Navajo Human Rights 'Listening Session' - SMSC Donates $150,000 To Local Organizations
U.S.ASKED TO SUPPORT INDIGENOUS HUMAN RIGHTS
By Kathy Helms
Dine Bureau
Gallup Independent
WINDOW ROCK – Navajo Nation Council Delegate Rex Lee Jim – who is also a medicine man – did a house blessing the other day at a new home in Monument Valley. “The reason was because the other house was contaminated with uranium,” he told members of the U.S. Department of State during their visit Wednesday to the Navajo Nation capital.
The owner of the new home has health problems believed to be related to radiation exposure. “We're doing the best we can with what we have. We ask for your help,” Jim said as he welcomed federal representatives to the Navajo Nation.
Environmental issues, sacred sites, relocation, racism, and unsolved deaths were just a few of the topics discussed as the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission hosted a federal government “listening session” to discuss the federal government's record on human rights in preparation for the Universal Periodic Review in November.
The United States has not endorsed the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, passed in September 2007 by the U.N. General Assembly. The commission is strongly advocating for ratification of the declaration to protect the Dine way of life.
Representatives of the Nation's three-branch government were on hand to express concerns, however, President Joe Shirley Jr. was unable to attend due to another obligation. However, he and First Lady Vicki Shirley did meet later with Jodi A. Gillette, Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. Shirley requested her assistance in arranging a meeting with President Obama.
Harrison Tsosie of Navajo Department of Justice appeared at the session on behalf of Shirley to raise the issue of the federal government's failure to acknowledge land ownership.
“It denies Navajo people economic opportunities, progress and other benefits as enjoyed by citizens who hold fee title to their own land,” he said. “I think it's time the United States address this issue.”
Council Speaker Lawrence T. Morgan said the Navajo people have been subjected to abuses for many years, with deaths and beatings being common acts of violence in border towns.
“These acts were mostly done by non-Native people,” he said, citing an example of two Navajos killed in Gallup in the 1970s. “They told the court that they thought they were jackrabbits – and the court bought that,” Morgan said.
Chief Justice Herb Yazzie said it was 142 years ago that the federal government entered into a treaty with the Navajo Nation. “We were at a concentration camp (Bosque Redondo), but a treaty was entered, promises were made, and today I want to impress upon you that that promise, that treaty, guaranteed self-determination.
“We are here to express several concerns about racism, about legal issues, about environmental concerns. I would submit to you that these concerns came to exist because the United States government has not lived up to that promise, this law that they entered into that is supposed to be the supreme law of the land,” he said.
Howard Shanker, an attorney from Flagstaff who has represented the Navajo Nation and other tribes in litigation to protect Dook'o'oosliid, or the sacred San Francisco Peaks, told the delegation there really is no law that substantively protects these sacred sites.
“For decades we have been fighting the U.S. government and we've been fighting the Justice Department,” he said, but the U.S. Supreme Court, in Lyng vs. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, “essentially held that Native Americans have no First Amendment rights when it comes to government land use.”
Though sacred to 13 Arizona tribes, when it came to protecting the San Francisco Peaks from what the tribes perceived as desecration through the use of reclaimed sewer water to make artificial snow for the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort, the court ruled against them.
“President Shirley, on the stand, said this is like making me watch you rape my mother,” Shanker told them.
Arista La Russo, originally from Sand Springs, said her father resided in the Joint Use Area., but he and her family were relocated in the 1970s. “My parents were advised they had to move because it was the law and that if they did not, they would be forcibly removed by the military,” she said.
Thousands of Navajos and hundreds of Hopis were relocated, resulting in their children and grandchildren being disenfranchised.
There is no federal policy addressing the children of the relocatees who are displaced, she said. “The incompetent planning by the federal government was with no regard to the children of relocatees.” As a result, many turned to drugs, alcohol and violence. “Many children of relocatees do not have a home to come home to,” she said.
Marie Gladeau who lives on Hopi Partitioned Land, said the Accommodation Agreement of 1987 gives legal jurisdiction to the Hopi tribal government and responsibility for services to the Navajo Nation. In doing so, it greatly limits their freedom, she said.
“Things got fast-tracked to get the AA signed into law. The law has created conflict over who has exclusive rights to the home sites, cornfields, and livestock. ... The law is based on Colonial tactics with the outcome being to divide and conquer what was once a shared and equal right to land use,” she said.
Perry Charley, director of Dine Environmental Institute at Shiprock Dine College, said the Navajo Nation faces many challenges in the coming years due to climate changes, including depletion of non-renewable natural resources and water.
