11/20/14

Final Indian war underway; sage grouse doomed to PRTC, KXL


What is even worse South Dakota’s media has also buried its collective heads in the sand even though Native Sun News has been reporting on the Keystone XL Pipeline since 2006. Award winning Health and Environment Editor for Native Sun News, Talli Nauman, has been at the journalistic forefront of this environmental disaster about to happen from day one and she has been rewarded by the South Dakota Newspaper Association with many awards for her yearly series of articles on this most important topic. Until this issue became a political football, the rest of South Dakota’s media had been silent. The Keystone XL Pipeline that is being pushed by TransCanada may well be the beginning of the final war between the United States government and the Indian Nations. [Tim Giago, The final Indian war in America is about to begin]


The expansion will quadruple the size of the existing airspace to an area of about 20 million acres lying northwest of Rapid City and spanning parts of South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota. The lowest allowable altitude would be 500 feet, with higher minimums in some areas. [Seth Tupper, Rapid City Journal]





As hundreds of welfare ranchers reap windfall benefits for their negligence during a late fall blizzard, the Anthropocene is wiping out thousands of native species.

The extirpation of bison from the American West has led to the introduction of European cattle now doing untold damage to prairies, the sage steppe and to the high plains and deserts.
As sage grouse have been listed as a species worthy of protection under the Endangered Species Act, but precluded by higher priorities for now, western farmers and ranchers have been concerned about what the implications of such a decision might mean to the way they use the land. “They’re real worried that if that bird gets listed, the federal government will come in and tell them how to manage that ground,” said Melissa Foster, an FWP biologist who was the lead author of a four-year study in Powder and Carter counties. Scientists and conservationists are trying to piece together the best way to preserve sage grouse on their traditional sagebrush steppe environment, which is seeing greater pressures from oil and gas development, loss of habitat to wildland fires and even conifer encroachment. The study area included a land mix of about 54 percent private, 36 percent BLM and 10 percent state, spreading east from the Powder River to the South Dakota border and south from the Powderville Road to the Wyoming border. [Brett French, Billings Gazette]




It's not like we haven't seen it coming.

South Dakota's junior US Senator is betting his career on ramming the expansion of the Powder River Training Complex and the Keystone XL pipeline down American Indian throats.

His actions to defeat tribal sovereignty are putting natives peoples' rights at risk.

Verily, South Dakota's At-large US Representative wails that the US Environmental Protection Agency is employing a land grab to regulate water pollution yet heralds TransCanada's efforts to condemn land for a diluted bitumen pipeline. Recall that Tim Giago supported Kristi Noem's candidacy.
If [municipal solid waste] were to be used as a fuel in [waste to energy] power plants, it could replace all the coal imported by states such as New York, California, Idaho, New Jersey and Maine. Use of MSW fuel in place of coal could reduce the U.S. state-to-state transportation of coal by 22%. [American Chemistry Council, pdf.]
The emergence of warrior societies led by veterans of the Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, and Kosovo has unified young people in North America's tribal regions. Movements are growing from the Mohawk Nation in Quebec and New York to the Lakota strongholds in South Dakota, among the descendants of the Arapaho in the Mountain West, south to the Navajo Nation and into the border regions of the Tohono O'odham.

From Al Jazeera English:
In recent years in particular, Canada's indigenous communities have shown the will and potential to grind the country's economic lifelines to a halt through strategically placed blockades on the major highways and rail lines that run through native reserves well outside of Canada's urban landscape. There are more than 800 outstanding native land claims held against the Canadian government. And in many First Nations communities there is deep crisis, with poverty, unemployment and overcrowding the norm. According to figures from the Assembly of First Nations, more than 118 First Nations lack safe drinking water and some 5,500 houses do not have sewage systems. Almost one half of homes on native reserves are in need of "major repairs", compared with 7 per cent of non-native homes. Natives suffer a violent crime rate that is more than 300 times higher than Canada's non-native population, while natives represent 18.5 per cent of the male prison population and one-quarter of the female population, although natives only constitute 4 per cent of the total population.
In the US, where sovereignty rights, culture and language resurgence and growing capital resources from burgeoning black markets are building alternatives to hopelessness, suicide, and repression in Indian Country, deaths from firearm violence are higher than in any ethnic group.

South Dakota, New Mexico, Wyoming and Montana are in the cross hairs.








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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. LK, thank you. Incredible post. Made my day, and cheered my heart. I have been so despondent after the election of fascist America, that I have basically stopped reading....and writing. In fact, I have been asked to leave the last site in Montana that would even allow me to post. (cgirl) But hey, that's OK with me. There's nothing left to say. It's all been said. Now, there's nothing left but activism. And that's where we're at.

The Rangers have always worked very closely with the Native Americans here in Montana. (ie. Zortman/Landusky, Red Thunder, etc.) And I'm so glad to see that there is a whole new generation of veterans willing to work with the Native peoples. That's wonderful. That gives me great hope.

And we even worked with the late Walt Bressette. I had a very nice conversation with Walt when they did their blockade of the cyanide trains back in the '90's. (very interesting story btw) I told Walt that the Rangers were prepared to come Wisconsin to help in any way that we could. Walt declined my offer saying that they had things under control. And well they did. But still, I was glad to have met such a great man as Walt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Bresette

Bottom line, Lk. I guarantee you that I will be at any action to protect the land in South Dakota. Any action the Natives choose to undertake, I want to be party of it, if they will allow me. For you see, I missed Wounded Knee because I was in Nam. But now, I'm back. I won't miss another!

Thanks, Bro. That was great stuff.

November 18, 2014 at 8:46 PM
larry kurtz said...

LK, it's always good to have you here. Seeing your comments at Cowgirl helps me to think all is okay with the world. Sad to see Tokarski fucking things up over there: maybe just give it a rest for awhile and let him and Kailey get tired of beating each other up.

Hang in there, bro: Montana and South Dakota legislatures are all earth haters racing to see who can shit the bed the fastest.

November 19, 2014 at 6:02 AM
Anonymous said...

I found this quite interesting, LK. Check it out.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-19/the-real-legacy-of-the-keystone-xl-is-already-settled#r=read

LK

November 19, 2014 at 6:32 PM
Anonymous said...

Yup. Only so many tits on the ol' Earth hog!

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/19/breeding-ourselves-to-extinction/

LK

November 19, 2014 at 6:44 PM

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