Judge rules Daca suspension invalid, Homeland Security head in office illegally


Chad Wolf took office unlawfully, says federal court judge, therefore could not suspend program that shields young people from deportation


Associated Press

Sun 15 Nov 2020 
 

Acting Homeland Security chief Chad Wolf during a Senate confirmation hearing in September. Photograph: Greg Nash/AFP/Getty Images


A federal judge in New York has ruled that the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, assumed his position unlawfully and has invalidated Wolf’s suspension of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, which shields young people from deportation.

“DHS failed to follow the order of succession as it was lawfully designated,” the US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis wrote.

Chad Wolf: who is the Trump official leading the crackdown in Portland?


“Therefore the actions taken by purported acting secretaries, who were not properly in their roles according to the lawful order of succession, were taken without legal authority.”

About 650,000 people are part of Daca, which allows young immigrants who were brought to the country as children to legally work and shields them from deportation.

Karen Tumlin, an attorney who represented a plaintiff in one of two lawsuits that challenged Wolf’s authority, called the ruling “another win for Daca recipients and those who have been waiting years to apply for the program for the first time”.

Wolf issued a memorandum in July effectively suspending Daca pending review by DHS. A month earlier the US supreme court had ruled that Donald Trump failed to follow rule-making procedures when he tried to end the program, but the justices kept a window open for him to try again.

Daca has changed lives – and the country – for the better. It must be preserved

Roberto G Gonzales and Kristina Brant

In August the Government Accountability Office, a bipartisan congressional watchdog, said Wolf and his acting deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, were improperly serving and ineligible to run the agency under the Vacancies Reform Act. The two have been at the forefront of administration initiatives on immigration and law enforcement.

Wolf is the fifth person to serve as homeland security secretary under Trump in an acting or confirmed capacity, while George W Bush and Barack Obama each had three people in the job over the course of their two presidential terms. Wolf was named to the post only after two of the president’s preferred candidates were ruled ineligible to take up the job.

Since being appointed to the role, Wolf has overseen the controversial deployment of federal agents to quell Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, as well as denying that there was a problem with systemic racism in US law enforcement. He has also downplayed the threat of Covid-19, while overseeing the implementation of extreme immigration restrictions the White House claimed would stem the spread of coronavirus.

In Garaufis’s ruling on Saturday, the judge wrote that DHS did not follow an order of succession established when then-secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned in April 2019.

DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the

Repatriating Human Rights


Ledger art by George Curtis Levi, who is a member of the Southern Cheyenne Tribe of Oklahoma and is also Southern Arapaho. This ledger art painting depicts how repatriation builds community and strengthens culture. It was painted on an antique mining document from Montana that dates from the 1890s. India ink and liquid acrylic paints were used.

BY SHANNON O’LOUGHLIN 


There are 122,000 known Ancestors waiting in boxes in American museums, universities and government agencies. Imagine 122,000 people – that’s the entire population of Berkeley, California, or Hartford, Connecticut. That is today’s total number of all the Apache and all Tohono O’odham peoples combined.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was created as human rights legislation to repatriate our Ancestors’ remains, their burial belongings, sacred objects and cultural patrimony, and to protect our burial sites. This year marks the 30th anniversary of NAGPRA. But after 30 years, only 20% of museums have returned all reported Ancestors in their collections.

We know that the growth of the United States has been built upon the destruction of our sacred places and grave sites, and laws were passed that made our religions, languages and ceremonies illegal in order to assimilate us out of existence. Wave after wave of federal law codified Tribal dispossession and cleared a literal path for settlement and ownership by others.

NAGPRA was meant to repair some of this destruction. It has allowed us to rebury our relatives and return our sacred items so that we may heal from this trauma.

There have been many institutions that have followed NAGPRA’s process to repatriate. Through consultation with Tribal Nations, those institutions have discovered that Tribes are the experts of their own cultures; and often, the information that had been collected by archaeologists and anthropologists was lacking important facts – or was just plain wrong. These relationships between Tribal Nations and museums have often created opportunities to better educate the public about Tribal Nations and their histories in an appropriate and truthful way.

But there have been other institutions and federal agencies that refuse or delay Tribal Nations’ efforts to consult and repatriate Ancestors and sensitive cultural items. The National NAGPRA Program in the U.S. Department of Interior reports that there are 13 institutions that hold 56% of the total number of reported Ancestors. These are the institutions that have been slow and difficult to work with. They have also declared that the majority of Ancestors in their collections are not affiliated with any Tribe – even though those collections have geographical or other information that would connect the Ancestors to present day Tribal Nations.

Federal agencies are worse. Many museums and Tribes report that academic institutions hold collections from government agencies that refuse to consult with Tribes and inventory their collections. Can you imagine any other federal law being neglected at that level for this long?

As the United States grapples with its legacy of racial oppression and human rights abuses, the Association on American Indian Affairs is partnering with the University of Denver Museum of Anthropology for the 6th Annual Repatriation Conference to take a critical look at the implementation of NAGPRA after 30 years, and to build better relationships to carry out this necessary human rights work. Some of the leading repatriation practitioners from Indian Country and institutions will gather virtually October 26-28 to develop strategies and build alliances to enact an ever-more robust approach to this important human rights work. All are welcome to attend and the sessions will be recorded to access after the Conference.