Though the federal government instituted the National Environmental Policy Act, CERCLA, or Superfund, and other laws designed to guarantee a safe living environment “oftentimes, these laws fail to recognize Native American cultures and traditions,” Charley said.
Federal policies and regulations also fail to recognize Native American sovereignty issues, as exemplified by the March 8 decision by the 10th Circuit Court which upheld the license for Hydro Resource Inc. to mine uranium in Churchrock, despite the Navajo Nation's ban on uranium mining and processing.
Wahleah Johns of Black Mesa Water Coalition told the delegation, “Water is life, and a basic human right. We don't look at it as a resource, but a sacred element that sustains all life. Without water, life cannot grow.”
Johns told them there is physical evidence of damage to the Navajo aquifer from Peabody Western Coal Co.'s use of it to mine coal. She asked the State Department to look into the “shifting of the water.”
Office of Intergovernmental Affairs' Gillette said the Obama Administration is committed to strengthening the nation-to-nation relationship.
“I know that a lot of you are coming to us with information that you said before in the past. It's been a long time that you've been saying these things and it feels like nobody's listening; but I'm here to tell you that we are listening, I'm listening with an open heart and an open mind. All of us are going to go back and do our best.”
Duane H. “Chili” Yazzie, chair of the Navajo Human Rights Commission, said they will look for a sign within 90 days that the United States has heard them.
“One signal that we will look for is some word from a very contemporary tragedy that continues -- the illegal imprisonment of my brother Leonard Peltier. Show us! Give us a signal that says, 'Yes, these United States of America will sign on to this declaration.'
“It's not something that we should have to ask for. It's not something that we should have to beg for. It's not something that we want to demand. It's something that we should expect from the greatest democracy on this face of the earth.”
SHAKOPEE MDEWAKANTON SIOUX DONATE MORE THAN $150,000 TO LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS
By Tessa Lehto
tessa.lehto@shakopeedakota.org
Prior Lake, MN – The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community announces $153,000 in charitable grants to support 13 Twin Cities’ organizations.
A grant for $30,000 went to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International of Bloomington, Minnesota, for general research and for sponsorship of the Walk to Cure Diabetes. JDRF is committed to finding a cure for the disease that afflicts more than 22 million men, women, and children, killing one American every three minutes. Each year over 500,000 people walk for a cure at 200 JDRF Walk locations in over a dozen countries. The local event will be held February 27, 2010, at the Mall of America.
An internship program in conjunction with the Thaw collection, a visiting Indian art collection, will be funded by a grant for $25,000 to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The curatorial internship program will provide hands on experience working with collections, exhibitions, and research techniques for Native Americans.
The exhibition consists of 110 of the most outstanding works of art drawn from the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of North American Indian Art, which comprises more than 800 masterpieces of Native American art from across North America spanning more than 2,000 years. The Thaw Collection, organized by the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, will debut in the fall of 2010 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in Minneapolis.
Emergency relief efforts will be funded through $20,000 in grants to the American Red Cross. Relief efforts for the island Haiti were funded with a $10,000 grant in response to the devastating earthquake which recently killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions of residents. An additional $10,000 grant funded local emergency services in the Twin Cities area. Services provided locally include helping residents in the immediate aftermaths of fires, floods, and other emergencies.
A grant for $10,000 went to the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life event in Shakopee, Minnesota. The event, which is held annually at the Shakopee High School track, raises funds to support programs of the American Cancer Society and research. It also commemorates victims and survivors of cancer.
The American Diabetes Association of Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a $10,000 grant for their annual fundraiser to support education to target Native Americans in Minnesota and research. Diabetes is one of the leading causes of heart disease, heart attack, and stroke. Together these diseases represent some of the most critical health concerns among American Indians.
Memorial Blood Centers of Saint Paul, Minnesota, will use their grant to help purchase a new bloodmobile. Memorial Blood Centers have co-sponsored blood drives at the SMSC for more than 20 years. The new bloodmobile will have more donor beds and interview rooms and will replace an older model at the end of its service life. Memorial Blood Centers has served the Twin Cities and surrounding region for more than 60 years.
A $10,000 grant to the Hennepin County Medical Center of Minneapolis, Minnesota, will pay for a portion of salary for an American Indian Advocate who helps patients and their family members with emergency social service during medical treatment.
A project to raise funds for Parkinson’s Foundation of Minnesota (Golden Valley, Minnesota) and the National Parkinson Foundation of Miami, Florida, was awarded a $10,000 grant. Prior Lake resident Kevin Burkart will complete 200 skydives in one day to raise money and awareness for Parkinson’s disease on June 16, 2010. The unique fundraiser will take place at Skydive Twin Cities in Baldwin, Wisconsin. Burkart did a similar effort in 2008 in which he completed 100 jumps in one day. (For more info go to www.perfectjumps.com.)
