The "Turtle Island" marathon tour of this worldwide unique film festival on all #nuclear topics and #radioactive dangers includes more than 10 cities in 9 states.
#KleeBenally, #Diné artist, activist and filmmaker, died suddenly on December 30, 2023, just days after completing his designs for the 2024 IUFF tour of North America and the Window Rock festival. We are so sad about Klee's death! Our hearts are with him.
Opinion: Why the birthplace of the Western #Apache religion shouldn’t be destroyed by a #CopperMine
by Luke Goodrich
February 6, 2024·
"A federal court is poised to decide whether a #NativeAmerican#sacred site will be destroyed by a massive #copper#mine. Mining proponents claim that destroying the #SacredSite is necessary for the development of #GreenEnergy. That claim is both factually wrong and morally repugnant. And recent polling shows that the vast majority of Americans agree with what the constitution requires: #Native sacred sites deserve the same protection as all other houses of worship.
"Since before European contact, #WesternApache and other Native tribes have lived and honored their #Creator at #OakFlat, or 'Chi’chil Bildagoteel.' The site is the birthplace of Western Apache religion and the site of ancient religious ceremonies that cannot take place anywhere else. Because of its religious and cultural significance, Oak Flat is on the National Register of Historic Places and has been protected from mining and other destructive practices for decades.
"That changed in 2014, when several members of Congress, supported by #corporate#mining#lobbyists, slipped an amendment into a must-pass defense bill authorizing the transfer of Oak Flat to a foreign-owned mining giant. That company, #ResolutionCopper, announced plans to obliterate the sacred ground by swallowing it in a mining crater nearly two miles wide and 1,100-feet deep, ending Apache religious practices forever. That was no surprise given the company’s sordid history dealing with #IndigenousPeoples. The majority owner of Resolution Copper is #RioTinto (the world’s second largest mining company), which sparked international outrage in 2020 when it destroyed a 46,000-year-old rock shelter with some of the most significant #Aboriginal artifacts in all of #Australia.
"The Apache and their allies, represented by my firm, the #BecketFundForReligiousLiberty, have been fighting in court to ensure that such an atrocity won’t repeat itself at Oak Flat. After initial court rulings against the Apache, a full panel of 11 judges at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reheard their appeal last spring. A decision on whether the government can execute the land transfer is expected any day.
"Resolution Copper and its backers want the public to believe that building the mine is essential for developing #renewable energy. Extracting the copper beneath Oak Flat, they say, will help to build batteries necessary for powering #ElectricVehicles and thus fight #ClimateChange. In other words, we have to destroy Oak Flat in order to save the planet.
"These claims, however, are false — and they are specifically designed to obscure the physical and cultural destruction the project would wreak on the land.
"The mine will destroy the #environment, not save it. It is undisputed that the mine will swallow the ecologically diverse landscape of Oak Flat in a massive crater, decimating the local #ecosystem. It will also leave behind approximately 1.37 billion tons of '#tailings,' or #MiningWaste, which, according to the government’s own environmental assessment, will pollute the #groundwater and scar the landscape permanently. And the mine will consume vast quantities of water at the time it is most needed by drought-stricken towns and #farmers.
"Supporters of the mine are also at odds with the majority of Americans. According to this year’s Religious Freedom Index, an annual survey conducted by Becket, 74% of Americans believe that Native sacred sites on federal land should be protected from mining projects, even when the projects are purportedly pro-jobs and pro-environment.
"That conclusion is both sensible and humane. America can transition to renewable energy without blasting the cradle of Western Apache religion into oblivion. And it should. For too long, our nation has made excuses for taking advantage of #IndigenousPeople and their land. Indeed, our nation drove the Western Apache off Oak Flat and surrounding lands in the 1800s precisely to make way for #MiningInterests. It shouldn’t repeat that #injustice again.
"It is past time to protect Indigenous sacred sites from further destruction. Basic fairness and our constitutional commitment to religious freedom require no less. And, happily, most Americans agree."
Here's everything you need to know about the WA government's backdown on its #Aboriginal Cultural Heritage laws
By Jake Sturmer
Posted Tue 8 Aug 2023
"The WA government's 2021 changes were supposed to prevent what it described as a 'global embarrassment' from ever happening again.
"Instead, the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act has left many farmers confused and traditional owners frustrated.
"After just five weeks in operation, the government has backflipped — trying to stem the political bleeding that is tainting WA's new premier and now muddying the waters of the Voice referendum debate.
So what's changing?
"It's important to remember that any activities that could damage Aboriginal cultural heritage still need approval.
