Tribal Nations and Wild Buffaloes

Tribal Nations and Wild Buffaloes

Editor’s Note: Roam Free Nation’s cofounders traveled to Gardiner, MT recently to attend the Interagency Bison Management Plan meeting and speak on behalf of the buffalo. The meeting gave an overview of the recent “hunt” that killed over 1,200 wild buffaloes. The meeting was also attended by a few representatives of tribal people who participated in the “hunt”. Many of the represented tribal people there were satisfied at how “smooth” the “hunt” turned out to be for them. Read the Roam Free Nation’s full report on the meeting here.

Yet not everyone believes that the “hunt” was what could be the best for the wild buffaloes. The following piece is an opinion piece by Jaedin Medicine Elk, a co-founder of Roam Free Nation and a member of the Cheyenne tribe.


By Jaedin Medicine Elk/Native News Online

I expected the recent meeting of those involved with the Interagency Bison Management Plan to be highly emotional given the national and international outrage over the indiscriminate killing of so many Yellowstone buffalo this year. Instead, it was business as usual with no remorse from anyone for killing over 25% of the herd as state and tribal hunt managers talked about how well it went and claimed there were no problems.

If you considered the 1,250 dead bulls, pregnant females, and calves from the buffalo’s perspective, however, the conversation would have gone much differently. But none of the “managers” or tribal representatives did that.

The dominate, colonized culture has made its way onto our Tribal Nations. But we can’t live as tribal people when all we think about is ourselves and our rights and not Mother Earth or the wildlife our ancestors loved and depended on.

Killing hungry, pregnant female buffalo at the Park’s border isn’t what we should be doing. We need to allow these matriarchal family groups – mainly pregnant females and grandmothers – to teach the young ones the migration corridors so more buffalo can establish themselves on the lands that are their birth right.

The buffalo know what to do, they just need our help to allow them to do it — it’s the humans who need to be managed. As buffalo culture tribal people, when we see things like Blood Creek at Beattie Gulch in the new documentary by Yellowstone Voices: A Path Forward for the American Bison, we must speak up, not participate in the massive kill.

We have to stop treating these buffalo like they are just meat animals that don’t have a right to roam free on Turtle Island. We’re treating the Buffalo Nation as the Veho (whites) want us to, controlling and destroying these buffalo to appease Montana and the livestock interests – with our help! They want us to forget our ancient relationship and obligations to the Buffalo Nation.

When first joining this issue, I expected powerful native voices who see what is going on to say something. But I came to find out the reality is, people are afraid to say anything as tribal members. We don’t want to fight our own people, but at the same time when it’s our people helping facilitate the destruction of a wild buffalo population, what are we supposed to do? Sit by and let buffalo keep dying because Tribal people have been brain-washed to believe humans are everything and we matter the most? This ‘hunt’ isn’t the right way to reconnect with the Buffalo Nation. They’ve had our back since we made that spiritual connection. Now it’s time we had theirs.

The older I get, the more I understand why our elders tell us to learn our language and culture. When I started being with wild buffalo, things became more clear as to how our ancestors lived their ways of life, copying the Buffalo Nation that kept them going for thousands of years.

Today the Buffalo Nation is like our own Tribal nations…forgotten. Our relationship and connection to them is likewise forgotten — because tribal members are killing pregnant female buffalo and preventing the next generation 0f buffalo from seeing the sun, moon, grass, blue skies, rain, and everything this beautiful Turtle Island has to offer. The Buffalo Nation is looking to tribal nations to help them, not just kill as many as we can because we have treaty rights to do so.

The laws made by men can be unmade by men and now is the time to “un-make” the “management plan” that is decimating wild Buffalo Nation and allow them to once again roam free.

Jaedin Medicine Elk is a co-founder and board president of the Montana-based Roam Free Nation. Jaedin is Northern Cheyenne, a Sundancer and Sacred Pipe Carrier from a traditional Buffalo Culture family.


