Inuit-a unique experience of development
BATANI FOUNDATION
June 30, 2021, at 10 am New York time, will be held an international webinar “Inuit-a unique experience of development”, organized by the International Indigenous Fund for development and solidarity “BATANI”.
The Inuit are the indigenous people of the Arctic who live in four countries – Denmark / Greenland, USA, Canada and Russia.
This webinar will aim to introduce Indigenous peoples from different regions of the world to the experiences of the Inuit people in various aspects of their livsfe and work.
At the same time, the uniqueness of such an experience will lie in the fact that the representatives of this people (politicians, businessmen, public and state leaders) will talk about self-government, the social and economic development of their people, and will share their personal experience of participation in the life of their people. The uniqueness of the Inuit experience also lies in the fact that, living in different countries, they were able to build and develop their own self-government bodies, build their own economy, build their own relationships with the governments of these countries.
And at the same time, Inuit are active internationally, promoting the rights of indigenous peoples in international instruments, showing solidarity with indigenous peoples from other regions of the world. Inuit are an important part of the international negotiation process related to climate change and biodiversity conservation.
To participate, please fill out the registration form: https://forms.gle/BTXivEBQCn9NPbqv5
A link to participate will be sent two days before the meeting to all registered participants. Simultaneous interpretation in Russian and English will be provided at the meeting.
Panelists:
Dalee Sambo Dorough, PhD Chair / INUIT CIRCUMPOLAR COUNCIL
Dr. Dorough has a long history of direct involvement in the discussion, debate, and negotiation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). She was an active participant in this work from 1984 up to the adoption of the UNDRIP on September 13, 2007. Dr. Dorough was also a direct participant in the two-year revision process of International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention No. 107, which resultedin the adoption of C169 Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries on June 27, 1989, by the ILO. She also specializes in Alaska Native self-determination and has extensive experience in the administration, management and coordination of statewide, national and international organizations as well as estimating and oversight of federal, state, and private construction contracting as the former President of Yellowknife Construction, Inc.
Tove Søvndahl Gant, Expert Member and rapporteur of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Greenland.
Ms. Tove Søvndahl Gant is an official of the Government of Greenland, where she is a senior advisor at its Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As an official of the Greenland Government and in close cooperation with the Danish government, she has followed all key UN processes pertaining Indigenous peoples for three decades. From 2014-2020, Tove was seconded to the Human rights division of the European External Action Service in Brussels. Besides holding the portfolio on indigenous peoples’ rights worldwide, she was also responsible for a range of other human rights files such as, inter alia, the combatting of racism and xenophobia, non-discrimination, the rights of persons with disabilities and human rights and environment. In August 2021, Tove will move to Iceland to take up the post as the Chief of the Greenland Representation in Reykjavik.
Pita Aatami, President Makivik Corporation, Canada.
“A tireless symbol of Inuit progress and sovereignty in the North, Pita Aatami has shaped policies that have uplifted and strengthened social, economic and political progress for the Inuit that will serve for generations. The broad range of his policy leadership in the North, in business, education, politics, social progress and community development, and the broad impact of the causes he has championed and of his approach to championing those causes makes him a great leader.” Recipient of the Order of Canada 2020; Honorary member of the CIERA Arctic Research of Laval University, In 2007 – Hero of the year of Reader’s Digest, Recipient of the Gold Award of the Canadian Environment Awards in Environment.
Dialogues about Rights
Director of the Batani Foundation Pavel Sulyandziga discusses the 30-ty years process of negotiations between the Udege indigenous community and authorities on the creation of the «Bikin» natural park in Primorsky Krai. The guest of the YouTube broadcast «Dialogues about Rights» is a prominent Russian environmentalist Alexandr Lebedev, the director of the environmental NGO «Brok» and a member of the Sosnovka coalition.
Manganese matters
A metal of consequence for women and communities in South Africa affected by mining and the global energy transition
Manganese has been identified as one of the key minerals for the realisation of the energy transition needed to address the climate crisis. It is, however, important that the transition and thus the increasing need for certain minerals and metals such as manganese does not exacerbate or create new negative impacts for local communities, particularly women and youth in South Africa, the country with the world biggest manganese reserves.
For this research we conducted field research in the Kalahari Manganese Field (which hosts 18 of the 22 manganese mining companies in South Africa) to detect and analyse the impacts of mining activities on the local communities and their environment. Simultaneously, the supply chain was mapped to understand how manganese mining in South Africa reaches the Netherlands and Europe, with a specific
focus on steel and low carbon technologies: wind, electric vehicles, and energy storage.
Through general surveys, individual interviews and focus groups it was concluded that the communities in the Kalahari Manganese Field are deprived of their rights to water, safe and accessible healthcare, FPIC and participatory governance. Community members, many of whom have experienced waves of mining booms throughout their entire lives, expect only the worst from the current boom in manganese mining. They contend with less and less water even as large-scale, innovative pipelines are built around them to serve the needs of mines. They live with illness and chronic stress about their own and their families’ health, nervously anticipating the almost-daily blasts and the
repercussions thereof (including damage to dwellings and release of hazardous asbestos from housing materials).
The Netherlands imports manganese in many forms, including as manganese ore, manganese alloys (used for steelmaking) and as manganese metal (key input for producing batteries). In 2019 alone, the Netherlands imported 63 kilo tonnes of manganese ore of which 70% came directly from South Africa. The Netherlands is the world’s fourth largest importer of ferromanganese, which is a key alloy to produce steel. The Netherlands also imports manganese as part of finished products such as lithium batteries. A big part of all manganese that is imported to and consumed in the Netherlands and Europe originates in South Africa, which dominates global production and has the largest reserves and resources. In fact, around a third of all European imports of manganese comes from South Africa. Indirectly, the share is much bigger as manganese from South Africa also reaches the Netherlands after being refined in China and Norway.
