Talli Nauman and Native Sun News alert readers of indianz.com to a climate conference including presentations by Yuchi member of the Muskogee Nation of Oklahoma, Dan Wildcat:
in Rapid City on April 15, at the Surbeck Center Ballroom of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology Campus. A founding co-director of the Haskell Environmental Research Studies Center, in Lawrence, Kan., Wildcat will address the second annual Green Energy and Sustainability Conference, from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society 2011 AISES Region V Conference from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Also scheduled to appear are Tom Bull Bennett, the first American Indian to earn a Ph.D. at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and Otakuye Conroy, a Rapid City Central graduate and the first Lakota to receive a doctorate in environmental engineering.
Decorah, Iowa eagle cam; you have to watch an advert:
Early September 2003, in the middle of the night, water filled the lake at the toe of Grasshopper Glacier to its tipping point. Pressure grew against the natural dam of rock and ice, and around midnight, water burst through the barrier.
Attorney Mario Gonzales has been litigating the "Black Hills Claim" for most of his life. He contends that the commission charged to make peace with tribes inserted language into the document signed in 1868 that Red Cloud had neither seen nor agreed to in negotiations.
Ernestine Chasing Hawk, Native Sun News Managing Editor sent this story to the Missoula-based Buffalo Post:
In 2008, during a campaign stop in Sioux Falls then Sen. Barak [sic] Obama gave Great Plains Indian tribes a ray of hope on the outcome of the century’s long legal battle over “theft of 48 million acres of their homeland.” However one of the key elements to resolving the issue is “bringing together all the different parties” and with each passing day their “window of opportunity” shrinks as time ticks away for the Obama-Biden administration.
Anybody surprised? Ms. Chasing Hawk goes on to say:
The 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty gave the Sioux 60 million acres of land west of the Missouri. Gonzalez points out that the Sioux were never militarily defeated by the U.S. and would never have signed the 1868 Treaty had they thought they were ceding any land to the U.S. Arriving at Fort Laramie via Cheyenne in November, the Commission under General W. T. Sherman was dismayed to find no Sioux to parley with as planned. Red Cloud refused to come in until the garrisons at Forts Reno, Phil Kearny and C. F. Smith were withdrawn. The Commission acceded and in March, 1868 the President ordered their abandonment.
And according to Edward Lazarus during his last days in office, Democratic “Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle did a neat little favor for one of his corporate constituents. As a rider to the defense appropriation bill, he attached a provision granting absolute immunity to the Barrick Gold Company of Toronto for any liability arising from the 125-year operation of its Homestake Mine, a gold-bearing gash in the Black Hills of South Dakota.”
Historical Accounting Claims state that the federal government violated its trust duties by not providing a proper historical accounting relating to Individual Indian Money accounts and other trust assets. Trust Administration Claims that include fund and land administration claims state that the federal government violated its trust duties, mismanaged individual Indian trust funds and violated its trust responsibilities for management of land, oil, natural gas, mineral, timber, grazing and other resources.
The act provides a quantified water right of 650,000 acre-feet per year from natural flow and storage with a priority date of 1868. Tribal executives also brought in high-level speakers to endorse its passage, including U.S. Sen. Jon Tester; Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk, of the Department of Interior; and Michael Connor, Bureau of Reclamation commissioner.
As a founding listener and devotee of Bill Janklow’s idea of public radio for 37 years, my affirmation was cemented by this story:
In ’97, I performed my first of six seasons as Mother Ginger in the Black Hills Dance Theater’s production of the Nutcracker; Vanessa Short Bull danced the Sugar Plum Fairy. On opening night, her dad brought her likely centenarian grandmother backstage before the show to watch her warm up. The vision of three Sicangu generations attending a Tchiachovski ballet was all it took for me to understand how public media funds bridges.
Kristi Noem, Cynthia Lummis, and Denny Rehberg know not of these things; they, and their families are victims of televangelism and commercial broadcasting as they tout the wonders of jesus and white bread to children.
Rep. Lummis, bless her earth-hating heart, proposed in a media release that:
NPR must stand on its own. However, she noted that she prefers what she calls a "glide path to self-sufficiency" for Wyoming Public Radio.
Doc Blanchard hosted a fascinating discussion about NPR.
Federal laws limit the authority of Indian tribes to punish Indian offenders to no more than 1-year imprisonment, and force reservation residents to rely on Federal (and in some cases State) officials to investigate and prosecute violent crimes on Indian lands. The Tribal Law and Order Act takes a comprehensive approach at addressing these shortfalls by establishing accountability measures for Federal agencies responsible for investigating and prosecuting reservation crime, and by providing tribes with additional tools to combat crime locally. Foreign drug cartels are aware of the lack of police presence on Indian lands and are targeting some reservations to distribute and manufacture drugs.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs within the US Department of the Interior is the nearly universally hated clearinghouse of resources and trusts for tribes while DoI manages The Peoples' water and mineral tracts for lease to the various industries of extraction. The Office of Special Trustee has a temporary director. The GOP's solution? Eliminate the BIA:
The toast of the Tea Party, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, so desperately wants to cut the federal budget that he’s ready to stomp all over federal trust responsibility and treaty obligations to Indians—even obliterate them, if he must. The good news: The United States won’t be quite so broke. The bad news: The United States will have broken the law in order to balance its books on the backs of Indians.
