Carleton PhD student detained in Turkey, accused of inciting protests
Nil Köksal


In the ten years they've been together, Ömer Ongun has not gone a day without hearing the voice of his partner, Cihan Erdal.

It's now been three days since they've spoken.

Their last conversation came on Friday, just moments before Erdal was detained in Istanbul's Besiktas neighbourhood.

"It was 2 a.m. for us, 9 a.m. for Cihan in Istanbul. He called me and said 'I love you. They are at my door. They're going to take me away,'" Ongun said.

Erdal, a 32-year-old PhD candidate at Carleton University and a permanent resident of Canada, is now being held at a detention centre in the Turkish capital, Ankara.

He was among dozens of people named in warrants issued across Turkey on Friday. Ongun, also a permanent resident, said Erdal's lawyer has not been allowed to see the specifics of his case file, but the allegations against all of the detainees relate to a letter written in 2014.

The letter called on the Turkish government to step in to help the Kurdish town of Kobani, in Syria, at the height of ISIS attacks.
Deadly protests

Thirty-seven people were killed in protests in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast that October as people filled the streets, angry the Turkish Army wasn't moving in to protect Kobani and its people.

The Turkish government accuses the signatories of that letter of supporting the protests.

Erdal was a member of the youth arm of the People's Democratic Party (HDP), a pro-Kurdish, legal political party in Turkey. It is the country's third largest party.

Its leader, Selahattin Demirtas, has been in prison since 2016. In recent years, dozens of elected HDP mayors have been forced out of their positions and replaced with government appointees.

The Turkish government accuses the HDP of supporting the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) — an allegation the HDP denies.

Canada, the United States, and the European Union along with Turkey have labelled the PKK a terrorist organization. The conflict with the PKK has taken roughly 40,000 Turkish and Kurdish lives since 1984.
'It's ridiculous'

Ongun can not reconcile the accusations with the man he knows.

"Cihan is one of the kindest, most peaceful people in the world," he said in a telephone interview from his home in Ottawa. "He wanted to represent voices of LGBTQ youth, students, ecologists, you know, make their rights and needs visible. To accuse him for calling for violence and terrorism. It's devastating. It's ridiculous. We are all shocked."

Carleton University says it is equally shocked. In a letter released on Friday, the university's department of sociology and anthropology condemns Erdal's detention and says he has not been politically active for years.

"Cihan's research is on youth-led social movements in Europe, including in Turkey, focused on the stories of young activists about their involvement in social movements. His work is in no way critical of the Turkish state," the letter reads. "He was beginning interviews online, while awaiting approval under the new pandemic ethics process to begin face to face interviews in Turkey, Athens, and Paris."  

  

© Yilmaz Kazandioglu/Reuters Turkish troops patrol in Hakkari province, southeastern Turkey in June 2010 where Turkish troops and Kurdish fighters clashed.

Ongun said they were also in Turkey in August to check on their parents during the pandemic. Ongun returned to Canada, Erdal planned to stay a few more weeks to conduct his doctoral field research.

The university has reached out to Foreign Affairs Minister Francois Philippe-Champagne's office, the Turkish Embassy in Canada and the Canadian Embassy in Turkey, hoping to help secure his release.

The school is offering to cover any travel or accommodation expenses Erdal may have when he is released.

Global Affairs Canada told CBC News it was preparing a response to our request for information about Erdal's case.

Erdal has not been physically harmed in detention. His lawyer has been able to visit him, take him clothing and toiletries, and a pen and paper to write a letter to Ongun.

The lawyer sent him a photograph of it. "He said all he is doing is thinking about me and his family," Ongun said.

There are concerns his sexual orientation could make him a target during a prolonged detention.

The next step will be a court appearance in the coming days, perhaps as early as Monday. And then, Cihan's family and supporters hope, a swift release.

"He has a lot to contribute to this world. To Canada. To Turkey. We just want him back," Ongun said.

Liz Weston: Sustainable investing could get a lot harder

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Interest in sustainable investing is soaring, as more people become convinced that making a positive impact can be profitable as well as good for the planet and society. Unfortunately, the Labor Department doesn’t think these investments belong in your 401(k).


In June, the federal regulator proposed a rule that would restrict workplace retirement plans from investments that include environmental, social and governance considerations. Popularly known as ESG or socially responsible investing, this approach considers the sustainability of a company’s business practices.

The Labor Department says only returns, not business practices, should matter. But its proposal is unusual for a number of reasons, including its wide range of opponents. The rule has been denounced by some of the world’s largest investment managers, including BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street Global Advisors and Fidelity, along with groups representing pension funds and 401(k) providers. Many say the rule would make it so difficult or risky for workplace plans to offer ESGs that it effectively removes them from consideration.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Bankers Association and the Investment Company Institute, among other business interests, warned the rule could raise costs, significantly limit investment options and increase the risk of lawsuits.

