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"Robert V. Schmidt" wrote:

> >From the LA Times, 3/31/02:
>
> *****
>
> SUNDAY REPORT
> Arctic Ice and Way of Life Melting Away for Eskimos
>
> Nature goes awry, bringing vast climatic and cultural changes, and baffling
> residents and researchers alike.
>
> By USHA LEE McFARLING, TIMES STAFF WRITER
>
> YANRAKYNNOT, Russia -- The native elders have no explanation. Scientists
> are perplexed as well. The icy realm of the Eskimo--the tundra and ice of
> Russia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland--has started to thaw.
>
> Strange portents are everywhere.
>
> Thunder and lightning, once rare, have become commonplace. An eerie warm
> wind now blows in from the south. Hunters who prided themselves on their
> ability to read the sky say they no longer can predict the sudden
> blizzards. "The Earth," one hunter concluded, "is turning faster." In
> recent years, seabirds have washed up dead by the thousands and deformed
> seal pups have become a common sight. Whales appear sick and
> undernourished. The walrus, a mainstay of the local diet, is becoming
> scarce, as are tundra rabbits.
>
> The elders, who keep thousands of years of history and legend without ever
> writing it down, have long told children this story: If the ice that
> freezes thick over the sea each winter breaks up before summer, the entire
> village could perish.
>
> The children always laugh. Here in the Russian Arctic, the ground is frozen
> nearly year-round. The ice blanketing the winter seas around the Bering
> Strait is thick enough to support men dragging sleds loaded with whale
> carcasses.
>
> Even Zoya Telpina, the schoolteacher in this outpost of 350 Chukchi
> reindeer herders and marine mammal hunters, said that a winter sea without
> ice seemed like "a fairy tale."
>
> But last winter, when Telpina looked from her kitchen window toward the
> Bering Sea, she saw something she'd never seen in her 38 years: The dark
> swell of the open ocean. Water where there had always been ice.
>
> Telpina's husband Mikhail, a 38-year-old dog-sled musher, has seen
> mushrooms on the tundra shrivel and whole herds of reindeer starve. He has
> cut open the bellies of salmon to find strange insects inside. He has seen
> willows rise where he has never seen trees before.
>
> The changes are so widespread that they have spawned changes in the Eskimo
> languages that so precisely describe ice and snow. In Chukotka, where the
> natives speak Siberian Yupik, they use new words such as misullijuq--rainy
> snow--and are less likely to use words like umughagek--ice that is safe to
> walk on. In Nunavet, Canada, the Inuit people say the weather is
> uggianaqtuq--like a familiar friend acting strangely.
>
> What the residents of the Arctic are reporting fits convincingly with
> powerful computer models, satellite images and recently declassified ice
> measurements taken by Russian submarines.
>
> In the last century, parts of the Arctic have warmed by 10 degrees
> Fahrenheit--10 times the global average. Sea ice covers 15% less of the
> Arctic Ocean than it did 20 years ago, and that ice has thinned from an
> average of 10 feet to less than 6.
>
> A group of scientists who spent a year aboard an icebreaker concluded that
> the year-round sea ice that sustains marine mammals and those who hunt them
> could vanish altogether in 50 years.
>
> The U.S. Navy, already planning for an ice-free Arctic, is exploring ways
> to defend the previously ice-clogged Northwest Passage from attack by sea.
>
> Without the stabilizing effect of great land masses, the Earth's watery
> north is exquisitely sensitive to warming. A few degrees of warmth can mean
> the difference between ice and water, permafrost or mud, hunger or even
> starvation for the inhabitants of these remote lands.
>
> Yet, explaining the quick thaw and determining its cause--whether human or
> natural--has so far eluded the experts.
>
> There are few long-term climate observations from the Arctic: Weather
> stations in the Far North are just 50 years old. And there is almost no
> data from places like Russia's Chukotka Peninsula, only 55 miles from
> Alaska.
>
> In their search for information, Western scientists are turning to sources
> they once disparaged. In a rare convergence of science and folklore, a
> group of scientists is mining the memories of native elders, counting
> animal pelts collected by hunters and documenting the collective knowledge
> of entire villages.
>
> These threads, which stretch back generations, may be the only way to trace
> the outlines of the half-century of change that has resculpted the Arctic
> and to figure out its cause.
>
> "We have all these people paying very close attention to the animals they
> hunt and the sea ice they travel on," said Henry Huntington, a scientific
> consultant in Alaska. "It's often extremely accurate and far better than
> anything science has come up with."
>
> Native observations that at first don't seem consistent with the
> warming--such as snowier winters and colder summers--also fit the
> scientists' models. Warmer air is expected to usher more storms and
> precipitation into the Arctic. Melting sea ice in summer can lower the
> water temperature and lead to cooler temperatures on adjacent land.
>
> Despite parallel observations, Western researchers and Arctic dwellers
> still look at each other suspiciously across a cultural divide. Many
> scientists remain uncomfortable with any information that is not backed by
> numbers and measurements. Many native elders resent scientists who come
> ashore with their strange machines thinking they know more about the place
> than those who live there.
>
> Others mistrust Western scientists who come to gather data and never send
> back word of their findings. They still recall a group of toxicologists who
> came to remote villages here several years ago to collect women's breast
> milk to measure pollution levels. The scientists detected organic
> pollutants such as dioxin and PCBs in the breast milk. But the women say
> they were never contacted about the results.
>
> For scientists, the facts are mostly a matter of academic, and sometimes
> political, interest. But for the natives, they may be a matter of life and
> death.
>
> The subsistence hunters of Chukotka live in small villages without pickup
> trucks or snowmobiles, without supply ships or supermarkets. They have 19th
> century harpoons, small boats and limited fuel for their hunts.
>
> These villagers, almost entirely dependent on the icy sea for their food,
> may be witnessing the demise of their ancient way of life.
>
> Caleb Pungowiyi, an Eskimo who works with scientists to record the
> observations of his elders and peers, put it this way: "When this Earth
> starts to be destroyed, we feel it."
>
> Ice is a second home for Gennady Inankeuyas, a 42-year-old hunter
> considered the best harpooner on the Chukotka Peninsula. For years,
> Inankeuyas has prowled the ice for seals and walrus, dragging heavy sleds
> and animal carcasses over the frozen ocean. While he was butchering a
> bearded seal last November, the thin ice cracked open beneath him.
> Inankeuyas was pulled out of the frigid water, cut from his frozen sealskin
> pants and revived. He was lucky: He did not lose any limbs to frostbite.
>
> This year, Inankeuyas returned to the uncertain ice. He had to. "Of course
> it's dangerous," he said. "But the village needs the food."
>
> That food is not as easy to come by now that the weather has changed. "The
> south wind is a bad wind. It moves the walrus to another place," said a
> 42-year-old Eskimo hunter named Igor Macotrik. "The walrus is hard to
> find."
>
> Scientists understand such observations. Their data show that the walrus
> are declining, possibly because they also have to work harder to find food.
> Walrus mothers nurse their babies on sea-ice floes. As melting ice recedes,
> the walrus do too. Far from the coast, the mothers must dive longer and
> deeper from the ice to the sea floor to find clams.
>
> In recent years, the Eskimo hunters have also noticed that gray whales have
> become extremely skinny. The meat of some freshly killed whales smells
> rancid, "like medicine," said 28-year-old hunter Maxim Agnagisyak. The sled
> dogs won't eat it. Some hunters fear the flesh is rotting because the
> leviathans aren't getting enough to eat.
>
> Scientists are beginning to analyze samples of whale blubber from the
> region to seek an explanation. For several years, record numbers of gray
> whales have washed up dead and emaciated as they migrate to their winter
> calving grounds in Baja California. This year's whale count is still
> underway.
>
> Land animals are also under stress. Reindeer herds plummeted after the
> Soviet Union collapsed and the government subsidies that helped sustain the
> herds were cut off. The animals began starving, and their numbers continue
> to decline, perhaps because they cannot forage beneath the strange, brittle
> snow that the natives call misullijuq.
>
> Scientists have not studied the reindeer herds of Chukotka, but they have
> seen similar starvation in Canadian caribou. The grazing animals normally
> survive the winter by nosing through soft, dry snow to feed on the tundra
> vegetation insulated below. In recent warm years, winter rains have
> alternated with snow, leaving an icy crust that is difficult to penetrate
> and lacerates the animals' legs.
>
> Scientists are only beginning to catch up with native observations on many
> other aspects of the Arctic environment, such as tundra vegetation. They
> are monitoring a tree line that is advancing north as the Arctic warms. And
> scientists from Russia, Delaware and Ohio have just started a large-scale
> project to study the ground under the Eskimos' feet--the permafrost--as it
> thaws.
>
> The stalwart Arctic people have survived for many centuries alongside polar
> bears, seals and whales in conditions too harsh for other human settlement.
> Their hold on the land is so tenuous and so subject to disruption from the
> outside that anthropologists have predicted their demise for two centuries.
>
> Until now, the Eskimos have defied the doomsayers. Nature has always
> provided. But now nature itself has gone awry.
>
> Archeological evidence is scant, but it suggests that today's Siberian
> Eskimos arrived in Chukotka from central Asia about 2,500 years ago. That
> settlement would not have been possible without the massive global warming
> that took place more than 10,000 years ago at the end of the last great Ice
> Age.
>
> Melting ice submerged the Bering land bridge that the first Americans had
> walked across some 13,000 years earlier.
>
> The waters that surround the Chukotka Peninsula today are among the richest
> in the world. They teem with 25 species of marine mammals; 450 species of
> fish, mollusks and crustaceans; vast numbers of summering seabirds; and
> innumerable krill and plankton that provide food for many whales.
>
> The early Eskimos followed their prey. They lived in underground houses
> insulated from the cold and moved among seasonal hunting camps. They
> collected eggs from seabirds and salmon and plucked greens, berries and
> mushrooms from the tundra. They hunted walrus, seal and whale. The flesh of
> marine mammals, particularly maktak, the blubbery skin of the whale, is
> still preferred by many to "European" macaroni and canned fruit.
>
> Ludmilla Ainana, a 66-year-old Eskimo, was educated by the Soviets in St.
> Petersburg and now lives in an apartment in Chukotka's biggest town,
> Providenya. Though she can now buy chicken and noodles and exotic
> ingredients like soy sauce at a grocery, she still prefers the food of a
> childhood spent at a coastal camp in a single yaranga, or reindeer hide
> tent. "Walrus flippers with sea cabbage," she said. "It's delicious food."
>
> When American whalers began arriving in the 1840s, they praised the natives
> for their ingenuity and hired the men to kill whales. The whalers left
> behind a taste for imported trade goods, decimated whale stocks and a
> native population ravaged by measles, smallpox and flu.
>
> At the time, anthropologists warned that the native way of life was doomed.
> But the Eskimos took to the whalers' improved harpoons and became even
> better hunters. Still, the hunger for manufactured goods marked the
> beginning of a long, slow shift from the old ways.
>
> In the 1920s, the Soviets accelerated the process, introducing the Eskimo
> hunters and Chukchi herders to jobs, wages and a steady diet of imported
> food. They provided houses, schools, clinics and coal for heat.
>
> Families like Ainana's who had lived in scattered settlements were
> relocated by the hundreds into villages such as Yanrakynnot. In a village
> that once recorded 26 inhabitants in five households, the population would
> swell to nearly 500, even though the land could not support so many.
>
> "These were convenient for supply ships," Ainana said, "but the hunting was
> very poor."
>
> For the Eskimo, food, livelihood and an animistic religion had always been
> intertwined. They not only hunted the whale, they worshiped it.
>
> But the Soviets jailed the shamans and outlawed native whaling. Instead,
> big Russian whaling ships caught the beasts and towed them to shore. The
> job of the natives was to slice up the carcasses and feed the meat to caged
> foxes being raised for their fur on the outskirts of Yanrakynnot. There
> were no more ceremonies, no chanting by the elders, no heroes returning
> from the hunt.
>
> "People stopped hunting and they became butchers," said Igor Krupnik, a
> Smithsonian Institution ethnologist and expert on the native people of
> Chukotka. "This was a tremendous blow to their culture and their
> self-esteem."
>
> The young began to embrace Soviet imports, including vodka and cigarettes.
> Many began marrying ethnic Russians. Their children received Russian
> lessons and Russian names. They forgot how to hunt.
>
> That modernization came to an abrupt end along with the Soviet Union in
> 1991. Almost overnight, there were no supply ships. No food. No coal. No
> heat.
>
> Ainana spent years struggling to preserve the Eskimo culture, but now
> watches from an upper-story gray concrete-block apartment as it evaporates.
>
> The warming of the Arctic, coupled with years of intense social stress, she
> said, has had "a terrible effect on lifestyle and health."
>
> Villages shrank as families moved to the cities to find work and food.
> Infant mortality, suicide, disease and alcoholism all took a toll.
>
> In some parts of the Russian Arctic, life expectancy dropped to about 37
> years. A 1989 census found 1,400 Eskimos in Chukotka. The population is now
> estimated to be 700. Yanrakynnot's population in 1989 was 448; today it has
> 100 fewer residents.
>
> Those who remained tried to resurrect subsistence hunting--even though no
> one really knew how.
>
> Macotrik, the hunter from the relocated Eskimo settlement of Novoye
> Chaplino, filled two small boats with young men and bravely headed out to
> chase 50,000-pound whales. There were accidents and deaths. Some were the
> fault of storms and rough seas; others were caused by inexperience.
>
> "Unfortunately, the old generation passed away--the ones that knew how to
> approach the whale, how to use the darting gun," said Macotrik as he sat in
> a dank hunting cabin cleaning the Kalishnikov rifle he would use in the
> next day's whale hunt. "We started from zero."
>
> With the help of Alaskan cousins who provided boats, gear and even hunting
> lessons, the Russian Eskimo once again surprised the doomsayers.
>
> "We watched with amazement as these people restored their whaling," said
> anthropologist Krupnik. "We were wrong to say the Soviet Union had dealt
> them a mortal blow."
>
> Macotrik and his young crew have been bringing in whales since 1997,
> helping feed their impoverished village and salvaging some of their ancient
> pride.
>
> "Walrus, seal and whale," Macotrik said. "It's not just our food. It's our
> history and tradition."
>
> It is unclear if the changing climate will let them. With scientists still
> debating the trajectory of change in the Arctic, the fate of the Siberian
> Eskimo remains as uncertain as the Arctic ice in late spring.
>
> Hunters with tiny boats and little fuel must now go much farther out to sea
> for food. Sometimes they return empty-handed. Sometimes they return with
> prey unusual for the season, or fish native to warmer waters. Sometimes,
> when the seas are rough, they do not return at all.
>
> Much has been made of the plight of the Arctic people by environmental
> activists hoping to draw attention to the issue of global warming.
>
> But Eskimo leaders, who repeatedly ask foreign visitors "Are you a
> Greenpeace?" are wary of that attention and of Western environmentalists,
> who often oppose their whaling.
>
> The hunters willingly talk about the many changes they see around them. But
> they don't spend much time worrying about climate change.
>
> For the moment, they have more pressing concerns: gathering enough ammo for
> the spring hunt and stretching their limited supply of stored whale meat.
>
> It is possible that the Eskimo will once again adapt--to new food species
> that could move north with the shifting temperatures, and to a new economy
> that could bring tourism, jobs, and enough money for faster boats and
> better weapons.
>
> The Eskimos have a haunting reminder of the instability of Arctic life--one
> that still spooks hunters from Yanrakynnot as they pass it on their way to
> the open sea. It is an island called Yttygran. On the beach lie 60 massive
> bowhead whale skulls arranged geometrically. Huge whale jawbones stand
> upright among them like sentries.
>
> This is "Whalebone Allee," a shrine to the whale, built in the 13th or 14th
> century. It is the abandoned construction of a relatively large and
> organized civilization, with an amphitheater and 120 stone meat lockers
> that still contain mummified whale meat.
>
> Today's Eskimos have no connection with the people who built this, said
> Krupnik, the Smithsonian anthropologist who helped excavate the site in the
> 1970s.
>
> That society simply vanished, much like the Viking settlements in Greenland
> that flourished for several hundred years only to disappear when the Arctic
> climate cooled in the 15th century.
>
> Why did the builders depart? Where did they go? "We don't have a clue,"
> Krupnik said. "It's an example of how precarious life is in the Arctic."
>
> It is also an example of what climate change can do. For hundreds of years,
> the skulls of Whalebone Allee stood undisturbed in precise rows.
>
> But last winter, a massive ridge of ice, warmed and weakened by an early
> thaw, pushed ashore and rammed the line of whale bones. After more than 700
> years of perfect alignment, the relics now lie askew.

