What Happens When Native People Lose Their Traditional Foods .docx

What Happens When Native People Lose Their Traditional
Foods?
Foods?
by Deborah Small
November 17, 2016
Purepecha public health worker Abe Sanchez
gathers chia seeds. | Photo: Deborah Small
“The revitalization of tradition is much more
complex than people can imagine. It really is a
process that reaches far into the silenced
knowing. Recovering from intergenerational
historical trauma is something that continues
to seep into the lives of California Indians
today. Growing, nurturing, harvesting, and
preparing native foods not only feed and renew the body—they
feed the mind, the soul, the
dreamtime of the people. Most importantly, our practices
contribute to the healing of our
common relative, our Mother Earth, and right now, she is sick
and unable to attract all the
beauty of the universe to come to her. And if our Mother Earth
is sick, so are we, simply
because we are part of her.” —Cindi Alvitre, Tongva
educator, Chia Café Collective
The native people I have worked with in southern California for

the past 16 years have a
profound spiritual connection to the land through their ancestors
and their long history of living
on the land. They pay homage to plants and consider them as
their teachers. They’re dedicated
to passing on what they know to others. All stress our
interdependence with other species. All
have a fierce devotion to revitalizing their culture as part of the
larger cultural revitalization
sweeping California.
Cahuilla/Apache elder Lorene Sisquoc describes a reciprocal
relationship with the plants and the
land. “The plants are waiting for us to come take care of them
so they can take care of us.
In Temalpakh, Katherine Saubel writes that the Cahuilla word
for an oak grove, meki'i'wah,
means ‘the place that waits for me.’ It’s our responsibility to
take care of the land, to get out
there and gather, to sing songs, tell stories, do ceremony, share
our laughter and our language.
To preserve our oral traditions by passing our knowledge to our
kids and grandkids. It’s
important that they start learning very young. Taking care of the
plants helps make our families
healthy. We’re working hard to heal our communities by
deepening our connection to the land.”
Sisquoc is a founding member of the Chia Café Collective, or
CCC, a grassroots group of
southern California tribal members and their allies committed to
the revitalization of native
foods, medicines, culture and community. Their work to
revitalize native foods honors the vast
traditional knowledge and spiritual relationship to the land, and
explores the nutritive and

medicinal bounty the land offers us.
Through workshops, classes, demonstrations, and native foods
celebrations, the CCC focus on
ways to re-incorporate native food plants into their daily diets
to take back responsibility for
their health and well-being. Their work helps others to
reconnect with the land through
gathering, gardening, and cooking native foods, and by
preparing medicinal plants as teas,
tinctures, salves, and soaps.
https://www.kcet.org/author/deborah-small
https://deborahsmall.wordpress.com/2016/06/02/chia-cafe-
collective-book/
The goal of the CCC’s classes and workshops is to inspire
healthy eating practices for individuals
and social justice for communities whose land management
practices and native food traditions
were disrupted when tribal land bases were taken away, native
children sent to boarding
schools, and traditional foods replaced by white flour, white
sugar, and other unhealthy
commodities and fast foods.
Sisquoc teaches at the Sherman Indian High School in
Riverside, a former boarding school
created to assimilate Indian children into the dominant culture.
Sisquoc relates that students
were instructed: “‘Forget about your traditional plants. Forget
about the acorns and pine nuts
and mesquite waiting to be gathered. You’ve got to get over
here and make a garden and milk
that cow. That’s what the boarding schools were about. It was

lactose-intolerant kids being fed
dairy products and introduced foods, and taught cooking and
home economics that were
different from theirs. They were taught that their ways were
wrong. Many of our gathering
practices and our culinary secrets and specialties were not
passed down because the boarding
school students weren’t home to learn them.”
Shimwich Chumash educator and CCC member Tima Lotah Link
echoes Sisquoc: “If you want to
wreck a culture, hit it in the kitchen. Boarding schools did that
in one generation. Take away
the kids, take away their plants, take away their knowledge of
the kitchen. Parents and children
no longer gathered their plants together. They no longer spoke
their language or shared
information.”
Tongva educator and CCC founding member Barbara Drake also
describes a shattered way of
life: “Our lives and our cultures were disrupted by colonization,
and we became disconnected.
The colonizers tried to eradicate us by severing our relationship
with the natural world, with our
plants and animals and the land. They took away the benefits of
our traditional foods. We were
no longer celebrating the seasons, caretaking our land, using
digging sticks to aerate the soil,
pruning plants, or thinning stands of trees. We were no longer
spreading seeds or saving them,
or helping plants to grow. We were letting them down. It was
disastrous, but all was not lost.
Today, we’re asking elders what they remember. We’re piecing
together our traditional
knowledge and sharing the benefits of eating our traditional

foods.”
The agave harvest | Photo: Deborah Small
Re-introducing native foods into people’s
diets has a remarkable effect, helping
individuals and communities take back a
large measure of responsibility for their
health and well being, and for reclaiming
their cultural identity. For the past 20 years,
the Malki Museum on the Morongo
Reservation has sponsored a yearly Agave
Harvest and Feast to celebrate what Lorene
Sisquoc calls “our most important staple every spring.” The
Cahuilla have been working for over
20 years with CCC member Daniel McCarthy, former Tribal
Liaison for the U.S. Forest Service, to
restore the nutrient-dense agave to its honored place at the table
of traditional foods. McCarthy
speaks of the historic importance of agave as a staple food by
noting that over 10,000 ancient
roasting pits have been found in agave gathering areas. “So
many foods like agave were almost
forgotten,” Sisquoc says, “but now we’re continuing to gather,
eat, and celebrate these native
foods.”
Agave hearts in a roasting pit | Photo: Deborah
Small
Those foods include cholla, whose buds pack a
nutrient punch with their highly absorbable calcium,

a boon for lactose-intolerant people. The slow-
release mesquite and acorn are two of the most
effective foods for controlling blood sugar levels
and diabetes. Chia seeds are high in protein, fiber,
and omega-3 fatty acids, and their mucilage is of great
assistance to the digestive system.
Prickly pear juice can alleviate musculo-skeletal inflammation,
sage provides a dose of
antioxidants, and rose hips and lemonade berries are a rich
source of vitamin C.
The Chia Café Collective promote an ethic of gathering and
cultivating native plants in a manner
that is sustainable, and they stress the importance of preserving
native plants, plant
communities, habitats, and the land for the future generations of
all species. When they teach
the protocol and etiquette of traditional gathering practices,
Barbara Drake reminds us to take
no more than we can use, and to share what we gather with
everyone. “Our ancestors were
doing that sharing all the time. We knew that if we didn’t do
that, it was endangering the life of
everyone.”
For Lorene Sisquoc, gathering native foods is a way to heal
both individuals and communities.
“A long time ago it was our families and our clans, but now we
go out as intertribal groups. We
pray before we gather. We’re teaching the young people and
teaching each other about
discipline, about respect for the land, about taking care of the
land and creating a healthy
environment. Gathering is about community.”

