Tag Archives: environmental justice

Zinke Embraces Depatriation

After several months of study, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is said to have decided on substantially cutting down the area of lands that presidents since Theodore Roosevelt have protected through the Antiquities Act.

Two of the four monuments Zinke wishes to reduce are those established by recent Democratic presidents. Highest on the list: Bears Ears National Monument, set aside for protection by President Obama. If Zinke and the President get their way, places like Bears Ears in Utah and Gold Butte in Nevada may now be re-opened to commercial mineral and resource extraction.

In a previous post, I outlined how the Act has been implemented since Roosevelt’s administration (it was a Republican-sponsored piece of legislation) by presidents who have responded to the public’s desire to see places with culturally sensitive landmarks and archaeological features preserved for future generations.

“I want to ask you to do one thing in connection with it in your own interest and in the interest of the country—to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is.”

Teddy Roosevelt
Although recent monument designations have been characterized by some western politicians as “federal land grabs,” as the history of the Antiquities Act demonstrates, most are very much in keeping with the vision of its originator, T.R. Like the idea of repatriation (see “Iowa’s Place in Repatriation”), cultural preservation got its start in Iowa when Congressman John F. Lacey, a Republican representative, pushed to create the Antiquities Act. Republicans from Roosevelt to Lacey and Taft all saw that protection of western lands were a necessary part of legislating for “the greater good.” As Roosevelt said when he set aside parts of the Grand Canyon for protection: “I want to ask you to do one thing in connection with it in your own interest and in the interest of the country—to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is.”

Certainly Secretary Zinke is right when he says, “No President should use the authority under the Antiquities Act to restrict public access, prevent hunting and fishing, burden private land, or eliminate traditional land uses, unless such action is needed to protect the object.”

The law states: “the limits of [monuments] in all cases shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.” But also says that private land may be caught up in the process: “When such objects are situated upon a tract  . . . held in private ownership, the tract, or so much thereof as may be necessary for the proper care and management of the object, may be relinquished to the Government.”

Yet several of Zinke’s statements regarding his decision seem to ignore this provision and suggest a highly politicized process. Instead of simply acknowledging that many citizens have written to protest the changes to the boundaries of places like Bears Ears, Zinke interpreted their disagreement as some sort of conspiracy:

Comments received were overwhelmingly in favor of maintaining existing monuments and demonstrated a well-orchestrated national campaign organized by multiple organizations (Washington Post, 8/24/17).

Where else are everyday Americans who want to preserve sacred lands and archaeological wonders to turn? We don’t have as many lobbyists on K Street. Plus, much of our lobbying is done in the open, in letter writing campaigns and blogs like this one. We don’t have access to the golf clubhouses where deals involving the public interest are now routinely made.

“When such objects are situated upon a tract  . . . held in private ownership, the tract, or so much thereof as may be necessary for the proper care and management of the object, may be relinquished to the Government.”

Antiquities Act
This debate is about much more than balancing environmental protections with the needs of local farming and mining interests. The Antiquities Act is all about protecting those “objects of cultural patrimony” that inhere in the land itself—pictographs, earthworks, human remains, artifacts.

Petroglyphs at Gold Butte. Photo by Terri Rylander.

These objects need the special protection a monument designation provides precisely because they do not easily fall under the guidelines of NAGPRA, especially if the land in question is not federal land. Those who would claim that their rights to “improvement” are being violated by such monument designations often claim an ancestral right to the land. The problem with such claims, however, is that much of land use in the west is predicated upon ignoring earlier treaties the U.S. made with Indian tribes in the nineteenth century.

In an ideal world, those of us who wish to see sacred sites and objects of cultural patrimony be protected would simply write our representatives and eventually have legislation written to that effect. There would be compromises, to be sure, but in the end, both the rancher and worshiper would have land enough to peaceably coexist.

But we live in an era of legislative “under-reach” that almost guarantees nothing will get done in this regard. The U.S. Senate couldn’t even find a way to hold hearings for a Supreme Court nominee, something the Constitution lists as part of their job. How could they possibly act on something like this, an issue that requires careful thought, historical knowledge, and cultural sensitivity?

Although it is being marketed under the guise of local autonomy, this executive action is simply a disguised form of depatriation—the clawing back of Indian homelands into the maw of corporate interests. Repatriation law is founded on the right of peoples to declare sovereignty over those objects of cultural patrimony that have been unjustly alienated from them. More fundamentally, it posits a homeland to which such items may be returned.

