Aboriginal chiefs not consulted over logging
http://ottawa.cbc.ca/editorServlets/View?filename=abolog011029

Ottawa - Aboriginal people in Ontario are angry they're being left out of the
consultation process when it comes to forestry development on treaty land.

Ministry of Natural Resources is considering logging north of Sioux Lookout.

Deputy grand chief of the Ontario Cree, Raymond Ferris, says while the Ministry
has heard from some communities, he's worried that their Cree and Ojibwa
neighbours further north haven't had their say.

Ferris wants the government to spend more resources looking at how the industry
will affect communities.

"The chiefs have passed policies and procedures on how we want to be consulted,"
says Ferris. "So far, the government is not listening to that. So, we probably
will be having a conflict or confrontation if the government proceeds the way
they're going."

Ferris says logging roads disrupt native rights to hunt and trap.

Assistant deputy minister Mike Willick says the native community, and not the
government, initiated the forestry development plans in the first place.

"Some aboriginals that are in the area immediately north of where we practice
forestry have been indicating to us that they're interested in developing forest
harvesting opportunities. So, when someone comes to the door and says they'd
like to do this, we work with them," says Willick.

The chiefs plan to present their concerns to the Ministry of Natural Resources
this week.
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Rural water storage risks explored HEALTH: Home containers blamed for spread of
illnesses in villages.


By Elizabeth Manning Anchorage Daily News
http://www.adn.com/alaska/story/734105p-779221c.html
(Published: November 1, 2001)

Even though nearly three-quarters of rural households in Alaska now have indoor
plumbing, village families across the state still face health risks from
drinking water stored in home containers, experts in the field told a conference
in Anchorage this week.

Families that live in homes without indoor plumbing usually haul water from
public water spigots at community wash houses or from traditional sources such
as rivers, ponds, snow or ice. Often, they store the water in large plastic
containers such as trash cans equipped with plastic dippers.

The water sources themselves often don't pose a problem, the experts said. But
health risks do exist from the way people store water in their homes. Problems
arise when people set dippers down on contaminated surfaces and then put them
back in the water or scoop unwashed hands into water cans.

Primitive water and sewage disposal systems can lead to a range of health
dangers, from infectious diseases such as hepatitis A and viral meningitis to
increased spread of common ailments like colds and the flu. Alaska villages have
long experienced high rates of these ailments, and state, federal and local
governments have spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past two decades
to bring more modern water and sewer systems to the Bush.

Yet in many villages, people continue relying on water hauled by hand and kept
in containers in homes.

"In most cases, the traditional water sources aren't bad but as soon it gets
into the house, it goes downhill fast," said Bill Stokes, a rural environmental
quality specialist with the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

Stokes and other state and tribal officials discussed ways to make water storage
safer at this week's Alaska Tribal Environmental Management Conference held at
the Hotel Captain Cook. Suggestions included designing a better home water
delivery system, educating villagers about safe water handling or chlorinating
or boiling water before use. No final recommendations were made.

Malcolm Ford of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service
said the state has made significant progress toward providing all village homes
with safe drinking water and flush toilets by 2005. But he said it may take
longer to reach about 15 percent of homes in small, poor villages. In the
meantime, Ford said, the state should consider economical ways to make home
water systems safer.

Even when centralized water is available, villagers sometimes trust traditional
water sources over spigot water that may taste strongly of chlorine or is brown
in color, conference participants said. And some families prefer to collect and
haul water even when they have plumbing in their homes.

A year ago, the Cooperative Extension Service sampled water sources and home
water containers in three test villages over winter, early spring and summer.
The study, conducted in Eek, Tanana and Shishmaref, found that total coliform
and fecal coliform levels in water storage containers often exceeded safe levels
for drinking water and occasionally even for swimming or boating.

"It was a real wake-up call," said Nina Miller, a wellness coordinator with the
Alaska Native Health Board who is originally from Tanana.

Tanana has a central water source at the laundromat and some homes are now
getting indoor plumbing. Still, Miller said, many families still get water from
the river.

Jennifer Demit, an environmental program coordinator with the Native Village of
Shishmaref, said just a few families there haul water from the wash house. Most
people instead still collect water from snow or from their basins connected to
their roofs during the summer. But the study has changed people's attitudes,
Demit said. Many Shishmaref families now leave dippers attached to water
containers or add drops of chlorine to the water to make water safer, she said.

Reporter Elizabeth Manning can be reached at emanning@... or 907 257-4323.

LINKS FROM INDIANZ.COM:
Relevant Links:
   Village Safe Water Program, Department of Environmental Conservation
   - http://www.state.ak.us/local/akpages/
   ENV.CONSERV/dfco/fco_vsw.htm
   Governor's Council on Rural Sanitation -
   http://www.state.ak.us/local/akpages/
   ENV.CONSERV/dfco/gov_counc_rs.htm
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Yukon abuse victims settle cases
WebPosted Oct 31 2001 12:42 PM CST
http://north.cbc.ca/editorServlets/View?filename=bist31

Whitehorse, Yukon - The federal government has settled abuse claims with 11 more
Yukon victims. They all lived in a student residence. The out of court
settlements include a memorial to the survivors, financial compensation,
counseling and apologies from the government.

It's the second major settlement in the Yukon. The former students were all
victims of sexual abuse at Coudert Hall, the now demolished former Indian
Centre.

It housed hundreds of first nation children attending school in Whitehorse
during the 1960's. Lawyer Laura Cabott has been on the case for the past three
years.

Cabott says this case was made simpler because there was no fight over who
operated the residence.

"What tends to happen is the claimant brings forward a claim and then what tends
to happen is Canada and church start pointing fingers to who's fault and who's
liable, it's much easier to deal with just one defendant," she says.

Cabott says her clients are pleased with the recent settlements. But she says
dozens more cases are pending, and she's receiving more inquiries almost daily.

"This is the tip of the iceberg, I think more individuals will see that they can
bring forward claims, receive compensation, apologies and memorials, and when
those individuals are ready to bring forward claims they will take on the
government and the churches if it's appropriate," says Cabott.

The federal government announced this week that it will pay 70 percent of
negotiated settlements where they share blame with the church. Across Canada,
thousands of abuse claims worth an estimated billion dollars have been filed
against churches and the government.

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Crown attorney studies reserves Seeking alternatives to white man’s system

Posted: October 30, 2001 - 07:00am EST
by: Roberta Avery / Today Correspondent / Indian Country Today
http://indiancountry.com/?2770

CAPE CROKER, Ontario — After 16 years of prosecuting criminals in Ontario, Crown
Attorney Rupert Ross knows the traditional white man’s justice system doesn’t
always work.

That’s why he has traveled across Canada visiting Indian reserves searching for
an alternative.

“It is the Aboriginal people of Canada who have helped me come at the issue from
a different direction, for they have given me a different way of looking at
victims, at offenders and the crimes that ensnare them,’’ Ross said.

Understanding the “teachings’’ has been a difficult learning curve for a white
man who studied law in Toronto and had little knowledge of Aboriginal ways until
he spent 11 years as a fishing guide in Northern Ontario to learn some of the
native ways.

Now he is an advocate of restorative justice and recently came to the Chippewas
of Nawash reserve at Cape Croker on the shore of Lake Huron to talk to the 700
residents who are close to establishing their own alternative justice program.

The way an Aboriginal scientist studies a plant illustrates a different way of
looking at things that can carry over into the criminal justice system, Ross
said.

The western scientist focuses on all parts and properties of the plant,
analyzing its root, stem and leaf system, an Aboriginal scientist, by contrast,
looks at the role the plant plays in the meadow, he said.

“The Aboriginal eye is trained to see not the plant in isolation, but the vast
web of relationships connecting it with all other things.’’

When Ross applied that principal to the theft of a bottle of rum from a couple’s
home a different picture emerged.

“To the offender, all he did was steal a bottle. To the court, while indeed he
invaded their privacy, it was only for a moment, involved no physical
confrontation and only resulted in a $20 loss,’’ Ross said.

But to the couple, who no longer feel secure in their home, “it was an injury
which remained long after the case was closed.’’

Bringing the victims and the offender together in a non-confrontational manner
can help both offender and victim.

The victim meets the intruder and realizes that he isn’t a monster who is going
to rape and murder them.

“And hopefully, the offender realizes that he has done a lot more than steal a
bottle of rum,’’ Ross said.

While such conferences between victim and offender don’t always work “they have
a better chance of rehabilitating offenders than anything I know.

“The process is nearly always emotional because it gives an opportunity to learn
from each other as human beings directly, ‘’ said Ross. “When you have emotion
there’s a better chance that communication takes place. It’s much more powerful
than having a judge yelling at an offender,’’ said Ross.

He points out that restorative justice is not a substitute for traditional
justice.

“But the two can work together, hand in hand,’’ he said.

Ross is the author of two books on restorative justice “Dancing with A
Ghost”(McClelland and Stewart) and “Returning to the Teachings” (Penguin). They
are a model ideally suited to the justice system’s search for methods to
recognize the needs of victims of crime, he said.

While based on a native model, restorative justice is working well off the
reserves. Programs are in place in the United States and Canada, Britain and in
New Zealand where the Maori communities pioneered some of the techniques.

The Cape Croker band council is progressing toward a restorative justice
program. Needs assessment, survey and community input have all been part of the
process, band councilor Isabel Millette said.

Millette also cautioned it’s not a substitute for traditional justice.

While there is still much work to be done, Millette has found support for the
concept from local police and prosecutors.

“There is a need to look into alternative sources for our membership to make
sure they are given the opportunity to have a chance, ‘’ she said.

The Cape Croker group will also have to find financial support for staff to
administer the program, which will likely also require significant commitment in
time and training from volunteers.

Millette said she expects the Cape Croker program to begin with young people not
adult offenders, but Ross argues that restorative justice can be helpful for a
wide range of offenders and offences.

“The attraction is that the focus is switched from the offender to the community
and the victims of crime.’’

The encounters between offender and victim or the victim’s family are often
‘’surprisingly effective in breaking through an offender’s tough guy exterior,
releasing a flood of heartfelt confusions, sorrows, regrets and the like,’’ Ross
said.

He does caution that such conferences can’t be used when the offender is a
psychopath who may enjoy seeing a victim’s pain.

“A sadist who takes joy in learning how deeply he has hurt shouldn’t be part of
this. Fortunately those kinds of offenders are rarities in the criminal justice
system,’’ Ross said.

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include the full content - articles, advertisements, notices and listings - that
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November 1, 2001

Ottawa seeking church mortgages as bailout security Native school settlement

Richard Foot National Post
http://WWW.NATIOnalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20011101/765070.html

The federal government has asked Canada's largest churches to hand over
mortgages to properties across the country as financial security in any
agreement on settling residential school lawsuits, according to an Anglican
Church lawyer.

"They wanted the mortgages of every church in Canada as security," said Bud
Smith, a former B.C. attorney-general and one of four Anglican negotiators
meeting with federal officials about how to resolve native residential school
claims. "If we agree to do that, the government could foreclose on our church
buildings the way any commercial lender would ... I wouldn't put them past
that."

Ottawa has been negotiating with the Roman Catholic, Anglican, United and
Presbyterian churches since June to find a common solution to the lawsuits filed
by nearly 9,000 native people who say they were abused as children in Indian
residential schools.

One major problem is how to share the cost of liabilities between government and
church defendants.

On Monday, Herb Gray, the Deputy Prime Minister, announced talks so far have
failed and therefore the government will unilaterally pay 70% of any settlements
for sexual and physical abuse reached out of court.

Yesterday, Mr. Smith called the move a public relations gesture. He said it
became obvious from the first negotiating session in June that Ottawa has no
intention of quickly resolving the lawsuits -- or of helping its co-defendants,
the churches, survive them -- but wants to appear to be trying.

Consider, he said, the government's latest offer to the four churches: At a
meeting in Winnipeg in September, two senior Justice Department officials and
two bureaucrats working for Mr. Gray tabled a draft proposal suggesting Ottawa
would pay two-thirds the price of any out-of-court settlements if the churches
agreed to pay one-third.

In addition, the government said the churches must put up commercial security to
guarantee their one-third share of any deal. The proposal did not contain the
word mortgages, but Mr. Smith says real estate is the only commercial security
the churches own.

"It means mortgages," he said. "It means that the Anglican cathedral in Halifax,
or elsewhere, would sign a mortgage in favour of the government of Canada in
support of the liability claims the government has against the Church."

The government wants the mortgages because it may be on the hook for church
liabilities.

Mr. Smith said the government does not trust the churches to pay their part of
any cost-sharing deal. He says there was "stunned silence" among church leaders
when federal officials first made the request for mortgages, followed by
laughter and some head-shaking.

"We would be foolish indeed, as institutions of faith, to get into a situation
with government that is rooted in commercial security," Mr. Smith said. "That is
the relationship in undemocratic societies, where the executive is a little more
authoritarian."

Cindy Clegg, a federal spokeswoman, said, "That is not the case," but declined
yesterday to discuss the September proposal, saying she does not want to
negotiate with the churches in public.

