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      With National Monument Designation, Biden Tries to Balance Electoral Realities

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      The president has highlighted his climate actions as a way to spur domestic energy production and create blue-collar jobs, while nodding to environmental activists and tribal leaders.The president designated nearly a million acres of land in Red Butte, Ariz., as a national monument.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAfter spending most of his appearance near the Grand Canyon describing how his fifth national monument designation would preserve sagebrush, bighorn sheep and 450 kinds of birds, President Biden said on Tuesday that protecting the land long held sacred by Native American leaders was not just a matter of the environment.“By creating this monument, we’re setting aside new spaces for families to bike, hunt, fish and camp, growing the tourism economy,” Mr. Biden said as he declared nearly a million acres near the Grand Canyon as a national monument, with the 300-million-year-old “majestic red cliffs” serving as his backdrop.“Preserving these lands is good not only for Arizona, but for the planet,” he said. “It’s good for the economy.”Mr. Biden has often framed his climate investments as a means to spur domestic energy production, one that would create thousands of jobs for blue-collar workers. But when he traveled to Arizona to announce a permanent ban on uranium mining in the area, he also nodded to other crucial constituencies: environmental activists and tribal leaders who have pressed the White House to make good on its ambitious campaign promises to protect the environment and ancestral homelands.The White House has presented Mr. Biden’s sales pitch for legislation aimed at cutting planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, the Inflation Reduction Act, as a job-growth machine to appeal to the middle class. But the administration knows that those who care about protecting the environment and preserving lands stripped from tribal nations are crucial voters, particularly in the battleground state of Arizona.The balancing act was reflected during Mr. Biden’s visit to the mountainous range of Red Butte near the Grand Canyon, where he spoke of job creation while also acknowledging environmental activists and tribal leaders.Indigenous people, Mr. Biden said, “fought for decades to be able to return to these lands to protect these lands from mining and development to clear them of contamination to preserve their shared legacy.”The Biden administration has argued that the Grand Canyon region contains just about 1.3 percent of the country’s uranium reserves.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe White House hopes Mr. Biden’s message is received by not just Native Americans but also young and climate-conscious voters, many of whom have yet to be fired up by his economy-first message.About 71 percent of Americans say they have heard “little” or “nothing at all” about the Inflation Reduction Act one year after it was signed, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll. And most Americans — 57 percent — disapprove of Mr. Biden’s handling of climate change, according to the poll. Recent polls also show that voter sentiment on the economy continues to drive the president’s negative approval ratings.Mr. Biden has been inconsistent in his efforts to protect federal lands and waters. This year he approved the Willow project, a large oil-drilling development in the pristine Arctic wilderness. The administration also approved more oil and gas permits in its first two years than President Donald J. Trump did in his, and agreed to a series of compromises in the Inflation Reduction Act, Mr. Biden’s signature climate law, to allow offshore oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Cook Inlet.“It’s a pick-your-battle environment,” said Joel Clement, a former policy director at the Interior Department.Mr. Clement, who is now a senior program officer at the Lemelson Foundation, a philanthropic group funding work on climate change, said he believed the Biden administration was intent on protecting Indigenous lands and culture, and also on blocking as much fossil fuel production as it could.But, he said, “The calculus revolves around how much damage they can weather from the right on each of these things.”The Biden administration needs to amp up its climate change messaging as campaign season heats up, said Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, which has conducted surveys on Americans’ climate opinions since 2007.While the message about jobs and the economy might be a winning strategy in a general election, Mr. Leiserowitz said Mr. Biden’s base of climate-focused voters wanted to see the president use the bully pulpit to talk more about replacing fossil fuels, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet.“They have more teachable moments to talk about climate change with the American people than any other president in history because we are getting hit every day by another two-by-four of climate extremes on steroids,” Mr. Leiserowitz said.Mr. Biden leaned into that message on Tuesday, describing his efforts to combat the effects of climate change, including investing $720 million for Native American communities to ease the impact of droughts and rising sea levels. Standing before an Arizona delegation as well as tribal leaders donning traditional attire, Mr. Biden framed the Inflation Reduction Act as the biggest investment in climate conservation and environmental justice on record.But his announcement also highlighted the risks Mr. Biden faces as he seeks to conserve lands while also promoting the expansion of clean energy. Uranium is a fuel most widely used for nuclear plants, a key source of energy that does not produce carbon dioxide emissions.As countries work to curb planet-warming greenhouse gasses, competition for uranium is expected to increase, according to experts. The United States imports the majority of its uranium, from Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia and Russia.Paul Goranson, the chief executive of enCore Energy, which has mining claims in the Grand Canyon area, said the uranium found there is of a higher grade than in other parts of the United States. Cutting off that supply, he said, will keep the United States reliant on imports, which could have an impact on national security and hurt the Biden administration’s ability to develop zero-emissions energy sources to fight climate change.“It seems the timing is a bit inconsistent with the president’s objectives for clean energy,” Mr. Goranson said. “It doesn’t seem to be aligning with his stated clean energy targets.”The Biden administration has argued that the Grand Canyon region contains just about 1.3 percent of the country’s uranium reserves. Environmental groups also noted that because the area was under a 20-year moratorium imposed during the Obama administration, no mining would have occurred for at least a decade anyway.Republicans blasted Mr. Biden’s decision this week. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and a supporter of nuclear energy, accused the president of “supporting our enemies” by blocking uranium production. American companies currently pay around $1 billion a year to Russia’s state-owned nuclear agency to buy uranium.The White House’s balancing act of framing its agenda as a boon to domestic investment and job growth, as well as a way to combat climate change and advance environmental justice, will continue throughout the re-election campaign, according to senior White House officials. After Mr. Biden was endorsed by the four largest environmental groups in the United States in June, the president celebrated days later at a rally for union workers.