terms of thinking and acting on climate change differently.”

Global conversations happening locally

The Navajo Nation, like many communities across the globe, is having conversations about how to adapt to climate change and how to stave off some of the worst effects of extreme conditions.

These conversations are in line with the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment, which confirms that more extreme weather events are ahead if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t drastically reduced.

From 2010 to 2019, average annual greenhouse gas emissions were at their highest level in human history, according to the IPCC report.

Limiting temperature rise to 2.7 degree Fahrenheit is nearly impossible, report authors say, unless greenhouse gas emissions peak before 2025 and emissions are cut by 43% by 2030.

If that isn’t achieved, then it will be impossible to go back, said Kathy Jacobs, who directs the Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions at University of Arizona. Cronkite News talked with Jacobs in February after the first report came out.

The IPCC assessment includes solutions and adaptation strategies for climate change. But it also encourages the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge and lived experiences into the efforts.

“But if you’re trying to bring the knowledge of the ancestors and the people who have known this land to bear on this topic, while the species that they know may be leaving, that’s a pretty big challenge,” Jacobs said.

A series of turquoise signs along southbound U.S. 89 near Tuba City proclaims the Navajo Nation’s resiliency. “Resiliency is who we are. But we also need to reclaim it,” said Keith Howard, a wildlife technician with the tribal Climate Change Program. (File photo by Sierra Alvarez/Cronkite News)

The toll of climate change

Indigenous people across the globe are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change, despite contributing very little to the emissions that cause some of its most extreme effects, Jacobs said.

The effects of climate change are being felt in different ways across the 27,673 square mile Navajo Nation, which includes 110 chapters – each one unique, Chischilly said.

“A lot of people are becoming aware of climate change,” he said, “but it’s so unique here on the reservation because every community has their different issues. In one area, it would be totally devastated by drought and overgrazing. Other areas in the higher elevations are experiencing trees dying off.”

The Navajo Nation released its first climate adaptation plan in 2018, after long talks with elders and community members to identify such priorities as addressing drought, pollution and overgrazing.

For the past several years, Howard said, the Navajo Nation Climate Change Program has tried to get on the same page as members about climate change, especially elders and some of the older generations, by bringing awareness about the issue. This process is complicated, especially because many elders only speak Navajo.

“The concept of climate change, ecological restoration and so forth is hard to communicate, especially when there’s a language barrier,” Howard said. “Many of the concepts, like carbon footprints and greenhouse gasses, are not easily translated into the Dinè Navajo language.”

Trust building is at the core of much of the climate program’s work.

“A lot of these new techniques, even though they might be relatively low technology and low cost, like just simple erosion control, require buy-in from communities and the acceptance that these techniques work before we can start any implementation at all,” Chischilly said.

But despite the sensitivity and challenges, progress is being made.

Drought tour leads to progress

In 2019, Chischilly and Howard began visiting several chapters across the reservation to discuss and educate community members about the impacts of climate change.

They had reached a handful before the COVID-19 pandemic set in, and the Navajo Nation closed. Now, Chischilly said, the tribe is taking its first steps toward restoration projects, based on feedback from a reservation tour last July by Navajo resource and development officials to gauge the effects of drought and overgrazing.

One of the stops was Tsegi Canyon, where the positive impacts of ecological restoration techniques were demonstrated.

“We wanted to educate people about climate change with this tour, but we also wanted to show people tools they can use to adapt,” Chischilly said.

“Mother Earth is sick and she needs healing.”

-Keith Howard, Climate Change Program wildlife technician

But he and Howard said uneasiness remains between the calls from scientists to take immediate action on climate change and the historical trauma Native people have suffered when the government dictates how their lands should be used.

“Not just the Navajo Nation, but native people in general across the United States, we all suffer from transgenerational trauma,” Howard said. “In the 1930s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs forcibly removed livestock from our nation. This really impacted our people because that was our way of life. Our elders and our people loved their herds of sheep, cows and horses.”