"Robert V. Schmidt" wrote:

> >From the LA Times, 3/31/02:
>
> *****
>
> Parkland Is Home to Planned Community
>
> Development: Mini-mansions rise on private holdings at a federal monument.
> The project is unlikely to be the last, environmentalists fear.
>
> By EVAN HALPER, TIMES STAFF WRITER
>
> Imagine peninsular bighorn sheep strolling up to your backyard fence as you
> pull into the four-car garage. Or dipping into a custom swimming pool and
> then freshening up in marble bathrooms overlooking thousands of acres of
> protected wilderness.
>
> Such is life at Mirada, a slice of Beverly Hills in a wildlife refuge. The
> designer desert development is inside the gates of the rugged Santa Rosa
> and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument near Palm Springs.
>
> That's right, inside the monument. "This is the equivalent of living on the
> floor of Yosemite," said project director Chuck Strother, sitting behind
> the wheel of the company's giant four-wheel drive as construction crews
> around him carve out more multimillion-dollar plots.
>
> Mirada, developed by MCO Properties of Arizona, is an island of densely
> packed mini-mansions in the wildlife sanctuary. It is the only
> master-planned community in the country built entirely within the borders
> of federal parkland.
>
> To the dismay of environmentalists, it is unlikely to be the last.
>
> "I think you're going to see this more often as the pressures of
> suburbanization surround these lands,'' said David Barna, spokesman for the
> National Parks Service. "We're scrambling to buy up as much of this
> property as we can."
>
> More than 4.3 million acres of privately held inholdings are inside
> national parks and monuments, 200,000 acres of which federal officials
> estimate are threatened by development at any given time.
>
> Preservationists grudgingly accept the Mirada development, but only because
> its approval predates the monument's creation in October 2000. MCO also
> agreed to provide more than 1,400 acres and millions of dollars to help
> save the endangered sheep.
>
> Park watchdogs warn that with the precedent set, other high-end
> homebuilders will want to elbow their way inside preserves. Real estate
> companies increasingly view parks, monuments and protected forests from the
> California desert to Civil War battlefields in Tennessee as prime places to
> plant modern subdivisions.
>
> They need not wait for preserves to be created around land they own, as
> happened at Mirada. Instead, they can snatch up privately owned parcels
> surrounded by public land. "People assume the land inside these parks is
> protected," said Robin Pritchard, spokesperson for the National Park Trust
> in Washington. "These areas are private and they can be subdivided."
>
> When the federal government creates parks and monuments, it isn't always
> able to acquire all the privately owned land within the new park's
> boundaries. In some cases, private owners aren't ready to sell; in others,
> the funds aren't there.
>
> The government tries to buy these parcels, called inholdings, as they come
> on the market. But that's becoming increasingly difficult because
> landowners often find that they can make more money selling to a developer.
>
> The trophy homes at Mirada in Rancho Mirage offer a glimpse at what some
> inholdings could look like.
>
> "It's paradise," said Doug Robinson, a security company president who owns
> a 4,500-square-foot ranch-style home in Mirada with a view from every room.
> Bighorn sheep gathered at the fountain on his property daily until they
> were fenced out last year. "We've had 16 of them here at once," he said.
>
> The neighboring Lodge at Mirada Hotel offers room service to the private
> homes, so Robinson and his wife can enjoy a catered breakfast poolside
> while watching wildlife. "It doesn't get any better," he said.
>
> Project director Strother points out the 4-mile fence that keeps the sheep
> out of the development. On the other side are steep, rocky mountains that
> are the animals' home. The lots average three-quarters of an acre and sell
> for as much as $2.1 million. Forty-six homes and the hotel are already
> there. Another 63 plots for single-family houses are being released into
> the market, and 128 townhomes and two-story "hotel villas" are planned.
>
> "For the guy who wants to be close to Mother Earth, this is the perfect
> backdrop," Strother said, pulling the truck onto a parcel with a 360-degree
> view of the desert landscape, the snowcapped mountains, and the Palm
> Springs Airport hundreds of feet below. The airport view is a prime selling
> point for residents who like to build their lounges so they can watch the
> planes come and go.
>
> "See this house," Strother said, pointing at a space age-looking number
> down the road. "They had 22 interior designers work on it." Another
> homeowner is building a 23-foot retaining wall, which will also hold in the
> swimming pool. Water from the pool will cascade over the top, creating a
> waterfall.
>
> Biologists tending to the bighorn sheep say they regret that the
> development encroached on the animals' habitat and don't want to see such
> construction again, but they are pleased at the attention MCO is paying to
> its environmental obligations.
>
> The 1,400-plus acres of open space MCO donated amounts to 10 acres for
> every acre it developed. The company also set up the Mirada Habitat
> Foundation, which is providing $1.5 million to fund conservation mandates
> from the federal government. Every homeowner at Mirada becomes a trustee of
> the foundation and must contribute monthly dues toward preservation
> efforts.
>
> Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs) is on an advisory board to the foundation
> and will be at Mirada on Thursday when the organization's plans are
> unveiled. .
>
> The foundation is a selling point at Mirada. "It makes buyers feel fuzzy
> that they are contributing to the habitat," said marketing director Chris
> Gilfillen.
>
> Environmentalists appreciate the help, but they are hoping Mirada is the
> last subdivision of its kind.
>
> That may be wishful thinking.
>
> Inholding controversies are not new. Preservationists have long battled
> landowners seeking to log, mine, graze cattle or extract oil and gas. There
> are occasional fights over proposals to build a lodge or country home.
>
> George Nickas, executive director of Wilderness Watch, a Montana-based
> nonprofit group that keeps track of inholdings, says sprawl is rapidly
> approaching many of the borders of the parks, making the inholdings
> attractive to builders who want to subdivide. "They are like ticking time
> bombs," he said.
>
> About 505,000 acres checkered in large parcels among the lava fields, sand
> dunes and mesas in and around Mojave National Preserve were threatened with
> residential development when landowner Catellus Corp. began courting real
> estate companies to purchase the land in the mid-1990s. To buy it
> themselves, private donors and the federal government came up with $56.1
> million and a generous tax break for the company.
>
> Still, more than 1,000 privately owned parcels remain inside the preserve,
> according to Jay Watson, regional director of the Wilderness Society, a
> national preservation group. That includes 16 40-acre parcels where
> residential units have been proposed by a Las Vegas developer, and a
> 640-acre site near the volcanic rock formations of Hole in the Wall, where
> plans for a golf course have been submitted.
>
> "The longer those parcels sit there, the more likely people are going to
> come forward with proposals to build condos on them," Watson said.
>
> But the subdivision threat to parkland is most imminent in the East.
>
> Hundreds of residents and war buffs around Valley Forge National Historic
> Park outside Philadelphia revolted in January after learning of a plan by
> Toll Bros. to put 62 single-family houses inside the park where George
> Washington spent a grueling winter with his troops. The company wants to
> turn 80 acres of the park into a development called Valley Forge Overlook.
>
> The park service is trying to buy the parcel, valued at $10 million.
>
> Civil War sites are also under siege, with real estate companies looking at
> privately held family farms scattered inside such parks as Chickamauga &
> Chattanooga National Military Park on the Tennessee-Georgia border.
>
> "We just acquired a 30-acre parcel last year that developers would have
> loved to get," said Bobby Davenport of the Trust for Public Land.
>
> There are 42 privately held parcels within protected areas in and around
> Gettysburg, Pa., most of them family farms that developers are eager to
> acquire.
>
> Development pressure in the area is tremendous, and park officials fear
> that prices for the properties could skyrocket on hitting the market.
>
> Land management officials in California say the situation is less pressing
> here because inholdings tend to be remote. But remote parcels haven't
> always thwarted building. In Colorado, one developer flew in construction
> materials by helicopter in 1992, calling the federal government's bluff. He
> ultimately negotiated a deal to trade the land, worth an estimated
> $240,000, for a public property near the ski resort of Telluride, which he
> then sold for millions.
>
> List info at: http://nativenewsonline.org/natnews.htm
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

This review was originally published in
"Eskimo"
Fall - Winter 2001-2002
Published twice a year by the Diocese of Churchill-Hudson Bay
Editor: Lorraine E Brandson (E-mail) <chhbay@...>
P.O. Box 10, Churchill, Manitoba, Canada R0B 0E0
Fax 204-675-2140
Used with permission.


Author: Norman Hallendy

INUKSUIT - Silent Messengers of the Arctic

Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver and Toronto / University of Washington Press,
Seattle http://www.douglas-mcintyre.com/index.asp
2000; 127 pages. ISBN 1-55054-778-X

Reviewed by:
Frederick A. Homann, s.j.
Iqaluit, Nunavut


Veteran archaeologist Norman Hallendy begins and ends this beautiful book in
wonder and meditation, as befits his subject, the Inuksuit, those arcane
stone figures that are the silent messengers of the circumpolar Inuit. He is
no dispassionate student of these enigmatic cairns: his forty years in the
Arctic and deep friendships with Inuit mentors have profoundly shaped his
mind and heart, as he knows so well. One can only appreciate the stained
glass splendor of a Gothic cathedral by entering it physically and
spiritually; Hallendy could only hope to penetrate the mystery of the
inuksuit by answering an invitation to share the Inuit life of body and
spirit, as far as any Qallunat can. His pages aim to convey the insights,
impressions, and experiences he won from those remarkable and generous
elders in whose company he learned of the existence of a physical and
spiritual landscape, and of "the dearest freshness deep down things" to be
found in the Arctic reaches.

Between his deeply introspective reflections we are treated to a study,
perfectly coordinated between text and evocative colour plate (52
photographs in all), that probes the history, meaning, and functions of
these often solitary figures that are found throughout the Canadian Arctic,
and quite notably in the empty sweep of southwest Baffin Island. The Inuit
have truly depended on them for physical survival since time immemorial;
equally, they have reverenced them as sacred objects that mark out places
where spirits and shamans exercise their powers for good or ill. Hallendy
opens that world for those who want to learn of it. Today, too many
Qallunaat recognize an inuksuk only in the trivializations of commercial
logos and Arctic tour brochures. Far better, however, the Nunavut flag shows
an inuksuk figure on its white and gold field, and the corpus on the cross
in the Churchill-Hudson Bay RC diocesan logo is an inuksuk-like figure.

Hallendy explains how to identify and distinguish the stone figures, though
dating and attribution is usually tentative. Some are true inuksuit (plural
of inuksuk, whose root meaning is "to act in the capacity of a human"). They
act as direction markers used for sighting and aligning, or for announcing a
rich caribou hunting or fish spawning area, or to identify food caches.
Other figures that resemble or seem to be inuksuit are in fact not so. They
are innunguait (plural of innunguaq, meaning "in the likeness of a human"),
and signify the presence of human traces, for example, perhaps informing
Inuit whalers of a gathering place. Again, the stone figures can also
singly, or as a group, be objects of veneration or sites where Inuit might
leave offerings in the hope of receiving protection from helping spirits.
Ominously, they can also be structures where shamans were initiated and
received their powers, objects from which an Inuk should ordinarily keep a
safe distance.

An appendix gives a database for inuksuk types, functions, and related
features. After local variants of the word inuksuk (as they are found in the
eastern Arctic, the Keewatin, the Coppermine area, the western Arctic, etc.)
are noted, there are listed the Inuktitut words for some general types of
inuksuit (e.g., the most beautiful one, or an ancient and important one
built by Tunniit predecessors of the Inuit, or one built to pass the time at
a hunting site, or an inuksuk built by a non-Inuk, etc.). A second set of
some 23 entries records the specialized terminology for inuksuit related to
hunting, travel, and navigation. Inuksuit-like figures (innunguait) have at
least nine terms applicable, according as the human-like figures are used
for bow and arrow target practice (!), or as signs of human presence, or
cylindrical fox traps, or, upside down, as meat drying platforms, etc.
Fourteen other terms apply to inuksuk-like objects of veneration: structures
where shamans were initiated and received their powers, objects believed to
contain a spirit, arches under which a shaman healed or protected a person,
doorway shaped structures through which a shaman entered the spirit world,
and single upright stones where people left offerings in hope of protection
by benevolent spirits. But there are also extant figures, like the beautiful
one near Saattirittuq (shown on p. 108 and on the dustjacket), whose meaning
is unknown, or perhaps, like some other items of Inuit history and culture,
not yet shared with the non-Inuit world.

As Hallendy explains, these sets of words of closely related usage together
form what linguists call a semantic field. His methodology is to combine
such linguistic devices with information and meanings that are rarely
divulged by his Inuit mentors to outsiders, to articulate, however
tentatively, the significance of the Inuit cairns. Hallendy's lexical
references include the dictionaries of Oblate missionaries Lucien Schneider
and Arthur Thibert, as well as that of the Rev. Edmund J. Peck compiled from
Erdman's 1864 Eskimo-German edition. His complementary use of oral history
learned from elders is essential here as elsewhere in Inuit studies. John
MacDonald made comparable use of like sources that soon will no longer be
available in his remarkable study The Arctic Sky: Inuit Astronomy, Star Lore
and Legend (reviewed in Eskimo n.s. 56 (1998/9) 26-31), where he only
examines the role of these stone cairns in marking traditional travel
routes.

As we learn, an inuksuk often functioned as a navigation aid for Inuit
travelers by pointing to the best route to their destination, or by warning
an unwary Inuk of dangers at hand. As the elders testified time and again,
countless generations found inuksuit the difference between life and death
on the trail. Young hunters learned from the elders how to read the inuksuit
and learn where to look for fish and gem. Today that story is changing,
especially for Inuit hunters who use modern technology, such as GPS
navigation devices or cellular radios, though Hallendy, understandably, does
not address the matter. However John MacDonald and Ed Picco do note the new
ways in their account of Inuit navigation practices at Hall Beach
(Sanirajak) (The Baffin Handbook 1993, p. 250). In the Iglulik-Sanirajak
area the DEW Line structures built in 1955 changed traditional navigation
ways that relied on recognizing star clusters and sighting familiar
inuksuit. For when the Department of National Defense proposed, in 1990, to
dismantle the DEW radar screens at Hall Beach, much to DND's surprise the
hamlet asked that the huge antennas be left standing. The elders explained
that local hunters now used them as landmarks, as they did the inuksuit
before 1955, since an Inuk 40 miles distant from the town could see them
across the flat landscape and make his way safely.

Hallendy tells of his persistent efforts to learn the spiritual power of
certain inuksuit and how they could be vessels for spirits. After respectful
prodding and patience with three Pelly Bay elders who denied having any
knowledge of inuksuit containing spirits, he was told the story of their
youth when they lived in small camps ruled by the camp boss and a shaman.
The old shaman who had many spirit helpers died at spring camp just as he
had foreseen in a vision. The last thing that his son did to show respect
for the shaman was to build an inuksuk for each spirit that helped his
father. According to the elders, each such inuksuk was in the likeness of a
spirit, and "the hill behind the spring camp is where they live."

Inuksuit then are more than just physical entities. Many are intimately
linked with shamanistic practices and sacred sites where ancient traditions
had been observed, or where by decree no one could enter or trespass.
Osuitok Ipeelee, Hallendy's friend and mentor for 35 years, underscores the
perduring influence of shamanism in the Inuit world with his insistence that
"Real shamans never die. As long as there are people in the world, someone
will believe in them. They are listening as we speak (p. 98)." As the
notable fascination of young Inuit today with shamans and spirits and their
own cultural roots suggests, the Inuit transition to Christianity has not
been a clean break on the cultural or spiritual level. Successful
inculturation of the Gospel among the Inuit demands an honest assessment of
the cultural inheritances of those evangelized no less than of the
evangelizers. With its sensitive probing of the Inuit mind and heart,
Inuksuit can be a substantial contribution to that goal. Readers can
appreciate the beauty ever ancient, ever new resident in the physical and
spiritual Arctic landscapes, and welcome the Gospel always more deeply into
their own minds and hearts, even as they share it with others.

Hallendy, a Research Fellow of the Nunavut Research Institute, presented the
data that support this superb book in a paper read at the 1992 Canadian
Archaeological Association meeting. It was later published in the Canadian
Museum of Civilization's Archaeological Survey of Canada Mercury Series
paper 149 (1994): Threads of Arctic Prehistory: Papers in Honour of William
E. Taylor, Jr. A touring exhibition of his profoundly insightful Arctic
photography was shown in Paris and elsewhere.

Frederick A. Homann, S.J.
Iqaluit, Nunavut

This review was originally published in
"Eskimo"
Fall - Winter 2001-2002
Published twice a year by the Diocese of Churchill-Hudson Bay
Editor: Lorraine E Brandson (E-mail) <chhbay@...>
P.O. Box 10, Churchill, Manitoba, Canada R0B 0E0
Fax 204-675-2140
Used with permission.