“The investment isn’t only going to help us save the planet, it’s going to create jobs — lots of jobs, tens of thousands of good-paying union jobs,” Mr. Biden reminded A.F.L.-C.I.O. members at the rally in Philadelphia.That strategy was evident on Tuesday. As Mr. Biden talked about the importance of protecting the country’s natural wonders, Vice President Kamala Harris joined Labor Department officials in Philadelphia to speak to construction workers about efforts to raise their wages.And after the event at the Grand Canyon, Mr. Biden traveled to Albuquerque, where he will describe how his signature climate and clean energy bill also creates manufacturing jobs in the clean energy sector.A group gathered to see President Biden.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesJohn Leshy, a public lands expert who served in the Interior Department during the Clinton and the Carter administrations, said trade-offs between developing renewable energy to fight climate change and conserving and protecting public lands will only increase in the years to come.“We’ve got a catastrophe in the offing if we don’t move rapidly to decarbonize,” Mr. Leshy said. “I don’t think that means opening up the Grand Canyon to uranium mining everywhere, but in some situations it does mean we’re going to have to grit our teeth” to allow for more minerals development, he said.For Carletta Tilousi, a member of the Havasupai Tribe, Mr. Biden’s monument designation means that her ancestors “are finally going to be feeling rested.”“A lot of these areas are in places where there were once gathering sites of tribal people and many years ago, hundred years ago, where our ancestors once roamed and we still roam today here,” she said. “But I believe those areas are very important to our existence.” More

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      The supreme court made a surprising ruling for Native American rights | Nick Estes

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      A white couple in Texas felt racially discriminated against when facing barriers to adopting a Navajo child. Backed by powerful corporate interests and other non-Native families, the Brackeens brought their grievance to the US supreme court and attempted to overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA. The “rights” of individuals thereby stood against the collective rights of entire nations of people who were here first in a legal system not of their own making. The Brackeens argued that the law privileges Indians as a race over others, including white families, and is, therefore, unconstitutional. The argument reeked of “reverse racism”, a bogus notion that measures taken to protect marginalized people end up harming white people.The ICWA, however, was designed to reverse a sordid history of Native family separation that benefited white families seeking to adopt Native children. More importantly, the law guarantees that federally recognized tribes have a say in their children’s futures by keeping them with Native families. Those determinations are not based on race but on the political status of tribes and the rights of their members.Indian country blew a huge sigh of relief on Thursday when the rightwing-majority court ruled against the Brackeens and upheld the ICWA. A decision otherwise would have had dire consequences for tribes. Beyond removing protections for their children, it could have changed tribes’ status, which precedes the existence of the United States and its constitution, to that of racial minorities whose remaining lands, histories and identities would, without thought, be absorbed into the American melting pot.The 7-2 decision should be celebrated as a clear sign that not only is tribal sovereignty a constitutional reality, but it is also here to stay. Sadly, the supreme court, throughout its history, has more often done harm to Native sovereignty than protected it. “Often, Native American tribes have come to his court seeking justice only to leave with bowed heads and empty hands,” admitted Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, in his concurring majority opinion. His opinion offers a rich history of Indian child removal, examining the transition from federal Indian boarding schools to state welfare systems and adoption agencies that engaged in Native family separation.Gorsuch also writes of a 19th-century court that created the foundations of federal Indian law, upon which today’s justices draw. The court made those decisions during a time of great horror for Native people – often providing legal justification for Indigenous genocide and land seizures. In the 1823 case Johnson v M’Intosh, Chief Justice John Marshall argued that the United States inherited its right to Native lands from previous European powers. “Conquest gives a title which the courts of the conqueror cannot deny,” he wrote. The right to take lands from non-Christians and non-Europeans derived from 15th-century papal bulls known as the “doctrine of discovery”.That principle of racial and civilizational superiority hasn’t gone away and today infects the minds of jurists of all stripes. As recently as 2005, the supreme court invoked the doctrine in a ruling against a land claim by the Oneida Indian Nation. Writing against tribal sovereignty, the liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned against “rekindling embers of (tribal) sovereignty that long ago grew cold”.Last March, after the tireless advocacy of Indigenous peoples, the Vatican “repudiat(ed) those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery’”. That rejection, however, didn’t undo the centuries of terror against Indigenous peoples and their children taken from them to be “civilized” according to Christian principles. It didn’t return the land or property the Catholic church stole from Indigenous peoples. And it didn’t overturn the fundamental premise upon which federal Indian law still rests – European conquest.In his concurring opinion in Haaland v Brackeen, Gorsuch makes a strong case defending tribal sovereignty against the overbroad powers of Congress to curtail tribal sovereignty and the overreach of states in his concurring opinion. Liberal justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor joined Gorsuch in his opinion. But they didn’t concur with his assertion that the principle that Congress has “plenary power” to divest tribes of their sovereignty conflicts with the original understanding of the constitution. Gorsuch argues that the constitution doesn’t grant the authority to limit tribal sovereignty. Yet Congress has used its powers to terminate federally recognized tribes and divest tribes of criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians.Gorsuch’s concurring opinion shows he is the most serious about engaging federal Indian law and history. How far his call for aligning Indian law with original understandings of the constitution will go is anyone’s guess. His sympathies with tribal sovereignty also show that getting good legal outcomes for tribal nations is like rolling the dice with unelected judges who hold so much sway over the survival and existence of tribal nations.But the victory in keeping ICWA and upholding tribal sovereignty doesn’t lie with Gorsuch. Leading up to this decision, tribes and activists led an effective political campaign to teach the public. Since ICWA’s passage in 1978, 14 states passed their own state versions of the law. In anticipation of ICWA being overturned, several states (including several Republican-majority state governments) recently passed protections to uphold it.The popular sentiment is on the side of tribal sovereignty. It’s now a question of what actions must be taken to ensure the collective rights of tribes are guarded against the individual and corporate desires to lay claim to Native lands, identities and children.