Law enforcement are the last men standing: ATF, DEA, FBI, DHS...because Republicans sell prisons as economic development solutions, take the money from programs treating core issues, and use violence to suppress the results.
While Montana lawmakers grapple to control a booming medical marijuana industry, the state's seven Indian reservations are islands where the drug is still illegal in all circumstances. As sovereign nations, each tribal government can pass laws stricter or more lenient than state or federal laws. The debate reminds Blackfeet Chief Earl Old Person of a similar discussion more than 50 years ago. Decades after prohibition ended, the tribe continued to outlaw the use and sale of alcohol on the reservation. The council agreed to allow it on the reservation in 1954. "The people supporting it said 'if our boys can fight in wars, why can't they drink liquor?'" Old Person said.
Discussions of medical marijuana on Montana reservations began about a year ago with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai but has not yet circulated to all seven recognized tribes as a black market flourishes within peeing distance of 450 Minuteman IIIs.
Pennington County State's Attorney Glenn Brenner, Rapid City Police Chief Steve Allender and then Pennington County Sheriff Don Holloway filed the complaint last May after Fuller referred to law enforcement officers as a "bunch of racists."
Both Maine and Wyoming legislatures have been trying to craft law that would skirt the grossly unpopular 2010 FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. Two versions of the Wyoming Food Freedom Act didn't make it out of committee. The Casper Trib tells us:
Under the bill, homemade foods served at weddings, potluck dinners and charitable events would not be subject to state food safety regulations. The Senate, however, inserted language into the legislation that would allow cities to adopt their own licensing and inspection rules.
It is already within the purview of most county health departments (the goddess affirms that as Jeffco Health Officer she has the authority) to walk through and inspect any place where food is sold or distributed, but that the resources are blissfully unavailable to police every funeral. Permits for large events are issued through the County Sanitarian.
Gardeners, home producers, and permaculture types resist compliance under the law on grounds that the potential absolute liability for giving somebody a carrot or some salsa made right out of the garden threatens the very core of community. ip, too, confesses discomfort about the insidious tendency of this law to creep into the courts and ultimately coerce individuals into purchasing personal liability insurance. Existing Montana law posits that food being sold under compliance is safe.
The US is beginning to get religion on existing rare earth stocks; we have more buried in landfills than all other developed countries combined. Japan recovers most of her needs from waste streams:
Recent problems with Chinese supplies of rare earths have sent Japanese traders and companies in search of alternative sources, creating opportunities for Kosaka. This town’s hopes for a mining comeback lie not underground, but in what Japan refers to as urban mining — recycling the valuable metals and minerals from the country’s huge stockpiles of used electronics like cellphones and computers.
Montana's Lemhi Pass area in the Bitterroot Mountains is also being surveyed for rare earth deposits.
The Wyoming Department of Revenue has suspended sales tax collections from gun shows because of increasing animosity toward the state's field tax agents. Dan Noble, director of the department's excise tax division, said Friday that an incident at a gun show triggered the decision. He added, however, that resistance from gun show sponsors and participants has been a recurring problem statewide. "I have 10 field reps throughout the state, and every one of them has experienced some animosity," he said. "Folks are nervous anyway because there are guns there. I don't want to put my people at risk."
Republican congressional candidate Cynthia Lummis, a devout Lutheran, said that when she was growing up in Cheyenne many of her closest friends were Mormons, and during her college years she twice considered converting, taking all the introductory lessons for membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
For a state that deplores the exercise of government, Wyoming's workforce is 25% public-employed. The LDS is a heavily armored, cradle-to-grave, member-swollen organ of male extremists heavily armored against any threat to a hypocritheocracy dedicated to white rule. A Mormon with great hair, Mitt Romney is expected to do well again in the Wyoming Caucuses, where he will announce that he is fulfillment of the White Horse Prophesy.
Republicans won nine state House seats and three state Senate seats this year, giving them a 50-10 majority in the House and a 26-4 majority in the Senate. That’s the most dominant the GOP has been in the Legislature since 1921.
Predicting legislative races in Wyoming can be tougher than in other states.
For one thing, Wyoming legislative districts are the smallest by population in the country: As of 2002, the average Senate district had 16,459 people, while the average House district had just 8,230 people, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Interestingly, though, only 66 percent of registered Wyoming voters turned out for the general election. That’s the lowest turnout for a midterm election in Wyoming since 1978, according to the Wyoming secretary of state’s office. Water quality and environmental issues get ignored in red states where greed is good.
Herb and ip were pondering the future of the Democratic Party after the TEA movement blows itself up and takes the GOP with it.
His ranch is about nine miles south as the raven flies from Devil's Tower. The house on the sandstone rimrock overlooking the Belle Fourche River with the deck view of the Bear Lodge Mountains looms in my memory as this is being typed. He hadn't seen the Christine O'Donnell campaign ad or the SNL skit parodying it, so I played them for him on the laptop.
