Flagstaff: The True Cost of Coal

Wednesday, October 14th @ 7pm
The True Cost of Coal Presented by the Beehive Design Collective & the Earth First! Journal
Co-Sponsored by the Taala Hooghan Infoshop & NAU Peace & Justice

On tour with giant, portable murals, the Beehive Design Collective
uses art as a tool for popular analysis, education and organizing. The Bees offer a variety of high energy, interactive, graphic-based
picture-lectures that speak to the overwhelming and complex picture of globalization, militarization, and resource extraction, as well as the
small-scale changes and actions we can undertake to build another world.
The Beehive's innovative, arts-based education strategy provokes community discussion, raising difficult questions, and offering a hopeful story in an era of too much bad news.
Over the years, we have spoken to tens of thousands of folks, and done countless presentations in locations of all kinds.
This Wednesday, October 14th, the Beehive Design Collective will be presenting at the Taala Hooghan Infoshop at 7pm.
Bring a friend or two for an evening of entertainment and education! Members of the Earth First! Journal will also be presenting on topics related to Coal Mining & environmental destruction.
Donations always accepted! ALL AGES!
Taala Hooghan Infoshop is located at 1926 N. Fourth St. Flagstaff, AZ.
www.myspace.com/taalahooghan
Please see http://www.beehivecollective.org/ for more information related to
their current project: The True Cost of Coal.

Listen: Radio Bird Street

"The Maidu Nation Station!"
www.radiobirdstreet.org

4 - 5 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time

Joining us today:
Tammy Cheshire, Professor, Anthropology & Ethnic Studies at Sacramento City College, California State University, Sacramento and The Center for Human Services, UC Davis Extension. Cheshire also advises the student run Indigenous People's club at Sacramento City College. Cheshire is Lakota and has several publications on American Indian families and her master's thesis from Oregon State University was on Cultural Transmission in Urban American Indian Families. She is currently working on her Doctorate in Education at CSUS and plans to focus her dissertation on recruitment, retention and graduation of American Indian students in higher education.
Rose Beth Middleton, Ph.D., Environmental Science, Policy and Management - Society and Environment.dissertation is entitled: ‘We Were Here, We Are Here, We Will Always Be Here:’ A Political Ecology of Healing in Mountain Maidu Country, and it is about intergenerational trauma/ healing in Maidu natural resource activism. An ongoing project related to the dissertation is an interactive GIS map of Indian allotments in Plumas and Lassen counties that Maidu tribal governments, individuals, and organizations can use in land claims and genealogical research. Currently, Middleton is the UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow, Environmental Science and Policy, Native American Studies, at University of California, Davis.
OnNativeGround@live.com
"First you dream it,
plot it out,
ask Creator to bless it,
only then will you achieve it, On Native Ground!"
- ppena, Kickapoo Nation KS

UN Rapporteur to visit Pine Ridge to investigate housing conditions

Contact: Bill Means
International Indian Treaty Council
Cell: 612-386-4030 Bill.Means@state.mn.us