Said the Rev. David Iverson, a senior official of the United Church of Canada:
"The government's action on Monday made me feel that the government is
negotiating in public. That's been disturbing."

The churches say they cannot afford to pay a third of liabilities estimated to
reach $1.8-billion. Mr. Smith said the government refuses to accept this.

Last year, justice officials asked rural Anglican churches in B.C. to disclose
lists of jewelry and paintings apparently stored in church basements. "They
still believe the churches are hiding assets and have a lot of money," Mr. Smith
said.

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Walleye fishery on tenterhooks

Kingston, Ontario. - Questions are being raised about native fishing rights in
the wake of a decision that could see a fishery shut down in Eastern Ontario.

The Ministry of Natural Resources says declining fish stocks could lead to a
collapse of the Bay of Quinte walleye fishery if action isn't taken soon.

Over the past 10 years the number of walleye in the Bay of Quinte has dropped
from more than one million to an estimated 200,000.

The Ministry of Natural Resources blames a changing environment and excessive
harvest.

But conservationist Scott Anderson says the Ministry itself is at fault. He says
a small group of native fisherman have been allowed to use illegal fishing
methods.

Anderson says the Ministry knows the practice goes on, but does nothing about
it.

"They've turned a blind eye to spearing spawning fish in sanctuaries," says
Anderson. "This is the only place in the world where they allow completely
unregulated killing in sanctuaries."

Anderson says discussions about a shutdown are merely a way of skirting the real
issue.

Alistair Mathers, a management biologist with the Natural Resources, says the
Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte are allowed to fish for food or ceremonial
purposes.

"We do not agree that they have a right to sell fish. The Mohawks do not agree
with this, so we have been trying to resolve that," says Mathers.

He says that over the next few weeks the Ministry will meet with all the groups
who use the fishery, including the Mohawks. After that, he says, a decision will
be made on whether it should be closed.

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from Paul P..thanks!

The law of the land changed overnight
Inuits consider each individual is his or her own master

Posted: October 30, 2001 - 7:00AM EST
by: Rachel Attituq Qitsualik / Indian Country Today

In an Inuit community, everyone knows the law. It arrives by plane.

In every community, there is the air of nervous expectation that builds just
before the court party is flown in, making for good conversation, like a
scheduled celebration.

"Are you going to court?" is asked in much the same way as asking, "Are you
going to the party?" Even those who know that they will be brought before the
court display little anxiety — only a trace of the stomach butterflies that
someone might complain of before a performance.

Usually, the reaction to being asked about it is a wide grin and a shrug of the
shoulders, a typical Inuit reaction to any mystery.

Mystery? But everyone knows the law, that word Webster’s defines as, "a custom
or practice recognized as binding by a community ... ."

Yet Inuit have no true word for law. The contemporary Inuktitut word for a law,
"piqujaq" actually means "commandment." And piqujaq is appropriate, for Inuit
have never felt ownership over southern law. In traditional society, the concept
was unnecessary, since each individual was considered to be his own master.

There were common understandings that some acts were undesirable, but
consequences varied with practicality and necessity. For example, in the case of
murder:

The killer might be avenged by the victim’s relations. This was personal, not
public.

The killer might simply leave.

If the killer’s acts were especially abominable (ex: child molestation), an
"executioner" was appointed. This last resort was not "corporal punishment" but
only the swift removal of a threat.

If no one cared, the killer might simply be ignored.

In this way, "law" was as plastic as human variation itself.

When southern law arrived, most were incapable of comprehending it, and it was
deemed "one of those white things." Since qallunat (whites) owned it, it was no
Inuk’s business (after all, it was what qallunat wanted to do, and shouldn’t
everyone be allowed to do as they want?).

Consequently, Inuit often found themselves in trouble with the law, for the
rules had changed literally overnight. Suddenly, if a man killed another in
vengeance, he could find himself seized, whisked through bizarre rituals,
labeled an unrepentant savage, and deprived of home and family.

With time, Inuit adapted, but continued to see law as a qallunat obsession,
existing independently of real, practical life. What astounded them most was the
fact that qallunat themselves often recognized the poor utility of their laws.
My father was forced to hunt ducks and geese out of season. By law, he could
only hunt the birds in the fall, which was when they began to migrate away (we
used to joke that they knew the law).

There was a particular police officer who always suspected my father, and badly
wanted to catch him. His persistence made him seem like my father’s nemesis.

Theirs was a game of cat-and-mouse until, one day, my father caught the officer
himself carrying poached birds.

Inuit still regard the law as something of a qallunat tradition, and rightly so.
It is not something they would have chosen to invent. It is alien to them, for
in its present form, it shares none of the adaptability required of Arctic life.
No Inuk would dispute the need for law today, yet one who obeys a piqujaq — a
command — possesses not one hundredth the power of one who obeys from his own
will. And until the law evolves from nebulous commandments into common
understandings, as of yesterday, Inuit will ever grin and shrug as the courts
fly in.

Pijariiqpunga.



This article can be found at
http://www.indiancountry.com/?article=2743

©2001 Indian Country Today
The on-line version of Indian Country Today does not include the full content -
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From: Miketben

FROM: THE CORNWALL STANDARD-FREEHOLDER NEWSPAPER


Indian Act Survey 'Superficial,' Says Grand Chief Mitchell

By Terri Saunders Standard-Freeholder Akwesasne
http://www.standard-freeholder.southam.ca/

A local First Nations leader says Canadians are not informed about issues
surrounding native communities, and a national survey regarding proposed changes
to the Indian Act is "superficial."

Grand Chief Mike Mitchell, of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, the elected body
which governs the Canadian portion of Akwesasne, said a recent poll conducted by
the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs into whether there should be an
overhaul to the Indian Act is nothing more than an attempt to gauge the
temperature of public support.

"Obviously, the government is ready to take a position on this," Mitchell said.
"They want to see what position Canadians will support." But Mitchell said most
Canadians have not been adequately educated about issues facing native
communities. "Generally, Canadians are not going to understand what goes on
inside the First Nations communities," said Mitchell. "At least not without more
of an explanation."

The telephone survey was conducted from Aug. 7-20. It suggested more non-natives
than natives support overhauling the act. It also suggests just 53 per cent of
natives view self-governance as a good idea. Concerns about survey Mitchell has
concerns about other aspects of the survey.

"Nobody was consulted in Akwesasne," he said. "What they did was focus on a few
small First Nations communities, so I don't believe they got the whole picture."
Mitchell said such polls only succeed in furthering conflicts between First
Nations leaders, the ministry and First Nations national chief Matthew Coon
Come.

"The First Nations assembly has been butting heads with both the ministry and
the national leader for some time," said Mitchell. "But they've had drastic
cutbacks in their budget and they're trying to deal with that as well." Mitchell
said that although he's following what's happening on the national scene
closely, his focus remains on the issues at home.

"For Akwesasne, I continue to work closely with local politicians to make
changes necessary for the good of our community," said Mitchell. "Part of that
work is to build relations with the government, and address the issues that
exist between natives and Canadians."


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From: "Lessard, George" <glessard@...>
Subject: KEGEDONCE PRESS: New website for Native publishing house


-----Original Message-----
From: Rolland Nadjiwon [mailto:mikinakn@...]
Sent: Friday, November 02, 2001 12:39 AM
To: NATIVELIT-L@...
Subject: New website for Native publishing house


KEGEDONCE PRESS LAUNCHES NEW WEBSITE!

Award winning Indigenous publisher Kegedonce Press is pleased announce the
launch its new website www.kegedonce.com

The site offers information on Kegedonce Press, our new releases, profiles
of our authors, information on events, news from the world of Indigenous
writing and publishing, links to related sites, reviews of our books, as
well as online ordering.

To celebrate the launch of our new website Kegedonce is offering a prize to
the 100th correct answer to the following question:

Who won the Canadian Author's Association Air Canada Award for "most
promising Canadian author under 30" in 1997?

The answer is on the site. To enter and be eligible for a special prize from
Kegedonce, send your answer, your name and a current (snail) mail address to
renee@...  The 100th CORRECT answer wins. It's that simple! The
winner will be announced on the site.... Stay tuned.

Kegedonce is also offering visitors to the website a special offer on Joseph
Dandurand's beautiful collection of poetry looking into the eyes of my
forgotten dreams. It's a special, limited time offer so act now!

Designed by Pineneedle Blankets Productions, an Anishnaabe website company
based at Whitefish Lake First Nation, the Kegedonce Press site will be
updated regularly. BOOKMARK US NOW & CHECK IN OFTEN.

Chi megwetch!


SUPPORT INDIGENOUS WRITING AND PUBLISHING

Please circulate this email. Megwetch


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From: "Lessard, George" <glessard@...>
Subject: Aboriginal Writers Wanted! "Journeys of the Spirit 2"

DEADLINE: November 16, 2001

Aboriginal Writers Wanted!
for
"Journeys of the Spirit 2"

We want your stories, poems, and writings about:
o Learning Journeys:  struggles, successes, residential school
o Identity Journeys
o Healing Journeys
o Journey to Freedom
o Journey of Truth


We are looking for writings from Aboriginal literacy learners from across
Canada.

Each author published in our book will get their name in the credits and
receive a free copy of the completed anthology.

Please submit writing no later than November 16, 2001 along with a brief
description of the author.  Please include the following information: name,
age, Nation, literacy program, and photo (if possible).

Please call for more information.

Maria Morrison
Publishing Coordinator
Ningwakwe Learning Press
237897 Inglis Falls Road
RR #4 Owen Sound ON
N4K 5N6
1-888-551-9757 or 519-372-9855
F: 519-372-1684      E: maria@...


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From: "Lessard, George" <glessard@...>
Subject: Manitoba Aboriginal Perspectives curricula

Aboriginal Perspectives
found on
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/metks4/curricul/k-s4curr/elements.html

Aboriginal perspectives
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/metks4/abedu/index.html
are being integrated into curricula to enable students to learn the history of
Manitoba and Canada before European settlement and to give the perspective of
Aboriginal people since that time. Each subject area will address the
perspectives and accomplishments of Aboriginal people, as appropriate. The goal
in integrating Aboriginal perspectives into curricula is to ensure that all
students have opportunities to understand and respect themselves, their cultural
heritage, and the cultural heritage of others.

Aboriginal perspectives apply to learning experiences for all students. However,
there may be unique and particular learning experiences that apply specifically
to Aboriginal students. Aboriginal students are learners and participants in
Aboriginal cultures, not necessarily experts in the culture. Their knowledge
about their culture may be the same as that of other students in the class but
if they do have extensive knowledge about their culture, it can benefit the
entire class.

All students learn in a variety of ways and this should be taken into
consideration to maximize learning for Aboriginal students as well. The intent
is to ensure that high expectations in supported learning environments apply to
Aboriginal students just as they do to non-Aboriginal students.

Goals of Aboriginal Perspectives for Aboriginal Students

to develop a positive self-identity through learning their own histories,
cultures, and contemporary lifestyles to participate in a learning environment
that will equip them with the knowledge and skills needed to participate more
fully in the unique civic and cultural realities of their communities Goals of
Aboriginal Perspectives for Non-Aboriginal Students

to develop an understanding and respect for the histories, cultures, and
contemporary lifestyles of Aboriginal people to develop informed opinions on
matters relating to Aboriginal people Gender Fairness To address the challenges
of gender fairness and to develop student understanding in all subject areas in
a balanced way, teaching, learning, and assessing must be equally accessible,
relevant, interesting, appropriate, and challenging to male and female students.
This will ensure that all students have opportunities to succeed regardless of
gender.

Curriculum documents, learning resources, and classroom practice should reflect
a commitment to gender fairness and inclusion. All students, regardless of
gender, should be encouraged and supported to develop to their full potential.


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For or against, Inupiats tied to off-shore drilling
   FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2001
http://www.indianz.com/SmokeSignals/Headlines/showfull.asp?ID=env01/1122001-1

Oil began flowing on Thursday from the first new off-shore drilling project in
Alaska to occur in more than a decade, a prelude to expanded development in
traditional Inupiat whale hunting grounds.

Known as the Northstar project, it is being undertaken by oil giant BP
Exploration with royalties being paid both to Alaska and the federal government.
Secretary of Interior Gale Norton said the joint effort will bring in 175
million barrels of oil, which she considered especially vital to national
security in the wake of September 11's terrorist attacks.

But fears about drilling's impact on the bowhead whale population has raised
concerns among Inupiat communities on Alaska's North Slope. While many Inupiats
support on-shore oil and gas development including the controversial proposal to
open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to exploration, they are less
excited about the prospect of drilling affecting their traditional source of
food and a central part of their culture.

With the Interior moving forward on a five-year plan to lease more off-shore
areas to development, those fears are becoming more pronounced. The Alaska
Eskimo Whaling Commission, which oversees Inupiat whale hunts, earlier this year
passed a resolution to support drilling in ANWR -- so long as the government
kept away from the sea.

Along with Arctic Slope Regional Corp., an Alaska Native regional corporation
which also supports ANWR development, Inupiats have objected to a plan to build
a natural gas pipeline through the Beaufort Sea and Chukchi Sea, prime hunting
grounds. The two seas are targeted for development by a draft management plan
Norton released in July.

