ReportWire

Tag: Indigenous people

  • Founding father Gen. Anthony Wayne’s legacy is getting a second look at Ohio’s Wayne National Forest

    Founding father Gen. Anthony Wayne’s legacy is getting a second look at Ohio’s Wayne National Forest

    [ad_1]

    NELSONVILLE, Ohio — Some 40 Native American tribes have ancestral ties to Wayne National Forest, a quarter-million acres spread across portions of Appalachian southeastern Ohio. Their citizens have never stopped helping the U.S. Forest Service manage this expanse of forested hills, hollows, streams and lakes — even as the name recalls a violent past.

    Now, a vigorous debate is underway over a Forest Service proposal to replace the name of Gen. Anthony Wayne, a founding father who Americans of an earlier era celebrated as an “Indian fighter,” with something more neutral: Buckeye National Forest, after the state tree.

    Forest Manager Lee Stewart said tribes had been asking for a name change for decades, but their request was formalized last year as part of a sweeping review of derogatory place names undertaken by the Biden administration.

    Since 2021, the names of about 650 places and geographic features across the country have been renamed, with involvement by the same federal board that in earlier eras helped get rid of the N-word and a pejorative word for Japanese.

    “In thinking of the offensive nature (of the name) to tribes, it’s the opportunity to begin to heal, to begin to connect our forest deeper than just around a name,” Stewart said. “Ohio has thousands of years of history. The history here is very, very deep — pre-history to historic times, where Wayne occupies his space, to the history once we became a state. So Buckeye, we feel, reflects that.”

    The public comment period ends Monday, with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to receive the feedback and make a final decision. It would be the first national forest renaming since 2007.

    Proponents see the name change as an act of respect for Indigenous people whose ancestors lived on the land and whose citizens continue to offer their skill and expertise to stewardship of the land, some through treaties with the U.S. government.

    The forest’s 381 square miles (987 square kilometers) are used for timber and other natural resources, in addition to featuring campgrounds, a horseback riding network and off-highway vehicle trails.

    Before a federal government purchase in 1934, the land was dug, blasted and mined for coal. It was 1951 when the forest was named for Wayne, a Revolutionary War leader whose legacy has been revisited during the nation’s recent racial reckoning.

    Wayne commanded Army forces during the Northwest Indian War, a confrontation on the American frontier that ended with the Battle of Fallen Timbers, a key victory over confederated Native forces that allied with the British. The resulting truce, the Treaty of Greenville, largely ceded Native rights to most of the territory that became the future state of Ohio, a result some these days see as “ethnic cleansing.”

    Logan York, a representative of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, said in a statement that Anthony Wayne’s actions “ultimately led to the forced removal at gunpoint of our Miami ancestors from our homelands in 1846.”

    “Wayne may be a Revolutionary War hero to some, but he is also the main villain in our story of resistance, trying to keep our homes and maintain our lives,” said Logan, the tribal historic preservation officer. “For a National Forest to bear the name of Anthony Wayne is a harmful, and painful reminder and devalues us as Native peoples of Ohio.”

    Opposition to the proposed name change, which has an estimated $400,000 price tag, also is vigorous.

    Donald Schultz, 89, who has lived in proximity to the forest all his life, dropped by Wayne headquarters this week to register his objections.

    “I am concerned about changing the name of everything, just history,” he said. “We need to keep the history this country had. We don’t need to change the names of all the history.”

    Schultz said he recognizes the U.S. government “treated the people horribly that were here, but by the same token, those same people treated the people that were coming here horribly.”

    “This was border warfare. It was ugly on all sides,” said Toledo-based historian Mary Stockwell, author of “Unlikely General: ‘Mad’ Anthony Wayne and the Battle for America” and a book about the removal of Native Americans from Ohio.

    Stockwell opposes removing Wayne’s name from the forest. She believes he has been miscast by history as the “mad” general, when he actually viewed it as his “great misfortune” that President George Washington chose him “to come out to Ohio in 1791, raise an army and face the British-Indian coalition that was stopping the advance of the U.S. across the Ohio River.”

    “You take down all the statues and rename everything, that’s not going to change our turbulent, creative, wonderful and often difficult past,” she said. “We’ve got to tell everybody’s story.”

    Stewart said the Forest Service appreciates Wayne’s significant legacy, which included building the fort at Fort Wayne, Indiana, and inspiring the screen name of Hollywood icon John Wayne.

    “We get it,” he said. “This isn’t about erasing Wayne out of history, it’s about reconciliation. To make (the tribes) say ‘Wayne’ every time they engage, it’s difficult.”

    It’s appropriate for societal viewpoints to evolve, York said.

    “As we look back on history, today we all have increased knowledge that leads to greater understanding, and an excellent way to reflect that is not to forget the past but to change as we change as a people,” he said in the tribal statement.

    “Wayne might have been a hero to some but not to all, and National Forests are for everyone to enjoy equally, and the name should reflect that,” York said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Tribe getting piece of Minnesota back more than a century after ancestors died there

    Tribe getting piece of Minnesota back more than a century after ancestors died there

    [ad_1]

    GRANITE FALLS, Minn. — Golden prairies and winding rivers of a Minnesota state park also hold the secret burial sites of Dakota people who died as the United States failed to fulfill treaties with Native Americans more than a century ago. Now their descendants are getting the land back.

    The state is taking the rare step of transferring the park with a fraught history back to a Dakota tribe, trying to make amends for events that led to a war and the largest mass hanging in U.S. history.

    “It’s a place of holocaust. Our people starved to death there,” said Kevin Jensvold, chairman of the Upper Sioux Community, a small tribe with about 550 members just outside the park.

    The Upper Sioux Agency State Park in southwestern Minnesota spans a little more than 2 square miles (about 5 square kilometers) and includes the ruins of a federal complex where officers withheld supplies from Dakota people, leading to starvation and deaths.

    Decades of tension exploded into the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 between settler-colonists and a faction of Dakota people, according to the Minnesota Historical Society. After the U.S. won the war, the government hanged more people than in any other execution in the nation. A memorial honors the 38 Dakota men killed in Mankato, 110 miles (177 kilometers) from the park.

    Jensvold said he has spent 18 years asking the state to return the park to his tribe. He began when a tribal elder told him it was unjust Dakota people at the time needed to pay a state fee for each visit to the graves of their ancestors there.

    Lawmakers finally authorized the transfer this year when Democrats took control of the House, Senate and governor’s office for the first time in nearly a decade, said state Sen. Mary Kunesh, a Democrat and descendant of the Standing Rock Nation.

    Tribes speaking out about injustices have helped more people understand how lands were taken and treaties were often not upheld, Kunesh said, adding that people seem more interested now in “doing the right thing and getting lands back to tribes.”

    But the transfer also would mean fewer tourists and less money for the nearby town of Granite Falls, said Mayor Dave Smiglewski. He and other opponents say recreational land and historic sites should be publicly owned, not given to a few people, though lawmakers set aside funding for the state to buy land to replace losses in the transfer.

    The park is dotted with hiking trails, campsites, picnic tables, fishing access, snowmobiling and horseback riding routes and tall grasses with wildflowers that dance in hot summer winds.

    “People that want to make things right with history’s injustices are compelled often to support action like this without thinking about other ramifications,” Smiglewski said. “A number, if not a majority, of state parks have similar sacred meaning to Indigenous tribes. So where would it stop?”

    In recent years, some tribes in the U.S., Canada and Australia have gotten their rights to ancestral lands restored with the growth of the Land Back movement, which seeks to return lands to Indigenous people.

    A national park has never been transferred from the U.S. government to a tribal nation, but a handful are co-managed with tribes, including Grand Portage National Monument in northern Minnesota, Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona and Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska, Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles of the National Park Service said.

    This will be the first time Minnesota transfers a state park to a Native American community, said Ann Pierce, director of Minnesota State Parks and Trails at the Department of Natural Resources.

    Minnesota’s transfer, expected to take years to finish, is tucked into several large bills covering several issues. The bills allocate more than $6 million to facilitate the transfer by 2033. The money can be used to buy land with recreational opportunities and pay for appraisals, road and bridge demolition and other engineering.

    Rep. Chris Swedzinski and Sen. Gary Dahms, the Republican lawmakers representing the portion of the state encompassing the park, declined through their aides to comment about their stances on the transfer.

    They voted against a key bill allocating $5 million to the transfer. The vote was largely on party lines and passed with broad support from Democrats.

    Tribal wins are rare in these conflicts, but the land transfer is a victory, Jensvold said.

    “We’re just a small community,” he said. “We’ve accomplished something that teetered on the edge of impossible.”

    ___

    Trisha Ahmed is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter: @TrishaAhmed15

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Native nations on front lines of climate change share knowledge and find support at intensive camps

    Native nations on front lines of climate change share knowledge and find support at intensive camps

    [ad_1]

    PORT ANGELES, Wash. — Jeanette Kiokun, the tribal clerk for the Qutekcak Native Tribe in Alaska, doesn’t immediately recognize the shriveled, brown plant she finds on the shore of the Salish Sea or others that were sunburned during the long, hot summer. But a fellow student at a weeklong tribal climate camp does.

    They are rosehips, traditionally used in teas and baths by the Skokomish Indian Tribe in Washington state and other tribes.

    “It’s getting too hot, too quick,” Alisa Smith Woodruff, a member of the Skokomish tribe, said of the sun-damaged plant.

    Tribes suffer some of the most severe impacts of climate change in the U.S. but often have the fewest resources to respond, which makes the intensive camps on combatting the impact of climate change a vital training ground and community-building space.

    People from at least 28 tribes and intertribal organizations attended this year’s camp in Port Angeles, Washington, and more than 70 tribes have taken part in similar camps organized by the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians at other sites across the U.S. since 2016.

    They heard from tribal leaders and scientists and learned about a clam garden that is combatting ocean acidification. They visited the Elwha River where salmon runs were recently restored after the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe fought to have two dams torn down. They also learned how to make the most of newly available federal funds to add climate staff, restore habitats and reduce carbon emissions. And they set aside time to focus on cultural practices, such as cedar weaving, to unwind from the harsh realities of climate change.

    “(What) this camp has done for us is to help us know that there is the network, there is a supporting web out there, that we can help one another,” said Jonny Bearcub Stiffarm, a member of the climate advisory board for the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes in Montana. “So we make new songs. We make new stories. We make new visions that we embrace for the positive outcome of our people. We make new warrior societies, new climate warrior societies.”

    Knowledge-sharing between tribes is not new. There were trade routes across North America before colonization. During first contact, tribes on the East Coast would send runners as far west as possible to share the news, said Amelia Marchand, citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.

    “This is kind of like a revitalization and an extension of that,” she said.

    Kiokun is one of only three fulltime employees for the Qutekcak Native Tribe. In 2022, a landslide cut off a major road and hurled debris into a bay, damaging a popular fishing spot for tribal elders, said Jami Fenn, the tribe’s financial grant manager.

