_ __ _____ __ _ __ ___ ____ _ __ ___ ' ) / / ') / / ) ' ) ) / ) / ' ) ) / ) / / / / / / /--/ / / / ___ / / / / ___ (_(_/ (__/ ( / (_ / (_ (___/ '__/_ / (_ (___/ ' O ( N A T I V E A M E R I C A N ) O o O ____ _ , ___ _ , ___ O o O / ' ) / / ) ' ) / / ' O o o o o O / /-< / /--/ /-- VOLUME 01, ISSUE 032 O o O __/_ / ) (___/ / ( (___, 30 October 1993 O o O ( N E W S ) O This issue contains articles from NATIVE_L/NATCHAT Lists and by members of the Invisible Band. <----<<<< >>>>----> This newsletter is a way of keeping the brothers and sisters of the Invisible Band and those who share our spirit informed about current events within the lives of those who walk the Red Road. It is hoped that our presence will be rewarded with a Native American RoundTable on GEnie. It is archived at the Native American FTP site ftp.cit.cornell.edu in the directory /pub/special/NativeProfs/newsletters; and is being sent to gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us (Gary S. Trujillo) should he wish to include it in his NATIVE-L or NATCHAT lists. "The Lakota was a true naturalist - a lover of Nature. He loved the earth and the attachment grew with age. The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power." "It was good for the skin to touch the earth, and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth." __ Chief Luther Standing Bear, Teton O'siyo Brothers and Sisters! There are many things that matter to me greatly. Among them is the need to see all our brothers and sisters joined together. Another is the need to stop the senseless destruction of Mother Earth. These are not, in my mind, separate issues. Who but the first people know and love Mother Earth more? If we do not speak with one voice how can we hope to stop the greedy theft of our Mother? Mitaquye Oyasin! Night Owl ------------------ clip here for news feature -- 8< ----------- --------- "RE: Forest Certification" --------- From: Phil Young Subj: Forest Certification Mailing List: NATIVE-L (native-l@gnosys.svle.ma.us) I am posting this message on Native-L at the request of Doug Norlen, who is not on the net and who believes that the information may be of interest to many people who are. Phil Young International Studies University of Oregon ====================================================== Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1993 17:12:34 -0700 (PDT) Here's the article (with introduction) regarding forest certification I'd like to post on Native Net. Thanks! ---------- Forwarded message -------- Introduction: Forest conservation advocates from around the world are becoming concerned about so-called "green" timber certification systems. While many forest advocates may support certification systems per-se, an increasing number of people are skeptical about integrity and operability of existing schemes. Criticisms include the lack of concern for the protection of primary forests and biodiversity, and the rather obvious conflict of interest between producer and certifiers under current schemes. Critics of these schemes voiced their opinions at the recent Forest Stewardship Council meeting in Toronto, Canada. Others, including some from the Pacific Northwest, favored a more conciliatory approach with the timber industry. The following article is an alternative view from the Pacific Northwest, which appeared in Inner Voice, the national newsletter of the Association of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (reprinted with permission). The author, Roy Keene, has worked as a forester for over twenty years and now directs the Public Forestry Foundation in Eugene Oregon. For more information about AFSEEE or PFF, send email correspondence to: dnorlen@oregon.uoregon.edu Article Text: During a lunch break at the North American Conference on Sustainable Forest Products, I laid down under a big red oak and considered the many opinions I'd heard on sustainable forestry. As humans, we consider long living forests through the short window of our own life spans, attempt to define their enormously complex functions and processes, and now precociously debate the sustainable management of their primary resources. In this endeavor, we are, I mused, like the blind men who, touching different parts of the elephant, insist that what each is touching is the whole reality. The reality of a forest continues to elude exact definition. When does a savanna develop enough tree coverage to be considered a forest? How long must a plantation exist before it exhibits the features necessary to be called a forest? How much biomass must be maintained and for how long to sustain the mysterious living community we call a forest? How many and what kind of trees can a forest manager harvest over a period of time without permanently impairing the integrity and vitality of the forest? The oldest sustainably managed forests in the United States have been around only a little longer than a century. How productive will they be in another century? Human forest management continues to be less perfect than the natural processes and changes that have maintained forests through the ages. Less tested by time is the variety of concepts and proposals for sustainable forestry certification. The central purpose for certifying sustainably grown wood is to help consumers make environmentally responsible choices which will hopefully foster environmentally sound forestry. It is anticipated that conscientious consumers will pay more for "good wood," resulting in product price and market share rewards for sustainable forest management. Like human forest management, this concept is also less than perfect. Without affecting major wood producers, "good wood" efforts will not be likely to change forestry practices at a noticeable scale. In order to shift this larger forestry paradigm, sustainable forestry certification