Native Americans

Sacred Site Protection & Rights of Indigenous Tribes (SSP&RIT)

For Immediate Release:

As Bulldozers May Arrive Any Day at Ancient Burial Site,
Native Americans To Occupy Sacred Land at Glen Cove in Vallejo
Spiritual Ceremony and Occupation Beginning Friday, April 15, 2011 at 8 am

Vallejo, California (April 14, 2011) – Faced with the imminent arrival of bulldozers at the Native American sacred burial site at Glen Cove, Vallejo, members of the local Native American community will hold a religious ceremony to commence an occupation of Sogorea Te, otherwise known as Glen Cove, in the City of Vallejo beginning at 8 am on Friday, April 15, 2011. Native Americans and their supporters have vowed to physically block bulldozers or any other work that would desecrate the burial site.

Native American activists consider this to be the last stand in a struggle that has been going on for over a decade, since the Greater Vallejo Recreation District (GVRD) first proposed plans for a “fully featured public park” including construction of a paved parking lot, paved hiking trails, 1000 pound picnic tables and a public restroom on top of the 3500 year old burial site.

MLPA Officials refused to Include Tribal scientists in process

by Dan Bacher

One of the most persistent myths promulgated by advocates of the privately-funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative is that the so-called "marine protected areas" created under the process are "based on science."

However, the "science" that the MLPA is based on is extremely shaky. In the 7 years since Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger privatized the process by directing the Department of Fish and Game to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the shadowy Resources Legacy Foundation, MLPA officials have refused to consult with Tribal scientists and integrate Tribal knowledge into the process.

No Tribal scientists were allowed to serve on the MLPA Science Advisory Teams, in spite of the fact that North Coast Indian Tribes have large natural resources and fisheries departments staffed with many fishery biologists and other scientists. And it wasn't until 2010, six years after the MLPA process was privatized, that the first Tribal representative on the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In fact, MLPA officials turned down a request by Yurok Tribe lawyers and scientists last August to make a presentation to the MLPA Science Advisory Team. The Yurok Fisheries Department alone has a staff of over 70 people. Among other data, they were going to present data of test results from other marine reserves regarding mussels.

The Winnemem Journey to Justice benefit is set for Thursday, February 3, from 7 to 9:30 pm at the David Brower Center at 2150 Allston Way in Berkeley.

The evening of film, food and silent auction will assist the Winnemem Wintu (McCloud River) Tribe in their pursuit of justice, protection of sacred sites and the return of chinook salmon to the McCloud River.

by Dan Bacher

Over 2,300 fall run Chinook salmon, the largest number of fish counted at the Van Arsdale Fisheries Station on the Eel River below Cape Horn Dam since the Department of Fish and Game (DFG) began keeping records, arrived just a few months after members of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Covelo conducted dances and ceremonies to bring back the salmon.

In July of 2010, the Feather Dancers of the Tribes joined Friends of the Eel River (FOER) at a swimming hole in the Hearst area, a few miles downstream of the PG&E Potter Valley diversion (PVP) to the Russian River.

“Prayers and dances began just before dusk and continued well into the night,” said Nadananda, Executive Director of Friends of the Eel River. “Dances and ceremonies that had not happened in more than 100 years were done on the edge of the Eel River, prayers to bring back the salmon and for return of water natural to this river system.”

The Eel River Prayer Ceremony and Summit, a historic 2-day event held on the banks of the Eel River near Willits on July 17-18, 2010, drew Eel River advocates from San Francisco to the Oregon border, including biologists, hydrologists, fishermen and leading environmental groups. “We will not sit idly by,” was the central message of the event.

The Round Valley Tribes, with century-long fishing rights on the Eel, have experienced “devastating economic and health-related hardships from the loss of the salmon fisheries,” according to a joint news release from the Tribes and FOER.

MLPA Attempts to Ban Traditional Tribal Gathering along North Coast

by Dan Bacher

A panel appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to implement his controversial Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative will consider amending a motion that will, in effect, ban traditional harvesting by Indian Tribes until the legal authority to regulate the Tribal uses is clarified by the State of California and California Tribes.

