Human Rights Watch criticises Biden, others for weak defense of democracy

13 January 2022 - BY MICHELLE NICHOLS

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch.
Image: REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

Human Rights Watch on Thursday criticised US President Joe Biden and other Western leaders for a weak defense of democracy and for failing to meet challenges from the climate crisis and Covid-19 pandemic to poverty, inequality and racial injustice.

In contrast to what Human Rights Executive Director Kenneth Roth described as former US President Donald Trump's “embrace of friendly autocrats”, Biden took office in January 2021 with a pledge to put human rights at the center of his foreign policy.

“But he continued to sell arms to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel despite their persistent repression,” Roth wrote in Human Rights Watch's annual World Report, released on Thursday.

“Other Western leaders displayed similar weakness in their defense of democracy,” Roth wrote, naming French President Emmanuel Macron and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Roth also said that during key summits Biden “seemed to lose his voice when it came to public denunciation of serious human rights violations.”

“The US State Department has issued occasional protests about repression in certain countries, and in extreme cases the Biden administration introduced targeted sanctions on some officials responsible, but the influential voice of the president was often missing,” he wrote.

US officials have defended the Biden administration's record, saying diplomats have frequently raised human rights concerns with foreign leaders, including in difficult talks with adversaries including China and Russia.

“If democracies are to prevail in the global contest with autocracy, their leaders must do more than spotlight the autocrats' inevitable shortcomings. They need to make a stronger, positive case for democratic rule,” Roth said.

Bolsonaro is a “threat to democracy,” HRW says

Friday, January 14th 2022 - 

Human rights violations and deforestation are not new to Brazil's indigenous communities, Canineu said

President Jair Bolsonaro represents a “threat” to Brazilian democracy, according to Lawyer Maria Laura Canineu, head of the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) local office.

Canineu focused on the situation of journalists in the country, as well as that of indigenous communities of the Amazon region.

HRW also recommended that the international community monitor possible attacks on institutions in this election year. “2021 was marked by very serious threats from President Bolsonaro to the pillars of democracy, Bolsonaro has tried to intimidate judges of the Supreme Federal Court, tried to discredit the electoral system and attacked the media,” Canineu said upon launching HRW's annual report Thursday.

Regarding freedom of expression, she pointed out that the picture is “very worrying,” because Bolsonaro harasses journalists at all times. According to Reporters Without Borders, Bolsonaro has attacked journalists at least 90 times in the first half of 2021.

Another form of threat to ”freedom of expression was through the persecution of the president's critics with the opening of criminal investigations against journalists applying the National Security Law that was promulgated during the dictatorship (1964-1985),“ Canineu went on.

The head of HRW Brazil also highlighted the constraints to which the native communities were subjected, especially in the Amazon region. ”The government promoted deforestation, made failures in combating violence against indigenous people, there was an increase in invasions of indigenous territories,“ Canineu stressed.

”The government empowers people who promote the destruction of the Amazon (while) people who defend the environment face an extremely dangerous situation,“ she added.

Canineu also insisted neither human rights violations against ancestral communities nor deforestation were ”new problems in Brazil.“ Although the HRW document deals with the outlook in 2021, Canineu mentioned that 2022 will be a key year for democratic stability due to the Oct. 2 presidential elections.

”This year Brazilians are going to exercise their right to vote, the elections have to be free and this is a right that cannot be affected,“ she highlighted. ”One of the main messages of our report is for the international community to remain vigilant, to monitor any attempt to attack the electoral system, to weaken the democratic state,” Canineu concluded.

FARC sentenced to pay US $ 36 million for Betancourt kidnapping

USA DENIES ICC RIGHT TO JUDGE IT BUT APPLIES US RULES AROUND THE GLOBE

Friday, January 14th 2022 

The case could be brought before the US Justice because Betancourt's son was a US citizen

A US court has sentenced the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and several of its leaders to pay US $ 36 million for the kidnapping of politician Ingrid Betancourt, it was announced Thursday.

The ruling, handed down Jan. 4 by Judge Matthew Bran, of the Pennsylvania federal court and announced Thursday by lawyers from the plaintiffs, mandates FARC must pay US $ 12 million for damages to the Betancourt's son, Lawrence Delloye, who filed the lawsuit in June 2018 and who was a teenager when his mother was abducted.

The US $ 12 million become US $ 36 million after legal fees are added, the dollars, Delloye's attorneys Scarinci Hollenbeck explained.

Delloye argued in his complaint that the FARC and its leaders had violated the Antiterrorist Law and that the kidnapping of his mother had caused him significant emotional stress.