“This is out of step with mainstream investing,” says Aron Szapiro, director of policy research for investment research firm Morningstar. “This is pretty unworkable and it’s logically inconsistent.”

Far from acting in investors’ best interests, as workplace plan sponsors are required to do, the Labor Department seems determined to make retirement plans limit our options and potential returns.

SUSTAINABLE INVESTING IS NOW MAINSTREAM

The proposed rule might have made sense 20 years ago, when so-called “socially responsible” investing consisted of a handful of funds that excluded entire industries for social, political or religious reasons and sometimes sacrificed returns in the process.

But socially responsible investing has long since evolved into “sustainable” investing. Instead of making value judgments, it seeks companies making a quantifiably positive impact and steers clear of those that may pose costly risks.

This approach has spread rapidly. By 2018, one out of every four dollars under professional management was invested using strategies that consider environmental, social and corporate governance issues, according to the US SIF Foundation, a non-profit that researches sustainable investment. The number of mutual funds that say they consider sustainability grew from 81 in 2018 to 562 last year, Morningstar found. BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, announced in January that it would incorporate sustainability criteria into its investment decisions. Two weeks later, State Street Global Advisors, the third-largest asset manager, said it would use its influence to make sure companies were identifying and considering sustainability risks.

These investment managers haven’t become soft-headed do-gooders. They believe, with good evidence, that they’ll get better risk-adjusted returns if they consider a company’s impact on the environment, potential labour and product liability issues, executive compensation, and the effectiveness and diversity of its board of directors, among other factors.

Proponents of ESG investing say such concerns “are intrinsically tied to the ability of an enterprise to continue to generate profits or cash flow,” Szapiro says.

In fact, sustainable funds have outperformed conventional funds for the past few years and weathered the downturn earlier this year with fewer losses, Morningstar found.

THE RULE WOULD IMPOSE NEW COSTS ON PLANS

Screening out investments that use sustainability criteria would be an added expense that regulators don’t seem to have considered, Szapiro says.

“They say, ‘Well, we don’t think it’s gonna cost anything because we think plan sponsors simply won’t use ESG funds,’ but that requires identifying which ones are and are not,” Szapiro says.

“That’s a really big issue with cost that is simply not addressed.”

Another problem was the proposal’s short comment period. The Labor Department allowed feedback for just 30 days, closing comments on July 31. Normally, comments are accepted for 60, 90 or even 180 days, Szapiro says. The short timeline may indicate the department plans to implement the rule, despite overwhelmingly negative feedback.

YOU STILL HAVE OPTIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE INVESTING

If enacted, the rule may stymie the growth of sustainable investing strategies in retirement plans that the department regulates, which include 401(k)s and other defined contribution plans as well as most traditional corporate pensions. The rule won’t apply to public pensions, however, or to investments in individual accounts, including IRAs.

You also can invest in ESG funds if your 401(k) offers a “brokerage window,” which lets you invest outside of the plan’s normal investment lineup. These windows allow you to set up an account with an associated brokerage and pick from a much larger array of stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other investments.

You can research options using the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment or an online broker’s mutual fund screening tools. In addition, some automated investment platforms – known as robo-advisors – offer ESG options.

It obviously would be easier if your 401(k) plan would do the screening and offer vetted options. As long as the Labor Department seems determined to prevent that, you’ll need to put in some work for a shot at better returns.

________________________________________

This column was provided to The Associated Press by the personal finance website NerdWallet. Liz Weston is a columnist at NerdWallet, a certified financial planner and author of “Your Credit Score.” Email: lweston@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @lizweston.

RELATED LINKS:

NerdWallet: What Is Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) and How to Get Started http://bit.ly/nerdwallet-responsible-investing

Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment https://charts.ussif.org/mfpc/

Liz Weston Of Nerdwallet, The Associated Press

Amazon to create 3,500 new tech and corporate jobs in Vancouver and Toronto

Financial Post Staff , Bloomberg News

© Provided by Financial Post Amazon jobs will include software development, designers, cloud computing and sales and marketing executives.

Video player from: YouTube (Privacy Policy, Terms)

Amazon has announced plans to create 3,500 corporate and tech jobs in its Canadian technology hubs Vancouver and Toronto.

The lion’s share of jobs, which include software development, designers, cloud computing and sales and marketing executives, will be in Vancouver. Amazon says to make room for 3,000 new workers it will expand its location at The Post in downtown Vancouver, leasing 18 floors in the north tower and 17 floors in the south tower, as the sole corporate tenant.

“Amazon’s investment has tangible benefits for the broader economy and community – from the people we employ, to the small businesses we empower, to the charities we support, to the academic opportunities we fund. We’re proud to reaffirm our commitment to Canadian cities at this critical time,” Jesse Dougherty, Amazon VP and Vancouver site lead, said in a statement.