UNITED NATIONS OFFICIAL TO VISIT PINE RIDGE TO INVESTIGATE HOUSING CONDITIONS

SAN FRANCISCO – The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, Raquel Rolnik, will visit the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota on November 1st during her official visit to the United States where she will be focusing on the human right to housing. She will investigate conditions in public housing as well as homelessness, the foreclosure crisis and the lingering impacts of Hurricane Katrina. South Dakota is one of six states Ms. Rolnik will visit in addition to Washington, D.C., during her official mission to the U.S. from October 23rd – November 8th, 2009. Pine Ridge is her only scheduled visit to an Indian reservation.
The Rappporteur’s visit will provide an opportunity for her to view housing conditions on Pine Ridge, meet with tribal and community members and examine the Treaty and Trust obligations of the U.S. Government to the Lakota and other Indian Nations which includes housing, education, health and other social services. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted in 2007 by the UN General Assembly, affirms the international character of these Treaty Rights and the obligations of countries to honor and uphold them. Housing remains a significant problem on the Pine Ridge reservation and throughout Indian Country. A preliminary report submitted to the Rapporteur by the IITC in August of this year, included information provided by the Oglala Sioux Lakota Housing authority (OSLH), and stated: “…housing built and indirectly maintained by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (through thoroughly inadequate grants in aid to the Lakota Oglala Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation) is in a deplorable state. Holes in the wall are inadequately repaired by the residents with duct tape and cardboard, mold is a constant menace to health, the units are severely overcrowded, and trash is not collected, among many housing problems. The Oglala Pine Ridge Reservation also raises another problem of many Indian Reservations and their relationship to the United States. The Lakota Nation, among other Indian Nations, is a party to treaties with the United States, signed in the mid and late 1800’s. Among the United States Treaty Obligations is the provision of subsistence and housing, guaranteed to them for their stolen lands and the extermination of their primary means of subsistence, the Buffalo”.
The Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing was created by the UN Commission on Human Rights in 2000 to examine and report back on the housing situation in various countries in accordance with international human rights obligations. The report on her first–time visit to the U.S. will be presented to the UN Commission on Human Rights in 2010.
American Indian, Alaska, Hawaiian Native and other Indigenous Peoples living in the U.S. are invited to present information to the Rapporteur during her visit to Pine Ridge and in the cities listed below. The National American Indian Housing Council in Washington, D.C., is also hosting a policy briefing for the Rapporteur on November 7th in which various Tribal and community leaders will also participate.
For more information on the November 7th Indigenous Peoples Policy Briefing in Washington, D.C. contact: Wendy Helgamo, National American Indian Housing Council, 202-789-1754, whelgemo@NAIHC.NET

Private prison hustlers target Indian country

PRIVATE PRISONS: PROFITEERING FROM MISERY
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogpsot.com

In the same way that coal mining, power plants, uranium mining and oil and gas drilling companies targeted Indian country for their cancer alleys, private prison profiteers and private security firms are now targeting Indian country, bordertowns and economically-desperate regions of the U.S. to profit from misery.
The private security firm American Police Force, operated by an ex-con in Hardin, Mon., is under probe. The links to CorPlan and the proposed Tohono O'odham migrant prison are now exposed.
Private prison profiteers proposed a migrant prison on San Xavier land of the Tohono O'odham Nation, near Tucson. Although the residents of nearby Sahuarita and O'odham halted those plans, the alternative plan calls for the migrant prison to be built east of Three Points, Ariz.
Tohono O'odham opposing the prison say the migrant prison violates their Himdaag, their sacred way of being.
Read Frank Smith's article for Censored News on the private prison fiascos in Montana, Oklahoma and Arizona:
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2009/10/corrupt-prison-hustlers-linked-to.html
More articles at Google News on the probe of American Police Force:
http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=American+Police+Force
Also see: NM targeted by private prison scam
http://newmexicoindependent.com/39009/private-prison-developer-behind-montana-fiasco-involved-in-construction-of-nm-private-prisons
Private prison developer behind Montana fiasco involved in construction of NM private prisons
"The company that built a Montana private prison, which eventually led to a national embarrassment with the involvement of American Police Force, is also the company that constructed a number of prisons around New Mexico..."

Vice President Cheney profiteered from private prisons, migrant xenophobia
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

While vice president, Dick Cheney profiteered from private prisons by way of his investments. During the same time, the Bush/Cheney administration fanned the flames of racism toward migrants.
Private prisons flourished, especially in Texas and border states, and were filled with migrants and people of color.
Grossly mismanaged, the private prisons are now pits of sexual abuse, violence and murder.
In Nov. 2008, Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales were indicted in Texas.
Although they have not been prosecuted, their link to profiteering at private prisons was exposed. Cheney invested in Vanguard Group, which holds financial interests in the private prison operator GEO (formerly Wackenhut Corrections.)
AP reported in Nov. 2008, "Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have been indicted. The indictment in Willacy County has not yet been signed by the presiding judge.
Cheney is charged with engaging in an organized criminal activity related to the vice president's investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds financial interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. The indictment accuses Gonzales of using his position while in office to stop an investigation in 2006 into abuses at one of those privately run prisons."