should promote positive change over time rather than attempt to attain instant "perfect" forestry. There is also the unfortunate possibility that as global population increases and available timber supplies decrease, forest sustainability certification may be lost in the rush of consumer demand. In the environmental community, there has been another kind of rush. A variety of well-meaning groups are attempting to draft sustainable forest certification systems. Manifestos I have seen to date vary from vague global principles to narrow, local prescriptions. Some of these proposed certification systems are highly idealized and would be economically and even biologically infeasible to inaugurate on the commercial forest lands that dominate our nations wood production. Neither are present certification systems perfected enough to objectively and clearly distinguish the good from the bad. Systems I'm familiar with, including one Public Forestry Foundation foresters designed for certifying the 92,000 acre Collins Almanor Forest in Northern California, are weakened by requiring highly subjective judgment calls and a lack of comparative ratings. Questions will obviously arise as to how much real forest management experience the certification team has, what its bias is, and where other forest ownerships fit in the evaluation scale. The question of bias raises a distinct issue in third party certification efforts. Who will pay and who will play? Most smaller private woodlot owners will find lengthy third-party certification requirements, prescriptive processes and complicated inspections too costly. The Collins Almanor certification process cost less than a dollar per acre while one being proposed for a small forest tract in north California may cost over six hundred dollars per acre. Many woodlot owners I've talked with are resistant to the idea of "outsiders" with often minimal forest management experience judging how sustainably their lands are managed. Conversely, large industrial forest owners may attempt to "candy coat" extractive forest practices with a favorable certification claim by plying eager certifiers with generous fees. A sampling of private forest ownerships in the Pacific West (of the U.S) reveals three basic kinds of private forest owners. The first two, industrial and farm/woodlot forest owners, usually grow timber as a resource investment to be realized by harvesting timber and selling logs. The third kind of forest owner maintains their forest as an enhancement for a residence or a retreat and generally values aesthetic and spiritual amenities more than timber. It is very easy for most "aesthetic" forest owners to sustain their forest since they place no demand on the timber resources. To be meaningful, sustainable forest management certification must focus on the forest owners who are deliberately growing and harvesting timber. Many of these owners have no other intention or motive for their forest except to liquidate their standing timber when the market peaks. In order to turn this cut-and-replant mentality toward continuously sustainable forestry, the premium paid for "good wood" will need to rise high enough to offset present net timber value, cyclic log markets, and the human desire for quick profits. We have yet to ascertain whether or not large scale consumers are willing to pay the substantial premium this will require on wood products. The private owners I've encountered who have forsaken large capital gains and elected to prudently maintain their forest along with small yet regular profits are usually very aware of sustainable forestry principles and practice them. These established principles include: -a well designed management plan that describes a sustainable desired future condition; -sustained yield based on physical inventory or recognized empirical yield tables; -substantial forest retention, particularly in riparian areas; -harvest rotations long enough to develop mature timber stands and the ensuing habitat; and -efficient, unsubsidized site utilization and wood production. These reliable indicators of sustainable forest management can be quantified and presented by a knowledgeable forest owner wishing to make a sustainable forestry claim. Unrealistic certification expenses and third party conflict-of-interest problems can be avoided by sincere forest owners making their own claim based on the willingness to accommodate a reasonable and intelligent audit. Objectively measurable sustainable forestry aspects can be reasonably audited by experienced foresters. There will, however, always be enough subjective judgment involved in a critique of forest management to raise concern over who pays for an audit and what is expected in return. An ideal audit would be one that was financed by a neutral funder and entailed the full cooperation of the forest owner making the sustainable forestry claim. Fortunately, most sustainable private forest management I've seen to-date has been in place at least a decade, is obviously genuine, and can be easily verified by inspecting management records and doing a physical forest overview. Managers of these well-kept forests were unanimously proud of their forest stewardship and, consequently, encouraged reasonable public scrutiny. In the long run, the public's opinion of forest management may be more important than an audit or certification rating itself. Yet, after spending twenty years working with private forest lands in the West, it amazes me how little commercial forest land is managed for even minimal true sustained yield, where physically measured continuous timber growth equals continual timber harvest in board-feet. Conversion of forests to pulp plantations, quarterly profit goals, taxation practices, currency exchange rates, political policies and global log marketing