The Association on American Indian Affairs has made repatriation one of its cornerstone issues, so that we may heal from these historic wrongs that continue to affect us today. Repatriation is a human rights endeavor for all involved in the process. And, it’s one significant way to honor and recognize the First Peoples whose losses instigated the growth of wealth for our American society. Please consider joining our efforts to repatriate our human rights! More info at indian-affairs.org.

 

From Other to Something Else

Native Americans across the nation got a kick out of being lumped into the "Something Else" category on election night.

BY NATIVE NEWS ONLINE STAFF 

 

NOVEMBER 04, 2020

ATLANTA — Through the years, getting thrown into the “other” box when being identified by demographers has caused angst among American Indians and Alaska Natives. Some tribal leaders have given getting past “other” speeches to get more respect for the labels put on Native people.

During CNN’s coverage of the 2020 election Tuesday night, producers unveiled a new term: “Something Else.”

The slide used to breakdown voting percentages of racial/ethic groups read like this:

• White
• Latino
• Black
• Something Else
• Asian

“All I can say is, unbelievable,” reacted Little River Band of Ottawa Indians Ogema Larry Romanelli in an email on Wednesday to the “something else” label.

Native Americans began posting memes and “something else” comments on social media.

“Something else? That’s horrible. And yes, Native Americans exist and have a voice. Keep speaking up,” one Facebook post read.

In Chicago, Native artist Santiago X came up with a t-shirt using the novel idea of calling Native people something else.

Native American cartoonist Ricardo Caté found the humor in the new label. 

The new label inspired Rainy Dawn Ortiz to pen “More than something else.” The daughter of Joy Harjo, the United States Poet Laureate, and Simon Oritiz, Rainy Dawn’s talent shines throughout the poetry.

More Than Something Else

Something Else.

Some one else

Some where else

That place is here,

In my home,

We are here.

I am brown,

Brown hair,

Brown eyes,

Like cookies Feather tells me, and I like to think it’s perfectly cooked Pueblo cookies.

My kids are something else,

9 different shades of brown,

All beautiful.

My grandkids are something else,

4 brown eyes, 2 blue eyes,

All Native,

Definitely something else, as I watch them be rowdy, be loving, be here in this world.

We are here

On this earth

In this time and place

In our homes,

On our lands,

In the cities,

With our families, laughing loudly, cooking together, protecting each other.

We are something else

With our songs

Our dances.

We pray with corn meal,

Eagle feathers,

Medicine bundles,

Burn some sage, make sure to acknowledge the four directions, as the sun comes up.

We are the something else,

Who were here,

To greet Christopher Columbus

We were born from

This earth,

Crawled out of the center,

Of our mothers womb, we are important, we are strong.

We are something else,

We are Pueblo people, Plains people, Forest People, Desert people, Nomadic people, Cliff dwellers, Ocean fishers, Lake and river fishers, hunters,, medicine collectors, horse riders, artists, speakers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, we are human beings.

We are something else,

We are Native People,

Indigenous to this land.

We are a proud,

Something else.

Rainy Dawn Ortiz, November 4th, 2020

https://nativenewsonline.net/

The Navajo Vote Helped Win Arizona for Biden

Ride to the Polls on the Navajo Nation.

BY LEVI RICKERT 

 

NOVEMBER 08, 2020 

https://nativenewsonline.net/

Opinion. Back in May, I talked to a Navajo woman, who gave her time as a volunteer to elderly Navajo citizens who were impacted by Covid-19. In addition to her full-time job with the federal government she volunteered her time to help get much needed supplies, such as water and other basic needs, to the Navajo elderly.

She relayed a story to me about an elderly Navajo grandmother who followed all of the lockdown guidelines. She told me the grandmother washed her hands and had stayed home for over a month. However, her children and grandchildren came to visit her and sadly the Navajo grandmother contracted Covid-19 and had died the night prior.

Overcome with sadness and grief, the volunteer said she had to cut the call short.

Back in May, it was already becoming clear that the Navajo Nation was being ravaged by the coronavirus. At one point, it had one of the highest per capita outbreaks of Covid-19 in the world. It became and remains the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic across Indian Country. As of Saturday night, there have been 12,447 positive cases and the death rate approaches 600 with 591.

Last week, as I worked on an article about Navajo voters riding horseback to vote on the Navajo Nation, I interviewed Allie Young, a young enterprising 30-year-old Navajo woman who organized the Ride to the Polls. Separate from the Ride to the Polls initiative, Young co-founded Protect the Sacred, a grassroots initiative created in response to Covid-19 to educate and empower Navajo youth and Native youth throughout Indian Country to rise up as the next generation of leaders by protecting their elders, their languages and their cultures.

Speaking about Ride to the Polls initiative, Young told me, “We rode to the polls to honor our ancestors who fought for the right to vote. We also rode to honor those who died from Covid-19, who are not here to vote in this election.”

At the end of my conversation with Young, I asked her about the Navajos for Trump movement. She said she didn’t think there were really all that many. She said in the age of social media, attention goes to those who make the most noise there—even if there aren’t that many.

