ONGOING ACTIVITIES

Activities in the U.S.

At the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI)'s 62nd annual convention, newly elected President Joe Garcia, San Juan Pueblo governor, announced that its new Policy Research Center had initiated wide spread consultation, with the goal of envisioning new futures for Indian tribal communities. NCAI Executive Director Jacqueline Johnson said the Center’s consultations were bringing together local tribal community members, including youths and elders, around a collective agenda aimed at a bright future. ''These intimate discussions will culminate in an agenda prepared by tribal leaders so they can address the issues that are important to them to promote a better Indian country for the seventh generation.'' Created in 2003, the Policy Research Center was fashioned to provide a forum for forward-thinking, deliberate, proactive Indian policy development, on such issues as tribal lands, cultural protections and the importance of Indian youth maintaining connections to their land and culture. NCAI treasurer Ron Allen encouraged Indian tribes to donate to the planned Embassy of Tribal Nations in Washington, which would become a symbol and center for the protection of American Indian rights and advocacy. The embassy would be a home for NCAI and other American Indian organizations. Allen said it would be created and built for the children and future generations of American Indians.

National Congress of Indians (NCAI) President Joe Garcia, in February, called for a partnership between the tribes and federal, state and local governments to combat methamphetamine, which some Indian leaders say is replacing alcohol as the scourge of reservations. "It exists in all of the country, but it exists worse in Indian Country," Garcia said Monday during the legislative summit of the Congress. "Methamphetamine is killing our children, affecting our culture and ravaging our communities”.

NCAI has been working in collaboration with other Indian organizations on a major initiative to get Congress to reauthorize the Indian Healthcare Improvement Act, HR5312.

National Indian Education Association President Ryan Wilson (Oglala Lakota) made a plea for Congress to take note of and action on the problems facing Indian youth, in the State of Indian Education address at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, in February. Wilson stated, "The conscience of America can never be clear, the state of American education can never be strong, so long as Indian Country lives on a lonely island of educational poverty, amidst of vast ocean of wealth and educational opportunity for all Americans, except the first Americans," Wilson began his address with a history lesson. In 1969, Congress requested a study of the learning conditions in Indian Country. The results of that study, published as "Indian Education: A National Tragedy - A National Challenge, were a "stinging critique," "We ranked at the bottom of every social, health, economic, and yes, education indicator in America." In the last 37 years thing have not improved much, he said. "American Indian and Alaska Native children live in conditions that the rest of America would never accept. The poverty rate of our children is three times that of white children. The suicide rates of our children are more than double the national average." Wilson added that Native children are 200% more likely to die in a car accident because reservation roads are the most dangerous in the country. There are some bright spots. Wilson commended tribal colleges for producing "more Native graduates in institutions of higher learning in the last 30 years than all of the mainstream universities across America combined" and said that "Indian Head Start programs have graduated thousands of Native American children who do remarkably better than their counterparts who have never had those opportunities to attend Head Start." He closed the address with requests: -Asked Congress to convene an Indian education summit.- Requested a "commitment to fuel the tribal language revitalization movement, greater teacher support, flexibility and acknowledgment of the unique contexts of Native schools, and data collection, and research with culturally appropriate design models and methodologies."-Re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. -Greater input from Native leaders when Congress debates the No Child Left Behind Act. For more details go to: http://nativetimes.com/index.asp?action=displayarticle&article_id=7602

Montana Urban Indian Health Executive directors met, at the end of April, to develop a strategy to oppose President Bush's proposed budget cuts of $33 million in funding for urban Indian health centers. For information, go to http://www.helenair.com/articles/2006/04/28/montana/a10042806_02.txt. The American Indian Council (AIC) of Missouri put on an American Indian Symposium, November 7-8, in Liberty, MO providing an opportunity for dialogue with public health and state and local officials about delivering health and social services to the urban American Indian community in culturally appropriate and respectful ways. Success stories and best practices were shared with the goal of developing strategies for providing better service and increased collaboration among agencies. AIC was formed in 1972 and has been designated as a consortium of off-reservation Indian people from Missouri, Iowa and Kansas. As a consortium, AIC addresses Indian issues, and mobilizes and focuses resources to establish preparatory programs for youth and adults facing significant barriers to employment. Individuals are provided job training and other services that result in increased employment and earnings, increased education and occupational skills, and decreased welfare dependency. These programs develop academic, occupational, and literacy skills making these individuals more competitive in the workforce. The program also promotes the economic and social development of Indian communities in accordance with their goals and values. For information contact Jerry W. Briscoe, Director of Research & Services Coordinator, American Indian Council, 310 Armour Road, Suite 205, North Kansas City, MO 64116 (816) 471-489, (800) 546-4898.