all take their toll on prudent local forest management. As Americans strive to build ever larger houses, I fear that a consumer preference for "good wood" will be only a token effort in reducing extractive forestry. It may take a stronger move, perhaps a mass consumer boycott of all non-sustainably grown wood products, to really turn forest exploitation around. Even though the current sustainable forest certification process is, in my opinion, wrought with problems, good forest management models are hard to find and should be encouraged with recognition and reward. To provide incentive, a certification system should be reasonably objective and economically feasible. Environmentalists working on the certification process should mix more pragmatic experience with their ideology to be successful. We should keep in mind how little we really know about forests, how resilient forests really are, and how, in the forest, change happens slowly. We should not expect private forest owners to immediately reject their old value system or management regime overnight and embrace our various sustainable forestry manifestos as though they are the final reality. Instead, we should consider practical, widely applicable certification processes that work patiently with both existing forest conditions and the owners goals to bring about a sustainable state over time. As Lao-Tzu said, "A long journey begins with a single step." -Roy Keene --------- "RE: Tribal Rights, Tribal Wrongs" --------- From: B.HUNGERFORD Beverly Hungerford Subj: Tribal Rights, Tribal Wrongs GE Electronic Mail Forwarded with permission RoundTable: Writers' Ink From: JDILL Hi all. Have been off-line for some time. Have caught up with all messages and noticed much talk about tribes, rights, and the BIA. All may find the following material interesting. Tribal Rights, Tribal Wrongs -no author cited- Akwesasne Notes, Vol. 23 #4, Fall 1992. Herbie O'Neill's mother died when he was born, in 1918. His father was killed in World War I. The orphanage in Santa Rosa didn't know what to do with Indians when it closed, so O'Neill, who is half Cherokee and half Yurok, was sent to the Hoopa Valley Reservation. Back then the reservation belonged to all Northern California Indians. The fact that O'Neill was Yurok and his step family was Hoopa didn't matter. He and his stepfather hunted and gathered and fished all over the valley, the surrounding twelve-mile Square and the land along the Klamath River. That kind of harmony is now only a memory. Ever since Congress passed the Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act in 1988, Hoopa Valley, the largest reservation in California and site of some of the most valuable old-growth Douglas fir in the world, has belonged exclusively to the Hoopa. Other Indians, mostly Yurok and Karuk - even lifelong residents of the Square like O'Neill - have rights only to the Extension, an impoverished twenty-mile strip along the Klamath. Those who haven't joined a congressional formed Yurok Tribe, one defined by statute and legal obligation rather than by lineage and self- identification, have lost all federal rights as Indians. You live somewhere all your life, says O'Neill, now an elder among the Yurok, and then you can't call it home anymore, just because I'm Yurok. He and sixty-eight other non-Hoopa Indians, as well as one federally recognized tribe to which some of them belong, are seeking to overturn the Settlement Act as a violation of their constitutional rights. It is the first lawsuit to question, on First Amendment grounds, Congress's authority to determine tribal membership. This is one of the most egregious examples of Congress deciding to do what it wants with Indian land and self government, without consideration of constitutionality or fairness, says Curtis Berkey of The Indian Law Resource Center in Washington. You know if these people were white, Congress would not dream of doing this. But if Congress can do this to the Yurok, it can do it to any tribe. Indian's across the country will be watching this case to see what happens. The case, which had been dismissed on a technical procedural issue, is currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and oral argument is set for April 15 (1993). As a multitribe settlement, the Extension was tacked on in 1891, and the two areas were administered as a single reservation with one census roll. All that changed in the 1950s, when the postwar building boom and the laying of paved roads increased the value of the Square's timber. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (B.I.A.) began to cut and sell the timber, and a number of Indians who had allotments on the Square formed the Hoopa Valley Tribe to press for per capita payments. This tribe was based on geography, not blood. Indeed, it constituted only one third of the members of the reservation, and many of these were of mixed Yurok, Hoopa and other lineages. In 1963, in what came to be called the Short case, 3,800 non- Hoopa sued the federal government, saying all Indians had equal rights to profits generated from the joint reservation. Ten years later the courts sided with the plaintiffs, and the B.I.A. established a timber profit escrow account. No funds were paid to the 3,800 plaintiffs, however. Instead, the B.I.A. flouted the ruling and gave the Hoopa Valley Tribal Business Council, the governing body of the new tribe, sole right to manage the timber and the profits generated thereby. This compounded inequity triggered the Puzz case, which was decided in April of 1988. Again, the court found that the Business Council was not exclusively entitled to manage the timber and that the B.I.A. had to allow everyone on the reservation an equal opportunity to participate in the reservation management in a nondiscriminatory manner. That should have