      Nick Estes is a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and an assistant professer of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is a journalist, historian and the host of the Red Nation Podcast. He is the author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance More

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      Wildflowers, eagles and Native history: can this California ridge be protected?

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      Molok Luyuk, a 11-mile (18km) rocky ridge just north of San Francisco, is a rare, idiosyncratic landscape. Purple and yellow wildflowers bloom against green and brown hillsides. Dark rock formations extend against lush cypress groves.Located along California’s inner coast ridge, “it’s a beautiful area, secluded from development,” said James Kinter, tribal secretary of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation. “And for us, it’s more than just a natural environment.”Now, the Yocha Dehe and local environmentalists are asking Joe Biden to add 13,700-acres (5,500 hectares) of the ridge to the Berryessa Snow Mountain national monument. Legislation introduced in Congress is also proposing tribal co-management of an expanded monument.“It’s a great opportunity to work with the federal government, the state government and local governments to protect this habitat and history,” Kinter said.Molok Luyuk means “condor ridge” in Patwin, and tribes in this region have always referred to the area that way. Though development, hunting, lead poisoning and DDT contamination have decimated the California condor population over the decades, the ridge is still a home to bald eagles, golden eagles and peregrine falcons, as well as more than 30 species of rare plants.Kinter has driven his family across the ridge many times. “It’s kind of a long drive,” he said laughing. “But, you know, it’s important to explain to them what is out there.”For thousands of years, the ridge served as a key trade route for northern California Indigenous nations, and was a meeting place for the Yocha Dehe, as well as the Cachil Dehe and Kletsel Dehe, said Kinter. A number of village sites and gravesites, and petroglyphs remain on the landscapeFrom the summit, there’s a clear view of the state’s most iconic peaks and mountain ranges – there’s Mount Diablo to the south, the Sutter Buttes and Sierra Nevadas to the east, Mount Shasta to the north. “You can see so much of California from just one place, from this one point,” said Sandra Schubert, executive director of local conservation group TuleyomeIt’s a botanical wonderland, said Nick Jensen, conservation program director at the California Native Plant Society. “One of the things that makes this place special is the diversity of environmental conditions, the diversity of habitats,” he said. “You have oak woodland, right next to a patch of grassland underlaid with clay soils, right next to serpentine chaparral.”The patches of clay soil are fertile grounds for delicate pink adobe lilies. And the harsh, serpentine soils – low in calcium and other minerals most plants need, and high in heavy metals like chromium – spark deep burgundy blooms of Hoover’s lomatium.This spring, after an especially wet, rainy winter, Molok Luyuk’s foothills were alive with fields of sweet butter-coloured creamcups and California goldfields, bird’s-eye gilia, and blue dicks.The ridge is also the largest habitat for MacNab cypress in California. Its small, tightly closed cones only open when they’re exposed to the high heat of a wildfire. “When a fire sweeps through a grove, the mother plant is almost always killed,” said Jensen. “And then what happens afterwards is this grand process of rebirth where you have thousands upon thousands of seedlings sprouting from the burn.”In 2015, Barack Obama designated Berryessa Snow Mountain, but only included a small portion of Molok Luyuk within its borders. Adding the rest of the ridge, the tribe and local environmentalists say, will ensure a protected wildlife corridor between Berryessa and the Mendocino national forest to the north.The Yocha Dehe would like to work with the local and federal agencies to reintroduce indigenous land stewardship practices to the area, including the use of prescribed burns in a landscape that has evolved with fire. “Here, this is an awesome opportunity to show some of the Indigenous knowledge of how to take care of the land,” Kinter said.And eventually, Kinter said, the tribe would like to help reintroduce California condors, so they can once again soar over this stretch.Last year, senators Alex Padilla and Dianne Feinstein, along with California representative John Garamendi, introduced legislation to add about 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) of the ridge to the Berryessa monument, and officially change its name from “Walker Ridge” to Molok Luyuk.Lawmakers reintroduced the legislation this year, as well. But nearly 10,000 acres (4,000 hectares) of the ridge, however, were excluded from that legislation, after Colusa county supervisors asked those areas be left out of the monument.A monument designation would increase the bureaucracy and consultation required for fire management, logging and other activity in the area, said Gary Evans, vice chair of the Colusa county board of supervisors. “I’m one with the whole nature thing but it’s gone off the deep end,” he said. “We’re going overboard with the touchy feely thing.”In a letter to Padilla sent in June, county officials also opposed the renaming of Walker Ridge, and said doing so would require changing maps, and would confuse law enforcement and fire response teams that work in the area. The name Walker Ridge is “just fine”, said Evans. “I just hate rewriting history.”The Bureau of Land Management supported the expansion in testimony to congress, though the office said it could not comment further on pending legislation. The expansion “aligns with the administration’s conservation goals,” Mark Lambrecht, assistant director of the National Conservation Lands and Community Partnership, testified.Regardless of whether the legislation passes, local environmental groups are also petitioning the Biden administration to designate the entirety of Molok Luyuk under the Antiquities Act. The administration has so far named three new national monuments, and restored three monuments that the Trump administration reduced.“We just want to make sure we’re protecting our cultural sites and also protecting the natural habitat,” Kinter said. “It’s not just for tribal folk. It’s American history, California history right there.”Periodic proposals to develop wind energy projects in the area have been denied, but a monument designation would ensure that key habitats and archaeological sites across the ridge are protected in perpetuity.A national monument designation would come with additional resources and funding to improve trails and access routes, and the ability to better preserve some areas, while also opening up others for recreation and tourism, said Schubert, whose group organises hikes and wildflower tours on the ridge. In consultation with tribes, the federal government could help create more opportunities for hiking, mountain biking, off-roading and camping, she said. “You could have art classes and science classes up here,” she said.“It’s a very auspicious area,” said Eddie “EJ” Crandell, a supervisor in Lake county, and former chairman of the Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians of California. “And if it’s marked as such, I think people will really take a liking to it.” More