A group of shareholders of Newmont Mining corporation, at the April company shareholders meeting, called upon Chairman and CEO Wayne Murdy, to respect the decision of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), rejecting the United States' claim that Western Shoshone lands somehow transferred to "federal" or U.S. ownership without Western Shoshone consent, and calling for Newmont to "develop a policy toward Native American peoples in the United States and address the specific concerns of the Western Shoshone." A delegation of Western Shoshone also addressed Nemont’s CEO and Board at the Annual General Meeting in Denver, CO. Newmont currently operates gold mines across Western Shoshone territory in Nevada, consisting of about 40% of its equity base, and the firm is seeking a large number of new exploration in the area. For more information contact the Western Shoshone Defense Project, P.O. Box 211308, Crescent Valley, NV 89821 (775)468-0230, wsdp@igc.org, www.wsdp.org.

Defenders of the Black Hills is raising money in hopes of buying land around Bear Butte, near Sturgis, SD, as a buffer zone to protect the sacred site used for vision quests and ceremonies from offensive noise pollution. The organization opposes a plan by a bar owner to use 600 acres near the butte as an entertainment site and campground during the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Defenders of the Black Hills, earlier, stopped a gun range from being developed on the land. Native Earthworks Preservation (NEP), devoted to stopping the destruction and desecration of American Indian sacred sites and burial mounds, has launched a new web site at: www.nepsite.org.

O'odham in Mexico joined a 120-car caravan, in May, to oppose a planned hazardous waste dump near the O'odham sacred site of Quitovac, south of the international border.

The Indigenous Support Network, supported by the University of CU-Denver Student Activities and the Fourth World Center for the Study of Indigenous Law and Politics (CU-Denver), put on Indigenous Peoples and Mining Conference, The Real Price of Gold: The Impacts of Mining on Indigenous Peoples and the Global Environment, in late April, For more information go to: http://www.coloradoaim.org/blog/2006/04/indigenous-peoples-and-mining.html.

The Boarding School Healing Project is a national coalition of several Native organizations currently working to document boarding school abuse and its many impacts on individuals and communities, develop and build indigenous individual and community healing models, and demand justice from the U.S. government and churches in the U.S. and in front of the United Nations. The current focus is not on individual lawsuits, but on building a movement that calls on the U.S. government to ensure justice and collective reparations for the human rights abuses against Native children in church run boarding schools. For more information go to: http://www.boardingschoolhealingproject.org/.

"Based in St. Paul, Minnesota, Living Justice Press is a new nonprofit publisher devoted to producing books on restorative justice. Because restorative justice has its roots in Indigenous philosophies and practices, our books come from an Indigenous perspective". See Media Notes below for some of the press' books. For information contact Living Justice Press, 2093 Juliet Ave., St. Paul, MN 55105, (651)695-1008, LJPress@aol.com, http://www.livingjusticepress.org/.

The National Society for American Indian Elderly (NSAIE) works to increase senior services on tribal lands, allowing American Indian Elderly to stay in their homes as respected members of their communities and keepers of their traditions. NSAIE operates as an AmeriCorps*VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) project. VISTA members who serve through NSAIE assist with capacity building, grant writing, coordination of services and other locally directed activities that help build stronger communities. For more information go to http://www.nsaie.org/.

An international movement is seeking to change the name of Minnesota's Rum River back to its Sacred Mdowakanton Dakota name, Mdo-te-min-wakan, translated as mouth (of river) + water + sacred. For information go to: http://www.towahkon.org/.