“While no amount of money can replace the time Lawrence Delloye lost without his mother or heal the trauma suffered at the hands of the FARC, we are proud to have been able to achieve some form of justice,” attorney Robert Levy said in a statement.

The case could be brought before the US Justice because Delloye was a US citizen, born in San Bernardino, California, in 1988. “The FARC and its members led the plaintiff to suffer damages associated with the separation from his mother, as suffer emotional stress by not knowing if his mother was dead or alive, or if he would be reunited with her,” the lawyers had argued.

Of the 15 accused FARC leaders, only one, Juan José Martínez Vega, responded to the accusations, while the rest have not appeared in court in the last three and a half years.

Ingrid Betancourt, now 61 years old, was kidnapped in February 2002 during a part of her presidential campaign to an area of southern Colombia controlled by the FARC. In July 2008 she was rescued, along with 14 other FARC hostages, by Colombian troops posing as aid workers from an international humanitarian organization.

US Lawmakers are Blacklisting Renewable Energy Efforts

Thomas Perrett
14 January 2022

US President Joe Biden at the COP26 climate summit.

 Photo: Alan Harvey/UK Government

Thomas Perrett reports on the efforts of corporate lobbyists to stymie US President Joe Biden’s climate ambitions

Since he assumed office, US President Joe Biden has encountered significant obstacles blocking his proposed plan to decarbonise the US economy by the middle of the century.

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin has consistently opposed the Build Back Better Act, which would have invested $555 billion in clean electricity and accelerated the reduction of methane emissions, and Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema has likewise resisted Biden’s climate spending plans.

Recently, fresh challenges have also emerged from coordinated, Republican-aligned interest groups. Corporate lobbyists are attempting to craft legislation which hands a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry, encouraging state officials to blacklist and divest from financial companies which pull funding from fossil fuels.

Last month, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organisation which creates templates for state legislation by connecting law-makers with corporations, published a draft of a piece of legislation entitled the ‘Energy Discrimination Elimination Act’ (EDEA).

Claiming that “restricting the supply of fossil fuels, without an immediate substitute for those fuels, only serves to raise prices on energy consumers, profoundly impacting the poorest among us”, the EDEA attempts to punish financial institutions seeking to divest from polluting energy sources.

How the Financial Sector Bankrolls  CLIMATE CHAOS
Thomas Perrett

The EDEA aims to take action against firms which “boycott energy companies”, referring to the termination of business activities associated with corporations engaged in producing fossil fuel energy. It advocates that state legislatures be given the authority to “sell, redeem, divest, or withdraw all publicly traded securities” of banks which decide to redirect their investments towards renewable energy sources.

Stating that financial companies should be mandated to provide state comptrollers (regulatory bodies) with evidence of their continued commercial support for oil and gas firms to avoid facing debilitating economic sanctions, the EDEA advocates that officials be permitted to “request written verification from a financial company that it does not boycott energy companies and rely, as appropriate in the comptroller’s judgement and without conducting further investigation, research, or inquiry, on a financial company’s written response to the request”.

This suggests that the jurisdiction concerning whether financial firms have, in fact, “boycotted energy companies” rests entirely with the state comptrollers, which may decide that nothing less than explicit support for oil and gas firms is sufficient for the firms to avoid divestment, public blacklisting, and the revocation of subsidies.

The EDEA advocates for states to make public lists of financial institutions complicit in divestment from fossil fuel energy, advocating for comptrollers to “prepare and maintain, and provide to each state governmental entity, a list of all financial companies that boycott energy companies”. It also suggests that such lists ought to be regularly reviewed and updated.

A Feature of the System, Not a Bug

The EDEA was based on State Bill 13, which has taken hold in Texas, promulgating that state officials must “sell, redeem, divest, or withdraw all publicly traded securities”, from financial organisations and insurance houses which “boycott energy companies”.

Drafted by the libertarian think tank the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), State Bill 13 bears significant similarities to the EDEA. According to emails obtained by the Centre for Media and Democracy, TPPF director Jason Isaac described the EDEA as “an opportunity to push back against woke financial institutions that are colluding against American energy producers”.

Isaac’s email also described the EDEA as “a strategy in which states use their collective economic purchasing power to counter the rise of politically motivated and discriminatory investing practices”, outlining the corporate plan to bypass democracy and compel financial companies to facilitate the continued existence of environmentally damaging energy sources.

The EDEA has formed the basis of several attacks on fossil fuel divestment, having proven popular in West Virginia, a state famously reliant on coal-fired power stations and represented in the Senate by Joe Manchin.