    Out of last year’s camp came a group made up of tribes and Native villages across the Chugach region in Alaska, including the Qutekcak Native Tribe, focused on responding to climate change. The group is now working to get a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant so they can rebuild fish habitats ruined by the landslides and add liaisons with federal entities on climate change issues.

    Camp participants include those first starting to consider actions to counter the effects of climate change to those who have long had plans in place.

    The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe in Washington attended for the first time last year. Soon after, they added a staff member focused on climate change, installed their first solar panels, and kicked off a friendly competition with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation to see which could become carbon neutral by 2032. This year, the tribe co-hosted the camp.

    Loni Greninger, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe vice chair, said a comment from a participant last year had stuck with her, about how the Western red cedar — which is central to the tribe’s cultural identity — could die off in the Pacific Northwest because of excessive heat due to climate change.

    “To think about a world where there wouldn’t be cedar anymore, where I can’t smell it, where I can’t touch it, where I can’t work with it, where I can’t weave with it, where I can’t use it anymore. That caught my attention,” she said. “I don’t want to be in a world like that.”

    This year’s camp had added urgency. The federal government has granted more than $720 million through the Inflation Reduction Act to help tribes plan and adapt to climate change. But Marchand, from the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, said navigating these opportunities can be “overwhelming” for tribal staff juggling many responsibilities.

    The training helps tribes see “what the low-hanging fruit is … where they can leverage their energy,” she said.

    Near the end of the camp, each tribal team presented projects they were working on and discussed the impact of climate change.

    The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in Montana was among the first tribes in the U.S. to develop a climate response plan, and the tribe’s climate change advisory committee chairman willingly shared that with other camp attendees.

    “You don’t have to steal it, it’s yours,” Michael Durglo Jr. told the group. “Everything I have is yours.”

    The Qutekcak Native Tribe is planning a tribal youth climate camp in Alaska, and Durglo has already agreed to teach part of the six-week program.

    Kiokun, the tribe’s tribal clerk, also plans to help with this work.

    “I think I’ve found a new passion,” she said.

    ___ Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Environmental groups recruit people of color into overwhelmingly white conservation world

    Environmental groups recruit people of color into overwhelmingly white conservation world

    [ad_1]

    BARABOO, Wis. — Arianna Barajas never thought of herself as the outdoors type. The daughter of Mexican immigrants who grew up in Chicago’s suburbs, her forays into nature usually amounted to a bike ride to a community park.

    She was interested in wild animals but had no idea she could make a living working with them until her older brother enrolled in veterinarian school. She took a leap of faith and enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and became a wildlife ecology major.

    This summer Barajas landed an internship designed for people of color at the International Crane Foundation’s headquarters in Baraboo, Wisconsin, and stepped into a new world.

    “I always knew growing up I had an interest in wildlife and animals but didn’t know the options I had,” Barajas, 21, said. “I really just have a passion for the outdoors. I can’t just be in an office all day. I need to be outside and doing things I think are valuable.”

    Environmental groups across the country have worked for the last two decades to introduce members of underrepresented populations like Barajas to the overwhelmingly white conservation world. The effort has gained momentum since George Floyd’s death forced a national reckoning on race relations and challenged a variety of industries to focus on diversity and inclusion efforts.

    As climate change reshapes the planet, leaders need to hear every perspective when determining conservation policies, minority advocates say. Multiple studies since the early 1980s have found communities of color feel the impact of pollution and climate change more acutely than wealthy areas.

    “All the environmental issues we’re facing are really big and we simply can’t face them all unless we have a lot of ideas at the table,” said Soumi Gaddameedi, a 22-year-old Indian American who works as a donor coordinator for the nonprofit group Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin. “No one solution fits all. People of color are in the communities facing the worst impact. It’s important that they have a voice.”

    White men have largely controlled American conservation policy for more than a century. The modern conservation movement in the United States began around the turn of the 20th century, led by figures such as Sierra Club co-founder John Muir, who openly derided American Indians as savages, and President Theodore Roosevelt, who doubled the number of sites in the National Park System. Conservationists such as Aldo Leopold and Wisconsin Gov. Gaylord Nelson, who founded Earth Day, followed them.

    More than 80% of National Park Service employees are white, according to service data. A 2022 survey of the 40 largest non-government environmental organizations and foundations by Green 2.0, an organization advocating for minority inclusion in the environmental sector, found 60% of staff and almost 70% of organization heads identified as white.

    Sociologists offer a number of explanations for the lack of diversity in conservation ranks. For instance, people of color tend to live in urban settings with less exposure to the outdoors and may consider outdoor recreation a white man’s domain, said Kristy Drutman, the Filipino and Jewish founder of the Green Jobs Board, an online listing of environmental jobs with companies promoting diversity. She also runs the Brown Girl Green podcast.

    “I don’t think BIPOC are choosing not to be in the outdoors, they’re just not given the same opportunity,” Drutman said, using an acronym for Black people, Indigenous people and people of color.

    “Urbanization, racial segregation, all these histories have separated BIPOC from neighbors with more green spaces,” Drutman said. “It’s become a white people’s thing because of that.”

    Relatively few people of color study biology and natural resources in college. Hispanic people made up only about 13.6% of graduate students and 12.8% of doctoral students in those fields in 2021, according to a National Science Foundation study. Black people made up about 9.5% of graduate students and only 6% of doctoral students. Native Americans made up less than 1% of graduate and doctoral students in both fields.

    “There’s a long-standing tradition of white men from rural areas dominating these roles,” said Caitlin Alba, who works to recruit minority students to the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point’s environmental programs. “(Minority) mentors and educators are unfamiliar with these opportunities.”

    National environmental organization Conservation Legacy has been recruiting young people from underrepresented populations for teams across the country, including Arizona, New Mexico, North Carolina and the Appalachian region.

    The teams handle a wide array of conservation projects, such as river restoration, vegetation monitoring, disaster relief and conservation projects on Native American lands. The teams include a group for sign-language users and an all-female crew dubbed “the Trail Angels.”

    Northwest Youth Corps, based in Eugene, Oregon, has recruited LGBTQ students between 16 and 18 and LGBTQ adults to its so-called Rainbow Crews since 2017. The crews work on reforestation projects and are designed to provide hands-on training and experience for those interested in environmental jobs or other other outdoor careers. The program won the Corps Network’s 2020 Project of the Year award.

    This year the organization created two all-women crews that operate out of Idaho. The organization also recruits young American Indians for crews working on ancestral lands in hopes of encouraging them to find environmental jobs with their tribes.

    The Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin launched a paid internship program for BIPOC students in 2021. The program places interns with other conservation groups like the International Crane Foundation where Barajas is one of 10 interns. The internship program had three participants in 2021 and seven last summer.

    After spending the summer tagging and tracking whooping cranes across south-central Wisconsin, Barajas has become even more aware of how minority perspectives are rarely considered in the conservation world.

    “Sometimes I’ll hear about children’s programming on different natural things. I’m thinking, what opportunities do you have for people who don’t speak English?” she said. “Are you reaching out to diverse communities?”

    Barajas used the example of a city imposing fines to ensure people recycle. “Well, there’s a financial obstacle now where certain communities can’t pay that fine,” she said.

    Other people of color are working to expand inclusion on their own.

    Tykee James, who is Black, grew up in Philadelphia but became an avid birdwatcher after two white employees at a local environmental education center visited his high school environmental studies class and recruited him to serve as a guide at the facility. Like Barajas, the job opened his eyes to a new path.

    James has since served as an environmental policy specialist for Pennsylvania state Rep. Donna Bullock and governmental affairs coordinator for the National Audubon Society. He currently works as government relations representative for The Wilderness Society, which seeks to protect wilderness acreage.

    In 2019, James co-founded Amplify the Future, which provides college scholarships for Black and Latinx bird watchers from the continental U.S. and Puerto Rico.

    “When we’re making decisions about the use of finite resources … it requires a diversity of vision to answer these types of important questions,” James said. “The same folks from the same background, money, same racial make-up, same wealth background, I wouldn’t be too surprised that they all think the same about how things work.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Hawaii’s cherished notion of family, the ‘ohana, endures in tragedy’s aftermath

    Hawaii’s cherished notion of family, the ‘ohana, endures in tragedy’s aftermath

    [ad_1]

    LAHAINA, Hawaii — Families were torn asunder. A community is reeling with grief. More than 100 people have perished and hundreds more remain missing after flames and smoke barreled from the hills and annihilated the historic town of Lahaina.

    But even in places overwhelmed by despair and devastation, the Hawaiian spirit known as ‘ohana endures.

    In the Hawaiian lexicon, ‘ohana is a sensibility, a way of thinking that means family, belonging, community and so much more — solace in a time of calamity. It is a unifying principle in an increasingly fragmented world. And in recent weeks, amid misfortune, the word has taken on profound importance in a place appealing for help.

    “In times like this, ‘ohana gets stronger,” says Dustin Kaleiopu, whose Maui roots date back to when monarchs ruled the islands.

    The kanaka of Hawaii, the Native Hawaiians who inhabit the islands, value ’ohana, which extends beyond the familial ties of blood. It is a life nourished by kinship.

    “In a small town like Lahaina, we all know each other. We’ve all grown up together,” says Kaleiopu, whose ‘ohana came to his aid after he and his grandfather escaped the flames that turned their home into a mound of ash and charred debris. ”It’s such a tight-knit community.”

    TESTING THE BONDS OF ‘OHANA

    Finding grace and solace can be almost unimaginable when the very world around you is burning. This is what Lahaina faces today as the smoke begins to clear.

    Thousands of other homes are gone. At least 115 people are confirmed dead. And by some counts, nearly 400 of Lahaina’s residents remain unaccounted for: fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, young and old, friends and neighbors — all part of someone’s ’ohana.

    “There’s plenty of families who’ve been displaced by the fire. So we’re going to take care of our community as much as possible. So in this sense, our community is the ’ohana,” says Kapali Keahi, whose family has lived on Maui for generations.

    In the days, and now weeks, after the deadliest wildfire in the United States in more than a century, families who lost homes and possessions continue to depend on the generosity of relatives, friends and even strangers. Shipments of food, clothes and everyday necessities keep arriving from the state’s other islands, including Oahu, home to Honolulu.

    Online fundraisers, many set up by displaced families, have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, much of it from distant places. One relief fund has well surpassed $1.2 million, its 6,400 donors hailing from every part of the globe.

    So much of Lahaina has been lost. Left behind are people in deep despair, said Kekai Keahi, another Lahaina resident. One thing, though, remained strong: a connecting strand.

    “‘Ohana was never lost. It never left,” he said. “We will always come to each other’s aid.”

    Keahi spoke as Hawaiian flags fluttered near the ocean and a Native Hawaiian group calling itself Na ‘Ohana o Lele — the ‘ohana of Lahaina — gathered at a beachside park to speak on behalf of their community.