This amendment will be discussed at Schwarzenegger’s Blue Ribbon Task Force (BRTF) meeting this Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 10 am via teleconference. BTRF members will be distributed between locations in Crescent City, Eureka, and Fort Bragg, in a thinly-veiled attempt to prevent a unified protest by tribes, fishermen and environmental activists.

“The MLPA is trying to ban any and all gathering along our coastline, including NO TRADITIONAL gathering whatsoever, in marine protected areas,” said Georgiana Myers, organizer of the Klamath Justice Coalition and Yurok Tribal member. “I urge people to speak out against this insane idea of taking away what is not theirs to take!”

Yurok Tribal representatives and other North Coast Tribes expressed strong opposition to the original motion four, the “Enhanced Compliance Alternative,” by Gregory F. Schem, at the October 25-26, Blue Ribbon Task Force, (BRTF) meeting in Fortuna. They did so on the specific grounds that once the BRTF started changing the unified proposal, “it would be an invitation to make further changes,” according to a draft letter to BRTF Chair Cindy Gustafson by Thomas O’Rourke, chairman of the Yurok Tribal Council.

Assembly Speaker John Pérez Is on the Wrong Side of History
By Dan Bacher

In a historic protest on July 21, over 300 members of California Indian Tribes and their allies peacefully took control of a Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Blue Ribbon Task Force meeting in Fort Bragg to protest the violation of indigenous gathering and fishing rights under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s controversial MLPA Initiative.

Over 60 immigrant workers from the sea urchin industry, many from indigenous communities in central and southern Mexico that were forced to come to the U.S. after they were driven off their land under NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), marched side by side with members of the Yurok, Tolowa, Cahto, Kashia Pomo, Karuk, Hoopa Valley, Maidu, Hopi, Navajo and other tribes. Besides them were recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, seaweed harvesters, environmentalists and sea urchin divers and local political candidates.

by Dan Bacher

In her guest opinion in the Eureka Times-Standard on June 29, former Democratic Assemblywoman Virginia Strom-Martin claimed that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fast-track Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative is “the most open and transparent process” that she has ever been involved with.

However, a historic protest the same day by over 40 activists from the Yurok, Karuk, Hoopa Valley, Tolowa, Cahto and other tribes at the MLPA Science Advisory Team meeting in Eureka exposed Strom’s claim for the falsehood that it is. They demonstrated how the only thing “open” about the process is the open, racist disregard by MLPA officials for tribal gathering and fishing rights.

The MLPA team attempted to meet without allowing any public testimony, but Frankie Joe Myers, a member of the Coastal Justice Coalition and Yurok Tribe ceremonial leader, went to the microphone and demanded that the panel open up a public comment period. The panel was prevented from proceeding as they were interrupted by chants of “Keep your laws off my culture” and “M-L-P-A taking Tribal rights away.”

The MLPA officials conceded and members of North Coast Tribes and non-native supporters then provided powerful testimony demanding tribal representation on the science panel and exposing the hollowness of the claim that the process is “open and transparent.”

Hoopa Valley Tribe Calls on Legislature to Repeal Water Bond

by Dan Bacher

Leonard Masten, chairman of the Hoopa Valley Tribe, today said Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's announcement to postpone the California Water Bond (Proposition 18) from the 2010 ballot until 2012 is "indicative of the measure's weakness" and called on the Legislature to repeal the bond.

"It’s a choreographed political move for Schwarzenegger and his special interest cronies to postpone the measure," according to a statement from Masten. "It buys them more time to falsely convince the public that they need this pork-filled bond to have water when they turn on their spigots."

Masten noted that the proposition, known as the Safe, Clean and Reliable Drinking Water Supply Act, "is not really about drinking water."

"It’s about building and privatizing taxpayer-built dams and moving the control of the California’s water from the public trust to the private sector," he said. "The measure also paves the way for the construction of a peripheral canal that would more easily ship Northern California Water south."