A weak loonie, lower wages and a steady flow of graduates make Canada an attractive place to expand for tech companies whose largest expense is labour.

The average wage of a software developer in Vancouver last year was US$92,726, compared to US$141,785 in San Francisco or US$128,067 in Amazon’s hometown of Seattle, according to a July report by real estate firm CBRE Group Inc. Once rental costs are folded in, the cost of running a 500-employee operation in the Canadian city is half that of a similar-sized operation in the Bay Area, it found.

Vancouver also had the fastest-growing tech labour pool of 50 markets surveyed in the U.S. and Canada by CBRE, while the quality of its talent based on academic degrees and work experience ranked among the top 10, the study found.

The expansion positions the company to become one of the city’s biggest employers: Vancouver-based telecommunications giant Telus Corp. has about 8,000 staff in the province, according to Business In Vancouver.

With files from Natalie Obiko Pearson, Bloomberg

Alberta's oilpatch gets a rare gift — a U.S-backed $22-billion export line to tidewater via Alaska

Yadullah Hussain

© Provided by Financial Post A White Pass and Yukon passenger train rounds a curve on the narrow-gauge track as it descends through the mountains to Skagway, Alaska. 

It may well be his last few weeks in office (at least according to the public polls), but U.S. President Donald Trump just gave Alberta oil producers a gift.

Amid his increasingly-deranged conspiracy theory tweets over the weekend, he broadcast a more presidential tweet on Friday: “Based on the strong recommendation of @SenDanSullivan and @repdonyoung of the Great State of Alaska, it is my honor to inform you that I will be issuing a Presidential Permit for the A2A Cross-Border Rail between Alaska & Canada. Congratulations to the people of Alaska & Canada!”

Dan Sullivan is a U.S. senator serving Alaska, and Don Young is a Congressman serving the American last frontier. The U.S. president has been sweet on the Canadian oilpatch before, having approved TC Energy Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline project which had been rejected by the previous president Barack Obama. If it proceeds, the railway project could serve as another important outlet for Alberta’s oil producers who have struggled due to lack of pipeline capacity. However, railway lines are deemed to be a more expensive way to transport oil compared to pipelines.

The proposed 2,570-kilometre A2A railway aims to transport bulk commodities such oil, grain and ore in addition to containerized goods, and aims to develop “a new railway connecting the Alaska Railroad and Alaska’s tidewater, to northern Alberta.”

The project is expected to cost $22 billion, of which $7 billion will be built in Alaska and $15 billion in Alberta, according to the company.

Construction will begin near Fairbanks, where the Alaska Railroad currently ends, and move south and east through Alaska, across into Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and into Alberta.

The proposed route will connect the North American railway network, via Northern Alberta to the existing Alaska Railroad network and Alaska’s deep-water ports.

“This is a world-class infrastructure project that will generate more than 18,000 jobs for Canadian workers at a time when they are most needed, provide a new, more efficient route for trans-Pacific shipping and thereby link Alberta to world markets,” A2ARail founder and chairman Sean McCoshen said in July, as he announced commissioning an engineering firm to start a detailed land survey along the Alberta segment of the railway’s proposed route.

“The new rail line will create new economic development opportunities for a wide range of businesses, communities and Indigenous communities in Canada and Alaska,” the chairman said. “We estimate that A2A Rail could unlock $60 billion CAD in additional cumulative GDP through 2040 and lift household incomes by an average of 40 per cent.”

The company’s president is Jean Paul Gladu, who served as the president and CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business from September 2012 until April 2020.

The Alaska–Alberta Railway Development Corporation (A2A Rail) is privately owned and funded by its McCoshen, who the company says has spent more than US$100 million through the early phases of the project.

“As the project progresses, it is anticipated that A2A Rail will seek investment from infrastructure funds, Sovereign Wealth groups, and private investors. Additionally, A2A Rail is looking into several government issued grants and loan guarantees in both the U.S. and Canada to assist in providing the risk capital needed to develop the railway,” according to the company website.

IT'S NEVER THE RIGHT TIME DEPT.
Air France leads tax pushback in climate vs recovery fight

By Laurence Frost and Kate Abnett

© Reuters/Pascal Rossignol FILE PHOTO: Outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Lesquin

By Laurence Frost and Kate AbnettPARIS/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Air France-KLM is battling new green taxes on top of the coronavirus crisis - in a test of growing policy tensions between righting Europe's crippled airlines and delivering on climate goals.

The Franco-Dutch group, sustained by 10.4 billion euros ($12.2 billion) in state-backed loans, faces higher duties in both home markets as well as EU plans to hike airlines' carbon costs.

The struggle unfolding around Air France-KLM is part of a larger reckoning for carbon-intensive industries as efforts to tackle global warming spawn more taxes and regulation.