For Rose Ramirez, of Chumash descent, the healing dimension
of gathering native foods comes
from a very palpable connection to the ancestors. “When we
gather, we feel spiritually as if our
ancestors are right there alongside of us. Either they’re my
ancestors or my husband Joe’s
ancestors, because we’re in his territory [Luiseño]. They’re side
by side with us. By revitalizing
native foods, by bringing them back, we’re honoring our
ancestors. We’re cherishing not only
what they used to do and create, but also what they lost. I don’t
think our ancestors lost their
foods, their language, and their culture willingly. It’s a real
honor to try to recover as much as
we can. This is one of the best things we can do.”
For Tongva educator and CCC member Craig Torres, his
profound sense of responsibility and
compassion for other species extends to the oaks, pinyon pines,
yucca, mesquite, chia, sage,
and stinging nettle. For Torres, “Plants are not just ‘cultural
resources.’ Plants are our relatives.
They’re to be treated with reciprocal respect as relatives in the
web of nature, in the circle of
life. Plants enable us to survive and to maintain a sacred
balance on this particular place on
Mother Earth. In Tongva sacred oral narratives, it is we humans
who were the last created. We
were given the responsibility and obligation to maintain a
sacred balance for all life on Mother
Earth.”
Similar to the protectors of the waters fighting the Dakota
Access Pipeline at Standing Rock,
Torres tells us: “If we don’t fight to protect the plants and to
protect the land, they’re no longer

there for us. We’re trying to re-establish those relationships
with the native plants, because
they’re so important to us. The connection to who we are as a
people has everything to do with
the plants.”
One significant way to re-establish those relationships with
native plants and foods is to put in
some labor-intensive hours to insure the sustainability and
survival of the plants. As part of the
Parry Pinyon Pines Project, the CCC worked alongside Daniel
McCarthy and southern California
tribes and to resurrect traditional environmental practices. They
removed the lower limbs of
pinyon pines, cleared vegetation beneath the trees, and pruned
the surrounding shrubs to
eliminate potential fuel ladders to make the groves less
vulnerable to the ferocious wildfires that
can sweep through unmanaged forests.
Roasting pinyon pine cones | Photo: Deborah Small
Another way to revitalize a relationship with native
foods is to reject to the industrialized food chain and
all that it represents—the multinational corporate
control of seeds, production of genetically modified
foods, and the promotion of unsustainable agricultural
practices damaging to all species and to the earth that
sustains us. For public health worker and CCC member
Abe Sanchez, it’s a daily practice to cultivate consciousness
about the foods he eats to maintain
optimum health. “Native foods sustained indigenous cultures for

thousands of years. Native
foods are our future. But we have to make choices. We have to
be disciplined. We have to be
aware of what we’re putting in our bodies to prevent chronic
illness, diabetes, obesity, high
blood pressure. And native foods will help us prevent that.”
When diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, anthropologist and CCC
member Leslie Mouriquand had
an epiphany: “I needed to actually eat the traditional foods that
I had been researching, not
just for the sake of cultural preservation, but to save my life! I
am now passionately immersed
in gathering, growing, and eating chia, mesquite, prickly pear,
cholla, and other native foods.
By changing my diet and sedentary lifestyle, I succeeded in
reversing my diabetes. This is a
lifetime commitment for me.” Mouriquand is lucky that she
caught her diabetes early and knew
exactly what she needed to do.
In Recovering the Sacred, Anishinaabeg environmental activist
Winona LaDuke writes that “the
recovery of the people is tied to the recovery of food, since food
itself is medicine: not only for
the body, but for the soul, for the spiritual connection to
history, ancestors, and the land.”
People speak of the necessity for a major shift to a sustainable
society from our unsustainable
and ultimately destructive way of life. Like Leslie Mouriquand,
we have the opportunity to learn
from people whose ancestors were here for thousands of years,
who knew how to protect and
honor the earth. Their work offers hope, inspiration, and healing
for all of us.

Banner photo: Deborah Small
Co-produced by KCETLink and the Autry Museum of the
American West, the Tending the
Wild series is presented in association with the Autry's
groundbreaking California
Continued exhibition.
https://www.kcet.org/shows/tending-the-wild
http://www.theautry.org/CAcontinued
Foods?
Foods?
by Deborah Small
November 17, 2016
Purepecha public health worker Abe Sanchez
gathers chia seeds. | Photo: Deborah Small
“The revitalization of tradition is much more
complex than people can imagine. It really is a
process that reaches far into the silenced
knowing. Recovering from intergenerational
historical trauma is something that continues
to seep into the lives of California Indians
today. Growing, nurturing, harvesting, and
preparing native foods not only feed and renew the body—they

feed the mind, the soul, the
dreamtime of the people. Most importantly, our practices
contribute to the healing of our
common relative, our Mother Earth, and right now, she is sick
and unable to attract all the
beauty of the universe to come to her. And if our Mother Earth
is sick, so are we, simply
because we are part of her.” —Cindi Alvitre, Tongva
educator, Chia Café Collective
The native people I have worked with in southern California for
the past 16 years have a
profound spiritual connection to the land through their ancestors
and their long history of living
on the land. They pay homage to plants and consider them as
their teachers. They’re dedicated
to passing on what they know to others. All stress our
interdependence with other species. All
have a fierce devotion to revitalizing their culture as part of the
larger cultural revitalization
sweeping California.
Cahuilla/Apache elder Lorene Sisquoc describes a reciprocal
relationship with the plants and the
land. “The plants are waiting for us to come take care of them
so they can take care of us.
In Temalpakh, Katherine Saubel writes that the Cahuilla word
for an oak grove, meki'i'wah,
means ‘the place that waits for me.’ It’s our responsibility to
take care of the land, to get out
there and gather, to sing songs, tell stories, do ceremony, share
our laughter and our language.
To preserve our oral traditions by passing our knowledge to our
kids and grandkids. It’s
important that they start learning very young. Taking care of the
plants helps make our families