Young’s comments proved true.

The election results showed in the three counties in northeast Arizona that overlap with the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe, tribal citizens in precincts voted for Joe Biden with 73,954 votes to only 2,010 for Donald Trump. The Native votes translated to a rate of 97 percent for Biden as opposed to 51 percent throughout the entire state.

As of Saturday night, Biden led over Trump by 18,610 votes. Given the lopsided vote, it can be suggested the Navajo played a significant role in helping turn Arizona blue.

In spite of the pandemic that is literally killing its tribal citizens, it makes sense that the Navajo people would vote for Biden over Trump. The Trump administration has done a horrible job nationwide in handling the Covid-19 pandemic and the ineptness extended to the Navajo Nation. Response from the federal government to assist the Navajo Nation was very slow. Federal funds earmarked by Congress to provide Covid-19 relief were slow getting there.

Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez has been extremely critical of the Trump administration’s mishandling of the pandemic and its slow response time to provide the tribal nation with assistance.

The Navajo Nation joined a lawsuit in federal court to receive funds allocated for Indian Country outlined in the CARES Act.

After Biden was declared president-elect on Saturday morning, Nez released a statement on the Biden-Harris victory. He said a large majority of Navajo voters had a major impact on the outcome of the presidential election.

“In October, I had the opportunity to meet face-to-face with Biden and Harris to talk about the ‘Biden-Harris Plan for Tribal Nations’ and we were assured that tribal nations would always have a seat at the table. The Navajo Nation now looks forward to working together with the Biden-Harris Administration to put that plan into action,” Nez said.

The Navajo Nation and other tribal nations in Indian Country look forward to working with an administration that has an understanding of the needs unique to tribal nations.

At various times on Saturday as celebrations broke out in major cities across the United States, I kept going back to the story about the Navajo grandmother who died in May and what Young told me about how the Navajo rode on horseback to honor those who died of Covid-19 and could not vote in this election.

In this historic new era, we must all work to ensure the votes cast were not in vain.

SEE Arizona and Wisconsin: How Indigenous Voters Helpe...

Minn. State Authorities Approve Enbridge Line 3 Permits, Protesters Met with Counter Trump Protesters Front of Governor’s Mansion


Trump supporters showed up as Enbridge Line 3 protesters assembled outside the Govenor's Mansion in St. Paul, Minn. - Photographs by Darren Thompson

BY DARREN THOMPSON NOVEMBER 14, 2020
https://nativenewsonline.net/

SAINT PAUL, Minn. — Today, protesters against Line 3 clashed with pro-Trump counter-protestors in front of the Governor’s Mansion in Saint Paul, Minn.

On Thursday, November 12, 2020, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) approved various permits for Enbridge’s Line 3, moving the Calgary-based pipeline replacement project closer to completion.

Enbridge’s Line 3 is the largest project in the company’s history, and would be one of the largest crude oil pipelines in the continent, according to a statement on the company’s website.

https://www.enbridge.com/Line3ReplacementProgram.aspx&source=gmail&ust=1605492830789000&usg=AOvVaw3Uqlod5fzylNiyFkcmnH9O

 Line 3 is expected to transport up to 760,000 barrels a day through Northern Minnesota, passing through treaty lands of several Ojibwe bands. 

Canada, North Dakota, and Wisconsin have all approved their segments of the pipeline.

Line 3 has been a hotly debated topic for several years, having both vocal proponents and opponents, citing climate change, job creation, safer transportation of crude oil, and tribal sovereignty.

Current Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has previously made comments on social media against pipelines, specifically because they pass through tribal lands, but at the time he made them, he was a state representative. He hasn’t since made public comments either supporting or opposing the project.

Community organizations, leaders, and tribes have all spoken against the pipeline.

“As many people know, I have long expressed opposition to the Line 3 project and my position has not changed,” said Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan in an email to Native News Online.

Flanagan is an enrolled member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe and is considered by many to be one of Line 3’s biggest opponents.

The Star Tribune reported that White Earth Band of Ojibwe Tribal Chairman Michael Fairbanks wrote a letter to MPCA Commissioner Laura Bishop and asked the agency to deny permission of Line 3 citing that the activity will be a super-spreader for COVID-19.

“The Governor and Minnesota Pollution Control Agency Commissioner Laura Bishop decided that this [decisionhttps://www.foxnews.com/us/michigan-governor-seeks-shutdown-of-great-lakes-oil-pipeline">statement, “They [Enbridgehttps://mn350.org/campaigns/stop-line-3/stop-line-3-what-are-the-risks/">website, oil transported through Line 3 is the equivalent of the total CO2 daily emissions of 16-18 million cars, every year the pipeline operates.


As Line 3 protesters stand outside the Governor's Mansion, Trump supporters show up to erroneously claim the election was stolen.

Towards the end of the two-hour event, the crowd of nearly 400 protestors against the permission of Line 3, were met with pro-Trump supporters voicing their support for pipelines. They cited a fraudulent election, a claim that is being widely denied in courts and in media throughout the country.

Pro-Trump supporters eventually swelled to a crowd of nearly 300 people in front of the Governor’s Mansion, wearing Proud Boys memorabilia, waving Trump | Pence flags, and carrying assault-like rifles with alcohol in their hands chanting, “Four more years!”