Newspapers Accepted Money to Publish Positive Environmental Stories About Saudi Arabia

Byline Times Team

Indeed, a bill introduced to the West Virginia legislature last year stated: “The legislature finds it is contrary to the interests of the state of West Virginia and the citizens of West Virginia for taxpayer dollars or retirement funds of public pensions to be invested in or at the direction of entities engaging in, providing incentives for, or directing strategies to divest from companies invested or assisting in the production of or the manufacturing of any of the following: natural gas, coal, oil, or petrochemicals.”

Much like the EDEA, this bill includes provisions for state officials to notify financial institutions of their complicity in boycotting energy companies, stating that: “If 90 days after the system’s first engagement with a business under this code, the business continues to engage in divestment activity, the system shall sell, redeem, divest, or withdraw all publicly traded securities of the business that are held by a fund.”

This follows a sustained campaign by corporate interests to artificially keep the coal industry afloat despite renewable energy becoming an increasingly attractive prospect for investors and declining significantly in cost. In August 2020, the West Virginian electricity regulator voted to keep coal-fired power stations running until 2040, even despite the state experiencing a 150% rise in electricity prices over the past 15 years.

Ted Boettner, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, a think tank which focuses on the expansion of clean energy and the democratisation of the economy, told Kate Aronoff of The New Republic that corporate interests are frequently involved in drafting legislation similar to the EDEA, stating: “The coal industry and other powerful industries in the state typically write legislation.”

“Having a lobbyist write a bill is a feature of the system, not a bug,” he added.

Both ALEC and the TPPF have extensive records of promoting disinformation about the veracity of climate science, and lobbying to roll back environmental protections. ALEC, which received $3.2 million from organisations related to the radical right-wing Koch family between 1997 and 2017 according to Greenpeace, was intimately involved with a GOP-backed plan to oppose President Biden’s climate agenda.

ALEC’s advocacy against measures designed to avert the climate crisis has become so radical that even the multinational oil and gas firm ExxonMobil cut ties with the group in 2018 following disagreements over climate policy. Despite the disingenuous nature ofExxonMobil’s recent advocacy for a carbon tax, which is in fact indicative of corporate greenwashing, it is telling that ALEC’s hardline stance against decarbonisation proved too noxious even for Exxon.

The EDEA, and the legislation in West Virginia and Texas seeking to punish financial institutions for divesting from fossil fuels, represents an alarmingly coordinated opposition to the expansion of clean energy.

With state officials incentivised to blacklist companies which ‘boycott’ oil and gas firms, decarbonising the economy is likely to prove even more difficult. The Koch network, and the ‘revolving door’ between corporations and state legislatures, must be challenged if President Joe Biden’s green policies are to succeed.

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M HACKERS FOR HIRE

N.Korean hackers stole $400 mln in cryptocurrency in 2021 - report

Thu., January 13, 202
By Josh Smith

SEOUL, Jan 14 (Reuters) - North Korea launched at least seven attacks on cryptocurrency platforms that extracted nearly $400 million worth of digital assets last year, one of its most successful years on record, blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis said in a new report.

"From 2020 to 2021, the number of North Korean-linked hacks jumped from four to seven, and the value extracted from these hacks grew by 40%," said the report, which was released on Thursday.

"Once North Korea gained custody of the funds, they began a careful laundering process to cover up and cash out," the report added.

A United Nations panel of experts that monitors sanctions on North Korea has accused https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-sanctions-cyber-idUSKBN2AA00Q Pyongyang of using stolen funds to support its nuclear and ballistic missile programs to circumvent sanctions.

North Korea does not respond to media inquiries, but has previously released statements denying allegations of hacking.

Last year the United States charged https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-cyber-idUSKBN2AH2B5 three North Korean computer programmers working for the country's intelligence service with a massive, years-long hacking spree aimed at stealing more than $1.3 billion in money and cryptocurrency, affecting companies from banks to Hollywood movie studios.

Chainalysis did not identify all the targets of the hacks, but said they were primarily investment firms and centralized exchanges, including Liquid.com, which announced in August that an unauthorized user had gained access to some of the cryptocurrency wallets it managed.

The attackers used phishing lures, code exploits, malware, and advanced social engineering to siphon funds out of these organizations’ internet-connected 'hot' wallets into North Korea-controlled addresses, the report said.

Many of last year's attacks were likely carried out by the Lazarus Group, a hacking group sanctioned https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-northkorea-usa-sanctions-idUKKCN1VY1RM by the United States, which says it is controlled by the Reconnaissance General Bureau, North Korea’s primary intelligence bureau.

The group has been accused of involvement in the “WannaCry” ransomware attacks, hacking of international banks and customer accounts, and the 2014 cyber-attacks on Sony Pictures Entertainment.