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      in Elections

      James Abourezk, the First Arab American Senator, Dies at 92

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      A Democrat from South Dakota, he found the freedom to act on principle in the House and Senate by choosing not to seek re-election.James Abourezk, who was elected by South Dakotans as the first Arab American senator, and who used his prominence to support the causes of Palestinians and Native Americans while also pushing for friendlier relations with Cuba and Iran, died on Friday, his 92nd birthday, at his home in Sioux Falls, S.D. His daughter Alya James Abourezk confirmed the death.Mr. Abourezk (pronounced AB-ur-esk) was a double novelty for a senator. He was a left winger from a generally conservative rural state and a politician who gave up the chance for re-election to focus on pursuing the political objectives he believed in, rather than those supported by his party, his constituents or even, in some cases, most Americans.In 1970, when Mr. Abourezk won a race for South Dakota’s second district seat in the House, the state’s newly elected governor was a fellow Democrat, Richard F. Kneip, and its other senator was the progressive standard-bearer George McGovern. Mr. Abourezk’s victory came as a surprise nevertheless: A Democrat had not occupied that House seat since the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s dominance in the 1930s.He was elected to the Senate in 1972. After he stepped down, Larry Pressler, a Republican, succeeded him and served for nearly 20 years.Mr. Abourezk attributed his success to his reputation as “more populist than liberal or leftist, a brand of politician that resonates with people from South Dakota,” he told The Capital Journal, a South Dakota newspaper, in 2013. “One comment I constantly heard from people was that, ‘I don’t agree much with Abourezk, but by God, he’s honest.’”Mr. Abourezk in his Sioux Falls, S.D., office in 2004. After leaving the Senate, he served as counsel for the Iranian Embassy and founded the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.Lloyd B. Cunningham/The Argus Leader, via Associated PressHis biggest achievements as a senator concerned support for Native Americans. He proposed the establishment of the American Indian Policy Review Commission, which studied legislative possibilities to address problems in that community. The laws that resulted included the 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, which granted tribes more autonomy in administering government programs, and the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, which established controls on the adoption of Indigenous children by white families. That measure continues to draw praise, even from tribal representatives and legal advocates who say it did not go far enough.On some issues, Mr. Abourezk was content to oppose most other senators — or even the entire rest of the chamber. In 1977, he was a lone dissenter in an 85-to-1 vote on an amendment concerning child pornography. He questioned the legality of a ban on selling or distributing material that might not be considered obscene.The same year, he organized an almost comically unusual good-will trip to Cuba for a delegation of South Dakota college basketball players to compete against the Cuban national team. “Sports is noncontroversial, and this should do a lot for normalization of relations,” Mr. Abourezk told The New York Times in Havana. “It’s fitting South Dakota should be involved because we’re famous for pioneers of all kinds.”Traveling from 25-degree Sioux Falls to 85-degree Havana and being served frozen daiquiris upon arrival, the South Dakotans reacted to the trip with wonderment. “I’ve never even seen the sea before,” Bob Ashley, a 6‐foot‐10 center from the Sioux tribe, told The Times.Mr. Abourezk brought his dissident sensibility most vocally to issues involving the Middle East, particularly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In a 1975 article for The Times, he argued, “No settlement can come about and no peace can endure unless the Palestinians have been settled in a homeland of their own.”The next year provided another occasion for him to vote against the rest of the Senate. The issue was a measure to cut off foreign aid to nations that harbored international terrorists. Mr. Abourezk said that the amendment was aimed at Arab terrorists but had no provisions for what he termed terrorist acts by the Israeli military.Some opposed his appearance at a 1977 Democratic dinner in Denver on the grounds that he was too critical of Israel. He replied, “Just as we have seen U.S. Presidents wrap themselves in the American flag in efforts to stifle criticism of their policies, so do we see a foreign country wrapping itself in its state religion, so that criticism of the state or its policies is perceived as a form of racism.”After leaving the Senate, he became “Iran’s Man in Washington,” as The Times labeled him in 1979, serving as counsel for the Iranian Embassy and seeking to recoup money that the Islamic Republic said had been stolen by the Shah. He also founded the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which drew attention to prejudicial treatment of Arabs by the government and in everyday life.James George Abourezk was born on Feb. 24, 1931, in Wood, S.D. He grew up there and in Mission, two tiny towns that were on the Rosebud Indian Reservation of southern South Dakota. His father, Charles, had moved to the United States from Lebanon as a peddler in 1898 and managed to open general stores in Wood and Mission. His mother, Lena (Mickel) Abourezk, a Lebanese Greek Orthodox immigrant like her husband, ran the family store