ISSUMATUQ
Learning from the traditional helping Wisdom of the Canadian Inuit

Author - Kit Minor


Fernwood Publishing, Halifax http://www.fernwoodbooks.ca
1992. Pp. 110. ISBN 1-895686-05-9

Reviewed by:
Frederick A. Homann, s.j.
Iqaluit, Nunavut

Kathleen (Kit) Minor's Issumatuq takes its title from issuma, an Inuit
concept that Euro-Canadians might identify as wisdom/discernment/insight. An
issumatuq (wise individual), not necessarily an elder, was consulted in
traditional Inuit culture for advice and counsel about matters crucial to
the individual or group's physical, psychological, or social survival.
Traditional Inuit culture was that of tent and igloo camp ; it all but
vanished once the Canadian government moved the nomadic people into fixed
settlements such as Kugaaruk (today called Kugaaruk), Pond Inlet, and
lqaluit. Early and late issues of Eskimo magazine have firsthand Oblate
missionary reports about the hardships of that way of life, where physical,
and often, psychological survival, was in fact a daily challenge.

Minor cites Oblate documents published and private, as well as indigenous
witness, to validate her own academic and field work on behalf of Nunavut's
wisdom and self?helping tradition. Now politically autonomous, Nunavut has a
rapidly evolving culture critically dependent on external assistance. But
the people long deeply to renovate and preserve their traditional internal
helping and healing practices. Issumatuq aims to assist professional social
workers create an ambience where Inuit helpers can take leadership roles in
that task. Minor can also provide points and methodology worth review as the
Church evaluates its twentieth century efforts to inculturate the Gospel in
the Canadian Arctic, and to adapt our way of proceeding to the realities of
a Nunavut trying to keep cultural autonomy against relentless and
irreversible Euro?Canadian incursion. Continued development of Inuit
catechist couples, and establishment of aboriginal clergy, deacons, priests,
and bishop, to support a spirituality both Catholic and Inuit, are the most
obvious examples of church helping practice.

Lately an instructor in the Lakehead University School of Social Work, Minor
functioned from 1974 to 1984 first as a social worker, and then as a
supervisor and superintendent, among the Inuit and Inuvialuit at Inuvik,
Cambridge Bay, and lqaluit. First hand experience with camp culture enabled
her to refine, in her doctoral dissertation, a simple method of categorizing
information and some of the factors that affect the group, the individual,
and the environment, into what she calls a "cultural-specific Design".
Though meant to guide the user in getting information, the Design itself is
not research oriented. Rather it is a scheme to assist social workers and
helpers, like those active in our Churchill-Hudson Bay apostolate, to
provide more effective and culturally appropriate helping within any
specific culture. Helping (and spiritual healing, especially) must, as her
basic premise insists, be developed or adapted with approaches peculiar to
the history and current needs of the culture.

Minor's Design, or perhaps better, Data Organization Scheme for helping
methodology, shows three interrelated levels, all stemming from the author's
reflection on her Arctic experience. Level 1 considers data relating to the
physical survival of the group and of the individual. For the Inuit case,
these include environmental influences, shamanistic practices, religious
beliefs, and worldview. Level 11 is a bipartite analysis of the social and
psychological survival of the group. First, intracultural helping resources
such as family structure, social customs, language, artistic and oral
tradition, are considered. External influences on the culture, such as
traders, whalers, and the individual's spiritual and physical well-being ; a
person's value to the group, peer acceptance, identity, and sense of self,
all come into play here.

Consistent with the essay as a faculty of Social Work dissertation, Minor's
introduction is a technical explanation of her methodology, basic
principles, and use of academic and field sources. Four chapters present the
hardships of physical survival in the Arctic and Inuit ways of meeting them
(ch. 1) ; the traditional Inuit values of scooperation, sharing and trust
developed for psychological and social survival (ch. 2) external visitors
and intruders impinging on Inuit culture (the Christian missionaries, at
length, ch. 3) ; the modem young Inuk within the group (ch. 4). A Summary
and Conclusion pulls the chapters together ; it can usefully be read first.
Rather than evaluate here the overall validity of Minor's Design, we will
consider some specifically Inuit data and Oblate missionary experience that
she adduces, in the course of her explication, to illustrate the three
Levels in the Design.

According to Minor (ch. 1), Inuit belief in the spirit world, and the
helping role the shaman played in their culture were two essential factors
for their physical survival in that earlier era. The confrontation of
Christianity (Oblate missionaries, in particular) and shamanism occupies
Minor's attention in chapter 3. Her treatment of traditional shamanistic
helping practice (described purposely only in a sketchy way) relies in part
on personal knowledge. Some elderly Inuit, themselves once practitioners,
confided information to her, an outsider, which she has not published here
or elsewhere for review. Catholic and Anglican missionaries did not in
general enjoy such confidences, no doubt because of their denunciations of
shamanism as the work of the devil, and the reluctance of shaman converts to
discuss their former practices.

Minor draws on the reports Bishop Armand Clabaut, o.m.i., published in
Eskimo magazine (vv. 27?29, 1952?1953) about the conversion and baptism of
Pelly Bay Inuit after Father Pierre Henry, o.m.i. (Kayoaluk), used Western
medicine and Christian prayer to restore the sight of a blind woman. On
another occasion, when the Inuit feared demonic infestation of their camp,
Father Henry left his mission to bless the now vacant but quiet tent ; on
return to the mission he told the Inuit : "You can go back now, the Sign of
the Cross has cased the devil away." Diligent efforts like these
("theatrics" in Minor's words, p. 70) earned Father Henry and his associate
Father Van de Velde, o.m.i., the respect of Pelly Bay people. In due time
the entire camp was baptized and became practicing Catholics. The shamans'
role, for good or bad, was constrained, but not completely eradicated (Minor
notes some of her shaman sources were still practicing, and reports of
shaman activity persist to this day). But the missionaries' seizure of power
from the shamans interrupted, in her reading, the traditional helping
practices, and disrupted camp harmony. Not surprisingly, Father Lionel
Ducharme, o.m.i. (Mikilar), saw things differently in his Eskimo magazine
report (v. 33, 1954, 7?10) that Minor cites (p. 67).

Minor thought (in 1992)the Pelly Bay Inuit the most psychologically healthy
community in the Arctic : their traditional strengths ensured that
"missionary influences did not destroy their well being" This raises the
complex question of what is universal and salvific in Roman Catholic
Christianity, helping and healing, and what is only external cultural
formulation? How could Euro?Canadian Catholic Oblates help Pelly Bay Inuit ?
Minor is committed to a helping Design that rightly puts great emphasis on
the leadership of intracultural helpers, and on cooperation by
non?indigenous helpers sensitized to the culture's history and resources.
But this should not preclude external helpers from providing what the target
culture never of itself did or could produce, whether in the material or
spiritual order. Nunavut today can not survive physically without the
Euro?Canadian technology that it has however willingly allowed to change
profoundly and irreversibly its culture and life style, even though its
people have not yet contributed substantially to that technology or to the
cultures that developed it.

The psychological and social survival of the people poses a deeper and more
difficult question. Missionaries, Catholic and Anglican, hold it as a matter
of faith that the Gospel of Jesus Christ they proclaim is a liberation from
fatal error of mind and heart (original sin), a call to repentance, to
metanoia, a change of life. The Gospel is the Word that gives light on the
ultimate meaning and value of human life. To look at specifics in the case
of Inuit culture, the Gospel challenges traditional ideas about the
individual's two souls (the human soul and the name soul, for which see G.M.
Rousselière, Eskimo, v. 42, 1956, 10?12), and about the consequent
possibility of reincarnation that, according to Minor, grounded Inuit
acceptance of survival.

Today the scourge of suicide, especially among Inuit youth, is at crisis
stage, and far worse than that of the late 70s which Minor analyzes in
chapter 4. The emotional trauma, severe climactic conditions, and abuse of
alcohol she attributes as primary causes in the rise of the suicide rate at
that time should not be allowed to divert attention from the moral and
psychological damage done by acceptance of suicide as a resource for social
(and individual !) survival of the people of Nunavut. The many conferences
and seminars with native and southern participants that today search for
solutions to the suicide problem are at a loss how to resolve this problem
with indigenous cultural resources alone. But there will be no deep
healing/helping without an inculturated Gospel. Crisis lines and peer
counseling do not suffice. A deep and pervasive metanoia is needed most of
all.

An inculturated Gospel is not a Christianity "forced upon the people, ..., a
set of beliefs with little, if any, historical or cultural relevance",
undermining the Inuit belief in the supernatural that supported their
institutions and practices of helping, as Minor describes it (chapter 3, p.
76). Rather than going in search of the Inuit with the expressed purpose of
changing their beliefs, as she would have it, the missionaries, and the
Oblates in particular, proclaimed the truth of the Gospel and invited the
hearer to respond freely in faith. Catholic evangelization prior to the
Second Vatican Council (1962?1965), took place heavily laden with cultural
"packaging", to be sure. The use of Latin in the Roman Rite is a prime
example. Latin liturgy entered the Inuit imagination. Even today
Chesterfield Inuit and others in the Keewatin can sing well the Latin verses
of the Corpus Christi and other liturgical hymns. But cultural baggage did
not diminish the Inuit sense of transcendence or reverence for spiritual
realities. Eucharistic doctrine intensified their sense of community, and
strengthened the traditional will to share the gifts of earth and creation.
Today, Catholic liturgy celebrated in Inuktitut, thanks to Vatican 11, can
be a powerful factor in preserving that language which is a primary carrier
of Inuit culture, as Minor recognizes. Even more, it purifies every value
and gift the people know.

One can only agree with Minor's insistence that the Inuit must take
responsibility for preservation of their changing culture and control of
their own destiny. Yet today that culture is irreversibly linked to a
changing Euro-Canadian culture. The traditional Inuit helping processes that
Minor has laid out for the reader, and which she wants to be the foundation
for contemporary approaches, will inevitably be modified by southern
considerations, economic ones, if no others. It does not seem possible, or
good, that Euro?Canadians relinquish the process of "helping" to the Inuit
themselves, as Minor seems to wish (p. 89). The Euro-Canadian missionaries'
role is to phase themselves out in favor of Inuit pastors, of course. But
they must and will leave with the Inuit the Gospel, the salvific Word, that
itself was handed on to them in whatever cultural mode.

Better editing would have improved Issumatuq a great deal. Apart from lack
of an index for easy reference, and a number of typos, there is an
inconsistency between the subtitle "traditional healing wisdom" on the
paperback cover and "traditional helping wisdom" on the title page.
Bibliographical references need to be checked, in particular those to Eskimo
magazine (1946 ? ) and its brief predecessor Link (1945?6). Some authors of
personal letters cited are otherwise unidentified. Curiously, Father
Ducharme is cited as a witness for the history of Anglican missions to the
Inuit. Surely Anglican sources must have been known and available to the
author.

------- Forwarded message follows -------
From:            NYTimes.com <newstracker@...>
To:              <media@...>
Subject:         Times News Tracker: NunavutNYT (2 articles)
Date sent:       Sat, 30 Mar 2002 03:45:55 -0500 (EST)



News Tracker Alert: NunavutNYT
Sat Mar 30 03:17:31 2002
--------------------------------------

March 30, 2002 FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW  Film Society of Lincoln Center
Movies: A Far-Off Inuit World, in a Dozen Shades of White
NYT
By A. O. SCOTT
"The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat)"; directed by Zacharias Kunuk and based
on an ancient folk epic, is the first feature film made in the Inuktitut
language by an almost entirely Inuit cast and crew.

[Excerpts]

..."The Fast Runner," however, is not merely an interesting document from a
far-
off place; it is a masterpiece. Mr. Kunuk's film, which won the Caméra d'Or
for
best first feature at last year's Cannes International Film Festival, is
much
more than an ethnographic curiosity. It is, by any standard, an
extraordinary
film, a work of narrative sweep and visual beauty that honors the history of

the art form even as it extends its perspective....

... Because different camps and clans in the tribe depend on one another for

survival, Atanarjuat and Oki are continually butting heads - or, as in a
ritual
contest to decide who will marry Atuat, punching each other in the head. The

tragic cycle of vengeance and cruelty consumes them for years, but "The Fast

Runner" also abounds with humor and sensuality. Mr. Kunuk has accomplished
the
remarkable feat of endowing characters from an old folk tale with
complicated
psychological motives and responses. The combination of dramatic realism and

archaic grandeur is irresistibly powerful.

So is Mr. Zunuk's visual command. "The Fast Runner" includes some
unforgettable
sequences, shot in the smoky interiors of igloos, out on the ice and in
fields
of yellow grass and purple clover during the brief spring thaw. The most
astonishing scene - during which Oki and his minions, after a brutal assault
on
their enemy's tent, pursue the naked, barefoot Atanarjuat across a vast
expanse
of ice - has already become something of a classic, a word that will quickly
be
bestowed on the film as a whole. ....

[ Full story at...(requires free registration)... .ed ]
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/30/movies/30RUNN.html?tntemail0


March 30, 2002
International: Returning Tundra's Rhythm to the Inuit, in Film
NYT
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
Zacharias Kunuk has directed the first film about the Inuit, a group of
indigenous Asians who crossed into North America centuries ago.

[ Full story at...(requires free registration)... .ed ]
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/30/international/americas/30FPRO.html?tntemai
l0

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Image
  http://graphics4.nytimes.com/images/2002/03/30/international/30kunu.1.jpg
Robert J. Galbraith for The New York Times
"I would go back to the law of the Inuit, the law of nature. I would live
like
that while checking e- mail." ZACHARIAS KUNUK


[Excerpts]

...ZACHARIAS KUNUK'S film, "Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)," based on an
age-old
Arctic folk tale, has made him a celebrity of sorts. But frankly, he would
rather pass on the parties....
...THE Arctic is a big, blank canvas in Mr. Kunuk's hands. In "Atanarjuat,"
a
nearly three-hour movie full of exquisite icy landscapes, he uses an ancient

Inuit legend to show survival techniques and explore how love, hypocrisy,
jealousy and revenge drive life in a community divided by an evil spirit.

As the film has been shown across Canada's Arctic, entire Inuit communities
have been brought to tears watching a tale that until now has been handed
down
from generation to generation as a bedtime story.

Like Mr. Kunuk himself, "Atanarjuat" is alternatively reflective and
rambunctious, sorrowful and funny.

The movie is playing in theaters in France and the Netherlands and is
scheduled
for release in the United States and Australia in June. But Mr. Kunuk says
the
audience he cares most about are the 40,000 Inuit who live in isolated
settlements across Canada's north, especially the young people who he says
do
not know how to endure in the wilderness.

"It's about identity and showing people where they came from, but it's also
about survival," said Mr. Kunuk, whose soft brown eyes are set above cheeks
weathered like black chalk by the hostile climate. "Young people today
travel
from community to community, and when a storm blows we have to rescue them.
They don't know where they're going, they don't bring knives or saws to
build a
shelter out of ice, and they don't know how to do it."

"Atanarjuat" also functions as a how-to film, showing viewers how to build
an
igloo in a storm. This reflects how much life is changing here. People still

leave frozen walrus carcasses in their front yard for hungry neighbors. But
supermarkets and automated teller machines are quickly taking root.

MR. KUNUK and his art are a product of this revolution. He was born in a
shack
of frozen moss as the fourth child of 12, and was taken from his parents by
the
government so he would go to school.

"I saw a little bit of that old way before I was dragged to school; people
living in sod houses, hitching their dogs, and fathers going off for the day

hunting," he said. "And what else do you need? When I was 7, I didn't worry
about money or grades or how I looked."

His mother, Vivi, had a particularly lasting effect on him with her gripping

night-time storytelling and her personal connection to Inuit mysticism. She
grew up as the adopted daughter of a woman who lost one child after another
in
childbirth because of the curse of a jealous shaman, Mr. Kunuk said.

"I believe in shamans," he said. "If it were up to me, I would go back to
the
law of the Inuit, the law of nature. I would live like that while checking
e-
mail in the morning, calling halfway around the world to do business,
watching
wars in my living room on television. It is possible to do both in this
day."...
... "My generation," Mr. Kunuk said, sighing, "we used to drive on the land
in
dog sleds. Now we look out the window and say, `It's a nice day. Shouldn't
we
be out there?' That's where I want to take the audience."


------- End of forwarded message ---------
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   George Lessard, living @ 61.10N 94.05W
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From: "David Duthie" <David.Duthie@...>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 14:39:47 +0300
To: bioplan@...
Subject: BIOPLAN - REQUEST BY WIPO FOR TK REFERENCES

bioplan
"David Duthie" <David.Duthie@...>
Dear BIOPLANNERS,

As I know that many of you follow matters relating to CBD and IPR/TK, you
might be able to assist with the following request (see below).

If you can, please send all relevant information to:

The Global Intellectual Property Issues Division at grtkf@...
or at
WIPO, 34, chemin des Colombettes, 1211, Geneva 20 (Switzerland), Fax  41 22
338 8120.