North Korea also appeared to step up efforts to launder stolen cryptocurrency, significantly increasing its use of mixers, or software tools that pool and scramble cryptocurrencies from thousands of addresses, Chainalysis said.

The report said researchers had identified $170 million in old, unlaundered cryptocurrency holdings from 49 separate hacks spanning from 2017 to 2021.

The report said it is unclear why the hackers would still be sitting on these funds, but said they could be hoping to outwit law enforcement interest before cashing out.

"Whatever the reason may be, the length of time that (North Korea) is willing to hold on to these funds is illuminating, because it suggests a careful plan, not a desperate and hasty one," Chainalysis concluded. (Reporting by Josh Smith Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

UK
Meta faces billion-pound class-action case

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

Up to 44 million UK Facebook users could share £2.3bn in damages, according to a competition expert intending to sue parent company Meta.

Dr Liza Lovdahl Gormsen alleges Meta "abused its market dominance" to set an "unfair price" for free use of Facebook - UK users' personal data.

She intends to bring the case to the Competition Appeal Tribunal.

A Meta representative said users had "meaningful control" of what information they shared.

'Excessive profits'

Facebook "abused its market dominance to impose unfair terms and conditions on ordinary Britons, giving it the power to exploit their personal data", Dr Lovdahl Gormsen says.

And this data, harvested between 2015 and 2019, provided a highly detailed picture of their internet use, helping the company make "excessive profits".

Anyone living in the UK who used Facebook at least once during the period will be part of the claim unless they choose to opt out, she says.

However, in November, the UK's Supreme Court rejected an optout claim seeking billions of pounds in damages from Google over alleged illegal tracking of millions of iPhones - Google said the issue had been addressed a decade ago.

Free services

The judge in that case said the claimant had failed to prove damage had been caused to each individual by the data collection.

But he did not rule out the possibility of future mass-action cases if damages could be calculated.

And Dr Lovdahl Gormsen told BBC News: "Optout cases are specifically permitted at the Competition Appeal Tribunal.

"As a result, my case is able to claim damages on behalf of the 44 million British Facebook users affected."

Meta has rejected the allegations.

People use its free services because they find them useful and have control over how their data us used, it says.

'Deliver value'

A representative told BBC News: "People access our service for free.

"They choose our services because we deliver value for them and they have meaningful control of what information they share on Meta's platforms and who with.

"We have invested heavily to create tools that allow them to do so."

However, this latest case adds to the company's legal battles

The US Federal Trade Commission was recently given the go-ahead to take Meta to court over anti-trust rules.

Meta said it was sure it would prevail in court.
More on this story

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

66 months in prison for Indian-American for selling stolen Apple product online

US District Judge Catherine C Blake also ordered Saurabh Chawla, who is from Aurora in Colorado, to pay USD 713,619 as restitution to the Internal Revenue Service

 (Photo by Alastair Pike / AFP) 

Updated: 14 Jan 2022


WASHINGTON : A 36-year-old Indian-American has been sentenced to 66 months in prison in the US for buying stolen Apple products meant for Native American school children in the US state of New Mexico and then selling them online.

In addition to the sentence, US District Judge Catherine C Blake also ordered Saurabh Chawla, who is from Aurora in Colorado, to pay USD 713,619 as restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.

He is also asked to sign an order of forfeiture requiring him to forfeit a 2013 Tesla Model S, USD 2,308,062.61 from accounts held in his name, and the sale of property in Aurora, Colorado, according to a statement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Maryland on Wednesday.

As per the court documents, Chawla bought Apple products from Kristy Stock, who worked for the Central Consolidated School District in New Mexico from 2010 to 2019 and was responsible for overseeing a programme to provide Apple iPods to school children with the intent of benefitting Native American children living on tribal reservations in New Mexico.

The court also sentenced Stock, who admitted that she stole more than 3,000 iPods from 2013 to 2018 purchased by the school district, to 18 months in prison.

Chawla's accomplice James Bender has also been sentenced to a year and a day in prison, the statement said.

According to the documents, from October 2015 to 2018, Stock and Chawla dealt directly with each other, in emails, texts, and phone calls. Stock repeatedly advised Chawla of the items she had obtained, providing details such as the model, colour and number of Apple products available.

Chawla and Stock then negotiated a price, and Stock shipped the items to Chawla’s relative on the Eastern Shore in Maryland. Chawla paid Stock through PayPal.

Stock admitted that she received more than USD 800,000 in illegal proceeds from selling stolen iPods worth more than USD 1 million. After his relative received the stolen goods from Stock, Chawla listed them for sale online through eBay at a substantial markup, the statement said.

Beginning in 2014, James Bender agreed to allow good friend Chawla, and a relative of Chawla’s, to sell goods and merchandise through Bender’s eBay accounts.