At the same time, Arctic Slope vice president Richard Glenn said Inupiats aren't
entirely opposed to off-shore projects like Northstar. But they aren't going out
and holding press conference either, he acknowledged, as they do to push for
ANWR drilling.

"The Inupiat people as a whole categorically tried to draw a line supporting
safe on-shore exploration development and opposing off-shore development," Glenn
said.

Unable to stop test oil wells and projects like Northstar, Glenn said there is a
move to become more involved in the process, which has helped allay some fears.
In the Beaufort Sea where Northstar is located, for example, he said when
Inupiats "were convinced development could be done safely, we supported it."

"But it doesn't mean we are out in front supporting off-shore oil and gas
development," he said.

With the prospect of jobs from both on-shore and off-shore projects, Inupiats
are tied to drilling whether they approve or not, Glenn said. "In other areas
where -- even in spite of our opposition -- construction has taken place, we've
tried to have a part in construction so that our people could go to work," he
pointed out.

Inupiats will be faced with the question more often once the Interior moves
forward with leasing in the Beaufort Sea, which is scheduled for 2003. Robin Lee
Cacy, a Minerals and Management Services spokesperson for the Alaska region,
said the Beaufort leases will be covered under the first environmental impact
statement being prepared.

Because of Inupiat concerns, Lee Cacy added that the Interior has undertaken a
number of studies to address the impact of drilling on the whale population. In
particular, the government wants to "capture the traditional knowledge of the
area," she said.

As the process continues, don't look to Inupiats to stop working with the
goverment, said Glenn. "To categorically oppose something that's going to happen
in your area is to walk away from the table," he said.

A second Beaufort Sea project has been proposed, called Liberty. A final
environmental impact statement is due next year.

   Relevant Links:
   Northstar Project -
   http://www.mms.gov/alaska/cproject/northstar/index.htm
   Arctic Slope Regional Corp - http://www.asrc.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Northstar pumps out its first barrels BP: Six years, $700 million later, oil
field starts production.


By Ben Spiess Anchorage Daily News
http://www.adn.com/business/story/734199p-780134c.html
(Published: November 2, 2001)

BP's embattled Northstar oil field began production Thursday with about 3,000
barrels of oil coming out the ground.

After the trip through the 800-mile oil pipeline and in tankers to the West
Coast, the first oil from Alaska's newest field could be in California gas tanks
by Thanksgiving.

Northstar holds an estimated 175 million barrels of oil. BP Exploration (Alaska)
Inc., which operates Northstar, expects production to reach 65,000 barrels a day
by midwinter. Northstar is one of a string of smaller North Slope fields adding
hundreds of thousands of barrels a day of production.

  From Northstar's discovery in the early 1980s to first production Thursday has
been a long road and a lesson of the problems that plague oil development in
Alaska's Beaufort Sea. Not only is the Beaufort a harsh, high-cost environment,
but many people fear the environmental cost of mixing oil and the sensitive
Arctic sea.

BP's final project costs topped $700 million, well beyond what BP expected when
it announced development plans in 1995. Lawsuits and permitting problems delayed
start-up by two years. Murphy Oil owns 2 percent of Northstar.

"The lesson here is that offshore production in Alaska is very, very difficult,"
said Ken Boyd, a geologist and oil consultant.

In 1995, BP said it wouldn't develop Northstar unless the state changed the
field's tax structure. The deal struck with Gov. Tony Knowles and the
Legislature drew howls of protest and was challenged in court for three years.
In 1998, BP restarted construction. But a dispute over the safest pipeline route
canceled winter construction. In 2000, BP finally resumed work at the field.

.

Last year, protests by the environmental group Greenpeace drew international
attention to the field and sparked a mini shareholder revolt for BP, when 13
percent of shareholders voted to halt Northstar development and agree not to
drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Delayed more than three years and more than $300 million overbudget, Northstar
oil is now getting to market.

"Yes, it has cost more than expected. But once we began, continued investment
made sense," said Ronnie Chappell, BP spokesman.

Northstar did have some successes.

The field was the first project pursued under Knowles' policy of assuming a
cooperative rather than an adversarial stance with the oil industry.

Under pressure from Knowles, BP agreed to build most oil processing facilities
in Alaska, giving huge contracts to local firms Veco Alaska Inc. and Alaska
Petroleum Contractors. Those complex projects have led to other industrial
construction work in state.

Knowles' other bid to help BP, the tax change, was more controversial.

Under the deal struck with the governor and Legislature, the state waived a
profit-sharing arrangement it would have had from Northstar production in return
for a greater share of the oil produced if oil prices are high.

Boyd, who was head of the state Division of Oil and Gas at the time, said that
with investment costs of $380 million, the agreement was a break-even for the
state. Now, with investment costs past $700 million, "it is unequivocal that
this is a good deal for the state," Boyd said.

Chuck Logsdon, state oil economist, agrees: "From my perspective this was a good
deal."

Assuming an average oil price of $21 a barrel, Northstar should bring the state
$28 million in the remainder of the fiscal year, Logsdon said.

BP has tentative plans for a similar offshore development known as Liberty, east
of Northstar. BP planners are working on permits for Liberty. First production
would not be until 2005.

Northstar's high costs could cast a shadow over other offshore development,
Chappell said.

"Northstar is a project we would look very hard at, knowing what we know today,"
he said.

Reporter Ben Spiess can be reached at bspiess@....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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Native self-governance institute shut down
Last Updated: Fri Nov 2 09:11:54 2001
http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/view?/news/2001/11/02/native_funds011102

OTTAWA - Ottawa has cut off the funding to an organization that was set up last
spring to explore native self-governance.


The First Nations Governance Institute, which was created in March with more
than $800,000 of federal money, has shut down.

The First Nations Governance Institute was set up in an office on the Long Plain
reserve in Manitoba, bringing computers and jobs.

Intended to spearhead research and study into different models of native
self-government, the institute was endorsed by the Department of Indian Affairs.

The concept of the institute was recommended by the Royal Commission on
Aboriginal Peoples, and the federal government's own strategy on native people.

"Everyone agreed this institute was needed, including the federal government,"
said Matthew Coon Come, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.
"Officials from the Department of Indian Affairs worked with First Nations to
set it up."

But Indian Affairs Minister Robert Nault cut off the funds this week.

"Every time you turn around there's another organization, another think-tank
created," Nault said. "What we need to do is put resources in the communities
where they can have the most impact, and make the most difference."

For months Coon Come and Nault have been locked in a public battle over an AFN
boycott of the minister's plan to rewrite the Indian Act.

Nault has slashed AFN's budget as well, and the assembly laid off 70 people last
month.

Coon Come calls Nault's decisions part of a consistent and disturbing pattern,
which has more to do with control, than helping with First Nations.

Written by CBC News Online staff

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Former Mi'kmaq chief wins appeal
http://charlottetown.cbc.ca/editorServlets/View?filename=sark01nov01

Charlottetown, P.E.I. – Former Mi'kmaq chief Jim Sark is going to get another
chance to try to create his own band.

Two and a half years ago he was voted out as chief of the Abegweit band, a
position he had held for more than two decades, and ever since he has been
trying to split the band and create a new one.

Federal Aboriginal Affairs Ministger Robert Nault turned him down, but Sark
appealed to the Federal Court on grounds that the minister had not followed
proper procedures.

The Court upheld Sark's appeal, which means Sark now has the right to make the
request again.

However Nault still has the authority to reject it.


Copyright © 2001 CBC All Rights Reserved
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Fish plant hit by major fire
WebPosted Nov 2 2001 07:15 AM EST
http://novascotia.cbc.ca/editorServlets/View?filename=ns_fishfire

Grosses Coques, N.S. - A major fire has ripped through a fish plant and a food
lab owned by Comeau Seafoods in Grosse Coques, N.S.

The fire started at about 5 a.m. Friday morning. Five local fire departments
were called to fight the blaze. The extent of the damage isn't known, but one
company official said things did not look good for the plant.

No one was hurt in the fire and so far there is no explanation for the cause of
the fire. About 25 people were employed at the plant.

Grosses Coques is near Church Point in the southwest part of the province.

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Home-grown Yukon teachers head south

WebPosted Nov 2 2001 08:14 AM CST
http://north.cbc.ca/editorServlets/View?filename=n02teagrad

Whitehorse, Yukon - There's a teacher shortage in the Yukon, but locally-trained
native teachers are leaving the territory to find work in other parts of the
country.

Graduates from the Yukon's only teachers' college shouldn't have any trouble
finding work at home, but education officials say some local schools have been
letting those grads slip through their fingers to find jobs down south.

Brian Aubichon is the director of the Yukon Native Teacher Education Program.

He says not all graduates stay in the Yukon, and some are being lured to other
parts of the country.

"Certainly our graduates are well-positioned to fill those vacancies as they
occur, and providing the flexibility to go to where the jobs are is there," he
says.

Aubichon says Y.N.T.E.P. graduates are highly regarded across the country.
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Inuit homes not built for lifestyle: Professor
WebPosted Nov 2 2001 09:03 AM CST
http://north.cbc.ca/editorServlets/View?filename=n02housinnun

Arviat, Nunavut - An archeology professor from the university of Calgary says
northern homes were built for southern families.

Peter Dawson says northern homes have not supported a traditional Inuit
lifestyle.

Dawson will spend next summer living with a family in Arviat. He'll be
researching how the family members use the different rooms in the house.

"The kinds of houses Inuit are living in today are not that different from the
kinds of houses that some Euro-Canadians families in the south live in," he
says. "But I think most people would sort of agree that the kinds of lifestyles
that a southern Euro-Canadian family leads is quite different from the
lifestyles of an Inuit family."

Dawson says he plans to return to Arviat during the winter to find out more
about activities that take place in the home.

He says he'll take that information to architects and building professionals.

Dawson says that should help them redesign northern housing that reflects the
cultural needs of Inuit.

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Ottawa wants water supremacy
WebPosted Nov 1 2001 10:23 AM CST
http://north.cbc.ca/editorServlets/View?filename=belln01

Iqaluit, Nunavut - A powerful land claims organization in Nunavut did not get
one of its key demands in a federal review of water use laws. Nunavut Tunngavik
argued the federal northern affairs minister should not have the final say over
water issues.

The federal standing committee on Aboriginal affairs and northern development
has just completed its review of Bill C-33. Nunavut Tunngavik was one of 7
witnesses that appeared before the standing committee reviewing the Nunavut
waters and surface rights tribunal act.

John Merritt is a lawyer for Nunavut Tunngavik.

"We asked for a removal of the section which would purport to give the minister
an approval's role with respect to water board licensing decisions," Merritt
says.

"Our view is that the land claim agreement no longer allows the minister to play
that role," he says.

The standing committee did not agree to that demand, leaving the final word on
the licenses in the hands of the minister of Indian and northern affairs. But
Will Dunlop says the committee did limit the amount of time the minister has to
make a decision. Dunlop is in charge of resource policy with the department.

"The minister will now have 45 days to arrive at a decision, Dunlop says. "Or
failing that, 45 days, one extension maximum of another 45 days if at the end of
that period he has not made a decision the law will now say that that license is
deemed to be approved."

The bill now goes back to the house of commons for third reading debate. If
passed, it goes to the Senate.

The federation could still make another submission for changes there. And it has
already filed papers to challenge the minister's authority in court.

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Roberts sending mixed messages on FAS
WebPosted Nov 1 2001 10:30 AM CST
http://north.cbc.ca/editorServlets/View?filename=tailln01

Whitehorse, Yukon - Yukon's health minister is sending some mixed messages about
the registry of fetal alcohol syndrome cases in the territory. Doctors are
required by law to report diagnoses of fetal alcohol syndrome.

The Yukon was the first jurisdiction to pass the law. The plan is to use the
statistics to help develop long term programming and prevention of fetal alcohol
syndrome. The law has been on the books for a year now and so far there are 11
people on the list.

Health minister Don Roberts says the low number may be a sign current prevention
programs are working.

"Yes, i believe those are correct numbers," Roberts says. "Now I don't know why
they would be challenged other than the fact we've had higher numbers in the
past. Maybe what's happening is the big issue here is it's starting to pay
dividends with women who are getting pregnant they're not drinking, they're just
saying no."

However some doctors are saying they are seeing patients with fetal alcohol
syndrome, but they aren't reporting them because of the paperwork. Roberts says
he hasn't heard that.

But he says if that is the case, the department will have to deal with doctors
who aren't complying with the law.

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From: Joint Policy Council <jpc1@...>
Organization: Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 2nd, 2001
CHIEF STEWART PHILLIP RE-ELECTED AS PRESIDENT

(Vancouver, Coast Salish Territory/November 2, 2001)  Chief Stewart Phillip was
re-elected for a
second term as the President of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs
(UBCIC).  Chief Phillip,
of the Penticton Indian Band and of the Okanagan Nation, received 73% of the
votes on the first
ballot.  Chief Robert Shintah, of the Ts’kw’aylaxw Band of the St'at'imc Nation,
received 27% of the
votes.