A grant for $8,000 to the Ramsey County Historical Society (RCHS) allowed for the purchase of all current copies and future publishing rights to the books Dakotah: Life and Legends of the Sioux and Painting the Dakota: Seth Eastman at Fort Snelling.
Both books were originally published by the Afton Historical Society Press. The RCHS plans to use these unique publications to enhance the learning of low-income children who participate in their Subsidized Dakota Tour program at the Gibbs Museum or their Dakota Outreach programs to hundreds of schools in Minnesota.
Grants of $5,000 each to went to Project Turnabout for their Appetite for Life fundraiser; the National Kidney Foundation for the Kidney Early Evaluation Program; the National Eagle Center for a capital campaign; and the Minnesota Planetarium for a new planetarium atop the Minneapolis Public Library.
TO SUBMIT an ARTICLE, OPINION PIECE, COMMENTS to the Native Unity Digest, e-mail bobbieo@digitaldune.net.
NATIVE UNITY - A place for Native American Peoples to solidify their tribes to make a positive impact on the cultural, social, economic and political fabric of American society and a place for non-Natives to better understand the ways of the American Indian.
News Blog - American Indian Report - AIR BLOG
http://falmouth-air.blogspot.com
THE BUFFALO POST - Missoulian Montana's Native News Blog about Native People And The World We Live In.
http://buffalopost.net/
Check Out NATIVE PRIDE- It's a great site!
http://letstalknativepride.blogspot.com
NATIVE AMERICA, DISCOVERED AND CONQUERED
http://lawlib.lclark.edu/blog/native_america/
PATHOLOGY.ORG - Up-to-date informmational database on general health and disease information, medical schools and medical resources.
http://www.Pathology.org
FOR ANNIE'S NATIVE CELEBRITY NEWS - go to www.nativecelebs.com
CATCH COLORADAN PETER JONES AT:
http://indigenousissuestoday.blogspot.com
SUPPORTING NATIVE AMERICAN/FIRST PEOPLE - ARTISTS, FILM MAKERS, ENTERTAINERS, ETC. http://www.krystynmedia.blogspot.com.
By Kathy Helms
Dine Bureau
Gallup Independent
WINDOW ROCK – Navajo Nation Council Delegate Rex Lee Jim – who is also a medicine man – did a house blessing the other day at a new home in Monument Valley. “The reason was because the other house was contaminated with uranium,” he told members of the U.S. Department of State during their visit Wednesday to the Navajo Nation capital.
The owner of the new home has health problems believed to be related to radiation exposure. “We're doing the best we can with what we have. We ask for your help,” Jim said as he welcomed federal representatives to the Navajo Nation.
Environmental issues, sacred sites, relocation, racism, and unsolved deaths were just a few of the topics discussed as the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission hosted a federal government “listening session” to discuss the federal government's record on human rights in preparation for the Universal Periodic Review in November.
The United States has not endorsed the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, passed in September 2007 by the U.N. General Assembly. The commission is strongly advocating for ratification of the declaration to protect the Dine way of life.
Representatives of the Nation's three-branch government were on hand to express concerns, however, President Joe Shirley Jr. was unable to attend due to another obligation. However, he and First Lady Vicki Shirley did meet later with Jodi A. Gillette, Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. Shirley requested her assistance in arranging a meeting with President Obama.
Harrison Tsosie of Navajo Department of Justice appeared at the session on behalf of Shirley to raise the issue of the federal government's failure to acknowledge land ownership.
“It denies Navajo people economic opportunities, progress and other benefits as enjoyed by citizens who hold fee title to their own land,” he said. “I think it's time the United States address this issue.”
Council Speaker Lawrence T. Morgan said the Navajo people have been subjected to abuses for many years, with deaths and beatings being common acts of violence in border towns.
“These acts were mostly done by non-Native people,” he said, citing an example of two Navajos killed in Gallup in the 1970s. “They told the court that they thought they were jackrabbits – and the court bought that,” Morgan said.
Chief Justice Herb Yazzie said it was 142 years ago that the federal government entered into a treaty with the Navajo Nation. “We were at a concentration camp (Bosque Redondo), but a treaty was entered, promises were made, and today I want to impress upon you that that promise, that treaty, guaranteed self-determination.