"The old-but-soon-to-be-new 1972 act meant the minister had to tick off on every action no matter how minor — known as a Section 18 approval.
WA premier announces repeal of Aboriginal Cultural Heritage laws
"Just five weeks after being legislated, Roger Cook announces the WA government will be scrapping its #AboriginalCulturalHeritageLaws.
"The 2021 act created a system of tiers and approvals.
"Want to build a fence with no clearing? No approval required.
"New #mine site with deep excavation? You'll need a management plan that has to be ticked off by a local Aboriginal organisation at your expense.
"But the government acknowledged these tiers have caused massive confusion and will therefore be scrapped.
"There were reports the rules would have prevented everything from gardening to installing a swimming pool, building a garage or burying a pet in the backyard.
"In fact, such activities were exempt, as were all properties smaller than 1,100 square metres.
"So it's no surprise the biggest outcry came from farmers.
How will another Juukan Gorge be prevented?
"When landowners requested to damage or destroy heritage sites, they needed one of those #Section18 approvals from the minister.
"If the minister rejected that, developers had a right to appeal but traditional owners did not.
"As part of the government's backflip, it will amend the laws to give a right of appeal to the native title party whose cultural heritage is impacted.
"Developers will also have to bring any new heritage information to the government's attention."
Evidence for persecution and imprisonment of hundreds of older #Uyghur women for #religious crimes.
'"Rachel Harris, professor of ethnomusicology at Soas University of London and co-author of the new report, said the ustaz (urban female leaders who embraced reformist styles of Islam coming from the Middle East in the 1980s) used religion to pursue education and participate in international trade.
"Meanwhile, the büwi (female religious leaders primarily in rural Uyghur communities) held significant power in society, and were responsible for leading birth and death rituals, teaching children and overseeing women’s religious and cultural activities.
"The government narrative was that women needed to be liberated from religious oppression. They really took that [agency] away in the name of liberating women,” said Harris'
"We speak with award-winning Palestinian American artist and filmmaker Emily Jacir, whose event in Berlin in October was canceled after Israel launched its ongoing assault on Gaza. Jacir decries a pattern of “harassment, baseless smear campaigns, canceling shows, canceling talks” conducted against Palestinian artists in Germany and around the world. “It’s very much part of a coordinated movement,” she says, connecting global censorship of diasporic Palestinian voices with the violent “targeted destruction of culture in Gaza,” which she calls a “part of genocide.”
Crutcher attempted to pressure Jimmy into deleting portions of the meeting. Dorece Sam said that was not going to happen because it was a live broadcast
By Brenda Norrell, Censored News
Video by Young Warrior
"A Fort McDermitt tribal leader attacked a minor and choked him. The youth was videotaping a public community meeting being held about financial benefits from lithium mining by Lithium Americas, now digging into the Paiute Massacre Site in northern Nevada.
"The incident was broadcast on #KPFK Los Angeles. It occurred during the quarterly meeting with Lithium Americas and #FortMcDermittTribalCouncil, on Monday, Jan. 8.
During the meeting, Arlo Crutcher, former chairman of Fort McDermitt #Paiute#Shoshone, walked across the conference room where tribal youth Jimmy, a minor, was videotaping."
The Omari Mosque in Gaza was largely destroyed by Israeli bombardment on Dec. 8, 2023. It was one of the most ancient mosques in the region and a beloved Gazan landmark. It was once a temple to Philistine and Roman gods, a Byzantine and Catholic church, and had engravings of Jewish ritual objects. It is one of over 200 ancient sites damaged or destroyed in Israeli raids since October 7th. #Israel#Gaza#Culture#OmariMosque#CulturalGenocide
According to the New York Times, Israeli forces damaged or destroyed at least six cemeteries in the northern Gaza Strip over the last few weeks.
In one example, the report found that satellite imagery showed armoured vehicles operating atop what were intact graves in Gaza City's Shejaiya neighbourhood.
The damaged cemeteries are located in the towns of Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun and #Gaza City.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said it documented damage to the Al-Faluja cemetery, Ali bin Marwan, Sheikh Radwan, Al-Shuhada and Sheikh Shaaban cemeteries, in addition to St. Porphyrius Church cemetery in Gaza City and Al-Shuhada cemetery in the northern town of Beit Lahia.
@godsouza Hospitals, medical centres, schools, mosques, churches, universities, bakeries, markets, libraries, archives, galleries and now even cemeteries.