in Wood, while Charles managed the one in Mission.Mr. Abourezk served for four years in the Navy. He got a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, and in 1966 he earned a law degree from the University of South Dakota School of Law. Before entering politics, Mr. Abourezk worked as a farmhand, wholesale grocery salesman, car salesman, bartender and bar owner. He became passionate about politics after a family doctor lent him copies of I.F. Stone’s Weekly, The Nation and The New Republic.Mr. Abourezk’s marriages to Mary Ann Houlton and Margaret Bethea ended in divorce. He married Sanaa Dieb in 1991. She survives him, along with Alya, their daughter; two sons, Charlie and Paul, and a daughter, Nikki Pipe On Head, from his first marriage; a stepdaughter, Chesley Machado; more than 30 grandchildren; and several great-grandchildren.Mr. Abourezk’s wife runs Sanaa’s Gourmet Mediterranean, a restaurant in Sioux Falls that The Times credited in 2014 with kicking off “an epicurean trend” in the city. In 2019, when he was 89, The Aberdeen News reported that Mr. Abourezk enjoyed holding court at the restaurant, telling stories of his colorful life and sharing his views on politics.He suggested to The Capital Journal a way to ensure more independent-minded legislators such as himself: term limits. “If a member of Congress is not worried about getting re-elected, he or she will more often than not vote in the public interest rather than in his or her own electoral interest, which is now what happens,” he said. More

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      FBI’s opposition to release Leonard Peltier driven by vendetta, says ex-agent

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      FBI’s opposition to release Leonard Peltier driven by vendetta, says ex-agentExclusive: retired FBI agent Coleen Rowley calls for clemency for Indigenous activist who has been in prison for nearly 50 years The FBI’s repeated opposition to the release of Leonard Peltier is driven by vindictiveness and misplaced loyalties, according to a former senior agent close to the case who is the first agency insider to call for clemency for the Indigenous rights activist who has been held in US maximum security prisons for almost five decades.Coleen Rowley, a retired FBI special agent whose career included 14 years as legal counsel in the Minneapolis division where she worked with prosecutors and agents directly involved in the Peltier case, has written to Joe Biden making a case for Peltier’s release.“Retribution seems to have emerged as the primary if not sole reason for continuing what looks from the outside to have become an emotion-driven “FBI Family” vendetta,” said Rowley in the letter sent to the US president in December and shared exclusively with the Guardian.Rowley added: “The focus of my two cents leading to my joining the call for clemency is based on Peltier’s inordinately long prison sentence and an ever more compelling need for simple mercy due to his advanced age and deteriorating health.”“Enough is enough. Leonard Peltier should now be allowed to go home.”Peltier, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribe and of Lakota and Dakota descent, was convicted of murdering two FBI agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota in June 1975. Peltier was a leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), an Indigenous civil rights movement founded in Minneapolis that was infiltrated and repressed by the FBI.Rowley refers to the historical context in which the shooting took place as “…the long-standing horribly wrongful oppressive treatment of Indians in the U.S. [which] played a key role in putting both the agents and Peltier in the wrong place at the wrong time.”The 1977 murder trial – and subsequent parole hearings – were rife with irregularities and due process violations including evidence that the FBI had coerced witnesses, withheld and falsified evidence.Peltier, now 78, has been held in maximum security prisons for 46 of the past 47 years. He has always denied shooting the agents. Last year, UN experts called for Peltier’s immediate release after concluding that his prolonged imprisonment amounted to arbitrary detention.In an exclusive interview with the Guardian about her intervention, Rowley, who retired in 2004, said that for years new agents were “indoctrinated” with the FBI’s version of events.“The facts are murky, and I’m not going to say either narrative is correct. I wasn’t there. But I do know that if you really care about justice, then the real issue now is mercy, truth and reconciliation. To keep this going for almost 50 years really shows the level of vindictiveness the organisation has for Leonard Peltier.”“The bottom line is there are all kinds of problems in the intelligence service which by and large never get corrected for the same reasons: group conformity, pride, and an unwillingness to admit mistakes so systemic problems are covered up and never fixed,” said Rowley, a 9/11 whistleblower who testified to the senate about FBI failures in the terrorist attacks.Nick Estes, an assistant professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota, said Rowley’s support of Peltier’s clemency was “historic”.“She is trying to dispel a myth that is deeply embedded into the culture of the FBI… handed down through indoctrinating young recruits such as Rowley about Peltier’s unquestionable guilt and the FBI’s supposed blamelessness during the reign of terror on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation,” said Estes, a volunteer with the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee.Rowley wrote to Biden in response to a letter by the intelligence agency’s current director vehemently opposing Peltier’s release on behalf of the “entire FBI family” – which was recently published online by the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI.Christopher Wray described Peltier as a “remorseless killer who brutally murdered two of our own – special agents Jack R Coler and Ronald A Williams”. Commutation of Peltier’s sentence would be “shattering to the victims’ loved ones and an affront to the rule of law”, according to Wray’s letter to the justice department’s pardon attorney dated March 2022.FBI has successfully opposed every clemency application with emotive Op-Eds, letters and marches on Washington.But the time served on most murder sentences ranges between 11 and 18 years, while Mark Putnam, the first FBI agent convicted of homicide – for strangling his female informant – was released after serving just 10 years of a 16-year sentence. Peltier was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences, and a parole officer who recommended his release after acknowledging that there was not enough evidence to sustain the conviction, was demoted.