While campaigners say those are long overdue, crisis-hit airlines warn their timing and severity will cost thousands more jobs and hurt development of lower-carbon technologies.

New taxes "do not support emissions reductions", said Air France-KLM Chief Executive Ben Smith in response to proposed increases to French passenger duties.

"In fact it's counterproductive and would deprive us of finances that could otherwise be invested in environmental projects," he told an online industry forum this month.

Tensions can only rise as emissions goals are toughened to slow dangerous climate change. The European Union's executive now wants to cut greenhouse gas output by 55% in the next decade rather than the previous 40%, from a 1990 baseline.

While the pandemic has dampened climate protests led by Extinction Rebellion and Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, their political legacy must be squared with the economic emergency.

GREEN WAVE

French municipal elections saw the ecologist EELV party take Lyon, Bordeaux and Strasbourg in a June 28 "Green Wave". The next day, President Emmanuel Macron promised to advance 146 proposals from a "citizens' climate convention".

Those include an airline duty increase to 30 euros per short-haul economy passenger and 400 euros for long-haul business, from their current 1.50-18 euro range. At 2019 traffic, officials say the sector would pay 4.2 billion euros.

Key members of the government, which underwrote 7 billion euros for Air France, are backing away from the pledge as officials draft legislation in response to the convention.

"It would be grotesque to take back with one hand what we'd given the sector with the other," Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told daily Les Echos.

Le Maire and his Dutch counterpart were among nine EU finance ministers who had called for "taxation or similar policies" to curb emissions by raising air fares.

From Jan. 1, the Netherlands is introducing passenger duties worth 220 million euros at pre-crisis traffic. A Greenpeace legal challenge is also demanding steeper emissions cuts in return for KLM's 3.4 billion-euro aid package.

OFFSETS UPSET

Airline emissions account for 2.5% of the global total but are set to triple by 2050. Under a U.N.-brokered programme, CORSIA, the industry aims to counter emissions growth from international flights with carbon offsets, whose effects are contested.Airbus has given itself until 2035 to put a "zero-emission" plane into service, but many are sceptical about that deadline. Synthetic fuels are also too scarce and expensive to offer a near-term solution.

For intra-European flights, airlines would face a higher bill for European carbon credits under plans outlined this month to reduce free permits for the sector.

EU officials have also signalled likely moves to end a tax exemption for jet fuel enshrined in international treaties, a process that could take several years.

Germany, which has pushed ahead with an airline tax increase to fund cheaper rail travel, plans binding minimum quotas for carbon-neutral alternative jet fuel.

Far from giving struggling airlines a break, campaign groups are urging governments to use bailouts to force faster progress.

"Airlines' reliance on governments strengthens the case for acting to cut their emissions," said Andrew Murphy of Brussels-based Transport & Environment.

Assuming a slow recovery, the group says CORSIA's market mechanism would price emissions as low as 17 cents per long-haul flight, leaving little incentive to curb greenhouse gases. ICAO, the U.N. aviation agency that developed the programme, said it was "grossly misrepresented" by the research.

NOT FARE

Other emissions-cutting proposals may divide the industry.

Air France-KLM's Smith called on French ministers to consider a minimum fare instead of taxes, citing the 40-euro minimum recently introduced in Austria. "Let's discuss that," he said in a newspaper interview.

While minimum fares can curb overall traffic and emissions without hurting traditional airlines' profits or jobs, they punish budget carriers and their customers."This is another mad idea from a high-fare airline that can only survive with over 10 billion euros of illegal state subsidies," Ryanair said. The low-cost giant is challenging rivals' EU-approved bailouts in court.

"Ordinary consumers all over Europe have benefited from and will continue to demand low fares, choice and competition," it said.

However these tensions play out, airlines face a rising tide of carbon costs on top of their current woes.

Maintaining fuel tax exemptions would present a "flagrant inconsistency" with EU climate goals, said Christian Egenhofer of Brussels-based think tank CEPS.

Taxing fuel would be an important step even if rates started low, Egenhofer said. "You know what happens with taxes – they always go up."

(Reporting by Laurence Frost and Kate Abnett; Editing by Mark Potter)

Gap in early death rates between rich and poor growing: research

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Poor Canadians stand a greater chance of dying early than the well off and that gap has been growing for decades, says a detailed new analysis.

The study, published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, found the chances of dying before age 75 or of avoidable causes has been declining for almost everyone. But they've been declining for the rich much faster than for the poor and have been doing so for a generation.

The gap is growing for both women and men, the analysis found. And the chances of an early, avoidable death for women with the least education are actually growing.

"We've made no overall progress towards reducing overall health inequality," said Faraz Shahidi of the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

"The size of these inequalities in mortality are even larger than we previously thought."

