‘Sometimes we hear the voices of children playing there’

Spirits of children buried at boarding schools provoke reckoning in Oklahoma and beyond


Rachel Mowatt, a special project manager for the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, peers in July 2022 through a mural painted by Navajo-Euchee artist Steven Grounds on a wall of the now-closed Concho Indian Boarding School near El Reno, Oklahoma, which closed in 1983. Mowatt, of the Comanche and Delaware Nations, gave ICT a tour of the school ground, which was one of more than 75 Indigenous boarding schools operated in Oklahoma. (Photo by Mary Annette Pember/ICT)

WARNING: This story has disturbing details about residential and boarding schools. If you are feeling triggered, here is a resource list for trauma responses from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition in the US. The National Indian Residential School Crisis Hotline in Canada can be reached at 1-866-925-4419.

MARY ANNETTE PEMBER
AUG 18, 2022

ICT

EL RENO, Oklahoma — The remains of the Concho Indian Boarding School have an aura of a long-past apocalypse that mysteriously snuffed out an ancient civilization.

Outlines of sidewalks and streets are barely visible through the densely wooded forest floor, and an old pedestrian bridge with rusty railings crosses a stream that leads to the abandoned site along the North Canadian River.

Built in 1903, the school served children from the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes whose lands are centered in the town of El Reno in central Oklahoma.

Many of them never went home.

“They tell us that’s where the children are buried,” said Rachel Mowatt, a special project manager for the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, pursing her lips, Native-style, in a gesture toward a small hill.

“Sometimes we hear the voices of children playing there.”

The tree-covered hill sits about a quarter mile away from the old school. Located near the wide fields of cut grass that surround the tribe’s administration buildings, it stands alone like a tiny, wild island.

“We’re instructed not to disturb that area,” said Mowatt, of the Comanche and Delaware tribes, who took ICT on a tour of the site in July.

Rachel Mowatt, special project manager for the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, tours the grounds of the old Concho Indian Boarding School in July 2022, including the remnants of an old bridge built in the early 1900s. The school, in El Reno, Oklahoma, was built in the 1903 and closed in 1983. It was one of more than 75 Indian boarding schools that operated in Oklahoma. 

(Photo by Mary Annette Pember/ICT)

Although unmarked, the little hill commands attention. According to traditional Cheyenne and Arapaho beliefs, spirits of the dead require certain rights and ceremonies in order to be put to rest properly.

“No one ever performed traditional burial rights for these children; they deserve that today,” said Gordon Yellowman, director of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes’ language and culture program.

“Not all of the schools had formal cemeteries but they all had some place where they buried their dead,” he said.

Oklahoma — which had more Indigenous boarding schools than any other state — stands as a microcosm for the U.S., where more than 400 Indian boarding schools once dotted the country.

Some of the 76 Indian boarding schools in Oklahoma operated for 10 years or less, closing in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. Most were originally founded by Christian missionaries and were later taken over by the federal government.

Indeed, the spirits of generations of children, many unnamed, are buried on the grounds of Oklahoma’s boarding schools, lost and endlessly traveling the earth in search of rest, Yellowman said.

It is a ghostly history that continues to haunt the U.S., calling out for recognition and reckoning.

Life at Concho

Walking through the dense underbrush was slow going in the oppressive July heat, and the sound of insects thrummed loudly in a place that seemed nearly wholly subsumed by nature.

But Concho Indian Boarding School is not part of an ancient civilization. There are people alive today who attended the school, people who still hold memories of their lives there.

It was not so long ago that Native children of the 39 tribes that were moved to Oklahoma by the federal government with the enactment of the 1830 Indian Relocation Act were coerced into attending boarding schools.


Erma Jean Brown, 89, Cheyenne, graduated in 1951 from the old Concho Indian Boarding School in El Reno, Oklahoma. She said her experience was mixed but she was determined to make something of herself. 