“The disparate nature of Peltier being held for nearly a half century behind bars is striking,” said Rowley, who in the 1990s helped pen an Op-Ed by the head of the Minneapolis division opposing Peltier’s release. “The facts are everything, not loyalty to the FBI family, not them versus us, not good guys versus bad guys.”Peltier supporters hope that Rowley’s intervention will count.“Rowley speaks with authority and is saying that nothing justifies him being in prison, just vindictiveness, so ignoring her means turning a blind eye to what’s happening,” said Kevin Sharp, Peltier’s attorney who submitted the most recent clemency application 18 months ago. “Rowley knows the case. She knows the FBI and supervised some of those directly involved. She knows Indian Country, so understands the context which is really important.”Peltier is currently being held in a maximum security prison in Coleman, Florida, where his health has significantly deteriorated since contracting Covid-19, according to Sharp, who visited in December. Multiple recommendations by the facility to lower Peltier’s classification, so that he can be transferred to a less restrictive prison closer to his family, have been rejected.“This is a little old man with a walker. It’s not just the FBI that’s vindictive,” added Sharp, a former federal judge appointed by Obama who stepped down from the bench in protest of minimum mandatory sentence. He took on Peltier’s case in 2018 after successfully obtaining a pardon from Donald Trump for a young Black man he had been forced to imprison.According to Sharp, Peltier’s clemency was still on the table until Trump’s last day in office but didn’t make it onto the final list of presidential pardons which was mostly former associates and white collar criminals.He added: “This is not about a 10 minute shootout. It’s about hundreds of years of what had gone before and the decades of what’s gone on afterwards. That’s why Leonard Peltier was convicted, and that’s why he’s still in jail.”TopicsNative AmericansFBIUS politicsJoe BidennewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Biden declares Arizona floods a federal disaster for Havasupai tribe

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      Biden declares Arizona floods a federal disaster for Havasupai tribeThe declaration provides funds and federal assistance for emergency and permanent infrastructure The White House has made a federal disaster declaration for the Havasupai Native American tribe that mainly lives deep inside the Grand Canyon in Arizona, as the community prepares to reopen tourist access to its famous turquoise waterfalls next month.Last October, the village experienced drastic flooding which damaged extensive parts of the reservation.The floods “destroyed several bridges and trails that are needed not only for our tourists, but for the everyday movement of goods and services into the Supai Village”, the tribe said.The Havasupai is now readying itself to receive tourists again from 1 February on its reservation, which sits nine miles down narrow trails between spectacular red rock cliffs deep within the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. Tourists must apply for permits to enter the reservation.It is the first time that tourists have been allowed to return to the reservation not only since the flooding, but in almost three years, since tourism was closed off early in 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic spread across the US. The canyon community has very limited health care resources on site.The tribe is one of North America’s smallest and is the only one based inside the canyon, where the community has lived for more than 800 years, despite being driven off much of its original, much wider, territory by armed settlers in the 19th century.On 31 December the White House announced that Joe Biden had approved a disaster declaration for the Havasupai. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), such a declaration provides a wide range of federal assistance programs for individuals and public infrastructure, including funds for emergency and permanent work.The tribe grows crops and keeps farm animals on a thin ribbon of land inside the canyon, alongside the naturally occurring, vividly hued streams and falls. Havasupai means the people of the blue-green water.The tribe issued a statement last month, reflecting on last fall’s flooding, saying: “This has been a trying experience for all involved … However, there are many positive things as a result. While you may see downed trees on the trails where the flood crashed through, you will also see flourishing flora and fauna and new waterfall flows.”The White House noted that: “Federal funding is available to the Havasupai tribe and certain private non-profit organizations on a cost-sharing basis for emergency work and the repair or replacement of facilities damaged by the flooding,” the statement continued.In December, the tribe noted that it had been in a dispute with the third-party tourism operator it had normally worked with and had switched to another operator in preparation of the 2023 tourism season.Last month, the tribe also reported fresh uranium mining activity in the Grand Canyon region where the tribe’s water source originates, which it has long claimed is an existential threat.“It is time to permanently ban uranium mining – not only to preserve the Havasupai tribe’s cultural identity and our existence as the Havasupai people but to protect the Grand Canyon for generations to come,” the tribal chairman, Thomas Siyuja Sr, said in a statement reported by Native News Online. “With recent activity observed inside the mine fence, it is clear that the mining company is making plans to begin its operations.”The legacy of uranium mining has long threatened Native American communities, including the Havasupai tribe. From 1944 to 1986, close to 30m tons of uranium ore were extracted from neighboring Navajo lands. During the cold war, companies extracted millions of tons of uranium in those territories to meet the demands for nuclear weapons, causing environmental blight.TopicsArizonaNative AmericansIndigenous peoplesFloodingUS politicsJoe BidennewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma could get first delegate to Congress in 200 years