Publications and online databases will, as far as possible and as
appropriate, be compiled into inventories that will be presented to the
third meeting of the Committee, to be held in Geneva from June 13 to 21,
2002.  The inventories will also be published on the WIPO web site at
www.wipo.int.

It would be appreciated if all replies could be sent before Friday, April
26, 2002.

Best wishes


David Duthie
E-mail:  david.duthie@...

***************************************************************

REQUEST FOR REFERENCES BY THE WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ORGANIZATION


Re: Inventories of Disclosed Traditional Knowledge-related Publications and
Databases.

1. There has been considerable concern in recent years that patents have
been granted for certain inventions that did not meet the fundamental
requirements of patentability when compared with the traditional knowledge
from which the inventions had been derived.  This traditional knowledge,
had it been known to the patent examiners at the time of the examination,
may have amounted to "prior art" and may have defeated any claim that the
invention was either 'novel' or 'inventive' and therefore patentable.

2. For example, a patent on the use of turmeric for wound healing was
revoked once the patented invention was compared with ancient Indian
documents that demonstrated that the invention was neither novel nor
inventive.

3. In response to numerous proposals that the status of traditional
knowledge as prior art would be considerably enhanced if patent examiners
had access to existing, documented traditional knowledge, the Secretariat
of the World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO"), as part of its
program of activities under the Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual
Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore, is
compiling two inventories which may be the basis of a useful resource to
prevent the granting of patents on disclosed traditional knowledge:

(a) An inventory of existing periodicals, journals or gazettes concerning
traditional knowledge-related issues; and
(b) An inventory of existing online traditional knowledge-related
databases.

4. The inventories will only contain references to traditional
knowledge-related publications and databases which are already in the
public domain.  Their objective is to help to prevent the granting of
patents on this knowledge.  WIPO has not collected and does not wish to
collect traditional knowledge itself.

5. The Secretariat of WIPO is seeking contributions to compile these
inventories. Relevant categories of traditional knowledge could include:
medicinal knowledge, including related medicines and remedies; agricultural
knowledge; scientific knowledge and technical knowledge.  The Secretariat
would particularly welcome information relating to existing traditional
knowledge-related national publications and databases compiled by and/or
with the prior informed consent of local communities and traditional
peoples.

Inventory of existing periodicals, journals or gazettes:
6.         WIPO would appreciate receiving the following details of
national periodicals, journals or gazettes concerning traditional
knowledge-related issues:

A.         Full Title:
B.         Publisher's name & contact details:
C.         Summary of content of publication:
D.         Publication ISSN number:
E.         Format of publication (paper, online, CD-ROM, Microfilm etc):
F.         Internet Address, where appropriate:
G.         Language(s) of publication:
H.         Frequency of publication (weekly, monthly, annual etc):

Examples of relevant national publications may be:
- The Honeybee Newsletter, published by the Society for Research into
Sustainable Technologies and Institutions, Ahmedabad, India;
- Le Voix du Paysan, published by SAILD, Yaounde, Cameroon;
- The Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, published by the Nuffic
Centre for International Research and Advisory Network; and
- The Journal of Ethnopharmacology, published by Elsevier Science Ireland
Ltd.

Inventory of existing online traditional knowledge-related databases:
7.         WIPO would appreciate receiving the following details of online
databases concerning traditional knowledge-related information:

A.         Internet address;
B.         Database title:
C.         Summary of content of database:
D.         Name, contact details of compiler(s) of database; individual(s),
institutions,  communities etc:
E.         Name and contact details of publisher(s) of database:
F.         Approximate size of database: i.e. number of entries:
G.         Language of database:

Examples of relevant databases may be:
- http://www.taiga.net/webdata/aklaviktk/ - Sources of Documented Yukon
North Slope Traditional Knowledge;
- http://www.nativeknowledge.org - Alaska Traditional Knowledge and Native
Foods Database;
- http://www.umd.umich.edu/cgi-bin/herb - Native American Ethnobotany
Database compiled by the University of Michigan- Dearborn; and
- http://ip.aaas.org/tekindex.nsf - TEKPAD (Traditional Ecological
Knowledge Prior Art Database).

8.         Please send all relevant information to The Global Intellectual
Property Issues Division at grtkf@... or at WIPO, 34, chemin des
Colombettes, 1211, Geneva 20 (Switzerland), Fax  41 22 338 8120.

9.         Publications and online databases will, as far as possible and
as appropriate, be compiled into inventories that will be presented to the
third meeting of the Committee, to be held in Geneva from June 13 to 21,
2002.  The inventories will also be published on the WIPO web site at
www.wipo.int.

10.        It would be appreciated if all replies could be sent before
Friday, April 26, 2002.

11.        Thank you, in advance, for your help in this matter.  Please
feel free to forward this message to any other individuals, institutions or
communities who may be in a position to make a useful contribution to
either of these tasks.


BIOPLAN is an electronic list server established by the UNDP-UNEP
implemented
  Biodiversity Planning Support Programmme and maintained by UNDP-GEF to
serve the
  global community involved in planning for national implementation of the
Convention on
  Biological Diversity. To unsubscribe (remove yourself) from this list send
a message to:
  majordomo@... with the subject line BLANK and the following text in
the body of
  the message: UNSUBSCRIBE  BIOPLAN followed by your e-mail address,
or go to http://stone/undpweb/bpsp/bioplan.cfm

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: IPR: Taiwanese singer found a global audience
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 18:47:44 -0500
From: "Dionne Stout,Tamara [NCR]" <Tamara.DionneStout@...>



-----Original Message-----
From: wgtrr.ocees@...
[mailto:wgtrr.ocees@...]
Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2002 7:51 AM
To: indknow@...
Subject: Taiwanese singer found a global audience


This article in today's Financial Times may interest indknowers.


Taiwanese singer found a global audience
By Mure Dickie in Taipei
Financial Times
Published: April 2 2002 19:35 | Last Updated: April 2 2002 19:47

Amid the international debate over intellectual property rights there
can be few tales as rich in cross-cultural irony as that of Taiwanese
aboriginal singer Difang, who died last week aged 81.

Difang, who was also known by his Chinese name Kuo Ying-nan, shot to
fame in his last decade after a hauntingly distinctive traditional
melody sung with his wife Ingay was incorporated without their knowledge
into a 1993 hit song by the European pop group Enigma.

Enigma, which had previously won notice for combining Gregorian chants
with sexy vocals and a danceable drumbeat, had stumbled across a
recording of the couple singing the traditional Elders' Drinking Song in
a compilation of indigenous Taiwanese music.

Difang knew nothing of the global success of Enigma's Return to
Innocence until an acquaintance recognised his voice on the track after
it was chosen as a theme for the 1998 Atlanta Olympics.

Exploitation is nothing new for Taiwan's Austronesian peoples, who were
masters of the island until European, Chinese and Japanese colonialism
began eating away at their autonomy in the late 16th century. Aborigines
now account for a tiny and largely disenfranchised fraction of the
island's population.

Intellectual property protection can also be a challenge in Taiwan,
where copying CDs is a mini-industry and where printing shops run off
unauthorised facsimiles of textbooks for just a few dollars.

But Enigma's musical borrowing did not go unchallenged. Backed by a
local record company, Difang and Ingay sued in US courts and ended with
a 1999 settlement that associates say granted them a hefty sum in
compensation.

Above all, the suit brought recognition. "The most important thing was
not the money. It was to show the world that this was really the sound
of an aborigine from Taiwan and that his name was Difang," said Hsiao
Ju-hsien of Magic Stone Music, the couple's record company.

In the end, the case turned Difang, an elder of the Ami people who live
mainly in eastern Taiwan, into a voice for his people's culture.

Difang's fame, which friends say left his character unchanged, inspired
interest in the musical heritage of Taiwan's indigenous peoples. He and
other aboriginal singers created a new market for traditional music in
Taiwan.

Difang's 1998 album of Ami songs, Circle of Life, sold better than many
mainstream pop offerings. But the album itself underlined the power of
cultural borrowing: most of the songs featured contemporary drum rhythms
and synthesizer backing matched to Difang's soaring vocals. The
stylistic similarities with the work of Enigma were unmistakeable.


http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT3DDC52KZC&live=tr\
ue&tagid=ZZZC19QUA0C&subheading=asia%20pacific

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [NatNews-north] BC, Vote on Indian Treaties Sparks Anger in
Canada
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 22:30:58 -0500
From: Senior Staff <ishgooda@...>
Reply-To: NatNews-north-owner@yahoogroups.com
To: NatNews-north@yahoogroups.com

Vote on Indian Treaties Sparks Anger in Canada
http://webcenter.newssearch.netscape.com/aolns_display.adp?key=20020401165300021\
7640_aolns.src

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Residents on Canada's Pacific
Coast will be asked this week to endorse a tougher provincial government
line in a century-old battle over Native land rights, but the referendum
may prove as much of a quagmire as treaty talks have been.

The British Columbia government wants voters to endorse eight
"principles", including opposition to the "expropriation" of private
land claimed by Indians for treaty settlements and limiting Native self
governments to the same powers the province grants to local non-Native
communities.

Supporters of the mail-in referendum say it will engage citizens
directly in the treaty process. Critics call the vote an attack on
minority rights, and warn it will lead to civil disobedience and
economic uncertainty.

"The referendum is about reinvigorating a moribund treaty process that
has been under way for a decade and has yet to come up with a single
agreement," Attorney General Geoff Plant said last week after a court
rejected an effort to block the government from mailing the ballots.

Voters will begin receiving the ballots as early as Tuesday and have
until May 15 to mail them back. They will be asked to vote "yes" or "no"
on eight questions the government says will quide its negotiating
position if approved.

According to the government, there are 197 native bands and tribal
nations in British Columbia, such as the Nisga'a, Haida, Tis'kw'aylaxw
and In-SHUCK-Ch N'Quat'qua, but the aboriginal population comprises only
about 3 percent of the province's 4.09 million people.

Indians are among the province's poorest residents. Unemployment is high
on the reserves, and many Natives have ended up destitute in urban
neighborhoods such as Vancouver's drug-infested Downtown Eastside.

Native leaders often blame the situation on the loss of territory and
traditional culture as European settlers began spreading across Western
Canada in the mid 1800s.

British Columbia was the only Canadian province to officially ignore a
1763 directive from the British Crown that required land treaties be
signed with native Indians.

In 1973, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Indians, referred to as
"First Nations", had "aboriginal title" to their traditional lands, and
in 1990 British Columbia agreed to enter three-way negotiations with the
tribes and with the federal government in Ottawa.

Treaty talks, however, have stalled on issues such the legal structure
of native self-government, how much land Indian nations should receive,
compensation resources, and whether natives should be allowed to
maintain their current tax-free status.

British Columbia's only modern-day treaty, signed with the Nisga'a in
1999, was negotiated independently from other Native bands. The Nisga'a
received extensive self-government rights over 745 square miles (1,930
square km) and C$490 million ($306 million) in assorted compensation.

In response to complaints that the province gave too much to the
Nisga'a, the right-of-center Liberal Party promised during the 2001
provincial election to hold a referendum on the treaty process.

The Liberals swept the left-leaning New Democratic Party from power in a
landslide that gave them 77 of 79 legislative seats.

Premier Gordon Campbell has promised the referendum would not bring an
end to the negotiations, but it was not until last month that the
government decided exactly how the questions would be worded.

A judge last week rejected a claim that the referendum should not be
mailed out because the questions were too broadly worded, but Native
leaders have vowed to keep fighting.

"If we can't resolve treaties, and this referendum will kill treaties,
then we're going to create maximum economic uncertainty," said Chief
Judith Sayers of Hupacasath First Nation, which filed the lawsuit.

British Columbia's economy is dependent on resources such as timber and
minerals, and economists have warned that the uncertainty caused by a
lack of land treaties has become a major drag on economic development.

Referendum critics have warned it will lead to civil disobedience such
as road blockades, and have urged voters to boycott the balloting.

Government officials have denounced the threats.

"Making threats about boycotts and blockades won't feed a single hungry
aboriginal child or put a school book in the hands of a single
aboriginal child," Plant said.

Officials have not said how many of the ballots they expect to be mailed
back, but have said each "principle" will be considered approved if
endorsed by more than 50 percent of the votes cast.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [NatNews-north] N.W.T. museum, Nunavut divide up artifacts
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 20:57:08 -0500
From: Senior Staff <ishgooda@...>
Reply-To: NatNews-north-owner@yahoogroups.com
To: NatNews-north@yahoogroups.com


N.W.T. museum, Nunavut divide up artifacts
WebPosted Apr 3 2002 09:14 AM MST
http://north.cbc.ca/template/servlet/View?filename=apr3museum

Yellowknife, N.W.T. - Negotiations to divide the collection at the
Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre are nearly complete.

About half of the 113,000 items will stay in Yellowknife and the rest
will eventually go to Nunavut.

Chuck Arnold, standing in front of two caribou coat skins in a display,
says negotiators from the two territories readily agreed the parka made
on Baffin Island would be moved to Nunavut.

The director of the museum adds that deciding what to do with the other
coat was more complicated. It was sewn by Copper Inuit who lived on both
sides of what is now the Northwest Territories and Nunavut border.

"Something like this is a grey area and really required a lot of
discussion as we decided where it would go," Arnold explains.

Negotiators looked at how many Copper Inuit garments the Prince of Wales
had and decided they could share.

After a year and a half of discussions that Arnold describes as
friendly, negotiators decided what to do with 95 per cent of the
artifacts and records at the Prince of Wales.

"In the rare instances where there might be non-agreement as to how a
particular collection should be divided, we are then going to have it
settled through a settlement mechanism," explains Anthony Saez with
Nunavut's Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth.

The next questions involve what to do with the display area at the
Prince of Wales once the artifacts have been packed away and where
Nunavut will store and display the items destined for the new territory.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [wto-info] NGO Treaty Aims to End Patenting of Life Forms
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 14:22:23 -0600
From: mritchie@...
To: dbain@...

WTO Info (wto-info@...)Posted: 04/03/2002  By  mritchie@...
============================================================





IPS-English ENVIRONMENT: NGO Treaty Aims to End Patenting of Life Forms

ROMAIPS NA EN IF
ENVIRONMENT: NGO Treaty Aims to End Patenting of Life Forms
By Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Apr 1 (IPS) - The battle over who should control the
planet's biological resources is heating up. While activists and
developing nations insist on more local control, the world's trade body
wants all countries to adopt a U.S.-style patent system.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) say they will demand that
governments at the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development sign
on to their ”Treaty Initiative to Share the Genetic Commons”, which
proposes to halt patenting of life forms and the creation of monopolies
over seeds, food and medicine.

”All genetic material should be free and available to everyone,” says
Alexia Robinson of the US-based Foundation on Economic Trends. ”The
global gene pool is a shared legacy and, therefore, a collective
responsibility.”

The treaty does not prevent a company from patenting a final product
that relies on genetic material, says Robinson. ”But simply finding a
gene in a plant or animal that has a certain trait should not be
patentable.”

Launched at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January,
the treaty has been signed by more than 325 NGOs.

The Genetic Commons treaty was sparked by the patenting of the neem tree
by a U.S. multinational company and that country's department of
agriculture in the early 1990s, says Robinson. The company, W R Grace,
obtained U.S. and European patents to use the tree's oil as an
anti-fungicide, but the neem had already been used in south Asia for
centuries for medicinal and agricultural purposes.

Enormous grassroots opposition and a five-year legal battle led to the
revoking of the patent in Europe but despite the Indian government's
opposition, the U.S. patent remains - as do nearly 100 other neem
patents in that country.

Indian activist Vandana Shiva says U.S. patent law allows companies to
pirate the uses and genetic heritage of plants or animals in other
countries, patent them, and protect them as ”intellectual property”.
Thousands of patents have already been filed this way, a process Shiva
terms ”biopiracy” and ”biocolonialism”.

”Our initiative improves upon other international agreements dealing
with this issue in one very fundamental aspect. We oppose the extension
of intellectual property rights to any living thing as well as the
components of the living things,” says Shiva, director of the Research
Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology.

But the World Trade Organization (WTO) thinks other countries should
adopt U.S. rules on patents, says Chela Vazquez of the Institute for
Agriculture and Trade Policy. That way U.S. firms could file their
patents in those nations and gain full protection.

The WTO's deadline for governments to make those changes is 2005, adds
Vazquez. ”Countries that don't comply won't be able to trade with other
WTO/FTAA members,” she says.

The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) acknowledges countries
have sovereign rights over their natural resources. But in some cases,
countries and local communities have ”sold” or ”leased” their indigenous
intellectual property, a move Vazquez considers shortsighted and fraught
with difficulties.

It creates divisions within local communities, prevents access to
communal property such as seed and commodifies communities' heritage
says Vazquez. ”Intellectual property only works for those in the North.
Local communities in the South lose their independence and power.”