(Photo by Mary Annette Pember/ICT)

Erma Jean Brown of the Arapaho tribe graduated from the Concho school in 1951. She is now 89 years old and lives in Clinton, Oklahoma, about 50 miles west of the school.

“I’d say it was 50 percent good and 50 percent not-so-good,” Brown said, in describing her years at Concho.

At age 6, she was dropped off at the school by her grandmother. She remained there, off and on, for 12 years until she graduated.

“There were over 200 kids there and I didn’t know a single one; kids cried when their parents dropped them off but the parents didn’t come back,” Brown said.

She recalled her friend Edith, a pretty girl, who was raped by the school’s baker.

Brown encouraged Edith to report the assault. “They (school administrators) said she just made it up; there was a lot of cruelty there. That’s the honest-to-God truth,” she said.

“They just talked awful to you there. You didn’t get a feeling of love or caring. It was just cold.”

But as bad as it was, Concho was better than home where her mother’s drinking and revolving door of predatory boyfriends made life impossible.

“As I got older, I decided it was better to stay there but I thought, ‘I’m going to get out of here and do something with my life,’” Brown said.

A gym teacher at the school recognized Brown’s athleticism and encouraged her to compete in sports, which improved her confidence.

After Concho, Brown earned training as a drug and alcohol counselor, later working at Chemawa School in Oregon.

“I just loved the kids there and I think they loved me, too, because I treated them like humans,” she said.

Demanding acknowledgement

By the second half of the 20th century, Indian boarding schools had become ingrained, for better or worse, in the Native experience in the U.S.

In later years, the schools began placing less emphasis on destroying Native culture and assimilating students into mainstream America and more on supporting them where they were.

But a vestige of the inhumanity underlying the original destructive blueprint guiding boarding school policies lingers on, even for those who value their days at contemporary schools.

This undated historical photo shows the pedestrian bridge at the old Concho Indian Boarding School in El Reno, Oklahoma. A version of the bridge remained in July 2022.(Photo via Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes)

For Mowatt, who graduated as valedictorian from Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, Oklahoma, in 1997, the experience was transformative.

It was at Riverside that she connected with her culture and gained a sense of community among other Native students.

“I wasn’t brought up in my culture,” she said. “Riverside opened doors to my Native identity.”

Even in such a positive environment, however, Mowatt was compelled to explore the grounds of the school, in search of something she couldn’t name.

Mowatt recalled an incident when she was walking behind the school’s gym building. A little boy appeared out of nowhere, running past her and a group of friends.

“We didn’t recognize him,” she said. “He was wearing leggings and had long hair, unlike the other boys at the school. He ran into our dorm building.”

Entering the dorm, she asked the matron if she’d seen the little boy; she hadn’t. All the children were accounted for.

“I believe he was a spirit,” Mowatt said. “It haunts me to know he was running for his life from the school.”

A new Concho school was built in 1968; its buildings are located about a quarter-mile from the school’s original site.

The rebuilt school was described as “a new exemplary Indian school” in a 1968 Bureau of Indian Affairs press release. In addition to preparing students for “a productive and self-sustaining life in American society,” the school was intended to support the role Native culture can play in providing students with a sense of “personal identification and belonging.”

The new Concho school, however, closed in 1983, due to a decrease in enrollment and federal funding.

The buildings from that era remain. The old campus – its dorms and classrooms – stands in the middle of large fields of grass, strangely isolated from nearby tribal buildings.

The original construction included the use of asbestos, so the campus is officially off-limits to the public until it can be safely razed, Mowatt said.

In 2014, Steven Grounds, an artist of the Navajo and Yuchee tribes, painted murals on the school’s decaying walls.

Murals on the rear side of the abandoned Concho Indian Boarding School in El Reno, Oklahoma, were painted by Steven Grounds of the Navajo and Euchee tribes.

 (Photo by Mary Annette Pember/ICT)

The work is a series of huge portraits, some depicting famous Indigenous people such as Chief Black Kettle and Suzan Shown Harjo, both citizens of the Northern Cheyenne tribe.