Dutch and European importing of manganese originating in the Kalahari Manganese Field is likely to continue, as 75% of the manganese global resources are located there. European countries, the automotive industry, battery manufacturers and wind energy companies therefore all have a responsibility to ensure that the manganese they source does not cause, contribute or is linked to human rights violations and environmental degradation.
Putin’s Climate Envoy Should Be Persona Non Grata
He’s no climate expert, but he’s a champion when it comes to repression.
John Kerry’s Russian counterpart has blood on his hands. Kerry, President Obama’s secretary of state and his chief negotiator for the Paris climate accord, now serves as President Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. His Russian counterpart is Ruslan Edelgeriyev, Vladimir Putin’s Special Presidential Envoy on Climate Change. Edelgeriyev has held his position since July of 2018. He has virtually no history with the climate change issue but does have a long and illustrious association with human rights violations.
Kerry first met with Edelgeriyev virtually, on March 3. From now on, Kerry and Secretary of State Antony Blinken should avoid him at all costs. When President Biden meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva in June, Biden should make clear to Putin that, as far as the United States is concerned, Edelgeriyev is persona non grata.
Edelgeriyev’s official background lists a vaguely defined ten-year stint in Russia’s “law enforcement system,” lasting until 2004. Intriguing as that may be, it is his activity afterwards that raises eyebrows. From 2008 to 2018 Edelgeriyev was deputy prime minister and then prime minister of the Chechen Republic. The head of state of this North Caucasus republic is strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, one of the worst human rights abusers in the world. Edelgeriyev was Kadyrov’s right-hand man for many years and, as such, is more than complicit in the Chechen leader’s grotesque violations of human rights and common decency.
In an extraordinary step in 2018, the United States joined with fifteen other nations to invoke the “Moscow Mechanism,” a measure used by Europe’s Organization for Security and Cooperation to create a fact-finding mission into what then-American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described as “horrific reports of abuses against LGBTI persons, human rights defenders, members of the independent media, and other citizens who ran afoul of Mr. Kadyrov.”
Kadyrov’s singular record came to include extrajudicial killings, unlawful detentions, torture, and enforced disappearances. For these and more, the United States sanctioned him in 2020. Pompeo noted on that occasion that the Department of State had “extensive credible information” of Kadyrov’s responsibility for “numerous gross violations of human rights dating back more than a decade.”
That the Trump Administration—which generally took, to put it mildly, a soft approach to Russian human rights abuses—invoked the Moscow Mechanism underscores the depth of the abuses in Chechnya. That Kadyrov’s record stretched back “more than a decade” by 2020 dates the evidence to much of the time during which Edelgeriyev was Kadyrov’s prime minister.
Even against this record, the brutal campaign against Chechens suspected of being gay stands out. Although homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia in 1993, discrimination against the LGBTQ community remains rampant. For instance, legislation signed by Putin in 2013 banned “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations to minors,” a measure clearly aimed at gays.
Edelgeriyev has virtually no history with climate change but does have a long and illustrious associations with human rights violations.
Life has been unbearable for LGBTQ Chechens. In April of 2017, Novaya Gazeta reporter Elena Milashina broke the story of Kadyrov’s anti-gay purge. As she told The New Yorker in June of 2017, “It became clear very quickly that this was a purposeful campaign against gays.” The campaign included rounding up those suspected of being gay and subjecting them to torture, beatings, forced disappearances, and execution.
More than one hundred people received such treatment. According to one activist who fled, at least ten of the targeted individuals were murdered by state authorities. Milashina, too, had to flee Russia after numerous threats to her life.
A number of other respected media outlets and human rights organizations confirmed Milashina’s reporting. One of them was Human Rights Watch. According to a 2017 report,
In February 2017, Chechnya’s law enforcement and security officials launched an anti-gay purge. They rounded up dozens of men on suspicion of being gay, held them in unofficial detention facilities for days, humiliated, starved, and tortured them. They forcibly disappeared some of the men. Others were returned to their families barely alive from beatings. Their captors exposed them to their families as gay and encouraged their relatives to carry out honor killings. Although Chechnya’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has denied the roundups, the information presented in this report shows that top-level local authorities in Chechnya sanctioned them.
Edelgeriyev was one of those officials.
“This is nonsense,” Kadyrov said in response to the allegations in a July 2017 interview—while Edelgeriyevwas prime minister. “We don’t have such people here. We don’t have any gays. If there are any, take them to Canada.… To purify our blood, if there are any here, take them.” A concerted international campaign was launched to help gay Chechens flee the republic for their own safety. HBO produced a documentary about these efforts, Welcome to Chechnya (2020).
Edelgeriyev was in the Chechen capital of Grozny during the anti-gay purge. More, he was the head of the government of the republic. There is not the slightest doubt that he has the blood of innocent Chechens on his hands.
No U.S. official, let alone one with the stature of John Kerry, should meet with Edelgeriyev ever again. Instead, Edelgeriyev should be declared persona non grata and join Kadyrov on the U.S. and European Union sanctions lists for gross human rights abuses. There, Edelgeriyev will be in good, or at least appropriate, company.
‘Keystone XL is dead!’
Dallas Goldtooth wrote on Twitter: “We took on a multi-billion dollar corporation and we won!!”