been the end of it, but eighteen days after the Puzz decision came down, Doug Bosco, then a Representative from Northern California and a man closely allied with timber interests, introduced the Settlement Act, which reversed every previous court decision. We started getting nailed in the l950's, says Yurok Howard McConnell, whose family has lived in the area for generations. Then we got things fixed with the Short case. Now I'm getting treated like I'm absolutely nothing again - and I was born and raised here. This whole mess is crookeder than a dog's hind leg. Robert Clinton, an expert in Native American law at the University of Iowa Law School, took the argument further: I know of no other instance in American history in which there has been twenty-five years of litigation, with a number of wins, where Congress stepped in, without negotiation, and imposed a settlement that gives the losers almost everything. Contemporary federal Indian policy emphasizes protecting Indian sovereignty. This legislation heralds a return to the termination policies of the early fifties. It's one of the worst things that has happened in Indian country in twenty years. Termination conjures bitter memories, of a period in the 1940s and 1950s in which government policy was designed to cut Indians loose from both federal protection and federal responsibility - terminating their special status as Native American tribes. What's happening now to the Indians of Northern California looks awfully familiar. The difference between the Square and the Extension is dramatic. The valley proper, a lush grassland bisected by the Trinity River and banked by steep mountains, has shopping centers, paved roads, electricity and running water, Timber industry profits in the area have been falling in recent years, but on the Square, where logging is not subject to the same export or wildlife protection rules as on nonreservation lands, profits have risen 75 percent in the past eighteen months. At the time of the Short case, profits were estimated to range from $1 million to $5 million a year. By contrast, the Extension, which follows the Klamath all the way to the Pacific, is bleak and inhospitable. It is endowed with neither timber nor arable land, and has neither electricity nor potable water. Few roads are paved; none follow the river's entire length. Non-Hoopa Indians living on the Square don't have to move, but they cannot hunt, fish, gather wood, or pick their traditional foodstuffs - roots, acorns, beargrass and mushrooms - in that area. Fish catches as recorded by the Pacific Fisheries Management Council, was 27,500. In 1990 and 1991, there was no commercial harvest at all, and only about 10,000 fish were caught in each of those years for subsistence. That's not enough to support a tribe of ten, never mind 4,000. The Hoopa claim The Extension's commercial salmon fishery is worth as much as the Square's timber, but drought, logging debris and offshore commercial fishing have reduced the Klamath River fishery considerably. In 1989, the commercial harvest upriver, thirty, forty, fifty miles, to fish and cut wood, O'Neill says. Many of the Indians depend on fishing and gathering for their livelihood, notes Michael Greenberg, an attorney in the Short case. The Settlement Act divides families as well as resources. Traditionally, Indians in the area lived in scattered villages and cohered by family, language, intermarriage and place more than by political affiliation. Even today most of them - even Hoopa Valley Tribal Business Council members - have mixed blood, and everyone on the reservation knows it. For instance, according to lineage, Howard McConnell's sister, Carol Ammon, stands in line to be a caretaker of Yurok ceremonial regalia. Her mother, four brothers and son all qualify as Yurok. But according to law, she cannot qualify, even though she is at least one-quarter Yurok, because she was born after an arbitrary cut-off date. I will end up terminated by this bill, she says. I am losing my entire identity. All this bureaucracy and infighting just makes me wonder. Do I exist? Am I real? Culturally, I feel lost. Under the Settlement Act, all non-Hoopa Indians are culturally lost. The non-Hoopa - even those already in federally recognized tribes - were given the choice of joining the new Yurok Tribe and waiving all rights to sue the federal government in the future, or accepting a $15,000 lump sum payoff (money, in any event, already owed them from the Short case) and renouncing all rights to Native Americans. But the Yurok never had or wanted a formal tribe; they say they prefer a joint government on the reservation. As this article went to press, the Yurok tribe was deciding whether to defy Congress and sue the government for compensation for loss of its members' rights and property. Such a suit would echo a case filed last year by Carol Ammon and other individuals for damages in their own right. The Hoopa claim the arrangement is equitable because the Square is their traditional territory. and because the Yurok now have the opportunity to . . . determine their destiny and manage their resources, according to former tribal forestry chairman Gary Risling. If we're getting the better deal, it's because of opportunity and aggressiveness. Daniel Jordan, assistant to Hoopa Tribal chairman Dale Risling, adds, We are not one big happy family. There are distinct cultural differences. If there are people here who don't know who they are, that's a problem with their personal identity. It's not the Hoopa Tribe's problem. Those involved on the Yurok side, however, argue that more than opportunity, aggressiveness and strong personal identities determined the land division. Many suspect foul play. I have no idea what Bosco's motive in this settlement has been, says William Wunsch, the original