Another anti-biopiracy initiative will also attempt to reverse that
outcome..Twelve countries that are home to 70 per cent of the world's
biodiversity - Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Indonesia,
Kenya, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Venezuela - want better protection
than that offered by the CBD.

”Up to now, our nations have not benefited from this great wealth
because there hasn't been an equal sharing between the nations involved
nor with the rural and Indian groups that use and protect biodiversity,”
Mexican environment secretary Victor Lichtinger said in a statement.

At September's World Summit, the coalition will propose a new set of
rules, including the need to legally certify possession of biological
material and to get informed consent from traditional users of the
material before negotiating mutually agreeable terms for transfer.
(END/IPS/NA/EN/IF/SL/ML/02)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [tech.cid] Call for Papers: Commodities, Locality and
Globalization
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 08:54:14 -0800
From: "M. Derya Honca" <m_derya_honca@...>
Reply-To: "M. Derya Honca" <m_derya_honca@...>
To: "Technology Update" <tech.cid@...>

<<<<<<<<<<<<SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION UPDATE>>>>>>>>>>>>

<<<<<<<<<<<<<http://www.cid.harvard.edu/cidtech/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

COMMODITIES, LOCALITY AND GLOBALIZATION

The International Journal of Technology and Globalization
<http://www.cid.harvard.edu/cidtech/IJTG/IJTG.html> is seeking
contributions to a special issue on "Commodities, Locality and
Globalization."

The convergence between rapid technological innovation and globalization
has been a major source of concern over the future of export communities
from developing countries for a long time. Fears about outright
displacement of export commodities by substitutes are being accompanied
by new trends involving product differentiation based on diversity in
taste. This differentiation is also offering new possibilities for
ecologically-based niche products for global markets.

A special issue of the International Journal of Technology and
Globalization <http://www.cid.harvard.edu/cidtech/IJTG/IJTG.html> will
focus on this theme, emphasizing the relationships between technological
innovation, product differentiation and geographical distribution of
commodity origin. The papers will focus on policy options for dealing
with the prospects and challenges associated with these trends. The
Journal calls for papers based on trends in specific commodities (such
as coffee, tea, rice, beverages, fruits and vegetables). Preference will
be given to papers that cover the following issues: historical commodity
trends; market liberalization; geographical and ecological basis of
commodity sourcing; impact of innovation on product differentiation and
value chain transformation; diversity of tastes and implications for
product differentiation; redistribution of incomes from the commodities;
evolution of industry structure; scientific and technological
capabilities in developing countries; intellectual property rights
(especially those related to geographical indications).

The deadline for the submission of manuscripts for the special issue is
August 1, 2002. Instructions on formatting papers can be found at
<http://www.inderscience.com/editorialindex.html>.
Manuscripts should be emailed to <calestous_juma@...> with
copies to  <derya_honca@...>.



>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The aim of this list is to announce updates to our website and
forthcoming events hosted by the Science, Technology and Innovation
Program, a joint activity of the Center for International Development at
Harvard University and the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program
at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard
University.

List-Subscribe: <mailto:subscribe-tech.cid@...>
List-Owner: <mailto:owner-tech.cid@...>
Archives: Select "Visit tech.cid Without Joining," then "Read Messages"
at
<http://silver.lyris.net/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?site=silver&enter=tech.cid>

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [NativeNews] AK, Voters want a voice on subsistence
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 11:36:49 -0500
From: Senior Staff <senior-staff@...>
Reply-To: NatNews-owner@yahoogroups.com
To: NatNews@yahoogroups.com

Voters want a voice on subsistence ELECTION Prop. 1 passes in Anchorage
by a landslide.

By Elizabeth Manning Anchorage Daily News
(Published: April 3, 2002)
http://www.adn.com/front/story/875311p-962770c.html

Anchorage voters spoke loudly and clearly to the Alaska Legislature in
an advisory vote at Tuesday's municipal election. Their message: Let us
vote on subsistence.

With all precincts reporting, nearly three of every four voters backed
Proposition 1. A yes vote on the advisory question urged state lawmakers
to put a constitutional amendment on subsistence before voters in the
November statewide election.

"It isn't binding in any way, but it's a message from the largest
community in the state," said Rep. Reggie Joule, a Native lawmaker and
Democrat from Kotzebue.

The result came as no surprise to supporters of the advisory vote. They
said they expected to win but now hope the Legislature will listen.

"We can say that the people of Anchorage have spoken," said Rob Shoaf, a
vice president at Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. and treasurer of a group
called Let Us Decide that formed to campaign for passage of Proposition
1.

The subsistence impasse results from a conflict between federal law and
the Alaska Constitution. A 1980 federal law requires the state to
recognize a rural preference for subsistence use of fish and game. The
state Supreme Court, however, has ruled that the state constitution
forbids such a preference. Supporters of a rural preference have tried
for years to get lawmakers to put an amendment before voters to change
the constitution, but key Republican state senators have blocked the
move.

Voters interviewed Tuesday said the Legislature needs a wake-up call.

"I think it's outrageous that the people haven't addressed it yet," said
Linda Kesterson, an attorney who voted at Inlet View Elementary School.
"I think it needs to go out to a vote."

Dave Cartier agreed. "The Legislature has utterly mishandled the
subsistence issue by not allowing Alaskans to vote on it," said Cartier,
a transportation supervisor for the Anchorage Senior Center.

But some who voted against the proposition said they don't think any
group of Alaskans should get a preference over others. "The Alaska
Constitution dictates equal protection for everyone," said Karen Bretz,
another attorney. "We should be treated the same."

What happens now depends on the Legislature. Two-thirds of both the
state House and Senate must agree for an amendment to reach the state
ballot.

Before Tuesday's election, several Republican senators said the
Anchorage advisory vote would carry little weight in Juneau.

Sen. Robin Taylor, R-Wrangell, said the Anchorage proposition should
have been more specific.

"It won't tell us anything," Taylor said. "Most people don't understand
what (a constitutional amendment) would actually do. And there are so
many different solutions."

Critics said the subsistence question didn't belong on the municipal
ballot because subsistence affects all Alaskans, not just Anchorage
residents.

"It's none of the Assembly's business," said Sen. Randy Phillips,
R-Eagle River.

"It's every Alaskan's business," countered Anchorage Assembly Chairman
Dick Traini, who sponsored the ordinance that placed the advisory
question on the local ballot.

If lawmakers still choose to take no action, Traini said, "that's
between them, their conscience and their constituents."

Trefon Angasan, vice president of the Bristol Bay Native Corp. and a
board member of the Alaska Federation of Natives, said urban support for
rural subsistence is crucial. If the Legislature doesn't listen to the
vote, he said, some AFN board members have discussed taking the issue to
Congress to seek a Native priority. This vote could bolster their cause,
he said.

"Without subsistence, our people are going to die," Angasan said. "We
need to make sure that subsistence is around as long as the user groups
need it."

If the state Senate continues to block a subsistence amendment, Native
groups may come to view Congress as the best venue for action on
subsistence, said Joule, the Kotzebue Democrat. "If Anchorage does pass
this overwhelmingly and the Legislature does nothing, I think it does
strengthen the argument for the Native community to go back to
Washington and seek other options," Joule said as votes were being
tallied.

Some supporters of Proposition 1 said they remain hopeful the outcome
will sway enough votes in the Legislature to put an amendment on the
ballot in November. If not, voters may change the balance by electing
new lawmakers this fall, they said.

"If I were a candidate up for re-election, this would be difficult for
me to ignore," said Carl Brady Jr., chairman of Let Us Decide.

Brady, an Anchorage insurance broker, said he got involved in the
campaign primarily because he wants Alaska to regain control of
subsistence fish and game management. The federal government took
control of managing subsistence fisheries on waters flowing through or
adjacent to federal lands in 1999, after the Legislature failed to send
an amendment to voters.

The campaign on the advisory vote was lopsided. Let Us Decide raised
about $150,000 to pay for a flurry of television, radio and print ads
featuring prominent Alaskans supporting the proposition. Much of the
money came from Native corporations.

Although the measure had critics, no group organized to oppose it. The
Alaska Outdoor Council asked its members to vote against it and spent
some money for radio advertising, but the campaign wasn't a high
priority, said the group's executive director, Jesse Vanderzanden. He
said he didn't see the vote as much of a threat, since most of the key
lawmakers said it wouldn't change their minds.

"This was just an advisory vote," Vanderzanden said. "If it would have
been the real issue, certainly you would have seen a heightened
awareness."

Reporters Anne Marie Tavella and Nicole Tsong contributed to this story.
Reporter Elizabeth Manning can be reached at emanning@... or 907
257-4323.

For the latest city election returns, see the municipal Web site at
http://www.muni.org/assembly2/2002.cfm

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Peltier press release - forward widely!
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 09:06:12 -0600
From: "lpdc" <lpdc@...>
To: dbain@...

PRESS RELEASE FOR LEONARD PELTIER BELOW!


Friends,

Below is the press release for the lawsuit that will be filed TOMORROW
on Leonard Peltier's behalf.  Please forward it far and wide to your
local media and to other supporters.  Please be sure that the release
date remains in tact.  We do not want coverage on this before the case
is filed tomorrow. We do, however, want to give reporters a chance to
write their stories today so that it can hit the press tomorrow.  Also
note that this has been distributed to all national news sources
already, so we just need to focus on everyone's local press.  You may
want to follow up with phone calls to your paper, radio and TV stations
to request they cover the story given that a local support group or
supporters exist in the area.  Let us know if you have any questions.
THANK you for your help and support!

In Solidarity,
LPDC

PS A formatted version can be downloaded from our web site:
http://www.freepeltier.org
________________________________________________________
RELEASE DATE:  THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2002

Contact:
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee (785) 842-5774; lpdc@...


NATIVE AMERICAN ACTIVIST FILES LAWSUIT AGAINST FBI

         Former FBI Director Louis Freeh is named as a defendant in a
lawsuit filed today by attorneys for imprisoned Native American
activist, Leonard Peltier.  Freeh, along with the FBI Agents Association
and a long list of active FBI agents, are accused of violating Peltier's
Constitutional rights by making false and unsupported statements to the
public, the Department of Justice, the United States Parole Commission,
and former President Clinton. The complaint, filed in U.S. District
Court, Washington D.C., alleges that the FBI "engaged in a systematic,
and officially sanctioned campaign of mis-information and
dis-information" designed to prevent Peltier from receiving fair
clemency and parole reviews.

             The suit follows a highly controversial campaign conducted
by the FBI to stop former president Bill Clinton from issuing Peltier a
grant of executive clemency during his last days in office.  FBI agents
across the nation submitted letters to the editor, sponsored major
newspaper and radio ads, and marched by the hundreds in front of the
White House to discourage clemency.  Former FBI Director Louis Freeh
wrote searing letters to Bill Clinton and Janet Reno, to urge against
Peltier's release.  The campaign, which gained national attention,
characterized Peltier as a cold-blooded killer who brutally shot two FBI
agents at point blank range.  Peltier's attorneys and supporters assert
that this characterization is not only false but intentionally deceptive
given the government's long held position that it cannot prove who shot
the agents.  Furthermore, they say it cost Peltier, now 57 years of age
and in poor health, his long deserved freedom.

             Peltier has served more than 26 years in prison for the
deaths of two FBI agents killed in a 1975 shoot-out on the Pine Ridge
Indian Reservation.  Peltier's supporters claim the FBI terrorized
witnesses, utilized false testimony and withheld a ballistic test
proving Peltier's innocence to gain his conviction.  Senior Eighth
Circuit Judge Gerald Heaney, who denied Peltier a new trial based on a
legal technicality, has since come forward to support Peltier's release,
citing FBI misconduct. Amnesty International, the Kennedy Memorial
Center for Human Rights, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rigoberta Menchu Tum,
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Corretta Scott King, and scores of Native
tribes are among those who consider Peltier a political prisoner who
should be freed.

(Complaint will be posted on LPDC web site on April 4:
www.freepeltier.org . Interviews with lawyer handling case and
spokespeople for the LPDC can be arranged).





Until Freedom Is Won!
The New Peltier Justice Campaign

Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
PO Box 583
Lawrence, KS 66044
785-842-5774
www.freepeltier.org

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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [ConserveAfrica] Morocco symposium on Mrdicinal Plants:Rabat,
2-4 May 2002
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2002 11:20:00 +0100
From: "Conserve  Africa  International" <info@...>
Organization: Conserve Africa International
To:
<phytomedica@yahoogroups.com>,<reseau-phytomedica@...>,<conserveafri\
ca@yahoogroups.com>,<Greentour@yahoogroups.com>

INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON MEDICINAL PLANTS AND PHYTOMEDICINES:

Workshop and Colloquium:Rabat, Morocco on 2-4 May 2002.

We are pleased to inform  anyone interested in attending the meeting
that we have extended the deadline for registration until 15 April 2002.
The registration fees  will remain unchanged until that date.

If you did not have an opportunity to register, you can register now.
The full information on the content and administrative procedures of the
meeting are available  at:

http://www.conserveafrica.org

http://www.multimania.com/congres2002pma


For more information about Morocco and its tourism attractions, please
visit:
http://www.tourisme-marocain.com/
and
http://www.tourism-in-morocco.com/welcome.htm


PLEASE NOTE THAT:
Wednesday 1 May 2002 is an International public holiday.












[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: URGENT MEDIA ADVISORY: Burning of Referendum Ballots TODAY in
Vancouver (April 4th)
Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2002 10:07:55 -0800
From: Joint Policy Council <jpc1@...>
Organization: Union of BC Indian Chiefs

Attention News/Assignment Editors

MEDIA ADVISORY
April 4, 2002

Burning of Referendum Ballots TODAY

Vancouver, BC – The distribution of the provincial referendum ballots
has begun.  Chairs of the following tribal councils and numerous chiefs
from different communities will speak to their opposition of the
referendum and in protest will burn ballots.

A press conference will be held at the Pacific Palisades Hotel (1277
Robson Street, Vancouver) at 2:00 PM today.

Present will be:

Chief Mavis Erickson, Chair – Carrier Sekani Tribal Council
Debbie Jeffrey, President – Tsimshian Tribal Council
Chief Allan Weselowski – Chair, Carrier Chilcotin Tribal Council
Chief Bill Cranmer – Chair, Kwakiutl District Council
Chief Gary Oker – Chief, Doig River First Nation
Chief Dan Wilson – Chair, Okanagan Nation Alliance
Pauline Terbasket – Executive Director, Okanagan Nation Alliance
Chief Stewart Phillip – President, Union of British Columbia Indian
Chiefs

As well as numerous chiefs from different communities will be in
attendence.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

Chief Mavis Erikson   Cell: (250) 614-1162
Chair, Tsimshian Tribal Council

Chief Stewart Phillip   Cell: (250) 490-5314
President, UBCIC

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: UBCIC Press Release: Broad Coalition Building Against Immoral
Referendum
Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2002 17:23:03 -0800
From: Joint Policy Council <jpc1@...>
Organization: Union of BC Indian Chiefs

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 4, 2002

Broad Coalition Building Against Immoral Referendum

(Vancouver, Coast Salish Territory/April 4, 2002)  Tribal council
representatives held a press conference today to speak their opposition
of the current provincial referendum process.  In protest,
representatives from the 16 tribal councils symbolically burned ballots.

Chief Stewart Phillip, President of the Union of British Columbia Indian
Chiefs was present and commented afterwards “Today was the first of many
events where people from across the province will actively boycott the
referendum.  The process is a sham and only serves to vilify our efforts
to reconcile our Aboriginal Title and Rights with the Province of
British Columbia and the Government of Canada.”

First Nations have a constitutional relationship with both the
Provincial and Federal governments.  Section 35 of the Constitution of
Canada guides the current relationship and has been clarified through
the various court decisions.  The referendum process continues the
longstanding adversarial approach undertaken by both the Provincial and
Federal Government of their outright refusal to recognize Aboriginal
Title and Rights.

Chief Phillip concluded, “We are working with a growing coalition of
political, labour, church and concerned citizens who all agree that
referendum is immoral and unconscionable.  We will be advocating an
‘active boycott’ and will be soon encouraging people, in the coming
days, to direct their ballots to one of many collection points
throughout the province.”

– 30 –

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

Chief Stewart Phillip   Cell: (250) 490-5314
President, UBCIC

-----Original Message-----
From: David Lewis [mailto:coyotez@...]
Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 1:28 PM
To: nasualumni@yahoogroups.com; indigenousanth-uo@yahoogroups.com;
sovernspeakout@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [sovernspeakout] Fw: ANY ORGANIZATION NEEDS A COMPUTER?


FYI
----- Original Message -----
From: AWTC
To: kanakamaoliallies-l@...
Cc: thetick@...
Sent: Monday, April 01, 2002 11:10 AM
Subject: FW: ANY ORGANIZATION NEEDS A COMPUTER?