This history, Howard said, makes it hard to bring up the Western scientific concept of a “point of no return” requiring immediate action.

“Many people still carry that experience and trauma with them,” he said.

Time, tradition and trust

But Chischilly said the idea of a “point of no return” is making some Navajos more aware of climate change.

“It’s difficult to communicate that concept when our lifestyles are at our own pace,” Chischilly said. “We have a slower way on the reservation because it’s hard to get that immediate buy-in and also immediate implementation, because sometimes that’s just not how it works. A lot of people need that trust first.”

“When there’s no trust and you try to come into a community right off the bat, it’s like, ‘I don’t really know you, I don’t trust you yet. Explain this to me.’”

When it comes to making decisions about the environment, Chischilly and Howard said choices around climate change on the Navajo Nation can be extremely personal, especially for elders.

“This involves the heart, our lifestyles and the way we choose to live,” Chischilly said. “The land makes the people. That’s where we get our identity from as a people. It’s born through the environment we live in, the Southwest. So it’s not only scientific in talking about the land, it’s also talking about emotion, spirituality and faith.”

Howard noted a spiritual aspect to addressing climate change. Although it’s considered controversial by some Navajo people, he said reintroducing songs, prayers and rituals to reconnect with the Earth, especially among younger generations, will play a large part in addressing climate change in the future.

“Mother Earth is sick and she needs healing,” Howard said. “And that healing comes from all these prayers and songs, in addition to our resilience. This word always comes up with Indigenous people who heal from these issues, because climate issues are a sickness. Everything is interconnected. We must treat that healing process as a duty. Resiliency is who we are. But we also need to reclaim it.”

Despite the challenges and changes ahead, Howard and Chischilly said they have faith that the Navajo Nation will get through this alongside Indigenous people across the globe through resilience, reconciliation and self-determination.

“A lot of sacrifices will have to be made from ourselves and from our people, but we will be able to address these issues,” Chischilly said. “We will find ways to bring our land back in as a self-sustainable ecological system on the Navajo Nation.”

Fiona L.Q. Flaherty

News Reporter, Phoenix

Fiona L.Q. Flaherty expects to graduate in May 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and minors in sustainability and Italian. Flaherty, who has interned with NASA and the Environmental Working Group, is working for the Phoenix news bureau.

Via Cronkite News

( Cronkite News) – WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden restored Bears Ears National Monument to its previous 1.36 million-acres footprint Friday, reversing a Trump-era decision to cut as much as 85% of the southern Utah site valued for its environmental, archeological and tribal treasures.

Bears Ears was one of three national monuments cut by former President Donald Trump that were restored by Biden, along with the 1.87 million acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah and the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument off the coast of New England.

Photo by Josh Ewing/ Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition.

The move was welcomed by environmental and tribal leaders who were on hand for Friday’s signing of the proclamations restoring the public lands, with one calling the restoration of Bears Ears “a victory for our people, our ancestors, and future generations.”

“It’s time to put Trump’s cynical actions in the rearview mirror, restore rightful protections, and restart the Bears Ears co-management arrangement with the tribes who have held this place sacred since time immemorial,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Tucson, in a prepared statement.

But Utah officials, who had criticized former President Barack Obama’s decision to create the Bears Ears monument in 2016, were not pleased.

“These decisions clearly demonstrate the administration’s unwillingness to collaborate with and listen to those most impacted by their decisions,” Utah Gov. Spencer J. Cox said in a written statement Thursday.

That statement, which was also signed by the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the Senate president and House speaker, charged that Biden’s proclamation “fails to provide certainty as well as the funding for law enforcement, research, and other protections which the monuments need and which only Congressional action can offer.”

Bears Ears was created by Obama with a stroke of the pen under the Antiquities Act, a law that allows a president to unilaterally create monuments to protect cultural and natural resources. Obama used the act more than any other president, invoking it 34 times to create 29 new monuments and enlarge five others during his term.