attorney in the Short case, but it is an inexplicable, outrageous bill. On one theory, then-Representative Bosco may have been influenced by his father-in-law, Victor Guynup who owns a dock with Eureka Forest Products and exports considerable amounts of timber. On another, he set in motion a process of terminating thousands of California's Indians in order to take away their fishing rights to Klamath water that is badly needed in the rest of the state. Guynup would not comment. Bosco denies both charges and says he introduced the legislation merely to settle twenty-five years of conflict and to cut out the attorneys, who he says were driving the controversy and getting the profits. He calls the result fair to both tribes and argues that it will lift the Yurok from poverty. It is difficult to discern the exact path of influence peddling, yet a fair amount of politicking did occur. Throughout the 1980's the Hoopa Tribe set up an extremely effective political machine, with professional lobbyists, a toll-free number and fund raising efforts for Bosco and then Senator Pete Wilson, now California's Governor. (The Yurok had neither the money nor the experience to develop such strategies.) When the bill was introduced on the Senate floor on October 1, 1988, it was 1am. At that hour, nobody knew or cared about this bill, McConnell says. At best it was considered a bit of local legislation. Indian legislation is too often seen as local, says Richard Thierolf, the attorney for the latest lawsuit. Still, Thierolf says that President Reagan had been ready to veto the bill until a call from Wilson, who had been talking to Hoopa leaders at a fund raising barbecue, changed his mind. Reagan signed the bill on October 31 - a Halloween trick - as McConnell puts it. Yet if the Settlement Act withstands the lawsuit, it will cause shock waves across the country. This will send a message to other Indian groups that if they protest federal policy toward their natural resources, they'll be dissolved, Clinton says. It's no accident that the bill was introduced only days after Puzz was settled. The Yurok have been singled out because they were putting up a fight and winning. What self-respecting tribe would dare question federal policy after this? --------------- --------- "RE: The Grand Treaty" --------- From: David (Kayoshk) Ashelman Subj: The Grand Treaty THE GRAND TREATY THE CHANGING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INDIAN NATIONS AND THE U.S. The past relationship of the Indian Nations of America, and the United States government has been one that has remained constant for the most part. While there have been periods of flux, the basic premise has always been that in the eyes of the United Sates, Native Americans have always been viewed as a "conquered" people. At the same time, most Indian Nations have wondered how a "conquered" people can have the ability to negotiate a treaty with their "conquerors". There is no place in the history of war where the defeated were allowed to accept anything except unconditional surrender. For today, the question now becomes: "are Indians really conquered"? Although the invasion of North America by Christopher Columbus is a significant event in history for all Indians, I will keep the historical perspective to the time since the Revolutionary War. For isn't this when the U.S. government really took hold on the land? In its infancy, those colonists wanting to break away from British rule knew that they would need military help. After all, they were about to fight the entire British Empire. It occurred to George Washington that the obvious place to look for help was from the people that were already here - the Indians. In the mind of Washington, this would prove to be a great military advantage, as nobody knew the land better than the ones who had been here for tens of thousands of years. After soliciting several Nations, Washington felt that he finally had the help that he was looking for, and with the help of Nations like Seneca, and Oneida, the colonists were able to win their freedom. While General Washington knew where his gratitude lay, his promise to "never consent to defraud the Seneca Nation" was a strange sort of extortion tactic. What would eventually become of this promise, is that the U.S. government would protect the Seneca Nation from U.S. tyranny, for a price - LAND. At the same time, this "special" preference was not given to other Indian Nations, and as a result, many other Nations suffered from the hands of the new U.S. government. During the course of over 200 years, Indian Nations have continued to suffer at the hands of both the U.S. government, as well as the Catholic Church that originally came with Columbus. All you have to do is pick up the morning paper in any given town, at any given day of the week, and you'll find a story about an Indian fight against the government. It could be the Western Shoshone land issue, to the Seneca Nation land issue, to the "official" recognition of the Lumbee Nation. Any given time, with any given Nation, there is still turmoil. But the common thing about most Indian disputes is LAND. Either the government is trying to take more of it, or the Indian Nation is trying to get it back for having it stolen from them. The basic premise is simple; the U.S. values the land according to its REAL- ESTATE value, while Indians value the land for its SPIRITUAL value...the common believe that all life comes from Mother Earth (wonder where non- Indians got that phrase from), who deserves our respect. In the Indian world, it is much easier to understand "spiritual" then it is to understand "real- estate", and it has always been that way. To view the relationship between Indian Nations and the U.S. government in one direction, only leaves a half picture. The U.S. likes to