UC Berkeley: Grandmother oak fed to wood chipper

UC Berkeley feeds grandmother oak to wood chipper, destroys sacred grove and jails tree sitters

By Morning Star Gali
Photo by Brenda Norrell
Dear friends of the Memorial Oak Grove,
Today, after 648 days, the treesitters and the University of California reached an agreement that brought the Oak Grove treesit to an end.
The treesitters agreed to come down voluntarily, and University representatives agreed that they would make a public statement that the University will create new ways for the community to be involved in land use decisions going forward. What form precisely that will take is yet to be determined.
It is up to the community to ensure that the format is substantial, and that the community is involved in the beginning, brainstorm phases and on an ongoing basis with land use.
The University representatives and treesit supporters agreed that confrontations are in no one's best interest, and it is a mutually shared interest for real cooperation to take place.
The supporters of the treesitters have made a request for bail funds... please visit:http://oaksarrestees.org/click on "donate"or if you'd rather send a check, make it out to "Oaks Arrestees Defense Committee" and mail it to....Oaks Arrestees Defense Committes1610 North Normandie Avenue, #210Hollywood, California, 90027
Many brave souls are in jail right now, including the four treesitters who surrendered to the UC Police (Huck, Mondo, Shem, and Ernesto), as well several ground supporters who were arrested today.
Also, Native American leader and organizer Morningstar Gali requested that UC Police honor a prior commitment they made to allow the Native Community to enter the remains of the grove and place tobacco at the stump of the Grandmother Oak once the treesitters come down. Thus far, UC Police have refused to respond to this request. If you agree that UC Police should allow the ceremony to happen, please call the office of Chief of Police Victoria Harrison at 510-642-1133 to express your views, or send an email to vlh@berkeley.edu.
Furthermore, treesit supporters want the stump of the Grandmother Oak returned to the Native community so that they may create drums and other religious artifacts. If you agree, please state this desire as well when you contact Chief Harrison.
The Memorial Oak Grove is regarded as a sacred place to Native American people and is documented as such by UC Berkeley's own Anthropology Department. There is evidence of 2 shell mounds sites in the area, with 19 ancestral remains found within them. Along with UC Berkeley's attempt to develop on a sacred place, they are guilty of housing over 17,000 sacred remains and objects. UCB currently holds the largest human remains collection in the United States of which it is not in compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)
Morning Star described the importance of this area, when the destruction began last week.
"I brought my five year old daughter and two month old son out today to bear witness to the massacre of sacred life," said Morning Star Gali of the Pit River Tribe and co-chair of Advocates to Protect Sacred Sites. "The cops responded by yelling to move them behind the median. I asked if they would stand by as complacent if it was their grandmother’s gravesites being desecrated. I want my children here to witness the destruction of sacred life and how important it is to protect it. I wanted them to witness the cops, arborists and UC Officials that participated and cheered as the trees came crashing down from bulldozers. This exhibits the ongoing Human Rights abuses committed by the University. They refuse to comply with NAGPRA by holding 13,000 of our ancestors remains hostage, they illegally reorganized NAGPRA with no tribal consultation and now they continue to desecrate sacred burial grounds."The Memorial Grove is a native Coast Live Oak ecosystem. Native oaks support the most complex terrestrial ecosystems in California. The California Native Plant Society CNPS has stated that the Memorial Oak Grove is “an important gene bank for the Coast Live Oak.” Every one of the oaks in the grove should be protect by law and the Berkeley Coast Live Oak moratorium forbids cutting mature Coast Live Oaks in Berkeley. UC refuses to recognize the law. The grove is also part of a National Historic Site. The Stadium and landscape is a memorial to Californians who died in World War I.
The treesitters say that they sincerely thank you for your love, your time, your letters, your food, your water, your witnessing, your words, your presence. We know many of you contributed deeply to this campaign in many ways, and many of those contributions have gone unrecognized and unseen. So know that whether your participation was visible or not, the treesitters say that your support for them -- and most importantly, for the trees -- is deeply appreciated.
This email list is obviously winding down, although it is possible that something new that relates to community relationships with UC could be created. Stay tuned for that.
If you're curious what ground supporters are up to now, you can reach them at 510 938 2109. And again, ground support says a way to help out those who have done so much is to visit:
http://oaksarrestees.org/
Sincerely,
Your friends from the Oak Grove