“We are here to express several concerns about racism, about legal issues, about environmental concerns. I would submit to you that these concerns came to exist because the United States government has not lived up to that promise, this law that they entered into that is supposed to be the supreme law of the land,” he said.
Howard Shanker, an attorney from Flagstaff who has represented the Navajo Nation and other tribes in litigation to protect Dook'o'oosliid, or the sacred San Francisco Peaks, told the delegation there really is no law that substantively protects these sacred sites.
“For decades we have been fighting the U.S. government and we've been fighting the Justice Department,” he said, but the U.S. Supreme Court, in Lyng vs. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, “essentially held that Native Americans have no First Amendment rights when it comes to government land use.”
Though sacred to 13 Arizona tribes, when it came to protecting the San Francisco Peaks from what the tribes perceived as desecration through the use of reclaimed sewer water to make artificial snow for the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort, the court ruled against them.
“President Shirley, on the stand, said this is like making me watch you rape my mother,” Shanker told them.
Arista La Russo, originally from Sand Springs, said her father resided in the Joint Use Area., but he and her family were relocated in the 1970s. “My parents were advised they had to move because it was the law and that if they did not, they would be forcibly removed by the military,” she said.
Thousands of Navajos and hundreds of Hopis were relocated, resulting in their children and grandchildren being disenfranchised.
There is no federal policy addressing the children of the relocatees who are displaced, she said. “The incompetent planning by the federal government was with no regard to the children of relocatees.” As a result, many turned to drugs, alcohol and violence. “Many children of relocatees do not have a home to come home to,” she said.
Marie Gladeau who lives on Hopi Partitioned Land, said the Accommodation Agreement of 1987 gives legal jurisdiction to the Hopi tribal government and responsibility for services to the Navajo Nation. In doing so, it greatly limits their freedom, she said.
“Things got fast-tracked to get the AA signed into law. The law has created conflict over who has exclusive rights to the home sites, cornfields, and livestock. ... The law is based on Colonial tactics with the outcome being to divide and conquer what was once a shared and equal right to land use,” she said.
Perry Charley, director of Dine Environmental Institute at Shiprock Dine College, said the Navajo Nation faces many challenges in the coming years due to climate changes, including depletion of non-renewable natural resources and water.
Though the federal government instituted the National Environmental Policy Act, CERCLA, or Superfund, and other laws designed to guarantee a safe living environment “oftentimes, these laws fail to recognize Native American cultures and traditions,” Charley said.
Federal policies and regulations also fail to recognize Native American sovereignty issues, as exemplified by the March 8 decision by the 10th Circuit Court which upheld the license for Hydro Resource Inc. to mine uranium in Churchrock, despite the Navajo Nation's ban on uranium mining and processing.
Wahleah Johns of Black Mesa Water Coalition told the delegation, “Water is life, and a basic human right. We don't look at it as a resource, but a sacred element that sustains all life. Without water, life cannot grow.”
Johns told them there is physical evidence of damage to the Navajo aquifer from Peabody Western Coal Co.'s use of it to mine coal. She asked the State Department to look into the “shifting of the water.”
Office of Intergovernmental Affairs' Gillette said the Obama Administration is committed to strengthening the nation-to-nation relationship.
“I know that a lot of you are coming to us with information that you said before in the past. It's been a long time that you've been saying these things and it feels like nobody's listening; but I'm here to tell you that we are listening, I'm listening with an open heart and an open mind. All of us are going to go back and do our best.”
Duane H. “Chili” Yazzie, chair of the Navajo Human Rights Commission, said they will look for a sign within 90 days that the United States has heard them.
“One signal that we will look for is some word from a very contemporary tragedy that continues -- the illegal imprisonment of my brother Leonard Peltier. Show us! Give us a signal that says, 'Yes, these United States of America will sign on to this declaration.'
“It's not something that we should have to ask for. It's not something that we should have to beg for. It's not something that we want to demand. It's something that we should expect from the greatest democracy on this face of the earth.”
SHAKOPEE MDEWAKANTON SIOUX DONATE MORE THAN $150,000 TO LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS
By Tessa Lehto
tessa.lehto@shakopeedakota.org
Prior Lake, MN – The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community announces $153,000 in charitable grants to support 13 Twin Cities’ organizations.
A grant for $30,000 went to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International of Bloomington, Minnesota, for general research and for sponsorship of the Walk to Cure Diabetes. JDRF is committed to finding a cure for the disease that afflicts more than 22 million men, women, and children, killing one American every three minutes. Each year over 500,000 people walk for a cure at 200 JDRF Walk locations in over a dozen countries. The local event will be held February 27, 2010, at the Mall of America.