Videos of reports from public on the meeting

Jaedin Medicine Elk (Roam Free Nation)
Stephanie Seay (Roam Free Nation)
Bonnie Lynn (Yellowstone Voices)
Dagmar Riddle (Earth advocate)

Banner Photo by R Gray on Unsplash

 

Yakama Nation calls for removal of Columbia River dams

Yakama Nation calls for removal of Columbia River dams

Editors note: The Columbia River has been turned into a slave of civilization, forced to provide hydroelectricity, barge transport, and irrigation water to cities and big agribusiness. It is shackled in concrete and dying from  dams, from overfishing, from toxins, from nuclear waste, from acoustic barrages and armored shorelines and logging and endless  atrocities.

We at Deep Green Resistance do not believe that the federal government will accede to demands such as these. Furthermore, there are thousands of dams currently under construction or proposed worldwide. There are millions of dams in the “United States.” The salmon, the Orca whales—they have no time to waste. Everything is heading in the wrong direction. Therefore, we call for a militant resistance movement around the world to complement aboveground resistance movements and to dismantle industrial infrastructure.

Featured image: The Columbia River is constrained by Bonneville Dam, and bracketed by clearcuts, highways, and utility corridors. Public domain.


Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation

On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, October 14, 2019, the Yakama Nation and Lummi Nation hosted a press conference urging the removal of the lower Columbia River dams as part of a broader call for federal repudiation of the offensive doctrine of Christian discovery, which the United States uses to justify federal actions that impair the rights of Native Nations. The press conference took place this morning at Celilo Park near Celilo Village, Oregon.

“The false religious doctrine of Christian discovery was used by the United States to perpetuate crimes of genocide and forced displacement against Native Peoples. The Columbia River dams were built on this false legal foundation, and decimated the Yakama Nation’s fisheries, traditional foods, and cultural sites,” said Yakama Nation Tribal Council Chairman JoDe Goudy. “On behalf of the Yakama Nation and those things that cannot speak for themselves, I call on the United States to reject the doctrine of Christian discovery and immediately remove the Bonneville Dam, Dalles Dam, and John Day Dam.”

The doctrine of Christian discovery is the fiction that when Christian European monarchs obtained what was for them new knowledge of the Western Hemisphere, those monarchs had a religious right of domination over all non-Christian lands. This doctrine was propagated by the Roman Catholic Church through a series of papal bulls in the 15th century, including a papal bull authorizing Portugal to “invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans” and to place them into perpetual slavery and take their property. The Roman Catholic Church then implemented a framework where the right to subjugate the Americas was split between Spain and Portugal, although they were later joined by other European states. The doctrine was therefore one of domination and dehumanization of Native Peoples, and was used to perpetuate the most widespread genocide in human history.

In 1823, the United States Supreme Court used the doctrine of Christian discovery as the legal basis for the United States’ exercise of authority over Native lands and Peoples. See Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. 543 (1823). The Court found that the United States holds clear title to all Native lands subject only to the Native Nation’s right of occupancy, which the United States can terminate through purchase or conquest. In relying on the doctrine of Christian discovery, the Court described it as “the principle that discovery gave title to the government . . . against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession.” Id. at 573. The Court used this religious doctrine of domination and dehumanization to unilaterally deprive Native Nations of their sovereign rights, racially juxtaposing the rights of “Christian peoples” against those “heathens” and “fierce savages.” Id. at 577, 590.