I don't know if this already circulated - if not, please forward to
interested parties.



John McClain



-----Original Message-----
From: Halcyon Liew
Sent: Friday, March 29, 2002 2:11 PM
To: Program
Subject: ANY ORGANIZATION NEEDS A COMPUTER?





Gateway Olympic Sponsorship PC Donation Program"
Following the completion of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake
City, Gateway will donate up to 4,500 computers.  Grant consideration is
limited to eligible organizations recognized by the IRS as a nonprofit
entity, with priority given to schools and community centers whose
programs help enhance access to technology for traditionally under-served
communities.  Any organization interested in being considered must
complete an online application; faxed or written applications will not be
accepted. The application will be posted on the website from April 2 to
July 31, 2002.
http://www.gateway.com/olympics/donations.shtml



---
Incoming mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.338 / Virus Database: 189 - Release Date: 3/14/2002




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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [ConserveAfrica] Smoked salmon or roasted goat? (EA IYE
conference press release)
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2002 23:01:07 -0500
From: "Anne Loehr" <anne@...>
Reply-To: "Anne Loehr" <anne@...>
To: "info@..." <anne@...>

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Nairobi, Kenya (April 5, 2002) Smoked salmon or roasted goat? An odd
combination perhaps, but that's what happens when you combine East
African tribal leaders with western ecotourism gurus.

The U.N. declared 2002 the International Year of Ecotourism (IYE) and
Kenya played host to the largest regional IYE conference to date on
March 20-22. The Nairobi conference brought together governments,
businesses, tribal villagers, aid agencies and conservationists to
create future strategies for East African ecotourism, including
strategies on village land rights, national and international ecotourism
policy, wildlife protection, wildlife planning and business ventures.

220 representatives from as far afield as Ghana, France and Botswana
mingled with those from Zanzibar, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda and
America. Over 100 East African local village participants attended, the
most community members at any of the IYE regional conferences. While
there, they all outlined how ecotourism has affected their lives and
livelihoods.

The aim of the conference was to share knowledge, ensuring that local
cultures and communities understood ecotourism principles and that the
western 'gurus' understand local problems, concerns and backgrounds.
Strategic plans to move forward with regional ecotourism and
recommendations for action will be presented at the Quebec World
Ecotourism Summit in May 2002 by one representative each from Kenya,
Tanzania and Uganda.

The following key points were made:

- Ecotourism as a business activity must be commercially viable,
environmentally sound and market driven, while supporting the local
communities directly and indirectly. Benefit sharing between the tourism
partners needs to be equitable, with established legal agreements that
define transparency and accountability from all sides. These agreements
need to address issues of respect toward the local culture and
indigenous knowledge of the community.

- All tourism partners should be involved in the development of the
ecotourism business plan from the outset, especially local villagers.
This is especially important for those villages neighbouring protected
wildlife areas.

- Traditionally, local villagers have been the custodians of the natural
resources; they have specific strengths and can be allocated
responsibilities within the development of ecotourism.

- National policies must clearly identify tourism partners and their
relationships, as well as establish the national guidelines, codes of
conduct and best practices that pertain to the conservation aims of
ecotourism. The policies should also clarify land tenure issues defining
use, ownership rights and responsibilities over the natural resources.
Finally, national policies should encourage community owned, sustainable
ecotourism activities, as well as provide incentives toward the
development of ecotourism initiatives.

- Any regional and/or international policy should strive to coordinate
national, regional and international standards.  Policies should include
proper land-use management and attempt to minimise human-wildlife
conflicts.

The East Africa IYE conference was hosted by the African Conservation
Centre, Conservation International, Eco-resorts, the Ecotourism Society
of Kenya, The International Ecotourism Society, Rainforest Alliance and
UNEP.


For further information, contact:
Anne Loehr
Eco-resorts

Tel: 254-122-32161
Fax: 1-801-991-7410
Email: anne@...
www.eco-resorts.com

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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Beyond the Commons
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 10:41:49 -0500
From: Anthony McCann <mccannat@...>
Reply-To: Ecol/Env Anthropology <EANTH-L@...>
To: EANTH-L@...

Hello,

I would like to invite you to visit http://www.beyondthecommons.com,
where I have posted my doctoral thesis. The thesis posits a model of the
process and practices of enclosure (chs 1, 7-9). It may be of interest
to anyone concerned with issues of enclosure, common property/pool, or
those with a general interest in authority-as-certitude, power,
legitimation, or hegemony. There is an abstract on the site.

All the best,

Anthony McCann
Post-doctoral Research Fellow
Smithsonian Institution

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [NativeNews] Salmon, the 'silver needle that sews us all
together'
Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 22:40:57 -0500
From: Senior Staff <senior-staff@...>
Reply-To: NatNews-owner@yahoogroups.com
To: NatNews@yahoogroups.com

Salmon, the 'silver needle that sews us all together'

Friday, April 5, 2002
By CANDY HATCHER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/hatcher/65411_candy05.shtml

The amazing story of salmon is familiar enough to Northwest natives.

But not the way the Salmon Fool tells it. Not the story told with clay
and fabric, folklore and perspective. Not with hues of purple and red
and azure blue, or names such as Wrong Way Finnegan, Salmon a la King,
Luna Lox and Salmon-Chanted Evening.

These 8-foot salmon sculptures, decorated by various artists, may remind
you of Seattle's whimsical Pigs on Parade. But these salmon have more of
a connection to the Northwest, the same way horses symbolize Kentucky.

The artful salmon have traveled many miles on a mission, much like their
living counterparts in rivers and streams. They were built and
decorated, and will be displayed tomorrow and auctioned next week, to
educate people about the legendary fish and to raise money for local
salmon-restoration efforts.

The art is one of many salmon- restoration efforts, and symbolic of the
hard, physical labor of schools, neighborhoods and environmental
organizations to restore streams and reduce pesticide use.

They're lovely sculptures that give you some idea of the energy and
resiliency of the fish. But to better understand their magic, pull up a
bucket and sit with me in Tom Jay's studio in the woods of Chimacum, a
little town south of Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula.

Listen as the sculptor and his wife, fellow artist Sara Mall Johani,
tell about their efforts to capture the history, beauty and legacy of
the fish.

JAY, 59, IS one of those gifted people who can see parallels in history,
nature, literature and life. He reads the dictionary the way most of us
pick up a novel before bedtime. He takes pleasure in understanding the
roots of words, the metamorphosis of an idea.

Take the word art, for example. It comes from the Latin word "artus,"
which means joint. Movable joint. "Art," he said, "is supposed to move
you.

"In the art world, everything is relative. But salmon have taught me
that everything's not relative. Everything's related."

Jay was about 23, making a living on a fishing troller in Alaska, when
he first experienced the strength of a salmon. The skipper, who had a 4-
or 5-foot king salmon on his line, yelled for Jay to bring the net. "I
was trying to come up behind the fish," he said. The salmon broke the
100-pound test leader and was gone.

He knew salmon were beautiful examples of resilience and sacrifice,
important to our history, culture and survival. He knew their life cycle
-- how they spawn in rivers, migrate to the ocean, then swim hundreds of
miles upstream, climbing ladders and jumping waterfalls, to come back to
the place they were born. They lay their eggs, then die, and their
carcasses nourish the rivers and forests.

But years later, walking by a creek one winter evening, Jay heard a
splash, then watched as a big coho made its way upstream. This creature,
he thought, an endangered species, could teach him a great deal about
life.

Jay began looking for ways to incorporate salmon -- which in Celtic
folklore is the embodiment of wisdom -- in his art. Restoring salmon
habitat became his passion.

If we let the rivers and forests slide to the point where salmon
disappear, he said, a crucial piece of who and what we are goes with it.

"COMMUNITY," Jay said, comes from "munus," which means "gift." "Co"
means "together." So "community" is sharing your gift.

That was Sara Mall Johani's intention 2 1/2 years ago when she invited
150 people in her community to talk about ways to increase attention to
salmon.

The core was a group of artists, creative and determined, who came up
with salmon art. Jay sculpted two fish. Johani did a third, and they
made nearly 100 copies to sell to organizations and businesses. In turn,
the buyers hired artists -- or decorated the sculpture themselves.

Olympia and Tacoma bought salmon and turned it into public art;
Jefferson County got 10. Two dozen decorated sculptures were then
donated for an auction April 13 at Pier 66. The proceeds from the sale
of each salmon will be given to the salmon-restoration project of the
sponsor's choice.

This week, Johani, who calls herself the Salmon Fool, trucked them to
neighborhoods throughout Seattle. They will be on display from 10 a.m.
to 3 p.m. tomorrow at Odyssey, the Maritime Discovery Center (for more
information, visit the Web site, www.soulsalmon.org).

"If artful salmon can generate cash and energy and draw attention to the
species," Johani said, "it would be acting in culture just like it does
in the watershed."

Salmon are more than just a Northwest icon. They're "the silver needle
that sews us all together."

"When people value salmon as a community asset," Jay said, "there is
reason for optimism."



P-I columnist Candy Hatcher can be reached at 206-448-8320 or
candyhatcher@...

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [NativeNews] Protesters oppose bison policy
Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 22:39:41 -0500
From: Senior Staff <senior-staff@...>
Reply-To: NatNews-owner@yahoogroups.com
To: NatNews@yahoogroups.com

story lead from Victor Rocha...thanks! www.pechanga.net

Protesters oppose bison policy
Associated Press
http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2002/04/05/build/l\
ocal/88-bison.inc

WASHINGTON (AP) - With lines of police and knots of curious tourists
looking on, Dan Brister donned a handmade paper bison mask and joined a
couple dozen others shouting at the entrance of the Agriculture
Department.

Brister and the others came to Washington Thursday to protest a
state-federal policy that allows Montana to capture bison that wander
from Yellowstone National Park, test them for disease and slaughter
those that are infected. The policy is intended to prevent bison from
spreading disease to Montana cattle.

After dressing as bison, toting placards and shouting slogans through a
megaphone, protesters also met briefly with USDA officials.

"We're trying to put pressure on the Department of Agriculture," said
Brister, a 32-year-old student from the University of Montana in
Missoula and a leader of the Buffalo Field Campaign, an activist group
that tries to prevent bison from being killed. "Somehow, we've allowed
cattle to take precedence over the wildlife in the park."

Agriculture Department officials called Thursday's meeting between
Forest Service Deputy Chief Sally Collins and the bison advocates
amicable and friendly. However, they also said the agency wasn't likely
to alter the joint state-federal management plan for handling wandering
buffalo.

At issue is how the federal government and Montana handle bison that
migrate out of the park in their search for food. The Yellowstone herds,
which park officials hope to keep at about 3,000, is the largest herd of
wild buffalo in the country.

Montana ranchers who graze their cattle on federal land outside the park
fear the bison will spread brucellosis to cattle herds. The disease
causes cows to abort. Montana spent 30 years and $33 million eradicating
the disease from its cattle herds.

An existing management plan, overseen by the Montana Livestock
Department and the U.S. Forest Service, a branch of the USDA, calls for
bison that leave the park to be hazed back into Yellowstone.

Those that can't be driven back are captured and tested for brucellosis.
Those that test positive are slaughtered.

More than 20 bison that left the park this winter were killed after
testing positive for brucellosis.

Opponents of the policy say there is no indication bison have ever
spread brucellosis to cattle. They argue killing those that test
positive is an inappropriate way to manage what are supposed to be wild
animals.

Copyright 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright © The Billings Gazette

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [NativeNews] CAMP JUSTICE: 'Killing field' still troubles
Lakota
Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 22:30:17 -0500
From: Senior Staff <senior-staff@...>
Reply-To: NatNews-owner@yahoogroups.com
To: NatNews@yahoogroups.com

story lead from Victor Rocha...thanks! www.pechanga.net

'Killing field' still troubles Lakota
Protests don't stop liquor, woe from flowing
By Gwen Florio Denver Post National Writer
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,53~503078,00.html

Thursday, April 04, 2002 - WHITECLAY, Neb. - Not so long ago they
marched here, held war lances high against the blue South Dakota sky,
toed their way across the Nebraska line on their way to battle. They
were confronting the enemy, these Lakota, an enemy that in the two
centuries since the white man's invasion has probably done them more
damage than his guns and disease combined.

Spurred on by the unsolved murders of two of their own, they took out
their grief and anger on the most obvious target - booze - and its most
obvious source: this town just on the other side of the state line from
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

The reservation is dry, but Whiteclay makes up for that.

The seedy stores lining its single paved street sell $4 million worth of
beer and malt liquor each year to the reservation's roughly 18,000
Oglala Lakota residents. Lakota people can walk the 2 miles to Whiteclay
from the town of Pine Ridge or drive the narrow, hilly roads from the
reservation's interior to buy beer here. Some of them drink too much of
it, and, too often, they die.

They get hit by cars walking home. Or pass out and freeze to death.
Drunken drivers get in accidents and kill themselves or others. Those
who make it home often die slower deaths, of cirrhosis or neglect. Or
they get in fights and kill one another.

Pick a lousy way to go and trace it back to booze. Then trace the booze
to Whiteclay.

"Whiteclay is a killing field," said Tom Poor Bear, whose brother, Wally
Black Elk, and cousin, Ronald Hard Heart, were killed in 1999 after an
evening of drinking in Whiteclay.

Poor Bear helped lead the demonstrators who vowed after the killings to
shut Whiteclay down. They set up a circle of tepees on the South Dakota
side of the state line, called it Camp Justice and swore to march from
the camp to Whiteclay every week until the killers were caught and the
flow of beer stopped.

Today, the killers are still at large. The fierce winter winds have long
since shredded the tepees' white canvas coverings, and the poles lean
lonely in the weedy field. The inhabitants of Camp Justice are no longer
purposeful demonstrators but bleary-eyed vagrants who spend their days
drinking in Whiteclay and their nights collapsed around the wood stove
that is all that remains of the camp.

And in Whiteclay itself, not one thing has changed.

Alcohol's deadly toll

Brian Blue Bird and Nathan Black Elk were among the marchers who tried
to close Whiteclay's stores. Last week, they stood outside those same
stores, sharing a tall can of Hurricane malt liquor and talking about
the widespread ravages of the disease they share with too many others.

"Just today, I buried my sister-in-law. She was only 37, and she died of
cirrhosis. She leaves five kids," Blue Bird said. He edged closer
against the side of an abandoned building that offered inadequate
protection against a bitter wind. "I'm a veteran," Blue Bird said. "I
was in Grenada with the 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles. Now I'm a
drunk."

Black Elk hit him up for a cigarette. "Cousin, don't smoke," Blue Bird
said gently.

"Directly or indirectly, alcohol affects everybody here," Cpl. John
Mosseau, a police officer in Pine Ridge, said of the reservation. Take
booze out of the equation, and 75 percent of his cases would disappear,
he estimated.

At night, Mosseau patrols the 2-mile stretch of road between the towns
of Pine Ridge and Whiteclay.

"Over 50 percent of all of the DUIs on the reservation" - the nation's
second-largest, spanning 7,000 square miles - "come on that road," said
Mosseau, recalling how, as a boy, he would climb the hill above the road
at night and watch for the inevitable moment when two sets of car lights
would collide.

Statistics compiled by the Indian Health Service show that
alcohol-related deaths kill Indians at an age-adjusted rate of 638
percent higher than that of all other races, said Terry Blue-White Eyes,
who heads Anpetu Luta Otipi, a substance-abuse program with facilities
around the reservation.

Blue-White Eyes has been at it for 15 years. Her annual budget for
treating the reservation's worst health problem amounts to a quarter of
the Whiteclay beer sales. "I got past my anger a long time ago," she
said - then immediately contradicted herself.

"No. I'm still angry. I'm angry that our people are in such a state of
abject misery that drinking is all they have to look forward to."

Shannon County, which encompasses Pine Ridge, is routinely listed as the
nation's poorest. Unemployment runs 85 percent on the reservation.
Housing is substandard, and there isn't enough of it. Whether people are
jobless and homeless because they're alcoholics or they drink because
there's no work and they live in crummy homes is a chicken-and-egg
problem that makes Blue-White Eye's head hurt. She took a deep breath
and lit a braid of sweetgrass for the calming scent it released into her
office in a mobile home off a dirt road in the center of the Pine Ridge
reservation.

Anpetu Luta Otipi is Lakota for "Living in a Red Day." "Red is the color
of strength. It's the good road to walk," she said.

Using a combination of conventional treatments and Lakota traditions
such as sweats and inipi (purification), the program has tilted at the
daunting statistics. Blue-White Eyes sees slow progress. Her own
observations tell her that more people than ever are abstaining from
drinking, a difficult stance to maintain when so many households contain
drinkers. Some of the abstainers are reformed alcoholics; others never
started. Social drinking - a beer or two while watching the game - is
almost unheard of on Pine Ridge.