Masten said he agreed with the statement by Mark Franco, headman of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, that "The peripheral canal is a big, stupid idea that doesn’t make any sense from a tribal environmental perspective. Building a canal to save the Delta is like a doctor inserting an arterial bypass from your shoulder to your hand– it will cause your elbow to die just like taking water out of the Delta through a peripheral canal will cause the Delta to die.”

The Hoopa Valley Tribe is urging the California legislature to vote NO on postponing proposition 18 until 2012, according to Masten.

Chevron Vs. Filmmaker

[story begins 32 seconds into the video]

Seth Myers: This week, Arizona signed the toughest illegal immigration law in the country which will allow police to demand identification papers from anyone they suspect is in the country illegally. I know there’s some people in Arizona worried that Obama is acting like Hitler, but could we all agree that there’s nothing more Nazi than saying "Show me your papers?"

California Court Okays Discrimination Against Section 8 Tenants

Remember Donald Sterling, the NBA team owner and Los Angeles mega-landlord who has been sued multiple times for outrageous housing discrimination, most recently by the U.S. Department of Justice? Sterling is back in the news this week, again for discrimination in his role as landlord. This time, however, Sterling convinced a California Court of Appeal that it was just fine for him to discriminate against a Section 8 tenant. At this point, anyone who still believes in the myth that judges are “liberal activists” needs to have his or her head examined.

Judge Wanger Affirms Flows to Protect Central Valley Salmon

by Dan Bacher

Environmentalists, fishermen and the Winnemem Wintu Tribe scored a legal victory on March 31 when a federal judge affirmed restrictions on Delta pumping to protect imperiled Central Valley salmon populations.

In a rebuke to junior water rights holders, Judge Oliver Wanger of the Eastern District of California refused to grant the Westlands Water District and its co-plaintiffs a temporary restraining order on the biological opinion of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). The opinion includes seasonal water flows required to protect Sacramento River endangered spring-run Chinook salmon and Central Valley steelhead in the California Delta, according to the Planning and Conservation League (PCL).

Despite claims to contrary from the plaintiffs, the Judge found that the NMFS opinion, expressed in written comments to the Delta Flow Criteria Proceeding as the absolute "…minimum flows necessary to avoid jeopardy," was based on the best available science and takes the human impacts of seasonal flow regimes into account.

The Karuk Tribal Council on January 28 voted unanimously to sign the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement and Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement.

Karuk Tribe

P R E S S R E L E A S E

For Immediate Release: January 28, 2010

For more information: Craig Tucker, Klamath Coordinator, Karuk Tribe, cell 916-207-8294

Click the picture to see how they did it 55 years ago

Honduras: Military Coup Engineered By Two US Companies?

By John Perkins

August 07, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- I recently visited Central America. Everyone I talked with there was convinced that the military coup that had overthrown the democratically-elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, had been engineered by two US companies, with CIA support. And that the US and its new president were not standing up for democracy.

Earlier in the year Chiquita Brands International Inc. (formerly United Fruit) and Dole Food Co had severely criticized Zelaya for advocating an increase of 60% in Honduras’s minimum wage, claiming that the policy would cut into corporate profits. They were joined by a coalition of textile manufacturers and exporters, companies that rely on cheap labor to work in their sweatshops.

Memories are short in the US, but not in Central America. I kept hearing people who claimed that it was a matter of record that Chiquita (United Fruit) and the CIA had toppled Guatemala’s democratically-elected president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and that International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT), Henry Kissinger, and the CIA had brought down Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973. These people were certain that Haiti’s president Jean-Bertrand Aristide had been ousted by the CIA in 2004 because he proposed a minimum wage increase, like Zelaya’s.

I was told by a Panamanian bank vice president, “Every multinational knows that if Honduras raises its hourly rate, the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean will have to follow. Haiti and Honduras have always set the bottom line for minimum wages. The big companies are determined to stop what they call a ‘leftist revolt’ in this hemisphere. In throwing out Zelaya they are sending frightening messages to all the other presidents who are trying to raise the living standards of their people.”