The Keystone XL pipeline project is officially terminated, the sponsor company announced Wednesday.
Calgary-based TC Energy is pulling the plug on the project after Canadian officials failed to persuade President Joe Biden to reverse his cancellation of its permit on the day he took office.
The company said it would work with government agencies “to ensure a safe termination of and exit from” the partially built line, which was to transport crude from the oil sand fields of western Canada to Steele City, Nebraska.
“Through the process, we developed meaningful Indigenous equity opportunities and a first-of-its-kind, industry leading plan to operate the pipeline with net-zero emissions throughout its lifecycle,” said François Poirier, TC Energy’s president and chief executive officer in a statement.
The pipeline has been front and center of the fight against climate change, especially in Indigenous communities. Native people have been speaking out, organizing, and in opposition of the project for several years.
“OMG! It’s official,” Dallas Goldtooth, Mdewakanton Dakota and Diné, wrote on Twitter regarding Keystone XL’s termination. “We took on a multi-billion dollar corporation and we won!!”
Goldtooth is part of the Indigenous Environmental Network. The network said it has been organizing for more than 10 years against the pipeline.
“We are dancing in our hearts because of this victory!” wrote the network in a statement. “From Dene territories in Northern Alberta to Indigenous lands along the Gulf of Mexico, we stood hand-in-hand to protect the next seven generations of life, the water and our communities from this dirty tar sands pipeline. And that struggle is vindicated. This is not the end – but merely the beginning of further victories.”
The network noted that water protector Oscar High Elk still faces charges for standing against Keystone.
Construction on the 1,200-mile pipeline began last year when former President Donald Trump revived the long-delayed project after it had stalled under the Obama administration.
It would have moved up to 830,000 barrels of crude daily, connecting in Nebraska to other pipelines that feed oil refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Biden canceled it in January over long standing concerns that burning oil sands crude would make climate change worse.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had objected to the move, although officials in Alberta, where the line originated, expressed disappointment in recent weeks that Trudeau didn’t push Biden harder to reinstate the pipeline’s permit.
Alberta invested more than $1 billion in the project last year, kick-starting construction that had stalled amid determined opposition to the line from environmentalists and Native American tribes along its route.
Alberta officials said Wednesday they reached an agreement with TC Energy, formerly known as TransCanada, to exit their partnership. The company and province plan to try to recoup the government’s investment, although neither offered any immediate details on how that would happen.
“We remain disappointed and frustrated with the circumstances surrounding the Keystone XL project, including the cancellation of the presidential permit for the pipeline’s border crossing,” Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said in a statement.
The province had hoped the pipeline would spur increased development in the oil sands and bring tens of billions of dollars in royalties over decades.
Climate change activists viewed the expansion of oil sands development as an environmental disaster that could speed up global warming as the fuel is burned. That turned Keystone into a flashpoint in the climate debate, and it became the focus of rallies and protests in Washington, D.C., and other cities.
Environmentalists who had fought the project since it was first announced in 2008 said its cancellation marks a “landmark moment” in the effort to curb the use of fossil fuels.
“Good riddance to Keystone XL,” said Jared Margolis with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of many environmental groups that sued to stop it.
On Montana’s Fort Belknap Reservation, tribal president Andy Werk Jr. described the end of Keystone as a relief to Native Americans who stood against it out of concerns a line break could foul the Missouri River or other waterways.
Attorneys general from 21 states had sued to overturn Biden’s cancellation of the pipeline, which would have created thousands of construction jobs. Republicans in Congress have made the cancellation a frequent talking point in their criticism of the administration, and even some moderate Senate Democrats including Montana’s Jon Tester and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin had urged Biden to reconsider.
Tester said in a statement Wednesday that he was disappointed in the project’s demise, but made no mention of Biden.
Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate energy committee, was more direct: “President Biden killed the Keystone XL Pipeline and with it, thousands of good-paying American jobs.”
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on TC Energy’s announcement. In his Jan. 20 cancellation order, Biden said allowing the line to proceed “would not be consistent with my administration’s economic and climate imperatives.”
TC Energy said in canceling the pipeline that the company is focused on meeting “evolving energy demands” as the world transitions to different power sources. It said it has $7 billion in other projects under development.
Keystone XL’s price tag had ballooned as the project languished, increasing from $5.4 billion to $9 billion. Meanwhile, oil prices fell significantly — from more than $100 a barrel in 2008 to under $70 in recent months — slowing development of Canada’s oil sands and threatening to eat into any profits from moving the fuel to refineries.
A second TC Energy pipeline network, known simply as Keystone, has been delivering crude from Canada’s oil sands region since 2010. The company says on its website that Keystone has moved more than 3 billion barrels of crude from Alberta and an oil loading site in Cushing, Oklahoma.
Why Indigenous knowledge should be an essential part of how we govern the world’s oceans
Our moana (ocean) is in a state of unprecedented ecological crisis. Multiple, cumulative impacts include pollution, sedimentation, overfishing, drilling and climate change. All affect the health of both marine life and coastal communities.
To reverse the decline and avoid reaching tipping points, we must adopt more holistic and integrated governance and management approaches.
Indigenous peoples have cared for their land and seascapes for generations, using traditional knowledge and practices. But our research on marine justice shows Indigenous peoples face ongoing challenges as they seek to assert their sovereignty and authority in marine spaces.
We don’t need to wait for innovative Western science to take better care of the oceans. We have an opportunity to empower traditional and contemporary Indigenous forms of governance and management for the benefit of all people and the ecosystems we are part of.