    The message from the group was clear: There will be talk of rebuilding, yes, but families need time to grieve and begin healing before any of that begins.

    Archie Kalepa, a surfing legend and revered member of Maui’s Native Hawaiian community, urged his ‘ohana to honor core values. “Love your family, take care of the land,” he said, “and you’ll rebuild your community.”

    MANY PEOPLE FROM MANY PLACES, UNITED

    The community of 13,000 people included immigrants from many parts of the world. Here, they find common ground.

    No matter where they came from, no matter when they arrived, transplants are soon charmed by Hawaii’s culture, a melange of imported customs and traditions melded together by ways in existence long before the British imperialist and explorer Capt. James Cook came across the Hawaiian archipelago nearly 250 years ago while crossing the Pacific.

    As they assimilate, newcomers pick up the oft-spoken vocabulary intrinsic to island life. “Mahalo” conveys gratitude, admiration and respect. “Aloha” is for hello and goodbye, or for love and affection — a word with the warmth of a hug and the beauty of a lei.

    Then there is ’ohana. As the movie “Lilo & Stitch” defined it, “’ohana means family, and family means nobody is left behind or forgotten.”

    With so many dead or missing, a sentiment like that is ripe to resonate across a community coping with loss.

    “It’s all about family out here,” says Mike Tomas, whose immediate family lost their home in the fire. They are sheltering in the homes of friends and relatives. He had planned to move with his girlfriend to Texas sometime in the fall, but they will now depart much sooner.

    “Nothing’s left here,” he says. Not even the clothes and belongings they had begun packing. But he knows he’ll be back.

    “This has always been home,” he says. “This is where family is.”

    Amber Bobin moved from Chicago to Maui nearly four years ago. She says she was drawn, in part, by the culture and strong bonds of community.

    Earlier this week, she joined a small group to hang 115 crosses on fences erected along the road that cuts through Lahaina. That’s a single cross for each of the souls whose remains have been found. Bobin expected to hang more crosses in the coming days. The fence also was festooned with a collection of ribbons, one for every person still missing.

    And if ‘ohana is a way of life in good times, those crosses and ribbons help reveal what it is in tough ones: a mindset that ensures those who have been part of you remain so, even after they were torn away by forces no one imagined would be visited upon home.

    “To be able to experience what ‘ohana means, especially in tragedy,” she says, “has been significantly impactful.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Indigenous communities are embraced at the Women’s World Cup, but will the legacy live on?

    Indigenous communities are embraced at the Women’s World Cup, but will the legacy live on?

    [ad_1]

    AUCKLAND, New Zealand — More than any previous tournament, the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand has leaned into both including and showcasing the Indigenous cultures of both nations.

    For some Indigenous groups, though, there’s not enough commitment to a more lasting legacy.

    This Women’s World Cup was the first hosted by two countries. FIFA, led by a panel of six Indigenous women, worked with both countries to make sure the Australia’s First Nations and New Zealand’s Maori cultures were included.

    For the first time at a World Cup, all of the nine host cities were referred to in both English and Indigenous terms in the FIFA materials surrounding the event, including website content, signage and broadcasts.

    Soccer organizers in Australia and New Zealand successfully pushed to have Indigenous flags flying at stadiums. In New Zealand a traditional karanga call was performed ahead of each match, while in Australia the pre-game ceremonies included a welcome to country by Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander elders.

    FIFA executives had cultural awareness training in the run-up to the World Cup and the players attended traditional ceremonies when they arrived. The United States was among eight teams that participated in Auckland.

    “I don’t think we’ve ever had a cultural welcome like that in any of the places we’ve had a World Cup before,” American defender Kelley O’Hara said. “I know how special it is for the New Zealand players, for the Australian players, for the people of New Zealand and Australia. I’m really good friends with (Ferns defender) Ali Riley, she has so much pride in the fact that this tournament is being played in New Zealand.”

    Spain’s team caused a stir before the tournament when they mocked the haka in a video posted to social media. Captain Ivana Andres later apologized to elders and members of the Rangitane O Manawatu iwi (tribe) at a ceremony in the North Island city of Palmerston North, where the team was based during the group stage.

    “Their words came from the heart and there was an acknowledgement that they understood that the haka is very precious, not only to Maori but to all of Aotearoa,” Iwi representative Professor Meihana Durie said.

    In New Zealand there has been an increasing effort overall to honor the culture. It is common to refer to the country as Aotearoa, which means “land of the long white cloud.” The greeting Kia Ora is a common greeting at restaurants and shops.

    FIFA’s head of women’s soccer, Sarai Bareman, is of Dutch and Samoan descent and was raised in New Zealand.

    “I can’t even remember the number of conversations that I’ve had until today with people who have come from overseas, who have commented about how special it is to have a `Welcome to Country’ in First Nations and in Maori when the teams are coming onto the field,” Bareman said. “People think that is so special, and it is, and it’s so unique. And how amazing that these two beautiful cultures are being shown, literally, to the entire globe.”

    While the inclusion during the tournament has been lauded, First Nations groups have questioned Australia’s Legacy 23 plan that seeks to grow women’s soccer in Australia beyond the World Cup.

    Indigenous Football Australia’s council sent a letter to FIFA last month decrying the lack of commitment to Indigenous-led soccer organizations going forward.

    “Despite ubiquitous Indigenous culture, symbolism, traditional ceremonies and installations at the World Cup and the holding out of Indigenous culture as something of central value to football, not a single dollar from the legacy program has been committed to organizations that are Indigenous-led,” the letter said. “Without support for the Indigenous community and their programs, we consider this symbolism empty.”

    The foundation set up by John Moriarty, the first Indigenous player for Australia’s national team, launched a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign to support the work it is doing through soccer with First Nations children in remote communities.

    Football Australia said support and advancement of Indigenous football programs were integral parts of the sport’s national commitment, supported by its National Indigenous Advisory Group.

    But IFA council member Ros Moriarty said the response to the letter “doesn’t address our concerns with what we see as contraventions of FIFA’s own human rights statutes for self determination for indigenous peoples.”

    “It’s the Indigenous-led grassroots football programming and movement that we’re part of that we’re looking to see recognition of,” she said. “But, as importantly, we’re looking to understand how part of the legacy fund is going to be directed to programs such as ours that have been delivering for a long time, and carrying the heavy weight of football in Australia for Indigenous people.”

    Veteran goalkeeper Lydia Williams and playmaker Kyah Simons are Indigenous players on the Matildas’ World Cup roster. Ros Moriarty said the relative lack of young Indigenous players coming into the top national soccer teams was evidence the “pipeline” and engagement needed more attention.

    “It seems to us, that a World Cup on our shores that ignores the movement that Australia has experienced toward acknowledging and recognizing Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander self-determination … without a (specific) allocation from this legacy fund, is tone deaf,” she said.

    New Zealand’s program is Aotearoa United: Legacy Starts Now. The soccer federation also partnered with Maori Football Aotearoa and Sport New Zealand to develop a school program aimed at increasing participation in sports for young girls from different backgrounds, including Indigenous communities.

    “The Sport continues to grow, as you see it’s the most participated sport in the country. We are aided by the growth of futsal, which just can’t stop growing as well,” said Andrew Pragnell, CEO of New Zealand Football. “We’ve got to make sure we continue to make sure our environments are well connected and that they’re supporting as many young people to join the sport from all walks of life as possible.”

    ___

    AP Sports Writers John Pye in Brisbane, Australia and Steve McMorran in Wellington, New Zealand contributed to this report.

    ___

    More AP coverage of the Women’s World Cup: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-womens-world-cup

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Journalist group changes its name to the Indigenous Journalists Association to be more inclusive

    Journalist group changes its name to the Indigenous Journalists Association to be more inclusive

    [ad_1]

    WINNIPEG, Canada — The Native American Journalists Association announced Friday it is changing its name to the Indigenous Journalists Association in an effort to become more inclusive and strengthen ties with Indigenous journalists worldwide.

    “We need young, Indigenous people to be telling stories in their own communities, and so having a name that can be inclusive to all Indigenous peoples, especially First Nations and Inuit, Métis and Canada, who don’t identify as Native American — So that was really part of it,” Francine Compton, citizen of Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation and associate director of the journalists association, told The Associated Press.

    The group that was founded in 1983 and now includes more than 950 members, mostly in the U.S., announced the name change at its annual conference in Winnipeg, Canada. The decision was made after Indigenous members voted 89-55 in favor of the name change. The organization also updated the logo from NAJA with a feather to a stylized “IJA.”

    The name change has been in consideration for a few years, as the association sought to give its members time to voice their support and any concerns, Compton said.

    It also wanted to honor the association’s legacy and those who led it, including board presidents who were gifted a beaded medallion with the NAJA logo on stage Friday, with drumming and song filling the room.

    The change also reflects terminology used by the United Nations and other multinational organizations.

    “We live in a time when it is possible to connect and create deep, meaningful relationships with Indigenous journalists no matter where they are, and we look forward to helping them find each other to share their knowledge and support,” Graham Lee Brewer, a Cherokee Nation citizen and the association’s president, said in a statement.

    It also represents an evolution in how Indigenous people see themselves.

    “It’s part of this larger movement that’s happening in Indigenous people, just reclaiming everything that’s theirs that should be theirs,” board member Jourdan Bennett-Begaye said ahead of the vote. “Since contact, decisions have been made for us and not by us.”

    ___

    Golden reported from Seattle.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • ‘Native American’ or ‘Indigenous’? Journalism group rethinks name

    ‘Native American’ or ‘Indigenous’? Journalism group rethinks name

    [ad_1]

    ATLANTA — The Native American Journalists Association is aiming to become more inclusive as its members vote on whether to rebrand as the Indigenous Journalists Association — a move inspired, in part, by evolving trends in cultural identity.

    The group, with more than 950 members mostly in the United States, is expected to approve the change at its annual conference this week in Winnipeg, Canada. Voting on the new name, as well as branding that would replace a feather with an “ija” logo in stylized letters, runs through Thursday, Aug. 10.

    Founded in Canada in 1983, NAJA wants to foster inclusion with Indigenous journalists there as well as in Alaska and Hawaii, since “ Native American ” is a modern alternative for “ American Indian ” — referring specifically to the millions of descendants of the original inhabitants of what is now the Lower 48 states.

    “Essentially, we’re going back to our roots and trying to create and provide support and resources for Indigenous journalists all across Turtle Island,” board member Jourdan Bennett-Begaye said, invoking the term some Indigenous people use to refer to the North American continent.

    More broadly, the proposed change aligns with terminology used by the United Nations and many multinational organizations as the group also seeks allies among Indigenous journalists worldwide. The Māori people in New Zealand, the Sámi people in Arctic Scandinavia and Russia, and the Mapuche people in Patagonia all face similar issues, with journalists who cover climate change, conflicts over land and resources and missing and murdered women, she said.