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      Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma could get first delegate to Congress in 200 yearsThe tribe’s right to representation is detailed in the 1835 Treaty of New Echota, which forced them from their ancestral land The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma moved a step closer on Wednesday to having a promise fulfilled from nearly 200 years ago that a delegate from the tribe be seated in Congress.Chuck Hoskin Jr, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, was among those who testified before the US House rules committee, which is the first to examine the prospect of seating a Cherokee delegate in the US House. Hoskin, the elected leader of the 440,000-member tribe, put the effort in motion in 2019 when he nominated Kimberly Teehee, a former adviser to Barack Obama, to the position. The tribe’s governing council then unanimously approved her.Trump for 2024 would be ‘bad mistake’, Republican says as blame game deepens Read moreThe tribe’s right to a delegate is detailed in the Treaty of New Echota signed in 1835, which provided the legal basis for the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation from its ancestral homelands east of the Mississippi River and led to the Trail of Tears, but it has never been exercised. A separate treaty in 1866 affirmed this right, Hoskin said.“The Cherokee Nation has in fact adhered to our obligations under these treaties. I’m here to ask the United States to do the same,” Hoskin told the panel.Hoskin suggested to the committee that Teehee could be seated as early as this year by way of either a resolution or change in statute, and the committee’s chairman, the Massachusetts Democrat James McGovern, and other members supported the idea that it could be accomplished quickly.“This can and should be done as quickly as possible,” McGovern said. “The history of this country is a history of broken promise after broken promise to Native American communities. This cannot be another broken promise.”But McGovern and other committee members, including the ranking member, Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, acknowledged there are some questions that need to be resolved, including whether other Native American tribes are afforded similar rights and whether the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma is the proper successor to the tribe that entered into the treaty with the US government.McGovern said he has been contacted by officials with the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the Delaware Nation, both of which have separate treaties with the US government that call for some form of representation in Congress. McGovern also noted there were also two other federally recognized bands of Cherokee Indians that argue they should be considered successors to the 1835 treaty: the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians based in North Carolina, both of which contacted his office.The UKB selected its own congressional delegate, the Oklahoma attorney Victoria Holland, in 2021. Holland said in an interview with the Associated Press that her tribe is a successor to the Cherokee Nation that signed the 1835 treaty, just like the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.“As such, we have equal rights under all the treaties with the Cherokee people and we should be treated as siblings,” Holland said.Members of the committee seemed to be in agreement that any delegate from the Cherokee Nation would be similar to five other delegates from the District of Columbia, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands. These delegates are assigned to committees and can submit amendments to bills, but cannot vote on the floor for final passage of bills. Puerto Rico is represented by a non-voting resident commissioner who is elected every four years.TopicsNative AmericansOklahomaIndigenous peoplesHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      Indigenous Voters Mobilize in Midterm Elections

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      ANCHORAGE — Tesla Cox’s eyes filled with tears as she thought about watching her state elect its first Alaska Native to Congress this year, and what it could mean for the future.“If we can mobilize our people, we can really shift the way that our world is working for us,” said Ms. Cox, 31, who is Tlingit and gathered late last month with other Alaska Natives for a three-day convention, where their influence as a voting bloc was a major topic of discussion.“Our next steps are not just getting our people to go and vote, but getting our people to be the people that people vote for,” she said.Indigenous voters have become a major power center across the country in recent years, including in 2020, when the Navajo Nation and other Indigenous voters helped flip Arizona for President Biden. This Congress saw the first Native Hawaiian and Alaska Native elected and seated alongside enrolled members of tribes from Oklahoma and Kansas. The Senate confirmed Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, as the first Native American to serve as interior secretary.It is a trend that is expected to continue on Tuesday, when races that will determine control of both the House and Senate may come down to razor-thin margins in states with sizable Indigenous populations. There are nearly 90 Indigenous candidates on state and national ballots, according to a database maintained by Indian Country Today, a nonprofit news organization. Those candidates include Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican who is likely to become the first Cherokee senator since 1925.“We’ve made a lot of progress in the country and we’ve made progress in the judiciary and in Congress and across the federal administrations,” said Chuck Hoskin Jr., the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. “For us not to turn out during the midterms would send an unfortunate message to policymakers that our numbers aren’t there.”Alaska Native corporations have offered key endorsements that could help Representative Mary Peltola of Alaska, a Democrat who is Yup’ik, and Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a Republican who was formally adopted by a clan of the Tlingit tribe, keep their seats in Congress and overcome conservative challengers.Representative Mary Peltola, Democrat of Alaska, is the first Alaska Native in Congress.Ash Adams for The New York TimesSenator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is the top Republican on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.Brian Adams for The New York TimesThe five major tribal nations in Oklahoma have offered a rare joint endorsement of the Democratic candidate for governor, jolting the race into a tossup, while the Cherokee Nation has reignited its campaign for the United States to fulfill a nearly 200-year-old treaty and seat Kimberly Teehee as their congressional delegate.