Chawla’s eBay account had previously been suspended due to security concerns. From May 2014 through August 2019, Bender and Chawla conspired so that the latter could use Bender’s eBay and PayPal accounts to sell stolen goods and merchandise, it said.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text.

US gas supply to EU is 5x higher than that of Russia’s Gazprom so far in January


Russian Gazprom has cause to worry as American liquid gas becomes more dominant among key recipients, writes Iwona Trusewicz

January 14, 2022
editor: GRZEGORZ ADAMCZYK
RP.PL

Gas supplies from the United States to the European Union this January are five times higher than the volume Russian majority state-owned company, Gazprom, is supplying to its key customers, marking the first time in history such a situation has occurred on the European market.

The import of liquified natural gas (LNG) to the EU is breaking records and is compensating for the rapid decrease of Gazprom gas supply which began in the fall of last year and continued through winter.

In the first days of January, Western European countries purchased 250 million cubic meters of gas per day, according to Bloomberg.

The majority of this gas came from the United States, from where close to 30 gas tankers traversed the Atlantic to Europe in mid-December last year. They delivered the most gas to Europe since December 2019 and saved the EU from an energy crisis forced upon it by the actions of the Russian company.

According to Slovakian operator Eustream, the average daily volume of gas transfer from Russia between Jan. 1 and 9 had dropped to 54 million cubic meters — half the amount for the same period in 2021. The Yamal pipeline, on the other hand, has not been transferring any gas through Poland at all since the end of December.

Despite assurances, Gazprom has not restocked supply in its own European warehouses based in Germany and Austria, in which there was less gas at the start of 2022 than at the end of heating seasons in the last three out of five years. It must be noted, that these years had very warm winters.

As such, the influx of LNG has cooled down the European gas market in which gas prices surged above $2000 per 1000 cubic meters in December. Within the last three weeks, deadline contracts for gas with delivery have cheapened by 56 percent at the London ICE stock exchange. On Tuesday, they stabilized at $904 before dropping by 3 percent within a day.

The increasing amount of American gas on the EU market is knocking down not only the prices of gas but also electricity. In Germany, energy for the upcoming month has become 5 percent cheaper — down to €218 per megawatt hour. In France, the cost decreased by 10 percent down to €287.

An analyst from StormGeo-Nena in Oslo, Bengt Longwa, explained that the price of gas directly influences the price of electrical energy, and that was currently the most important index.

As a reminder, in August 2021 Gazprom completely ceased gas sales on the free market a few days after the court in Dusseldorf refused to exclude Nord Stream 2 from EU gas regulations, placing the fate of the €10 billion pipeline in the balance.

“In such a situation Gazprom’s strategy seemed commercially justified, yet in the long-term it may transform into a political risk,” experts from the Skołkowo Energy Center warned at the time.

The production of LNG throughout the world has been constantly growing and by 2025 it will reach 449 million tons, leading to a gas surplus on the market of up to 34 million tons.

Similarly, by 2025 Gazprom’s long-term contracts for billions of cubic meters of gas with European and Turkish consumers will expire.

“Their renegotiation will depend not only on the basic market indexes but also on the European energy security situation,” Skołkowo warns.

According to Polish government declarations, the contract for gas transfer to Poland, hitherto a key recipient of Russian gas in the region, will not be extended after its expiration at the end of 2022. Russian gas will be replaced by Norwegian gas through the Baltic Pipe.

Indigenous feminism flows through the fight for water rights on the Rio Grande

An intergenerational group of Pueblo women lead the way on water policy along the Middle Rio Grande Valley.

Christine Trudeau and Kalen Goodluck

Image credit: Kalen Goodluck/High Country News

PHOTOS

Jan. 1, 2022

From the print edition

On a late November morning, Julia Bernal walked a stretch of riverbank along the Rio Grande in Sandoval County, New Mexico, between Santa Ana and Sandia Pueblo. Bernal pointed out the area between the cottonwood trees and the edge of the Rio Grande, a 30-foot stretch of dry earth covered in an ocean of tiny pebbles intermixed with periodic sandbars, tamarisk and willow shrubs.

“It never used to look like this,” Bernal said. “The reason the cottonwoods look the way that they do is because of the Cochiti Dam — that hyper-channelization of the river did cause this riparian forest to just kind of (disappear) along with it.”

Bernal grew up in the 1990s watching the river shrink every year, even as Sandia Pueblo, where she is enrolled, and other Rio Grande pueblos were left out of the state’s surface-water management process. Knowing that her community’s water, central to its culture, was in danger, Bernal resolved to work in the water sector after she graduated college in 2016, perhaps in the Bureau of Indian Affairs or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But everything changed later that year.