Other portrayals are unknown, but all share a poignant quality, at once elegiac and celebratory.

Bold and unapologetic, the images seem to demand acknowledgement.

A reckoning

So far, efforts to commemorate and reconcile Oklahoma’s boarding school past have been scattered, Yellowman said.

In 2021, the Catholic Diocese of Tulsa and Eastern Oklahoma launched the Oklahoma Native Schools project. Catholic entities operated 11 of the Indian boarding schools in the state from 1880 to 1965. The Diocese, according to its website, is working to create a report that “seeks to understand the history of Catholic Indian boarding schools in Oklahoma.”

Bryan Rindfleisch, associate professor of history at Marquette University, a Catholic school in Milwaukee, is conducting research into the Diocese’s archives kept in the university’s special collection.

At the former site of the Chilocco Indian School in Newkirk, Oklahoma, the Chilocco National Alumni Association has maintained the school’s cemetery since the late 1990s in efforts to honor students who died there.

Jim and Charmain Baker, former students at Chilocco, told Enid News that they have found dozens of graves dating between 1884 and 1937 at the school through research and use of ground-penetrating radar. The Chilocco school closed in 1980.

In an interview with ICT, Max Bear, the tribal historic preservation officer for the Cheyenne Arapaho Tribes, said that the tribes purchased a ground-penetrating radar unit in 2018 in order to search for graves at several boarding school locations in the region near the tribe’s headquarters in El Reno.

The pandemic, however, stalled plans for staff training on the machine. Bear hopes to get started on finding and identifying graves again soon.

Yellowman would like to see denominations that operated schools create an educational fund for tribes.

“Reparations are needed; this would be something Native people could use as a tangible resource,” he said.

Yellowman also envisions a traditional ceremony for the children who died at the schools.

“All of these decisions about reparations and ceremonies will have to be made collectively by the tribes,” he said.

As of now, Yellowman said, “Those children’s spirits are lost; they don’t know where to go.”



BY MARY ANNETTE PEMBER
a citizen of the Red Cliff Ojibwe tribe, is a national correspondent for ICT.

Canada’s ‘Arctic Rose’ Susan Aglukark continues epic journey

Award-winning Inuit musician recognized with Humanitarian Award 

Susan Aglukark is the most celebrated Inuit musical artist in Canadian history, having won four Juno Awards in 11 nominations since the release of her debut album, "Arctic Rose, in the early 1990s.

 (Photo courtesy of Susan Aglukark)

MILES MORRISSEAU
AUG 16, 2022
ICT

Susan Aglukark is the most celebrated Inuit musical artist in Canadian history but it was her work off the stage that was recognized at the 2022 Juno Awards, the nation’s annual celebration of music.

The three-time Juno winner received the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences’ Humanitarian Award for her charitable work with the Arctic Rose Foundation, which she founded in 2012 as the Arctic Rose Project to support arts-based programming for Inuit, First Nations and Métis youth in Canada’s north.

It was an honor not just for her work but for the foundation’s success in promoting Indigenous-led programs that integrate language and culture while encouraging emotional and mental wellness.

“The Humanitarian Award presented by Music Canada is a very special one,” she told ICT recently. “It's been a real acknowledgement of the work we've been doing.”

Related story:
—Indigenous artists shine in 2022 Juno Awards

Aglukark joins a stellar list of Canadian musicians to win the Humanitarian Award, including Buffy Sainte-Marie, Bryan Adams, Neil Young, and the bands Rush and Arcade Fire.

She also won the first-ever Aboriginal Achievement Award in Arts & Entertainment and the Canadian Country Music Association’s Vista Rising Star Award, and was presented the Officer of the Order of Canada Award in 2004. In 2016, she received the Governor General’s Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award.

‘Canadians are listening’

Aglukark has been speaking out on the challenges facing Indigenous youth from the north since the beginning of her career.