    The change also would reflect an evolution in how Indigenous people see themselves. They’re increasingly calling for “decolonizing” language, moving away from terms that were imposed on them, like “Indian” — a legacy of Christopher Columbus’ infamous cartographic blunder — and even, in some contexts, “American,” which derives from a mapmaker’s effort to honor another Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci.

    “It’s part of this larger movement that’s happening in Indigenous people, just reclaiming everything that’s theirs that should be theirs,” Bennett-Begaye said. “Since contact, decisions have been made for us and not by us.”

    Still, some NAJA members have raised concerns that if the association globalizes, its focus on issues particular to Native Americans might be lost. Board members have proposed creating regional chapters if that happens.

    “Indigenous is inoffensive, but it also doesn’t do any of the kind of distinct sovereignty work, distinct political work, distinct cultural affiliation ″ that other words do, said Elizabeth Ellis, a historian at Princeton University and an enrolled citizen of the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma. “It doesn’t tell you much beyond the fact that you’re existing in opposition to a history and ongoing legacy of colonization.”

    Usage of the word “Indigenous” has soared in recent years, particularly after demonstrations against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 forged the largest pan-Indigenous alliance in North American history. Standing Rock marked a before and after for Native American visibility in the media and popular culture, Ellis said.

    But the proliferation of its usage doesn’t mean other terms should disappear, because they’re not always interchangeable, said Ellis. Indian, American Indian, Native American, Native, and even “NDN” — a tongue-in-cheek slang popular in social media — each have distinct meanings and are appropriate in different contexts.

    Indian, for example, is a historical reference used to connote barbarism to justify enslaving Indigenous people during the colonial era — settlers equated it to savagery while seizing more land and federal policies invoked it as a racist concept in the 19th century, Ellis said. “Indian Law” remains embedded in the U.S. Constitution and in the official names of many Indigenous nations, so its usage in such contexts is inescapable.

    “Indigenous” applies worldwide, including to anyone whose ancestors didn’t come from somewhere else, and whose communities have endured oppression of their people. But it doesn’t reflect the particular duality that many Native Americans experience as citizens of their tribal nations as well as the U.S., Ellis said.

    This is why many Native Americans, when communicating with wider audiences, identify themselves first by their tribal affiliations, and increasingly, in their Indigenous language. Ellis intentionally introduces herself as Peewaalia, just as Bennett-Begaye tells people she’s Diné, a member of the Navajo Nation.

    Young people in particular are driving these changes in language, Bennett-Begaye said.

    “A lot of older folks, and across Indian Country, they still call themselves Indian. My late grandmother, she still calls herself Indian,” she said. “But young people … they see that as derogatory. They’re like, ‘We don’t call ourselves that.’ And I think that’s the cool part, like, young people owning their identity.”

    As editor of Indian Country Today, Bennett-Begaye oversaw that media organization’s recent name change to ICT, prompted by conversations about identity that were happening across the United States after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.

    For older generations, ICT can still mean Indian Country Today, while for younger folks, it can mean Indigenous Cultures Today, or Indigenous Communities Today, she said. “We really left it up to interpretation for our readers and our audience.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Anchorage homeless face cold and bears. A plan to offer one-way airfare out reveals a bigger crisis

    Anchorage homeless face cold and bears. A plan to offer one-way airfare out reveals a bigger crisis

    [ad_1]

    ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Shawn Steik and his wife were forced from a long-term motel room onto the streets of Anchorage after their rent shot up to $800 a month. Now they live in a tent encampment by a train depot, and as an Alaska winter looms they are growing desperate and fearful of what lies ahead.

    A proposal last week by Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson to buy one-way plane tickets out of Alaska’s biggest city for its homeless residents gave Steik a much-needed glimmer of hope. He would move to the relative warmth of Seattle.

    “I heard it’s probably warmer than this place,” said Steik, who is Aleut.

    But the mayor’s unfunded idea also came under immediate attack as a Band-Aid solution glossing over the tremendous, and still unaddressed, crisis facing Anchorage as a swelling homeless population struggles to survive in a unique and extreme environment. Frigid temperatures stalk the homeless in the winter and bears infiltrate homeless encampments in the summer.

    A record eight people died of exposure while living outside last winter and this year promises to be worse after the city closed an arena that housed 500 people during the winter months. Bickering between the city’s liberal assembly and its conservative mayor about how to address the crisis, and a lack of state funding, have further stymied efforts to find a solution.

    With winter fast approaching in Alaska, it’s “past time for state and local leaders to address the underlying causes of homelessness — airplane tickets are a distraction, not a solution,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska said in a statement to The Associated Press.

    About 43% of Anchorage’s more than 3,000 unsheltered residents are Alaska Natives, and Bronson’s proposal also drew harsh criticism from those who called it culturally insensitive.

    “The reality is there is no place to send these people because this is their land. Any policy that we make has to pay credence to that simple fact. This is Dena’ina land, this is Native land,” said Christopher Constant, chair of the Anchorage Assembly. “And so we cannot be supporting policies that would take people and displace them from their home, even if their home is not what you or I would call home.”

    Bronson’s airfare proposal caps a turbulent few years as Anchorage, like many cities in the U.S. West, struggles to deal with a burgeoning homeless population.

    In May, the city shut down the 500-bed homeless shelter in the city’s arena so it could once more be used for concerts and hockey games after neighbors complained about open drug use, trespassing, violence and litter. A plan to build a large shelter and navigation center fell through when Bronson approved a contract without approval from the Anchorage Assembly.

    That leaves a gaping hole in the city’s ability to house the thousands of homeless people who have to contend with temperatures well below zero for days at a time and unrelenting winds blasting off Cook Inlet. At the end of June, Anchorage was estimated to have a little more than 3,150 homeless people, according to the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness. Last week, there were only 614 beds at shelters citywide, with no vacancies.

    New tent cities have sprung up across Anchorage this summer: on a slope facing the city’s historic railroad depot, on a busy road near the Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson and near soup kitchens and shelters downtown.

    Assembly members are slated to consider a winter stop-gap option in August falling far short of the need: a large, warmed, tent-like structure for 150 people.

    Summer brings its own challenges: hungry bears last year roamed a city-owned campground where homeless people were resettled after the arena closed. Wildlife officials killed four bears after they broke into tents.

    Bronson said he prefers to spend a few hundred dollars per person for a plane ticket rather than spending about $100 daily to shelter and feed them. He said he doesn’t care where they want to go; his job is to “make sure they don’t die on Anchorage streets.”

    It’s not clear if his proposal will move forward. There is not yet a plan or a funding source.

    Dr. Ted Mala, an Inupiaq who in 1990 became the first Alaska Native to serve as the state’s health commissioner, said Anchorage should be working with social workers and law enforcement to discover people’s individual reasons for homelessness and connect them with resources.

    Buying the unsheltered a ticket to another city is a political game that’s been around for years. A number of U.S. cities struggling with homelessness, including San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Oregon, have also offered bus or plane tickets to homeless residents.

    “People are not pawns, they’re human beings,” Mala said.

    The mayor’s proposal, while focused on warmer cities, also would fund tickets to other Alaska locations for those who want them.

    Clarita Clark became homeless after her medical team wanted her to move from Point Hope to Anchorage for cancer treatment because Anchorage is warmer. The medical facility wouldn’t allow her husband to stay with her, so they pitched a tent in a sprawling camp to stay together.

    Having recently found the body of a dead teenager who overdosed in a portable toilet, Clark yearns to return to the Chukchi Sea coastal village of Point Hope, where her three grandchildren live.

    “I got a family that loves me,” she said, adding she would use the ticket and seek treatment closer to home.

    Danny Parish also is leaving Alaska, but for another reason: He’s fed up.

    Parish is selling his home of 29 years because it sits directly across the street from Sullivan Arena. Bad acts by some homeless people — including harassment, throwing vodka bottles in his yard, poisoning his dog and using his driveway as a toilet — made his life “a holy hell,” he said.

    Parish is convinced the arena will be used again this winter since there isn’t another plan.

    He, too, hopes to move to the contiguous U.S. — Oregon, for starters — but not before asking Anchorage leaders for his own plane ticket out.

    “If they’re going to give them to everybody else,” Parish said, “then they need to give me one.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Anchorage homeless face cold and bears. A plan to offer one-way airfare out reveals a bigger crisis

    Anchorage homeless face cold and bears. A plan to offer one-way airfare out reveals a bigger crisis

    [ad_1]

    ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Shawn Steik and his wife were forced from a long-term motel room onto the streets of Anchorage after their rent shot up to $800 a month. Now they live in a tent encampment by a train depot, and as an Alaska winter looms they are growing desperate and fearful of what lies ahead.

    A proposal last week by Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson to buy one-way plane tickets out of Alaska’s biggest city for its homeless residents gave Steik a much-needed glimmer of hope. He would move to the relative warmth of Seattle.

    “I heard it’s probably warmer than this place,” said Steik, who is Aleut.

    But the mayor’s unfunded idea also came under immediate attack as a Band-Aid solution glossing over the tremendous, and still unaddressed, crisis facing Anchorage as a swelling homeless population struggles to survive in a unique and extreme environment. Frigid temperatures stalk the homeless in the winter and bears infiltrate homeless encampments in the summer.

    A record eight people died of exposure while living outside last winter and this year promises to be worse after the city closed an arena that housed 500 people during the winter months. Bickering between the city’s liberal assembly and its conservative mayor about how to address the crisis, and a lack of state funding, have further stymied efforts to find a solution.

    With winter fast approaching in Alaska, it’s “past time for state and local leaders to address the underlying causes of homelessness — airplane tickets are a distraction, not a solution,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska said in a statement to The Associated Press.

    About 43% of Anchorage’s more than 3,000 unsheltered residents are Alaska Natives, and Bronson’s proposal also drew harsh criticism from those who called it culturally insensitive.

    “The reality is there is no place to send these people because this is their land. Any policy that we make has to pay credence to that simple fact. This is Dena’ina land, this is Native land,” said Christopher Constant, chair of the Anchorage Assembly. “And so we cannot be supporting policies that would take people and displace them from their home, even if their home is not what you or I would call home.”

    Bronson’s airfare proposal caps a turbulent few years as Anchorage, like many cities in the U.S. West, struggles to deal with a burgeoning homeless population.

    In May, the city shut down the 500-bed homeless shelter in the city’s arena so it could once more be used for concerts and hockey games after neighbors complained about open drug use, trespassing, violence and litter. A plan to build a large shelter and navigation center fell through when Bronson approved a contract without approval from the Anchorage Assembly.

    That leaves a gaping hole in the city’s ability to house the thousands of homeless people who have to contend with temperatures well below zero for days at a time and unrelenting winds blasting off Cook Inlet. At the end of June, Anchorage was estimated to have a little more than 3,150 homeless people, according to the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness. Last week, there were only 614 beds at shelters citywide, with no vacancies.