Shahidi and co-author Abtin Parnia analyzed more than 16 million records from five different censuses and divided incomes into five groups. The incomes for each group varied from census to census. In 2016, the median household pretax income -- which would represent the middle group -- was $70,300.

The study found that for high-income men -- the top fifth of earners -- the mortality rate before age 75 declined by nearly 50 per cent between 1991 and 2016. For those in the bottom fifth, mortality declined by 34 per cent.

Education levels revealed the same pattern.

Premature deaths in men with a post-secondary degree declined by 47 per cent, but for men without a high school diploma the decline was 21 per cent.

The pattern was just as stark for women.

Premature death for high-income women declined more than 40 per cent, but 19 per cent for the less wealthy. Mortality rates for women with university degrees went down by more than one-third, but less than two per cent for those without a high-school diploma.

Shahidi found similar results when he looked at avoidable deaths caused by behaviours or by treatable conditions. For women with little education, mortality rates increased -- by up to 12 per cent for those who didn't finish high school.

The links between income, education and health have been well-established by previous research, Shahidi said.

"It's an inference," he said. "But it's an inference we make on a massive body of science telling us that people's everyday social and economic conditions are a fundamental factor driving health inequality."

Shahidi said eliminating the gaps in rates of early death is "virtually impossible" without reducing the income and education gaps that help create them.

"In the absence of policy action, we tend to see those inequalities widen," he said. "There are very actionable policy solutions which (governments) can put in place to address and reverse this trend."

Those measures include raising wages, more progressive taxation, generous social assistance, easier-to-access employment insurance and protecting job security.

"It's in a large part through lack of policy action that we have allowed, as a society, these inequalities to grow over time," said Shahidi.

"These health inequalities are fundamentally rooted in everyday conditions. And everyday social and economic conditions are what they are for people, because of the political decisions policy-makers make."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2020.

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

Ambassadors appeal for acceptance of LGBTQ people in Poland


The Associated Press

© Provided by NBC News LGBTQ AND ANTIFA FLAGS

WARSAW, Poland — Polish leaders on Monday rejected suggestions that LGBTQ people are deprived of any of their rights in the country, after an open letter from 50 ambassadors and international representatives cited a need to work for “non-discrimination, tolerance and mutual acceptance.”


The ambassadors’ appeal, made in an open letter published Sunday, comes as an increasingly visible LGBTQ community in Poland has faced a backlash from the right-wing government, many local communities and the Catholic church.

“Human rights are universal and everyone, including LGBTI persons, are entitled to their full enjoyment,” the letter said, using the acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said he agreed that every person deserves respect but that he completely disagreed with the ambassadors’ claim that LGBT people were being deprived of that.

“Dear Ambassadors, I can tell only you that tolerance is in Poles’ DNA,” Morawiecki said at a news conference on Monday. “Nobody needs to teach us tolerance.”

Some of Poland’s leaders, including the president and lawmakers from the ruling party, have cast the movement for civil rights for LGBTQ people as a threat to traditional families. President Andrzej Duda won a second term this summer after calling LGBTQ rights an “ideology” more dangerous than communism.

Meanwhile, dozens of towns in conservative parts of eastern and southern Poland have passed mostly symbolic resolutions declaring themselves to be free from “LGBT ideology.” Many of the declarations express the view that young people will be demoralized if confronted by the issue.

“Human Rights are not an ideology — they are universal,” U.S. Ambassador Georgette Mosbacher tweeted. “50 Ambassadors and Representatives agree.”

Joachim Brudzinski, deputy head of the ruling Law and Justice party who is now a lawmaker to the European Parliament, shot back at Mosbacher on Monday, saying “we in Poland also agree.”

“Therefore, we are waiting with hope for the next letter, this time in defense of murdered Christians, imprisoned #ProLife activists, people dismissed from work and persecuted for quoting the Bible, people subjected to euthanasia against their will,” he wrote on Twitter, along with some other examples of alleged abuse of Christians.

It was not exactly clear what Brudzinski was referring to. Poland is a predominantly Catholic nation where Christians do not face persecution and where abortion is illegal in most cases and euthanasia is outlawed. In one case, however, an IKEA employee in Poland was fired for citing Biblical passages to suggest gays should be killed. The current government has spoken in the employee’s defense and a state prosecutor is suing the IKEA manager who fired him.

Brudzinski also waded into the debate about LGBTQ rights in the summer, saying on Twitter that “Poland without LGBT is most beautiful.” His tweet included an image of Jesus and eggs in a bird nest — a bird family which he described as “realizing God’s plan.”

That triggered articles in the Polish liberal press about how homosexuality is a naturally occurring phenomenon in the animal world — just one of many examples of an outpouring of support in Poland for LGBTQ people. In Warsaw, for instance, it has become common recently to see rainbow flags hanging from apartments or people carrying rainbow bags.