She first came onto the Canadian music scene in 1992 with her single, “Arctic Rose,” one of the first songs to take on the difficult subject of Indigenous suicide. She would hit mainstream success in 1995 with her album, “This Child” and the single, “O Siem.”

“O Siem” reached number one on the Canadian Adult Contemporary charts and on the Canadian Country Tracks chart, and peaked at number 3 on the pop charts – the first and only time an Indigenous artist had reached those levels.

She took home her first two Junos that year for her “Arctic Rose” album – for Best New Artist and Best Aboriginal Recording, a category that has since been renamed to Indigenous Music Album of the Year.

With the release of her second album, “This Child,” the next year, she received Juno nominations for all major categories – Best Female Singer, Best Video, Best Single and Album of the Year – but did not bring home a win. In 2004, she took home the Juno Best Aboriginal Recording for her album, “Big Feeling.”

Her latest album, “The Crossing,” was released in April to rave reviews. It was recorded with Chad Irschick, who produced her triple-Platinum-selling album, “This Child.”

“Susan Aglukark is one artist you need to pay attention to on so many levels; spiritually, musically, morally,” according to a review of the new album in Record World International.

“We all need to learn, and the music is a way to take us on that path.”

Aglukark believes that in this age of reconciliation the mainstream public is ready to hear more than just the music.

“All Canadians are listening,” she said. “In my experience, many have always supported [us]. So they've always wanted to know, “How do we advance artists? How do we advance music? How do we advance all this other work that is going on?” I would say in the last 10 years, it's been happening, so it's exciting to see.

“We have a generation of artists who are fearlessly and very boldly advocating, but also loving their careers,” she said.

Learning to dream

When Aglukark was growing up in Arviat, Nunavut, the idea of becoming a singer/songwriter was not even considered. In an Orwellian twist, the very system that crushed the spirit of the people had also replaced their dreams.

“We live and work within our communities, within the restrictions of those communities,” she said. “We rely on government to have a decent income, career and pension. So everybody wants that really great government job to have all these things. We don't nurture dreamers.”

Inuit perfomer Susan Aglukark waves to the crowd as she sings on Parliament Hill in Ottawa for Canada Day celebrations on Saturday, July 1, 2006. Aglukark is the most celebrated Inuit musical artist in Canadian history, having won four Juno Awards in 11 nominations since the release of her debut album, "Arctic Rose, in the early 1990s.

 (AP Photo/CP, Jonathan Hayward)

Aglukark had to leave home at a young age to attend the Sir John Franklin High School in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, nearly 700 miles away. She then left in 1990 for Canada’s capital city of Ottawa when she was offered a one-year job with Indian Affairs as a communications coordinator.

“When I moved away, I had a lot to learn, just living in Ottawa, and very quickly, it became opportunities in the arts,” she said.

She stumbled into performing arts after a poem she had written about students searching for identity was put to music and used for a music video, she told CBC Radio in May.

The song took off, encouraging her to continue writing songs. Then came the “Arctic Rose” album.

Her work has addressed the legacy of trauma and violence in her community and in her life.

She has spoken out against violence against children, and said she was abused at eight years old by a neighbor who lured her into his home. The neighbor, Norman Ford, was convicted in the 1980s for abusing Aglukark and others, but he spent only six months of his 18-month sentence behind bars, according to CBC News.

Aglulkark identified him in a public meeting of the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women in Rankin Inlet in 2018, when Ford was sentenced on additional charges of sexual abuse. His name will remain on Canada's national sex offender registry until 2038.

Her online biography also refers to a period in 1998, when “she was suffering from postpartum depression and found herself in a dark place in need of time to reflect and heal.”

She began a healing journey that focused on her own people, as she “learned more about her culture and the strength and resilience of the Inuit who have been on this land for over 5,000 years.”

The Arctic Rose Foundation now works with young people, providing mental health support through an after-school program that uses expressive arts.