Three Hawaiian sovereignty groups. Na Koa Ikaika O Ka Lahui Hawai'i, the Koani Foundation and Kekuni Kanaka Maoli Tribunal Komike, are calling for the United Nations to demand that the United States respond to allegations of human right violations against Native Hawaiians that the groups have detailed in a report that will be taken up by the Human Rights Committee in Geneva in July. The groups are seeking the removal of the U.S. government from the Hawaiian Islands. The groups hold that the U.S. has been in violation of the international human rights treaty by failing to provide Native Hawaiians their right to self-determination and stealing their lands. The Akaka bill, now stalled in the U.S. Senate, would not go far enough in addressing the concerns of Native Hawaiians in the view of the groups. For more information, contact Gordon Y.K. Pang at gpang@honoluluadvertiser.com. Indigenous World Association, claiming to represent Native Hawaiians and Alaskans stated, April 20, that it has submitted reports to the U.N. Human Rights Committee seeking to pressure the United States into granting Indigenous peoples in Alaska and Hawaii full rights as independent states, on the grounds that the occupation of their lands is against international law. “We are independent and occupied peoples,” stated Indigenous World Association spokesman Ronald Barnes. “Neither Alaska nor Hawaii has ever ceded these powers.”

Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO) partnered with the State University of New York to assist a delegation of Bolivian Congress people, who were members of Indigenous President Evo Morales MAS party, experience Tribal America and deepen their understanding of the issues and initiatives of Indian leaders at the tribal and national level. AIO then went to Washington DC with them to facilitate a meeting with participants of the Tribal Self-Governance Conference, and for an interactive dialogue session that AIO family and friends put on in the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Hearing Room. In August, AIO ran a two day workshop, using its Indigenous Leaders Interactive System, as part of the ten day "The Answers Lie Within" exchange between members of the Southern African Arts Community visiting the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM, in August, and members of Advancement for Maori Opportunity (AMO), concerning the question, "What are the challenges to establishing international networks amongst the indigenous art communities to improve overall wellbeing of indigenous communities?" In December, AIO hosted a meeting with three other New Mexico headquartered Indian Organizations, Futures for Children the Indian Pueblo cultural Center and the American Indian Graduate Center, to set up a regular collaboration. The American Indian Science and Engeneering Society (AISES) has since joined the ongoing cooperation. AIO has now set up a web page for the Ambassador Alliance, graduates of its Ambassador leadership nurturing program who continue to network on Native issues, at: www.aioambassador,com. For more information contact AIO, 1001 Marquette, NW, Albuquerque NM 87102 (505)842-8677, aio@aio.org, www.aio.og.

International Activities

Survival International is supporting the urgings of world veteran journalist John Pilger and BBC World Affairs editor John Simpson to fellow journalists not to use terms such as 'stone age' and 'primitive' to describe contemporary tribal peoples, as set forth in their letter published in the UK's Financial Times. For more information, contact Survival International, 6 Charterhouse Buildings, London EC1M 7ET, UK, Tel: 020 7687 8700 or +44 7815 300 664, mr@survival-international.org, http://www.survival-international.org/.

Approximately 40,000 indigenous people from around the world took part in the December 3 International March for Climate in Montreal as part of the U.N. Climate Summit. Aboriginal peoples at the summit, threatened by global warmin, developed the Tiohtia:ke Declaration addressing climate change and indigenous peoples, by reaffirming previous positions of indigenous peoples who have participated in U.N. climate conferences since the late 1990s. ''The burning of oil, gas and coal as fossil fuels is the primary source of human-induced climate change. Indigenous Peoples have experienced systematic and repeated violations by oil, gas, mining and energy industries infringing on our inherent right to protect our traditional lands.'' In addition, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, submitted a petition to the Washington, D.C.-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights seeking relief from violations of Inuit human rights by global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The ICC petition urges the commission to recommend that the United States adopt mandatory limits to its emissions of greenhouse gases and cooperate with the global community of nations to ''prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system,'' the objective of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. The petition also requests the commission declare that the United States has an obligation to work with the Inuit to develop a plan to help Inuit adapt to unavoidable impacts of climate change, and to take into account the impact of its emission on the Arctic before approving all major government actions. Tom Goldtooth, director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, said climate change is not just a scientific term to those who live close to the earth. ''We are here to put a human face to this issue. Climate change is a human rights issue when it concerns the devastating effects of climate change and global warming on indigenous communities in the U.S. as well as throughout the world,'' The global meeting was the 11th session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. It was the first meeting of the parties since the Kyoto Protocol was implemented, last February, and focused on continued development of implementation mechanisms to reduce emission and deciding what measures to follow when the protocol expires in 2012.