Moments afterwards, this image appeared for just long enough to get a photo as the cackling echoes died in the canyon.
Newcastle, Wyoming has been part of energy production since coal was discovered nearby and shipped through town by rail; a hand-dug oil well is a local tourist attraction. The Rapid City Journal's Mary Garrigan reminds readers back in September just how dependent some communities are on industry no matter what the cost. Resident Rhonda Sandness begins this story that got by me:
It was so pungent and so strong. It smelled like dead cattle and propane mixed together,” Sandness said. “I couldn’t see. My eyes were watering. My throat felt like it was closing up. I couldn’t breathe.”
“It was like hitting a wall of vapor,” said Sullivan, who was returning to his Newcastle home from Rapid City about 7 p.m. when he first encountered the odor. It filled his home, killed birds in his backyard and sickened his dogs.
Wolfe described a sulfuric acid smell that lingered for days and caused her throat to burn and bleed.
Sullivan called 911 on July 29 to report what he assumed was a noxious odor — and a public safety issue — caused by the Wyoming Refining Co. Bad smells are not unusual at the oil refinery, which is located, literally, on Main Street in this town of 3,000 people on the southwestern edge of the Black Hills National Forest. Elliott and Ellis Hemler are two longtime Newcastle residents who blame Wyoming Refining for a litany of health ailments. The refinery does have a history spotted with spills, leaks and soil contamination that have occurred over its more than 80 years of operation. That includes a 2005 pipeline leak at a pumping station at Mule Creek Junction, where remediation is still ongoing after the 6-inch pipeline that brings gasoline from the refinery to Rapid City leaked up to 200 barrels. Elliott alleged the cumulative effect of those pollutants has had a detrimental effect on the health of many, including him. Garrigan's story is horrifyingly comprehensive and comes on the heels of the announcement that Black Hills Corp. is closing the ancient asbestos-cited coal-fired plant just upwind at Osage.
"In June, the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission unanimously ruled that ingredients would be reported to the commission – at the insistence of Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal, a member of that body. At the time, it was unclear how that would work and whether ingredients would be public.
In a phone interview with New West, Freudenthal said he’d pushed a straightforward argument –that the actual formula or recipe for fracking fluid could remain a commercial secret, but that the ingredients had to be revealed to the state and, by extension, the public. Several energy companies were not enthusiastic about this approach, said the governor, but none of them pushed back as hard as Halliburton, the leading developer of hydraulic fracturing technology.
“Halliburton sent a big-time lawyer to talk to us, but it didn’t go well for him,” Freudenthal said.
In crafting what environmentalists dubbed the “Halliburton loophole,” Congress relied on a 2001 energy task force chaired by (former Vice-Dork and erstwhile Halliburton Chair, Dick) Cheney, which reported on the many advantages of hydraulic fracturing, and that most fracking fluid is recovered.
Gov. Freudenthal confirmed Wyoming is the only state to require that fracking ingredients be made public. “What other states do is up to them,” he said. “What’s important is that we got ahead of this. This big play on the Niobrara shale (in southeast Wyoming) is going to mean a lot of fracking.” From now on, said the governor, Wyoming will have the necessary records and data to determine the least-harmful methods of future fracking.
“This is huge,” said Deb Thomas, an organizer for the Powder River Basin Resource Council. She and her group have been working for years to get state and federal agencies to investigate a growing number of complaints from Wyoming citizens about water contamination that occurs near drilling sites.
John Robitaille, vice-president of Petroleum Association of Wyoming, said he’s somewhat comforted that the commission is willing to look at industry claims of confidentiality if requested.
He said it is “too early” to know whether industry can live with these new regulations or not: “We’ll just have to get some experience with this under our belt.”
Freudenthal is no Liberal and leaves office after elections. Wyoming voters, recently polled as America's most conservative, might just get a taste of what an angry lame duck Democratic governor will do to enshrine into law safe food, safe water, safe shelter, safe sex in another red state where Republicans=cheap food, cheap water, cheap shelter, and cheap sex.
BISMARCK, N.D. -- Testing showed that underground water supplies are safe after a ruptured oil well leaked more than 2,500 barrels of crude oil and water in western North Dakota, and it appeared the leak had been cleaned up, the state Health Department said Tuesday.
The ruptured oil well, dubbed Franchuk 44-20 by the company, used horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, a process that uses pressurized fluid and sand to break open oil-bearing rock some two miles underground.
A Gallup poll released on Monday found Wyoming, long a solidly Republican state, to be the most conservative state in the nation along with Mississippi: 53 percent of Wyomingites declared themselves to be conservatives. Two-thirds of all Wyoming voters believe the country as a whole is on the wrong track, including includes 82 percent of Republicans and 68 percent of registered independents polled, the Star-Tribune poll found.
Come on: Wyoming is just one more racist red state leading the pack in failed marriages, teenage pregnancies, and obesity rates, not to mention acid mine drainage or aiding and abetting war criminals.