A new album

Her latest album is a cross-section of the things that make Aglukark a true iconoclast.

The title track begins with the words, “across the Bering Strait we came,” which is a challenge to a long-standing Pan-Indigenous perspective that the Bering Strait theory is a false narrative that disrespects not only Indigenous creation stories but the growing archaeological evidence.

“I think it's important when we talk about Indigenous groups in Canada, that there are three distinct Indigenous groups in Canada – there's the Inuit, there's the First Nations, and there's the Métis,” she said.

The connection among Inuit peoples across the north is much more evident across the Bering Strait and around the circumpolar region, she said.

“It’s in the clothing,” she said. “You can trace ancestors through the way that we harvest, the way that we hunt, the way that we prepare food. We can trace connections by language, so there are common words from Alaska across to Greenland and in Nain and Labrador. We have these common connections that are the first kind of pieces that connect us.”

She continued, “And then there are stories, so we talk about myths and traditional storytelling, and we have those … and each region will have its own take on it or their own way of doing it, but they're all similar.”

In addition to songs with her folk-influenced style, the album includes one with a swinging jazz sound that is also sung in Inuktitut. The song, “Tikitaummata,” has an infectious quality reminiscent of the Suzanne Vega classic, “Tom’s Diner.”

The album closes off with a song, “Ataniq Qujaqiliqpagit” (“Thank You, Lord”), written by her late father, David Aglukark. Although sung in Inuktitut, it is in style and verse a gospel song.

“It was in honor of him,” she said. “He passed away a couple of years ago. So I wanted to put one of his original pieces on the album. So that's his song.”

Challenging perceptions

After 30 years in the industry, Aglukark’s musical journey continues to challenge the accepted narrative.

She is aware of the views many Indigenous peoples hold because of the history of Indian residential schools and the role of churches in oppressing them. She chooses to make the music that reflects her world view and her spirituality.

For more info

Susan Aglukark’s latest album, “The Crossing,” is available on amazon.com and on most streaming services as both singles and a full album.

“I think this is going to be one of those tense conversations we're always going to have with our fellow Indigenous, because we know the role church played during residential school,” she said. “But also many of us would not have healed enough or stayed on a healing path without faith.”

It’s a personal journey, she said.

“We talk about reconciliation,” she said. “But the question that always has burned in me is, if we are having a true reconciliation conversation, we must first correct our inner narrative. We have to correct the story inside of us.”

Award-winning career
Indigenous Canadian musician Susan Aglukark has been nominated 11 times and won four Juno Awards, the Canadian equivalent of the American Grammy Awards, including the 2022 Humanitarian Award:
Juno Awards
*2022, Humanitarian Award
*2004, Best Aboriginal Recording, “Big Feeling”
*1995, Best Aboriginal Recording, “Arctic Rose”
*1995, Best New Solo Artist, “Arctic Rose”
Nominations
*2007, Best Aboriginal Recording, “Blood Red Earth”
*2004, Best Aboriginal Recording, “Big Feeling”
*2001, Best Aboriginal Recording, “Unsung Heroes”
*1996, Album of the Year, “This Child”
*1996, Female Vocalist of the Year
*1996, Best Aboriginal Recording, “This Child”
*1996, Single of the Year, “O Siem”
*1996, Best Video, “O Siem”

*Correction: Norman Ford, a neighbor who assaulted Susan Aglukark when she was eight years old, was convicted in the 1980s for assaulting Aglukark and others, and was convicted again in 2018 on additional charges. Details about the outcome of the allegations against him were incorrect in an earlier version of the story.


BY MILES MORRISSEAU a citizen of the Métis Nation, is a special correspondent for ICT based in the historic Métis Community of Grand Rapids, Manitoba, Canada. He reported as a national Native Affairs broadcaster for CBC Radio and is former editor-in-chief of Indian Country Today.