Bernal, along with the rest of the world, watched as tribal communities came together at Standing Rock to fight the Dakota Access Pipeline. The event galvanized her, forcing her to confront the fact that it was impossible to work on behalf of the Rio and the pueblos without centering the Indigenous environmental justice perspective. The time had come — for Standing Rock, for the pueblos, for all Indigenous communities — to enforce their sovereign right to lead on water policy.


Julia Bernal (Sandia, Taos and Yuchi-Creek Nations of Oklahoma) in Sandoval County in the Middle Rio Grande Valley. “It’s like this concept of landback. Once you get the land back, what are you going to do with it after? It’s the same thing. If we get the water back, what are we gonna do with it after? How are we going to maintain water?” Bernal, the director of the Pueblo Action Alliance, believes that “landback” can’t happen without “water back.”
Kalen Goodluck/High Country News

“It was a fight to protect water, but also protect culture, respect treaties,” Bernal said. “It taught me a lot about how any sort of planning initiative is going to include some sort of justice component if you’re dealing with Indigenous peoples.”

Later that year, Bernal helped found the Pueblo Action Alliance, which she directs. The organization, which prioritizes youth involvement, aims to advocate for the pueblos’ water rights and explain their complex history. Bernal is determined, she said, to “ensure that not just tribal nations but communities also have participation in decision-making processes.”

Bernal is not alone — far from it. She is part of an intergenerational group of Pueblo women working, advocating and organizing on behalf of the 19 pueblo nations and their right to be policy leaders when it comes to the future of the Rio Grande. Bernal and her contemporaries fight on several fronts at once: Convincing state and local governments to recognize their legal water rights; getting those rights quantified by the courts; and navigating the reality that pueblo nations have to depend on federal officials to actually enforce the existing water-quality regulations. The state has put the pueblos in a tenuous position regarding water rights, particularly given the two-decade-long drought, and these community leaders are done waiting for the state and federal governments to act.


The Southside Water Reclamation Plant, which treats wastewater sewage from Albuquerque homes before releasing it into the river, sits on the southern edge of the city, just five miles from the boundary of the Pueblo of Isleta.
Kalen Goodluck/High Country News

Indigenous water rights are intensely, often frustratingly, shaped by centuries-old colonial law.

Indigenous water rights are intensely, often frustratingly, shaped by centuries-old colonial law. The disbursement of water within the United States is determined by a process that prioritizes what are known as senior water rights. According to Indian law and civil litigation attorney Richard Hughes, most federally recognized tribes generally have the most senior water rights across the country, secured by a 1908 Supreme Court Decision known as Winters v. United States. The legal precedent for pueblo water rights, however, can also stem from the Mechem Doctrine, from New Mexico v. Aamodt, which holds that the pueblos’ aboriginal water rights were solidified by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed by the U.S. and Mexico in 1848. Despite their senior status, tribes often wait decades — some for over a century — to have their rights quantified through litigation or settlement with New Mexico and subsequent congressional approval. Whether through Winters or the Mechem Doctrine, this process is particularly cumbersome for the pueblo nations, Hughes says, which are often required to have a documented “precedent for what the tribe would be entitled to were the case to be fully litigated.”


Judge Verna Teller (Isleta Pueblo) in the Middle Rio Grande Valley at the Isleta Lakes, just south of ​​Albuquerque, New Mexico. “Every day, I thank the Creator that our standards haven’t been challenged, and they’re still active and alive today,” said Teller. “They put the onus on the tribe because we have permitting authority, so we have to monitor the river. We have to monitor that they’re maintaining as much as possible.”
Kalen Goodluck/High Country News

Thanks to New Mexico’s attitude, the opportunity for such litigation abounds. In 2020, the pueblos of Santa Ana, Jemez and Zia withstood an attempt by the state to diminish their aboriginal water rights along the Jemez River. The case was the latest entry in a decades-long campaign of antagonism by New Mexico — the very environment that taught Judge Verna Teller how to leverage her people’s sovereignty.

Teller, chief justice of Isleta Pueblo, grew up just south of Bernal. And like Bernal, Teller witnessed disconcerting changes in the river. Like other Isleta community members, she was unnerved by the discolored foam in the Rio. After traditional elders had to stop using water in ceremonies in the mid-1980s, they asked Teller to find out what was wrong.

“I just felt obligated to help, because I knew it wasn’t just for them,” said Teller. “It was for the whole community, and for everybody in the future — our children, our babies that weren’t born yet.”


Treated wastewater flows into the Rio Grande from Albuquerque’s Southside Water Reclamation Plant, which treats wastewater sewage, just five miles north of the Pueblo of Isleta’s boundary.
Kalen Goodluck/High Country News

“It was for the whole community, and for everybody in the future — our children, our babies that weren’t born yet.”