Indigenous journalists founded the organization, RED AIPIN, in October, to defend Indigenous journalists, disseminate information and provide an umbrella for other indigenous groups and news organizations. The leading participants at the meeting were from Argentina Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama and Peru. For more information e-mail: aipin_seminario@yahoo.com.

Cultural Survival’s Guatemala Community Radio Project was officially launched in January when representatives of six community radio station associations and their larger umbrella organization, Consejo Guatemalteco de Comunicación Comunitaria (CGCC), signed an agreement with Cultural Survival, establishing a five-year partnership between the organizations and laying out four major goals: legalize the stations, improve their content, upgrade broadcast equipment, and increase training for station personnel. The agreement assumes that at the end of its five-year term the 250 stations that are members of the associations will be self-sufficient at their new levels of quality. Although these community radio stations are tiny and homegrown, they reach some 7 million listeners. In a nation where the majority of the population is indigenous, they are an essential tool for maintaining indigenous rights and culture—a principle that was recognized in the peace accords that ended 10 years of civil war in Guatemala.

Negotiators for 26 Northern Mexican indigenous communities and Southwestern U.S. tribes, who felt their concerns were sidelined in a 2005 U.S.-Mexico binational declaration on border environment, released their own statement in response, last year, in the first participation by Indian populations in the U.S.-Mexico Border 2012 National Coordinators Meeting, where they had a voice in the cross-boundary programs sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency. Yet they deemed it necessary to distinguish their priorities from those outlined at the meeting by the representatives of other jurisdictions in the 2,000-mile-long border area. The Native American leaders put forward recommendations for conservation of land, air, and water, partly in agreement expressed by non-Indian participants, and partly expressing different concerns and emphasizes. For a more detailed report go to: http://americas.irc-online.org/am/3038

The Nahual Foundation worked last fall to call in what aid it could from individuals and NGOs to the Guatemalan towns of Pastores and Jocotenango, Sacatepequez in the wake of an official response to Hurricane Stan that "has most unfortunately included many press conferences and photo opportunities organized by government officials and little actual relief reaching the most desperate populations", which continue to recover slowly, across Guatemala. Ignacio Ocho reports that, "Sadly, the Guatemalan Government has been very slow in responding to the catastrophe and many indigenous Peoples in other regions have not received enough help as the government has given priority to protecting the cash crops for export which are cultivated in the plantations on the southern coast. "Some good emergency aid was received, but in terms of replacing destroyed housing, it was only possible to get aid organizations to provide temporary housing at cost to the homeless poor, who have been reduced to nothing, so Nahual put together a volunteer team to design and build its own houses with and for local people, one by one.

More recently, the Nahual Fondation has been collaborating with The Guatemala Institute of Radio Education to bring distance learning to indigenous communities. The program involves working with leaders of sixteen communities to assist in education and civil society development. Looking ahead on the academic side, Nahual is assisting Fernando Ascoli to write a biographical account of his time in El Salvador and perhaps a book on a major social movement during El Salvador's turbulent and violent 70s and 80s. For more information go to the foundation's blog at: http://nahualfoundation.blogspot.com/ or contact Ignacio Ochoa, Nahual Foundation, 2a Avenida Norte 6 B, Antigua Guatemala, Sacatepequez, Guatemala (502)7832-0167, (502)5985-4954, ignacio.ochoa@nahualfoundation.org, www.nahualinstitute.com.

Encouraged by the election of Aymara Indian, Evo Morales, as President of Bolivia, members of numerous Brazilian Inan nations, joined by Native delegates from Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Urugay, came to the 250th anniversary of the death of Guarani chief Sepe Tiaraju, to follow his example in asserting their rights to ancestral land and planning action, in February

}~~~---->>>>>>>-=+=-<<<<<<<----~~~{