    New tent cities have sprung up across Anchorage this summer: on a slope facing the city’s historic railroad depot, on a busy road near the Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson and near soup kitchens and shelters downtown.

    Assembly members are slated to consider a winter stop-gap option in August falling far short of the need: a large, warmed, tent-like structure for 150 people.

    Summer brings its own challenges: hungry bears last year roamed a city-owned campground where homeless people were resettled after the arena closed. Wildlife officials killed four bears after they broke into tents.

    Bronson said he prefers to spend a few hundred dollars per person for a plane ticket rather than spending about $100 daily to shelter and feed them. He said he doesn’t care where they want to go; his job is to “make sure they don’t die on Anchorage streets.”

    It’s not clear if his proposal will move forward. There is not yet a plan or a funding source.

    Dr. Ted Mala, an Inupiaq who in 1990 became the first Alaska Native to serve as the state’s health commissioner, said Anchorage should be working with social workers and law enforcement to discover people’s individual reasons for homelessness and connect them with resources.

    Buying the unsheltered a ticket to another city is a political game that’s been around for years. A number of U.S. cities struggling with homelessness, including San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Oregon, have also offered bus or plane tickets to homeless residents.

    “People are not pawns, they’re human beings,” Mala said.

    The mayor’s proposal, while focused on warmer cities, also would fund tickets to other Alaska locations for those who want them.

    Clarita Clark became homeless after her medical team wanted her to move from Point Hope to Anchorage for cancer treatment because Anchorage is warmer. The medical facility wouldn’t allow her husband to stay with her, so they pitched a tent in a sprawling camp to stay together.

    Having recently found the body of a dead teenager who overdosed in a portable toilet, Clark yearns to return to the Chukchi Sea coastal village of Point Hope, where her three grandchildren live.

    “I got a family that loves me,” she said, adding she would use the ticket and seek treatment closer to home.

    Danny Parish also is leaving Alaska, but for another reason: He’s fed up.

    Parish is selling his home of 29 years because it sits directly across the street from Sullivan Arena. Bad acts by some homeless people — including harassment, throwing vodka bottles in his yard, poisoning his dog and using his driveway as a toilet — made his life “a holy hell,” he said.

    Parish is convinced the arena will be used again this winter since there isn’t another plan.

    He, too, hopes to move to the contiguous U.S. — Oregon, for starters — but not before asking Anchorage leaders for his own plane ticket out.

    “If they’re going to give them to everybody else,” Parish said, “then they need to give me one.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • No children’s remains found in Nebraska dig near former Native American boarding school

    No children’s remains found in Nebraska dig near former Native American boarding school

    [ad_1]

    An archeological dig for a lost children’s cemetery near the Nebraska site of a former Native American boarding school has ended after two weeks — and no remains were found.

    Dave Williams, the state’s archeologist, said the team searching near the former Genoa Indian Industrial School plans to meet on Zoom with representatives of 40 tribes across the U.S. next week to determine next steps.

    “I would have preferred that we found the children,” said Judi gaiashkibos, a member of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska and the executive director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs. “But we have to remain hopeful. They’ve been gone more than 90 years. I feel like I have to remain steadfast and committed.”

    The search for gained renewed interest after hundreds of children’s remains were discovered at other Native American boarding school sites across the U.S. and Canada in recent years.

    Dogs trained to detect the odor of decaying remains searched the area last summer and indicated there could be a burial site in a strip of land bordered by a farm field, railroad tracks and a canal. In November, ground-penetrating radar identified four anomalies — or areas of disturbed soil beneath the ground surface — in the shapes of graves.

    Williams and his team spent the last two weeks excavating, but didn’t find the first anomaly they were seeking, which could’ve contained children’s remains.

    “That’s one of the challenges of archaeology,” Williams said. “We can have a lot of evidence that something should be where we think it’s going to be. And then once we actually get in and open up the ground and take a look, it’s not what we expected.”

    They’ll spend the next few weeks reevaluating the data and everything that led them to that location, Williams said, and figure out a new plan in consultation with the dozens of tribes that lost their children to the school.

    There are three other anomalies nearby. Crews could search for those, pursue other leads or stop the search entirely if the tribes collectively decide that’s what they want, Williams said, but he hopes the team can still help the tribes, find the children and “bring them to rest in a satisfactory way.”

    Sunshine Thomas-Bear, a member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska and the cultural preservation director for the tribe, said she wishes there had been more consultation with all 40 tribes — and not just the tribes in Nebraska — before now. She’s looking forward to that happening more in this next phase.

    “Nothing was found this time. But perhaps that was because we weren’t all ready yet,” Thomas-Bear said. “There were tribes that weren’t notified, there were tribes that weren’t there. We believe that everything happens for a reason. I think that if we get on the right track together, perhaps we’ll be more successful.”

    The Genoa Indian Industrial School was part of a national system of more than 400 Native American boarding schools that attempted to assimilate Indigenous people into white culture by separating children from their families, prohibiting them from speaking their Native languages, cutting them off from their heritage and inflicting abuse.

    The school, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) west of Omaha, opened in 1884 and at its height was home to nearly 600 students. It closed in the 1930s and most buildings were demolished long ago.

    The U.S. Interior Department — led by Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico and the first Native American Cabinet secretary — released a first-of-its-kind report last year that named hundreds of schools the federal government supported to strip Native Americans of their cultures and identities.

    At least 500 children died at some of the schools, but that number is expected to reach into the thousands or tens of thousands as efforts like the Nebraska dig continue.

    ___

    Trisha Ahmed is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Trisha Ahmed on Twitter: @TrishaAhmed15

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Search for children’s remains continues at former Native American boarding school in Nebraska

    Search for children’s remains continues at former Native American boarding school in Nebraska

    [ad_1]

    GENOA, Neb. — Amid a renewed push for answers, archeologists planned to resume digging Tuesday at the remote site of a former Native American boarding school in central Nebraska, searching for the remains of children who died there decades ago.

    The search for a hidden cemetery near the former Genoa Indian Industrial School in Nebraska gained renewed interest after the discovery of hundreds of children’s remains at Native American boarding school sites in the U.S. and Canada since 2021, said Dave Williams, the state’s archeologist who’s digging at the site with teammates this week.

    The team hadn’t found any remains by Monday afternoon, but the dig had only just begun.

    “Where is the cemetery and how many people are buried there? It’s the big question that’s hanging in the air,” said Alyce Tejral, a board member of the nearby Genoa U.S. Indian School Foundation Museum.

    Genoa was part of a national system of more than 400 Native American boarding schools that attempted to assimilate Indigenous people into white culture by separating children from their families, cutting them off from their heritage and inflicting physical and emotional abuse.

    Judi gaiashkibos, the executive director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, whose mother attended the school in the late 1920s, has been involved in the cemetery effort for years. She said it’s difficult to spend time in the community where many Native Americans suffered, but the vital search can help with healing and bringing the children’s voices to the surface.

    Williams, the archeologist, said finding the location of the cemetery and the burials contained within it may provide some peace and comfort to people who have suffered a long period of not knowing exactly what happened to their relatives who were sent to boarding schools and never came home.

    The school, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) west of Omaha, opened in 1884 and at its height was home to nearly 600 students from more than 40 tribes across the country. It closed in 1931 and most buildings were long ago demolished.

    Newspaper clippings, records and a student’s letter indicate at least 86 students died at the school, usually due to diseases such as tuberculosis and typhoid, but at least one death was blamed on an accidental shooting.

    Researchers identified 49 of the children killed but have not been able to find names for 37 students. The bodies of some of those children were returned to their homes but others are believed to have been buried on the school grounds at a location long forgotten.

    As part of an effort to find the cemetery, last summer dogs trained to detect the faint odor of decaying remains searched the area and signaled they had found a burial site in a narrow piece of land bordered by a farm field, railroad tracks and a canal.

    A team using ground-penetrating radar last November also showed an area that was consistent with graves, but there will be no guarantees until researchers finish digging into the ground, Williams said.

    The process is expected to take several days.

    If the dig reveals human remains, the State Archeology Office will continue to work with the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs in deciding what’s next. They could rebury the remains in the field and create a memorial or exhume and return the bodies to tribes.

    Last year, the U.S. Interior Department — led by Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico and the first Native American Cabinet secretary — released a first-of-its-kind report that named hundreds of schools the federal government supported to strip Native Americans of their cultures and identities.

    At least 500 children died at some of the schools, but that number is expected to reach into the thousands or tens of thousands as research continues.

    ___

    Ahmed reported from Minneapolis. Scott McFetridge contributed from Des Moines, Iowa.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Dig begins for the remains of dozens of children at a long-closed Native American boarding school

    Dig begins for the remains of dozens of children at a long-closed Native American boarding school

    [ad_1]

    GENOA, Neb. — In a remote patch of a long-closed Native American boarding school, near a canal and some railroad tracks, Nebraska’s state archeologist and two teammates filled buckets with dirt and sifted through it as if they were searching for gold.

    They’re trying to find the bodies of dozens of children who died at the school and have been lost for decades, a mystery that archeologists aim to unravel as they dig feet deep and meters wide in a central Nebraska field that was part of the sprawling campus a century ago.

    People toting shovels, trowels and even smaller tools are searching the unmarked site where ground-penetrating radar suggested a possible location for the cemetery of the Genoa Indian Industrial School.

    Genoa was part of a national system of more than 400 Native American boarding schools that attempted to assimilate Indigenous people into white culture by separating children from their families and cutting them off from their heritage. And the discovery of more than 200 children’s remains buried at the site of what was once Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school has magnified interest in the troubling legacy both in Canada and the U.S. since 2021.

    “For all those families with students who died here in Genoa and weren’t returned home — and that information being lost for over 90 years now — it creates this perpetual cycle of trauma,” Dave Williams, the state archeologist, said Monday.

    Williams added, “Finding the location of the cemetery, and the burials contained within, will be a small step towards bringing some peace and comfort” to tribes after a long period of uncertainty where children were sent to boarding schools and never came home.

    The school, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) west of Omaha, opened in 1884 and at its height was home to nearly 600 students from more than 40 tribes across the country. It closed in 1931 and most buildings were long ago demolished.

    For decades, residents of the tiny community of Genoa, with help from Native Americans, researchers and state officials, have sought the location of a forgotten cemetery where the bodies of up to 80 students are believed to be buried.

    Judi gaiashkibos, the executive director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, whose mother attended the school in the late 1920s, has been involved in the cemetery effort for years and planned to travel to Genoa on Monday. She said it’s difficult to spend time in the community where many Native Americans suffered, but the vital search can help with healing and bringing the children’s voices to the surface.

    “It’s an honor to go on behalf of my ancestors and those who lost their lives there and I feel entrusted with a huge responsibility,” gaiashkibos said.

    Newspaper clippings, records and a student’s letter indicate at least 86 students died at the school, usually due to diseases such as tuberculosis and typhoid, but at least one death was blamed on an accidental shooting.