The monuments were an early target for Trump, who ordered a review just months into his term in 2017 and signed a proclamation before the end of that year that slashed Bears Ears from roughly 1.35 million acres to about 200,000. The reduction was welcomed by critics like then-Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, who said at the time that the Antiquities Act has “no rules, there is no process in the law for either creation or readjustments, and that’s part of the problem.”

But Biden used the same act Friday to reverse Trump’s decision. Biden’s proclamation will not only bring back the boundaries established by Obama in 2016, but will add protections for 11,200 acres that Trump identified in 2017, for a total protected area of 1.36 million acres.

“The truth is that national monuments and parks are part of … our identity as a people,” Biden said. “They are more than natural wonders, they’re the birthright we passed from generation to generation, a birthright of every American. Preserving them is the fulfillment of a promise to our children.”

Biden on Friday recalled a promise he made while on the campaign trail, to a young girl who asked him to protect the monument as she handed him what he described as a pair of bear’s ears.

“This may be the easiest promise I’ve made in a long time,” Biden said.

Tribal, state and federal leaders who joined Biden at the White House signing ceremony included Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez, who said he “wholeheartedly supports” the expansion.

“This historic signing of the proclamation and restoration of the Bears Ears National Monument is a victory for our people, our ancestors, and future generations,” Nez said. “Bears Ears is home to many of our historical and cultural sites, plants, water, traditional medicines, and teachings for our people.”

Environmental and tribal groups hoped to have 1.9 million acres around Bears Ears declared a national monument. President Joe Biden designated 1.36 million acres, restoring it to its former size. (Photo by Tim D. Peterson Jr./Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition)

Hopi Chairman Timothy Nuvangyaoma told Indian Country Today that the president had promised to “listen to Native America and Biden’s actions does prove that it is happening.”

“We do need to protect these sacred sites that not only the Hopi tribe but other tribes find significant within their history,” said Nuvangyaoma, who was also at the signing ceremony.

Grijalva and Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Phoenix, had written Biden about Bears Ears in April, urging him to “strongly consider expanding the boundaries of the monument to the full 1.9 million acres proposed by the Native American Tribes whose ancestral lands the monument aims to protect.”

While the expanded monument falls short of that goal, it was still welcomed by Grijalva as proof of “this administration’s commitment to conserving our public lands and respecting the voices of Indigenous Peoples.”

Randi Spivak, director of the public lands program at the Center for Biological Diversity, called the restoration of the monuments “truly reason to celebrate,”

“This shows Biden understands the importance of these cultural and ecological treasures and the need to act boldly to protect our natural world,” said Spivak, who hopes to see the administration take the next step.

“Now Biden must quickly deliver on his pledge to protect 30% of our nation’s lands and waters by 2030, before other magnificent places are plundered by extractive industries,” she said.

Diannie Chavez is a visual journalist completing her bachelor’s degree in journalism. Chavez, who interned at Phoenix Magazine, is a visual reporter for the D.C. News Bureau.

Via Cronkite News

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

ABC4 Utah: “Utah Native Americans react to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments restoration”

“the generally accepted understanding is that 12-25% of “Western” medicine is derived or based on plant molecules/chemical backbones…It depends who’s talking and what their agenda is. And that is JUST in Western medicine. There are other, much older and empirically-based medicinal systems out there that are incredibly effective, but most U.S. citizens are unaware or only dimly, of them. Not only is the loss of language directly linked to knowledge loss and potential medical/economic loss, but think of all of the practical and useful things that get lost, too.”

When Brazil President- Bolsanaroo encouraged more forestry development in the Amazon, global climate advocates worried about the lungs of the planet and the contribution to global warming. They might equally have been concerned with the indigenous knowledge going up in smoke..

Sibélia Zanon writing at nature site Mongabay reports:

“A study at the University of Zurich in Switzerland shows that a large proportion of existing medicinal plant knowledge is linked to threatened Indigenous languages. In a regional study on the Amazon, New Guinea and North America, researchers concluded that 75% of medicinal plant uses are known in only one language.” She reports that 91% of medicinal knowledge exists in a single language, so the loss of linguistic diversity diminished the former as well.