Photo: Long Walkers gathered with the grandmother oak for prayers at the beginning of the Longest Walk in Feb. 2008/Photo Brenda Norrell

Organizations ready lawsuits against police in convention cities

Published on Tuesday, September 9, 2008 by The Hill.com
Organizations Ready Lawsuits Against Police In Convention Cities
by Jordy Yager
Republished from Common Dreams:
www.commondreams.org/

Political activists and legal groups are preparing to file multiple lawsuits against the cities and police departments of Denver and St. Paul because of their treatment of convention protesters.
Police used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse protesters outside the Republican convention last week. Political activists and legal groups are preparing to file multiple lawsuits against the cities and police departments of Denver and St. Paul because of their treatment of convention protesters. (Times Online/UK)The groups say protesters demonstrating against the war in Iraq and other issues in both cities were mistreated and their civil rights were violated.
The National Lawyers Guild of Minnesota is preparing multiple suits against authorities in St. Paul on behalf of protesters, according to the group. They say protesters were illegally detained and their First Amendment rights were violated.
"Over the course of the week people here in the Twin Cities saw a level of police repression that was unheard of for us," said Jess Sundin, a spokesman for the Coalition to March on the RNC [Republican National Convention] and Stop the War. "But I was very impressed that people came out anyway and demonstrated tremendous strength and conviction."
She said she believed the thousands of delegates, politicians and members of the media who descended on the city last week heard their messages clearly.
More than 800 were arrested at the GOP convention in St. Paul - many fewer than the 1,800 arrested at the 2004 GOP convention in New York City.
Re-Create 68, a protest group in Denver, plans to file similar suits against Denver authorities. They also complain that detained protesters were held in extremely cold cells.
Far more people were arrested at this year's Democratic National Convention in Denver than in the previous convention in Boston. More than 150 people were arrested in Denver, compared to six in Boston.
Protest groups charged Denver authorities with using excessive force against protesters in several instances.
They cite the case of Alicia Forrest, who was arrested during a Denver protest. Video of Forrest being shoved to the ground by a policeman wielding a baton has been viewed over 328,000 times in a YouTube video taken by the Rocky Mountain News.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is planning to represent her in a lawsuit against the city and the police department.
Also in Denver, an ABC News reporter was arrested and charged with trespassing and interfering with official business as he and a camera crew attempted to take pictures of Democratic senators and donors leaving a private meeting at a hotel. He was released on $500 bond later that day and has continued to garner support from civil rights groups.
"Arresting a reporter for simply doing his job is both unconstitutional and un-American," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, in a statement. "That free speech is curtailed during the Democratic convention underscores the need for continued protection of civil liberties, regardless of the party in power."
Tear gas, pepper spray and police in riot gear were a common sight at both conventions, but several instances of vandalism and property destruction added to the mayhem of the St. Paul protests. Anarchists and demonstrators broke from permitted marches and smashed store windows, lit fires in the street and damaged a police cruiser.
St. Paul police said while they hoped the week would have resulted in fewer arrests, they also had worried that more of the estimated 8,000 demonstrators would be violent.
"It's unfortunate, but on balance I think it's fewer than some people expected," said Tom Walsh, a spokesman for St. Paul police. "We had planned for much more violent activity [than occurred], but we were able to intervene."
One reason might be the aggressive actions police took in advance of the convention.
The weekend before the RNC began, police raided local houses and arrested at least five members of protest groups, such as the RNC Welcoming Committee. Police obtained items they said were to be used against police, including roofing nails, ropes, computers and cell phones. They also charged those arrested with conspiracy to riot.
Walsh said these arrests helped keep anyone from being seriously injured throughout the week. However, some groups, including the lawyers' guild, condemned the arrests, saying police seized everyday household items and claimed they were to be employed for mayhem.
No life-threatening injuries were reported in Denver, but the city's authorities did have a high-profile scare.
Days into the Democratic National Convention, police arrested three men whom they said made threats against Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's (Ill.) life. Though arrested with guns and drugs, authorities have since dismissed the severity of the threats, saying that they were not "credible."
Charges against many protesters in Denver have been dropped, while most of those still faced with fines or court actions have posted bail. Charges included obstructing police, remaining in an unlawful assembly and throwing stones.
The ACLU of Colorado has written letters to the Denver City Attorney and the Denver Sheriff's department complaining about the conditions in which those detained were kept. They say police did not provide all of the arrested protesters with access to legal representation and kept them in uncomfortable physical conditions, including extremely cold holding cells.
"I'm thinking we should watch what we ask for, because in our early letters to the city we were emphasizing that they needed to think about air conditioning, and now we're complaining that there's too much air conditioning," said Mark Silverstein, legal director for the ACLU of Colorado, pointing to the irony of the situation.