Alaska Native takes lead in US Congressional race
Updated: Trump-backed Alaskan candidates take second place #NativeVote22

Democrat Mary Peltola smiles at supporters after delivering remarks at a fundraiser on Aug. 12, 2022, in Juneau, Alaska. Peltola is in two races on the Aug. 16, 2022, ballot in Alaska. One is the U.S. House special election, a ranked choice election in which she is competing against Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich. The winner of that race will serve the remainder of the late U.S. Rep. Don Young's term, which ends early next year. The other race she is in is the U.S. House primary.

 (AP Photo/Becky Bohrer)


JOAQLIN ESTUS
AUG 17, 2022
ICT

In the special election to fill the remaining months in the late Don Young’s seat in Congress, Mary Peltola, Yup’ik and a Democrat, shows a lead of 6 points over Sarah Palin and almost 10 points over Nick Begich, both Republicans. That’s with 96 percent of the vote in.

Peltola has 58,614, or 38.05 percent of the votes. Sarah Palin has 49,190, or 31.93 percent, and Begich has 43,968, or 28.54 percent of the votes cast, as of 11:50 a.m. AK time.

In the primary general election for the House 2-year term, Peltola has 54,865, or 35.18 percent of the vote, followed by Palin with 48,609, or 31.17 percent, Begich at 41,815 26.81 percent and former Department of Interior Special Assistant for Indian Affairs Tara Sweeney, Inupiaq, Republican, with 5,744 or 3.68 percent of the vote

In the primary general election for the U.S. Senate, Lisa Murkowski, Republican, held her lead with 68,603, or 44.14 percent of the votes cast in her favor. Following her is Kelly Tshibaka, Republican, with 61,972, or 39.87 percent of the vote. Third is Patricia Chesbro, Democrat, with 9,612 or 6.18 percent of the votes.

Earlier story:

A Yup’ik woman is in the lead to fill out the term in Alaska’s sole Congressional seat with 80 percent of the vote counted.

Votes are being tallied in both a special election and a primary in a regularly scheduled election in Alaska. The special election is to fill the remaining months of the late Congressman Don Young’s term.

Mary Peltola, who is Yup’ik, is in the lead in the special election. Peltola, a Democrat and former state legislator, has 38.38 percent of the votes. Former Republican governor and Trump-backed candidate Sarah Palin has 32.59 percent. Republican businessman Nick Begich has 29.03 percent.

However, ranked choice voting could put either Palin or Begich in the lead once second choice votes are counted. As FiveThirtyEight news election analyst Nathanel Rakich commented, second choice votes may favor Peltola.

“With only a few points separating Palin and Begich for second place, that’ll be a really important race to watch as more votes are counted in the coming days, Rakich said. If Palin finishes third, she’ll be eliminated and her support will probably overwhelmingly go to Begich, likely leading to his election. But if Begich finishes third, his support will probably split more evenly between Palin and Peltola, possibly pushing Peltola over 50 percent if she is close enough.”

Second choice votes get counted if no one candidate takes a majority, or 50 percent plus one, of the votes.

(Related: Organizers, state face hurdles to getting out Alaska Native vote - Indian Country Today)

(Related: Will the Native vote count in Alaska? - Indian Country Today)

The primary in the general election will decide who fills the next two-year term of Alaska’s sole Congressional seat. The Associated Press projects Peltola (35.05 percent), Palin (31.4 percent), and Begich (26.92 percent) will move forward to the general election in that race. Former Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Tara Sweeney, Inupiaq, took 3.57 percent of that vote.

Final results won’t be decided for two weeks, as mail-in ballots get counted.

Former president Donald Trump had backed Palin in the House race. His favorite in the U.S. Senate race is also in second place, after Republican Lisa Murkowski.

Murkowski took home 43.73 percent of the votes against Trump-backed candidate Kelly Tshibaka, who got 40.39 percent of the votes. Trump opposed Murkowski as one of the 10 Republican senators who voted for his second impeachment.