Under Mr. Zinke’s plan, American Indians will have fewer places to worship and less land to spare for the bones of their ancestors.

 

 

 

 

 

Depatriation

Cedar Mesa Moon House, Bears Ears National Monument.

American Indian history is littered with euphemisms masking atrocities committed by the federal and state governments under their cover. Beginning with “removal,” that benign-sounding word for forced marches and starvation, the settler communities that invaded Indian Country have deployed a wide array of terms to describe what are now generally acknowledged to have been policies aimed at destroying tribal communities and their traditions—the Dawes Act, Relocation, Termination.

The latest word to enter the vocabulary of those who would carve out more sacred grounds and treaty land for their personal use is perhaps the most galling. That word is sovereignty.

During the 2015 armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge  in Oregon, members of a group called Citizens for Constitutional Freedom invoked sovereignty in the form of state’s rights to justify their actions. They said the federal government’s management of western lands was illegitimate because their own “ancestral rights” to cattle grazing usurped any federal claims (Read more).

Over the course of the protracted negotiations to end the Malheur occupation, the Burns Paiute Tribe, which once held land that included the refuge, called on the militants to end the standoff. From the point of such tribal communities, this bastardization of the concept of sovereignty is absurd. Yankton Dakota Sioux writer Jacqueline Keeler put it this way:

As a Native American, I find [their] late-nineteenth-century claims of “ancestral rights” presumptuous, since by law all remaining pre-emptive rights in [the states] belong not to late arrivals like [them] but to tribes that have lived in the region for thousands of years (Read more).

Unfortunately, the “ancestral rights” types have the ear of the new president. During the Obama administration, more lands were returned to the Native nations than in the terms of the three previous presidents. Now, the current Commander in Chief has signed an executive order instructing the Interior Department to review all national monument designations, paying special attention to the Bears Ears National Monument in San Juan County, Utah.

Members of Utah’s congressional delegation started lobbying the new administration soon after November’s election, asking it to reverse course on Bears Ears. Indian Country Today reported at the time that “a White House official justified this action, saying, ‘Past administrations have overused this power and designated large swaths of land well beyond the areas in need of protection.’”

The term I would use for these efforts is depatriation.

That is because repatriation and the renewal of cultural protocols presupposes a homeland where remains may be re-interred and ceremonies restored. The word’s etymology suggests a post-classical Latin reference to returning something or someone to the homeland, the country of one’s father. Yet it is given in a feminine form—patria—and thereby refers to a motherland as well. Thus, the word is, first and foremost, about land. It represents a landed definition of ownership, consanguinity, identity, association.

There is also the question of power. About 50 percent of San Juan County is Native American, yet just nine percent of business owners are Indian, according to the U.S. Census. It is also one of the poorest counties in the state. “It’s all about control,” said Mark Maryboy, a member of the grassroots Utah Diné Bikéyah, which initiated the effort to make Bears Ears a national monument.

Of course, not all tribes or tribal members agree. Darren Parry, Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation vice chairman, has said that the designation is not in the best interest of the Shoshone. Navajo Republican County Commissioner Rebecca Benally agrees, and has formed a group called Stewards of San Juan County. Ms Benally feels that the tribes are being “used” by environmentalists and that the monument’s boundaries extend too far into county lands that could he used by tribal members for grazing.

While these complaints deserve a proper hearing, it is also worth noting that the most outspoken supporters of rolling back President Obama’s designation are no less suspect of manipulating tribal politics and “using” Native people than the environmentalists Rebecca Benally opposes.

It’s all about control.

Mark Maryboy

San Juan County Commissioner Bruce Adams, a Republican rancher, is a case in point. As part of his support of the rollback, Adams distributed cowboy hats emblazoned with the message: “Make San Juan County Great Again.” It’s a witty take on the president’s campaign slogan, but just 200 days into this administration, it is a phrase that should give us all pause.

Bruce Adams (“Indian Country Today,” Kim Baca)

We have now experienced what “great” means for the new president, and it does not appear to have anything to do with helping rural counties like San Juan. It does, however, promise corporate interests more access to extractive resources, tax breaks, and relaxed environmental regulations. None of these would seem to offer farmers and ranchers any shot at “greatness.” More mining and drilling means less grazing land. Less oversight means more tainted ground water, more erosion. Nor are the corporate interests at all local. If they employ locals, they do so only sporadically, as suits their immediate needs. They rarely reinvest in the local infrastructure or participate in community activities. They build temporary roads to and from their mines and wells, hire itinerant workers, and cut and run when the mines are payed out and the wells run dry. Their profits go to place like Panama and the Cayman Islands, while rural people like those of San Juan County, both Anglo and Indian, are left to clean up the mess.