© 2008 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp.
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Pointe-au-Chien tribal building blown off foundation by Gustav

Pointe-au-Chien, near Houma, La., ignored by media and hurricane relief efforts
Contact: Chairman Charles Verdin, Sr., (985) 856-5336
Secretary Michelle Matherne, (985) 594-3267
P.O. Box 416
Montegut, LA 703770

http://pactribe.tripod.com/

Photo: Community home with roof blown off by Hurricane Gustav/Photo copyright Joel Waltzer
September 8, 2008
Most of Louisiana's remaining Native Americans reside in four centuries-old communities in the southern-most ends of Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes, such as Pointe-au-Chien (renamed "Chenes" by non-Indians). In this sleepy, modest fishing town, Indian French is the language most often heard, and generations of smiles and laughter almost always accompany a good pot of jambalaya or plate of soft shell crabs. Today, these unique communities, their language, Indian culture, lifestyle and even their identity as a separate people are deeply threatened. With the destruction of the barrier islands, and no levees protecting them, the Pointe-au-Chien people are under continual threat of harm from natural disasters.
On September 1, 2008, Hurricane Gustav ripped through these historic bayou towns with ferocious winds and a six foot storm surge. In its wake, Gustav left a trail of ripped roofs or crumpled houses, overlain with uprooted marsh and thick mud, unparalleled elsewhere in Louisiana. Almost all of these simple homes sustained major damage, from being pushed off their foundation to having their roofs ripped off. Generations of entire extended families have lost everything, with no monetary means to recover. In addition to housing damage, the Pointe-au-Chien Tribal building was blown off of its foundation.
If the Pointe-au-Chien and Isle a Jean Charles Indian communities are to survive, they need help in rebuilding and recovery efforts. To date, few elected officials and no agency representatives at any level have visited them. To date, no media representatives have been there to report on the devastation to the tribes. Unseen, and unheard, and without any utilities, their despair grows. Their immediate needs are simple: food and water to sustain them, tarps and screws to secure their roofs and walls (where possible), tools and supplies to muck out, and earth-moving equipment and roll-off containers to get the debris out. So far, only the Louisiana Environmental Action Network's disaster relief mission, the American Red Cross, and Four Directions Solidarity Network have delivered on some of these needs. The Tribe is working with the National Relief Charities to deliver needed supplies to the people. But greater assistance is needed in this devastated area.
At present, specific needs include generators and box fans, building supplies such as roofing paper, sheet metal and screws, water for cleaning and drinking, cleaning products, pressure washers, tarps, tools, first aid supplies, squeegees, shovels, storage containers and heavy duty garbage bags. In the medium term, they will need building materials to rebuild their homes, and personal items, furniture, clothes, refrigerators, freezers, and toys need to be replaced. Long term, the community will need assistance with storm hardening and surge protection, and for the government to get serious about coastal restoration in the Bayou Lafourche basin. Immediately, the Community could really use some energetic young people to help them muck out.
If you want to go there and assist with the clean up, please provide contact information to Joel Waltzer at joel@waltzerlaw.com. Donations can be made to the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe, PO Box 416, Montegut, LA 70377, http://pactribe.tripod.com/, or the Louisiana Environmental Action Network's Gustav relief effort, by visiting its website at http://leanweb.org.html/. Donations made to either the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe or LEAN are tax deductible.For more information: Chairman Charles "Chuckie" Verdin of the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe, (985) 856-5336; or Marylee Orr, Director, LEAN, (225) 588-5059; or Joel Waltzer, tribal lawyer, (504) 430-0844.

