Indigenous Peoples Demand Good and Green Jobs, Careers and Communities

CONTACTS: Jihan Gearon, Indigenous Environmental Network, 218-760-1370
Kelvin Long, Black Mesa Water Coalition, 928-600-4515
Anna Rondon, Navajo Green Economy Coalition, 505-726-9392
Courtesy photos

Indigenous Peoples Demand Good and Green Jobs, Careers, and Communities

Washington, DC – Native American leaders in the emerging green economy traveled to our Nation’s capitol to lobby representatives, network, and work together to demand good and green jobs, careers, and communities for Indian Country. Representatives from the Navajo, Acoma, Oglala Sioux, Ojibwe, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nations participated in the Good Jobs Green Jobs National Conference in Washington DC this week.

“We are here to ensure that Indigenous communities and Nations will be a part of the emerging green economy,” says Jihan Gearon, Native Energy Organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network and member of the Navajo Nation. “More so than mere participation and tokenization, we are here to ensure that in this emerging economy, our communities truly benefit and lead. There are numerous opportunities in Indian Country to do so.”

The Navajo Green Economy Plan is one such example. The Plan would generate hundreds of green jobs across the Navajo Nation and support local, community led, owned and operated initiatives such as small and large scale renewable energy development, green manufacturing textile mills, weatherization projects, weavers coops, traditional and organic agricultural markets, and green jobs training programs.

“With millions of federal dollars ready to be distributed across the country to support green jobs, we are prepared to support our local community and in doing so lead the Nation in creating sustainable and just societies, says Kelvin Long, member of the Navajo Green Economy Coalition and the Navajo Nation.

Native American lands, as well as Indigenous territories worldwide, have been historically and systematically targeted for fossil fuel – coal, oil and gas – development, which has resulted in the contamination and depletion of water, land and community health. Solutions to energy independence and climate change in the U.S., such as nuclear power and clean coal, pose the threat of exacerbating these negative affects.

“Green jobs must not include jobs for industries that will drag out the use of dirty and unsustainable energy,” says Petuuche Gilbert of Acoma pueblo in New Mexico, a community affected by uranium mining. “In this new economy, we must break the cycle of being marginalized people and forced to choose between economic development and preservation of our culture and lands. We are against renewed uranium mining. Nuclear is not green.”

Tribal lands have an estimated 535 Billion kWh/year of wind power generation potential, about 14% of U.S. annual generation. Tribal lands also hold an estimated 17,000 Billion kWh/year of solar electricity generation potential – 4.5 times total U.S. annual generation. As Winona LaDuke, Executive Director of Honor the Earth and member of the Ojibwe Nation points out, “The reality is that the most efficient, green economy will need the vast wind and solar resources that lie on Native American lands. And we are prepared to lead.”

MNN: Canada & Big Tobacco Try to Liquidate Down Indigenous Trade

CANADA & BIG TOBACCO TRY TO LIQUIDATE DOWN INDIGENOUS TRADE – 6 Nations and Tyendinaga illegally invaded on Feb. 5th

Mohawk Nation News
http://www.mohawknationnews.com

Feb. 6, 2009. Last summer two Canadian tobacco giants agreed to pay the largest criminal fines and civil settlements in Canadian history for their role in cigarette smuggling and tax evasion. Revenue Minister Gordon O’Conner announced the biggest “sweetheart” deal ever. Three companies were involved – R.J. Reynolds, Imperial Tobacco and Rothman. The fine is $4 billion. Reynolds and Imperial will pay $1.1 billion for mass criminal tax fraud.
Where will the rest come from? Ordinary people who don’t pay their fines are harassed and jailed. But not these guys! Nine R.J. Reynolds executives were charged. None went to jail.
Ever wonder why?
Paul Martin, former Prime Minister, was on the IMASCO board that owns Imperial. [See Comments Feb. 1/09 www.cbc.ca/sunday/2009]. Tobacco industry executive, Paul Finalyson, says Imperial initially set up the operations and the rest followed. There will be no trial.
The exact nature of the involvement of these companies and their executives will remain hidden from the public. The tobacco companies planned and set up the “contraband” market in the early 1990s. They shipped truckloads of product to Buffalo and Syracuse in New York State, supposedly for sale in the U.S. No taxes had to be paid to Canada. This product was then sold to middlemen. They brought them back to Canada for sale at very low prices. Sales rose from $800 million a year to $6 billion by 1993.
Everybody was involved, police, judges, stores, cigarette companies and so on. Cigarettes became cheaper and sales and profits soared.
In Canada one in three was a smuggled cigarette. The big tobacco companies taught the indigenous people how to run this business in a sophisticated way. Now successful Indigenous business people are being called “organized crime” for manufacturing and selling the very same product that Canada and big tobacco are dealing in.
In 1994 the federal government weaned itself off the “golden teat” by dropping the price on cigarettes. Overnight smuggling stopped because it wasn’t profitable. The deal between Canada and big tobacco was a business arrangement between two partners.
The Canadian government has an interest in keeping tobacco sales high to collect more taxes, while at the same professing to cut down cigarette smoking to bring down medical care costs. Smoking is on the decline. But these big companies and their corporate protector, Canada, want to keep the money rolling in.
They are trying to do this by putting legitimate indigenous tobacco manufacturers out of business.
They do not want legitimate Indigenous traders to legally sell tax free products. So they have to illegally stop our trade by bullying, charging, threatening and fining us. Big tobacco companies are waiting to start up again big time. Canada does not want to “shoot the goose that laid the golden egg” but it does want to steal any eggs laid by Indigenous people.
In the meantime, the tobacco companies have moved all their assets off-shore. British colonization of Turtle Island was founded on piracy. Throughout we have asserted our sovereignty including the duty to look after our families according to our traditional laws and governance. Tobacco trade was always a part of our traditional culture.
Today the colonists want the valueless paper currency we are getting in exchange for our legitimate products. Who’s the counterfeiter here?
We are accountable to our mothers, grandmothers, aunties, sisters, clanmothers, chiefs, clans and nations. Crown employees take an oath to uphold the colonial way of life which is aimed at destroying us.
They obviously want to stop us from having any means at all to look after each other and our families. Most Ongwehonwe communities in Canada are so poor that people don’t have adequate nutrition. It really sticks in their craw to see that we have found a way to feed our families and live decently.
On February 5 2009 our "smoke shops" and businesses in Six Nations and Tyendinaga came under fire. Canada decided to once again try to illegally enforce its colonial jurisdiction on us and our territory.
Squads of Six Nations Police and the Tyendinaga Mohawk Police, which are set up by the Canadian government, acted under the direction of the colonial band councilors. They set out to remove all products from a smoke shop and even tried to remove the building itself. Our men and women stopped them. Marked and undercover police hid out in Caledonia behind Tim Hortons, Canadian Tire parking lots and elsewhere. An OPP cruiser that got “lost” in Six Nations was turned back. In a former "dry run" the police would feign being lost in our community “accidentally”!
The OPP were actually testing our response so they could figure out the number, type of officers, weaponry and media required to attack us and make us look bad. They are also testing their communications equipment in all these operations now.
Martial law can’t be brought in until all the kinks are ironed out. The band council police told us that if they can't "get the job done", outside authorities will be brought in. We wanted to see proof of their rights to invade us and try to shut us down. The band council and its goons are part of the colonial “bankster” apparatus, no matter how dark their skin is under their uniforms. The same day, on February 5th, in Tyendinaga, six rez cops, with OPP SWAT Team backup 500 ft. down the road, went into a local bar claiming to have a warrant which they refused to show. They seized some cases of beer and whisky. The owner is accused of not paying Ontario provincial taxes even though there is no agreement for us to pay any taxes to foreigners. This is really a “protection racket”.
At the other end of the community towards the Trans Canada Highway 401 were parked SUVs, vans and a tactical team. They hesitate to come in as they know they have no jurisdiction over us in any way. The murder at Ipperwash and the fiasco at Sharbot Lake still hang over their heads.
We have no agreement with the colony of Canada to pay any taxes to them. By international law we require a valid agreement contracted with our full knowledge and consent, which does not exist. That can’t and will never happen.
It looks like Canada and big tobacco have made a deal to raise prices, collect the taxes and kill their biggest competitors, the Indigenous people. It isn’t gonna work, guys.
Unilaterally making laws, then forcing them down our throats by sending in your para-military death squads is illegal.
You know it!
Ia’koha:kowa & MNN Staff Mohawk Nation News
www.mohawknationnews.com Contact: 613-813-1017, 514-269-1400, kittoh@storm.ca katenies20@yahoo.com kahentinetha2@yahoo.com Note: Your financial help is needed and appreciated. Please send your donations to PayPal at www.mohawknationnews.com, or by check or money order to “MNN Mohawk Nation News”, Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L 1B0. Nia:wen thank you very much. Go to MNN “Six Nations” category for more stories; New MNN Books Available now! Purchase t-shirts, mugs and more at our CafePressStore http://www.cafepress.com/mohawknews; Subscribe to MNN for breaking news updates http://.mohawknationnews.com/news/subscription.php; Sign Women Title Holders petition! http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Iroquois SNOUTS IN THE TROUGH: Prime Minister Stephen Harper pm@pm.ca; R.J. Reynolds www.rjrt.com Reynolds America in Winston-Salem NC; Rothman UK Holding Ltd., 15 Hill St., London W1X 7FB, 071-491-4366 www.fundinguniverse.com; Imperial Tobacco Group PLC, P.O. Box 244, Upton Rd., Bristol BS99 7UJ +44-0-177-963-6636 www.imperial-tobacco.com

IEN: NO! $50 billion loan guarantees for nuclear reactors

From the Indigenous Environmental Network to our Friends:

Please ask your friends, colleagues, community organizations and (for Native Nations), ask your Tribal leadership, to take action, and contact their Senators to stop $50 BILLION in new taxpayer-backed loan guarantees for construction of new nuclear reactors!

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee late on the night of January 27 snuck in a provision to President Obama's economic stimulus package that would allow as much as $50 BILLION of your dollars to be used as loan guarantees for construction of new nuclear reactors. This would be on top of the $18.5 Billion taxpayer dollars already authorized by Congress during the Bush administration.

These loan guarantees would mean more nuclear reactors and more radioactive waste piling up in communities across our country. Please be reminded that It has been the plan of the U.S. government and the nuclear power and utility industry to permanently store its high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Yucca Mountain is within the traditional lands of the Western Shoshone Nation. Spiritual leaders and elders of the Western Shoshone have consistently opposed using the sacred lands of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste dump. Approval of this $50 billion loan package within the Obama economic stimulus plans would have devastating affect on the treaty rights of the Western Shoshone Nation to protect their sacred lands and provide a safe and secure homeland for their future generation.

These loan guarantees would also mean less money for safer, cheaper and cleaner energy alternatives like solar and wind power.

These loan guarantees would further stimulate an unsustainable and dangerous push by the mining industry to expand uranium mining in the homeland of Native and non-Native rural communities from Arizona, New Mexco, Nebraska, South and North Dakota and First Nation lands of Canada. Any expansion of nuclear power will need uranium to fuel these reactors. Uranium mining within Native Nation territories has already left a legacy of environmental and human health degradadtion and injustice.

The provision is vaguely worded. It would authorize $50 Billion in new loan guarantees for "eligible technologies." These technologies include nuclear, "clean coal," renewable energy sources and electric transmission. But the stimulus package is intended to create new jobs and economic activity over the next two years. Not only should new nuclear reactors and the false concept of "clean coal" be excluded from taxpayer support, but the reality is that neither technology is ready to produce any jobs within the next two years.

The Department of Energy apparently would have to decide how to allocate this $50 Billion. If it all went to safe, cost-effective renewable energy sources,that would be one thing. Unfortunately, the provision's backers, like Sens. Robert Bennett (R-UT) and Thomas Carper (D-DE) are clear that their intent is that it would go for new nuclear reactor construction. Yet the Congressional Budget Office predicts a 50% default rate by nuclear utilities using this program! This is simply a nuclear bailout waiting to happen, and we can't afford it.

But it's not too late. You can help stop this nonsense. The original plan was for the Senate to vote on the stimulus package during this week of February 2. However, the Senate and the House are still in debate on the stimulus package. There is still time to contact you Senator!

Please CALL your Senators now (Senate Switchboard: 202-224-3121) and tell them to stop all loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors. AND, please send an e-mail to your Senators with the same message using the form below. (Note: We encourage you to edit the wording to personalize your e-mail and reflect your own concerns. IEN networks with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) who manages this email campaign below.)

http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5502/t/4100/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=993

Thank you,

Tom Goldtooth, IEN

Michigan: Racism toward Native Americans in school

Civil rights accusation made against West Iron
By NIKKI YOUNK, Staff Writer

IRON RIVER- An Iron River man has filed a racial discrimination complaint with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights (MDCR) against the West Iron County Public Schools.
The man claimed that his son, a second-grader at Stambaugh Elementary, has been singled out because he is a Native American. According to the complaint, a white teacher grabbed the student on Jan. 26. The teacher has allegedly grabbed the student multiple times in the past, but the school district has taken no action against the teacher, the complaint added. "My son has had problems with white students, yet he is written up and the white students are not," the man stated in the complaint. "The respondent (West Iron County Public Schools) is looking for ways to write him up and force him to leave school."
Dave LaFreniere, regional director of the Michigan chapter of the American Indian Movement, has been following the case for years. "This child has been picked on since kindergarten, the kids beat up on him, but the school administration just sends him home," he said. "The kid has a right to an education." Read article ...
http://www.ironmountaindailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/505812.html?nav=5002