Tribes in #Maine Spent Decades Fighting to Rebury Ancestral Remains. Harvard Resisted Them at Nearly Every Turn.
by Mary Hudetz and Ash Ngu
Dec. 4, 5 a.m. EST
"Donna Augustine was in tears as she read the letter from Harvard University that winter morning in 2013. Looking around the room inside an elementary school on Indian Island, Maine, she saw other elders and leaders from the four Wabanaki tribes were also devastated as they read that the university was denying their request to repatriate ancestral remains to their tribes.
"The Wabanaki tribal nations — an alliance of the #Penobscot, #Passamaquoddy, #Maliseet and #Mikmaq — wanted to rebury the ancestral remains. But Harvard’s #PeabodyMuseum of Archaeology and Ethnology said, as it had in past years, that the tribes didn’t have enough evidence to show that they could be tied, through culture or lineage, to the ancestors whose remains the museum held.
"The denial felt like a rejection of Wabanaki identity for Augustine, a Mi’kmaq grandmother, who had spent years urging Harvard to release Native American remains.
"'Every one of us in that room was crying,' she recalled. 'We jumped through every hoop.'
"The group representing the only four tribal nations in present-day Maine had furnished a deeply researched report documenting their histories in the region, even sharing closely held stories passed down within their tribes from one generation to the next that told of their ancient ties to Maine’s lakes, islands and forests.
"Now they could see it hadn’t been enough for Harvard, which especially prized the remains of 43 ancestors buried for thousands of years near Maine’s Blue Hill Bay.
"Complicating matters for the tribes, another museum, the similarly named but smaller Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology, housed on the campus of the #PhillipsAcademy, a Massachusetts preparatory school, held items from the same ancient burial site.
"Instead of sending a letter as Harvard did, the Phillips Academy museum director, Ryan Wheeler, had asked to meet with the tribes. Seated at the table that morning, he was initially uncertain what he would do. He would later say that it became evident during the meeting that the tribes exhibited a strong connection to the ancestors they sought to claim, both from the report they had provided and their reaction to Harvard’s decision.
"He recalled leaving the meeting certain he would repatriate. 'There was really no question about it,' he later said.
"What the Wabanaki committee and Wheeler didn’t know, however, was just how hard Harvard would push back. In the two years that followed, the director of the Harvard museum went to surprising lengths to pressure Wheeler to reverse his decision.
"A #ProPublica investigation this year into repatriation has shown how some of the nation’s #elite museums have used their power and vast resources to delay returning ancestral remains and sacred objects under the #NativeAmericanGraves Protection and Repatriation Act. By exploiting loopholes in the 1990 law, anthropologists overruled tribes’ evidence showing their ties to the oldest ancestral remains in museums’ collections. We’ve also shown that museums and universities have delayed repatriations while allowing destructive analyses — like DNA extractions — on ancestral remains over the objections of tribes.
"Harvard, where the remains of an estimated 5,500 Native Americans are stored at the Peabody Museum, used these loopholes over the span of three decades to prolong the Wabanaki tribes’ repatriation process while remaining in technical compliance with the 1990 law, our review found.
"For Augustine and her colleagues, few things were more frustrating than knowing that NAGPRA had empowered museums to decide whether Indigenous people had a valid connection to their ancestors. These were the same institutions that had collected the human remains and objects from ancestral burial sites. Despite NAGPRA’s intent to give Indigenous people say over ancestral remains, institutions still made the final decisions on whether to repatriate.
"'The wolves are in charge of how to deal with the sheep,' said #DarrellNewell, a former vice chief of the Passamaquoddy Tribe who helped create the Wabanaki Intertribal Repatriation Committee to accelerate negotiations with the institutions. 'It’s just not a good way.'
"Harvard in recent years has apologized and promised to speed repatriation, saying it aims to repatriate all #NativeAmerican remains and the items once buried with them within the next three years and recently doubled staffing in the Peabody Museum’s repatriation office. However, the school has yet to return more than half of the human remains it reported holding under NAGPRA, according to federal data from November. Only two institutions, of the hundreds that must comply with NAGPRA, hold more human remains than Harvard."
Group outraged as controversial mining project breaks ground on site of massacre: ‘[We] were not consulted’
Rick Kazmer
Sun, November 19, 2023
"A lithium mine is being constructed on #Nevada land that’s culturally important to #NativeAmericans. The project by #LithiumAmericas is at #ThackerPass, where on Sept. 12, 1865, United States soldiers massacred Native Americans, killing up to 50 people, according to the Guardian.
"Now, 158 years later, the Thacker Pass area has been identified as having the country’s largest #lithium lode. But members of tribal communities who consider the land sacred told the Guardian that they have been left out of the discussion as the operation moves forward, a point contested by the company on its website.