An Alaskan Native speaks out on Palin, oil and Alaska

An Alaska Native speaks out on Palin, Oil, and Alaska
By Evon Peter
evonpeter@mac.com
Photo: Evon Peter with Long Walkers in Oakland in 2008/Photo Brenda Norrell
9/8/2008

My name is Evon Peter; I am a former Chief of the Neetsaii Gwich’in tribe from Arctic Village, Alaska and the current Executive Director of Native Movement. My organization provides culturally based leadership development through offices in Alaska and Arizona. My wife, who is Navajo, and I have been based out of Flagstaff, Arizona for
the past few years, although I travel home to Alaska in support of our initiatives there as well. It is interesting to me that my wife and I find ourselves as Indigenous people from
the two states where McCain and Palin originate in their leadership.
I am writing this letter to raise awareness about the ongoing colonization and violation of
human rights being carried out against Alaska Native peoples in the name of
unsustainable progress, with a particular emphasis on the role of Sarah Palin and the
Republican leadership. My hope is that it helps to elevate truth about the nature of
Alaskan politics in relation to Alaska Native peoples and that it lays a framework for our
path to justice.
Ever since the Russian claim to Alaska and the subsequent sale to the United States
through the Treaty of Cession in 1867, the attitude and treatment towards Alaska Native
peoples has been fairly consistent. We were initially referred to as less than human
“uncivilized tribes”, so we were excluded from any dialogues and decisions regarding our
lands, lives, and status. The dominating attitude within the Unites States at the time was
called Manifest Destiny; that God had given Americans this great land to take from the
Indians because they were non-Christian and incapable of self-government. Over the
years since that time, this framework for relating to Alaska Native peoples has become
entrenched in the United States legislative and legal systems in an ongoing direct
violation of our human rights.
What does this mean? Allow me to share an analogy. If a group of people were to arrive
in your city and tell you their people had made laws, among which were:
1. What were once your home and land now belong to them (although you could live
in the garage or backyard)
2. Forced you to send your children to boarding schools to learn their language and
be acculturated into their ways with leaders who touted “Kill the American, save
the man” (based on the original statement made by US Captain Richard H. Pratt
in regards to Native American education “Kill the Indian, save the man.”)
3. Supported missionaries and government agents to forcefully (for example, with
poisons placed on the tongues of your children and withheld vaccines) convince
you that your Jesus, Buddha, Torah, or Mohammed was actually an agent of evil
and that salvation in the afterlife could only be found through believing otherwise
4. Made it illegal for you to continue to do your job to support your family, except
under strict oversight and through extensive regulation
5. Made it illegal for you to own any land or run a business as an individual and did
not allow you to participate in any form of their government, which controlled
your life (voting or otherwise)
How would this make you feel? What if you also knew that if you were to retaliate, that
you would be swiftly killed or incarcerated? How long do you think it would take for you
to forget or would you be sure to share this history with your children with the hope that
justice could one day prevail for your descendants? And most importantly to our
conversation, how American does this sound to you?
To put this into perspective, my grandfather who helped to raise me in Arctic Village was
born in 1904, just thirty-seven years after the United States laid claim to Alaska. If my
grandfather had unjustly stolen your grandfathers home and I was still living in the house
and watching you live outdoors, would you feel a change was in order? Congress
unilaterally passed most of the major US legislation that affect our people in my
grandfathers’ lifetime. There has never been a Treaty between Alaska Native Peoples and
the United States over these injustices. Each time that Alaska Native people stand up for
our rights, the US responds with token shifts in its laws and policies to appease the
building discontent, yet avoiding the underlying injustice that I believe can be resolved if
leadership in the United States would be willing to acknowledge the underlying injustice
of its control over Alaska Native peoples, our lands, and our ways of life.
United States legal history in relation to Alaska Natives has been based on one major
platform - minimize the potential for Alaska Native people to regain control of their lives,
lands, and resources and maximize benefit to the Unites States government and its
corporations. While the rest of the world, following World War II, was seeking to return
African and European Nations to their rightful owners, the United States pushed in the
opposite direction by pulling the then Territory of Alaska out of the United Nations
dialogues and pushing for Statehood into the Union. Why is it that Alaska Native Nations
are still perceived as being incapable of governing our own lands, lives, and resources
differently than African, Asian, and European nations?
Let me get specific about what is at stake and how this relates to Palin and the
Republican leadership in Alaska and across this country. To this day, Alaska Native