    Researchers identified 49 of the children killed but have not been able to find names for 37 students. The bodies of some of those children were returned to their homes but others are believed to have been buried on the school grounds at a location long ago forgotten.

    As part of an effort to find the cemetery, last summer dogs trained to detect the faint odor of decaying remains searched the area and signaled they had found a burial site in a narrow piece of land bordered by a farm field, railroad tracks and a canal.

    A team using ground-penetrating radar last November also showed an area that was consistent with graves, but there will be no guarantees until researchers can dig into the ground, said Williams, the archeologist.

    The process is expected to take several days.

    “We’re going to take the soil down and first see if what’s showing up in the ground-penetrating radar are in fact grave-like features,” Williams said. “And once we get that figured out, taking the feature down and determining if there are any human remains still contained within that area.”

    If the dig reveals human remains, the State Archeology Office will continue to work with the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs in deciding what’s next. They could rebury the remains in the field and create a memorial or exhume and return the bodies to tribes, Williams said.

    DNA could indicate the region of the country each child was from but narrowing that to individual tribes would be challenging, Williams said.

    The federal government is taking a closer examination of the boarding school system. The U.S. Interior Department, led by Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico and the first Native American Cabinet secretary, released an initial report in 2022 and is working on a second report with additional details.

    ___

    Ahmed reported from Minneapolis. Scott McFetridge contributed from Des Moines, Iowa.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • In search of a lost cemetery, dig begins at a former Native American school in Nebraska

    In search of a lost cemetery, dig begins at a former Native American school in Nebraska

    [ad_1]

    Bodies of dozens of children who died at a Native American boarding school have been lost for decades, a mystery that archeologists aim to unravel as they begin digging in a central Nebraska field that a century ago was part of the sprawling campus.

    Crews toting shovels, trowels and even smaller tools planned to start searching Monday at the site experts suspect is the Genoa Indian Industrial School cemetery. Genoa was part of a national system of more than 400 Native American boarding schools that attempted to integrate Indigenous people into white culture by separating children from their families and cutting them off from their heritage.

    The school, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) west of Omaha, opened in 1884 and at its height was home to nearly 600 students from more than 40 tribes across the country. It closed in 1931 and most buildings were long ago demolished.

    For decades, residents of the tiny community of Genoa, with help from Native Americans, researchers and state officials, have sought the location of a forgotten cemetery where the bodies of up to 80 students are believed to be buried.

    Judi gaiashkibos, the executive director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, whose mother attended the school in the late 1920s, has been involved in the cemetery effort for years and was set Monday to travel to Genoa. She said it’s difficult to spend time in the community where many Native Americans suffered, but the vital search can help with healing and bringing the children’s voices to the surface.

    “It’s an honor to go on behalf of my ancestors and those who lost their lives there and I feel entrusted with a huge responsibility,” gaiashkibos said.

    Newspaper clippings, records and a student’s letter indicate at least 86 students died at the school, usually due to diseases such as tuberculosis and typhoid, but at least one death was blamed on an accidental shooting.

    Researchers identified 49 of the children killed but have not been able to find names for 37 students. The bodies of some of those children were returned to their homes but others are believed to have been buried on the school grounds at a location long ago forgotten.

    As part of an effort to find the cemetery, last summer dogs trained to detect the faint odor of decaying remains searched the area and signaled they had found a burial site in a narrow piece of land bordered by a farm field, railroad tracks and a canal.

    A team using ground-penetrating radar last November also showed an area that was consistent with graves, but there will be no guarantees until researchers can dig into the ground, said Dave Williams, Nebraska’s state archeologist.

    The process is expected to take several days.

    “We’re going to take the soil down and first see if what’s showing up in the ground-penetrating radar are in fact grave-like features,” Williams said. “And once we get that figured out, taking the feature down and determining if there are any human remains sill contained within that area.”

    If the dig reveals human remains, the State Archeology Office will continue to work with the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs in deciding what’s next. They could rebury the remains in the field and create a memorial or exhume and return the bodies to tribes, Williams said.

    DNA could indicate the region of the country each child was from but narrowing that to individual tribes would be challenging, Williams said.

    The federal government is taking a closer examination at the boarding school system. The U.S. Interior Department, led by Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico and the first Native American Cabinet secretary, released an initial report in 2022 and is working on a second report with additional details.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Long heritage of Native Hawaiian gender-fluidity showcased in Las Vegas drag show

    Long heritage of Native Hawaiian gender-fluidity showcased in Las Vegas drag show

    [ad_1]

    LAS VEGAS — Drag queens donning the white, red and blue of the Hawaiian flag shimmied across the stage to a throbbing techno remix of “Aloha Oe,” a song composed by Hawaii‘s last reigning monarch. Spectators roared as a performer shook her hips in a Tahitian-style dance.

    All were “mahu” — a Hawaiian term for people with dual male and female spirit and a mixture of gender traits.

    They starred in a drag show this week called “Mahu Magic” on the sidelines of a Native Hawaiian convention in Las Vegas to remind the world of the respected place gender-fluidity has held in Hawaiian culture for hundreds of years, while also making a foray into the national conversation about transgender rights.

    “It’s a little different from other drag shows because this one has a very specific purpose,” Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, who is mahu, a community leader and a master teacher of hula and chanting, told the audience midway through the event.

    “It is meant to reinstate the rightful place that mahu have between kane and wahine,” Wong-Kalu said, using the Hawaiian words for man and woman. The crowd erupted in raucous cheers and applause.

    Adam Keawe Manalo-Camp, an ethnohistorian who identifies as mahu and queer, said mahu also can include people who would be nonbinary, would define themselves as third gender and those attracted to someone of the same gender.

    “That’s what mahu does — mahu offers a space between the concepts of male and female,” Manalo-Camp said.

    The Hawaiian language makes it easier to inhabit that spot because it doesn’t have gendered pronouns. In the Western context, Wong-Kalu uses “she” and “her” but prefers the word “o ia,” which is a Hawaiian language pronoun used for all people.

    “It doesn’t matter whether you’re coming from male to female or female to the male, and it doesn’t matter what your physical articulation is,” Wong-Kalu said. “We have elements of both. Sometimes we completely walk away from one and walk to the other. Sometimes we stay in the middle.”

    The “Mahu Magic” show on Tuesday was sponsored by the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, a nonprofit organization better known for administering rent relief and job training programs. The council normally holds its conventions in Hawaii but met in Nevada for the first time — coincidentally during Pride month — in an acknowledgement that more than half of all Native Hawaiians now live outside the islands.

    Council CEO Kuhio Lewis said he wanted to shine a spotlight on gender-fluidity for those who have lost touch with Hawaiian culture because they’ve had to leave the islands due to rising housing costs and gentrification.

    Some Native Hawaiian families now have two or three generations born outside Hawaii and need help connecting to their homeland, Lewis said.

    But he also aimed to reach Native Hawaiians who have drifted from their culture in a Hawaii that’s increasingly shaped by continental U.S. influences. About one-third of the 1,200 attendees flew to Las Vegas from Hawaii, while the remainder already lived outside the state.

    “Unless we do something to honor, to recognize who we are, we’re going to lose our identity,” Lewis said.

    A panel discussion addressed how traditional roles of mahu have evolved over time. More broadly, the convention featured workshops on topics like hula, Hawaiian language and affordable housing.

    One dancer in “Mahu Magic” wore a white pantsuit, cape and towering feather headdress while lip-synching to “Sky” by Sonique. A trio danced hula to the modern favorite “Hawaii Calls” in halter-top gowns featuring red and white hibiscus flowers.

    All 10 performers live as women. Many other drag shows feature men who live as men but dress as women for the show.

    Mahu often have had important roles in Native Hawaiian culture as teachers, healers and keepers of knowledge and traditions.

    One story reflecting this history is that of four mahu healers who visited Waikiki from Tahiti more than 500 years ago. Hawaiians placed four boulders on the beach to honor them, which are still visible today.

    Despite these deep roots, mahu awareness in Hawaii has faded during centuries of foreign influence. Christian missionaries who first arrived in 1820 taught Hawaiians to shun anything deviating from clearly defined male and female roles. In 1893, businessmen backed by the U.S. government overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and a few years later prohibited the teaching of Hawaiian language in schools. The U.S. annexed Hawaii in 1898, making it a territory.

    Leikia Williams, the drag show’s producer and a performer, said mahu was a derogatory word when she was growing up in Honolulu in the 1980s. She remembers people saying, “Stop acting mahu.”

    The support of her “drag house,” consisting of elder mahu and fellow mahu sisters, helped her cope. Williams said her house mother taught her and her sisters to “be who we want to be; be who we are, especially in public. To keep our heads held high.”

    There’s more understanding today. Even so, a 2018 state report found transgender youth in Hawaii are three times more likely to consider suicide and make a suicide plan than their peers whose gender matches the one usually associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.

    Increasingly, anti-LGBTQ+ language has flowed into Hawaii from states that have enacted laws to keep transgender children off girls sports teams and block them from receiving gender-affirming medical care.

    Republican lawmakers introduced a bill at the Hawaii Legislature this year that would have required “separate sex-specific athletic teams or sports” in schools. The measure didn’t get a hearing in either the House or Senate, which are both dominated by Democrats.

    Lawmakers overwhelmingly passed legislation enabling the state to replace marriage certificates for people who change their gender or sex. Gov. Josh Green, a Democrat, on Friday indicated he would either sign the bill or let it become law without his signature.

    Wong-Kalu said influence from the continental U.S. exacerbates anti-mahu views in Hawaii and highlighting mahu during the Las Vegas event was important in countering the prejudice.

    “This, for me, is about decolonizing our people to the degree that we understand our rightful place in our own home, of which we still do not have,” Wong-Kalu said.

    Eight performers at “Mahu Magic” were Native Hawaiian and two were of Samoan ancestry, which Lewis said was fitting because the conversation about mahu is also one for broader Oceania. Other parts of Polynesia, such as Samoa and Tonga, have concepts similar to mahu. The Tahitian language even uses the same word.

    Mahu also is similar to the term “two-spirit” used by Native Americans, Alaska Natives and First Nations communities in Canada for people who combine traits of men and women.

    Williams related how performances can change minds. She shared how she can sense at drag shows when straight men in the audience are uncomfortable with mahu. But that changes when she takes the microphone. Afterward, those same men thank her, offer food and help carry her bags.

    “That’s educating people and letting them know that we’re real,” Williams said. “We’re human. We’re here.”

    ___

    McAvoy reported from Honolulu.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Australia’s Senate votes for holding referendum on Indigenous Voice to Parliament within 6 months

    Australia’s Senate votes for holding referendum on Indigenous Voice to Parliament within 6 months

    [ad_1]

    CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s Senate voted Monday to hold a referendum this year on creating an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, an advocate aiming to give the nation’s most disadvantaged ethnic minority more say on government policy.