Our research highlights alternative governance and management models to improve equity and justice for Indigenous peoples. These range from shared decision-making with governments (co-governance) to Indigenous peoples regaining control and re-enacting Indigenous forms of marine governance and management.
Indigenous environmental stewardship
Throughout Oceania, Indigenous marine governance is experiencing a revival. The long-term environmental stewardship of Indigenous peoples is documented around the globe.
In Fiji, customary marine tenure is institutionalised through the qoliqoli system. This defines customary fishing areas in which village chiefs are responsible for managing fishing rights and compliance.
Coastal communities in Vanuatu continue to create and implement temporary marine protection zones (known as tapu) to allow fisheries stock to recover. In Samoa, villages are able to establish and enforce local fisheries management.
In Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori environmental use and management is premised on the principle of kaitiakitanga (environmental guardianship) rather than unsustainable extraction of resources.
Australian Aboriginal societies likewise use the term “caring for country” to refer to their ongoing and active guardianship of the lands, seas, air, water, plants, animals, spirits and ancestors.
From the mountains to the sea
These governance and management systems are based on Indigenous knowledge that connects places and cultures and emphasises holistic approaches. The acknowledgement of inter-relationships between human and nonhuman beings (plants, animals, forests, rivers, oceans etc.) is a common thread. So is an emphasis on reciprocity and respect towards all beings.
Coastal and island Indigenous groups have specific obligations to care for and protect their marine environments and to use them sustainably. An inter-generational thread is part of these ethical duties. It takes into account the lessons and experiences of ancestors and considers the needs of future generations of people, plants, animals and other beings.
In contrast to Western ways of seeing the environment, the Australian Indigenous concept of country is not fragmented into different types of environment or scales of governance. Instead, land, air, water and the sea are all linked.
Likewise, for Māori, Ki uta ki tai (from the mountains to the sea) encapsulates a whole-of-landscape and seascape view.
Sharing knowledge across generations
Māori hold deep relationships with their rohe moana (saltwater territory). These are increasingly recognised by laws that emphasise Indigenous rights based on Te Tiriti o Waitangi. One example is the Integrated Kaipara Harbour Management Group, which co-manages the Kaipara Moana (harbour). The co-management agreement specifies shared responsibilities between different Māori entities (Kaipara Uri) and government agencies.
The agreement recognises Kaipara hapū (sub-tribes) and iwi (tribe) rights, interests and duties. It provides financial support to enable them to enact kaitiakitanga practices as they work to restore the mauri (life force) of the moana through practical efforts such as replanting native flora and reducing sedimentation.
They are using their mātauranga Māori (Māori Knowledge) alongside scientific knowledge to enact kaitiakitanga and ecosystem-based management.
Another co-management agreement is operating in Hawai’i between the community of Hā‘ena (USA) and the Hawai’ian state government. The Hā‘ena community operates an Indigenous fishing education programme. Members of all ages camp together by the coast and learn where, what and how to harvest and prepare marine products.
In this way, Indigenous knowledge, with its emphasis on sustainable practices and environmental ethics, is transmitted across generations.
Indigenous knowledge, values and relationships with our ocean can make significant contributions to marine governance. We can learn from Indigenous worldviews that emphasise connectivity between all things. There are many similarities between ecosystem-based and Indigenous knowledge management systems.
We need to do more to recognise and empower Indigenous knowledge and ways of governing marine spaces. This could include new laws, institutions and initiatives that allow Indigenous groups to exercise their self-determination rights and draw on different types of knowledge to help create and maintain sustainable seas.
Alaska Native corporation to protect its land, dealing blow to massive gold mine project
The nearly $20 million agreement includes land near Bristol Bay that covers part of the company’s proposed route for transporting ore
Growing up in a small village in southwest Alaska, Sarah Thiele had a childhood defined by sockeye salmon.
Her father caught the silvery-red fish in the summer by the net-full as a commercial fisherman while her mother would cure and cold-smoke hundreds of filets so Thiele and her eight siblings, plus the family’s team of sled dogs, could dine on sockeye year-round.
Now 66, Thiele is a board member of the Pedro Bay Corp., an Alaska Native group that owns land near Bristol Bay, the site of the most prolific sockeye fishery in the world. It is also the precise spot where the backers of the Pebble Mine hope to build a road to transport ore.
Late last month, Thiele and nearly 90 percent of the corporation’s shareholders voted to let the Conservation Fund, an environmental nonprofit organization, buy conservation easements on more than 44,000 acres and make the land off limits to future development — including the mining road.
“I feel like we are doing our mission of preserving our heritage and our pristine lands from any development,” she said. “That is totally our identity, the fish and our land.”
In exchange for the surface rights, the corporation would receive nearly $20 million, including $500,000 for education and cultural programs for those in the village.
The deal — which has not been previously reported — will make it difficult for backers of a massive open-pit gold and copper mine to carry out their project because the new protections cover a portion of a critical route the Pebble Limited Partnership plans to use to transport ore from the mine.
“I would say if it’s not the nail in the coffin, it’s just waiting for the last tap of the hammer,” Tim Troll, executive director of the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust, who helped negotiate the easement, said in a phone interview. Given the agreement, he added, “I just don’t see any way that they could do this.”
The mine was already in trouble. President Biden expressed opposition to the project during last year’s campaign and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit for the mine in November. But the Pebble Limited Partnership is appealing the Corps’ decision and said in a statement that the conservation deal would not change its plans.
The fate of Bristol Bay, its multibillion-dollar commercial fishing and tourism industry and the Indigenous people who live there has been contested for more than a decade. Although many of Alaska’s elected officials have supported mining there, an unusual coalition of environmentalists, Republicans, commercial fishermen and Alaska Natives helped persuade the Trump administration to block the mine project last year.