THIRD WORLD USA

The Deadly Loss of Navajo Women


Eugenia Charles-Newton, a Navajo Nation Council delegate, at home in Shiprock with her donkey, Brandy.

BY SUNNIE R. CLAHCHISCHILIGI NOVEMBER 14, 2020

https://nativenewsonline.net/

This article was orginally published by Spotlight New Mexico. 

 All rights reserved.

On the Navajo Nation, the coronavirus is leaving children motherless, families lost and traditions in peril. But Diné women fight on.

SHIPROCK, N.M. — Sitting in the passenger seat of her husband’s pickup truck just before dusk, Eugenia Charles-Newton watched a young Navajo girl, her niece, during a traditional kinaaldá ceremony in Shiprock.

The coming-of-age ceremony was unlike any other kinaaldá she’d ever seen. Scores of family members were missing and there was only a small cake, just enough to feed the immediate family. That morning, the girl’s female relatives hadn’t gathered to sing and tell stories as they mixed the cake batter. When the girl ran toward the east before the sun rose, she didn’t have throngs of relatives running behind her to fill the dawn air with happy screams and shouts, celebrating her transition into womanhood. Only the young woman’s brothers ran after her.


It’s hard “for a girl to have a ceremony like that and not have all the family there,” Charles-Newton said. She tried to comfort her niece, a relation by clan. “Your mom could have just said, ‘No, we’re not going to have it,’” she pointed out. “But instead, she made it happen.”

Women have long been front and center when it comes to making things happen on the Navajo Nation. But never has that role been so apparent — or so perilous — as during the pandemic. Ever since the coronavirus arrived on the 27,000-square-mile reservation, women in this matriarchal society have been putting themselves at risk, taking on ever more responsibilities, culturally and in everyday life.

“The sacred side of women has changed with COVID,” said Charles-Newton, 43, one of three female delegates on the Navajo Nation Council. Girls used to learn traditions through celebrations, face-to-face talks with elders and communal gatherings. But the pandemic has squelched those opportunities. “It’s taking away a part of the culture.”


By every measure — from economics and education to health — COVID-19 disproportionately harms women and girls “simply by virtue of their sex,” the United Nations has concluded. Women are more exposed to the virus because they’re more likely to be frontline workers, such as nurses and health care staff. They hold more than 77 percent of jobs in U.S. hospitals, health care facilities and nursing homes, U.S. labor statistics show. They hold essential jobs, albeit low-paying ones, in groceries and retail stores.

On the Navajo Nation, women are even more vulnerable to the virus, as a result of poor health care, poverty, trauma and high rates of illnesses like diabetes.

Navajo women not only hold high-exposure jobs but also are keepers of the cultural flame — and caretakers of the many people around them who’ve tested positive for the virus. When they become sick or die, the whole culture suffers.



Rena Martin, a Navajo archaeologist and ethnographer, at the office of Dinétahdóó Cultural Resources Management. She founded the consulting firm to preserve tribal history, culture and the environment.

“Women are the home — they’re matriarchs, they’re mothers,” said Navajo archaeologist Rena Martin, 67. “When people say, ‘I’m going home,’ it’s to where Mom is. If you lose a matriarch, you have no home to go to.”

The founder of Dinétahdóó Cultural Resources Management, a Navajo company dedicated to preserving tribal history, culture and lands, Martin has seen families living in some of the most remote landscapes in the Southwest. She particularly worries about the women elders — crucial to the culture — who are highly vulnerable to COVID-19.

The virus is typically more lethal for Navajo men — but that changes in the golden years, statistics show. After 70, the coronavirus death rate for Navajo women begins to accelerate. By age 80, Diné women suffer a substantially higher death rate than men.

Martin knows firsthand what the loss of an elder can do. Her maternal grandmother, matriarch to the core, boiled herbs, made medicinal drinks and carried them to families stricken with whooping cough, delivering them near and far on horseback. She succumbed to the disease when Martin’s mother was 4.

The loss left the next two generations without knowledge of their family history and teachings, Martin said. It was the need to reclaim those losses that prompted her to become an archaeologist.

“There was a loss of centeredness in the family. There was a loss of oral history.” The pandemic, she said, could leave generations of women feeling similarly at sea.

Some might feel like they’re drowning. Diné women today are juggling employment while also cooking, cleaning, babysitting, shopping, parenting, teaching, caring for relatives and tending to the elderly.

Since March, when the reservation became one of the country’s worst hot spots, women have commonly been seen making supply runs at local stores, buying not just for the immediate family but for extended family members, to meet kinship obligations.

They are carrying caskets at burial sites, typically a man’s job. They are revising the “baby’s first laugh” celebrations, dropping off salt and goodies to family and friends instead of hosting a gathering at home.

Grandmothers are helping children attend virtual classes, though most have no experience with computers. Some have set up makeshift desks in crowded houses without electricity, running water or indoor plumbing — a problem for roughly a third of households. Others sit with their grandchildren outside of schools and chapter houses so the kids will have internet access and can complete their homework.