The UBCIC Constitution states that that the office of the president requires 60%
of the votes in
favour of a nominee in order for the nominee to be declared president.  The term
of office for the
president is three years.  The election occurred during the UBCIC’s 33rd Annual
General Assembly.
This year’s AGA theme was “Indigenous Nations in Unity.”

“I believe my re-election represents a strong endorsement of my record of
actively supporting our
People ‘on the ground’ as they courageously defend their Aboriginal Title and
Rights interests
within their territories,” stated Chief Phillip.

Chief Phillip further stated “In terms of the future, delegates attending the
33rd Annual General
Assembly have expressed grave concerns with respect to the Province of British
Columbia’s aggressive
efforts to accelerate the sale and disposal of so-called ‘Crown Lands’ to
third-party interests.  As
well, delegates strongly indicated their continuing rejection of the Government
of Canada’s
unilateral legislative package concerning the First Nation Governance
Initiative, First Nations’
Fiscal Institutions Initiative and the proposed Independent Claims Body.”

Chief Phillip commented further on the Government of Canada’s actions “I am also
deeply troubled by
the drastic budget cut of the Assembly of First Nations by Minister Robert
Nault.  UBCIC member
communities have worked hard on such critical committees as the Delgamuuk’w
Implementation Strategic
Committee but because of the budget cuts these committees have now been all but
abandoned.  Minister
Nault is obviously punishing the AFN for the comments and actions of National
Chief Coon Come.  Is
this the approach of the Government of Canada?  Criticize the Federal Government
and you will be
isolated and punished?  How will legitimate criticism and Aboriginal protests be
interpreted after
Canada’s Anti-Terrorism bill is enacted?”

Chief Phillip concluded, “Governments must enter into good-faith negotiations or
constructive
dialogue of the issues at hand.  As long as governments refuse to recognize our
Aboriginal Title and
Rights as declared in court decisions like Delgamuuk’w and which are enshrined
in the Canadian
Constitution, the challenges before Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people will
intensify.  ”

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

Chief Stewart Phillip         Cell: (250) 490-5314
President
Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs

heads up from Deb M..thanks!

--NewsRelease--
Canada's Apartheid: Globe and Mail Launches 14-Part Series on Canada's
Relationship with its Native People
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
      -- Award-winning writer John Stackhouse explores in-depth --

TORONTO, Nov. 2 /CNW/ - This Saturday, The Globe and Mail, Canada's National
Newspaper, will begin an in-depth 14-part series on Canada's relationship with
its native people, titled "Canada's Apartheid."

Award-winning Globe and Mail writer John Stackhouse has spent much of this year
travelling to communities across Canada to see how natives and non-aboriginal
Canadians co-exist. He explores how economically, socially, politically and
culturally Canada has come to tolerate an entrenched division of people by race;
a quiet apartheid of our own.

The series runs November 3 to December 15 and looks at a wide range of contexts
including justice, labour, education, high tech, arts, faith, sports and more.
In addition, globeandmail.com will operate a special section dedicated to the
series including an archive of stories, a photo gallery of images and a listing
of resource links.

"I had the extraordinary opportunity to spend time with aboriginal and
non-aboriginal people across the country in their workplaces, homes, churches,
sweat lodges and theatres," said John Stackhouse. "I wanted to understand our
differences, and our similarities, and perhaps see why, after so many centuries,
we have such trouble sharing this vast and bountiful land. The series is meant
to explore the complex and unwritten relationship between our nations and why
distrust, resentment and, at times, hatred, run in both directions."

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WELCOME TO HARLEM ON THE PRAIRIES

Here in Saskatoon, the police are vilified as racists who run drunks out of town
and leave
them to freeze. But it is also home to the nation's highest crime rate and a
native
population that accounts for more than half of all arrests. What's it really
like to
uphold the law in this ghetto? Let's spend 12 hours on patrol with the cowboy
and the
Indian


By JOHN STACKHOUSE
Saturday, November 3, 2001 – Page F2
Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/series/apartheid/

The toughest cops on the Indian beat know what they will find even before they
kick in the
door. Hair Spray Jerry is there, slouched against a wall, and in the basement
apartment's
bedroom is his girlfriend, Diane, on a bare mattress, contorted in pain. Her
face is
bruised, her mouth badly swollen, her blood moist on the floor.

Diane is often in this state on "payday Friday," the day Saskatoon is flooded
with welfare
cheques and its jagged-edged native neighbourhood on the west side turns
violent. "I
called 911 because he was being a shit," she says as tears stream across her
cuts.

Nearby sit a half-finished bottle of Extra Gold beer (9 per cent alcohol) and a
7-Eleven
Big Gulp container. Constables Ernie Louttit and Dean Hoover know that it holds
the last
of the couple's preferred cocktail: one part hair spray to six parts water.

The scene makes their blood boil. They have helped Diane into an ambulance more
times than
they can recall. And they have spent just as many nights wrestling her wiry,
40-year-old
boyfriend into cruisers and drunk tanks.

Jerry just did six months for assaulting Diane, adding to a record that covers
more than
half his life.

"Diane, I never hit ya," he shouts as he is led once again into the hall from
the
apartment.

As Louttit yanks Jerry's right arm behind his back and shoves him against the
wall, he
whispers one word: "Asshole." Then he begins to read the man his rights.

The big policeman has seen this act played out for as long as he can remember
because he,
like Hair Spray Jerry, is an Indian. While Louttit was growing up with a Cree
father and
francophone mother in a hard-drinking Northern Ontario railway town, Hoover, who
raises
horses and rides in rodeos on his days off, was watching his Mountie father
chase Indians
across northern Saskatchewan.

The two clearly are frustrated by another encounter with Jerry, and joke that
they would
like to do something different tonight, rather than take him downtown to the
drunk tank.
They are both fed up with it all -- with Indian women bloodied and bruised, with
little
children abandoned in the dead of night, with native organizations that want to
handcuff
the cops who are paid to keep the lid on a ghetto of chronic abuse.

But then Louttit stops himself, knowing better than to throw oil on a fire
smouldering
beneath this troubled Prairie city, where the largely white police force and
fast-growing
native population are struggling to come to terms with each other. He knows that
even a
native cop shouldn't joke about natives.

In recent years, Saskatchewan's biggest city has come close to a racial
explosion after
allegations of rampant police abuse and police complaints that they cannot cope
alone with
a crime-ridden native community.

In February, 2000, a native man named Darrell Night accused the police of
dumping him,
while he was intoxicated, on the outskirts of town on a freezing cold night. Two
officers,
Ken Munson and Dan Hatchen, were fired from the force in September after being
found
guilty of unlawful confinement. At a hearing this week, they asked to have a
traditional
community sentencing circle decide their punishment -- a request so bizarre that
it
prompted laughter in the courtroom and anger on the part of natives, who felt
they were
being mocked. The judge said he will rule on the request on Nov. 30.

But there seems to be no end to the friction between a largely non-native
judicial system
and aboriginal people, who account for about one-fifth of the local population
-- and more
than half of those arrested on a typical night.

Coroner's inquests are looking into the deaths last year of two native men who
may have
been abandoned like Night. Then there is the Melvin Bigsky case.

On April 27, an RCMP officer shot and killed Bigsky, a long-time criminal, when
he rammed
his vehicle into a police car and allegedly attacked the driver. Three weeks
later, local
police shot and killed another native man, Keldon McMillan, after he gunned down
a police
dog during an attempt to arrest him on weapons charges.

So strong is the community's antipathy that the city fired police chief, David
Scott, last
June in part to soothe growing public anger.

With Canada's highest crime rate last year, many residents blame an aboriginal
population
that they say can't cope with the transition from isolated reserves to a
multicultural
city, where universal laws and independent police and courts are supposed to
prevail.

Many natives, on the other hand, believe that they are victims of a white
majority that
refuses to address their chronic social problems, except with the blunt end of a
police
force.

Valid or not, the accusations have sent a chill through Saskatoon's native
population --
and through police ranks. In private, some members of the force say they are
reluctant to
respond to native calls.

"You have a segment of the population afraid of the police," says Mayor Jim
Maddin,
himself a former cop, "and a segment of the police afraid of the population."

Caught between cultures, and responsible to both, Ernie Louttit and Dean Hoover
lead Hair
Spray Jerry to their cruiser and then help Diane to a waiting ambulance.

They are divided like their city, and perhaps their country, on how to deal with
native
crime and justice. Natives, who make up less than 3 per cent of the general
population,
account for 17 per cent of penitentiary inmates. In Saskatchewan, where 13 per
cent of the
population is aboriginal, they account for almost 70 per cent.

For Hoover, it is a question of law and order. If natives take up so many prison
spots, it
is because they commit so many crimes. Men like Hair Spray Jerry deserve to be
in jail, he
says.

For Louttit, however, the west side's epidemic of domestic assaults and harsh
police
responses is more complex. Each time he sees a native woman nursing her wounds
on payday
Friday, it brings back painful memories from his own childhood in a
hard-drinking Northern
Ontario town. Native groups that accuse the police of racial bias ignore the
fact that
"crime, at least where I work, is brown on brown," he says. The real victims are
native
women and children.

As the partners drive back to the police headquarters, they pass through a city
that is
divided by a river as well as by race.

On the east side of the North Saskatchewan, tree-lined streets rise through
patrician
neighbourhoods of brick homes and portable basketball nets, and beyond them wide
boulevards, shopping malls and a university campus. The Indian quarter -- a
Canadian
Harlem on the Prairies -- sits on the west side, beyond the riverside trails, a
few
historical buildings and a modest downtown.

Louttit, at the wheel, takes 20th Avenue, a spacious boulevard of pawn shops,
bingo halls
and soup kitchens that bisects the west side. Down each side street, there are
rows of
tiny houses that might serve as double garages if they were located across the
river.
Here, they are home to five, 10, on some nights 15 people, many of them pumping
their
bodies full of intoxicants.

The Indian beat -- a square mile of reckless inebriation -- is the one staff
sergeants
like to give to Louttit and Hoover. As well as being tough, they are experienced
enough to
know when to pull the trigger and strong enough to wrestle just about anyone to
the
ground. They are also on a first-name basis with just about every gang leader,
drug
dealer, pimp and prostitute on the west side.

From their cruiser, they can point to dozens of native men they have busted and
others
they are watching for their next misstep, such as breaking curfew or violating
parole, or
a minor drinking or drug-related charge. These are what native groups refer to
as
"system-generated" crimes, the revolving door of justice that keeps thousands of
native
men perpetually in the penal system -- people like Hair Spray Jerry who land in
jail
almost every time they are in a fight.

Native groups believe that Canada's justice system treats them and alcohol the
way the
United States treats blacks and drugs. Just as a black man in Harlem goes to
jail if
caught with marijuana, they say, a native caught drunk in Saskatoon is punished
when most
non-natives in the same situation have their wrists slapped.

Craig Neurf, the police force's aboriginal liaison officer, says he understands
the
problem even though, like many of his colleagues, he admits to having known
little about
natives before joining the force.

But native cases -- usually based on complaints from other natives -- take up
much of a
crime fighter's time. Of the 45 young people arrested in the past week, Neurf
can pick out
34 native names, most of them from the west-side native ghetto, where young men
can safely
assume that they will wind up in police custody one day. "An aboriginal kid in
Saskatoon
today stands a better chance of ending up in the criminal justice system than
finishing
high school," Neurf says.

A native antagonism toward "white" society is drilled into the minds of kids on
the west
side at the youngest age when a derelict uncle takes a swing at a cop or the
police come
crashing through the door to remove an intoxicated mother.

And it explodes during another call for Louttit and Hoover.

Summoned to a rundown house off 20th where an entire family has been drinking
hair spray,
the two cops find a shirtless man lying on the pavement, splattered in blood. He
says a
teenaged nephew hit him. Louttit is not surprised. The address is a regular call
for them
on Friday nights.

He also knows what is coming when he and his partner put on latex gloves to
handle the
bleeding man, who struggles to his feet and then takes a feeble swing at
Louttit. The cop
feigns a duck and laughs. The man's punch is as slow as his speech.

Once the man is in an ambulance, the cops move more cautiously to the back yard,
warning
that flying objects -- bottles usually -- could come from an open second-storey
window.
Instead, they find the injured man's sister and her 16-year-old son on the back
steps,
high on Pink Panther hair spray. People used to drink Listerine -- "Canadian
rye,"
west-siders call it -- but ever since welfare payments were cut, they have
switched to
Pink Panther, which is cheaper and has a higher alcohol content. For a couple of
dollars,
hardened hair-spray drinkers are intoxicated for the night. Most other people
would be
dead.

Louttit tries to ask the woman and her son what happened, when a younger boy
emerges on
the balcony above them, challenging the cops to a fight. He also appears drunk.
Louttit
says he is 14.

The boy shouts that he wants to see a cop hit a native.

"You racist pig," he says, spitting at the police below.

"What ya doin', fuckin' pigs?" his brother, just feet away from Louttit and
Hoover, shouts
at the two cops as they step back, trying to avoid a confrontation.

"White shit," the 16-year-old continues. "Get out of here, you white
motherfuckers."