"There's no in-between here," she said. "Either you drink till you're
drunk or you white-knuckle it."

"Nothing good happens'

Willie Pours a Hole drinks till he's drunk. A regular in Whiteclay, he
uses his knuckles, frequently, for fighting. Last year, he said,
pointing to a scar on his face, he got shot by another patron in one of
Whiteclay's stores.

"The only cops in this town are your left" - he held up one fist - "and
your right." He flailed with the other. As if to underscore his words, a
car skidded to a stop nearby. A young woman got out and ran to a station
wagon waiting at an intersection. She yanked another woman out of the
second car, punched her and threw her down into the mud, then sprinted
back to her own car.

"Nothing good ever happens here," Pours a Hole said. Then he asked for
money for beer. Pours a Hole, too, was among the marchers against
Whiteclay.

Liquor stores reopened

When the marches on Whiteclay started, 1,000 people joined in. They
posted "eviction" notices on the four liquor stores, set fire to one of
them, threw rocks through the windows of another.

The stores shut down for a few days but quickly reopened. Legally, there
is little the Lakota can do. Their claim that Whiteclay originally was
part of Pine Ridge - and so should revert to the reservation and become
dry - went nowhere.

Even if the Nebraska Legislature were to pass a proposed law setting a
5-mile buffer zone against beer and liquor stores near Indian
reservations, that law would not apply to existing stores. Shutting down
the stores, owners say, wouldn't solve the problem; in fact, it would
only cause people to drive farther to drink, thus putting more drunks on
the road, a view shared by many people on the reservation.

"You'd have to be awfully cold-hearted not to see the problems with
alcohol," said Stuart Kozal, who manages the Jumping Eagle store. "But
getting rid of Whiteclay is not going to solve the problem."

Although the first marches brought national publicity, fewer people
marched each time, and the demonstrations became less frequent before
stopping altogether this past fall.

"I feel I've failed them," Tom Poor Bear said of his dead brother and
cousin.

These days, Poor Bear drives frequently to the remains of Camp Justice,
bringing food and firewood and words of encouragement to the men who
stay there. When a reluctant spring finally takes hold at Pine Ridge, he
will repair the tepees. And he's already working the phones, trying to
organize a march for June 8.

"We will shake our fist at the enemy. We will nip at his heels," he
said. "We will turn our anger into something positive. We will open our
eyes to this situation. And this time, we will not look away."

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [NativeNews] CO, 2 face action in burial-site damage
Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 22:28:40 -0500
From: Senior Staff <senior-staff@...>
Reply-To: NatNews-owner@yahoogroups.com
To: NatNews@yahoogroups.com

story lead from Victor Rocha...thanks! www.pechanga.net

2 face action in burial-site damage
Ruins excavated in national forest
By Susan Greene Denver Post Staff Writer
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,53%257E505241,00.html

Thursday, April 04, 2002 - Two southern Coloradans have been indicted in
the defilement of an ancient Anasazi burial site in the San Juan
National Forest.

Their indictment March 12 stems from an October 2000 incident near
McPhee Reservoir near Dolores.

A Bureau of Land Management ranger said he observed Danny Rose of
Dolores and Tammy Woosley of Cortez "with shovels in hand digging in an
archaeological site."

They had "partially excavated a burial (site) containing human remains,"
according to a federal report.

Woosley turned over a rock object that an archaeologist has identified
as a funerary object from an Anasazi burial.

"Anasazi" is a Navajo name for farming people who were early residents
of southwestern Colorado.

The archaeologist estimates the damage will cost at least $500 to
restore.

Rose, 52, and Woosley, 41, face up to $500,000 in fines and a maximum of
12 years in prison.

They could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Said U.S. Attorney John Suthers: "Those who unlawfully hunt for
artifacts on public land must realize there will be consequences for
their actions."

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [NativeNews] Speaker: Sacred Sites Need More Protection
Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 22:02:34 -0500
From: Senior Staff <senior-staff@...>
Reply-To: NatNews-owner@yahoogroups.com
To: NatNews@yahoogroups.com

via ndn-aim

Friday, April 5, 2002

Speaker: Sacred Sites Need More Protection
By LISA CHAMLEY
P&D City Editor
http://www.yankton.net

VERMILLION, S.D. -- The native religions of American Indians aren't
recognized or protected under the U.S. Constitution, a Sisseton-Wahpeton
tribal elder said Thursday.

Jerry Flute, the executive director of the Association on American
Indian Affairs, said he has traveled across the country and spoken with
many different tribes about their respective theologies and customs.

His appearance on the University of South Dakota campus was part of the
30th annual Native American Cultural Festival held this week. He spoke
to a crowd of about 20 people.

During his travels, Flute said he "hit the cold reality that native
religion really has no standing when it comes to the First Amendment."

Flute said American Indians feel the same way about their sacred sites
that Christians and Jews feel about theirs. Mount Sinai, for example, is
one of the holiest sites in both theologies, but no one knows exactly
where Moses received his instruction from God.

He added that the burning bush experience correlated to the Indian
custom of "smudging," or purifying with smoke. Like other major
religions, it is customary to remove shoes when treading on holy ground.

"If it's a holy place, you have that respect," Flute said.

On that mountain, Moses received revelations and was given a code of
conduct. Flute said many Indian religions have similar stories.

Like Mount Sinai to the Judeo-Christian religions, Mount Shasta in
northern California is a holy place to the Wintun Indians. Flute said
the Wintun say that many years ago, holy men on Mount Shasta were
praying when a cloud descended and a man dressed in white appeared.

"He told them he was there as a messenger of God," Flute said. "He
instructed them in what they needed to relate to each other and avoid
chaos.

"The Wintun, from that point, used that teaching as the basis of their
native religion," Flute said. Even today, the Wintuns number only about
120, but they continue those ceremonies on Mount Shasta.

Similarly, another tribe in Arizona reveres a certain mountain because
it was there that a voice was heard, though no one was seen, Flute said.
That tribe's religious tenets were established from that experience,
Flute said.

The Mojave people on the Colorado River have a story that two "angels,"
so-called because they were dressed in white and had wings, descended
and taught to the people.

As one angel walked along the shore and spoke, the other appeared in the
middle of the river on a boulder. No footprints were made by the angel
who walked along the shore, but two perfect footprints were left on the
stone in the middle of the river.

"The Mojave looked at that as a very significant spiritual occurrence,"
he said, adding that stone became important to their theology.

When Hoover Dam was built, the area with the sacred stone was flooded.
Requests from the Mojave Indians to have the stone removed were
unanswered.

In South Dakota, tribes tell the story of the White Buffalo Calf Woman,
who appeared to two warriors on a search party.

"We see the similarities," Flute said. "We see that in our way, we don't
have the Bible, we don't have Scriptures, we don't have preachers
begging us for money on TV. But these are true stories, true theological
beliefs of the various tribes of the country. Almost every tribe in this
country has its own sacred places."

The Sioux Indians have four primary sacred sites: Medicine Wheel and
what is commonly called Devil's Tower, Wyo., and Harney Peak and Bear
Butte in the Black Hills.

"These are places we could go to for prayer. It has no difference, so we
see the similarities in the belief system," he said. "Without a
religious anchor, we just kind of float around here without any
direction."

"For native people, there is the strongest belief in the Creator, as
strong as any Christian belief," he said. "Native people are very
ceremonial ... We have these sites, and they're all important to who we
are as a people and what our future direction will be with this world,
with this life."

Flute spoke about attempts to protect the sites sacred to tribes. In
1988, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case in which four California
tribes sued the U.S. Forest Service for its intent to install a logging
road over a shrine on the top of a holy mountain.

Flute said the Supreme Court ruled the Forest Service can do what it
wants to on its own land, and "in destroying the shrine, it doesn't
destroy your religion."

"It took away our U.S. Constitutional First Amendment right," said
Flute. "If you're a Christian or Jew and the highway department was
going to [destroy] your church, you can go to court and probably win
unless you're an Indian."

Flute said for many American Indians, their church is Bear Butte, and
tribes tried for many years to stop development of the site as a tourist
attraction.

"The state said you lost that land. Again, Indian religion had no
standing under the Constitution," said Flute. "And the 1978 American
Indian Religious Freedom Act did nothing."

The state is now worried that overuse of the facility is impacting the
site.

Flute said tribes and the park management of Devil's Tower talked about
the tribes' request for privacy during Sun Dance ceremonies in June. The
park management said they could not close the park because it is a
public facility, but they could ask for a voluntary ban on rock climbing
during that time.

While 95 percent of the rock climbers honored the request, Flute said a
businessman in the area that rented climbing gear took the matter to
court. The tribes have won, but it's still on appeal.

The National Historic Preservation Act does have a section in it that is
now being used to protect American Indian sites, he said. The law says
tribes have to be consulted when federal agencies have an undertaking on
land that may contain an important site. Flute called the protection
that act offered "stop-gap."

Asked by an audience member what the biggest obstacle was to protecting
sacred sites, Flute answered, "Ignorance."

© Copyright 2002, Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan

Leading pollster slams treaty referendum
Lesley Pritchard reports for CBC Radio News

Vancouver - Canadian pollster Angus Reid is condemning the B.C.
government's referendum on aboriginal treaties. He says the eight
questions are really just motherhood statements designed to evoke a
"yes" answer for the government's own purposes.

Reid says it's one of the most amateurish, one-sided attempts to gauge
the public will that he's seen in his professional career.

He also calls it a disturbing precedent in terms of a government in
Canada being involved in this type of exercise.

"If this were the Quebec government putting out a poll of this sort on
the matter of sovereignty with questions as one-sided and loaded as
these are, I think there would be a national hue and cry," he says.

"So, to some extent, shame on the government of British Columbia for
putting this very one-sided serious questions out to the people of B.C,"
says Reid.

B.C.'s Attorney General Geoff Plant, who is responsible for the
referendum, says he's satisfied with the phrasing of the questions. He
argues that this is an exercise for the public, not for academics or
pollsters.

"If you want to spend time going through each of the questions. I think
that you can see there are real choices involved," says Plant.

The eight-question ballot is arriving at homes across B.C. this week.
The deadline for returning them to the government is May 15.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: ETC News:  Ban Terminator Before It's Too Late
Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 15:07:35 -0600
From: etc@...
Reply-To: etc@...
To: dbain@...

ETC group
5 April 2002
www.etcgroup.org



BAN TERMINATOR BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE


A UNITED NATIONS conference in the Hague next week offers the UN a
critical opportunity to ban 'Terminator' seeds before they are
commercialised in farmers' fields, warns an alliance of campaign groups.

The ETC group, Berne Declaration and ActionAid are among many groups
urging delegates at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
'COP6' conference to heed global opinion and ban the commercialisation
of crops modified to produce sterile seeds - known as 'suicide seeds' or
'Terminator technology'.

The alliance warns CBD delegates that seed giants such as Delta & Pine
Land intend to commercialise terminator crops and that the world's
largest agrochemical and seed corporations continue to work on and win
patents on terminator technology and closely related techniques to
chemically control plant fertility and/or seed germination.

Terminator plants are modified to prevent farmers from re-using
harvested seed, forcing farmers to buy new seeds from multinationals
every year.

This is seen as immoral because over 1.4 billion people, mainly poor
farmers in poor countries, depend on farm-saved seeds.

Terminator has been universally condemned by civil society groups and
farmers movements that consider it an assault on farmers and the well
being of all rural people; it has been banned by agricultural research
institutes and censured by UN bodies - including Dr Jacques Diouf,
Director General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. India,
Pakistan, Ghana and Panama have taken steps to ban terminator.

"The CBD must terminate Terminator before it's planted in open fields,"
says Hope Shand, research director for ETC group. "Terminator is an
anti-farmer technology and clearly isn't dead yet. The CBD must ban it
urgently in the Hague and protect farmers' rights and global food
security."

Monsanto and Syngenta vowed not to commercialise terminator after
widespread public opposition. "The multinational Gene Giants, however,
have been refining the technology and Syngenta filed the latest
terminator patent application on 13 September 2001," says Francois
Meienberg, from the Berne Declaration (see their new research at
http://www.evb.ch/index.cfm?page_id=1275 ). DuPont won its newest
Terminator patent on 2 October 2001.

Civil society and farmers' organizations dismiss arguments that
terminator has a role to play in controlling the escape of engineered
genes from GM crops to related plants (known as 'gene flow').
"Terminator as a biosafety tool is a spurious argument," says Hope
Shand. "The ultimate goal of seed sterility is neither biosafety nor
agronomic benefits, but bioserfdom."

The groups also urge the CBD to uphold and strengthen its moratorium on
'Traitor technology' - 'Genetic Use Restriction Technologies' - which
are GM crops with traits - such as flowering, sprouting, or immune
deficiency - which can be switched on and off by applying special
chemicals to the plant. "Terminator and traitor crops smash open the
idea that GM crops are intended to feed the poor," says Alex Wijeratna,
campaign coordinator from ActionAid.



More information:
Hope Shand, ETC group, Tel: + 919 960 5223 hope@...
François Meienberg, Berne Declaration, Tel: + 41 1 277 70 04 (w) or
41 79 478 91 94 (m)
Alex Wijeratna, ActionAid, Tel: + 44 207 561 7634 (w) or 0773 649 7412
(m).


Notes to Editor:
1) COP6: The Sixth Conference of the Parties (and 10th anniversary) of
the Convention on Biological Diversity in the Hague from 8-19 April will
consider, inter alia, GM contamination, Terminator technology and new
guidelines on access and benefit sharing.

2) See ETC group's new brochure on Terminator technology at
http://www.etcgroup.org/documents/terminatorbrochure02.pdf and new
DuPont and Syngenta patents:
http://www.etcgroup.org/documents/new_termpatent_jan2002.pdf

3) See a new report by the Executive Secretary of the CBD on the impact
of 'GURTs'
http://www.biodiv.org/doc/meetings/cop/cop-06/official/cop-06-11-add1-en.pdf





Thank you for joining our mailing list and for your interest in our
organization.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [tech.cid] An Inaugural Symposium
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 13:06:20 -0800
From: "M. Derya Honca" <m_derya_honca@...>
Reply-To: "M. Derya Honca" <m_derya_honca@...>
To: "Technology Update" <tech.cid@...>

<<<<<<<<<<<<SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION UPDATE>>>>>>>>>>>>

<<<<<<<<<<<<<http://www.cid.harvard.edu/cidtech/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

AN INAUGURAL SYMPOSIUM: ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT: Towards
Sustainability In The 21st Century
<http://www.environment.harvard.edu/symposium/index.html>

Harvard University Center for the Environment
<http://www.environment.harvard.edu/home.html>

April 12-14, 2002
Harvard University Science Center
<http://www.map.harvard.edu/index.shtml>
1 Oxford Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

To meet the challenge of sustainable development in the 21st century,
the factors that govern the interactions between the environment and
development need to be defined and their impacts on natural resources,
human health, and social structures must be understood. On the tenth
anniversary of the Rio Summit and as a pre-cursor to the Johannesburg
meeting later this year, the symposium seeks to identify long-term,
large-scale demographic, economic, social and political trends that will
transform the human and natural environment over the next century, and
to explore the challenges they pose to sustainability. The three-day
symposium is the Harvard University Center for the Environment's premier
celebratory and public intellectual event.

Registration
<http://www.environment.harvard.edu/symposium/register.html> is free,
but required. All are welcome to attend subject to
space limitations.

Please refer to the detailed schedule
<http://www.environment.harvard.edu/symposium/schedule.html> for a
complete listing of activities and a list of participants.