healthy. We’re working hard to heal our communities by
deepening our connection to the land.”
Sisquoc is a founding member of the Chia Café Collective, or
CCC, a grassroots group of
southern California tribal members and their allies committed to
the revitalization of native
foods, medicines, culture and community. Their work to
revitalize native foods honors the vast
traditional knowledge and spiritual relationship to the land, and
explores the nutritive and
medicinal bounty the land offers us.
Through workshops, classes, demonstrations, and native foods
celebrations, the CCC focus on
ways to re-incorporate native food plants into their daily diets
to take back responsibility for
their health and well-being. Their work helps others to
reconnect with the land through
gathering, gardening, and cooking native foods, and by
preparing medicinal plants as teas,
tinctures, salves, and soaps.
https://www.kcet.org/author/deborah-small
https://deborahsmall.wordpress.com/2016/06/02/chia-cafe-
collective-book/
The goal of the CCC’s classes and workshops is to inspire
healthy eating practices for individuals
and social justice for communities whose land management
practices and native food traditions
were disrupted when tribal land bases were taken away, native
children sent to boarding
schools, and traditional foods replaced by white flour, white
sugar, and other unhealthy

commodities and fast foods.
Sisquoc teaches at the Sherman Indian High School in
Riverside, a former boarding school
created to assimilate Indian children into the dominant culture.
Sisquoc relates that students
were instructed: “‘Forget about your traditional plants. Forget
about the acorns and pine nuts
and mesquite waiting to be gathered. You’ve got to get over
here and make a garden and milk
that cow. That’s what the boarding schools were about. It was
lactose-intolerant kids being fed
dairy products and introduced foods, and taught cooking and
home economics that were
different from theirs. They were taught that their ways were
wrong. Many of our gathering
practices and our culinary secrets and specialties were not
passed down because the boarding
school students weren’t home to learn them.”
Shimwich Chumash educator and CCC member Tima Lotah Link
echoes Sisquoc: “If you want to
wreck a culture, hit it in the kitchen. Boarding schools did that
in one generation. Take away
the kids, take away their plants, take away their knowledge of
the kitchen. Parents and children
no longer gathered their plants together. They no longer spoke
their language or shared
information.”
Tongva educator and CCC founding member Barbara Drake also
describes a shattered way of
life: “Our lives and our cultures were disrupted by colonization,
and we became disconnected.
The colonizers tried to eradicate us by severing our relationship
with the natural world, with our

plants and animals and the land. They took away the benefits of
our traditional foods. We were
no longer celebrating the seasons, caretaking our land, using
digging sticks to aerate the soil,
pruning plants, or thinning stands of trees. We were no longer
spreading seeds or saving them,
or helping plants to grow. We were letting them down. It was
disastrous, but all was not lost.
Today, we’re asking elders what they remember. We’re piecing
together our traditional
knowledge and sharing the benefits of eating our traditional
foods.”
The agave harvest | Photo: Deborah Small
Re-introducing native foods into people’s
diets has a remarkable effect, helping
individuals and communities take back a
large measure of responsibility for their
health and well being, and for reclaiming
their cultural identity. For the past 20 years,
the Malki Museum on the Morongo
Reservation has sponsored a yearly Agave
Harvest and Feast to celebrate what Lorene
Sisquoc calls “our most important staple every spring.” The
Cahuilla have been working for over
20 years with CCC member Daniel McCarthy, former Tribal
Liaison for the U.S. Forest Service, to
restore the nutrient-dense agave to its honored place at the table
of traditional foods. McCarthy
speaks of the historic importance of agave as a staple food by
noting that over 10,000 ancient
roasting pits have been found in agave gathering areas. “So
many foods like agave were almost
forgotten,” Sisquoc says, “but now we’re continuing to gather,

eat, and celebrate these native
foods.”
Agave hearts in a roasting pit | Photo: Deborah
Small
Those foods include cholla, whose buds pack a
nutrient punch with their highly absorbable calcium,
a boon for lactose-intolerant people. The slow-
release mesquite and acorn are two of the most
effective foods for controlling blood sugar levels
and diabetes. Chia seeds are high in protein, fiber,
and omega-3 fatty acids, and their mucilage is of great
assistance to the digestive system.
Prickly pear juice can alleviate musculo-skeletal inflammation,
sage provides a dose of
antioxidants, and rose hips and lemonade berries are a rich
source of vitamin C.
The Chia Café Collective promote an ethic of gathering and
cultivating native plants in a manner
that is sustainable, and they stress the importance of preserving
native plants, plant
communities, habitats, and the land for the future generations of
all species. When they teach
the protocol and etiquette of traditional gathering practices,
Barbara Drake reminds us to take
no more than we can use, and to share what we gather with
everyone. “Our ancestors were
doing that sharing all the time. We knew that if we didn’t do
that, it was endangering the life of
everyone.”

For Lorene Sisquoc, gathering native foods is a way to heal
both individuals and communities.
“A long time ago it was our families and our clans, but now we
go out as intertribal groups. We
pray before we gather. We’re teaching the young people and
teaching each other about
discipline, about respect for the land, about taking care of the
land and creating a healthy
environment. Gathering is about community.”
For Rose Ramirez, of Chumash descent, the healing dimension
of gathering native foods comes
from a very palpable connection to the ancestors. “When we
gather, we feel spiritually as if our
ancestors are right there alongside of us. Either they’re my
ancestors or my husband Joe’s
ancestors, because we’re in his territory [Luiseño]. They’re side
by side with us. By revitalizing
native foods, by bringing them back, we’re honoring our
ancestors. We’re cherishing not only
what they used to do and create, but also what they lost. I don’t
think our ancestors lost their
foods, their language, and their culture willingly. It’s a real
honor to try to recover as much as
we can. This is one of the best things we can do.”
For Tongva educator and CCC member Craig Torres, his
profound sense of responsibility and
compassion for other species extends to the oaks, pinyon pines,
yucca, mesquite, chia, sage,
and stinging nettle. For Torres, “Plants are not just ‘cultural
resources.’ Plants are our relatives.
They’re to be treated with reciprocal respect as relatives in the
web of nature, in the circle of
life. Plants enable us to survive and to maintain a sacred