Zoom won’t suffice

The Navajo are a matrilineal society: When they introduce themselves, they do so by clan, leading with their mother’s clan, which children take as their own. Naabeehó sáanii (Navajo women) are the center of the family, the keepers of wisdom and conservators of ancestral teachings. Navajo emergence stories tell of how women learned to be matriarchs from Changing Woman, a single mother of twin sons who became Diné heroes.

By tradition, the teachings are passed down in person, in the Navajo language. Zoom meetings are hardly a suitable replacement.

In the four-day kinaaldá, for example, the mother, grandmother and other female relatives have hands-on roles in the ceremony, held when a girl reaches puberty. The women help the girl wash and they tie and wrap her hair. They knead her limbs to symbolically “mold” her into a strong woman. They make the alkaan (Navajo cake) and bury it in the ground to cook.

It is a level of communion that’s nearly impossible during recurring waves of contagion and the accompanying public health restrictions. The Navajo Nation, a vast landscape (pop. 172,875) that spans New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, has one of the highest COVID-19 infection rates in America. As of Nov. 10, at least 12,641 cases have been confirmed there; 594 people have died.

The tribal government has tried to curb transmission by issuing strict curfews, stay-at-home orders, business and travel restrictions, and limits on gatherings. Officials have also canceled events like the Miss Navajo Nation pageant, in which contestants must butcher a sheep and cook over an open fire.

Shaandiin Parrish, the current Miss Navajo Nation, is one of the scores of women who’ve seen their roles morph in ways they never imagined. Parrish, 26, was living alone in Window Rock, Arizona, the Navajo Nation’s capital, when the virus struck. She wanted to rush home to the Kayenta area to be with her family, but the reservation was on lockdown.

So she used her time to spread health safety messages on her social media platform. When travel was allowed, she drove hundreds of miles to dispense food, water and supplies to families, along with Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez. Dressed in full traditional attire — velvet shirt and skirt, moccasins, jewelry, a sash, crown, plus a mask and gloves — she continues to give out care packages in remote Navajo communities, from Oljato


From left: Eric Trevizo, a team leader for the Northern Diné COVID-19 Relief Effort, delivers necessities to people like Emily John and daughter April, both diabetic, whose home had no electricity or running water. Eugenia Charles-Newton (far right), a Navajo Nation Council delegate and a volunteer with the relief group, also helps deliver supplies.

Acts of love

Charles-Newton, the council delegate, is among the countless other women engaged in relief work. In addition to her elected duties, she volunteers with the Northern Diné COVID-19 Relief Effort, a grassroots organization that distributes essentials to local families.

The work can get intense. In late July, before driving two hours to an emergency council meeting in Window Rock, Charles-Newton threw on her safety-approved clothing (long-sleeved T-shirt, baseball cap, pants), put on her mask, jumped in her truck and picked up cases of water to deliver to a mother and daughter in Shiprock who had no running water or electricity.

Both women are diabetic and — with no refrigerator — had to buy bags of ice every day to keep their insulin cold in plastic coolers.

On other days, Charles-Newton dispenses advice. One man contacted her because he feared he’d broken tradition: His mother and sisters had tested positive and were too sick to enter the sweat lodge alone. In violation of protocols that require women and men to sweat separately, he entered the women’s sweat to look after them.

“He was very emotional,” Charles-Newton recalled. “He said, ‘This is my mother; these are my sisters. These are the matriarchs, the strong ones in my family.’” Was it wrong to help them?

“I told him, ‘Shiyáázh [my son], what you did for your mom and your sisters is not wrong — it’s an act of love.’

Caring at a cost

Acts of love, of course, can be dangerous. In late April, the Navajo Nation mourned the loss of young mother Valentina Blackhorse, 28, a former Miss Western Navajo. Her boyfriend had contracted the virus, and she’d insisted on taking care of him, the Navajo Times reported. The death of someone so young became national news. Blackhorse was described as selfless, someone who risked her life to help another.

She would not be the last. Social media and headlines announced a growing list of health care workers who’d lost their lives to COVID-19. Other women who passed away were unsung heroes — caretakers on a land of vast needs.

They’d raised sheep and goats, weaved wool, grown food and survived on lands passed down for generations, by matriarchs who came before.

Natalie Tome-Beyale tends to the corn on her Shiprock farmland.

On a recent evening, just as the sun eased to meet the horizon, Natalie Tome-Beyale tended to the crops on Farm Road in Shiprock. With her cell phone in a back pocket and a water bottle nearby, she plucked weeds growing around her family farm. She placed the water bottle five plants ahead of her to make sure she stayed hydrated; every time she reached the bottle, she took a sip.

In previous years, Tome-Beyale and her husband planted the farmland together, but this year she had to do the work alone. About six months ago, she nearly lost her husband, Herbert Beyale Jr., to the virus.

Farming has become an act of healing, she said. With every weed she pulled, the memories sprouted.

Natalie Tome-Beyale works on her farmland.

Tome-Beyale, 63, lost her father when she was a teenager. The eldest of her siblings, she looked after her three younger brothers and at 19 became their legal guardian. She married Herb at a young age, had five children and worked as an educational assistant. “Being a Navajo woman, the big thing was that you need to care for the people around you — they come first.”