The cops decide to leave the boys and their mother alone. Soon enough, they will
all pass
out and be a danger to no one but themselves. The only option would be to take
them to the
drunk tank, which is already filling with more dangerous types.

The nightly ritual of packing intoxicated natives into the drunk tank has become
a sore
point in the city's racial divide. But during the winter, the police are also
accused of
abusing natives by leaving them to their own consequences, often in unheated
houses or
yards.

The police have lobbied for a detox centre -- Saskatoon is the only city on the
Prairies
without one -- but so far the province and native groups have failed to agree on
how to
fund and manage it. They both want to manage it and Ottawa to pay for it. (The
Federation
of Saskatchewan Indian Nations also wants a healing centre that could care for
entire
families.)

For now, the police send the most intoxicated people to the hospital, where it
costs far
more to keep them in an emergency ward for a night than it would in a detox
centre.

As Louttit and Hoover return to their cruiser, the teenaged brothers throw an
empty bottle
on the sidewalk, spraying the pavement with glass, before hurling a few more
insults about
"white cops." They may be the only native ones on the west side unaware of who
Louttit is.

Despite a policeman's look, including buzz cut and mustache, the 40-year-old is
known
along 20th Avenue as the Indians' cop. In police standoffs, murderers and armed
robbers
have called for him by name, demanding the right to surrender to Ernie.
Prostitutes wave
to him from barroom tables. On the road, he and the local Hells Angels boss nod
to each
other respectfully.

Louttit believes that he enjoys this rapport, not because he is Cree, but
because he has a
way with people. He cares about the women who are routinely beaten up, often
visiting them
on his day shifts to make sure that they feel safe. At 6 foot 3 and 200 pounds,
he is also
as hard as a hammer with anyone who tries to push him around, and he thinks that
most of
the west-side men respect him for it.

That was the way it always was in Oba, a tiny hamlet (population: 110) on the
rail line
south of Hearst, Ont., where he was born.

"It was a tough little town where everyone drank too much," he says. It also had
too few
people to worry much about race. Their Cree father refused to teach Louttit and
his
brother to speak his language, saying they should learn French instead. But
their
French-Canadian mother refused to co-operate, believing that French was a ticket
to
nowhere in Ontario.

Only after moving to Hearst for high school did the boys gain a different
understanding of
what it can mean to be native. Of the 1,200 students in their high school, only
23 were
Indian, and they were placed in a special Indian class, which rarely attracted
an
enthusiastic teacher.

Louttit dropped out, got a job on the railway and, at 17, joined the military
police,
which sent him across Canada and overseas to Cyprus. But he realized he would
not be
promoted without knowing French. So in 1987, while he was based in Alberta, he
quit for a
job with the nearby Saskatoon police.

Back in civilian life, he was surprised to discover a "different" Prairie
attitude toward
natives. He heard the usual slurs about Indians, on the job and in his largely
white
neighbourhood. He also learned about such pastimes as "brooming," in which farm
boys hang
out of pickup trucks and swat unsuspecting (usually drunk) natives along 20th.
The boy who
knocks over the most Indians wins.

The western attitude, Louttit says during a break at an all-night truck stop, is
"very
tolerant yet very intolerant. It's very tolerant of government authority.
Farmers are very
intolerant of Indians."

Dean Hoover could be one of those farmers. With seven horses and weekend jaunts
to rodeos
around Saskatchewan, he's all cowboy.

The son of a career RCMP officer, Hoover grew up on the Prairies watching, and
admiring,
the way justice used to be carried out. He still thinks that a little strong arm
-- and he
has arms the size of a bull's leg -- can help to make a point.

He is not much of a talker anyway, leaving it to his partner to calm the
hotheads and
comfort the injured. "We're hired to take care of criminals," Hoover says. "It's
that
simple."

Louttit, who understands the social conditions of natives, agrees that there is
only one
way to deal with people -- and he is speaking of native men -- who commit
crimes.

Sounding like a cop anywhere in North America, he says his first duty is to the
people who
want a safe city and pay his salary to ensure it.

"Bottom line is there will always be a criminal element in society and there
will need to
be police to keep them in check," he says. "When they're in jail, they're not
doing it to
anyone else. I don't have to feel collectively guilty, along with my family,
because he's
a bad guy."

In a year together, this is the first time Louttit and Hoover have talked about
the
philosophy of policing. Their partnership is restricted to work and their focus
is always
on the task at hand. Even now, they can't dwell on the issue as an urgent call
comes from
another house on the west side, this time at a party where some teens have
started to
fight.

When they get to the house, with a groomed yard that seems incongruous to the
neighbourhood, they find a group of preppy blondes trying to calm down John, a
big
16-year-old white boy who looks like he could be class valedictorian. Until he
opens his
mouth. He's ripped.

According to John, some natives started the fight after showing up uninvited.
"Fuckin'
Indians!" he shouts, suddenly pulling himself free from the girls. The police
grab John
and tell him to calm down. The girls, distressed at the downfall of their night,
move to
the back yard for a cigarette.

"They think they own the fuckin' place," John continues before blurting out,
apparently
unaware of Louttit's status, "Why don't you do somethin' about those fuckin'
Indians?"

Hoover advises the girls to get John home because he and Louttit have another
call. It
takes them just a few blocks away. But it could be in another world.

At 3 a.m., seven hours into their shift, they arrive at a familiar address, a
shed of a
house belonging to a young mother named Judy. Tonight, Judy is drunk -- she's
always drunk
on weekends, Louttit says -- but she has another problem. Her brother, Keith,
has just
been released from a federal penitentiary and is crashed with his girlfriend in
her
basement.

Keith is the face of all those statistics on native justice. To aboriginal
groups, he is a
victim, the product of a dysfunctional reserve who ran into trouble young and
has been in
the revolving door of Canada's justice system ever since, with no opportunity
for
rehabilitation. To his sister, he is a Class A jerk.

Downstairs, Keith is refusing to leave, and threatening to beat up Judy if she
tries to
make him. The police move gingerly down a rickety staircase into the unlit
cellar, where,
using their flashlights, they find Keith and his girlfriend on a mattress. He
co-operates
as they escort him to the door.

Once Keith disappears down a back alley, Louttit tells Judy to keep the door
locked, not
that that will do much good. There's no glass in the kitchen window, just a
hanging bed
sheet that rustles in the early-morning breeze. This is how Keith got inside a
few hours
earlier, when Judy was out at a party and her four children were home alone. The
youngest
is 2 and the oldest is a 13-year-old girl, whom Louttit coaches on how to put
her
intoxicated mother to bed.

The girl announces, with a hint of pride in her voice, that she has done it
before. She
says she will also take care of the three younger ones, who are awake and in the
living
room, and get them breakfast in the morning, although it is not obvious what
they will
eat. The only food in sight is a half-filled box of cereal. The cupboards and
fridge are
bare.

Louttit can't help but think of his own four children, especially his daughter,
who had
her baseball pitching debut tonight. He missed the game, but plans to spend the
weekend
with her, as soon as his shift is over.

"We talk here about native problems. It's a parenting problem," he says,
recalling the
case of a 14-year-old boy who was to be released into the custody of his father.
But the
father refused to come for him. The boy was released anyway. Two days later, he
was
arrested for stealing bicycles.

"There's no quick solution," Louttit says, "other than to teach parents to be
parents, and
teach their children not to follow stereotypes."

Of course, native stereotypes are to 20th Avenue what neon signs are to Las
Vegas. There
is the provincially owned liquor store, with its windows barricaded like an
inner-city
bank. And the provincial welfare office, the west side's main economic force
and, in a
horrible irony, the source of most of the liquor store's cash flow. Nearly
one-third of
Saskatoon -- 66,000 people in all -- relies on social assistance at some point
during the
year.

The stereotypes have not changed in years, but the economics behind them have.
Saskatoon
has precious few jobs for the west siders, so many able-bodied people have moved
to
Alberta and Ontario. For those left behind, welfare payments have been frozen
for so long
that a typical parent like Judy receives about $300 a month -- the same as what
she would
have received 20 years ago.

One consequence is that families have doubled up in the shoebox houses off 20th,
while
single people -- men mostly -- have been forced to trade apartments for rooming
houses
and, in Bobby Johnson's case, worse.

In a room above a Chinese restaurant on 20th, Bobby's existence seems to test a
new
wretched depth every time Louttit visits him. A loner, he drinks and watches
television
all day while he lies on a mattress in a puddle of his own urine and feces. The
stench
carries a whiff of death.

Whenever things turn quiet, Louttit parks his cruiser and climbs a staircase to
the
squalid room that looks abandoned by the society around him. "Hey, Bobby, how's
it going?"
he asks the withered, curled-up figure whose protruding bones are illuminated
only by the
flickering light of a late-night TV show.

Bobby mumbles a few words. Louttit engages him in some small talk, and then
checks the
room for fire hazards and food. Finding neither, he chats some more, providing
the only
human contact Johnson will have until his next expedition to the liquor store.

Every visit to this cesspool makes Louttit angry at his society, and his people.
"You hear
native groups say, 'We need this or we need that,' " he says bitterly. "Yeah, we
need them
to come down here and do something. We, as natives, need strong leadership, we
need
elected leadership, we need to take care of our own problems -- stop our own
people from
drinking and stop our own people from hurting each other."

No end of social agencies have tried to break the west side's vicious and
unyielding cycle
of welfare, drinking and jail. The Saskatoon Tribal Council has built a big
community
centre next to the bingo hall. Out on 20th Avenue, a posse of missionary groups
runs soup
kitchens, prayer clubs and clothing depots, as they have for years.

Every evening, the Hands On Ministry provides a haven for about 150 children,
with games
and a free loaf of bread to take home. When the ministry closes at 10 or 11, the
kids,
many of them preschoolers, can be seen walking home in small groups, their
loaves tucked
under their arms.

It's the sort of scene that infuriates many people impatient with the lack of
progress,
among them the police who keep having to arrest the kids' parents. "Police can
get
frustrated with an individual when they deal with him repeatedly, whether he's
aboriginal
or not -- the revolving door," Mayor Maddin says.

Would they go so far as to dump drunk people on the edge of town in sub-zero
temperatures?

The mayor, remembering his policing days, admits that the infamous "starlight
tours"
aren't "an unknown phenomenon."

"It's happened. Should it happen? I don't think so. Will it happen again? I
would hope
not."

Another former cop offers a more hardened version of how this came to be. Early
one
evening, he sits down at a coffee shop and, on condition that his name not
appear in
print, describes how the force has allowed itself to be pushed around by native
politicians -- the very ones, he feels, who defend male criminals and ignore
their female
victims.

Barely able to control his anger, he contends that most of the cops are fed up.
"Do we
hate Indians?" he asks bluntly. "No. Do we hate certain individuals who happen
to be
Indian? Yes."

He tells the story of a cold winter night when he entered a native household to
find two
parents passed out on the kitchen floor, with their year-old baby, clothed only
in a
diaper, sitting beside them crying. The door had been left wide open. It was
about 20
below outside.

The cop called the province's child-protection agency for help. They refused to
come. It
was the middle of the night. He shouted down the phone line. Finally, someone
arrived and
took the child to safety -- for the night. The next day, the parents got their
baby back.

"You get so mad you could kill someone," he says. "You could throttle someone --
because
of the kids."

The former cop says he knows the men charged in the "starlight tours" case, and
how
frustrated they were with Darrell Night, a regular at the drunk tank. Same goes,
he says,
for Melvyn Bigsky, the 33-year-old shot dead after allegedly ramming the police
cruiser.
"He hated cops."

Bigsky had a long criminal record, and once escaped from prison in Drumheller,
Alta.,
while serving a term for manslaughter (he had killed a cousin during a drinking
party in
Saskatoon by stomping on his chest). Cops across northern Saskatchewan knew
about him,
including Hoover, who picked him up so often that the two were on a first-name
basis. On
one occasion, he says, Bigsky suddenly began to bash his head into the grate
that
separates front seat from back in a cruiser.

Apparently, his plan was to inflict injuries he could blame on police abuse.
Hoover
remembers Bigsky bellowing, "I'm going to fuckin' kill you," through the grate.
At which
point, he says, he turned around, stared back at Bigsky and replied, "You know,
one day,
someone's gonna kill you."

In a poor and polarized province, some native leaders believe that the police
have become
the blunt stick of a racist white majority that sees its future threatened. Two
generations from now, if recent trends of a high native birth rate and a white
exodus
continue, half of Saskatchewan's population will be aboriginal.

Perhaps not surprisingly, right-wing political parties are gaining ground in a
province
that was once a socialist bastion by vowing to tax natives, crack down on crime
and fight
their special status. But the real fight is on the street, in schools and in
workplaces,
where two peoples -- long separated in the same province -- are trying to find
common
ground.

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, a provincial court judge, understands the bigotry. A
leading
advocate for rehabilitation programs in place of many jail sentences, the native
woman
once got a letter calling her "an Indian bitch" for allegedly being lenient on
an
aboriginal defendant.

Her husband, George Lafond, elected chief of the Saskatoon Tribal Council,
worries that
the racial fissure may be getting too deep to repair.

