Klamath disrupt Buffet's salmon killing corporate machine

Craig Tucker, Spokesperson Karuk Tribe (916) 207-8294 Regina Chichizola, Klamath Riverkeeper (541) 951-0126 Matt Mais, Yurok Tribe (707) 954-0976 Christina Haro, Media Contact (415) 453-0430

Klamath River Tribes and Fishermen Declare Mission Accomplished

Groups succeed in disrupting Warren Buffett’s Woodstock of Capitalism

By Criag Tucker

OMAHA – Klamath River Basin tribal leaders, native activists, and sport and commercial fishermen, and conservationists returned home to the West Coast after disrupting the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting. The group is demanding the removal of four Klamath River dams that kill salmon and create massive blooms of toxic algae.
“We went to Omaha to send Warren Buffett and his executives a clear message that as long as there is no business as usual on the Klamath, there will be no business as usual for him, Mid American Energy, or PacifiCorp,” said Karuk Vice-Chair Leaf Hillman, after the shareholder meeting held May 1 --4.
Tribal members, commercial and sport fishers and Regina Chichizola of Klamath River Keeper, camped out in front of Omaha’s Qwest Center at 1 a.m. the night before in a cold rain. This allowed the group to get at the head of the cue to ask Buffett questions during a six-hour question and answer session in front of 30,000 shareholders.
Karuk World Renewal Priest, or Fatawana, Chook-Chook Hillman spearheaded the strategy and was the third person to speak at the meeting. After introducing himself in his native tongue, Chook-Chook challenged Buffett by saying, “as a European-American you are the visitor in our country…will you not meet with the native people impacted by your fish killing dams. You say you want to address poverty and disease in the third world. But you are creating those same third world conditions right here in America. We want to meet and resolve the issue in a way that saves you money and saves our culture!” Chook-Chook then presented a dam removal agreement.
As he spoke, Georgiana Myers and Annalia Norris of the Yurok Tribe unfurled a large banner that read “Klamath Dams Equal Cultural Genocide.”
Before lunch two more questions came from the group, one from Klamath River Keeper Regina Chichizola focused on the toxic algae blooms in Buffett’s Klamath Reservoirs and another from Mike Polmateer of the Karuk Tribe. Each time Buffett passed the question off to Mid American CEO David Sokol and each time another banner was unfurled. One read, “Buffett’s Dams kill salmon, communities, and jobs.” Another read “Warren: Un-dam the Klamath - sign the agreement now!”
Sokol answered each time by describing the issue as “complex” while security escorted the Tribal members from the building. There were no arrests.
After the lunch break, Buffett announced that he would not field any more questions about the Klamath. Commercial salmon fishermen Dave Bitts, Karuk fisherman Ron Reed, and Karuk Medicine Woman Cathy McCovey where denied access to the microphones despite being next in the cue to speak.
Bitts, who had to navigate around a snow storm in Denver to make the meeting was clearly disappointed.
“I traveled over 3000 miles to be here and woke up at two o’clock in the morning to speak, then I was told I couldn’t speak. The story I have to tell is that of an out of work commercial fishermen,” said Bitts. “Buffett spent a lot of time today explaining what he couldn’t do for us. I wanted to ask the richest man on the planet what he could do for us.”
“Now we return home having accomplished our mission. We sent a clear message to Buffett, Sokol and every other executive involved that as long as there is no justice on the Klamath, there will be no peace for them,” said Karuk Tribal Member Jess Mcloughlin who was involved in erecting the banners.
Yurok council member Richard Myers said, “Everyone has had a chance to sit at the table and work with the tribes towards a resolution. There is one empty chair left. We are waiting for PacifiCorp to take a seat.”
Pictures from this year’s protests are available from the Associated Press and will be posted online soon at http://www.klamathriver.org/.
Learn more about the Klamath Crisis on YouTube:
Un-dam It Commercial: http://youtube.com/watch?v=pFoyzZvuXxs
Klamath River Toxic Algae: http://youtube.com/watch?v=tDny8jvd950&feature=related
Tribes and Fisherman at Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders meeting 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SasDF5b9rks
For more information: http://www.berkshireshareholders.com/ http://www.salmonforsavings.org/
S. Craig Tucker, Ph.D. Klamath Campaign Coordinator Karuk Tribe of California NEW NUMBER home office: 707-839-1982 Tribal office in Orleans: 530-627-3446 x3027 cell: 916-207-8294 ctucker [at] karuk.us
http://www.karuk.us/