balance on this particular place on
Mother Earth. In Tongva sacred oral narratives, it is we humans
who were the last created. We
were given the responsibility and obligation to maintain a
sacred balance for all life on Mother
Earth.”
Similar to the protectors of the waters fighting the Dakota
Access Pipeline at Standing Rock,
Torres tells us: “If we don’t fight to protect the plants and to
protect the land, they’re no longer
there for us. We’re trying to re-establish those relationships
with the native plants, because
they’re so important to us. The connection to who we are as a
people has everything to do with
the plants.”
One significant way to re-establish those relationships with
native plants and foods is to put in
some labor-intensive hours to insure the sustainability and
survival of the plants. As part of the
Parry Pinyon Pines Project, the CCC worked alongside Daniel
McCarthy and southern California
tribes and to resurrect traditional environmental practices. They
removed the lower limbs of
pinyon pines, cleared vegetation beneath the trees, and pruned
the surrounding shrubs to
eliminate potential fuel ladders to make the groves less
vulnerable to the ferocious wildfires that
can sweep through unmanaged forests.
Roasting pinyon pine cones | Photo: Deborah Small

Another way to revitalize a relationship with native
foods is to reject to the industrialized food chain and
all that it represents—the multinational corporate
control of seeds, production of genetically modified
foods, and the promotion of unsustainable agricultural
practices damaging to all species and to the earth that
sustains us. For public health worker and CCC member
Abe Sanchez, it’s a daily practice to cultivate consciousness
about the foods he eats to maintain
optimum health. “Native foods sustained indigenous cultures for
thousands of years. Native
foods are our future. But we have to make choices. We have to
be disciplined. We have to be
aware of what we’re putting in our bodies to prevent chronic
illness, diabetes, obesity, high
blood pressure. And native foods will help us prevent that.”
When diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, anthropologist and CCC
member Leslie Mouriquand had
an epiphany: “I needed to actually eat the traditional foods that
I had been researching, not
just for the sake of cultural preservation, but to save my life! I
am now passionately immersed
in gathering, growing, and eating chia, mesquite, prickly pear,
cholla, and other native foods.
By changing my diet and sedentary lifestyle, I succeeded in
reversing my diabetes. This is a
lifetime commitment for me.” Mouriquand is lucky that she
caught her diabetes early and knew
exactly what she needed to do.
In Recovering the Sacred, Anishinaabeg environmental activist
Winona LaDuke writes that “the
recovery of the people is tied to the recovery of food, since food
itself is medicine: not only for

the body, but for the soul, for the spiritual connection to
history, ancestors, and the land.”
People speak of the necessity for a major shift to a sustainable
society from our unsustainable
and ultimately destructive way of life. Like Leslie Mouriquand,
we have the opportunity to learn
from people whose ancestors were here for thousands of years,
who knew how to protect and
honor the earth. Their work offers hope, inspiration, and healing
for all of us.
Banner photo: Deborah Small
Co-produced by KCETLink and the Autry Museum of the
American West, the Tending the
Wild series is presented in association with the Autry's
groundbreaking California
Continued exhibition.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-wrongful-
convictions-race-20170307-story.html
Opinion
When wrongful convictions affect blacks more than whites, can
we call it a justice system?
Scott Martelle
Racial disparities have long been evident in the U.S. criminal

justice system, but a new report
drilling into statistics on wrongful convictions points up exactly
how nefarious the problem is.
African Americans are much more likely to be wrongfully
convicted of a murder, sexual assault
or drug offense than whites.
The report, by the National Registry of Exonerations, found that
“innocent black people are
about seven times more likely to be convicted of murder than
innocent white people,” and thus
also account for a disproportionate share of the growing number
of exonerations. African
Americans who were convicted and then exonerated of murder
charges also spent four years
longer on death row than wrongfully convicted whites (and
three years longer for those
sentenced to prison).
According to the report, African Americans convicted of murder
“are about 50% more likely to be
innocent than other convicted murderers,” and that such
wrongful convictions, even when later
corrected, expands the impact of violence on African American
communities.

“A major cause of the high number of black murder
exonerations is the high homicide rate in the
black community — a tragedy that kills many African
Americans and sends many others to
prison,” says the report, written by Samuel R. Gross, a
University of Michigan law professor,
and registry researchers Maurice Possley and Klara Stephens.
“Innocent defendants who are
falsely convicted and exonerated do not contribute to this high
homicide rate. They — like the
families of victims who are killed — are deeply harmed by
murders committed by others.”
Bias in the system becomes clear when looking at the races of
the arrested suspects as well as
the victims. Blacks are more likely to be wrongfully convicted
of murder when the victim is white:
“Only about 15% of murders by African Americans have white
victims, but 31% of innocent
African American murder exonerees were convicted of killing
white people.”
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-wrongful-
convictions-race-20170307-story.html
http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Race
_and_Wrongful_Convictions.pdf
http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/about.aspx

Chillingly, black prisoners later exonerated of the crimes for
which they were convicted were
22% more likely to have been targeted by police misconduct, a
function of everything from
malevolent individual racism by law enforcement and
prosecutors to institutional discrimination.
Although African Americans convicted of sexual assault are
more than three times likely to be
innocent than white convicts, the major cause isn’t official
misconduct but “the high danger of
mistaken eyewitness identification by white victims in violent
crimes with black assailants.”
In a sense, the study affirms what most people already know:
Failings of the criminal justice
system disproportionately affect African Americans. The
solutions, though, aren’t so clear.
Programs aimed at helping law enforcement and court officials
recognize their own implicit bias
are a step, and giving less credence to eyewitness testimony
(whose veracity is shakier than
most people think) at trial would help.
More judicious use of police patrols would also help. Although
blacks and whites use illegal

drugs at about the same rate, black users are five times more
likely to go to prison for it than
whites “and judging from exonerations, innocent black people
are about 12 times more likely to
be convicted of drug crimes than innocent white people.”
Why? Police enforce drug laws far more vigorously in
predominately black neighborhoods than
in white, which means black people are more likely to be
stopped and searched, increasing both
the overall arrest rate and the wrongful conviction rate.
When people are wrongfully convicted of murder, a real
murderer goes free, and the pain of the
crime invests in yet another family.
If there’s any good news in the registry’s findings, it comes in a
second report also released
today noting that exonerations reached a record 166 cases last
year. So the truth is being
rooted out more often, but only for a fraction of the wrongful
convictions that have occurred.
Which makes you wonder where exactly the justice is to be
found in the criminal justice system.
There’s more at stake here than the already bad-enough theft of
years of freedom from the
wrongfully convicted. A study published three years ago in