Today, she said, this presents women with an entirely new quandary: Children are defying public health orders.

“It’s really sad, because the mom — the women — will not close the door on them. And because of that, it [the virus] comes into the home,” she said. “The love that women have for their children is sometimes their downfall.”

In May, the coronavirus found Tome-Beyale’s family. She had recently become a grandmother and was staying with her daughter in Rio Rancho to help with the baby. Just as she was preparing to return home to Shiprock, Herb tested positive for the virus. He’d been exposed at work.

Tome-Beyale immediately switched gears from looking after her daughter and granddaughter to caring for her husband from a distance.

When Herb developed trouble breathing, he was admitted to a local ICU and then flown to a hospital in Santa Fe. She raced there to see him, but all she could do was watch him get wheeled in from afar.

For three tormented weeks, Herb remained hospitalized and she wasn’t allowed to visit. She rented a hotel room nearby just to be close to him.

Navajo archaeologist Rena Martin at the sheep pens by a home where she’s doing surveying work.

The weave of history

History has often changed the role of Navajo women, who’ve had a role in shaping history, as well. After the Long Walk began in 1864 — and the U.S. Army brutally removed the Diné from their homelands — women were instrumental in pushing for a return home, which was secured under an 1868 treaty.

After the return, women’s roles shifted, this time because of an influx of Christian missionaries who stressed that men — not women — needed to run the home, rule the people and control the government.

It wasn’t until 1951, when legendary public health crusader Annie Dodge Wauneka was elected to the Navajo Tribal Council, that a woman became a prominent government leader, a position Wauneka used to battle tuberculosis and other scourges. To this day, women seldom win elected office.

And while Navajo women are considered sacred, they are disproportionately victimized by violence. More than four in five Native women in the United States have experienced violence in their lifetime, studies show. On some tribal lands, women are murdered at a rate up to 10 times the national average. Navajo Nation Council delegate Amber Kanazbah Crotty has spent years calling attention to the problem of missing and murdered women, pressing for solutions at home and before the U.S. Senate. Fellow Council delegate Charlaine Tso summed up the tragedy in a report to the U.S. Department of Justice.

“The Navajo Nation views women as sacred. Yet Navajo women cannot safely go for a short jog in their own communities,” she said.

From left: Gloria Hosteen gets some exercise with grandson Logan and granddaughter Destenie, at the track of the former Shiprock High School.

Answers found

The sun had just set behind the famed Shiprock pinnacle when Gloria Hosteen, 63, took a minute for herself, sitting alone on the front porch of her double-wide trailer, facing ha’a’aah, the east — the direction that signifies birth and strength. She looked to the sky, where the Holy People are said to live, and turned to prayer.

A memory suddenly came to her. She recalled sitting next to her paternal great-grandmother in her hogan years ago. Her great-grandmother and mother had taught her all she knew about ceremonies, herding sheep, weaving, preparing traditional foods and picking herbs.

“These things will come in handy someday,” her great-grandmother told her.

That day had come, Hosteen realized. Her elder had been teaching her survival tools — tools to preserve the culture and protect her family.

For nearly 15 years, Hosteen had been the full-time caretaker for her four grandchildren, ages 10 to 15. She’d felt unsure of herself, uncertain about the future of her children, her grandchildren and the Diné. Now she knew what to do.

She began teaching her granddaughters the old ways. She taught them how to tie their moccasins, tie their sash belts and wrap their traditional hair buns. She taught them about sweat lodges and ceremonies. She also began preparing for the kinaaldá for a young granddaughter, who she expects will have her coming-of-age ceremony before a COVID-19 vaccine arrives.

She felt as if she’d become a matriarch in the truest sense, tested by the pandemic the way matriarchs in the past were tested by ravages and despair. “I have to be strong to challenge these barriers, so I take it one day at a time,” she said. “I’m sure a lot of Navajo women are saying the same thing.”

And on that day on the porch, she offered a prayer to the sky. “I looked up and said, ‘Thank you, Nalí. Thank you, Mom: I will do what you advised me to do.’ All these memories came back,"


Sunnie R. Clahchischiligi is a contributing writer at Searchlight and a member of the Navajo Nation. Her work appears in the Navajo Times, The New York Times and many other publications. She is also a doctoral student and writing instructor at the University of New Mexico.

TIKTOK
Trump Still Wants To Get Rid of TikTok
Remember this whole thing?


BY JORDAN HOFFMAN NOVEMBER 14, 2020

BY NURPHOTO/GETTYIMAGES

You may recall this summer that, in addition to toilets that didn't flush to his specifications, President Donald Trump went to war with TikTok.

Some theorized that it was because K-Pop fans using the app made him look like a dunce at a June rally in Tulsa, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed it was because the video sharing app's parent company, ByteDance, could do nefarious things with user data on behalf of the Chinese government. (He referred to the service that delights millions with videos of cranberry juice-drinking Fleetwood Mac fans as "a Trojan horse for Chinese intelligence.") As such, the administration threatened to ban TikTok entirely.