Nor are medicines all that are lost. She adds,

“Every time a language disappears, a speaking voice also disappears, a way to make sense of reality disappears, a way to interact with nature disappears, a way to describe and name animals and plants disappears,” says Jordi Bascompte, researcher in the Department of Evolutional Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich.”

As indigenous peoples rely on the spoken word for intergenerational knowledge transfer, the disappearance of these languages will take with them a universe of information. The possible losses include fundamental neurological facts about the human brain. Jairus Grove, author of Savage Ecology, cites work by neurologists showing that each language contains a different cognitive map of the human brain. Sometimes the differences are very significant and open up important research potential. Grove cites work by linguist David Harrison on the Uririna people of Peru showing that some, though very few, languages place the object of the sentence at the beginning. Were it not for the continued existence of this people, neuroscientists would not even suspect or know that the human brain could be wired in such a way to make O-V-S sentences possible..

Grove points out that most Indo European languages have a active subject, verb, passive object form, but there are minority cultures that do not express that format. In a world beset by the dangerous exploitation of the natural world these minority cultures may teach us more about how to survive and thrive in this world. In this context Trip[let points out that agency is not confined to the human world The unwillingness to recognize and accept this fact could have increasingly dire consequences.

Dr. Kirsten Tripplett writes, “It’s a long leap conceptually to make, but if one accepts a premise that “language” isn’t just spoken, and that knowledge is transmitted through actions and lifeways, then loss of biological species and their exploitation to serve human interests, is a critical loss, too, for the same reasons as those cited above . . .”

Grove has similar worries: “Irreversible catastrophic changes are certain but extinction is unlikely. What we stand to lose as a species in this current apocalypse of homogenization is unimaginable , not because of the loss of life but because of the loss of difference. Who and what will be left on Earth to inspire and ally with us in our creative advance is uncertain. If the future is dominated by those who seek to establish the survival of the human species at all costs through technological mastery then whatever “we” manages to persist will likely live on or near a mean and lonely planet.”(Savage Ecology, p. 209)

Why this loss of cultural diversity? There is first the reductionist tendency to treat cultural diversity and biodiversity as separate issues rather than as continuously interacting. Zanon further quotes Jordi Bascompte: “We can’t ignore this network now and think only about the plants or only about the culture . . . We humans are very good at homogenizing culture and nature so that nature seems to be more or less the same everywhere.”

This homogenization process includes reduction of human labor to cogs in a corporate machine, to cookie cutter development to the planned obsolescence and corporate dominated consumer culture. Most important is a neoliberal financial system fostering increasing wealth gaps within and among nations. In this context it is especially important to preserve alternative ways of being in the world and their origins and history. Despite efforts to homogenize many indigenous cultures some retain their vitality. But their survival will depend on bottom- up activism and rules, laws, and practices negotiated across race, ethnicity, religion and class.

As Subhankar Banerjee argues, saving elephants in different states presents complex problems. More broadly biodiversity conservation is contextual. What works for one place and in a particular culture may not work for another place and in another culture. This is not, however, cultural relativism. Biodiversity advocates value most those cultures that seek space for difference and for a politics that celebrates that end.

Banerjee again: “”What makes biodiversity conservation so beautiful is that it is a pluriverse—so many ideas, so many practices, so many forms of human-nonhuman kinship that exist around the world, which in a different context, a quarter-century ago, Indian historian Ramachandra Guha and Spanish ecological-economist Juan Martinez-Alier called Varieties of Environmentalism.”

To help indigenous peoples worldwide preserve, revitalize and promote their languages, UNESCO has launched its Decade of Action for Indigenous Languages from 2022 to 203. This is a principle worthy of much more attention than it receives. For that situation to change more than proclamations of rights will be necessary, including political movements celebrating and willing to fight for economic justice and biological and cultural diversity.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Euronews: “Inside the rainforest’s medicine cabinet”