Proceedings of the National
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/
https://www.innocenceproject.org/causes/eyewitness-
misidentification/
http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Exon
erations_in_2016.pdf
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/20/7230.abstract
Academy of Science found that, conservatively, about 4% of
people on death rows were likely
wrongfully convicted.
There currently are about 2,900 people on death rows around
the country, of whom; under that
formula, about 120 are likely to have been wrongfully
convicted. In California, about 30 of the
749 current death row inmates, using that formula, were likely
wrongfully convicted.
This isn’t to deflect or ignore the pain and suffering of the
victims of crimes, and their families.
But when people are wrongfully convicted of murder, a real
murderer goes free, and the pain of
the crime invests in yet another family — that of the person
falsely convicted.
So how does this happen? The Death Penalty Information
Center analyzed both its own

exoneration count and the one maintained by the registry and
agreed with the registry
conclusion that that official misconduct was the primary cause
for people being sentenced to
death for murders they did not commit.
“Our data shows that police or prosecutorial misconduct has
been the primary cause of 16 of
the last 18 death-row exonerations (88.9%),” said Death Penalty
Information Center Executive
Director Robert Dunham. “We also found that in 18 of the last
25 misconduct-related death-row
exonerations (72.0%), the wrongly capitally prosecuted
defendant was black.”
What we can’t know is how many innocent people have been put
to death in the name of
justice.
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Capital_Punishment/
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/
http://deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/DPICStatementOnNation
alRegistryReports.pdf
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/30/northwest-coal-
exports_n_4611021.html

exports_n_4611021.html?view=print&comm_ref=false
Lynne Peeples [email protected]
Coal-Hungry World Brings Tough Choices For Native
Americans
Posted: 01/30/2014 11:44 am EST Updated: 02/06/2014 9:59 am
EST
Jewell Praying Wolf James addresses a crowd
gathered in September in Olympia, Wash., to
protest coal exports. (Lynne Peeples)
Inside a ceremonial longhouse in northern Oregon
last September, the sun's rays spilling between the
high-peaked beams, Davis Yellowash Washines was
seated in full ceremonial dress -- yellow headband, red sash,
beaded shoes. A rawhide drum
rested in his hand, and to his left sat four teenage boys, each
with his own drum and mallet.
One wore a black Chevrolet T-shirt. They thumped their
instruments and called out native
songs as an organized smattering of young children bounced
rhythmically counter-clockwise
around the dirt floor. Two dozen fellow members of the tribal
community, seated in folded

metal chairs, looked on.
"This longhouse is used for lots of occasions," Washines said
between songs. "But this one is
significant."
This ceremony aimed to ward off coal.
Celilo Indian Village, Ore., separated from the Columbia River
by only a highway and some
railroad tracks, is one of many tribal communities that sit in the
path of what could soon
become America's coal-export superhighway. If government
agencies grant approval to three
export terminals proposed for Oregon and Washington, up to
100 million metric tons of coal
per year could soon be shuttled in open rail cars from mines in
the Powder River Basin of
Wyoming and Montana, along the shores of the Columbia River
and the Puget Sound, and
through ranches and reservations like this one. The coal would
then be loaded onto ships
destined for Asia's proliferating fleet of coal-fired power plants.
Many activists currently fighting the plan see the impacts of

burning coal on the global climate
as their primary motivation. But for the Yakama, Lummi and
other tribes, as well as
communities in the path of these shipments, it's the local effects
that worry them most. There
are the potential traffic delays and disturbances to cultural sites.
exports_n_4611021.html
exports_n_4611021.html?view=print&comm_ref=false
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lynne-peeples
mailto:[email protected]
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/huffington./id517151550?ls=1&
mt=8
mt=8
mt=8
mt=8
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/23/coal-port-pacific-
northwest-energy-pollution-climate-change_n_1109289.html
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021037388_apornorthw
estcoalports1stldwritethru.html
Then there's the very real prospect of toxic coal dust wafting off
the passing trains, fouling the
air, poisoning local waterways and even contaminating key food
resources -- such as the

salmon on which many local tribes, including those living in the
tiny Celilo Indian Village,
depend.
While the U.S. has seen a steady decline in coal use in recent
years thanks to tighter federal
regulations and the expanded viability of natural gas and
renewable energy, the rise of
burgeoning, coal-hungry economies in China, India and other
fast-developing nations means
the Celilo tribes -- like many communities across the Pacific
Northwest -- now find themselves
wedged squarely between a domestic abundance of the
combustible rock and its most
promising international market.
The potential expansion of coal exports elicits differing
opinions among tribes and communities
here. What may be an environmental or public health imposition
for one is seen as a
desperately needed opportunity for another. The coal industry,
for example, argues that
exports could inject welcome economic activity into struggling
Northwest towns and
reservations. By itself, the Gateway Pacific Terminal proposed
at Cherry Point on the Puget

Sound would add approximately 1,250 permanent jobs,
including induced jobs such as
restaurant and healthcare workers, as well as 4,400 temporary
construction jobs, according to
an analysis by an industry consultant. Annual local and state tax
revenues would amount to
about $11 million.
The dispute over the coal trains is playing out in television
advertisements, on the streets and
inside boardrooms, town halls and courthouses from
Washington, D.C., to Seattle. A series of
hearings and protests over the last few months have attracted
thousands of people -- some
donning makeshift respirators, others wearing "Beyond Coal" T-
shirts, and some even
rappelling from a bridge over the Columbia River as a symbolic
blockade to the shipments.
Still, nowhere are the tensions so acute as on the hardscrabble
reservations that either sit atop
valuable coal -- an estimated 30 percent of U.S. coal reserves
west of the Mississippi are
located on native lands -- or lie in the path of the trains that
would haul it to port.