The ambassadors’ letter paid tribute to the work of the LGBTQ community in Poland as it seeks to raise awareness about the challenges its faces. The rise in hostility has led many to live in anger and fear or even to emigrate from the country.

Many activists say their greatest priority now is to get legislation passed criminalizing hate speech against people based on their sexual identity.

The letter was signed by the ambassadors of the United States, many European countries, including Germany, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, as well as further off nations like Japan and Australia.

It was also signed by representatives in Poland of the United Nations, the European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Community of Democracies, which is based in Warsaw.

Opinion: Breonna Taylor's death reminds me this country doesn't love me as much as I love it


Opinion by Lisa Respers France, CNN
1 hour ago

© Patrick Smith/Getty Images North America/Getty Images ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND - JULY 05: In an aerial view from a drone, a large-scale ground mural depicting Breonna Taylor with the text 'Black Lives Matter' is seen being painted at Chambers Park on July 5, 2020 in Annapolis, Maryland. The mural was organized by Future History Now in partnership with Banneker-Douglass Museum and The Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture. The painting honors Breonna Taylor, who was shot and killed by members of the Louisville Metro Police Department in March 2020. (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

Some days I feel like a woman without a country.

The death of Breonna Taylor has been yet another painful reminder that women like me, Black women, are not safe in America.

We can be killed in our own homes by police and an officer will be charged over the bullets that missed, a charge that came only after months of calls for justice.

Make no mistake, Breonna Taylor's death wrought destruction - and not just for the family and friends who knew and loved her.

There has been constant outcry in the six months since Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician, was shot in her Louisville, Kentucky, home while police were executing a search warrant.

She is just one more Black person whose life has been overshadowed in many ways by their death and who, sadly, have become symbols of the racial inequality that has always been, and feels like it may always be.

Such discouraging thoughts have become so familiar that I fear I am becoming numb to it.

The #SayHerName and #JusticeForBreonna campaigns have kept Taylor's face ever before me on social media since her death. In that beautiful young woman's face, I have seen my sister, my nieces, my friends and myself.

I have wept for her and us, even as I have shed tears for a country where many are just now seeing its problems with systemic racism and racial injustice.

Typing that word alone will stop many people reading and to those who feel that way, it is hard to know you are tired of my and Breonna Taylor's Blackness.

Tired of hearing about it, thinking about it and feeling guilty about the disparity that it brings.

Imagine how tired we feel inhabiting these Black bodies. Because we live in a nation where being accused of racism angers people more than the fact of actual racism. A country where I am sure to be called a racist, accused of race-baiting and/or "playing the race card" for even daring to discuss our race problem.

© CNN Lisa Respers France

To that I say: White mothers, talk to me about how you prep your White children, your sons in particular, to try and handle interactions with police so they can make it home safely. All the while knowing that no matter what you tell them there is no guarantee.

White wives, have your White husbands taught themselves how to change rear light bulbs in their cars so they can avoid being stopped by police? Because my Black husband has.

These are all constant traumas that Black women like me, like Breonna Taylor and so many other Black women I could, unfortunately, name, have had to endure.

A few weeks ago, I posted to Facebook some thoughts about what is happening in America right now—how none of it is a surprise to me because I know the history.

"I'm not shocked by the cruelty & divisiveness because I have forever snapshots in my brain of White people smiling beneath the mutilated bodies of lynched Black people," I wrote. "Voter suppression doesn't surprise me because I am the descendant of those threatened, harassed and blocked from polling stations."

I pointed out that I "sprang from women whose children were ripped from their arms and sold, but those women had to keep on living and serving."

"It's why we bury our Trayvons and our Tamirs and then become activists and run for office. We give the world beauty for ashes on the daily, with food that is more flavorful because salt seasons and what's saltier than tears?," I posted. "We dance a little harder, sing a little louder and love a little deeper because we know life is fleeting and always has been. Covid kills us more, racism kills us more. Life. Kills. Us. More."

Black people as a whole have struggled to have our humanity recognized and respected, but Black women in particular have taken that fight to the polls.

According to the report "Black Girl Magic: The Power of Black Women in Elections" put out by the AFL-CIO, "Black women drive turnout for the black community and are one of the most progressive voting blocs in the country."

It continues: "They demonstrate high levels of support for progressive issues such as police reform, raising the minimum wage and protecting Social Security. Moreover, the majority of black women have an economically liberal view of government."

To possess such power and still know that the laws we have helped bring to fruition will—so often--not protect us, feels excruciating.

It also fuels the burning desire to hold America accountable to "the justice and liberty for all" it promised.

Knowing this country doesn't love me as much as I love it would seem reason enough to give up on it.

But I won't let the deaths of Taylor, George Floyd or the others who have sparked a racial reckoning in this great nation have happened in vain.