A deal, or at least the concept of a deal, was accepted by the Trump Administration wherein the Chinese company ByteDance would sell its core asset for the American market to an American company. (TikTok itself was already based in Los Angeles, and with a former Disney exec at the helm who defined his shop as "not really a Chinese company," but this didn't cut it.) While some companies like Microsoft, then a tandem of Oracle and Walmart, were eager work out an agreement, there was hesitation on behalf of the Chinese government. Then the pressure petered out, and there was that whole election thing. Trump's deadline of November 12 still loomed, however, so, last week, TikTok finally tapped the mic to ask, "hey, do you still want us to do this?"

The Trump Administration, in typical form, responded not with a yes or a no, but with yet a further delay. As such, the new deadline is November 27.

What does this mean for users of the popular app, whose downloads, naturally, went through the roof when Trump began his threats? That remains unknown for now, but we can surely expect some cutting videos about it if the government actually interferes.

WHEN IN DOUBT RED SCARE!

 TikTok a national security threat?

60 Minutes reports on the popular Chinese-owned app that a senator says has ties to the Chinese Communist Party. See the story, Sunday

• 2020Nov 13

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TikTok calls itself "the last sunny corner on the Internet." But dark forebodings about the company's ties to the Chinese government have clouded the popular app's reputation and future in the U.S. where 100 million Americans have already downloaded it and President Trump wants to ban it. TikTok was granted a temporary reprieve on Thursday when the U.S. Commerce Department announced it would not enforce its order that would have shut down the app because of pending litigation. Bill Whitaker speaks to intelligence and cybersecurity sources who warn the entertaining app collects a treasure trove of data the Chinese government could someday use against the U.S. Whitaker's report will be broadcast on the next edition of 60 Minutes Sunday night after NFL coverage on CBS.   

Each day, 50 million Americans, mostly teenagers, spend almost an hour watching short videos on TikTok, while data, like their name, location, personal network, online viewing habits and even keystroke patterns are collected. There's nothing unusual about a mobile app accessing such information; Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat also collect users' data. But TikTok is different, says Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri). "Here's the problem with TikTok…It is owned by a Chinese parent company that has direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party," Hawley says. "And we also know that under Chinese law, TikTok – Bytedance, the parent – is required to share data with the Chinese Communist Party… That's in the law. American users, parents, teenagers, they have no way of knowing about any of this," Hawley tells Whitaker.   

China has a history of spying on the U.S. and has been caught stealing technology. It has also been accused of acquiring personal information of hundreds of millions of ordinary citizens. For example, in February the Department of Justice identified the Chinese military unit and personnel involved in hacking into the credit reporting agency Equifax and taking personal information affecting more than 140 million Americans. Other high-profile hacks in the U.S. attributed to China have targeted government security clearance files, Americans' personal data collected by a major health insurer, and even hotel stays. Many wonder what the Chinese military could do with information collected by a mobile app like TikTok. "Build dossiers, build files on every American who they can get their hands on," for one thing says Hawley.  "We could ask the same question about the Equifax breach. Why would the Chinese government be interested in the financial history of hundreds of millions of Americans? What are they going do with that? Well, clearly they thought it was very, very useful to them. Who knows, it may have military applications in the future," says the senator.  

Those concerns, combined with the tensions with China this summer, led to President Trump's call for a ban of the mobile app unless it was separated from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, a $140 billion social media and artificial intelligence company based in Beijing. A compromise, currently on hold, was hammered out in which ByteDane would sell 20% of TikTok to the U.S. software and cloud computing company Oracle and Walmart. But Hawley says that won't change anything unless the app's recommendation algorithm is redesigned and severed from engineers working in China. "Because right now, it's been built by Chinese engineers. They have control and access to how the platform works," Hawley contends.  

Hawley, a former attorney general of Missouri, has been aggressive in pursuing the excesses of American big tech companies, and is even more concerned about TikTok and U.S. companies with strong connections to China. He chaired a Senate subcommittee hearing on the subject last March, but TikTok and Apple refused to testify. "Executives from TikTok, they will never come and take the oath and testify in public. That I think is unusual," Hawley says. "And I think it begs the question: 'What do they have to hide?'"  

TikTok has nothing to hide according to its interim-CEO Vanessa Pappas. "TikTok does not operate in China. The U.S. data is stored here in the U.S. with backup in Singapore, and we have strict data access controls," she says. "If a government were to request data we will put that in our transparency report and tell you. And certainly the Chinese government has not requested data, and if they did it would be an emphatic, 'no.'"   

Former intelligence officers like the Heritage Foundation's Director of Technology Policy Klon Kitchen tell Whitaker that TikTok would never know if the data it collects was being accessed. Its corporate parent ByteDance, like other Chinese tech companies, must provide the Chinese Communist Party access to all its data by law.  "The national security and cyber security laws of China require [companies] to operate and build their networks in such a fashion as to where the government has unfettered access to their data," says the former intelligence officer. "So no, the CCP doesn't ask them for information. They don't need to. They have access to the information."   

ByteDance gets extension on Trump’s TikTok divestiture order

Under pressure from the Trump administration, ByteDance has been in talks with Walmart and Oracle to shift TikTok’s US assets.

ByteDance filed a petition with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia challenging the Trump administration's divestiture order [File: Dado Ruvic/Reuters]

13 Nov 2020

The administration of United States President Donald Trump granted ByteDance a 15-day extension of a divestiture order that had directed the Chinese company to sell its TikTok short video-sharing app by Thursday.