In the years that followed, this false religious doctrine became the bedrock for what are now considered to be foundational principles of federal Indian law. In United States v. Kagama, 188 U.S. 375 (1886), and Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U.S. 553 (1903), the Court announced Congress’ extra-constitutional plenary power over all Indian affairs—the plenary power doctrine — which it justified by pointing to Native Nations’ loss of sovereign, diplomatic, economic, and property rights upon first ‘discovery’ by Europeans. In The Cherokee Tobacco, 78 U.S. 616 (1870), the Court applied the doctrine and held that Congress can unilaterally abrogate Treaty rights with subsequent legislation unless there is an express exemption provided in the Treaty—the last-in- time doctrine. In Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U.S. 191 (1978), the Court deprived Native Nations of criminal jurisdiction over non-members based on the statement in M’Intosh that Native Nations’ rights “to complete sovereignty, as independent nations, were necessarily diminished” by European ‘discovery’ — the diminished tribal sovereignty doctrine. These legal doctrines have been weaponized against Native Nations ever since, including by Congress in authorizing construction of the Bonneville Dam, Dalles Dam, and John Day Dam without the Yakama Nation’s free, prior, and informed consent.

The history of the lower Columbia River dams can be traced back to 1792, when United States Merchant Robert Gray sailed up our N’chi’Wana (Columbia River) and claimed the territory for the United States. Mr. Gray entered our lands and performed a religious doctrine of discovery ceremony by raising an American flag and burying coins beneath the soil, thereby proclaiming dominion over our lands and our families without our knowledge or consent. Following the War of 1812, the United States and England falsely claimed joint authority over what became known as the Oregon Territory until 1846, when England relinquished its claim south of the 49th parallel. Having eliminated British opposition, Congress passed the Oregon Territorial Act of 1848 and the Washington Territorial Act of 1853. Both Territorial Acts reserve the United States’ claim to the sole right to treat with Native Nations, thereby maintaining the federal government’s doctrine of Christian discovery-based claims.

At the Walla Walla Treaty Council in May and June of 1855, the Yakama Nation’s ancestors met with United States representatives to negotiate the Treaty with the Yakamas of June 9, 1855. Article III, paragraph 2 of the Treaty reserves the Yakama Nation’s “right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places . . .” including many places throughout the Columbia River basin. At no point during these negotiations did the United States express a claimed right of dominion over the Yakama Nation’s traditional lands that would allow the United States to unilaterally ignore the Treaty. Territorial Governor Isaac I. Stevens did not explain that the United States would dam the rivers and violate the Yakama Nation’s Treaty-reserved fishing rights without the Yakama Nation’s free, prior, and informed consent.

What followed was a 100-year conquest of the Columbia River by the United States. First, the United States Supreme Court paved the way by affirming federal regulatory authority over navigable waterways like the Columbia River in Gilman v. Philadelphia, 70 U.S. 713 (1866), and Congress’ extra-constitutional plenary authority over Indian affairs in United States v. Kagama, 188 U.S. 375 (1886). Congress then exercised this supposed authority by passing a series of legislative acts without the Yakama Nation’s consent, including Rivers and Harbors Acts, Right of Way Acts, the General Dams Act, the Federal Water Power Act, and the Bonneville Project Act, all of which facilitated construction of the lower Columbia River dams without regard for the Yakama Nation’s Treaty-reserved rights.

During the Depression, Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act authorizing President Franklin D. Roosevelt to approve public works projects like the Bonneville Dam. Construction started in 1933, but President Roosevelt’s approval of the project was quickly deemed unconstitutional in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935). The authorization was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority from Congress to the President. It should have been deemed unconstitutional under the United States Constitution’s Supremacy Clause — which says the Treaty of 1855 is the “supreme law of the land” — because it was inconsistent with the rights reserved to the Yakama Nation by Treaty. Any argument to the contrary is an argument that Congress has plenary power over Indian affairs rooted in the false religious doctrine of Christian discovery.

Congress quickly re-approved the Bonneville Dam’s construction, which was completed in 1938. The Dalles Dam was built from 1952 to 1957, and the John Day Dam was built from 1968 to 1972. The Yakama Nation, as co-equal sovereign and signatory to the Treaty of 1855, never approved the construction of these dams. They inundated the villages, burial grounds, fishing places, and ceremonial sites that we used since time immemorial. Celilo Falls was the trading hub for Native Peoples throughout the northwest. The United States detonated it with explosives and drowned it with the Dalles Dam. After the Dalles Dam’s construction had already started, the United States negotiated an insignificant settlement with the Yakama Nation for the damage caused by the Dam. This was domination and coercion, not consent.