An internship program in conjunction with the Thaw collection, a visiting Indian art collection, will be funded by a grant for $25,000 to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The curatorial internship program will provide hands on experience working with collections, exhibitions, and research techniques for Native Americans.
The exhibition consists of 110 of the most outstanding works of art drawn from the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of North American Indian Art, which comprises more than 800 masterpieces of Native American art from across North America spanning more than 2,000 years. The Thaw Collection, organized by the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, will debut in the fall of 2010 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in Minneapolis.
Emergency relief efforts will be funded through $20,000 in grants to the American Red Cross. Relief efforts for the island Haiti were funded with a $10,000 grant in response to the devastating earthquake which recently killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions of residents. An additional $10,000 grant funded local emergency services in the Twin Cities area. Services provided locally include helping residents in the immediate aftermaths of fires, floods, and other emergencies.
A grant for $10,000 went to the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life event in Shakopee, Minnesota. The event, which is held annually at the Shakopee High School track, raises funds to support programs of the American Cancer Society and research. It also commemorates victims and survivors of cancer.
The American Diabetes Association of Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a $10,000 grant for their annual fundraiser to support education to target Native Americans in Minnesota and research. Diabetes is one of the leading causes of heart disease, heart attack, and stroke. Together these diseases represent some of the most critical health concerns among American Indians.
Memorial Blood Centers of Saint Paul, Minnesota, will use their grant to help purchase a new bloodmobile. Memorial Blood Centers have co-sponsored blood drives at the SMSC for more than 20 years. The new bloodmobile will have more donor beds and interview rooms and will replace an older model at the end of its service life. Memorial Blood Centers has served the Twin Cities and surrounding region for more than 60 years.
A $10,000 grant to the Hennepin County Medical Center of Minneapolis, Minnesota, will pay for a portion of salary for an American Indian Advocate who helps patients and their family members with emergency social service during medical treatment.
A project to raise funds for Parkinson’s Foundation of Minnesota (Golden Valley, Minnesota) and the National Parkinson Foundation of Miami, Florida, was awarded a $10,000 grant. Prior Lake resident Kevin Burkart will complete 200 skydives in one day to raise money and awareness for Parkinson’s disease on June 16, 2010. The unique fundraiser will take place at Skydive Twin Cities in Baldwin, Wisconsin. Burkart did a similar effort in 2008 in which he completed 100 jumps in one day. (For more info go to www.perfectjumps.com.)
A grant for $8,000 to the Ramsey County Historical Society (RCHS) allowed for the purchase of all current copies and future publishing rights to the books Dakotah: Life and Legends of the Sioux and Painting the Dakota: Seth Eastman at Fort Snelling.
Both books were originally published by the Afton Historical Society Press. The RCHS plans to use these unique publications to enhance the learning of low-income children who participate in their Subsidized Dakota Tour program at the Gibbs Museum or their Dakota Outreach programs to hundreds of schools in Minnesota.
Grants of $5,000 each to went to Project Turnabout for their Appetite for Life fundraiser; the National Kidney Foundation for the Kidney Early Evaluation Program; the National Eagle Center for a capital campaign; and the Minnesota Planetarium for a new planetarium atop the Minneapolis Public Library.
TO SUBMIT an ARTICLE, OPINION PIECE, COMMENTS to the Native Unity Digest, e-mail bobbieo@digitaldune.net.
NATIVE UNITY - A place for Native American Peoples to solidify their tribes to make a positive impact on the cultural, social, economic and political fabric of American society and a place for non-Natives to better understand the ways of the American Indian.
News Blog - American Indian Report - AIR BLOG
http://falmouth-air.blogspot.com
THE BUFFALO POST - Missoulian Montana's Native News Blog about Native People And The World We Live In.
http://buffalopost.net/
Check Out NATIVE PRIDE- It's a great site!
http://letstalknativepride.blogspot.com
NATIVE AMERICA, DISCOVERED AND CONQUERED
http://lawlib.lclark.edu/blog/native_america/
PATHOLOGY.ORG - Up-to-date informmational database on general health and disease information, medical schools and medical resources.
http://www.Pathology.org
FOR ANNIE'S NATIVE CELEBRITY NEWS - go to www.nativecelebs.com
CATCH COLORADAN PETER JONES AT:
http://indigenousissuestoday.blogspot.com
SUPPORTING NATIVE AMERICAN/FIRST PEOPLE - ARTISTS, FILM MAKERS, ENTERTAINERS, ETC. http://www.krystynmedia.blogspot.com.
posted by BobbieoAZ @ 9:05 PM
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home