“'All the people here on the reservation were not consulted when this mine was approved,' Dorece Sam, a descendant of one of three survivors of the massacre, told the newspaper.
Why is lithium important?
"Lithium is a key part of #batteries that power electric vehicles #EVs and other tech. Much of it is refined on the other side of the world, with Australia and China among the leaders. The U.S., however, is among the global leaders in underground lithium reserves, with more than 13 million tons, according to Visual Capitalist, an online data collector.
"Proponents of mining the untapped U.S. reserve cite the need to gain independence from China for lithium and other metals, a goal marked at the highest level of our government.
"LithiumMining, however, can be invasive. Native Americans interviewed by the Guardian said that since it’s happening on sacred land, it’s an invasion of the highest order.
"'You can’t blow up a mountain and call it green,' Max Wilbert of Protect Thacker Pass said in a press release quoted on the Sacred Land Film Project website.
What’s the impact?
"Mining at Thacker Pass is projected to use about 1.7 billion gallons of #water, producing more than 66,000 tons of lithium a year, per the Guardian.
"Company officials claim on their website that the project has been planned for a decade with input from tribal leaders. They plan to permanently employ 500 people for at least 40 years, generating $8 billion in tax payments during the mine’s lifetime.
"At least two tribes have lawsuits filed against the project. However, tribal historic preservation officer Michon Eben told the Guardian that activity on the land is already disturbing.
"'So, if any tribes or anybody wanted to mitigate that destruction, what are we going to mitigate?' Eben said to the newspaper, noting frustration with the court system.
What’s being done to help?
"#Noninvasive lithium mining, or alternatives to the metal for use in batteries, is in the works in labs worldwide. The right solution could eliminate the need for #mining, or lithium, altogether.
"To help Native Americans protect Thacker Pass, you can research their story. The #SacredLandFilmProject has several ways to help, including #fundraising, calling #media and #officials, and sharing the story on #SocialMedia to highlight the cause."
"More than 250 years ago, the #Ojibwe people, one of the largest Indigenous populations in North America, received a prophecy to migrate westward until they reached the land where food grows on water.
When the #MilleLacsBand of Ojibwe encountered wild rice in north-central Minnesota, they knew they found their new home. Rice harvesting has been a cornerstone of Ojibwe culture ever since.
"Today, mining exploration company #TalonMetals, also has its sights set on Minnesota. Some of the world’s richest high-grade #nickel and #copper deposits are thousands of feet below the state colloquially known as 'the land of 10,000 lakes.'
"Talon seeks to construct a mine in the rural town of Tamarack, which it says will be integral to building the nation’s domestic supply of materials necessary for a clean energy transition.
"Nickel and copper are key components of rechargeable #lithium ion (#LION) batteries that are widely used for low-emission technologies like electric vehicles (EVs). The company already has an agreement to supply #Tesla with nickel from its proposed mine, potentially bringing hundreds of unionized mining jobs to this rural area.
"The federal government has also recognized nickel and copper as 'essential to national defense,' adding them to the U.S. critical minerals list in 2022 and 2023, respectively. And, this September, the Department of Defense awarded Talon a $20.1 million matching grant to continue searching for deposits throughout the #LakeSuperior region.
"As the U.S. strives to be a leader in clean energy transition, the #TamarackProject encapsulates both the promise and challenges that lie ahead.
"The Dangers of Sulfide Mining
"Kelly Applegate, the commissioner of natural resources for the Mille Lacs Band, was shocked when he first saw deep earth imaging of nickel-copper deposits beneath his tribal land in the late 1990s.
A study from the U.S. Geological Survey suggested that the Lake Superior region could have deposits as lucrative as high-yield mines in Canada and Russia.
'Oh my gosh, look at these mineral deposits that may one day be sought out,' he recalls thinking to himself.
"Two decades later, Talon Metals, a mining company founded by former Canadian venture #capitalists and based in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), applied for a permit with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to create the Tamarack Project just over a mile away from the closest Mille Lacs Band community. "
"On this week’s #MakingContact, we bring you a special encore of an episode that first aired in June. We’ll hear an extended interview with #IveyCamilleManybeadsTso, a #queer#Diné filmmaker and director of the award-winning #documentary Powerlands.
World Governments Rattled as Indigenous Expose Atrocities at the United Nations
By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, April 22, 2023
"Governments from around the world are rushing to defend their #HumanRights records as #IndigenousPeoples describe the atrocities during the 22nd session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues."