Indigenous activists honored for protecting sacred places

Indigenous activists honored for protecting sacred places

By Alyssa Macy/International Indian Treaty Council

SAN FRANCISCO -- On March 7th, 2009, two longtime indigenous activists, Carrie Dann, Western Shoshone and Manny Pino, Acoma Pueblo, were honored by the International Indian Treaty Council for their lifelong work to protect sacred places. Both received the “Human Rights Defenders” award during the “Indigenous Peoples Struggles to Defend Sacred Places” training and symposium at San Francisco State University.

Carrie Dann and her sister Mary have been on the forefront to protect the traditional lands of the Western Shoshone for over forty years. Ms. Dann has worked diligently through litigation and civil disobedience to defend Western Shoshone lands, treaty rights and sacred places such as Mt. Tenabo from international gold mining corporations, the nuclear industry and the U.S. government. Both the United Nations and the Organization of American States have supported the Western Shoshone struggle and most recently the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination condemned the actions of the U.S.

Manny Pino has worked many years to protect traditional indigenous lands and peoples from the destruction caused by uranium mining and defending sacred places such as Mount Taylor and the San Francisco Peaks. Uranium mining has long impacted the Indigenous Peoples from the southwestern part of the U.S. where mines were opened to aid in the production of the world’s first nuclear weapons. Most of its victims, including Diné and Pueblo miners and their families, were unaware of the dangers of exposure. Pino has played a key role in raising awareness of this issue including the impacts of uranium and other types of mining on Indigenous Peoples’ sacred sites.

Radley Davis, IITC Board Member, Pit River Nation, California, and activist, presented the awards on behalf of the IITC. The All Nations Drum from Oakland provided an honor song for the recipients, their families and friends.

The awards ceremony closed the daylong training on human rights and protection of sacred sites from mining and other forms of imposed development. The IITC’s “Human Rights and Capacity Building Program” trains Indigenous activists to use international standards and mechanisms to defend their human rights and increase their direct, effective participation in international fora.

Hersh: 'Bush and Cheney's Assassination Ring'

Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh reveals Joint Special Operations Command, murderers who reported directly to Cheney:

By Eric Black/Minnesota Post

" ... Yuh. After 9/11, I haven't written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven't been called on it yet. That does happen.

"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it's called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...

"Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us.
Read article:
http://www.minnpost.com/ericblackblog/2009/03/11/7310/investigative_reporter_seymour_hersh_describes_executive_assassination_ring

Longest Walk Photos

Back by popular demand, more photos of Long Walkers by Janice Trytten (Washington DC and Greenbelt Park, Maryland, July 2008)

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Homeland Security slapped with lawsuit over concealing documents on border wall

Margaret Kwoka (202) 588-7733
Denise Gilman (512) 232-7796

Federal Agencies Have Stymied Access To Records Showing Impact of Texas-Mexico Border Wall

Public Citizen Argues That Delays and Denials Violate Freedom of Information Act
By Public Citizen

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Federal officials are illegally withholding documents that would allow the public to determine the full impact of the 700 miles of fence being built along the Texas-Mexico border, Public Citizen argued in a suit filed in U.S. district court today on behalf of a member of the University of Texas (UT) Working Group on Human Rights and the Border Wall.
Denise Gilman, a clinical law professor at UT, submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in April for records that would show where the fence would be built, including maps, surveys and appraisals of affected properties. She also requested information about the criteria for deciding where segments of the wall would be built and agency assessments of the impact of the wall on surrounding communities.
Almost a year later, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have not complied with Gilman’s request. Despite initial indications that the agencies possessed volumes of records responsive to Gilman’s request, the corps of engineers denied part of her request outright and released only a few documents with substantial redactions. DHS referred her entire request to CBP, which released a mere two redacted documents in December. On Jan. 30, CBP told Gilman that it was still processing her request despite a federal requirement that it respond to her April request within 20 days.
UT’s Working Group on Human Rights and the Border Wall was formed to study and investigate the impact of the wall on property owners, indigenous communities and the environment. A full analysis is difficult without the documents showing where the wall will be built and the criteria on which those decisions were made.
With what little information is available, researchers have found significant differences in the income and race of property owners whose land will be affected and those who will not. For example, news outlets have reported that the wall will skip a wealthy country club on the border while having a devastating impact on some poorer neighborhoods and Native American communities.
“The Working Group at UT believes that the information we are seeking is necessary to allow a serious look at this massive border wall project moving forward at great expense to taxpayers, likely in the billions of dollars,” Gilman said. “We sincerely hope that the Obama administration, which has pledged greater transparency and accountability in government, will release the requested documents so that informed debate and consultation regarding the border wall can take place before there is any further construction.”
The Working Group at UT is launching a Web site to make the limited information available about the wall more publicly accessible. The site provides information gathered and prepared in the process of analyzing the human rights impacts of the border wall, including the limited FOIA responses received, other primary and secondary source materials, and the Working Group’s own analyses. The Web site is at http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/centers/humanrights/borderwall/
“The refusal to respond to Professor Gilman’s requests in a timely manner and each agency’s referral to another agency for a response constitute blatant disregards for the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act,” said Margaret Kwoka, the Public Citizen attorney representing Gilman. “These agencies should not be allowed to move forward with a project of such a scale and impact without being accountable to the public.”
In the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Public Citizen asks the court to order the agencies to make the requested records available to Gilman. The suit also challenges the redactions taken in some key documents, including information about property ownership in affected areas.
Public Citizen is representing Gilman as part of its Public Interest FOIA Clinic (http://www.foiaclinic.org) which was launched last year and is designed to give comprehensive assistance to other nonprofit organizations seeking government-held information. Through the clinic, Public Citizen provides direct FOIA litigation assistance to public interest organizations. Public Citizen also collects and analyzes information about recent FOIA litigation conducted by public interest organizations to identify and address common FOIA problems.
To read the lawsuit, go to http://www.citizen.org/documents/GilmanvDHSComplaint.pdf
Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.citizen.org