peoples are among the only Indigenous peoples in all of North America whose
Indigenous Hunting and Fishing Rights have been extinguished by federal legislation and
yet we are the most dependent people on this way of life. Most of our villages have no
roads that connect them to cities; many live with poverty level incomes, and all rely to
varying degrees on traditional hunting, fishing, and harvesting for survival. This has
become known as the debate on Alaska Native Subsistence.
As Alaska Governor, Palin has continued the path of her predecessor Frank Murkowski
in challenging attempts by Alaska Native people to regain their human right to their
traditional way of life through subsistence.
The same piece of unilateral federal legislation, known as the Alaska Native Claims
Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971, that extinguished our hunting and fishing rights, also
extinguished all federal Alaska Native land claims and my Tribe’s reservation status. In
the continental United States, this sort of legislation is referred to as ‘termination
legislation’ because it takes the rights of self-government away from Tribes. It is based in
the same age-old idea that we are not capable of governing our people, lands, and
resources. To justify these terminations, ANCSA also created Alaska Native led for profit
corporations (which were provided the remaining lands not taken by the
government and a one time payment the equivalent of about 1/20th of the annual profits
made by corporations in Alaska each year) with a mission of exploiting the land in
partnership with the US government and outside corporations. It was a brilliant piece of
legislation for the legal termination and cultural assimilation of Alaska Natives under the
guise of progress.
Since the passage of ANCSA, political leaders in Alaska, with a few exceptions, have
maintained that, as stated by indicted Senator Ted Stevens, “Tribes have never existed in
Alaska.” They maintain this position out of fear that the real injustice being carried out
upon Alaska Natives may break into mainstream awareness and lead to a re-opening of
due treaty dialogues between Alaska Native leaders and the federal government. At the
same time the federal government chose to list Alaska Native tribes in the list of federally
recognized tribes in 1993. Governor Palin maintains that tribes were federally recognized
but that they do not have the same rights as the tribes in the continental United States to
sovereignty and self-governance, even to the extent of legally challenging our Tribes
rights pursuant to the Indian Child Welfare Act. What good are governments that can’t
make decisions concerning their own land and people?
The colonial mentality in and towards Alaska is to exploit the land and resources for
profits and power, at the expense of Alaska Native people. Governor Palin reflects this
attitude and perspective in her words and leadership. She comes from an area within
Alaska that was settled by relocated agricultural families from the continental United
States in the second half of the last century. It is striking that a leader from that particular
area feels she has a right, considering all of the injustices to Alaska Native people, to
offer Alaskan oil and resources in an attempt to solve the national energy crisis at the
Republican Convention. Palin also chose not to mention the connection between oil
development and global warming, which is wreaking havoc on Alaska Native villages,
forcing some to begin the process of relocation at a cost sure to reach into the hundreds of
millions.
Our tribes depend on healthy and abundant land and animals for our survival. For
example, my people depend on the Porcupine Caribou herd, which migrates into the
coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge each spring to birth their young. Any
disruption and contamination will directly impact the health and capacity for my people
to continue to live in a homeland we have been blessed to live in for over 10,000 years.
This is the sacrifice Palin offered to the nation. The worst part of it is that there are viable
alternatives to addressing the energy crisis in the United States, yet Palin chooses options
that very well may result in the extinguishment of some of the last remaining intact
ecosystems and original cultures in all of North America. Palin is also promoting off
shore oil drilling and increased mining in sensitive areas of Alaska, all of which would
have a lifespan of far fewer years than my grandfather walked on this earth and which
would not even make a smidgen of an impact on national consumption rates or longer
term sustainability. McCain was once a champion of protecting the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge and it is sad to see, that with Palin on board, he is no longer vocal and
perhaps even giving up on what he believes in to satisfy Palin’s position.
While I have much more to say, this is my current offering to elevate the conversation
about what is at stake in Alaska and for Alaska Native peoples. Please share this offering
with others and help us to make this an election that brings out honest dialogue. We have
an opportunity to bring lasting change, but only if we can be open to hearing the truth
about our situations and facing the challenges that arise.
Many thanks to all those who are taking stands for a just and sustainable future for all of
our future generations,
*This essay is a personal reflection and should not be attributed to my tribe or organization