For those with ties to the small village of Pedro Bay on the shore of Lake Iliamna, the state’s largest lake and a natural nursery for Bristol Bay’s spawning salmon, the threat that some future version of the mine could damage this precious salmon habitat remains a chilling possibility.
“The salmon sustained us for how many thousands of years,” said Thiele, vice chair of the Pedro Bay Corp.’s Board of Directors. “So you really have to be very conscious that you don’t disturb their habitat.”
The conservation groups said they have begun a fundraising effort to pay for the easement among organizations and individuals interested in preserving wild Alaska and the salmon population. They plan to reach out to Bristol Bay’s commercial fishing industry, which has been valued in recent years at more than $2 billion, as well as other environmental organizations.
Pedro Bay residents would retain ownership of their land and be allowed to access it for subsistence hunting and fishing as well as cultural practices and some forms of economic development, such as tourism, said Larry Selzer, president and chief executive of the Conservation Fund.
“Iliamna Lake is the largest wild sockeye salmon fishery in the world. It’s a magnificent resource, unprecedented value, both economically and culturally, in addition to the wildlife values,” Selzer said.
For the Conservation Fund, the “primary objective” of the agreement is to protect the critical salmon habitat, Selzer said, but a secondary benefit is “to eliminate the threat of the potential construction of an industrial transportation route as part of the proposed Pebble Mine project.”
Under the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency took the unusual step of vetoing the prospect of a mine in 2014 on the grounds it could imperil the region’s sockeye salmon fishery. But the agency reversed course during the Trump administration, allowing the Pebble Limited Partnership to apply for a federal permit.
The company, a subsidiary of Canadian-owned Northern Dynasty Minerals, estimated its proposed 20-year operation would span more than 13 miles and require the construction of a 270-megawatt power plant, natural-gas pipeline, 82-mile double-lane road, elaborate storage facilities and the dredging of a port at Iliamna Bay. EPA concluded the project would result in the permanent loss of 2,292 acres of wetlands and more than 105 miles of streams.
But in September, the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency released secretly recorded conversations in which Northern Dynasty Minerals chief executive Ronald Thiessen and his associate spoke about seeking political favors from Republicans in Alaska and Washington. Both of Alaska’s senators, Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, subsequently questioned the idea of approving the mine, and the Corps then determined the plan did not meet the Clean Water Act’s requirements.
Asked to comment Monday, Pebble Limited Partnership spokesman Mike Heatwole said in an email: “Our focus remains on working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as its conducts its administrative appeal of the Pebble Project Record of Decision. This recent development hasn’t really changed that focus in any way.”
The Alaska Natives around Iliamna Lake have long relied on subsistence hunting and fishing, including for moose, seals, trout and salmon. There are also fishing lodges on the lake that attract anglers from around the world.
The path to protect the land along Iliamna Lake dates back nearly a decade, according to Troll, when genetic studies of the salmon in the lake by University of Washington researchers indicated the northeast corner of Iliamna — and the rivers that fed it — were the most productive breeding grounds for millions of salmon that eventually make their way out into Bristol Bay.
In 2017, the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust, with the help of the Conservation Fund, negotiated an easement covering islands in the middle of the lake, more than 12,000 acres also owned mostly by the Pedro Bay Corp. That deal helped pave the way for the most recent agreement to conserve three large parcels in the northeast portion of the lake where three rivers — Knutson Creek, Pile River and Iliamna River — feed into it.
The Iliamna Lake watershed is “the most important salmon fishery in the entire world,” Selzer said, “and so this project has extreme importance for the future of the salmon and the rest of the ecosystem.”
The fact that one of the proposed roads leading from the Pebble Mine project would pass through the Pedro Bay Corp.’s native-owned land near the shores of the lake only added to the urgency for those looking to protect this habitat in recent years.
Although it is unclear whether the new easement would block the company from constructing what it calls “the northern route,” Selzer said it would be “extremely difficult” and probably would deter future investors from financing the project. The company identified the route leading to Cook Inlet as its preferred route, and the Corps determined that it was the “Least Environmentally Damaging Practicable Alternative” for transporting minerals from the mine.
Matt McDaniel, the chief executive of the Pedro Bay Corp. and a spokesman for the community, said that for the corporation and the village of Pedro Bay, the proceeds from the conservation easement “immediately will impact and support these communities and we can send our kids to school and pass out dividends.”
Their decision to enter the agreement to preserve their land “was not specifically about Pebble,” he said. “It’s more about protecting the land from the effects of any type of development.”
Thiele — who now lives in Wasilla, but returns each summer to the village to fish — noted it is wedged in between the lake and the mountains, leaving little room for development.
“I’ve always been a little terrified about a big road going through,” she said. “We want people to be able to go there and experience it the way their mothers, their grandparents, their great-grandparents experienced it.”
‘I promised Brando I would not touch his Oscar’: the secret life of Sacheen Littlefeather
In 1973, she made history at the Academy Awards, appearing in place of Marlon Brando, declining his statuette and making a speech about Native American rights. She has been speaking out ever since
Sacheen Littlefeather begins by announcing that this will be one of her last interviews: “I’m very, very ill. I have metastasised breast cancer – terminal – to my right lung. And I’ve been on chemotherapy for quite some time, and daily antibiotics. As a result, my memory is not as good as it used to be … I’m very tired all the time because cancer is a full-time job: the CT scans, MRIs, laboratory blood work, medical visits, chemotherapy, infectious disease control doctors, etc, etc. If you’re lazy, you need not apply for cancer.”