Just outside the walls of the longhouse where Washines and his
fellow drummers were singing
out in opposition to the coal shipments, a 22-foot totem pole lay
on the bed of a white truck.
The carving, which depicted five salmon, two kneeling men and
a hungry child, was touring
towns, churches and reservations across the Pacific Northwest
as part of an effort to
consolidate tribal opposition to the proposed coal shipments.
(The totem's last stop, in late
September, would be across the border in the Tsleil-Waututh
Nation of British Columbia,
where it now stands erected as a display of solidarity with that
tribe's parallel struggle over a
tar sands oil pipeline.)
"Mother Earth doesn't have a voice," said Karen Jim Whitford, a
tribal elder, as she stepped
shoeless into the center of the longhouse floor. A couple of her
tears disappeared into the dirt.
"So we must speak for her."
http://gatewaypacificterminal.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/06/Economic-Analysis-Summary-for-
10.27.11.pdf

http://www.coaltrainfacts.org/docs/MartinAssocEcomonicImpac
tsReport2011.pdf
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/11/coal-exports-
pacific-northwest-asia-public-health_n_1510000.html
http://www.fs.fed.us/people/tribal/tribexd.pdf
"I vote we stand up," exclaimed another elder, Lorintha
Umtuch, referring to the totem's
symbolic call for Native Americans to get off their knees and
"Warrior Up!" for future
generations. "Indian people need to stop this, or else
corporations will trample us."
Not all tribes stand on the same side of the coal-export battle
line. CJ Stewart, a senator of the
Crow Nation, said in a phone interview in October that his tribe
desperately needs to develop
its coal reserves to improve its economic fortunes and lift its
people out of poverty. In
November, the Crow Nation signed a joint resolution with the
Navajo Nation in support of each
other's coal development. "We rely on coal just as they rely on
salmon," Stewart said,
referring to the Yakama and other tribes represented in Celilo.
"All tribes share one common
enemy, and that enemy is poverty."

Many tribes along the rail corridor, however, feel it's not just
livelihoods at stake -- it's lives.
Jewell Praying Wolf James, the carver of the well-traveled
totem and member of the Lummi
Nation, expressed sympathy with the coal-dependent tribes
during a later stop on the totem's
journey in Olympia, Wash. "We feel bad for the Crow Nation,
the Navajo, the Hopi. That's all
they got," he said. "But we want clean air, clean water. We want
salmon restored and our
children healthy."
Davis Yellowash Washines presses his hand
against one of the brightly painted salmon
encircling the bottom of the totem. "The salmon
gave its life for you, just like the tree gave its life
for this purpose," he said. (Paul Anderson)
Dig into Native American history and you will
strike coal. As far back as the 1300s, Hopi Indians
in what is now the U.S. Southwest used the fossil
fuel for cooking, heating and baking clay pottery.
In the 1800s, Native Americans made up much of the early
mining workforce that would help
ignite coal's long reign as the go-to fuel source for the country's

necessities and luxuries --
from transporting goods and running factories to heating homes
and powering Playstations.
But King Coal's grip is slipping. The rise of hydro-fracturing
technology in recent years has
unleashed torrents of natural gas, a cheaper and cleaner
alternative, and left coal-rich states
and undiversified coal companies with a serious revenue
problem. Many have responded by
looking to Asia, where mining local coal, in addition to building
wind farms and solar panels,
has not created nearly enough energy for the rapidly growing
economies there.
Asia's ready market and America's still plentiful coal could
make a convenient marriage.
Proving particularly attractive to Asian buyers is Powder River
Basin coal, which is cheap to
extract and relatively low in polluting sulfur. Yet plenty of
obstacles remain in the U.S. and
abroad before coal interests can successfully drive their product
to northwestern ports for
export. There are the vocal environmental advocates, the newly
elected local leaders who've

http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2013/11/05/bad-news-
for-big-coal-in-whatcom-county/
made clear their opposition to the plans, the big-money
investors who've withdrawn support
for port builders and, of course, the tribes.
In a July letter to the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal
agency tasked with evaluating the
two Washington State coal port projects, the Lummi Nation
wrote of its "unconditional and
unequivocal opposition" to the terminal planned for Cherry
Point, near its reservation.
The tribe cited among other concerns "significant and
unavoidable impacts and damage" to
treaty rights reserved in the 19th century to fish at its "usual
and accustomed" areas.
Patricia Graesser, a spokeswoman with the Corps,
acknowledged the Lummi letter and said
her agency was in government-to-government discussions with
the tribe. "We have a
responsibility to uphold the nation's treaty with Native
American tribes," she said.
The Chinese government, meanwhile, is responding to a major

air pollution crisis sparked
largely by rapid development centered on coal-fired power. In
December, Shanghai's air
quality fell to a record low and the country's smog could be
seen from space. But even with
leaders in China vowing to slow down the growth of coal use,
experts predict global coal
consumption will jump up another 25 percent by the end of the
decade.
Decisions on the Northwest export terminals could significantly
influence the future of coal in
Asia. "Opening up this main line of cheap American coal is a
pretty important signal if you are
a Chinese official thinking about how much to invest in what
kind of energy infrastructure,"
said KC Golden, senior policy adviser for the non-profit
Climate
Solution
s, which has advocated
against the proposed ports.