I love this country too much to not want to see it be the best that it can be.

Rio Tinto changes tack, ready for talks over Bougainville mine

© Reuters/HUMAN RIGHTS LAW CENTRE Theonila Roka Matbob stands in front of the Pangua mine in Konawiru, BougainvilleMELBOURNE

 (Reuters) - Rio Tinto Ltd said on Tuesday that it was ready to talk to stakeholders over allegations of human rights breaches at a giant copper mine in Bougainville that it formerly owned, after community members filed a complaint with the Australian government.

"We are ready to enter into discussions with the communities that have filed the complaint," it said, adding it would also speak with current mine owners as well as the Bougainville and Papua New Guinea governments.

The stance marks a change from April, when Rio rebuffed a request by the same group for a review of health and safety concerns at the mine as a starting point for discussion around compensation and remediation.

It also highlights a different approach by Rio to social responsibility, after its destruction of sacred and historically significant rockshelters for an iron ore mine in Australia in May cost its chief executive and two other executives their jobs.

Rio Tinto subsidiary Bougainville Copper (BCL) ran the Panguna copper and gold mine in Papua New Guinea from the early 1970s to 1990 when it was abandoned during a civil war that was largely fought over how mine profits should be shared.

Rio handed its shareholding in the mine to national and local governments in 2016.

The complaint, backed by 156 community members, was filed on Tuesday to the Australian OECD National Contact Point by Melbourne's Human Rights Law Centre. It alleges that the large volumes of mine waste left behind poisoned water sources, flooded lands and sacred sites, and caused a range of health problems.

Rio said that it was aware of the "deterioration of mining infrastructure at the site and surrounding areas, and claims of resulting adverse environmental and social, including human rights, impacts," despite not having had staff at the mine since 1990.

While global miners have not been forced to account for mines they operated in the past, or those they inherited, they have come under increased pressure from shareholders in the past few years to ensure high standards of responsible mining.The Bougainville mine - Bougainville Copper Ltd - is part listed on the Australian stock market and part-owned both by the Bougainville and PNG governments .

Bougainville, which held an election last week, is in talks with the Papua New Guinea government over its independence.

(Reporting by Melanie Burton. Editing by Jane Merriman)

Native American women shape how museums frame Indigenous culture

Understanding women’s roles in Indigenous society can help draw a line from the past to the present. An exhibition in Chicago features the contributions of Crow, or Apsáalooke, women and proclaims: We are still here.

Courtesy of the Field Museum
“Wherein Lies the Beauty of Life,” by contemporary artist Ben Pease, portrays an Apsáalooke woman in a traditional dress covered with elk teeth, holding her baby. Mr. Pease uses flowers to represent divinity and beauty.


September 25, 2020

By Richard Mertens Correspondent
CHICAGO

Growing up on the Crow reservation in Montana, Nina Sanders learned some of her most valuable lessons not in school, where the textbooks were silent on her people and she was discouraged from speaking her native language, but at home with her grandmother and great-grandmother, listening to their stories and “tearing apart sinews, washing clothes outside, picking berries.”

Now Ms. Sanders celebrates the contributions of Crow, or Apsáalooke (Ahp-SAH-luh-guh), women in a major exhibition at Chicago’s Field Museum. “Apsáalooke Women and Warriors” paints a vivid picture of Apsáalooke history and culture, drawing on the Field’s extensive collections of Indigenous objects, including 19th-century ceremonial war shields, as well as on the work of contemporary artists, like rapper and fancy dancer Supaman. The result is rich and wide-ranging and proclaims unmistakably: We are still here.

Museums are increasingly turning to Indigenous peoples to represent themselves to the world, a movement that Ms. Sanders and others call the “decolonizing” of American museums. What sets Ms. Sanders’ exhibition apart is its focus on women, portraying them as keepers of culture and celebrating their devotion to family, clan, and homeland.


“The women in my community are incredibly resilient, beautiful human beings who have managed to keep our community together in moments of devastation,” says Ms. Sanders, a guest curator at the Field and the first Native American to curate an exhibition there. “They just shine.”

Richard Mertens
Guest curator Nina Sanders (right) and one of her collaborators, JoRee LaFrance, parade down a street near the University of Chicago to celebrate the opening of a new exhibit at the Field Museum that pays homage to the role of women in Apsáalooke history and culture, March 12, 2020.

“Apsáalooke Women and Warriors,” open until July 18, 2021, and expected to travel after that, tells about the Apsáalooke through their own eyes and their own stories, beginning with their creation from the sea and continuing through their migration to the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains and eventual settlement on a reservation south of the Yellowstone River. The exhibition uses examples of Apsáalooke artistry to suggest how traditional beliefs and values have persisted and endure today. It shows the Apsáalooke reaching back to old ways of life and reinventing them in new circumstances and a new time.