Before long, elders realized Teller needed to be in a position of authority to hold local and state agencies accountable. Teller was only 35 when traditional elders asked her to run for governor of Isleta Pueblo, and she faced an uphill battle, given the existing council’s gender-based discrimination. But once in office, she was able to work with various agencies, legal experts and hydrologists to establish a water-quality standard for Isleta. It took a decade of legal tussling with the city of Albuquerque, but under Teller’s guidance, in 1998, Isleta became the first tribal nation to establish water-quality standards under the Clean Water Act.

“It was all spirit,” she said. “I still really get emotional when I think about it, because it was so important to us. As mortals, as humans, we don’t realize sometimes how powerful spirit is. They come to your aid when you need it.”


The Rio Grande flowing underneath a bridge on U.S. 550 in Bernalillo, New Mexico, in late November 2021.
Kalen Goodluck/High Country News

Over the years, however, alleged violations by the city have rarely been punished by federal agencies. And as Teller pushes for Isleta’s government to use its regulations to hold New Mexico accountable, others, like Phoebe Suina, also work to ensure that the pueblos keep fighting for their rights to the river and for the Rio’s water quality.

Suina, who hails from the Pueblos of San Felipe and Cochiti, is a hydrologist by training and the owner of High Water Mark, an Indigenous-women-led environmental consulting company that focuses on water-resources engineering. “We really need to address the water quality along with the water quantity in this very rigid, restricted framework,” Suina said. Like Teller and Bernal, Suina is still grappling with the overarching question that has defined every facet of this struggle: Is adjudication — going to court to obtain a more permanent answer on water rights and quantification — the best way to strengthen Indigenous water rights? And if not, what long-term strategy should the Pueblo nations pursue to achieve justice, given the flexibility that climate change is going to demand?


Phoebe Suina (Pueblos of San Felipe and Cochiti) at Alameda Open Space, on the Rio Grande. “Science has said, ‘A majority of what you are made of, a majority of what I am made of, is water.’ So what we’re talking about in terms of water rights, it is you, it is me.”
Kalen Goodluck/High Country News



The Rio Grande as seen from Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the Middle Rio Grande region. Quantifying water rights through litigation or settlement is a lengthy process, one that could easily outlast our lifetime, according to Richard Hughes, an Indian law and civil litigation attorney. What it could mean, if adjudicated, is that the rights of the Middle Rio Grande pueblos would finally be defined — inarguably — as superior to non-Native entities and governments. “It would completely turn the whole water-rights situation in the basin on its head,” Hughes said.
Kalen Goodluck/High Country News

“How do you have an agreement that you cannot live up to?”

“Even today, without the whole complexity of the prior paramount water users and water-right holders — even without all that, just with (the 1938 Rio Grande Compact) — (New Mexico) cannot live up to that agreement because of the drought,” Suina said, citing the ongoing litigation between Texas and New Mexico over water. “How do you have an agreement that you cannot live up to?”

For now, the question facing all sides involved in this complex, constantly shifting situation is painfully simple. Teller put it best: “Do we want the courts to settle it? Or do we want to settle it by working together?”

Kalen Goodluck is a reporter and photographer based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He comes from the Diné, Mandan, Hidatsa and Tsimshian tribes.

Christine Trudeau, Prairie Band Potawatomi, is a contributing editor for the Indigenous Affairs desk at High Country News, and the Indigenous Investigative Collective’s COVID-19 project managing editor. Follow her on Twitter @trudeaukwe or email her at christine.trudeau@hcn.org.

Cultural extraction at the edge of the abyss

Butte, Montana, doesn’t have a major art museum.

Instead, it has a gigantic toxic pit.

Kathleen McLaughlin
Image credit: Julia Lubas/High Country News

PERSPECTIVE

Jan. 14, 2022

Before the sun rises over Butte, Montana, on cold winter mornings when the air is still and dark, the sounds of shotgun blasts and air sirens pierce the quiet — ceaseless reminders of the massive toxic lake left behind in the city, a monument to unchecked corporate greed.

The mile-long acidic waters of the lake, known as the Berkeley Pit, mark the site of an abandoned copper mine. In years past, migrating birds have landed on the deadly lake and died by the thousands. For now and the foreseeable future, the solution lies in using noise to frighten away flocks of snow geese and other waterfowl before they land. The Atlantic Richfield Co. created this environmental catastrophe when it ceased mining the 1,600-foot-deep open-pit mine, which had been one of the world’s biggest copper producers, in 1982, nearly a century after it began. When the company stopped mining, it shut off the groundwater pumps at the pit. That allowed water to flow through the honeycomb of underground mine tunnels that weave beneath Butte, filling the pit and creating today’s lethal lake.