Debra Harry wrote:

> 5 April 2002
>
> RE:  Update on the Treaty Initiative to Share the Genetic Commons
>
> Dear Friends,
>
> As you are aware, the Treaty Initiative to Share the Genetic Commons was
> formally launched in February at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre,
> Brazil.  With the help of many of the early co-sponsors, we were also able
> to present the initiative at a parallel event in New York at the PrepCom
> for Rio+10.  On both occasions, the introduction of the Treaty encouraged
> many new civil society partners to join the initiative, and the meetings
> allowed those already involved and new allies to discuss the Treaty text,
> its goals, and its process in detail.   To date, more than 325 CSOs from
> over 50 countries have joined the initiative.  The Treaty is based on two
> decades of movement building to stop the patenting of life forms and the
> creation of monopolies over seeds, food and medicine.  The Treaty
> represents a collective commitment to defend the integrity of life and
> peoples' rights.
>
> The results of the Treaty launch were the topic of a teleconference held on
> March 4th that brought together a dozen or so co-sponsors from almost as
> many countries and regions.  During our teleconference, we agreed that it
> would be helpful to provide everyone with an update on the Treaty’s
> progress and to make a special additional effort to broaden and open the
> initiative to the widest possible range of partners.  We are writing to our
> friends and colleagues now in order to:
> q       Encourage discussion around the basic principles that underlie the
> Treaty;
> q       Promote specific ideas concerning the actual draft text of the
> Treaty - particularly formulations of words that would ensure that our
> principles are clearly expressed in the text in language that clarifies the
> cultural, linguistic, and historical concerns of partners around the world;
> q       Confirm the importance of the process in which we are engaged.  We
> have understood all along that the process of drafting the Treaty (already
> in its 12th month and 8th draft) is central to its success and that every
> effort must be made to facilitate the full participation of the many
> constituencies, regions, and cultures that are affected by the initiative;
> q       Propose a process for moving the initiative forward together.
>
> Principles supporting the Treaty Initiative:
>
> Perhaps more than anything else, the Treaty Initiative is a positive
> affirmation of the sacred integrity of the earth’s genetic inheritance and
> of our shared rights and duties to defend this integrity and to ensure that
> it is used for the benefit of all humanity and does not become the
> exclusive commercial monopoly of anyone.  The Treaty attempts to affirm a
> “positive” rather than pose a “negative”.
>
> To be clear, the Treaty text must support the sovereignty of nations and of
> communities to exchange or withhold the genetic materials they hold in
> trust.  The only prohibitions are not to destroy genetic diversity and not
> to claim  or allow others to claim  monopoly rights over germplasm.  We
> wish to affirm national sovereignty and community rights as well as the
> right of individuals whose genetic makeup is subject to discrimination
> (commercial or special) to have their own genetic integrity and rights
> ensured.  The primary aim of the Treaty is to stop the North and
> corporations from pirating the South’s and communities’ genetic inheritance.
>
> For many decades, life science companies have been scouting the world in
> search of genes in microbes, plants, animals, and human populations that
> might be commercially valuable in the biological marketplace.  The US and
> other governments have allowed companies to lay claim over thousands of
> genes in the form of intellectual property rights.  Many governments and
> indigenous and farming communities, especially in the developing world,
> complain of bio-piracy and argue that companies should not be allowed free
> reign to access the genetic resources of their lands without prior consent
> or proper financial compensation.
>
> At the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, most of the world’s nations signed a
> treaty that, among other provisions, affirmed the principle that every
> country enjoys absolute sovereignty over the regulation and use of genetic
> resources within its own borders.  The treaty further reaffirmed the right
> of every country to enter into bilateral agreements with other governments,
> commercial, academic, and other institutions to sell bioprospecting rights
> for their genetic information.  The signatory countries acknowledged the
> right of commercial and other enterprises to patent genetic information.
>
> We believe that when host countries receive compensation for bioprospecting
> rights, in exchange for intellectual property rights, a framework is
> created for a new and dangerous form of high-tech biocolonialism.  Host
> countries, especially in the developing world, will be given token
> financial compensation for the right to exploit their domestic genetic
> resources and then be forced to buy back patented products from seeds to
> drugs at exorbitant prices, further deepening the divide between the
> “haves” and “have-not” nations.
>
> Furthermore, the notion of selling exclusive bioprospecting rights and
> securing a monopoly in the form of patents on genetic information runs
> counter to the very principles of shared responsibility for the earth’s
> biodiversity espoused by the countries that signed the Biodiversity
> Convention Treaty.  Sustainable global development is an unrealizable goal
> in a world where countries and corporations can enter into exclusive
> monopoly agreements to profit off of the genetic blueprints of millions of
> years of biological evolution on Earth.
>
> We believe that the earth’s gene pool is a collective legacy and a shared
> trust and should not be reduced to negotiable commodities in the global
> marketplace.  At the same time, we agree with the principle affirmed at the
> Rio summit that communities and countries are responsible for managing and
> stewarding genetic resources within their borders.  There is a difference,
> however, between the sovereign right to act as a trustee - to be
> responsible for sustaining that part of the earth’s biodiversity that lies
> within one’s national or community boundaries - and the illegitimate act of
> entering into exclusive monopoly arrangements with commercial institutions
> to profit off of the earth’s genetic legacy.   The gene pool exists apriori
> to and independent of any contemporary political or commercial
> institution.  It is therefore not reducible to monopolies in the hands of
> governments or companies.
>
> These are three guiding principles that have inspired the Treaty Initiative
> to Share the Genetic Commons:
>
> 1.      The earth’s genetic endowment is a collective legacy and shared trust.
>
> 2.      Every community and country has the right and responsibility,
> assisted if requested by the international community, to manage that
> portion of the earth’s genetic endowment that lies within its territory.
>
> 3.      While communities and countries have sovereignty over the terms by
> which the genetic materials they hold in trust are shared with the world,
> that genetic information cannot be legitimately claimed as monopoly
> property in the marketplace.  Selling exclusive bioprospecting rights or
> claiming genetic information as exclusive intellectual property is a
> violation of the spirit of biodiversity.
>
> Every word comes with its own cultural and historic connotations, but we
> believe that these three principles convey the Treaty’s purpose (other
> language translations will follow shortly).
>
> We would like to emphasize that the Treaty Initiative to Share the Genetic
> Commons does not, in any way, preclude existing commercial and trade
> arrangements between countries and companies to buy and sell agricultural
> commodities and other biologically derived products in the global
> marketplace.  The Treaty Initiative is designed only to ensure that the
> genetic composition of living organisms does not become the exclusive
> monopoly of countries or companies.
>
> Opportunities to further develop the draft text:
>
> For more than a year now, the draft Treaty text has been a “work in
> progress” that has benefited greatly from many inputs.  Our “work”
> continues.  Your help and advice is needed.  To truly represent the beliefs
> and aspirations of civil society, the text must be clear in as many
> languages as possible.  To get our message across, the text should also be
> as brief as possible.  There is a special burden on the world’s major
> languages (those used by the United Nations, for example) to use words that
> convey the right meaning to as many different cultures as possible.  Some
> words may convey different meanings in different cultures and some may have
> been co-opted in one or more regions.  We recognize that we must be very
> careful with terms such as “commons” and we must be clear in our use of
> terms such as “sovereignty” and “community rights”.  We must shed colonial
> and neo-liberal interpretations of words that are important to
> us.  Specific social movements such as farmers (with respect to land
> rights), indigenous peoples (with respect to land and genetic material of
> unique spiritual importance) or people who have been socially disabled as a
> result of genetic or disease discrimination, may need to have additional
> language or greater clarification in the Treaty.  Please help us to ensure
> that the spirit of our shared principles is made clear in the text.
>
> Participation in the process:
>
> Many farming cultures share a joke about the city driver who stopped to ask
> directions from a farmer.  After considering several options, the farmer
> finally concludes, “You can’t get there from here.”   But, every initiative
> starts somewhere and good ideas should have the potential to go
> everywhere.  So far, more than 325 CSOs from over 50 countries have given
> their support to the Treaty Initiative.  We need your help now to broaden
> and deepen everyone’s participation.  Please do all you can to get this
> initiative into the hands of  and the languages of  as many potential
> partners as possible.  We have three general proposals that we hope will
> encourage participation:
>
> §       Please be willing to act as a disseminator of information about the
> Treaty among your own partners and also be prepared to help your colleagues
> convey their specific ideas, wording, and concerns, to the Treaty
> Co-Sponsors.  This would be especially helpful where language might prove a
> barrier to effective participation.
>
> §       Please encourage as many as are able to discuss the draft text on
> the following email message board:
>          “genetic-patents@...”.  The discussion here will be visible
> and open to everyone and will be       carefully noted by the Co-Sponsors
> as they offer future drafts.  (Note: a frequently updated list
> of    signatories to the Treaty can also be seen at: www.foet.org)
>
> §       If the Internet is a barrier to participation, please encourage any
> and all to send their thoughts to:
>          Treaty Initiative, 1660 L Street, NW, Suite 216, Washington,
> DC  20036; Fax: 202-429-9602.
>
> As several people pointed out during our recent teleconference, the process
> is as important as the product.  We will not rush the process in order to
> achieve an unsatisfactory product.
>
> Specific opportunities for participatory discussions at global and regional
> levels:
>
> During our teleconference, we briefly identified a number of opportunities
> for CSO consideration of the proposed Treaty in the months ahead.  We are
> committed to creating space for these discussions at the following venues
> but we would also welcome additional suggestions for discussion at global,
> regional, national or community levels.  If you are willing to host a
> specific discussion on the Treaty Initiative  perhaps during a seminar or
> conference you are already planning for other purposes  please let us know
> the details so that we can help to encourage participation.
>
> - PrepComs for Rio+10
> - Regional Conferences for FAO
> - 17-18 May: Summit of Latin America, Caribbean and Europe, Madrid (Spain)
> - End of May: 4th Preparatory Meeting for the World Summit on Sustainable
> Development, Indonesia
> - Early June: World Food Summit, Rome (Italy)
> - 22-23 June: EU Summit, Seville (Spain)
> - July: G8 Summit, Toronto and Calgary (Canada)
> - End of August / Beginning of September: Rio+10, Johannesburg (South Africa)
> - September: Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM), Copenhagen (Denmark)
> - October: Social Continental Forum "A new integration is possible," Quito
> (Ecuador)
> - November: 2nd Hemispheric Meeting Against FTAA, Cuba
> - December: EU Summit, Copenhagen (Denmark)
> - Other meetings?
>
> Working during “Work in Progress”:
>
> Having launched the Treaty Initiative last month after a year of
> discussion, many participating CSOs are eager to encourage national debate
> or wider constituency discussion.  As long as the Treaty’s principles are
> clearly in view, all such activity contributes to the process and should be
> encouraged.  We have always assumed that those who have “signed” the
> initiative have signed onto the process itself.  The Treaty is a catalyst
> to build processes in society, in parliaments, and in governments to
> protect the integrity of life, peoples’ knowledge and people’s rights. We
> invite you to join us in building, spreading, strengthening this process.
>
> We hope that this short update on the Treaty Initiative is helpful to you
> and your colleagues and that you will keep in contact with your own
> thoughts and ideas on every aspect of our work together.
>
> Yours sincerely,
>
> Alejandro Argumendo, Director, Indigenous Peoples' Biodiversity Network (IPBN)
> Maude Barlow, National Chairperson, Council of Canadians
> Bill Christison, President, National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC)
> Neth Dano, Executive Director, South East Asian Regional Institute for
> Community Education (SEARICE)
> Debra Harry, Executive Director, Indigenous People’s Council on
> Biocolonialism (IPCB)
> Camila Montecinos, Jefe Programa de Biodiversidad, Centro de Educación y
> Tecnología (CET)
> Pat Roy Mooney, Executive Director, ETC Group
> Andrew T. Mushita, Director, Community Technology Development Trust (CTDT)
> Fabrizia Pratesi, Architect Coordinator, Comitato Scientifico
> Antivivisezionista (CSA)
> Jeremy Rifkin, President, Foundation on Economic Trends (FOET)
> Mark Ritchie, President, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP)
> Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, Presidente dei Verdi, Federazione Nazionale dei Verdi
> Vandana Shiva, Director, Research Foundation for Science, Technology and
> Ecology
> Martin Teitel, President, Council for Responsible Genetics (CRG)
>
> Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism    Tel:   001 (775) 835-6932
> PO Box 818                                      Fax:  001 (775) 835-6934
> Wadsworth, NV 89442                             Email:  dharry@...
> USA                                             Website:  www.ipcb.org

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [NativeNews] Plan to Mine Clay for Litter Boxes Stirs Cat Fight
in Desert
Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2002 16:10:08 -0500
From: Senior Staff <senior-staff@...>
Reply-To: NatNews-owner@yahoogroups.com
To: NatNews@yahoogroups.com

via ndn-aim

April 06, 2002

Plan to Mine Clay for Litter Boxes Stirs Cat Fight in Desert;
Land use: Indians, environmentalists are teaming up to fight proposal
for two mines and a processing plant
By NANCY WRIDE, L.A. Times Writer
http://www.latimes.com

HUNGRY VALLEY, Nev. -- On this powdery brown expanse of Nevada desert,
an Indian tribe, a Chicago mining company and environmentalists are
struggling over a mother lode of kitty litter.

Led by Indians who have spent $200,000 to block two clay mines and a cat
litter processing plant, opponents say the operation will mar the
landscape, generating truck traffic, noise and dust.

The world's largest maker of cat litter, which secured a permit to mine
on federal land, says it can solve those problems and believes it has
hit pay dirt--clay that offers the ideal density, color and absorption
needed to keep cats and their owners content. But the Sierra Club and
other environmental groups, enlisted by the Reno Sparks Indian Colony,
believe they have struck pay dirt too: The mine has become the ideal
target for their years-long campaign against a 19th century mining law.

Signed by President Ulysses S. Grant, the 1872 Mining Act was originally
meant to encourage development of the West. But the law, which didn't
levy mineral royalties or impose environmental responsibilities, is
today considered by some a giveaway of valuable resources to the big
mining companies that came to replace the lone prospectors of the Old
West.

The law allows for mining on federal land if the mineral in question can
be proved "uncommon."

And the clay of Hungry Valley was so deemed.

"If this were some metal needed for national security, that would be one
thing," said John Singlaub, Carson City field office manager for the
Bureau of Land Management, which is responsible for approving mining
claims.

"But cat litter so our cats can poop in the house? That's the thing I
think is really odd about this whole thing."

Odd, but not necessarily surprising, because cat litter is big business.
Each year the 67 million American households with cats spend nearly $1
billion on it. Litter boxes, litter box liners--even self-cleaning
litter boxes--have become part of the pet business. Even kitty litter,
technically the trade name Kitty Litter, has become part of the American
vocabulary.

The point man for the Oil-Dri Corp., which has proposed the mines,
admits it sometimes sounds absurd to think such a brouhaha could be
caused by cat litter. And telling your son you make cat litter, he said,
is not the same as being a doctor or firefighter.

"You have to have a pretty thick skin, a sense of humor, in this
business," said Bob Vetere, Oil-Dri's vice president and general
counsel. "And especially after three years with this project."

The land from which the clay would be mined is owned by the BLM, which
issues a permit. But it generally does so only after local and state
governments with jurisdiction over related matters sign off.

Hungry Valley, about 10 miles outside Reno, consists of thousands of
acres of treeless cocoa-brown dirt covered with a stubble of scruffy
brush. On the tribe's 1,960 acres live about half the tribe's 1,000
residents. The proposed mines are about a mile away from houses.

For now, the federally owned acreage neighboring the tribe's land will
remain unmined. And for that, members of the tiny Reno Sparks Indian
Colony say they are thankful. But they are scanning the horizon, they
say, knowing they have a tough fight ahead.

In late February, the Washoe County Board of Commissioners denied
Oil-Dri Corp. a special-use permit for a processing plant it wants to
build on 60 acres it bought next to the federal land. The BLM then
withdrew its permit, because the company would need to propose a
different way to process the litter.

One option would be building the processing plant on federal land beside
one of the mines, which the law allows, Singlaub said. The other option
would be to truck out the raw ore to an off-site processing plant.

Next week, the company will meet with BLM officials to discuss yet more
studies. A new environmental impact report is needed to assess the
effects of processing the litter on BLM land or trucking it away. The
study is expected to take at least a year.

Leaders of the Reno Sparks Indian Colony--which originally formed in
Reno but in the late 1980s spread to 1,960 acres it bought in Hungry
Valley--feel triumphant.

They said they are protecting the way of life of their people, who have
lived in the Nevada desert for thousands of years.

"In the beginning, we were on the outskirts of Reno, and the city
encroached right up to our edge," said Diana Coffey, 42, among four
generations living in the colony, which was formed around 1916. (A
colony is a Nevada term for what would elsewhere be called a
reservation.)

"I want my grandbabies to have this land, and a lot of this has remained
untouched for thousands of years," Coffey said, a soft breeze blowing
through the valley. "Our people never had written language, so
everything was handed down from showing and telling in stories. That
means it needs to be quiet."

Environmentalists dispute the volumes of government studies and
assessments that found the impact on air quality, water quality and
traffic would not justify denying the mining permit, Singlaub said.
Ellen Pillard, president of the Sierra Club's Nevada chapter most
involved in the mining fight, said the tribe has led the drive against
the operation. But she and tribal council leaders say both groups
realized they could help each other.

The supporting cast of this ongoing drama has also included discount
giant Wal-Mart and Clorox, Oil-Dri's Vetere said. The corporations are
driving the search for a Western source of coveted clay to cut the cost
of shipping 280 million pounds of litter annually from mines in the
East.

Chicago-based Oil-Dri, founded by the man who claims to have invented
cat litter, reported $170 million in litter sales last year.

Naturally, such a company would favor mining rights. But others, even
the Bureau of Land Management's Singlaub, wonder whether modern times
have rendered the Mining Act outdated.

"Certainly, you have to question why we have a law on the books that
would allow nondiscretionary mining," Singlaub said.


Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times