Lafond is not cut from the same cloth of most native leaders in Saskatchewan. He
is a
pinstriped native who drives a Jeep, lives in a largely white neighbourhood on
the east
side of the river and has a small statue of his boyhood hero, John Diefenbaker,
in his
well-appointed office.

A Red Tory, he believes that the divisions stem from both the province's
economic decline
and Ottawa's preference to deal with natives on their reserves, rather than in
cities. The
province's natives used to be pretty much ignored, left to their reserves and
cared for by
the federal government.

But as they began to stream into cities, in the 1970s and 1980s, the province
was told to
care for them, with schools, health care, welfare. And police. This was at a
time when
Saskatchewan was in steep decline, with its agriculture base and federal
transfer payments
both in question.

One result was fewer public services for natives, which angered Indian groups.
Another was
fewer public services for the rest of the population, which angered non-native
groups just
the same.

By the 1990s, white kids were leaving the province in droves. And those who
stayed behind
-- the broom-wielding farm kids, for instance -- were as alienated as natives.
Despite the
social ravages of Saskatoon's west side, they saw aboriginal people getting a
special deal
at every turn, whether on taxes, university entrance quotas or softer penalties
for crime.

No group has yet to bring the two solitudes together.

"What I fear is that if you vacate the middle ground," Lafond says, "extremists
will fill
it."

If middle ground is to be reclaimed, he believes more than new money will be
needed. He,
and many natives, would like to see the justice system reformed.

For one, he says, police should stop treating self-inflicted abuse -- most
commonly
drinking and drugs -- as crimes that merit formal charges. They also should
break the
cycle of jail, parole and rearrest, he says, by trying new ways to rehabilitate
offenders.

Some attempts have been made at what's called "restorative justice," a
traditional native
approach that seeks to heal wrongdoers within their communities rather than
isolating and
punishing them. But the concept has sparked more skeptics than supporters --
Louttit says
that, in his experience, repeat offenders plead for native sentencing circles
and
community-based rehabilitation only so they can get back to a life of crime and
violence
as quickly as possible.

Lafond is aware of such beliefs, among natives and whites. He has struggled to
maintain a
conciliatory line through the recent wave of troubles. He believes that his
council's
relationship with the police kept the city from exploding last year when the
Darrell Night
case went public. He also believes that it is changing the police force, for the
better.

Lawrence Joseph disagrees.

If Lafond is a conciliator, Joseph, vice-chairman of the Federation of
Saskatchewan Indian
Nations, is a hard-liner, the Al Sharpton of Saskatoon politics, a minority
leader who
seems to want to inflame racial divisions every time controversy emerges.
Confrontation,
and at times conflict, are his tools.

To him, just about every problem for his province's natives is the result of a
white
conspiracy, and just about every offer made to natives is not good enough. He
talks of
"token Indians" and "piecemeal" measures, and cultural-sensitivity programs that
he
considers "a joke." (Of the police force, he says: "You can't teach an old dog
new
tricks.")

Despite Joseph's tirades, which many police officers believe led to their chief
being
fired, the force says it has tried to change its personnel and its culture. Of
its 328
staff, 35 are native -- about the same proportion as Saskatoon's resident
population.
Moreover, 18 of the 94 constables hired since 1996 are native, although none
speaks a
native language fluently or has strong ties to the local native community.

Recruiting young natives isn't easy, says Neurf, the force's aboriginal liaison
officer.
They tend to see the police as "the enemy."

Making a difficult situation worse, Saskatoon must compete with the RCMP and
every other
police force in Western Canada, and do so with a meagre budget. The Calgary
police force
recently toured reserves in northern Saskatchewan, offering recruits 10 per cent
more pay
than they would get in Saskatoon, on top of Alberta's lower tax rate.

Still, there are signs of progress. In September, the police placed a full-time
officer in
Saskatoon's only aboriginal high school. Next year, the force hopes to get funds
for a
native elder to work with him.

Senior officers are also attending powwows, feasts and sweat-lodge ceremonies,
and in the
summer going on biking and canoe trips with native youths and members of the
Saskatoon
Tribal Council. And the force is working with social agencies to help the most
vulnerable
urban Indians -- girl prostitutes -- to get off the street by arranging housing
and jobs
for them.

Bill Egadz, a Métis and former street kid who now runs his own youth agency on
the west
side, says the police may be the least of the problems he sees. When the cops
rough up
kids, he says, they do so regardless of colour -- and usually, he adds, with
good reason.
"We've never had a kid come back and say they were crapped all over because they
were
native."

Shortly after first light, when the last of the parties has ended and even the
most
hardened drinkers cannot lift themselves from the floor, Louttit and Hoover
return to the
police headquarters for another cup of coffee. It's their second break in nine
hours, and
they still have three hours to go.

After parking in the underground lot, they stand in front of a camera and the
dispatcher
upstairs sends down an elevator to whisk them up to the interrogation rooms and
drunk
tank. Each cell, the size of a small household washroom, is filled with the
likes of Hair
Spray Jerry, who is fast asleep on a cot. The only other object in his cell is
an aluminum
toilet.

There are 20 men and one woman in the drunk tank and, judging by the names, 16
are native.
Louttit and Hoover have booked 11 of them -- an average night, they say, perhaps
even a
bit slow for a payday Friday.

The big Cree cop shrugs as he takes a coffee and sits down in the staff room.
The
criticisms, he has just about heard them all: that he's an "apple" (red outside,
white
inside) and arrests Indians to please the white folk across the river, perhaps
even to
protect his own suburban lifestyle.

"Here's the bottom line on race," he says. "When someone calls the police, they
want the
police and they need the police. When we get there, they're happy we're there.
Policing by
its very nature means force because you're making people comply. You're
designated by the
society that hires you to keep the peace."

This is Ernie Louttit's calling; he hopes that it will keep him on the street,
and on the
west side, for years. The thrill of a chase, the joy in helping his society's
victims --
for him, no other job will do.

Dean Hoover is not so sure. He has applied for a position on the drug squad,
where he can
do more sleuthing and work better hours.

In the weeks ahead, he will get his transfer. As well, Jerry and Diane will
reconcile yet
again. She will refuse to testify and the charges against him will be dropped.

Bobby Johnson, the hermit, will pass away and be found on his mattress in front
of the TV.
Judy and her four kids will move to a new house and her brother Keith will wind
up back in
jail accused of aggravated assault and attempted murder. He was charged after a
man opened
fire on a barroom crowd. Louttit was on duty just a few blocks away, and got to
the scene
in time to wrestle the shooter to the ground.

But for now, the toughest pair on the Indian beat are just trying to get through
the
night.

When daylight comes and his shift is over, Louttit will head home, go for a run
to clear
his mind and then, after some sleep, play with his kids. He is eager to help his
daughter
with her pitching.

Hoover also will go home for some sleep before heading to a rodeo competition
south of the
city. He won't think much about the images of another Friday-night shift, of
Hair Spray
Jerry or big drunk John, the 16-year-old Indian baiter.

At the end of their 12-hour shift, he and Louttit go their separate ways,
knowing that
they have done their job.

If they are lucky, they will get to spend the remaining hours finishing off a
pile of
paperwork. But another call from the west side comes in and, even though it's
not their
turn, the dispatcher assigns it to Louttit and Hoover. She has been told that
there might
be trouble.

As the sun comes up over Saskatoon, the two men check their revolvers, adjust
their
bullet-proof jackets and head for the elevator, where, for a moment, they stand
and listen
to a shrill solitary cry from the drunk tank.

"Let me out," the voice calls. "NOW!"

Saturday, November 3, 2001 (SF Chronicle)
Heated Arctic dispute/Greenland, Alaska natives balk at new U.S. military plans
K.L. Capozza, Chronicle Foreign Service
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/11/03/MN1\
51862.DTL

Nuuk, Greenland -- As the Bush administration seeks to upgrade military bases in
the Arctic as part of its land-based missile defense strategy, a growing voice
of opposition is emerging from the Earth's attic.

Although the plan is likely to bring millions of dollars in investment to
isolated northern Inuit communities, many fear that the arrival of missile silos
and advanced radars may also bring environmental destruction.

During the Cold War, the Arctic became ground zero for U.S. communications and
surveillance operations designed to thwart a Soviet attack from the north.

When the Cold War thawed, military sites were abandoned and left to decay on the
Arctic tundra. Contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), petroleum,
radioactive waste and solvents, they still pose a toxic threat to local
ecosystems.

Now, communities in Greenland and Alaska are bracing for what promises to be a
second military boom in their territory. But if the military still has not
cleaned up its former sites here, many northerners are wondering whether they
should welcome a new wave of development.

"In order to make room for the Americans' Thule air base in 1953, the (Inuit)
inhabitants were forcibly relocated," said Aqaluq Lynge, president of the Inuit
Circumpolar Conference, Greenland's largest Inuit organization. "They lost their
hunting grounds and were given only tents to live in."

The 650 displaced Inuit from Thule sued the Danish government, Greenland's
former colonial ruler and current foreign policy representative, over this
episode of forced exile and won a $71,400 settlement.

Now they are filing for more compensation, and their case will be heard in the
Danish Supreme High Court this fall.

"We are fighting for the Americans to clean up Thule and give it back to us, "
said Axel Lund Olsen, deputy mayor of Qaanaaq, the community formed by displaced
Thule Inuit. "If one day a war begins, people are afraid that if a bomb would
hit Thule air base, all of the food we eat from the sea would be destroyed."


ANIMAL FLESH CONTAMINATED

Greenland natives depend on Arctic wildlife for survival, said Olsen. The
animals that have sustained them for centuries -- walrus, seal, whale and polar
bear -- now carry high burdens of contaminants, which arrive in Greenland
through long-range air currents and from local sources like U.S. defense sites.

In central Greenland, three radar sites that were part of the Distance Early
Warning radar system (the DEW line) were deserted in 1991, but the pollution
there was never dealt with.

Contamination at the DEW line sites is a problem that plagues communities from
Alaska to Greenland. Between 1953 and 1958, the United States aggressively built
a vast network of radar sites along the 69th parallel designed to thwart a
Soviet attack from the north.

Over 30 tons of PCBs were used in the construction and maintenance of the DEW
line. Discarded transformers made to withstand extreme temperatures and high
electrical currents are the primary source of PCBs, known cancer-causing agents.

The DEW line and other northern radar systems constituted one of the most
expensive military projects ever initiated during peacetime. Now those sites,
largely based in northern Canada, are an environmental blight that will cost
foreign governments hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up. In Canada
alone, the price tag of remediation is estimated at $500 million.

Under the current missile defense plan, the U.S. Defense Department will spend
$200 million to upgrade existing radar technology at Thule. Eventually,
experimental X-band radars may be imported to the site.

According to Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, spokesman for the Ballistic Missile Defense
Organization in Washington, the Defense Department is not required to complete
an environmental impact statement for sites that are located outside the United
States.

He insists that Greenland communities should not worry about environmental
damage because the new radar technology being considered for Thule is mostly
computer equipment that will not bring any additional contaminants to the site.


MILITARY VIEWED SKEPTICALLY

But the word of the U.S. military is taken with a large dose of skepticism here.

In 1995, Danish Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen told reporters that no
nuclear weapons were deployed in Greenland. Denmark and Greenland have a policy
barring nuclear weapons within their borders. Two weeks later, Petersen received
a confidential letter from then-U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry stating
that, indeed, air defense warheads and surface-to-air missiles had been stored
at Thule without Greenland's knowledge. The crisis became known as "Thulegate"
in Denmark.

"We want to be at the table in any discussion about MDP (the missile defense
plan) and Thule," said Malinannguaq Markussen, chairwoman of the committee on
missile defense for the Greenland Home-Rule government.

The missile defense's largest hub will be in Fort Greely, Alaska, where it has
run into heated opposition from environmental groups. The base was used for
biological and chemical weapons testing in the 1950s and 1960s and housed a
nuclear reactor that is now entombed in a sarcophagus on-site.

Under the missile defense plan, five missile silos will be built at Fort Greely
as early as next spring.

Environmentalists and native groups who live near the site contend that
dangerous contamination has not been fully addressed.

"Tribal members hiking through that area have found canisters of mustard gas,"
said Howard Mermelstein, tribal manager of the Healy Lake Village Council, an
Athabaskan tribe that lives next door to Fort Greely.

On his desk, Mermelstein keeps an unexploded 1945 howitzer shell that a tribal
member found near his office only three weeks ago. He says he uses it as a
paperweight and as a reminder of the dangerous materials that are still lurking
on the tribe's lands.


ARMY PLEDGES CLEANUP

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is charged with cleaning up Fort Greely,
has assured the public that the site no longer poses any health threat.

The Corps is working to remedy all remaining contamination, said John Killoran,
spokesman for the Corps in Alaska.

On Aug. 28, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Alaska Community Action
on Toxics (AKAT) and six other environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the
Defense Department to force it to draft new environmental

impact statements on missile defense activities in Alaska. Like activists in
Greenland, the plaintiffs hope to bring local concerns to the fore as the
missile defense debate heats up in Washington.