For the next couple of hours, speaking over Zoom from her home in northern California, as she trips down memory lane her solemn demeanour gives way to chattiness and laughter. At 74, she has lived a full, eventful life, though she will be for ever remembered for an event that took up little more than one minute of it, on the night of 27 March 1973. This was when she took the stage at the 45th Academy Awards to speak on behalf of Marlon Brando, who had been awarded best actor for his performance in The Godfather. It is still a striking scene to watch. Amid the gaudy 70s evening wear, 26-year-old Littlefeather’s tasselled buckskin dress, moccasins, long, straight black hair and handsome face set in an expression of almost sorrowful composure, make a jarring contrast.
When the presenter, Roger Moore, attempts to hand Littlefeather Brando’s Oscar she holds out her hand as if to push it away. She explains that Brando cannot accept the award because of “the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry”. The crowd interrupts her, half-applauding, half-booing. “Excuse me,” she says calmly, then continues: “And on television and movie reruns, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee.” At the time, Wounded Knee, in South Dakota, was the site of a month-long standoff between Native American activists and US authorities, sparked by the murder of a Lakota man. Littlefeather ends her speech begging that “in the future, our hearts and our understandings will meet with love and generosity”.
At the time, nobody knew what to make of it. Not the audience, the press or the 85 million people watching on television (this was the first year the Oscars were broadcast internationally via satellite). Was it a prank? A surrealist performance piece? Littlefeather was rumoured to be a hired actor, a Mexican impostor, a stripper. “It was not a performance, it was a real presentation,” she says. “I think that’s what took people by surprise: that it was so real. It really touches people’s hearts to this day.”
It was hastily planned, says Littlefeather. Half an hour before her speech, she had been at Brando’s house on Mulholland Drive waiting for him to finish typing an eight-page speech. She arrived at the ceremony with Brando’s assistant, just minutes before best actor was announced. Howard Koch, the producer of the Academy Awards show, immediately informed her she could not read it – and she would be removed from the stage after 60 seconds. “And then it all happened so fast when it was announced that he had won. I had promised Marlon that I would not touch that statue if he won. And I had promised Koch that I would not go over 60 seconds. So there were two promises I had to keep.” As a result, she improvised her speech.
However valid Brando’s charge of the way Hollywood stereotyped Native Americans, it did not go down well that night. John Wayne, serial slaughterer of Native Americans on-screen and self-professed white supremacist off it, just happened to be in the wings during Littlefeather’s speech. “During my presentation, he was coming towards me to forcibly take me off the stage, and he had to be restrained by six security men to prevent him from doing so.” Presenting best picture soon after (also for The Godfather), Clint Eastwood quipped: “I don’t know if I should present this award on behalf of all the cowboys shot in all the John Ford westerns over the years.” When Littlefeather got backstage, she says, there were people making stereotypical Native American war cries at her and miming chopping with a tomahawk. After talking to the press, she went straight back to Brando’s house where they sat together and watched the reactions to the event on television.
But Littlefeather is proud of the trail she blazed. She was the first woman of colour, and the first indigenous woman, to use the Academy Awards platform to make a political statement. Today they are almost expected, but in 1973 it was radical. “I didn’t use my fist [she clenches her fist]. I didn’t use swearwords. I didn’t raise my voice. But I prayed that my ancestors would help me. I went up there like a warrior woman. I went up there with the grace and the beauty and the courage and the humility of my people. I spoke from my heart.”
Littlefeather’s life up to that point had been difficult. Her father was Native American, a mix of Apache and Yaqui, and her mother was white. They met in Arizona – where mixed-race couples were still illegal – so moved to Salinas, California, working as saddle-makers and leather-stampers. “My biological parents were both mentally ill and unable to raise me,” she says. “I was a child who was abused and neglected. I was taken away from them at age three, suffering from tuberculosis of the lungs. I lived in an oxygen tent at the hospital, which kept me alive.” She was raised by her maternal grandparents, but saw her parents regularly. She recalls a time as a small child when she interrupted her father beating her mother – by hitting him with a broom. “I think that’s when I really became an activist.” Her father chased after her. “I escaped through a doorway and I ran with all my might down the road. And he got in the pickup truck, and he tried to run me over. There was a grove of trees. And it was near dark. I ran up a tree, and he couldn’t find me. I stayed up in the tree and I cried myself to sleep.”
Littlefeather was between two worlds. Since the late 19th century, there had been a concerted project in the US to “make Indian people white”, she explains, spearheaded by federal government and Christian schools for Native American children. “They wanted to make us something else. And this leads us into terrible pain, into suicide, into alcoholism, into jails.” She did not fit in at the white, Catholic school her grandparents sent her to. “There was a lot of racism. I was called the N-word.” When she was 12, she and her grandfather visited the historic Roman Catholic church Carmel Mission, where she was horrified to see the bones of a Native American person on display in the museum. “I said: ‘This is wrong. This is not an object; this is a human being.’ So I went to the priest and I told him God would never approve of this, and he called me heretic. I had no idea what that was.” In her teens, Littlefeather had a breakdown and was hospitalised for a year. She attempted suicide. “I was so confused about my own identity, and I was suffering,” she says. “I could not tell the difference between me and my pain.”
Fortunately, in the late 1960s and early 70s Native Americans were beginning to reclaim their identities and reassert their rights. After her father died, when she was 17, Littlefeather began visiting reservations in Arizona, New Mexico and California. She visited Alcatraz when it was occupied by Native American activists in the early 1970s. She travelled around the country, between camp-outs and pow-wows, learning traditions and dances, making outfits. “I really had a breakthrough, with other urban Indian people, getting back into our traditions, our heritage. The old people who came from different reservations taught us young people how to be Indian again. It was wonderful.”