In recent years, officials have used federal Superfund dollars to sculpt and reshape the hills in town, concealing the greenish waters of the pit from view. People who want a glimpse must first pay the city a few dollars to walk down a long tunnel that leads to a platform overlooking the eerie stew. An audio recording of a former Chamber of Commerce leader extols the virtues of mining and Butte’s own historic role in feeding an insatiable demand for copper through two world wars.

It is impossible to live in Butte and forget about the Berkeley Pit. Yet people who don’t live here remain oddly fascinated by it and feel compelled to remind those of us who do that it exists. Nowhere is this more evident than in a collective global art project, inspired by horror at Butte’s big open scar, meant to expose the perils of industrial degradation of natural landscapes. The project, “EXTRACTION: Art on the Edge of the Abyss,” opened last summer, but not here. Instead, it debuted in a multi-story art museum 121 miles away in the wealthier, larger city of Missoula.

Since then, more than 60 venues across the U.S., Canada and Mexico have hosted exhibits of work by hundreds of artists: photographs, paintings, sculptures and other pieces in a variety of mediums about the perils of extractive industries. Sam Pelts, a founding organizer of the project, said its larger goals are not specifically about Butte, even though the city’s image has crept into shows as far away as Phoenix and New York. Rather, the collective is meant to inspire communities to approach environmental problems locally. “All the environmental and climate crises we’re facing right now — all of those problems are downstream from this larger cultural problem that we have, which is humanity’s inability to conceive of natural resources as anything but things to be plundered,” Pelts said.

Still, he said, skipping Butte was a mistake, and the project finally opened a small show in a gallery here in December. Organizers initially told me they couldn’t find a place to host the art in Butte, adding that the city’s politics are “bad”: although the community consistently votes Democrat, it’s also pro-mining. And, in one instance, a composer wanted his piece for violin and chamber orchestra, described as “written in response to the horrific impact of the Berkeley Pit,” to be performed in Butte. But he couldn’t get permission to stage it on the edge of the pit — a dangerous toxic lake surrounded by potentially unstable land. The work debuted in Seattle instead.

It appears that the initial decision to skirt around Butte made it easier to talk about the place and its problems from the outside, rather than engaging the community that actually lives with the mess. It’s cultural extraction in action — taking away bits of history and community without providing any context for it.

Julia Lubas/High Country News
It’s cultural extraction in action — taking away bits of history and community without providing any context for it.

While the fascination with Butte’s big catastrophe lingers, in many ways it has begun to feel dated, a tired refrain giving way to newer, bigger problems. Today in the Mountain West, most people are more worried about making enough money so they can afford to live here than they are about natural resource extraction. Montana’s population, barely a million people, grew by 18,000 people from July 2020 to July 2021, a rate second in the nation only to Idaho and tied with Utah. That population boom has not been accompanied by a boom in well-paid jobs. It has, however, ratcheted up the price of living here. Meanwhile, there’s almost no political will to mitigate the resulting housing crisis and keep communities from splintering.

Butte, for nearly a century the heart of economic and political power in Montana, sits quietly in the geographic middle of the state’s new upheaval: gentrification spreading like an unchecked prairie fire through Montana and the wider West.

Eighty miles southeast, in Bozeman, dozens of people live in a makeshift town of camp trailers and tents that sprang up on the edge of the city as workers were priced out by the pandemic housing rush. The city has fallen victim to its own popularity, with median home prices rising last year to over $700,000, while the median income hovers around $55,000 a year. And that’s if you can find a house to buy at all.

To the northwest, in Missoula, a recent development debacle in the heart of downtown highlights the city’s path toward wealth and exclusivity. Last year, the local newspaper sold its riverfront building to California- and Utah-based developers, who revealed plans to build high-end condos and retail spaces. When residents pushed back, one of the developers excoriated critics on social media, in one instance saying the project is “not for Missoulians.”

Surrounded on all sides by wealth-driven, community-eroding development, Butte’s pace still feels normal, almost quaint. The grand brick buildings of its historic uptown have been bought up, but many remain empty, awaiting unknown futures. The city of 36,000 stalwarts stays tightly knit. The town might be pockmarked, but it remains intact, for now.

It is an untenable choice to have to make: Either live beside toxic waste that inspires cultural extraction and will never be fixed, or else live in economic precarity fueled by a suffocating wave of gentrification. But for now, it’s what we have.

Kathleen McLaughlin is a journalist and writer who lives in Butte, Montana. Follow her on Twitter @kemc.