The effects would span the globe. According to estimates by the
Sightline Institute, a nonprofit
think tank based in Seattle, Pacific Northwest coal exports
could create greater national and
worldwide environmental impacts, including on climate change,
than a Canadian company's
controversial proposal to ferry Albertan tar sands to the U.S.
Gulf Coast via the Keystone XL
pipeline.
As Jewell Praying Wolf James put it: "Once the coal gets to
China, it's pollution for all of us."
For more than 11,000 years, Celilo Falls served as the center of
trade and commerce for
Native Americans of the West. The upwards of 15 million
salmon that passed through the

mile-long span of rocky chutes in the Columbia River every
year functioned as a sort of
http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2014/01/08/goldman-
sachs-bails-out-on-coal-port-builder/
http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2014/01/08/goldman-
sachs-bails-out-on-coal-port-builder/
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2013/08/02/3126454/read-
lummi-nations-formal-letter.html
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2013/08/02/3126454/read-
lummi-nations-formal-letter.html
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059991738
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059991738
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2522963/So-bad-
SPACE-China-smog-grounded-planes-left-millions-risk-
pollution-remains-crisis-point.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/14/coal-demand-
idUSL3N0I40SN20131014
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/14/coal-demand-
idUSL3N0I40SN20131014
http://daily.sightline.org/2011/11/16/coal-exports-are-bigger-
threat-than-tar-sands-pipeline/
http://daily.sightline.org/2011/11/16/coal-exports-are-bigger-
threat-than-tar-sands-pipeline/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/05/keystone-xl-

pipeline-people-environment-health-map_n_3016383.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/05/keystone-xl-
pipeline-people-environment-health-map_n_3016383.html
currency. "Some tribal people call it pre-contact Wall Street,"
said Charles Hudson,
intergovernmental affairs director with the Columbia River
Inter-Tribal Fish Commission in
Portland, Ore.
Lewis and Clark called it "the great mart."
But within a few short hours on March 10, 1957, Celilo's era of
plenty came to an abrupt end.
Rising floodwaters from a newly completed hydroelectric dam
engulfed the rapids. Salmon
runs soon shrank to a small fraction of their former numbers.
Davis Yellowash Washines, chief of enforcement for the

Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish
Commission, was only 5 years old when the Dalles Dam opened
and drowned Celilo Falls. "I
can still feel its mist. I can still hear its thunder," he said over
dinner the night before the
September longhouse ceremony.
Warren Spencer, a Yakama elder, was serving in the military in
Germany that year, but he
recalled the time-lapse photos of the inundation he received by
mail from his mother back
home in Celilo Falls. "I sat there on my bunk and cried," he
said.
Now, Spencer is deeply concerned about how this new energy
project might affect the futures
of his four children, 17 grandchildren and eight great-
grandchildren. The coal push, he said,

represents the continued encroachment of the federal
government and "white man's money"
on Native American tribes. "It's turning brother against
brother," he said.
Members of the Lummi Nation bask in the natural
light of the Celilo longhouse before the totem
pole ceremony in September. (Paul Anderson)
Many of the current and former residents of Celilo
belong to the Yakama Nation. Like the Lummi,
the tribe put its opposition to the exports on
paper. In a November letter to the Army Corps of
Engineers and a state official, Yakama chairman Harry Smiskin
referenced a "long history of
Treaty violations from energy development in the region that
permanently and irreparably

have harmed my People." The new energy projects, he said,
would add "direct adverse
impacts" to the tribe's treaty rights to fish, hunt and gather
food, and do more damage to the
already fragile environment, culture and health of his nation.
Dr. Frank James, of the University of Washington School of
Public Health, underscored the
"disproportionate impacts" of the coal projects facing native
people of the Northwest. Much of
this vulnerability results, he said, from their traditional
dependence on the salmon of the
region's rivers and coastal waters -- fish that are now widely
listed as threatened or
endangered under federal law and could be further spoiled by
air and water pollution from

mining and transporting the coal, and its burning overseas.
http://www.millenniumbulkeiswa.gov/comments/MBTL-EIS-
0002293-58943.pdf
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-
news/index.ssf/2014/01/new_columbia_river_plan_for_pr.html
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-
news/index.ssf/2014/01/new_columbia_river_plan_for_pr.html
The tribes' reliance on salmon goes beyond a staple food and a
means to make a living. "It is
their total way of life," said James. "Salmon is part of their
religion, their culture, their
language. To further impact that is an assault on their very
existence."
In a back corner of the Celilo longhouse kitchen, Gloria Jim sat
in a folding chair, on a brief
break from cooking the ceremony's Columbia River salmon
lunch with other Celilo women. She

lamented that they hadn’t had enough salmon to serve for
breakfast, too.
"That's how it used to be here," said Jim, who wore a white shirt
printed with a picture of her
deceased son, pink stretch pants and running shoes. She recalled
the Forest Gump-like menu
of her childhood: Salmon, fried or dried, stuffed or baked, or
simply salted.
"My mom didn't believe in food stamps. We lived on what we
caught," she said. "Now we have
no choice. We have to go to the grocery store."
Her people have been warned, she added, that the salmon they
do catch and eat may be
dangerously polluted. An estimated 17 percent of pregnant
Native American women already
have mercury levels high enough to disrupt the healthy
development of their babies -- much

higher than other racial groups.
Deposits of the neurotoxic heavy metal, along with arsenic and
other contaminants from coal-
fired power plants, can accumulate up the food chain and into
salmon. Research further
suggests that around 25 percent of the mercury in Northwest
American waterways and up to
10 percent of the ozone in the region's skies is carried by wind
currents across the Pacific --
from power plants in Asia.
Coal exports could pollute the region in other ways. Perhaps
most talked about are the risks of
heavy metal-laden coal dust and diesel exhaust blown and
belched from trains, terminals and

ocean-going tankers. Derailments, such as the one that sent
seven cars spilling coal into a
British Columbia creek last week, raise further fears, as does
the possibility of bunker fuel
spillsonce tankers set out to sea through narrow, rough
passages.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16451850
http://discovermagazine.com/2011/apr/18-made-in-china-our-
toxic-imported-air-pollution#.UtVqBZTtgxU
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/01/11/burnaby-train-
derailment_n_4582000.html?just_reloaded=1
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/oil-spill-risk-
exports-asia_n_1453091.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/oil-spill-risk-
exports-asia_n_1453091.html
In November, Dan Jaffe, an environmental scientist at the
University of Washington-Bothell,

released preliminary results of a study on the environmental
insults of existing coal train
traffic. His team monitored 450 passing trains -- some carrying
coal, some not -- from two
representative sites. They sampled for about 10 days at a spot
on the Columbia River Gorge
and for about a month near a Seattle home that butts up against
railroad tracks currently used
by trains en route to Canadian coal ports. Jaffe said he
confirmed elevated levels of diesel
exhaust there "on par with the dirtiest air in the Seattle area," as
well as a slight increase in
large airborne particles -- likely coal dust, he said -- when coal
trains passed by.
The three proposed terminals would dramatically increase rail
traffic, bringing some 35
additional mile-plus-long trains in and out of the region every