This is not sovereignty, it is fealty, a word that should strike fear in the hearts of anyone with a desire for freedom and local control. It is not at all euphemistic. It means exactly what it says: “a feudal tenant’s sworn loyalty to a lord.”

 

Globalism and Indigenous Environmentalism

In January of this year, Isidro Baldenegro López was gunned down at his home village, Coloradas de la Virgen in Chihuahua, Mexico. He was shot six times, in the chest and abdomen, by a man authorities identified but could not capture. Just out of jail, he had returned to his family, against his better judgment. He knew firsthand that Chihuahua is a violent place. Drug trafficking and widespread corruption have made it, like several other Mexican border provinces, a militarized zone where the rule of law is only a dream.

But Isidro Baldenegro was not a narcotrafficker or corrupt official. He was a subsistence farmer and community leader of Mexico’s indigenous Tarahumara people in the country’s Sierra Madre mountain region. His 15-month prison term was handed down because he organized  protests against illegal logging there. In fact, in 2005, he was awarded   the Goldman Prize for his environmental work.

Isidro Baldenegro

Mr. Baldengro’s murder marked a horrible anniversary for indigenous peoples of the western hemisphere. Just a year before, fellow Goldman Prize winner, Berta Caceres— a member of the Lenca community in Honduras—was shot to death in her own home. She had been protesting the Agua Zarca Dam, a joint project of Honduran company Desarrollos Energéticos SA (DESA) and Chinese state-owned Sinohydro, the world’s largest dam developer. Like many such projects on Native land, Agua Zarca, “was pushed through without consulting the indigenous Lenca people—a violation of international treaties governing indigenous peoples’ rights” (Goldman Prize, http://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/berta-caceres/)

Berta Caceres at the banks of the Gualcarque River in the Rio Blanco region of western Honduras.

According to the Goldman Environmental Foundation, the dam threatened to “cut off the supply of water, food and medicine for hundreds of Lenca people and violate their right to sustainably manage and live off their land.” Sadly, Beta Caceres and Isidro Baldenegro are the norm, rather than the exception. All told, 122 activists were murdered across Latin America in 2015. Being indigenous and caring for one’s homeland has clearly become a lethal occupation.

All told, 122 activists were murdered across Latin America in 2015

The NGO Global Witness has produced a chart based on statistics that record violence against environmental activists around the globe. It highlights,  in vivid color, the awful concentration of violence the western hemisphere’s indigenous peoples bear in this global war for resources.

It would be easy for citizens of the United States to write these deaths off as yet more Latin American “instability,” if it were not for the parallels these events share with those in North America. A recent post on this blog detailed  how the government’s about-face on the Dakota Access Pipeline brought with it more violence to the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River reservations, this time in the form of BIA police .

Yet anyone familiar with American history knows that this is standard operating procedure for local, state, and federal governments when they heed the call of extractive industries and their powerful investors. In the late nineteenth-century, progressive activists like Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (who opened the first English-language kindergarden in the U.S.) constantly warned their eastern readers that the “management” of Indian Country actually involved a corrupt cabal of territorial governments, the federal authorities, and businessmen with vested interests in Indian lands. Writing to the Minister Lyman Abbot, Peabody explained,

The Indian Agency is “the most effectual instrumentality of a formidable Ring, composed of the still unreformed civil service on the frontiers, and the majority of the frontier population, who deprecate Indian civilization, and work against it with an immense mercantile interest scattered all over the Union, that fattens on the CONTRACTS FOR SUPPLIES, which is the breath of life to this well-named ‘Hidden Power.’” (“Sarah Winnemucca’s practical solution . . .” 1886).

In an era marked by non-Indian backlash against globalization, the sacrifices made by Native peoples across the hemisphere are worth noting. As Native legal scholar Duane Champagne recently reminded us, indigenous peoples can very well be likened to the “canaries in the coal mine” of democracy . What is happening at Standing Rock is part and parcel to what has rocked the Tarahumara communities in the Sierra Madre and the Lenca people of Honduras.

It is high time Americans saw their indigenous neighbors as partners, not adversaries. We are all in this together, battling  a global economy that has no care for our air and water, and prizes only what it can extract from our land—its beneficiaries hiding their profits in offshore accounts and manipulating the franchise the people have so desperately fought to win.