    Dozens of mainly Indigenous people stood up the public galleries and clapped when senators passed the referendum bill 52 votes to 19.

    The Senate vote means the referendum must be held on a Saturday in a two-to-six-month window.

    While the Voice would advocate for Indigenous interests, it would not have a vote on laws, and debate for and against the elected body has become increasingly heated and divisive.

    Proponents hope the Voice will improve living standards for Indigenous Australians, who account for 3.2% of Australia’s population and are the most nation’s most disadvantaged ethnic group.

    If the referendum is passed, it would be Australia’s first successful referendum since 1977 and the first ever to pass without bipartisan support.

    Opposition spokesperson on the attorney general’s portfolio Michaelia Cash told the Senate on Monday most of her colleagues would vote to hold the referendum “because we believe in the people of this nation and their right to have a say.”

    “This is not because we agree with what this bill ultimately sets out to achieve, which is of course to irrevocably change this nation’s constitution in a way that will destroy one of our most fundamental values: equality of citizenship,” Cash told the Senate before the vote.

    Opposition Sen. Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who is Indigenous, said the Voice proposal was already dividing Australia along racial lines.

    “If the ‘yes’ vote is successful, we will be divided forever,” Price said.

    “I want to see Australia move forward as one, not two divided. That’s why I will be voting ‘no,’” Price added.

    Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe, who is also Indigenous, said she opposed the Voice because it was powerless.

    “It’s appeasing white guilty in this country by giving the poor little Black fellas a powerless advisory body,” Thorpe said.

    Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy said providing Indigenous people with a Voice was a “very simple request” and urged all sides to keep the debate respectful.

    “I urge all Australians to dig deep, to listen to the better side of yourself throughout this debate,” said McCarthy, who is Indigenous.

    “This is a critical moment in our country’s history. It is the right thing to do … and it is time now to put this question to the Australian people,” she added.

    Australia’s House of Representatives last month voted overwhelming in support of holding the referendum.

    The Liberal Party and Nationals party, which formed a conservative coalition government for nine years before the center-left Labor Party was elected last year, both oppose the Voice.

    Prime Minister Anthony Albanese committed his government to holding the referendum during his election night victory speech.

    The Voice was recommended in 2017 by a group of 250 Indigenous leaders who met at Uluru, a landmark sandstone rock in central Australia that is a scared site to traditional owners. They were delegates of the First Nations National Constitutional Convention that the then-government had asked for advice on how the Indigenous population could be acknowledged in the constitution.

    The conservative government immediately rejected the prospect of the Voice, which it likened to a third chamber of Parliament.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Cruising to Nome: The first U.S. deep water port for the Arctic to host cruise ships, military

    Cruising to Nome: The first U.S. deep water port for the Arctic to host cruise ships, military

    [ad_1]

    ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The cruise ship with about 1,000 passengers anchored off Nome, too big to squeeze into into the tundra city’s tiny port. Its well-heeled tourists had to shimmy into small boats for another ride to shore.

    It was 2016, and at the time, the cruise ship Serenity was the largest vessel ever to sail through the Northwest Passage.

    But as the Arctic sea ice relents under the pressures of global warming and opens shipping lanes across the top of the world, more tourists are venturing to Nome — a northwest Alaska destination known better for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and its 1898 gold rush than luxury travel.

    The problem remains: There’s no place to park the big boats. While smaller cruise ships are able to dock, officials say that of the dozen arriving this year, half will anchor offshore.

    That’s expected to change as a $600 million-plus expansion makes Nome, population 3,500, the nation’s first deep-water Arctic port. The expansion, expected to be operational by the end of the decade, will accommodate not just larger cruise ships of up to 4,000 passengers, but cargo ships to deliver additional goods for the 60 Alaska Native villages in the region, and military vessels to counter the presence of Russian and Chinese ships in the Arctic.

    It’s a prospect that excites business owners and officials in Nome, but concerns others who worry about the impact of additional tourists and vessel traffic on the environment and animals Alaska Natives depend on for subsistence.

    The expansion will “support our local economy and the local artists here, the Indigenous artists having access to the visitors and teaching and sharing our culture and our language and how we how we make our beautiful art,” said Alice Bioff, an Inupiaq resident of Nome.

    Bioff was a tour guide who greeted the Serenity’s passengers when they arrived in 2016. One of the guests admired her cloth kuspuk, a traditional Alaska Native garment similar to a smock, and wanted to know if it was water resistant.

    It wasn’t, but the interaction inspired Bioff to create her own line of waterproof jackets styled like kuspuks. She now sells to tourists and locals alike from her own Naataq Gear gift store, a retail spot in the post office building, where about 20 Alaska Native artists offer ivory carvings, beadwork or paintings through consignment.

    Studies show that cruise ship passengers typically spend about $100 per day in Nome, city manager Glenn Steckman said.

    With the expansion, he’s hoping guests on larger cruise ships will extend their stays to experience more of Nome and the tundra, to view wild musk ox, or to sip a drink at the 123-year-old Board of Trade Saloon.

    Climate change is making this all possible.

    Nome, founded after gold was discovered in 1898, has seen six of its 10 warmest winters on record just in this century. The Bering Strait shipping lanes have gotten only busier since 2009, going from 262 transits that year to 509 in 2022.

    “We’re going to be the first deep-draft Arctic port but probably not going to be the last,” Nome Mayor John Handeland said.

    The Bering Sea ice on average reaches Nome in late November or December, about two or three weeks later than it did 50 years ago, said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

    In 2019, mushers in the Iditarod, who normally drive their dog teams on the Bering Sea ice to the finish line in Nome, were forced onto the beach because of open water. The ice season will only get shorter, Thoman said.

    The existing port causeway was completed in the mid-1980s. The expansion will be completed in three phases and effectively double its size. The first part of the project is funded by $250 million in federal infrastructure money with another $175 million from the Alaska Legislature. Field work is expected to begin next year.

    Currently three ships can dock at once; the expanded dock will accommodate seven to 10.

    Workers will dredge a new basin 40 feet (12.2 meters) deep, allowing large cruises ships, cargo vessels, and every U.S. military ship except aircraft carriers to dock, Port Director Joy Baker said.

    U.S. Rep. Dan Sullivan, an Alaska Republican, said the expanded port will become the centerpiece of U.S. strategic infrastructure in the Arctic. The military is building up resources in Alaska, placing fighter jets at bases in Anchorage and Fairbanks, establishing a new Army airborne division in Alaska, training soldiers for future cold-weather conflicts and has missile defense capabilities.

    “The way you have a presence in the Arctic is to be able to have military assets and the infrastructure that supports those assets,” Sullivan said.

    The northern seas near Alaska are getting more crowded. A U.S. Coast Guard patrol board encountered seven Chinese and Russian naval vessels cooperating in an exercise last year about 86 miles (138 kilometers) north of Alaska’s Kiska Island.

    Coast guard vessels in 2021 also encountered Chinese ships 50 miles (80 km) off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.

    NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg last yea r warned that Russia and China have pledged to cooperate in the Arctic, “a deepening strategic partnership that challenges our values and interests.”

    Still, the prospect of Nome welcoming more tourists and a greater military presence bothers some residents. Austin Ahmasuk, an Inupiaq native, said the port’s original construction displaced an area traditionally used for subsistence hunting or fishing, and the expansion won’t help.

    “The Port of Nome is development purely for the sake of development,” Ahmasuk said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Cruising to Nome: The first U.S. deep water port for the Arctic to host cruise ships, military

    Cruising to Nome: The first U.S. deep water port for the Arctic to host cruise ships, military

    [ad_1]

    ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The cruise ship with about 1,000 passengers anchored off Nome, too big to squeeze into into the tundra city’s tiny port. Its well-heeled tourists had to shimmy into small boats for another ride to shore.

    It was 2016, and at the time, the cruise ship Serenity was the largest vessel ever to sail through the Northwest Passage.

    But as the Arctic sea ice relents under the pressures of global warming and opens shipping lanes across the top of the world, more tourists are venturing to Nome — a northwest Alaska destination known better for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and its 1898 gold rush than luxury travel.

    The problem remains: There’s no place to park the big boats. While smaller cruise ships are able to dock, officials say that of the dozen arriving this year, half will anchor offshore.

    That’s expected to change as a $600 million-plus expansion makes Nome, population 3,500, the nation’s first deep-water Arctic port. The expansion, expected to be operational by the end of the decade, will accommodate not just larger cruise ships of up to 4,000 passengers, but cargo ships to deliver additional goods for the 60 Alaska Native villages in the region, and military vessels to counter the presence of Russian and Chinese ships in the Arctic.

    It’s a prospect that excites business owners and officials in Nome, but concerns others who worry about the impact of additional tourists and vessel traffic on the environment and animals Alaska Natives depend on for subsistence.

    The expansion will “support our local economy and the local artists here, the Indigenous artists having access to the visitors and teaching and sharing our culture and our language and how we how we make our beautiful art,” said Alice Bioff, an Inupiaq resident of Nome.

    Bioff was a tour guide who greeted the Serenity’s passengers when they arrived in 2016. One of the guests admired her cloth kuspuk, a traditional Alaska Native garment similar to a smock, and wanted to know if it was water resistant.

    It wasn’t, but the interaction inspired Bioff to create her own line of waterproof jackets styled like kuspuks. She now sells to tourists and locals alike from her own Naataq Gear gift store, a retail spot in the post office building, where about 20 Alaska Native artists offer ivory carvings, beadwork or paintings through consignment.

    Studies show that cruise ship passengers typically spend about $100 per day in Nome, city manager Glenn Steckman said.

    With the expansion, he’s hoping guests on larger cruise ships will extend their stays to experience more of Nome and the tundra, to view wild musk ox, or to sip a drink at the 123-year-old Board of Trade Saloon.

    Climate change is making this all possible.

    Nome, founded after gold was discovered in 1898, has seen six of its 10 warmest winters on record just in this century. The Bering Strait shipping lanes have gotten only busier since 2009, going from 262 transits that year to 509 in 2022.

    “We’re going to be the first deep-draft Arctic port but probably not going to be the last,” Nome Mayor John Handeland said.

    The Bering Sea ice on average reaches Nome in late November or December, about two or three weeks later than it did 50 years ago, said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

    In 2019, mushers in the Iditarod, who normally drive their dog teams on the Bering Sea ice to the finish line in Nome, were forced onto the beach because of open water. The ice season will only get shorter, Thoman said.

    The existing port causeway was completed in the mid-1980s. The expansion will be completed in three phases and effectively double its size. The first part of the project is funded by $250 million in federal infrastructure money with another $175 million from the Alaska Legislature. Field work is expected to begin next year.

    Currently three ships can dock at once; the expanded dock will accommodate seven to 10.

    Workers will dredge a new basin 40 feet (12.2 meters) deep, allowing large cruises ships, cargo vessels, and every U.S. military ship except aircraft carriers to dock, Port Director Joy Baker said.