TikTok first disclosed the extension earlier in a court filing, saying it now has until November 27 to reach an agreement. Under pressure from the US government, ByteDance has been in talks for a deal with Walmart Inc and Oracle Corp to shift TikTok’s US assets into a new entity.

The Treasury Department said on Friday the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) granted the 15-day extension to “provide the parties and the committee additional time to resolve this case in a manner that complies with the Order.”

ByteDance filed a petition on Tuesday with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia challenging the Trump administration divestiture order.

ByteDance said on Tuesday CFIUS sought “to compel the wholesale divestment of TikTok, a multibillion-dollar business built on technology developed by” ByteDance and based on the government’s review of the Chinese company’s 2017 acquisition of Musical.ly.

President Donald Trump, in an August 14 order, had directed ByteDance to divest the app within 90 days.


The Trump administration contended TikTok posed national security concerns, saying the personal data of US users could be obtained by China’s government. TikTok, which has more than 100 million US users, has denied the allegations.

Trump has said the Walmart-Oracle deal had his “blessing”.

One big issue that has persisted is about the ownership structure of the new company, TikTok Global, which would own TikTok’s US assets.

In Tuesday’s court filing, ByteDance said it submitted a fourth proposal last Friday that contemplated addressing US concerns “by creating a new entity, wholly owned by Oracle, Walmart and existing US investors in ByteDance, that would be responsible for handling TikTok’s US user data and content moderation”.

Separate restrictions on TikTok from the US Commerce Department have been blocked by federal courts, including transaction curbs that were scheduled to take effect on Thursday, which TikTok warned could effectively ban the app’s use in the US.

A Commerce Department ban on Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google offering TikTok for download for new US users that had been set to take effect on September 27 has also been blocked.

SOURCE : REUTERS

100 YEARS WAR

Armenian Villagers are Burning Down Their Homes Before Disputed Territory is Handed to Azerbaijan

Smoke rises from a burning house in an area once occupied by Armenian forces but soon to be turned over to Azerbaijan, in Karvachar, the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, on November 13, 2020. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

Armenia on Saturday said that 2,317 of it fighters were killed in the clashes, an increase of nearly 1,000 deaths compared to the last confirmed death toll among Armenian fighters.
AFP

CHAREKTAR

LAST UPDATED:NOVEMBER 14, 2020

Villagers outside of Nagorno-Karabakh set their houses on fire Saturday before fleeing to Armenia ahead of a weekend deadline that will see disputed territory handed over to Azerbaijan as part of a peace agreement.

Residents of the Kalbajar district in Azerbaijan that was controlled by Armenian separatists for decades began a mass exodus this week after it was announced Azerbaijan would regain control on Sunday.

Fighting between the separatists backed by Armenian troops and the Azerbaijan army erupted over the Nagorno-Karabakh breakaway region in late September and raged for six weeks.

Armenia on Saturday said that 2,317 of it fighters were killed in the clashes, an increase of nearly 1,000 deaths compared to the last confirmed death toll among Armenian fighters.

Azerbaijan has not revealed its military casualties and the real toll after weeks of fighting is expected to be much higher.

Russian President Vladimir Putin this week said the number of fatalities was higher than 4,000 and that tens of thousands of people had been forced to flee their homes.

In the village of Charektar, on the border with the neighbouring district of Martakert which is to remain under Armenian control, at least six houses were on fire Saturday morning with thick plumes of smoke rising over the valley, an AFP journalist saw.

"This is my house, I can't leave it to the Turks," as Azerbaijanis are often called by Armenians, said one resident as he threw burning wooden planks and rags soaked in gasoline into a completely empty house.

"Everybody is going to burn down their house today... We were given until midnight to leave," he said. "We also moved our parents' graves, the Azerbaijanis will take great pleasure in desecrating our graves. It's unbearable," he added.


RUSSIAN PEACEKEEPERS

On Friday at least 10 houses were burned in and around Charektar. The ex-Soviet rivals agreed to end hostilities earlier this week after previous efforts by Russia, France and the United States to get a ceasefire fell through.A key part of the peace deal includes Armenia's return of Kalbajar, as well as the Aghdam district by November 20 and the Lachin district by December 1, which have been held by Armenians since a devastating war in the 1990s.

The two sides will maintain positions in the territories they currently hold, a significant gain for Azerbaijan after it reclaimed some 15 to 20 percent of lost territory including the key town of Shusha.

Russian peacekeepers began deploying to Nagorno-Karabakh on Wednesday as part of the terms of the accord and took control of a key transport artery connecting Armenia to the disputed province.

Russian military officials said the mission consisting of nearly 2,000 troops would put in place 16 observation posts in mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh and along the Lachin corridor.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Wednesday accused Armenians of destroying "99 percent of the liberated territory" including hospitals, houses and monuments, adding that he wanted Armenia to pay compensation.

Meanwhile in Armenia, anger was mounting over Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's decision to cede swathes of disputed territory.

Thousands of people converged on the streets of Yerevan in demonstrations this week, while protesters stormed and ransacked government buildings, demanding Pashinyan's resignation.