Canaries in the Coal Mine

Among the flurry of executive orders signed by the President over the past few weeks, several targeted Native American communities. From the infamous border wall project to the ill-conceived Dakota Access Pipeline, the President affirmed his commitment to assaulting tribal sovereignty and environmental justice.

Verlon Jose, the leader of the Tohono O’odham Nation on the Arizona/Mexico border spoke for many people in Indian Country when he said, “over my dead body will a wall be built.”

Although some might think of the border wall and the Dakota Access Pipeline as “Indian” issues, it and others like it affect all Americans. That’s because what happens in Indian Country does not stay in Indian Country.

We have a vital concern with Indian self-government because the Native American is to America what the Jew was to the Russian Czars and Hitler’s Germany.

Felix Cohen

For nearly two centuries Native communities have been the staging area for federal policies and practices that would later be turned on the nation as a whole. Educational ideas were tried out on Native children—the Lancastrian monitorial method, the industrial school model. National water projects flooded Indian valleys.

Toxic runoff on Ft. Berthold Reservation, Montana.

National forest clear cutting denuded Indian hillsides. Nuclear weapons testing irradiated indigenous dunes and mesas; uranium mining for those same weapons scarred Indian Country’s mountains and poisoned its water.

Last summer, Duane Champagne, Professor of American Indian Studies and faculty member of UCLA’s School of Law, recalled Felix Cohen’s famous comment (made now a half-century ago) that Indians were like the canaries in the coal mine of American democracy. Given the events of the past few weeks, Cohen’s observation seems especially prescient.

Even more startling than his canary analogy is the context in which he made it.

Margene Bullcreek, opponent of toxic waste dump.

It was in the Yale Law Journal, in an article titled “The Erosion of Indian Rights, 1950 – 53” that Cohen forged this startling connection: 

We have a vital concern with Indian self-government because the Native American is to America what the Jew was to the Russian Czars and Hitler’s Germany. For us the Indian tribe is the miner’s canary, and when it flutters and droops we know that the poison gases of intolerance threaten all other minorities in our land.

Intolerance. That’s the extra something that sharpens federal policy into the point of the spear in Indian Country. In North Dakota, the federal government was very slow to acknowledge and protect the civil rights of protesters. It essentially turned a blind eye to intolerance. Native people were denied hotel rooms because of their ethnicity. They were gassed and beaten in a way that no middle class white American has been. They were showered with rubber bullets, freezing water, and set upon by attack dogs all while the Obama administration did little on their behalf. It was only in the waning days of his presidency that Obama instructed the Justice Department to take a closer look at what was going on in Morgan County. Although Attorney General Loretta Lynch did eventually send Justice officials to the field to survey the situation, with the new administration,  even those slim protections have been lifted and an aggressive BIA police force installed at Standing Rock to intimidate its residents.

BIA policeman beating a man on the Cheyenne River Reservation, February, 2017. [http://nativenewsonline.net/currents/cheyenne-river-sioux-tribe-reacts-bia-police-brutality/]

With the protection of state’s rights as its new role, the federal government has turned a blind eye to state legislation that is clearly, and maliciously, directed at Native people—with no other policy goals than intimidation and intolerance.

A case in point is North Dakota House Concurrent Resolution 3017. In January, when the new president took office, North Dakota legislators attempted to pass a bill that essentially made the old 1950s federal policy of “termination” (exactly the law Felix Cohen was discussing when he made his canary analogy) a model for the state’s relationship with its indigenous citizens. Like most Indian-directed legislation, it pretended to have the best interests of Native people at heart:

A concurrent resolution urging Congress to modify the Indian reservation system by vesting the states with the ability to engage in relations with Native American tribes and with the responsibility of developing plans to improve the failed Indian reservation system, advance and elevate the quality of life on Indian reservations, promote and increase literacy on Indian reservations, and help Indian reservations to achieve economic stability and independence.

The events in North Dakota, along the border of the Standing Rock reservation, on the Cheyenne River reservation, and in the Tohono O’odham homeland should worry non-Indians. Its is a short step from Indian Country to the “inner city,” and from there to suburbs and shopping malls. Native Americans are once again seeing the sweeping suspension of civil rights that happens when the government promotes the interests of the few over the objections of those it brands as alien, un-American, other. They know, perhaps better than the rest of us, that being Indian is just the beginning. Ask the Nisei, American citizens who, in the 1940s, found out they too were “Indians” and that they too could be herded into reservations “for the duration.”

Fracking in Indian County, North Dakota.