"The military has not addressed the existing toxic and radioactive waste that
they have left here," said AKAT Director Pam Miller. "Why should they be able to
come in and put in yet another technology that might possibly be obsolete in a
few years, on top of the mess that they have already created?"


Nuclear bombs aboard when plane crashed in 1968

Distrust of U.S. military operations in Greenland runs high, and it reached a
fever pitch last summer when a group of former Thule air base workers and Danish
parliamentarians gained access to declassified U.S. military documents and found
some support for what Greenlanders had suspected for decades -- that an
unexploded American hydrogen bomb disappeared somewhere off the northeastern
coast of Greenland.

In 1968, a B-52 bomber laden with four nuclear bombs crashed 12 miles from the
Thule base.

Decades later, reports of cancer and other illnesses began to surface among
Danish and Greenlander Thule air base workers. In 1995, the Danish government
acknowledged their plight and paid a $15.5 million settlement to the 1,700
workers who had been exposed to radiation during the 1968 accident.

"You still have some leftover plutonium in that area that used to be our hunting
grounds," contends Aqaluq Lynge of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. "Now that's
off-limits to us as well."

According to a 1991 Danish study, sediment on the bottom of Bylot Sound near
where the plane crashed has extremely elevated levels of radioactive plutonium
contamination -- more than 100,000 becquerels per square meter. The Danish
researchers also found levels of plutonium in bivalves, or shellfish, up to
1,000 times higher than precrash levels.

The Pentagon has conceded that not all of the plutonium involved in the crash
was recovered -- about one pound of plutonium escaped into the environment --
but has always contended that every one of the bombs on board was accounted for.

K.L. Capozza is an investigative fellow with the Center for Investigative
Reporting.
   ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2001 SF Chronicle


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Harris government fighting release of Ipperwash affidavits to protect privacy

COLIN PERKEL Canadian Press
http://www.canada.com/calgary/story.asp?id={6DDFA44E-B037-4D8A-8963-D040F00FE9E1\
}
Friday, November 02, 2001

TORONTO (CP) - The Ontario government is fighting the release of several sworn
affidavits related to the killing of a native protester at Ipperwash Provincial
Park.

In a letter to the province's information commission made public Friday, a
government lawyer said she will be asking the courts to block the release of the
documents. "My client is very anxious that the stay be granted," lawyer Sara
Blake wrote to assistant information commissioner Tom Mitchinson.

Blake offered no reasons for her request.

Liberal Gerry Phillips, who originally asked for the affidavits, maintains that
the government has failed to turn over all records related to a top-level
meeting on Ipperwash six years ago.

"These affidavits are key to determining whether crucial files about the Sept.
6, 1995, meeting have gone missing," he said.

"Is there now a systematic attempt to cover up the truth?"

However, Attorney General David Young attacked Phillips in a statement late
Friday, saying only a few of the more than 40 affidavits are being withheld to
protect the privacy of those involved.

"The government has been unable to obtain consent of a small number of
individuals," Young said.

It will be up to the courts to decide whether they should be released without
their agreement, he said.

The 1995 meeting, attended by Premier Mike Harris and several other top
government officials, was also attended by two police officers.

Hours later, protester Dudley George was shot dead as provincial police
attempted to clear the park.

A civil lawsuit filed by one of George's brothers alleges that Harris directly
influenced police to take a hard line against the natives despite contrary
advice from his senior bureaucrats and the police themselves.

Harris has strenuously denied giving police any direction.

However, even though more than a dozen people attended the meeting, which Harris
characterized as a routine update on plans for an injunction, just a few scraps
of handwritten notes have emerged.

Phillips said it defies belief there would be so few records.

But in dozens of the affidavits obtained by The Canadian Press, Municipal
Affairs Minister Chris Hodgson, former attorney general Charles Harnick and
others all deny knowledge of any records.

In his affidavit, Harris states that he has only a "general recollection" of who
was in attendance but insists he has already turned over all records he had.

Last month, Mitchinson ordered the premier and others to state under oath what
meetings related to Ipperwash they attended on that day and to confirm that no
other documents existed.

© Copyright 2001 The Canadian Press
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Canada's top Indian chief a controversial character Secession threat unnerves
Quebec separatists

Barbara Crossette, New York Times
Sunday, November 4, 2001
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2001/11/04/MN1616\
54.DTL


Ottawa -- One year into his term as Canada's paramount Indian chief, Matthew
Coon Come is catching trouble everywhere.

Fellow Indians are unnerved by his born-again Christianity. Separatists in his
native Quebec have been stung by his demand for the right to secede from them if
they persist in trying to leave Canada. This summer at a U.N. conference on
racism and discrimination in South Africa, he outraged many Canadians as he
denounced the country's human rights record for all the world to see.

"I was only quoting U.N. reports and Canadian Human Rights Commission reports,"
he said, sitting at his boardroom table in his conservative business suit, his
feathered headdress hanging from a coat tree by his desk.

Coon Come, 45, a Cree Indian born on a dog sled bearing his mother to a tent on
his father's trap line, was elected to a three-year term as leader of the
Assembly of First Nations, Canada's indigenous parliament, by the chiefs of 633
Indian tribes, or "bands" as they are known here. The chiefs knew what they were
getting.

Since the age of 16, when he read about a threat to the region of his birth,

he has been a tenacious agitator for Indian rights, leading a long and
successful campaign to stop a $13 billion Quebec hydroelectric project that
eventually acquired international dimensions.

ALARMED BY DAM PLAN

"I saw in a paper that reservoirs were going to be created in Quebec," he said.
"One of those reservoirs was my community. I picked up that map and said,

'Our home is going to be under water.' When you have walked on the land, and you
know what damage a beaver can do, you just magnify that, and you realize the
flooding that's going to take place."

Because New York state was the intended buyer of the electricity, Coon Come
asked Eskimo and Cree boat builders to make him a symbolic craft -- part kayak,

part ode, a Cree canoe -- and he sailed it down the inland waterways to Albany.

Earlier, while still a student, he had organized a demonstration in Ottawa
against the project. His girlfriend and now his wife, Mary Ann Matoush, also an
Indian, got clubbed to the ground by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. As he
dragged her to safety, he recalls asking himself, "Where do we fit in this
picture?"

That fitting in has never been easy, as even his name testifies. Coon means
"snow" in his language, and Come was attached arbitrarily and inexplicably by a
non-Indian census taker.

A boy growing up with slingshots and a bow and arrow for toys, Coon Come was
sent away to a boarding school at 6. Such schools have since been closed, after
years in which they contributed to the loss of Indian culture, and the sexual
abuse of children.

He later graduated from Trent University in Ontario and had begun to study law
at McGill University in Montreal when he was asked to go back to his James Bay
Cree community as a deputy chief. Eventually, he became chief of that group and
then of all the Cree, Canada's largest tribe.

Coon Come said that his priority as national chief of Canada's indigenous people
was to get the government to honor 200 years of treaty commitments, giving
Indians more land and autonomy.

He opposes increased government oversight, now being discussed by political
leaders, and would do away with the Department of Indian Affairs. He wants to
work with the government as equals.

"I believe we can be participants in the economy, but we do need capital to put
the infrastructure in place -- communications, connectivity, electricity, roads,
marinas, airstrips, water and sewage lines," he said.

ISOLATION'S UPSIDE

Geographic isolation of Indian and Inuit, or Eskimo, people, most of whom now
live all across the country's far north -- and call the rest of Canada "down
south" -- has made economic development challenging.

But that same isolation has allowed Canada's 660,000 Indians to keep languages
and cultures intact better than Indians in the United States have done, Coon
Come said.

Indians also take better care of their environment, he said. Integrated into
economic decision-making, they would ensure not "sustainable development" on
their lands but "sustainable creation," he said.

However, he has also been quick to acknowledge the problems in Indian
communities -- "bad apples" mismanaging government funds, suicide, diabetes,
alcoholism and jails full of indigenous people.

Not everyone in the communities he represents have been happy about it.

"I made a reference to fetal alcohol syndrome," he said. "There are alarming
statistics. My comment was that some people drink and smoke too much. I was
attacked for that -- right across Canada. They called for my resignation.

"I didn't say you couldn't smoke or you couldn't drink," he said. "To me that's
a choice. At the end of the day, it's a choice whether you take that drink or
not. It's not the devil that makes you do it."

Such strong conviction stems in part from his beliefs as an evangelical
Christian, a conversion that has led to problems both within the communities he
represents as well as his own family, traditional practitioners of shamanism.
"You have to understand, I was the only son," he said. "It wasn't easy."

His open profession of faith was an issue when he ran for national chief last
year. "They said, 'You will have no respect for our traditions and culture and
beliefs,' " he said. He told them he was a hunter whose spirit had never left
the land and who respected all beliefs. The issue faded.

Indeed, both Coon Come and his wife -- they have five children -- were both
taught by their parents how to live in the wilderness. Until moving to Ottawa
last year, they were comfortable in moose hide coats and snowshoes.

FATHER'S LESSONS

"I can take off these clothes you see now, and I'd be able to survive out on the
land," he said. "My father taught me all the skills that I need."

The lessons go on. His father ventured down to Ottawa last week to see his son's
new city home. Awake early, the father went for a walk on the golf course behind
the house. When he returned, he wanted to know why his son was not out hunting.
"He said, 'There are a lot of geese here,' " Coon Come said. ' "You could feed
your family.'

"My father is a hunter," Coon Come said. "Never went to school. Supported
himself by living off the land. To him, if there's game out there, how come
you're not out hunting?"








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Communities First: First Nations Governance Web site at:
http://www.fng-gpn.gc.ca/
PRESS RELEASE
        2-01248

FIRST NATIONS CALL FOR CHANGE IN BAND GOVERNANCE

OTTAWA, ONTARIO (NOVEMBER 1, 2001) -- With the first phase of national community
consultations winding down, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern
Development announced today that the First Nations Governance initiative is "on
track" and will move forward with First Nations.

"I would like to thank the First Nations people who have participated in the
initial First Nations Governance consultations - the first time DIAND has
consulted with First Nations people themselves to hear their views. Their words
of support and advice are essential to the success of this process," says
Minister Robert Nault.

"The more than 7,000 participants who shared best practices or called attention
to problems, unequivocally affirmed that First Nations people - leaders, elders,
women, business owners and entrepreneurs - want change."

An initial review of the findings shows that women are asking for more of a
voice, protected rights and recourse when needed. We also hear a call for change
in financial and political accountability and other issues that were hindering
economic development on reserves.

"First Nations people, like all Canadians, are concerned about health care,
education, and their social and economic well-being. The governance initiative
is about giving First Nations people the opportunity to address these concerns
within their communities in more open and accountable systems of First Nations
government."

The consultations with First Nations were launched on April 30, 2001 as part of
the "Communities First: First Nations Governance" (FNG) initiative to address
the fundamentals of on reserve band government, a topic which hasn't been
addressed for 125 years since the original Indian Act.

First Nations people should have an opportunity to establish government
institutions and practices that are sensitive to and reflect as appropriate
First Nations history, values, traditions and also cultural and spiritual
beliefs.

"We're in the process of collecting all of the information shared during the
consultation sessions and we will soon begin to analyze the implications. But we
are hearing the frustration of First Nations people. They want more power in the
hands of First Nations people themselves rather than another federal government
program," says Chief Dwight Dorey of the Congress of Aboriginal People (CAP).

CAP, and other national organizations such as Aboriginal Financial Officers
Association (AFOA) along with many regional First Nations associations, treaty
groups, tribal councils and chiefs have joined with Indian and Northern Affairs
Canada (INAC) on the governance initiative.

To date, over 7,000 First Nations people have participated in over 400
consultation and information sessions, responded to questionnaires, or used
interactive media to provide their views to consultation teams.

The information gathered through this first phase of community-level
consultation will be used to jointly develop models, or options, over the next
several weeks on which new FNG legislation could be based.

"We need to develop the legislative package before we can move forward to
Parliament and I want to make sure we get it right," says Nault.

The Parliamentary process, which is likely to involve further consultation, may
begin as early as this winter. The process of implementing new governance
legislation with corresponding regulations, will take two to three years to
complete. The objective is to implement new legislation in 2003.

        Communities First: First Nations Governance Web site at:
http://www.fng-gpn.gc.ca/

For more information, contact:

Nancy Pine Press Secretary Office of the Minister
              (819) 994-7644
Patricia Valladeo Media Relations INAC
              (819) 997-8404

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Sask. police must change attitude to Natives: Jury
Last Updated: Sun Nov 4 07:28:25 2001
http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/view?/news/2001/11/03/naistus_011103

SASKATOON - Police in Saskatoon must improve their relationship with the city's
aboriginal community, a coroner's jury ruled Saturday.

The six-member panel made the comments after reviewing the case of an aboriginal
man found frozen to death on the outskirts of Saskatoon.

The partly nude body of Rodney Naistus, 25, was discovered on Jan. 29, 2000 in
an industrial area. RCMP investigated allegations that he had been dumped there
by police, but the Mounties said there was no evidence to warrant criminal
charges.

An inquest was ordered. On Saturday the jurors ruled that the exact cause of
death could not be determined.