Today, the lower Columbia River dams stand as physical monuments to the domination and dehumanization that the United States continues to impose on Native Nations under the false religious doctrine of Christian discovery. “Columbus Day is a federal holiday celebrating the Christian-European invasion of our lands under the colonial doctrine of Christian discovery. Today, the Yakama Nation rejects that narrative by celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day and calling on the United States to remove the lower Columbia River dams that were built without our consent using the same false religious doctrine,” said Chairman Goudy.

Lummi Tribal Leaders Rally in D.C. Against Nation’s Largest Coal Terminal

Lummi Tribal Leaders Rally in D.C. Against Nation’s Largest Coal Terminal

Lummi tribal leaders and members gathered last Thursday in Washington, D.C. to express concerns about treaty violations related to the proposed coal terminal and train railway for Cherry Point, Washington.

In addition to the Lummi Nation, tribal members and leaders from the Tulalip, Swinomish, Quinault, Lower Elwha Klallam, Yakama, Hoopa Valley, Nooksack and Spokane nations were in attendance.

Chairman of the Lummi Nation Tim Ballew II expressed his concerns last Thursday in Washington, D.C. to express concerns about treaty violations related to the proposed coal terminal and train railway for Cherry Point, Washington.

Chairman of the Lummi Nation Tim Ballew II expressed his concerns last Thursday in Washington, D.C. to express concerns about treaty violations related to the proposed coal terminal and train railway for Cherry Point, Washington.

Chairman of the Lummi Nation Tim Ballew II came to the podium and told attendees and news crews that the 1855 U.S. treaty with Pacific Northwest Native American tribes, and associated rights for the fishing, hunting and sacred grounds was in jeopardy.

“We’re taking a united stand against corporate interests that interfere with our treaty-protected rights,” said Tim Ballew II, chairman of the Lummi Indian Business Council. “Tribes across the nation and world are facing challenges from corporations that are set on development at any cost to our communities.”

According to a release, for three years, Northwest treaty tribes, including Lummi Nation, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Tulalip Tribes, and Yakama Nation, and the Columbia River Intertribal Fisheries Commission have provided government agencies and elected officials detailed letters identifying the impacts the terminal would have on treaty fishing rights, the environment, natural resources and the health of Washington.

 Lummi tribal members and sisters Billy Kennedy Jefferson, 18, Danielle Kennedy Jefferson, 16, and Kathrine Jefferson, 15, all from the Lummi Nation in western Washington state Photo: Vincent Schilling

Lummi tribal members and sisters Billy Kennedy Jefferson, 18, Danielle Kennedy Jefferson, 16, and Kathrine Jefferson, 15, all from the Lummi Nation in western Washington state Photo: Vincent Schilling

Additionally, the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, representing 57 tribes, has taken action to oppose the increased transport of unrefined fossil fuels of coal, Bakken shale oil, and tar sand oil across the Northwest. The proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal would impact thousands of acres of treaty land and fishing along the rivers and mountains. Tribes across the Northwest have concluded that the impacts of significant increases in rail and vessel transportation cannot be mitigated to any level that would protect tribal treaty rights.

The proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal (a subsidy of SSA Marine) would serve as a gateway to markets in domestics companies and Asia. The terminal would handle 60 million tons of commodities, mostly coal – but the project’s location includes Lummi ancestral burial sites and ancestral fishing grounds.

“The location of the pier will take away fishing grounds and the increase in vessel traffic would impede access of our fishermen to fishing grounds throughout our usual and accustomed areas.”

“We soundly reject developments that desecrate our sacred places and call on Congress to uphold our treaty-protected rights,” said Ballew.