Hopi and Navajo truths confirmed by science in US censored climate report

By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

ARIZONA -- With the release of the US censored climate report -- that Bush and his corporate handlers censored for four years -- the words of the late Hopi spiritual leaders are mirrored forth.
Hopi Sinom, including Thomas Banyacya and Dan Evehema, foretold of a time when hurricanes, storms and wildfires would seize the planet if human beings did not care for Mother Earth. They also warned if the secret agenda of coal mining was carried out on Black Mesa, under the guise of the so-called Navajo Hopi land dispute and Navajos were relocated, that natural calamities would increase.
Just a few days ago in the Navajos' Chuska Mountains, I was listening to a traditional Navajo farmer talk about how dry the earth is. Looking at the dry pinon trees and dusty earth, she said it would be hard to get the corn and squash to grow this summer. The earth is so dry that it does not absorb water like it used to. Every year it gets worse.
The U.S. censored climate report, just released under court order, reflects this truth about the drought in the Southwest. The report also reveals the truth foretold by the Hopi spiritual leaders. Hurricanes and storms are increasing with global warming and changes in ocean air circulation.
Sadly, as the ice habitat of polar bears is melting, the Navajo Nation President and Council are pressing for another coal-fired power plant, Desert Rock, to produce more greenhouse gases to destroy more of the Arctic. The polar bears and walrus are now being driven from their homeland in the north largely because of coal-fired power plants, just as the Navajos were driven from their homeland in the south so Peabody Coal could seize the land for coal mines to feed power plants.
While it is a great day to see the voices of the traditional Hopi and Navajo converge with the facts of science, it is a sad day to see the destruction all around us. This was the reason for the Longest Walk, to bring attention to this destruction.
From the nuclear testing and gold mining on Western Shoshone lands in Nevada to the widespread oil and gas drilling on Ute lands in Colorado and the power plants on Navajoland, the damage to Mother Earth is pervasive.
In simple towns of working people across the west, power plants were being built wherever people were economically desperate and unaware of the illnesses that follow.
When the Bush Administration carried out torture, it violated the Geneva Conventions and committed perverse criminal acts.
By concealing the truth of global warming, so that power plants would be constructed and oil and gas drilling would increase rapidly in the mad rush for corporate profiteering before Bush's term ended, the Bush Administration committed a crime against humanity.
In reality, this was not just the genocide of American Indians and people of color, this crime crossed all racial lines and is now a crime against all of the people on this continent and all of humanity.

US Censored Climate Report:
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_sc/storytext/sci_climate_science/27673504/SIG=10r1psip4/*http://tinyurl.com/4hojv5

Global warming and wildfires:
"In the last three decades, the wildfire season in the western United States has lengthened and burn durations have increased. Climate change has also very likely increased the size and number of insect outbreaks and tree mortality that help to fuel wildfires in the interior West, the Southwest, and Alaska. These trends are very likely to continue." [V.1.c]
Greenhouse gases and black carbons
"Several different types of gases in the atmosphere warm the planet by trapping energy that would otherwise be emitted to space. These ‘greenhouse gases’ include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, nitrous oxide, and several fluorine- and chlorine-containing gases.
"Black carbon aerosols introduce a warming influence. Deposition of black carbon on snow and ice also contributes a warming influence on the climate by decreasing surface reflectivity that would otherwise deflect more solar energy back into space."