think of us Indians in one direction, while we like to think of the government in another. The United States, in both policy and practice, has always regarded Indians as "less-than" something else, whether it be "less-than" people, or "less- than" citizens of a land. While many Nations as well as A.I.M. has cried out against this (and rightly so), the fact is that this actually EMPOWERS all Indian people. In my Seneca tradition, it is often common NOT to think of ourselves as "better-than" anything that the Creator has made. By having the United States go to the point of equating us with animals, it has perpetuated our own traditions. This is a positive aspect of the evil side of the coin. By having government tactics backfire in this way, it has caused the voices of Indian Nations to grow louder, and as such, the United States will eventually be forced to deal with its "Indian problem". From the Indian's point of view, the relationship with the United States has been in a constant state of flux, always changing. However, there is one commonality that exists in most reservations today on how to view the U.S. - do not trust anyone from the government (Indian or non-Indian). For the most part, most Indian Nations started out trusting the new government, and genuinely wanted to know more about these people. The thought of the first Thanksgiving always pops into my mind at this point, and how the thoughts of most Americans have deviated from such a theme over time. As the trust of the Indian Nations were constantly being betrayed, Different Indian Nations continually had to re-evaluate the trustworthiness of the European invaders. For some Nations, this was not a large task, as the government would often use the Army to deal with the Indians in the most brutal way. For other Nations, adjusting this level of trust often caused dissension among the tribes, as the government used "manipulation" to gain in its interests. For Indian Nations dealing with the government in this manner, an entire Nation would have to change its mood several times in one day. As the government has depended less on force (although it still exists), and more on "manipulation" tactics, more Nations are in this state of flux, and more Nations face at least a minimal amount of dissension. Some Nations become isolated on purpose, hoping that the U.S. government will never have recourse with them. The constant state of flux described above, that's needed to keep Indians a step ahead of the manipulation of the government, is not a natural state of being for us. As a result, there has become a split in many Nations between the "modernists", and the "traditionalists", with little ground in between. However, there is generally a greater call to unity among the Nations, and as more Nations unite, the Indian's relationship with the U.S. government is coming to a FINAL state of change. This final "phase" has shown its presence by the increasing number of Indians are returning to the reservations they once left behind. The newer "pan-Indian" movements, the call back to traditions, and having large numbers of people respond, are also important indicators to this final phase. What this "final phase" holds for all North American Indians is a little vague. However, one thing that has happened, is the United States has seen an increase in the number of lawsuits from Indian Nations. This is ironic since a special board was established more than twenty years ago to settle Indian claims. From my own reservation (Cattaraugus - Seneca Nation), there has been a dramatic increase in the willingness of the Nation for armed standoffs with state and federal authorities. One of the largest Seneca standoffs of the 20th century was in 1992 when the state decided to impose taxes on Indian Reservations. I've also heard of other standoffs around the U.S. and Canada. The white-man's term "the Natives are restless" seems to hold true in many cases. One last aspect to the "final phase" lies in the United Nations. The U.N. has declared 1993 as "Indigenous People's year". Whether or not this declaration indicates the hope of U.N. representation of Indian Nations remains to be seen. However, it does indicate that someone in the U.N. has recognized us as "people" - a new precedent for the world. From my own standpoint as a Seneca Indian, I see good things for all Indians at the end of a very dangerous path. As one local resident put it, "The revolution has begun". Reservations are filling up - sometimes beyond capacity, more Nations are filing lawsuits against the government (and winning!), more people are returning to the traditional ways of our ancestors, and there's more unity among ALL Indian Nations. We can only guess as to what is in the future of the Great Circle, but one thing we do know is this: the revolution has indeed, begun. //:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/\\ || || || David (Kayoshk) Ashelman || || Seneca Nation It is the simplicity of the || || Niagara University, N.Y. Creator that baffles humanity || || S920539@vax.niagara.edu || || || \\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*/:\*// --------- "RE: The HGD Project - a response to SAIIC" --------- From: "Henry Greely" Subj: The HGD Project - a response to SAIIC Mailing List: NATIVE-L (native-l@gnosys.svle.ma.us) Some of you may be getting tired of reading my responses to attacks on the Human Genome Diversity Project, especially as the attacks (and hence the responses) have not changed very much since I joined this mailing list last July. I am NOT a member merely to respond to attacks on the HGD Project -- I have found some things on NATIVE-L to be useful and many of them to be very interesting. And I have come to recognize that people who subscribe to the list are very knowledgeable and interested in these issues. As