Some relatives at the hearing said they were upset that questions remained
unanswered.

Jurors said they could not conclude whether Naistus was killed, committed
suicide, died of natural causes or by accident. But they issued eight
recommendations to try to prevent similar tragedies.

Saskatoon's police force must strengthen its relationship with the native
community, according to the inquest, by hiring more aboriginal people and by
having all officers take "cross-cultural workshops." An aboriginal elder should
also be on call to help with "unruly situations."

Police officers who detain or transport people in their cruiser should keep
their dispatcher up to date, and record details in their notebooks, the jury
said. It also suggested more frequent patrols of "high incident" areas,
especially during winter months.

The recommendations will be forwarded to the Chief Coroner's office.

Written by CBC News Online staff

FROM JUNE 28, 2001: Cover-up alleged after no charges laid in death of
Saskatchewan native
http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2001/06/28/naistus010628

FROM FEB. 17, 2000: Sask. RCMP investigate two freezing deaths
http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2000/02/17/cops000217

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Rebirth of the scourge Is smallpox the next weapon in the terrorists' arsenal?
By MICHELE MANDEL-- The Toronto Sun
http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSAttack011104/04_reb-sun.html

It has been called the eleventh plague. Smallpox was supposed to be the ancient
scourge relegated to the past, an eradicated disease found only in medical
history books and the freezers of two guarded laboratories. Now, in the wake of
Sept. 11 and anthrax terror, fears are growing that the silent killer may be the
next weapon in the terrorists' arsenal.

As early as January 1999, a World Health Organization (WHO) committee warned
that smallpox poses "the most serious bio-terrorist threat to the civilian
population."

And we are still completely unprepared.

Scientific experts caution that there is only circumstantial evidence that
terrorists may have the smallpox virus. Many believe it is far more likely that
they have some of the other more easily obtainable biological weapons, such as
plague, botulism, tularemia or hemorrhagic fevers.

But we're not ready for any of them, warns Dr. Mark Miller, president of the
Canadian Infectious Disease Society.

"I'm worried that we still don't have the rudimentary basic preparedness for any
of the diseases on the (bio-terror) list," Miller says. "We do not have a
network of capable first-line physicians able to diagnose these diseases who are
aware of them. I'm concerned that most of our laboratories are not set up for
rapid diagnosis, they're using old, outdated technology which is really outmoded
today. We need rapid response in the event of a catastrophe and we don't have
the capability."

Miller believes smallpox is the least likely of the agents to be used, but it
would certainly be the deadliest.

"It would be the disease with the most impact because you're talking about
models that have shown anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of deaths
should a smallpox exposure take place."

Unlike anthrax, which has killed only a handful of Americans, smallpox is highly
contagious and the release of even the smallest amount of the virus would be
catastrophic.

Smallpox travels invisibly through the air, has no known treatment and kills 30%
of its victims. Very few doctors have seen smallpox and most wouldn't recognize
it if they did.

NONE OF US ARE IMMUNE

And none of us are immune anymore. More than half the population was born after
the disease was declared eradicated and mass vaccinations ended in the 1970s.
And for those of us who do bear the telltale scar of the inoculation, our
immunity only lasts from 10 to 20 years.

"We're all Indians," smallpox historian Dr. Elizabeth Fenn told The New York
Times two years ago, referring to native populations destroyed when the
Europeans brought smallpox to the new world. "We're approaching 100%
susceptibility."

Meanwhile, our vaccine stockpile is piteously small. In the U.S., they are
gearing up production to have enough to vaccinate every American if necessary by
"sometime next year."

Federal Health Minister Allan Rock has vowed to stockpile 30 million doses in
preparation to vaccinate every Canadian against a smallpox attack. Right now,
the Canadian defence department is said to have enough vaccine for about
380,000.


How vulnerable are we? In June, a two-day simulation exercise called Dark Winter
was held at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. It began with a fictional
scenario depicting a covert smallpox attack by Iraq that left 24 infected in
Oklahoma. After an imaginary two weeks, decisions by the assembled politicians
coupled with the quick exhaustion of the stockpiled vaccine would have resulted
in 16,000 people infected in 25 states and 1,000 dead, 10 other countries
reporting cases and the grim prediction that within three weeks there would be
300,000 victims, a third of whom would die.

And it would only multiply from there.

It was just a test, just an exercise, but it terrified its participants. "This
would cripple the United States if it were to occur," John Hamre of the Centre
for Strategic and International Studies testified before the House Committee on
Government Reform last summer. "No city, no state is capable of dealing with an
incident like this."

In many ways, the history of smallpox represents both the best and worst of
human nature, says Jonathan Tucker, author of Scourge: The Once and Future
Threat of Smallpox. The disease has killed hundreds of millions of people over
the course of history, yet it is also the first and only infectious disease to
be completely eradicated through a global vaccination campaign undertaken by WHO
-- one of the highlights of 20th-century medicine.

SECRET WEAPON

Meanwhile, Soviet scientists were betraying that achievement by secretly
developing smallpox as a weapon.

Before vaccination was invented in 1796, smallpox epidemics would cripple
civilizations. It was also completely democratic, claiming rich and poor alike
and counting Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses V, Queen Mary II of England and Tsar Peter
II of Russia as victims. The Aztecs were defeated not so much by Hernando
Cortes's army as by the smallpox the Spanish conquistadors had unknowingly
brought with them. North American natives were decimated by the disease. In the
20th century alone, smallpox killed 300 million people -- three times the number
who died in wars.

It is an insidious killer that is explosively contagious. Virus particles become
airborne from the infected person and can travel up to 1.5 metres with every
word or cough. Even contaminated clothing or bed linen can spread the virus. If
you inhale a single particle of smallpox, you can develop the disease. For the
first 10 to 14 days, you would feel fine. The first symptoms would be
deceivingly similar to the flu: Fever, headache, and weakness. At this point,
you are already contagious, infecting anyone you talk to. Two to three days
later, body temperature falls and you would feel somewhat better just as the
skin rash appears, first on the face, hands and forearms and then after a few
days progressing to the trunk. The spots turn into blisters, eventually becoming
painful, pus-filled and the size of peas. You have a one in three chance of
dying a horribly excruciating death.

For every one case, another 20 will begin exhibiting symptoms two weeks later.

With weapon-grade smallpox, the future is even more terrifying. With advances in
biotechnology, the virus could be dispersed through the air in a mist form
invisible to the naked eye. Bio-terrorism expert Michael Osterholm has proposed
a devastating scenario if smallpox were released into a major international
airport. Dispensed from a device the size of a heat thermostat velcroed to the
wall, three tablespoons of the virus could be turned into aerosol particles that
would fill an entire airport concourse with millions of infectious doses. And no
one would know when it was there. Long before anyone suspected, those infected
would have travelled to their destinations, quickly spreading the disease
throughout the world.

"Sept. 11 has made the possibility of mass casualty bio-terrorism much more of a
real concern," says Jonathan Tucker, author of Scourge and director of the
Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at Monterey's Institute
for International Studies. "As far as I know, there is no intelligence that bin
Laden has acquired smallpox and that it's an imminent threat. So I think it
remains more of a hypothetical threat, but one that is sufficiently compelling
that we need to reduce our vulnerability and acquire more vaccine."

The smallpox vaccine, if given up to four days after exposure to the virus and
before the rash appears, will provide protective immunity. But there's very
little vaccine available. Americans have 15.4 million doses in storage, but
researchers are considering stretching that number by diluting each dose.

Health Minister Rock says Canada's 380,000 doses may be diluted to vaccinate 10
times as many people. But there are serious concerns about the quality of the
old vaccine and the new production will take time.

With panicked calls for a return of mass vaccinations, the WHO issued a
statement last week warning against it. The risks of vaccination are too high,
killing one in one million recipients, they said, especially for the very young,
old, and those with suppressed immune systems.

Bio-terror is the poor man's atomic bomb.

The past is riddled with instances in which disease was used as a weapon of war.
In 1346, when the plague infected the Tartar army during its siege of Kaffa (now
Feodossia, Ukraine) they threw the bodies of their plague-ridden comrades over
the city walls of their enemy, infecting thousands and forcing the Kaffa army to
surrender.

Bio-terrorism was also used in North America during the French-Indian War in
1763. The English gave blankets to the Indians guarding Fort Carillon for the
French during the long, cold winter. The blankets, given as a "token of good
fortune," were actually infected with smallpox. The disease killed hundreds and
the Indians lost control of the fort.

WORLD WAR II PROGRAMS

In more modern times, the Japanese are believed to have been the first to
experiment with biological weapons during World War II. Not to be left behind,
the Americans and British began their own programs soon after.

In 1969, though, U.S. president Richard Nixon unilaterally renounced their use.
Three years later, countries throughout the world signed a treaty at the
Biological Weapons Convention forbidding research and use of biological weapons.
But it was still going on in the Soviet Union.

Within one year of signing the treaty, the Kremlin secretly established a
massive biological-warfare research program called Biopreparat.

In 1992, its deputy director, Kanatjan Alibekov, defected to the U.S. with his
shocking story: He and thousands of other Soviet scientists had been working to
mount deadly germs like anthrax, smallpox and plague on intercontinental
ballistic missile warheads. Their formulas for weapons-grade,
antibiotic-resistant anthrax, smallpox and Black Death were turned over to
military facilities for mass production and stockpiling by the tonne. There was
never less than 20 tonnes of weapons-grade dry smallpox stockpiled in bunkers.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the bio-warfare program fell on hard
times and unemployed Russian scientists were desperate to support their
families. Alibekov, now known as Ken Alibek, warned Congress that it was very
possible that smallpox left Russia in the pockets of mercenary biologists bound
for Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and North Korea.


How did they get hold of the virus in the first place? The disease had been
declared eradicated in 1980, but WHO decided to keep some of the live virus in
case there would be some future need to develop drugs against it. It was
officially stored in only two secure repositories on the planet, one at the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and the other at the
Soviet Union's sophisticated facility, Vector, in Siberia.

During the 1990s, Vector was a 4,000-person, 30-building complex protected by an
elite guard, but a visit by American scientists in the autumn of 1997 found a
half-empty facility protected by a handful of guards who had not been paid for
months. No one could say where the scientists have gone nor could they guarantee
that they hadn't taken some of the smallpox virus with them.

It gets worse. There is the very real possibility that agents such as smallpox
have been genetically altered by these rogue scientists. In that case, the
vaccine we currently have would be no protection at all. Alibek, the Soviet
defector, has said that his fellow Russians had been experimenting with plague
bacteria resistant to 16 different antibiotics and were splicing together the
viruses that cause smallpox and Ebola.

'ANTIBIOTIC-RESISTANT STRAINS'

"Just by reading scientific literature published in Russia in the last few
years, a biological weapons developer could learn techniques to genetically
engineer vaccinia virus and then transfer the results to smallpox; to create
antibiotic-resistant strains of anthrax, plague, and glanders; and to
mass-produce the Marburg and Machupa viruses," Alibek said in chilling testimony
to the American armed services committee last year. "Billions of dollars that
the Soviet Union and Russia put into biotechnology research are available to
anyone for the cost of a translator."

For Scourge author Tucker, it is a sad irony that the first disease eradicated
by man may now be used against it as a weapon of mass destruction.

That was driven home the other day when he received an e-mail message from David
Heymann, head of the communicable disease section at the WHO, informing him
about their new Web site on smallpox. "He said, 'Never would I have thought 30
years ago that we would need to digitalize the training materials and set up a
Web site for a disease we worked so hard to eradicate ... '

"And that's very poignant," Tucker says. "People devoted their lives to
eradicate this disease for 11 years. I think it's very troubling that it's come
back, potentially, to haunt us."

Dr. Miller is more worried that as our panic shifts from anthrax to smallpox, we
are ignoring the other diseases far more readily available to terrorists.

Physicians and labs are only now gearing up to identify anthrax, but none of
them would be able to diagnose symptoms of plague or tularemia. "We're one step
behind. We shouldn't be -- we should be anticipating," says the president of the
Canadian Infectious Disease Society.

"The same public health people sending out notices about anthrax should be
sending out a letter stating these are the six diseases that are likely to be
used as biological agents of terrorism. These are the clinical signs and
symptoms."

CENTRAL REPORTING SYSTEM

Incredibly, Canada also lacks an immediate, centralized reporting system. "If we
had multiple cases of plague at the same time in this country, there's no way
anybody in B.C. would know about a case in Nova Scotia and there would certainly
be no one in the federal government who would know about both cases."

Still, he hopes these new fears about smallpox will awaken a public demand for
an improved system.

"On any given day, we should be able as Canadians to say that we have adequate
preparedness for any biological agent that could be used for terrorism," Miller
says. "Today we cannot say that."
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Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
doctrine of international copyright law. Full copyright retained by the original
publication.
<<<<<>>>>>
Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
http://nativenewsonline.org/
Native News Online
a Service of Barefoot Connection

"Interesting game professor...the only winning move is not to play." Joshua,
"War Games"
FREE LEONARD PELTIER!! "YOU ~ARE~ THE MESSAGE"