Photo 1: Thomas Banyacya. Photo 2: Polar bear baby. Photos 3: San Juan Generating Station Photos 4 and 5: Indigenous Peoples protest the Desert Rock/Sithe Global power plant planned for the Navajo Naiton, during the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York. Photos Elouise Brown/Dooda (NO) Desert Rock.

brendanorrell@gmail.com

Longest Walk, Michigan and Pennsylvania

(Please double click on posters to enlarge and print)

Those of us here in southwestern Pennsylvania look forward to welcoming the participants of the Longest Walk 2 on Saturday, the 21st of June, as dancers from across the country come to honor the two gifts given to the People at the Woodland Zoo. The White and the Black Buffalo calves. More information about these amazing births, along with official statements from respected and recognized Elders and Spiritual Leaders can be found at www.buffalomessengers.org This will be a beautiful, powerful message for the People, not only of Turtle Island, but worldwide.

Jack Fire would have joined the National Day of Action!

The following letter by a Mohawk youth is being posted on the Day of Action:

Mohawk Nation News
Letter to the editor:

Jake Fire Would Have Joined the National Day of Action! Canadians are seeing the gruesome power of police officers. They have been given the right to carry deadly weapons as part of their arsenal to use during arrests. They carry 50,000 volt tasers, which recently caused the death of an immigrant at the air port in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Canadian public should be very concerned about that incident, since it was not an isolated one. On May 1, 1899, an Akwesasne Mohawk, Saiowisakeron, also known as “Jake Fire”, faced the barrel of a gun in the hands of an RCMP officer. The RCMP had been sent to arrest the Akwesasne traditional chiefs. Standing up for what was right, an unarmed Jake Fire was shot and killed by the RCMP officer. The RCMP officer shooting and killing Jake Fire is the kind of violence and aggression that the colonists use when dealing with Indigenous Peoples asserting our rights. Jake Fire was killed because he supported the traditional Iroquois government and though it was best for his people. At the time, the federal government wanted to impose the colonial band council system of governance. When the Mohawks of Akwesasne resisted the colonial band council style of government, they were coerced into obedience. This pattern has been followed over the centuries when Indigenous got in the way of the immigrants who were swarming all over Turtle Island. In the United States, whenever the settlers came against opposition from the Indigenous, the army was called in. Indigenous resisters were pushed onto uninhabitable areas of Turtle Island. In 1922 the RCMP raided the Six Nations as part of an Indian Affairs plot to overthrow the traditional govenrment. [Order in Council PC 1629, Sept. 17, 1924]. The Iroquois have always resisted being bulldozed into obedience by land developers, governments and police agencies. The most recent example of this brutal method to attempt to control Indigenous occurred in 1995 when an OPP sniper killed an unarmed Indigenous, Dudley George, at Ipperwash, Ontario. Canada and the provincial governments refuse to talk peacefully with the Indigenous people. Instead they arrest and jail, especially the youth. Jailing our people means that Indigenous across Canada are forced to take a back seat to ancestral land and resource theft. We are presently seeing the fast pace of urban development coming into conflict with the Indigenous. Land developers see no problem in going onto disputed Indigenous land to put up housing complexes and explore for oil that destroy the land. Reserves are the only lands left where the non-native are not supposed to encroach. This has not been stopping the developers from trying to enter them too. On May 29, 2008, the Indigenous are asking the Canadian public for support to inform the government that Indigenous Peoples must be dealt with fairly and equitably. This will be the second annual National Day of Action, and Indigenous will show the world that we still care about our rights. Support the cause since it is the future of Indigenous and non-natives alike that will be affected by the federal and provincial government’s response to Indigenous concerns. Kanatase Horn, MohawkAkwesasneKanatase_18@hotmail.com Posted by MNN Mohawk Nation News, May 29, 2008. http://www.mohawknationnews.com/