By her early 20s Littlefeather was working as public service director at a San Francisco radio station, and head of the local affirmative action committee for Native Americans, studying representation in film, television and sports (they successfully campaigned for Stanford University to remove their offensive “Indian” sports team symbol). One of her neighbours was Francis Ford Coppola. “I used to hike the hills of San Francisco every day,” she says. “He’d be sitting on his porch, drinking iced tea.” She got to know him to say hello to. At the time, many celebrities were expressing interest in Native American affairs, including Jane Fonda, Anthony Quinn and Burt Lancaster. Sometimes it was sincere, at others more self-interested, she says. So, when she heard Marlon Brando speaking about Native American rights, “I wanted to know if he was for real”. She wrote a letter to him and, walking past Coppola’s house one day, said: “Hey! You directed Marlon Brando in The Godfather.” She asked him for Brando’s address. Eventually, Coppola gave it to her.
She heard nothing for months, but one night a man phoned her at the radio station. “He said: ‘I bet you don’t know who this is.’ And I said: ‘Sure I do.’ And he said: ‘Well, who is it?’ I said: ‘It’s Marlon Brando. It sure as hell took you long enough to call. You beat “Indian time” all to hell.’ And we started to laugh as if we’d known each other for ever.”
They talked for about an hour, she says, then called each other regularly. Before long he was inviting her to visit. She stayed with him several times. They became good friends, but were never lovers or romantically involved. “No, no, he was far too old for me. He was my mother’s age, for God’s sake! He was extremely intelligent, and always entertaining. He had a great sense of humour. He would put on tons of different voices. We used to have a great time, laughing till tears were coming out of our eyes.
The Brando household was a busy and often heated place – with children, ex-wives and girlfriends. Brando sent her and his girlfriend Jill Banner to go and see his latest movie, Last Tango in Paris – Bernardo Bertolucci’s controversially graphic erotic drama (which would earn Brando another Oscar nomination). Littlefeather was not shocked, she says. “I just thought that it was about a man who had a very difficult relationship with women. I thought about Marlon in his early days with his mother. It was as though his life was being played out in that film.” Brando, too, had had difficult parents: his father was disapproving and unloving; his mother an alcoholic. “When he was young, they didn’t have therapy. Maybe that was why he was such a great actor – because he worked it out in his acting. He was able to share those real emotions with an audience. And maybe that was the love-hate relationship that he had with acting.”
Littlefeather’s Oscar speech drew international attention to Wounded Knee, where the US authorities had essentially imposed a media blackout. It was a key moment in the struggle for Native American rights and may well have saved lives, she suggests. It did little for her own career, however. She had had a few small roles in movies, including Freebie and the Bean and The Trial of Billy Jack. After the Oscars, she believes she was blacklisted by Hollywood. “I couldn’t get a job to save my life. I knew that J Edgar Hoover had gone around and told people in the industry not to hire me, because he would shut their talkshow or their production down. I got the word from people in the industry that that would happen to them.” She is not sure it helped Brando’s career, either. “I was a hotbed of controversy. And for any actor, I don’t know how safe that is for them, box office-wise.” They stayed in contact for a little while, but their lives naturally went separate ways. “We had our time together. We made history together.”
A few years later, when she was 29, Littlefeather’s lungs collapsed – a consequence of her childhood tuberculosis – and she became very ill. She found taking a holistic approach to her health helped and did a degree in holistic health and nutrition. She became a health consultant to Native American communities across the country, combining her knowledge with traditional medicine. She also reconnected with the Catholic faith, working with Mother Teresa caring for Aids patients in hospices, and led the San Francisco Kateri Circle, a Catholic group named after Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint. Their religious practice is a synthesis of both traditions, she explains. “For example, we have our buffalo dances in the middle of the mass.” It has helped her resolve her identity. “This is how I saved my life, by blending the two together. The acceptance of my dominant culture’s ways and my Indian ways together, living peacefully side by side.”
Now she is one of the elders transmitting knowledge down generations. Littlefeather gestures behind her to the sofa, where she mentors young Native American people. This is the real fulfilment in her life, she says. “When I go to the spirit world, I’m going to take all these stories with me. But hopefully I can share some of these things while I’m here.” Littlefeather talks about the end of life with the same composure and dignity she exhibited that night in 1973. “I’m going to another place,” she says. “I’m going to the world of my ancestors. I’m saying goodbye to you … I’ve earned the right to be my true self.”
Canada calls on pope to apologize after Indigenous children’s remains found
Government urges apology for role Catholic church played in residential school system after remains of 215 children discovered
Canada’s government has called on Pope Francis to issue a formal apology for the role the Catholic church played in Canada’s residential school system, days after the remains of 215 children were located at what was once the country’s largest such school.
Justin Trudeau’s government also pledged again to support efforts to find more unmarked graves at the former residential schools which held Indigenous children taken from families across the nation.
Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation in British Columbia has said the remains of 215 children were confirmed last month at the school in Kamloops, British Columbia, with the help of ground-penetrating radar. So far none has been excavated.
The Kamloops Indian Residential school was Canada’s largest such facility and was operated by the Roman Catholic church between 1890 and 1969 before the federal government took it over as a day school until 1978, when it was closed. Nearly three-quarters of the 130 schools were run by Catholic missionary congregations.