day. Currently, fewer than 10
coal trains come and go.
Jaffe's crowdfunded research has yet to be peer-reviewed, a
point emphasized by Courtney
Wallace, a spokeswoman with Burlington Northern Santa Fe
Railway, whose lines would host
much of the westbound coal. Wallace added that BNSF has
spent more than $1 billion on rail
cars and locomotives that "achieve the highest EPA standards
available," and result in 69
percent fewer diesel emissions compared to older locomotives.
BNSF has testified that up to 645 pounds of coal dust can
escape from each rail car during a
400-mile journey, but Wallace also pointed to findings by the
railway that this fugitive dust

diminishes as railcars travel farther from the Powder River
Basin and toward export terminals.
Several environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club,
filed a lawsuit in July against
BNSF over coal contamination of U.S. waterways. Wallace
called the action a "publicity stunt,"
but a U.S. District judge denied a motion to dismiss the case
this month.
Blown coal dust and other hazards could be particularly dire
around Celilo and the rest of the
Columbia River Gorge, where train tracks are sometimes just
feet from tribal residences, said
Hudson, of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.
"The winds are reliable and
strong -- 40, 50, 70 miles per hour," he said. "There's a reason
it's the wind-surfing capital of

the world."
Located in rural Montana, the Crow Nation can't boast a
lucrative seafood or wind-surfing
tourism market. What they do have is a whole lot of coal.
Approximately 9 billion tons of the
fossil fuel lie beneath their land, comprising one of the largest
coal reserves in the United
States.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/129350651/Surface-TransMinutes-9-
10-09-1
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2014/01/03/3403101/environ
mentalists-win-a-round.html
"Coal is the way we've been taking care of our people," said CJ
Stewart, the Crow senator. Yet
his people continue to struggle with poverty and an

unemployment rate he suggested is
upwards of 50 percent. "And the U.S. cries over its 8 percent,"
he said.
In June, the U.S. government approved a deal between the Crow
and Cloud Peak Energy, a
Wyoming company that's moving to increase its coal exports to
Asian markets. The tribe now
has the green light to lease its rights to an estimated 1.4 billion
tons of coal, more than the
U.S. consumes annually. The deal could be worth at least $10
million for the Crow over the
first five years. Cloud Peak has also pledged to give preference
in hiring, training and
promotion to qualified Native Americans, as well as annual
scholarships to local native
students. A spokesman for Cloud Peak, Rick Curtsinger, said
the company is continuing to

work through an agreement with the tribe.
Crow Nation chairman Darrin Old Coyote testified in July
before the U.S. House Committee on
Natural Resources that the deal is largely dependent on the fate
of coal exports through the
Northwest. Such significant coal development, he said, has
"unlimited potential to improve the
ongoing substandard socioeconomic conditions of the Crow
people and the surrounding
communities in southeastern Montana."
"Given our vast mineral resources, the Crow Nation can, and
should, be self-sufficient," he
said.
Also in the heart of the Powder River Basin, and also saddled

with high unemployment, are the
Northern Cheyenne. The tribe has a long history of resisting
coal development due to
perceived environmental health risks. But like the Crow, the
Northern Cheyenne are also
recognizing an increasingly tough economic reality.
"We've got a lot of coal underneath our land," said Tom
Mexican Cheyenne, director of the
Northern Cheyenne's community health department, who made
clear that he did not speak for
the tribe. "There's a split -- some on the tribal council are for
coal mining and some are
against it."
The Northern Cheyenne's decision on whether or not to harvest
their coal may, too, come
down to pending verdicts on the Pacific Northwest ports. No

train tracks currently run to their
reservation's coal reserves, though rail lines could be expanded
with enough demand.
Mexican Cheyenne believes the council is leaning towards
development of the coal. "I see a
real desperation to help the economy any way they can," he
said.
Wind energy has also been on the table here for years. But
impoverished tribes such as the
Northern Cheyenne and the Crow often lack the funds necessary
for capital investments and
opportunities for outside help, such as tax credits.
Debra Lekanoff, a leader with the Swinomish Tribe of
Washington, said the tribes need federal
support to find alternative ways to benefit from their resources.
"We urge the federal

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2013-06-20/feds-approve-1-
dot-4b-ton-coal-deal-with-crow-tribe
http://naturalresources.house.gov/uploadedfiles/oldcoyotetestim
ony07-09-13.pdf
government to help our brothers and sisters with funding,
capacity-building and sound science
to open up the doors to new opportunities," she said.
She suggested that the "elephant in the room" in the coal
development debate is the
challenge of "walking in two worlds" and soundly balancing
"economic sustainability and
environmental protection."
The Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, which includes the
Yakama and Lummi, adopted
a resolution in September supporting a pilot project proposed by
the Crow Nation to convert

some of its coal to liquid fuels such as diesel and gasoline for
domestic use. The tribe's plan,
which Stewart said illustrates that the Crow are not entirely
reliant on coal exports, also gained
support from the National Congress of American Indians this
fall. It still awaits federal
approval.
The official document from the Northwest Indians, however,
notes that their blessing does not
"supersede, replace, or rescind" a resolution made by the group
in May that opposed all
proposals to increase transportation through the region of
"fossil energy," including both coal
and unrefined crude oil.
About a week after the resolution's adoption, Jewell Praying

Wolf James's totem pole pulled up
in front of the Washington state capitol building in Olympia for
another event opposing coal
exports. Much like the other stops on the totem's journey, this
ceremony's songs and speeches
pointed to both the despair and hopes of Native Americans and
the deeply complex tensions at
hand.
A crowd of some 50 people, many representatives of local
tribes, stood in the alternating rain
and sun in front of the flatbed truck. Flanking the truck was a
yard sign that read, "No coal
exports. We can do better."
Creating alternatives, experts agree, is prerequisite to
combating climate change and
sustaining resources for future generations -- and even to

passing judgment on any group that
chooses to develop its coal, or buy and burn it.
"At the end of the day, we're not going to stop fossil-fuel
dependency if we don't have an
answer for how to create energy and create better lives," said
KC Golden, the Climate

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