A Voice from the Eastern Door
A Voice from the Eastern Door
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WASHINGTON, D.C. Amid a global public-health crisis and with oil prices at extreme lows, the lame duck Trump administration is expected to issue a “request for nominations” as early as Monday, asking oil companies to identify their preferences on areas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain to lease for oil drilling. This is the latest move by the Trump administration in its rushed process to open one of the nation’s most iconic and sacred landscapes to oil drilling. The case for protecting this sacred land is so clear that fi...
Sipekne’kitak, FN. – In a defining election Chief Mike Sack was notified of the final ballot count of over 72% in his favor this evening by the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq returning officer. 3 Candidates ran for Chief - Heather Knockwood, Kim Paul and Chief Mike Sack. “It has always been the greatest honor of my life to represent the people of my community however, today perhaps more than ever, as we have seen their resilience and strength emerge on the world’s stage in recent weeks,” said Chief Mike Sack. “Our people are committed to...
Mi’kmaq First Nation, Nova Scotia The federal government is affirming the Mi’kmaq First Nation’s treaty rights in an ongoing dispute with non-Indigenous fishermen in southwestern Nova Scotia. Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan and Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett released a statement Monday saying the Mi’kmaq have a constitutionally protected treaty right to fish in pursuit of a moderate livelihood. Non-Indigenous fishermen have been protesting the Indigenous fishers’ attempts to set lobster traps in St. Mary’s Bay during the...
By Dalton Walker. Reprinted with permission from Indian Country Today. The Navajo Nation, which has lost more than 500 citizens to the COVID-19 pandemic, is on the frontlines of a volunteer vaccine study. Only a few days after reporting no new daily cases for the first time in months, the tribe announced Friday that it is participating in a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine trial on a patient-volunteer basis. Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez regularly updates cases each day via social media. He reported no new cases on Tuesday. The next day...
By Joaqlin Estus. Reprinted with permission from Indian Country Media. Caribou and moose hunting season opened this month in Alaska, but only locals will be hunting at a popular destination for urban Alaska hunters. The federal lands being closed are part of the traditional homelands of the Ahtna Athabascan in South-central Interior Alaska. The region includes moose and migratory routes of the Nelchina caribou herd, which numbers in the tens of thousands. The state argues there are enough moose, and more than enough caribou, to let the hunt go...
Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez and Vice President Myron Lizer recently visited a newly-established housing manufacturing facility where the first Navajo hogan-style home is being constructed to serve as the prototype for the Nez-Lizer Administration’s housing development initiative to produce much-needed homes for Navajo families, veterans, elders, and others. Since being appointed to serve as the Executive Director of the Navajo Nation Veterans Administration under the Nez-Lizer Administration last year, James D. Zwierlein has taken o...
By Arlyssa Becenti. Reprinted with permission from Navajo Times June 4, 2020. Window Rock, Arizona. As tribes are distracted by coronavirus humanitarian efforts, the federal government has proceeded with a plan for fracking and mineral leasing activities near Chaco Canyon. Although Secretary of Interior David Bernhardt extended the public comment period from May 28 to Sept. 25 on the proposed plan to drill between 2,345 and 3,101 new oil and gas wells across the Greater Chaco area, it came after the U.S. Bureau of Land Management Farmington...
As coronavirus pandemic spreads in Brazil and its cases rise about 340,000, its Indigenous communities are taking a disproportionate hit and threaten vulnerable Indigenous communities in the Amazonas region. The state has one of the highest infection rates in the country and also suffers from poor healthcare and now COVID-19 is spreading to isolated villages there. Living far from hospitals and often lacking basic infrastructure, Brazil’s indigenous people are dying at an alarming rate from Covid-19 with little help in sight. The mortality r...
(January 9, 2020) Rising from the center of the southeastern Utah landscape and visible from every direction are twin buttes so distinctive that in each of the native languages of the region their name is the same: Hoon’Naqvut, Shash Jáa, Kwiyagatu Nukavachi, Ansh An Lashokdiwe, or “Bears Ears.” For hundreds of generations, native peoples lived in the surrounding deep sandstone canyons, desert mesas, and meadow mountaintops, which constitute one of the densest and most significant cultural landscapes in the United States. Abundant rock art, a...
February 4th, 2020, Vancouver, BC (Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Territory) – The Squamish Nation is extremely disappointed with today’s Federal Court of Appeal (FCA) decision to uphold the second federal approval of the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) Project. The Squamish Nation maintains that significant uncertainties and risks remain associated with the project in unceded Squamish Territory, and that these have not been adequately addressed to-date. “There is a lot in the Federal Court of Appeal decision that concerns us. The TMX P...
January 15, 2020, Smithers, (B.C.) Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs are collectively calling for diplomacy in light of B.C. Premier John Horgan’s recent statements in relation to the Coastal GasLink pipeline project on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory in northern B.C. We urge Premier Horgan to meet with the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs, rather than rely on a B.C. Supreme Court injunction order to justify infringement of our title and the forcible or violent removal of our peaceful members from our unceded territories. On Monday, Horgan stated...
Williams Lake, BC: The Tŝilhqot’in Nation celebrated the Grand Opening of its Solar Farm on October 18, 2019. The Tŝilhqot’in Solar Farm is located 80 km west of Williams Lake on what is known as the Riverwest Sawmill. The 1.25-MW solar farm is the largest of its kind in British Columbia and is a hundred percent developed, built, owned and operated by the Tŝilhqot’in Nation. Five years ago, the opportunity to initiate the Tŝilhqot’in Solar Farm presented itself. There were many challenges along the Tŝilhqot’in Solar Farm project’s life...