A papal apology was one of the 94 recommendations made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was set up as part of a government apology and settlement over the schools, and the prime minister asked the pope to consider such a gesture during a visit to the Vatican in 2017.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops announced in 2018 that the pope could not personally apologize for residential schools, even though he has not shied away from recognizing injustices faced by Indigenous people around the world.
“I think it is shameful that it hasn’t been done to date,” Marc Miller, Indigenous services minister, said.
“There is a responsibility that lies squarely on the shoulders” on the Catholic bishops of Canada, he added.
Carolyn Bennett, Indigenous relations minister, added that an apology by the pope would help those who suffered heal.
“They want to hear the pope apologize,” she said.
From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 First Nations children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools as part of a program to assimilate them into Canadian society. They were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused, and up to 6,000 are said to have died.
The Canadian government apologized in parliament in 2008 and admitted that physical and sexual abuse in the schools was rampant. Many students recalled being beaten for speaking their languages. They also lost touch with their parents and customs.
The prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has said the government will help preserve grave sites and search for potential unmarked burial grounds at other former residential schools. But Trudeau and his ministers have stressed need for Indigenous communities to decide for themselves how they want to proceed.
“We will be there to support every community that wants to do this work,” Bennett said. “We know right now that that work is urgent.”
The government previously announced C$27m (US$22m) for the effort. Bennett called that a first step.
“I know people are eager for answers but we do have to respect the privacy and mourning period of those communities that are collecting their thoughts and putting together protocols on how to honor these children,” Miller said.
Indigenous leaders plan to bring in forensics experts to identify and repatriate the remains of the children found buried on the Kamloops site. Perry Bellegarde, chief of the Assembly of First Nations, spoke with Trudeau this week and urged him to work with First Nations “to find all the unmarked graves of our stolen children”.
Murray Sinclair, the former chair of the reconciliation commission, said more sites will be found.
“We know there are lots of sites similar to Kamloops that are going to come to light in the future. We need to begin to prepare ourselves for that,” Sinclair said.
Alaska: Biden to suspend Trump Arctic drilling leases
US President Joe Biden’s administration will suspend oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge pending an environmental review.
The move reverses former President Donald Trump’s decision to sell oil leases in the refuge to expand fossil fuel and mineral development.
The giant Alaskan wilderness is home to many important species, including polar bears, caribou and wolves.
Arctic tribal leaders have welcomed the move but Republicans are opposed.
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Covering some 19 million acres (78,000 sq km), the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is often described as America’s last great wilderness.
How did we get here?
The push for exploration in the park has been the subject of a decades-long dispute.
The oil-rich region is a critically important location for many species and is considered sacred by the indigenous Gwich’in people.
One side argues that drilling for oil could bring in significant amounts of money and provide jobs for people in Alaska, while the other has raised concerns over environmental and climate threats.
Days before his presidential term ended in January, Mr Trump went ahead with the first sale of oil leases in the region’s coastal plain as part of his push to develop more domestic fossil fuel production.
But the sale received little interest from the oil and gas industry. Companies said they were focusing their spending on renewable energy, amid a huge slump in oil prices. Several large US banks said they would not fund exploration in the area.
In total, 11 tracts were auctioned off, covering just over 550,000 acres, according to the Washington Post newspaper. The sale raised less than $15m (£11m) – far less than the government had hoped.
Most went to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state agency.
While estimates suggest around 11 billion barrels of oil lie under the refuge, it has no roads or other infrastructure, making it a very expensive place to drill.
During his campaign Mr Biden pledged to protect the habitat. Once in office, he directed the Interior Department to review the leases.
In a statement on Tuesday, the department said it had “identified defects in the underlying record of decision supporting the leases, including the lack of analysis of a reasonable range of alternatives”, required under environmental law.
White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said Mr Biden “believes America’s national treasures are cultural and economic cornerstones of our country”.
“He is grateful for the prompt action by the Department of the Interior to suspend all leasing pending a review of decisions made in the last administration’s final days that could have changed the character of this special place forever,” she added.
Since taking office, Mr Biden has signed executive orders aimed at freezing new oil and gas leases on public land, and has pledged to drastically cut carbon emissions.
But his administration disappointed environmental groups last week when the Justice Department defended a Trump-era decision to approve a major oil project on Alaska’s North Slope in the former Naval Petroleum Reserve.
How have people reacted to the suspension?
Arctic tribal leaders praised the decision.
“I want to thank President Biden and the Interior Department for recognising the wrongs committed against our people by the last Administration, and for putting us on the right path forward,” Tonya Garnett, special projects coordinator for the Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government, said in a statement.
“This goes to show that, no matter the odds, the voices of our Tribes matter.”
Kristen Miller, acting executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, said suspending the leases was “a step in the right direction”.
But the Biden administration’s move was criticised in a joint statement by Republican senators Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski along with representative Don Young and Governor Mike Dunleavy.
“This action serves no purpose other than to obstruct Alaska’s economy and put our energy security at risk,” said Ms Murkowski, who has represented Alaska in the Senate since 2002.
Mr Dunleavy added that the leases sold by the Trump administration “are valid and cannot be taken away by the federal government”.
Oil revenues are critical for Alaska, with every resident getting a cheque for around $1,600 every year from the state’s permanent fund.
Mr Dunleavy has previously said that opening the refuge for “responsible resource development” could “put more oil in our pipeline, put Alaskans to work, bring billions of dollars of investment to our state, support American energy independence, and provide critical revenues to our state and local communities”.
The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority said it was disappointed by the decision, and had no reason to believe that the environmental analysis was inadequate.