The exhibition also reflects a transformation in museum practice and representation of Indigenous Americans that dates to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. That act, itself a product of decades of activism, led to the return of remains and sacred objects and a new era of collaboration between museums and Indigenous peoples. It also inspired a shift away from portraying Native Americans as a vanished people toward emphasizing their contemporary culture.

The focus on women is more recent. Among the inspirations for Ms. Sanders’ exhibits were not only her childhood memories but also a recent, groundbreaking exhibition about Indigenous women artists, called “Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists,” at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Novelist Louise Erdrich said of that: “At long, long last, after centuries of erasure, Hearts of Our People celebrates the fiercely loving genius of Indigenous women.”

Paying more attention to women has highlighted underappreciated aspects of Native American culture, including the importance of communal ties, says Amanda Cobb-Greetham, a member of the Chickasaw tribe and director of the Native Nations Center at the University of Oklahoma. Ms. Cobb-Greetham, who is also a trustee of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, contrasts the idea of “repatriation”– returning Native remains and sacred objects to the tribes from which they were taken – with “rematriation,” or the restoration and reassertion of core cultural values.

“It redefines how we understand leadership, or significant achievement, and what values we want to carry forward,” she says. “That may or may not be military leader or government official. It may be something entirely different.”

John Weinstein/Courtesy of the Field Museum
The “Apsáalooke Women and Warriors” exhibition opened at the Field Museum in Chicago in March 2020 and runs until July 18, 2021. In it, rawhide war shields are displayed beneath giant images of women “to symbolically care for these shields,” an exhibition note explains.

One of the women portrayed in the Field exhibition is Sharon Stewart Peregoy, an Apsáalooke elder and Montana state representative. Though most Apsáalooke leaders have been men, including those in elected positions today, Ms. Stewart Peregoy says women have played a central role in helping the Apsáalooke endure decades of dramatic and often painful change.


“Through the transitions, especially with Native women and Crow women,” she says, “there was a need for everyone – and still today – to pull together, to participate, and with the ending of nomadic life and making the change to being put on the reservation, to be able to undergird our men, our warriors, quietly, not so quietly in some ways, but to get them to have hope again. That way of life died. But the woman says no, we can inspire to be more.”

Courtesy of the Field Museum
A photograph of Apsáalooke woman Jordynn Paz by Adam Sings In The Timber. The exhibition at the Field Museum portrays women as keepers of culture and celebrates their devotion to family, clan, and homeland.

Ben Pease is an Apsáalooke artist who contributed paintings and other works to the exhibition, including an oil painting that shows a procession of women on horseback, each wearing a gold halo. “We do believe as Apsáalooke people that women are holy and sacred beings,” Mr. Pease says. “They have the ability to give life and save culture and perpetuate culture into the future.”


Mr. Pease grew up in Lodge Grass, Montana, reared by “mothers and aunts and grandmothers,” he says.

“I learned the strength of women early on, and the role they play. In an underresourced and underrepresented community, they lead and are the great leaders to help us step into the future – but also to preserve the past, to be keepers of medicine and knowledge.”

The Field exhibition portrays the Apsáalooke as matriarchal and egalitarian. In one of the tribe’s stories, man and woman are created at the same moment. Rawhide war shields, decorated with owl feathers and dried bird heads, are displayed beneath giant images of women “to symbolically care for these shields,” a note says.


And yet beyond this, Ms. Sanders and her Apsáalooke collaborators invite viewers to reimagine what it means to be a warrior today and to perform the acts of bravery that traditionally distinguished the greatest Apsáalooke fighters. They pay homage to past warriors and leaders like Plenty Coups, Spotted Tail, and Joe Medicine Crow, an author and decorated veteran of World War II. But they also celebrate women – and men – who have become scholars, artists, and teachers.

“Nina tries to present a contemporary interpretation of what a warrior is,” says Ms. Stewart Peregoy. “That’s the idea – to get our young people to reawaken to their Native self, to their Crow self, and to what they can aspire to.”

John Weinstein/Courtesy of The Field Museum
A war shield made and owned by Crazy Sister-in-Law. This war shield is made of buffalo hide, parts of a burrowing owl, and natural earth clay pigments. Crazy Sister-in-Law was a male warrior and one of the most respected leaders of his time during the early 1800s.

“Apsáalooke Women and Warriors” opened in Chicago in March with a gesture to the past: a traditional Crow parade in which scores of Apsáalooke visitors, mostly women, walked in a line down city streets, some on horseback, and many more on foot, to the accompaniment of Apsáalooke singing and drumming. Ms. Sanders’ grandmother, Margo Real Bird, was among them. At a ceremony afterward, the pair stood arm-in-arm, a reminder of the bonds between past and present that Ms. Sanders wants to honor.

“It’s love,” she says. “It’s what transmits culture across time.”

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