The U.S. held a record 69,550 migrant children in detention facilities in 2019, a Tuesday report from The Associated Press and PBS Frontline found, leading to major psychological and physical harm and lasting trauma. According to AP tech reporter Frank Bajak “No other country held as many immigrant children in detention over the past year as the United States - 69,550. The physical and emotional scars are profound.” This story lays out in excruciating detail the emotional pain of victims of President Donald Trump’s child separation polic...
OTTAWA, Nov. 6, 2019 – In a school gymnasium filled to capacity with elementary students, Phyllis Webstad, an Indigenous residential school survivor, recounted her first day at St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School. It was not a happy story. Her experience of how her brand new shiny orange shirt and the rest of her clothes were stripped from her, impacted her life. The first day of school is a big deal for all children. The students at Ottawa’s Chapman Mills Elementary School appeared to have a lot of empathy for the Secwepemc elder. Canad...
Reprinted with permission from Survival International November 2, 2019. An indigenous Amazon Guardian has been shot dead by loggers and another wounded after they were ambushed by loggers. Paulo Paulino Guajajara, known also as Kwahu Tenetehar, was shot in the neck and died in the forest. His colleague, Tainaky Tenetehar, was shot in the back and arm but escaped. The Amazon Guardians have been patrolling their territory in the eastern Amazon, which has been heavily invaded by loggers, for...
Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and was named the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States in 2019. Harjo is the author of nine books of poetry, several plays and children's books, and a memoir, Crazy Brave. Her many honors include the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, a PEN USA Literary Award, Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund Writers' Award, a...
Margaret Atwood and Bernadine Evaristo share the 2019 Booker Prize. The judges of this year's Booker prize have "explicitly flouted" the rules of the august literary award to choose the first joint winners in almost 30 years. At 79, Atwood becomes the prize's oldest winner. The Canadian author previously won the Booker in 2000 for The Blind Assassin; she becomes the fourth author to have won the prize twice. Evaristo, 60, is the first black woman to win the Booker Prize and first black British...
Five days into a massive airlift of bottled drinking water, the Seminole Tribe of Florida estimates it has delivered approximately 35,000 bottles of drinking water for victims of Hurricane Dorian. Since Friday, Sept. 6, the Tribe’s Aviation Department has made as many as three roundtrip flights a day with each of two helicopters and a single-engine Pilatus PC-12/45 airplane. The delivery schedule is continuing today, Tuesday, September 10. Deliveries have been made in cooperation with the G...
Ottawa, ON. Assembly of First Nations (AFN) National Chief Perry Bellegarde wants Brazil and all countries to take immediate action to stop the fires that are devastating the Amazon, and for all federal party leaders in Canada to commit to work with First Nations on a national plan to address the climate crisis with specific actions and measurable targets. “We must act now to stop the fires in the Amazon rainforest and if this requires international pressure at the G7 meeting and other forums then Indigenous peoples around the world support t...
A controversial mural depicting images of slavery and dead Native Americans at the George Washington High School located in San Francisco will be left in place but covered with solid panels. The San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education voted 4-3 on Tuesday, August 13, 2019 to cover the "Life of Washington" mural at the high school without destroying it. This vote amends a previous decision. In June, the board had decided to paint over the mural or, if painting would cause too...
Band constables stopped two young men suspected in three Northern B.C. murders as they drove through the Manitoba reserve of the Tataskweyak Cree Nation, according to Nathan Neckoway and told to Global News on Monday, July 29. RCMP continue to search for suspects Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, and Kam McLeod, 19, who are charged with the murder of B.C. resident Leonard Dyck. They are also wanted in connection with the murders of tourists Lucas Fowler and Chynna Deese, who were found dead along a B.C. highway over two weeks ago. The pair have since made...
Honolulu, Hawaii’s Governor David Ige said on Tuesday rescinded an emergency proclamation that was set to deal with native Hawaiian protestors. The protest group Pu’uhonua o Pu’uhuluhulu have been protesting the construction on a massive telescope – Thirty Meter Telescope on a mountain considered sacred. During weekdays, up to 1000 protestors can be seen blocking the main access road to the Mauna Kea’s summit. During the weekend, up to 2500 protestors gather in opposition of the construction. The protest group Pu’uhonua o Pu’uhuluhul...
Six Inuit organizations will receive $4.3 million in federal funding for a variety of environmental stewardship programs. According to CBC News North, the money will be disbursed over three years through the Indigenous Guardians Pilot Program, which provides financial support to Indigenous people to monitor their traditional lands, preserve wildlife and maintain their culture. Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna announced the funding on a trip to Inuvik, N.W.T., on June 22, 2019. “The Indigenous Guardians Pilot Program...
Oklahoma state ranks tenth in the country for murdered and missing indigenous women (MMIW) cases. Now, two of the sovereign Indian Nations within the state are acting to bring awareness to what Senator Jon Tester D-MT) has described as "an epidemic." Billboards that strikingly convey the tragedy will debuted near Tulsa, Oklahoma City, El Reno and Ponca City. The Ponca Nation was host to the Frontline Oil and Gas Conference on May 16 to18, 2019. This Indigenous-led organizing summit was held in...
Reprinted with permission from Indian Country Media Grand Ronde tribal citizen Mia Prickett used to assume she was reading unbiased reporting in the tribe’s newspaper, Smoke Signals. But all that changed when the tribal council disenrolled her and more than 80 of her relatives in 2013, effectively taking away their tribal citizenship. “I had no reason to think that council or anybody had an undue influence on the paper,” Prickett, then a journalism student at the University of Oregon said. She describes herself as naive for believing that...