“We’ve been in a process of people awakening to the power of our collective voice,” said Judith LeBlanc, of the Caddo Nation in Oklahoma, and the executive director of Native Organizers Alliance. “That collective voice can manifest itself as political power on Election Day and in between election days on the issues that we’re advocating for.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.House Democrats: Several moderates elected in 2018 in conservative-leaning districts are at risk of being swept out. That could cost the Democrats their House majority.A Key Constituency: A caricature of the suburban female voter looms large in American politics. But in battleground regions, many voters don’t fit the stereotype.Crime: In the final stretch of the campaigns, politicians are vowing to crack down on crime. But the offices they are running for generally have little power to make a difference.Abortion: The fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer Democrats a way of energizing voters and holding ground. Now, many worry that focusing on abortion won’t be enough to carry them to victory.The assertion of political power and sovereignty comes as the Supreme Court seems poised to challenge some tribal authorities and protections and Indigenous voters face steep barriers to the ballot box. They could not vote in every state until 1957 and now face increasingly restrictive voting laws passed by state legislatures. Distances to polling stations still could require round trips of 100 or more miles for some voters.In May, a federal judge ruled that South Dakota violated portions of the National Voter Registration Act, which requires state officials to provide voter registration renewal guidance at several state-run agencies.“The majority of voting access laws that were passed since 2020 have all been passed in states where the Native vote is politically significant and it therefore targets Native voters,” Ms. LeBlanc said. “And it has a big impact, especially when it comes to early voting, access to voting, voting locations and transportation to voting locations.”Beyond representation in the highest seats of government, there has been an increased acknowledgment of needs of tribal communities across the country, though lawmakers say far more needs to be done to fulfill their obligations.A document circulated by Democrats on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee noted that lawmakers had approved the largest direct investment in tribal governments in American history in 2021 with passage of the $1.9 trillion stimulus law, and set aside billions of dollars for tribal health care, housing, broadband and transportation. Tribal nations and villages will receive funds through a new program created under the Biden administration to help them relocate and avoid the toll of climate change.People attending the Alaska Native Federation candidates forum in Anchorage last month. All of the top candidates in congressional elections made appearances.Brian Adams for The New York Times“It’s a long game and change doesn’t happen overnight,” said Allie Redhorse Young, of the Navajo Nation and founder of Protect the Sacred, who led voters on horseback to polling stations in 2020 and will lead a similar ride this year. “But as we continue to show up and as we continue to make our voices heard and ensure that our votes are counted, the more we will invest in this change.”In 1955, only one Alaska Native was elected to serve among the 55 delegates at the state’s constitutional convention. Sixty-six years later, Ms. Peltola made history in September as the first Alaska Native elected to Congress, when she was sworn in to finish the remainder of Representative Don Young’s term following his death. She is running for her first full term representing a state where Alaska Natives account for about 15 percent of the population.“It’s a remarkable evolution, really,” said William L. Iggiagruk Hensley, 81, a Democrat who is Inupiaq and served as a state senator. He was among those who were instrumental in the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which set aside about 44 million acres for a dozen regional native corporations in 1971 and elevated Alaska Natives into a pivotal role for the new state’s economy.“Our people have seen the importance of participating in the political process and have done so extensively,” he added.Mr. Hensley, like others who gathered for three days in Anchorage at the Alaska Federation of Natives convention, pointed to the role of Alaska Natives in helping Ms. Murkowski mount a successful write-in campaign in 2010 as another moment that underscored their political might. Ms. Murkowski has worked closely with Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, to direct millions of dollars to the Indigenous communities in their states as the top lawmakers on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.William L. Iggiagruk Hensley, Faye Ewan and Tesla Cox.Brian Adams for The New York TimesRyen Aavurauq Richards, who is Inupiaq, said she has seen that change in recent years, in part because Indigenous voters have come together more frequently advocating issues that impact their way of life, from commercial fishing to taking care of their lands. She once felt disconnected from the political process because to her the outcome of races in Alaska appeared predetermined.“The more that all of us tribes come together and discuss these big issues and work on them together — I feel like it has shifted my perspective and I can see a difference,” said Ms. Richards, 34, a peer support specialist based in Palmer.Beyond national representation, Indigenous organizations are urging participation in state elections as they fight to maintain gaming rights as a crucial part of their economy. Communities are also working to keep salmon from going extinct in the Columbia River Basin in the Pacific Northwest.Preservation of natural resources has been particularly acute in Alaska, where attendees at the convention cheered for Ms. Peltola’s emphasis on a “pro-fish” platform and others spoke about how they had become more involved in the push for better subsistence fishing in their regions.“We’re fighting for our salmon, we’re fighting for our food — that’s our way of life,” said Faye Ewan, 68, who lives in the Native Village of Kluti-Kaah and is a longtime champion for Indigenous sovereignty over fishing. “It’s sacred.”But like other elders, she said she had seen a change in the organizing and impact of Indigenous voters.“The younger generation is more educated and more aware of the policies,” Ms. Ewan said. More