“I credit the current administration for every year building on our efforts to help us rebuild our nations and I encourage them to continue that,” Ballew said. “We really want them to give this issue its due respect. It’s a human rights issue, it’s a treaty rights issue, and we need our sacred sites protected.”

“For thousands of years, Washington tribes have fought to protect all that is important for those who call this great state home. We live in a pollution-based economy and we can no longer allow industry and business to destroy our resources, water and land. No mitigation can pay for the magnitude of destruction to treaty resources for today and generations from now. As leaders, we need to protect our treaty resources, our economies, and the health of our citizens and neighbors.” said Brian Cladoosby, Chair, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and president of the National Congress on American Indians in DC.

“The ancestors of all, Native and non-Native, witness those who have lost their integrity; the people of the present acknowledge as much; and the future generations will ask ‘Why did those ones who did not honor their own words allow it to happen?’ The past is the present and the future is now. The treaty is their word, our people trusted that word. Now, it seems to be just words. Do they lack the honor and integrity of their ancestors?” said Dave Brown Eagle, Vice-Chair, Spokane Tribal Business Council.

Dave Brown Eagle, Vice-Chair, Spokane Tribal Business Council at the White House Tribal Nations Council last week. Photo: Vincent Schilling

Dave Brown Eagle, Vice-Chair, Spokane Tribal Business Council at the White House Tribal Nations Council last week. Photo: Vincent Schilling

“Our treaty rights are not for sale. The Gateway Pacific Terminal project threatens our treaty-reserved rights and we do not support actions that would compromise or diminish the resources for which our ancestors sacrificed so much. There is no mitigation for the loss of our way of life or culture,” said Melvin R. Sheldon Jr., Chair, Tulalip Tribes.

“This issue affects all of us, we’re connected in ways that the U.S cannot even imagine,” said Tyson Johnston, Vice-President of the Quinault Indian Nation.

The project is currently under review by the Seattle district U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.  The State of Washington Department of Ecology has an environmental review listed here.

 

Activists March Against Nestlé On Bridge of The Gods

Activists March Against Nestlé On Bridge of The Gods

August 29, 2015

This morning, activists marched across The Bridge of the Gods to protest a proposed Nestlé bottled-water plant at Cascade Locks, Oregon.

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The bridge is only opened once a year for pedestrian traffic. Hundreds of sightseers and community members gather for the stunning view of the Columbia River. Today, they were joined by twenty protesters, who marched with a bridge-spanning banner that read: “Stop Nestlé By Any Means Necessary.”

Nestlé is the world’s largest food and beverage firm. Despite a history of human rights abuses, this Switzerland-based corporation has made billions privatizing public water supplies around the world.

Their planned bottling facility in the Columbia River Gorge would siphon off 118 million gallons of water every year from Oxbow Springs. Opposition is widespread, especially from indigenous communities.

“Nestlé already has millions, they don’t need our water,” said Ernest J. Edwards of the Yakama Nation. “Our water is for the salmon.”

Treaties made with the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs recognize their fishing rights. Tribal member Anna Mae Leonard held a five-day hunger strike last week, surviving only on water from Oxbow Springs. Despite this community opposition, the State of Oregon and local governments have so far sided with Nestlé.

“The water of the Gorge does not belong to Nestlé. It belongs to the Salmon, to the forests, to all non-humans, and to the indigenous communities,” said protester Jules Freeman. “It’s a desecration to bottle this water in toxic plastic and sell it back to us for a profit.” Freeman is a member of Deep Green Resistance, the group that organized the protest.

Opposition to Nestlé bottled water plants has been successful in the past; projects in Florida, Wisconsin, California, and elsewhere were scrapped after communities rose up in defiance. Freeman thinks the same can be done here.

“The community does not want this, but the government has not listened. But it doesn’t matter: if they won’t stop Nestlé, we will.”

If you are concerned about the Nestlé project, contact Oregon Governor Kate Brown at 503-378-4582 and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Curt Melcher at 503-947-6044.