    U.S. Rep. Dan Sullivan, an Alaska Republican, said the expanded port will become the centerpiece of U.S. strategic infrastructure in the Arctic. The military is building up resources in Alaska, placing fighter jets at bases in Anchorage and Fairbanks, establishing a new Army airborne division in Alaska, training soldiers for future cold-weather conflicts and has missile defense capabilities.

    “The way you have a presence in the Arctic is to be able to have military assets and the infrastructure that supports those assets,” Sullivan said.

    The northern seas near Alaska are getting more crowded. A U.S. Coast Guard patrol board encountered seven Chinese and Russian naval vessels cooperating in an exercise last year about 86 miles (138 kilometers) north of Alaska’s Kiska Island.

    Coast guard vessels in 2021 also encountered Chinese ships 50 miles (80 km) off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.

    NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg last yea r warned that Russia and China have pledged to cooperate in the Arctic, “a deepening strategic partnership that challenges our values and interests.”

    Still, the prospect of Nome welcoming more tourists and a greater military presence bothers some residents. Austin Ahmasuk, an Inupiaq native, said the port’s original construction displaced an area traditionally used for subsistence hunting or fishing, and the expansion won’t help.

    “The Port of Nome is development purely for the sake of development,” Ahmasuk said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Cruising to Nome: The first U.S. deep water port for the Arctic to host cruise ships, military

    Cruising to Nome: The first U.S. deep water port for the Arctic to host cruise ships, military

    [ad_1]

    ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The cruise ship with about 1,000 passengers anchored off Nome, too big to squeeze into into the tundra city’s tiny port. Its well-heeled tourists had to shimmy into small boats for another ride to shore.

    It was 2016, and at the time, the cruise ship Serenity was the largest vessel ever to sail through the Northwest Passage.

    But as the Arctic sea ice relents under the pressures of global warming and opens shipping lanes across the top of the world, more tourists are venturing to Nome — a northwest Alaska destination known better for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and its 1898 gold rush than luxury travel.

    The problem remains: There’s no place to park the big boats. While smaller cruise ships are able to dock, officials say that of the dozen arriving this year, half will anchor offshore.

    That’s expected to change as a $600 million-plus expansion makes Nome, population 3,500, the nation’s first deep-water Arctic port. The expansion, expected to be operational by the end of the decade, will accommodate not just larger cruise ships of up to 4,000 passengers, but cargo ships to deliver additional goods for the 60 Alaska Native villages in the region, and military vessels to counter the presence of Russian and Chinese ships in the Arctic.

    It’s a prospect that excites business owners and officials in Nome, but concerns others who worry about the impact of additional tourists and vessel traffic on the environment and animals Alaska Natives depend on for subsistence.

    The expansion will “support our local economy and the local artists here, the Indigenous artists having access to the visitors and teaching and sharing our culture and our language and how we how we make our beautiful art,” said Alice Bioff, an Inupiaq resident of Nome.

    Bioff was a tour guide who greeted the Serenity’s passengers when they arrived in 2016. One of the guests admired her cloth kuspuk, a traditional Alaska Native garment similar to a smock, and wanted to know if it was water resistant.

    It wasn’t, but the interaction inspired Bioff to create her own line of waterproof jackets styled like kuspuks. She now sells to tourists and locals alike from her own Naataq Gear gift store, a retail spot in the post office building, where about 20 Alaska Native artists offer ivory carvings, beadwork or paintings through consignment.

    Studies show that cruise ship passengers typically spend about $100 per day in Nome, city manager Glenn Steckman said.

    With the expansion, he’s hoping guests on larger cruise ships will extend their stays to experience more of Nome and the tundra, to view wild musk ox, or to sip a drink at the 123-year-old Board of Trade Saloon.

    Climate change is making this all possible.

    Nome, founded after gold was discovered in 1898, has seen six of its 10 warmest winters on record just in this century. The Bering Strait shipping lanes have gotten only busier since 2009, going from 262 transits that year to 509 in 2022.

    “We’re going to be the first deep-draft Arctic port but probably not going to be the last,” Nome Mayor John Handeland said.

    The Bering Sea ice on average reaches Nome in late November or December, about two or three weeks later than it did 50 years ago, said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

    In 2019, mushers in the Iditarod, who normally drive their dog teams on the Bering Sea ice to the finish line in Nome, were forced onto the beach because of open water. The ice season will only get shorter, Thoman said.

    The existing port causeway was completed in the mid-1980s. The expansion will be completed in three phases and effectively double its size. The first part of the project is funded by $250 million in federal infrastructure money with another $175 million from the Alaska Legislature. Field work is expected to begin next year.

    Currently three ships can dock at once; the expanded dock will accommodate seven to 10.

    Workers will dredge a new basin 40 feet (12.2 meters) deep, allowing large cruises ships, cargo vessels, and every U.S. military ship except aircraft carriers to dock, Port Director Joy Baker said.

    U.S. Rep. Dan Sullivan, an Alaska Republican, said the expanded port will become the centerpiece of U.S. strategic infrastructure in the Arctic. The military is building up resources in Alaska, placing fighter jets at bases in Anchorage and Fairbanks, establishing a new Army airborne division in Alaska, training soldiers for future cold-weather conflicts and has missile defense capabilities.

    “The way you have a presence in the Arctic is to be able to have military assets and the infrastructure that supports those assets,” Sullivan said.

    The northern seas near Alaska are getting more crowded. A U.S. Coast Guard patrol board encountered seven Chinese and Russian naval vessels cooperating in an exercise last year about 86 miles (138 kilometers) north of Alaska’s Kiska Island.

    Coast guard vessels in 2021 also encountered Chinese ships 50 miles (80 km) off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.

    NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg last yea r warned that Russia and China have pledged to cooperate in the Arctic, “a deepening strategic partnership that challenges our values and interests.”

    Still, the prospect of Nome welcoming more tourists and a greater military presence bothers some residents. Austin Ahmasuk, an Inupiaq native, said the port’s original construction displaced an area traditionally used for subsistence hunting or fishing, and the expansion won’t help.

    “The Port of Nome is development purely for the sake of development,” Ahmasuk said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Cruising to Nome: The first U.S. deep water port for the Arctic to host cruise ships, military

    Cruising to Nome: The first U.S. deep water port for the Arctic to host cruise ships, military

    [ad_1]

    ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The cruise ship with about 1,000 passengers anchored off Nome, too big to squeeze into into the tundra city’s tiny port. Its well-heeled tourists had to shimmy into small boats for another ride to shore.

    It was 2016, and at the time, the cruise ship Serenity was the largest vessel ever to sail through the Northwest Passage.

    But as the Arctic sea ice relents under the pressures of global warming and opens shipping lanes across the top of the world, more tourists are venturing to Nome — a northwest Alaska destination known better for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and its 1898 gold rush than luxury travel.

    The problem remains: There’s no place to park the big boats. While smaller cruise ships are able to dock, officials say that of the dozen arriving this year, half will anchor offshore.

    That’s expected to change as a $600 million-plus expansion makes Nome, population 3,500, the nation’s first deep-water Arctic port. The expansion, expected to be operational by the end of the decade, will accommodate not just larger cruise ships of up to 4,000 passengers, but cargo ships to deliver additional goods for the 60 Alaska Native villages in the region, and military vessels to counter the presence of Russian and Chinese ships in the Arctic.

    It’s a prospect that excites business owners and officials in Nome, but concerns others who worry about the impact of additional tourists and vessel traffic on the environment and animals Alaska Natives depend on for subsistence.

    The expansion will “support our local economy and the local artists here, the Indigenous artists having access to the visitors and teaching and sharing our culture and our language and how we how we make our beautiful art,” said Alice Bioff, an Inupiaq resident of Nome.

    Bioff was a tour guide who greeted the Serenity’s passengers when they arrived in 2016. One of the guests admired her cloth kuspuk, a traditional Alaska Native garment similar to a smock, and wanted to know if it was water resistant.

    It wasn’t, but the interaction inspired Bioff to create her own line of waterproof jackets styled like kuspuks. She now sells to tourists and locals alike from her own Naataq Gear gift store, a retail spot in the post office building, where about 20 Alaska Native artists offer ivory carvings, beadwork or paintings through consignment.

    Studies show that cruise ship passengers typically spend about $100 per day in Nome, city manager Glenn Steckman said.

    With the expansion, he’s hoping guests on larger cruise ships will extend their stays to experience more of Nome and the tundra, to view wild musk ox, or to sip a drink at the 123-year-old Board of Trade Saloon.

    Climate change is making this all possible.

    Nome, founded after gold was discovered in 1898, has seen six of its 10 warmest winters on record just in this century. The Bering Strait shipping lanes have gotten only busier since 2009, going from 262 transits that year to 509 in 2022.

    “We’re going to be the first deep-draft Arctic port but probably not going to be the last,” Nome Mayor John Handeland said.

    The Bering Sea ice on average reaches Nome in late November or December, about two or three weeks later than it did 50 years ago, said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

    In 2019, mushers in the Iditarod, who normally drive their dog teams on the Bering Sea ice to the finish line in Nome, were forced onto the beach because of open water. The ice season will only get shorter, Thoman said.

    The existing port causeway was completed in the mid-1980s. The expansion will be completed in three phases and effectively double its size. The first part of the project is funded by $250 million in federal infrastructure money with another $175 million from the Alaska Legislature. Field work is expected to begin next year.

    Currently three ships can dock at once; the expanded dock will accommodate seven to 10.

    Workers will dredge a new basin 40 feet (12.2 meters) deep, allowing large cruises ships, cargo vessels, and every U.S. military ship except aircraft carriers to dock, Port Director Joy Baker said.

    U.S. Rep. Dan Sullivan, an Alaska Republican, said the expanded port will become the centerpiece of U.S. strategic infrastructure in the Arctic. The military is building up resources in Alaska, placing fighter jets at bases in Anchorage and Fairbanks, establishing a new Army airborne division in Alaska, training soldiers for future cold-weather conflicts and has missile defense capabilities.

    “The way you have a presence in the Arctic is to be able to have military assets and the infrastructure that supports those assets,” Sullivan said.

    The northern seas near Alaska are getting more crowded. A U.S. Coast Guard patrol board encountered seven Chinese and Russian naval vessels cooperating in an exercise last year about 86 miles (138 kilometers) north of Alaska’s Kiska Island.

    Coast guard vessels in 2021 also encountered Chinese ships 50 miles (80 km) off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.

    NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg last yea r warned that Russia and China have pledged to cooperate in the Arctic, “a deepening strategic partnership that challenges our values and interests.”

    Still, the prospect of Nome welcoming more tourists and a greater military presence bothers some residents. Austin Ahmasuk, an Inupiaq native, said the port’s original construction displaced an area traditionally used for subsistence hunting or fishing, and the expansion won’t help.

    “The Port of Nome is development purely for the sake of development,” Ahmasuk said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link