someone involved in a Project that affects, and is affected by, Indigenous peoples, I want to make sure that the members of this list get accurate information about it. The most recent posting, which appeared last Friday, October 22, from the South and Meso American Indian Information Center, was not accurate, largely for the reasons that I have discussed in earlier postings. The remainder of this posting is a response to that attack. First, the HGD Project is a PROPOSAL by a group of scientists (largely, but not entirely, anthropologists and geneticists -- and not universities, at all) to collect, preserve, and study the diversity of the genetic inheritance of our species. The HGD Project is not at all involved with the U.S. Human Genome Project. The Human Genome Project, a $175 million per year "joint venture" of the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Energy, aims to sequence entirely the 3 billion base pairs of "the human genome," but with its concentration on North America and Europe, it will in effect tell us everything about the genes of one French farmer and one little old lady from Philadelphia -- but nothing about the rest of our species. The HGD Project wants to change that, by collecting DNA samples from, as a start, 400 to 500 human populations around the world (out of about 4,000 to 8,000). The Project will preserve those samples make them available to any scientist for research. The Project itself will do some elementary analysis of the samples; that analysis, plus any more detailed work done by those who use the samples, will be deposited in a database for use by any interested researchers. The populations that will be studied will be populations that choose to participate (and those individuals within the populations that also choose to participate). The Project has compiled some lists of some populations as examples of the kinds of populations of special interest -- for historical, cultural, genetic, or other reasons -- but those have been intended only as examples, and largely as examples to show possible funding agencies what the Project has in mind. Some of those listed populations are quite large; some are very small. European and North American populations are included -- this is not intended as just a sample of "endangered" and "exotic" populations, although small size is one issue that might give sampling a population a higher priority. No population will be sampled without its fully informed consent and without the participation of experts, often anthropologists, who can assure that the Project and the population understand each other. (Some populations may end up receiving grants to sample themselves.) We have not "officially embarked" on a "global mission" (that's a loaded noun!) to "'immortalize the DNA make-up of cultures considered to be on the brink of extinction so that 'their role in human history can be preserved.'" None of us -- anthropologists, geneticists, or (in my case) lawyer -- believes that a culture's "role in human history" can be preserved by saving some DNA, nor do we believe that such DNA preservation should or will be used as an excuse to stop efforts to preserve the living culture. As to the charge that "from beginning to end, the very people from whom the samples are being taken are not being consulted . . .", we haven't even reach the beginning of the Project -- and the Project is not collecting any samples (except possibly a few in Europe, through the European regional committee). The Project is still in its planning phase. It now has a structure, with an international coordinating committee, various regional committees, and ethics subcommittees. Two regional committees have already been organized, one for Europe and one for North America. (I am the chair of the Ethics Subcommittee for the North American Regional Committee.) The European Committee has some small operational funding from the European Community; the North American Regional Committee has no funding as yet and is doing no collecting. It is seeking funding from various governmental agencies and from some private foundations. It has not sought -- and I do not expect it to seek -- any funding from commercial sources. The Project most emphatically does not want to patent anything from these samples. Its organizers are not involved in this Project to make money, nor do we wish to repeat the sorry story of plant genetic diversity and the developing world. Although we think it is highly uncertain that any products of commercial value will arise from the Project, we are committed to ensuring that financial benefits from any such products flow back to the sampled populations. Implementing that commitment involves tricky questions of U.S. and international patent and contract law, but we will resolve them. In fact, I spent a good part of last week working (with the World Council on Indigenous Peoples and with Pat Mooney, Executive Director of RAFI, of which more later) to get the U.S. government to withdraw a patent application it had filed for a cell-line made from blood donated by a Native American from Panama (from the Guaymi people) for epidemiological research. This application had nothing to do with our Project (and was filed, in fact, because of a virus that infected those cells and not the human genetic material they contained), but I believed, from my work with the Project, that the U.S. application was a bad idea. (I think our efforts succeeded.) The Project has no implications for biological warfare. First, as far as we know (or expect to discover) there are NO genes that define an ethnic group. All humans share largely the same pool of genes. Some variants are more common in some populations than others, but there is no variant that only the, for example, Irish have and that all non-Irish do not have. Many Native American populations have a very high percentage of members with group O blood. A weapon that killed everyone with group O blood might kill 80% of Native Americans -- and 35% of the rest of the population. Second, even if there were such ethnic specific genes, scientists don't know how to kill a cell just because they know the sequence of its genes. If they did, those disease with known viral, bacterial, or fungal causes -- like AIDS -- could be eliminated. And finally, if someone could design such a biological weapon, they wouldn't seek genetic samples through a large, public program like the HGD. They would sneak around and take blood samples from two or three members of the targeted population in a very quiet manner. The size and public nature of this Project actually helps guarantee that it will act ethically, unlike the scattered and invisible way in which research into human genetic diversity might otherwise proceed. The Project does plan to meet -- a lot -- with representatives of indigenous peoples. The international committee (which includes among its members at least one person who is from an indigenous African community) plans to hold annual forums for international organizations, indigenous peoples' groups, scientists, and others. Eventually, that forum is expected to elect the members of the international committee. The North American Committee is seeking funding to meet with Native Americans and other indigenous peoples -- and pursuing informal contacts while we look for money for more face-to-face meetings. In fact, if we can find the money for it, we'll be sending at least one person to the General Assembly of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples this December in Guatemala City. Whether the meetings we will have would be in exactly the same format, and under the same sponsorship, intended by the SAIIC is still unclear, but as the Project moves toward beginning its operations, it certainly must and will meet with, talk to, and listen to indigenous groups and their representatives. Neither the National Center for Human Genome Research (Dr. Collins) nor the Department of Health and Human Services (Secretary Shalala) is as yet involved in funding the Project. It is not clear that either will be interested in providing funds. Letters to them will probably attract a form letter response, saying that they've got nothing to do with this project. Right now, we are most actively pursuing funding -- about $1 million year, we hope -- from the National Science Foundation, but even that probably wouldn't being until October 1994. Most of the information in the SAIIC posting came from a May press release from RAFI, Rural Advancement Foundation International, and the posting asks that you send copies of any letters to RAFI as well as to SAIIC. Since that press release, I have had many talks with RAFI, as well as with the World Council of Indigenous Peoples. I cannot (yet) say that those groups support the Project. Some differences remain between us, in part about the necessity of a United Nations role, though I am very hopeful that those differences can be bridged and that those organizations will support the Project. I can honestly say that, by explaining (and clarifying even to ourselves) our positions on intellectual property, on the process of informed consent, and on the irrelevance of the Project to biological warfare, we have reduced some of their concerns. I am sending a copy of this posting to RAFI in the hope that, as it was invoked by the SAIIC posting, it might clarify its position for the readers of NATIVE-L. (And, of course, I'm also sending a copy to the SAIIC -- though I should note that, as far as I know, no one from SAIIC talked to anyone from the Project before sending their posting . . . or, apparently, read my earlier postings on this list.) As always, I welcome your questions or comments about the Project. Please do not hesitate to contact me at rg.htg@forsythe.stanford.edu, either with an individual message or through a general posting. --------- "RE: Conferences and Powwows" --------- From: JANS Janet McNeely Subj: Upcoming conferences and powwows GE Electronic Mail =POWWOWS= As promised, the Veterans Day Powwow list! Nov. 11 Veterans Powwow, LCO Ojibwe Reservation Hayward, WI Info: 715-799-5166 Nov. 11 Pawnee Veterans Day Gathering & Dance, Round House Pawnee OK Info: 918-762-3962 Nov. 11 Veterans Day Powwow, Chemawa Indian School Salem, OR Info: 503-399-5721 Nov. 11 Veterans Day Powwow, Blue Earth Indian Nation Council Bluffs, IA Info: 712-325-1770 Veterans Day Weekend Veterans Day Celebration, Toppenish, WA Info: 509-865-5121 Veterans Day Powwow, Yuma, AZ No phone number given Veterans Day Powwow, Nespelem, WA Info: 509-634-4711 Veterans Memorial Powwow, Hopi Civic Center Oraibi, AZ Info: 602-734-2441 ext 215 NLAKA'PAMUX Nation's Traditional Veterans Remembrance Powwow, Kumsheen School Lytton, BC Canada Info: 604-455-2467 Veterans Day Rodeo and Fair, San Carlos AZ San Carlos Apache Reservation Info: 602-475-2361 Veterans Powwow Hobbema AB Canada 403-585-3739 Veterans Powwow, Saginaw, MI Info: 1-616-774-8331 1st Annual North American Iroquois Veterans Association Powwow, Niagara County Community College Sanborn, NY Info: 519-752-1925 And three special events well worth mentioning! - The 18th Annual American Indian Film Festival will be held in San Francisco Nov. 10-14. Call 415-554-0525 for information. - Also, the 4th Annual American Indian Festival and Market will be held in Dallas, Texas. Call 214-891-9848 for info. - And on November 13, the National Museum of the American Indian will sponsor a Powwow in Manhattan, NY. Call 212-598-0100 ext 29. Send notices of forthcoming powwows, conferences and gatherings to: jans@genie.geis.com jans%glsdk@wolves.durham.nc.us ....duke!wolves!glsdk!jans