Numbers are per the Division of Elections count at 1:55 a.m. Aug. 17.


BY JOAQLIN ESTUS
Joaqlin Estus, Tlingit, is a national correspondent for Indian Country Today. Based in Anchorage, Alaska, she is a longtime journalist. Follow her on Twitter @estus_m or email her at jestus@ictnews.org .

Scientists scramble to explain why Alaska wild salmon stocks are low

Crash has been tied to a changing climate

Sophie Beans in her now-empty smokehouse. Aug., 2022 (Photo by Olivia Ebertz).

Olivia Ebertz
KYUK-NPR

AUG 17, 2022

ST. MARY’S, Alaska – There are too few salmon right now in Alaska's Yukon River. That's making it hard for Indigenous residents to feed their families. And it's all made worse by skyrocketing prices at the grocery store.

Maggie Westlock, Yup’ik, is in a grocery store in Emmonak, a small village near the mouth of the Yukon River in western Alaska. She's picking up a few things for dinner.

“Grapes. Coleslaw. Sandwich,” Westlock commented to KYUK.

These are not the foods she and her family of eight prefer to eat. Normally, she'd be filling her freezer with wild salmon, the same staple food her Yup'ik ancestors ate for thousands of years. Now, because of a sudden and severe salmon crash, her family is forced to rely on store-bought food. Westlock picks up a small pack of ribs.

“Thirty-seven dollars and 10 cents,” Westlock said.

In the diaper aisle, things are even more dire.

“And look at these Pampers, Huggies, $84.99, one box. Expensive, I tell you.”

She doesn't end up buying the diapers or the ribs. Still, the final damage is more than $80 for just five items. Westlock is spending a lot more on food than back when she was fishing. The salmon crash has touched every Indigenous village from the Yukon River's mouth on the Bering Sea to its headwaters in British Columbia nearly 2,000 river miles away.

Smokehouse

A hundred miles upriver in the village of St. Mary's, Yup’ik elder Sophie Beans is peering into her smokehouse with her daughter, Deedee. It's empty now, but her whole street used to be filled with the sweet aroma of smoking fish.

When asked what the neighborhood would normally be like, when people were fishing, Beans replied, “Orange and smoky.”

“Yeah. Orange, full of kings and fish,” she said.

Now it looks like, “nothing.”

The Yukon's two most important salmon species are crashing. The most prized species is the big and fatty king salmon. Those have been running in low numbers for years. The other main species, chum salmon, was super abundant until just last year.

“My son Matty, one time he caught 700 chums,” Beans said. “And that's not even the kings before that.”

Scientists have been scrambling to figure out why western Alaska wild salmon stocks are crashing.

“That has been tied to a changing climate.”

That's Katie Howard, a fish biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. She says marine heatwaves have intensified in recent years. That's what's likely driving the chum crash.

“They were just bigger. They were geographically larger. And they lasted over a much, much longer period of time than is typical. It's more extreme when it happens. And the other expectation is that they may occur more often,” Howard said.

Back in the village of St. Mary’s, 11-year-old Nicole Thompson, Yup’ik, is practicing cutting fish with her mom for the first time in years.

“We cut it here, then cut at the head,” Thompson said.

Most tribal members in the village have just received a couple of donated salmon from the state. For most, it's the only taste they'll get all year. Nicole is struggling to remember exactly how to cut the fish. Her dad, Troy, says when he was his daughter's age, he already knew how because fish were so abundant and he got more practice.

“Pretty sad, though. We have to wait for fish one or two at a time. If we had a lot more I'm pretty sure she'd have it down a little quicker,” Troy Thompson, Yup’ik, said.

The salmon crash is about more than food. It's making it harder for parents to pass on Yup’ik culture to their kids.

This article was first published in KYUK.

Abortion Was Already Inaccessible on Reservation Land. Dobbs Made Things Worse.
Federal and state abortion restrictions have been interfering with tribal sovereignty for years



Protesters rally in support of abortion rights, Tuesday, May 3, 2022, in New York. 

(AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)

Emily Hofstaedter

MOTHER JONES

Since the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade in June, millions of people have faced new barriers to abortion access: increased wait times, longer distances to travel, and in many cases, an inability to access the procedure altogether. But for many Native people, especially those living on reservation land, these kinds of obstacles feel especially familiar.

“It is sad to say that we’re kind of used to these types of policies being passed and implemented,” says Krystal Curley, who is Diné and the executive director of Indigenous Lifeways, an Indigenous health and social justice group. “Now it’s the whole US that’s going to have to experience what we’ve been experiencing…and it’s traumatic.”

Native American tribes are sovereign nations that have a government-to-government relationship with the United States. Tribes have the right to make many laws on their land and for their citizens—and in theory, that right applies to making decisions about health care, including abortion. But in practice, decades of state and federal laws have limited tribal nations’ ability to provide reproductive health services, leaving Native people with disproportionate barriers to abortion access. In a post-Roe world, the obstacles to abortion access on tribal land have only gotten greater. For advocates like Curley, the ruling feels like just the latest escalation in a centuries-long attack on bodily and tribal autonomy.

“We’ve been under these genocidal policies for 500 years,” Curley says, pointing to a legacy of violence that began with the use of rape as a weapon against Native women during colonization. Since then, federal and state governments have spent decades trying to control Native people’s decisions about their families and reproductive health—from forcibly removing Indigenous children from their families to the Indian Health Service’s forced sterilization of Native women in the 1970s.

“America has always been after our natural resources, and one of the ways that you go about doing that is to target Native women, because we bring forth the next generation,” says Charon Asetoyer, executive director of the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center, who is Comanche. “If you can sterilize or control our fertility, you can control our population. The agenda is the same: harvest our natural resources.”

Today, federal government restrictions continue to limit Native people’s ability to access reproductive health services. That’s in large part because more than half of American Indian and Alaska Native people access health care through the severely underfunded Indian Health Service, which was established by a combination of treaties and legislation as partial payment for millions of acres of Native lands. Because IHS is a federal agency, the 1976 Hyde Amendment prohibits it from funding abortion. “They decide what is best for us,” says Asetoyer, who has been advocating for a repeal of the Hyde Amendment since the Obama administration. “It’s really very paternalistic.”

Although IHS is technically allowed to perform abortions in cases of rape or incest, research has found that most of its clinics don’t. The only comprehensive report on the issue is a 2002 study from Asetoyer’s group that found the IHS system performed only 25 abortions between 1976 and 2002.

Smaller reservations typically have just one IHS or tribal clinic, and on larger reservations, clinics can be spread hundreds of miles apart. For the 22 percent of Native people who live on reservations, that often means leaving tribal lands and traveling hundreds of miles to get care. Since 2020, the New Mexico-based abortion network Indigenous Women Rising has seen about one-third of its calls coming from Oklahoma, which is more than 40 percent reservation land and had some of the nation’s strictest anti-abortion laws even before Dobbs. The group has helped people travel as far as Granite City, Illinois—at least a six-hour drive from Tulsa—for an abortion, says IWR’s executive director, Rachael Lorenzo, who is Mescalero Apache, Laguna Pueblo, and Xicana. Since Dobbs, those long trips have only gotten more common for pregnant people in Oklahoma. In July, Indigenous Women Rising ran through its allotted abortion fund for the month in just three weeks. And Oklahoma is just one of several states with vast federally recognized reservations, including both Dakotas and Utah, that have enforced or are trying to enforce total abortion bans this year.

Ever since news of Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion leaked this spring, the issue of abortion on tribal lands has attracted national attention. In Oklahoma, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt warned that the state would be “watching” tribal nations, who, he claimed, are “super liberal” and will “try to set up abortion on demand.” Similarly, non-Native activists on the left have speculated that sovereign tribes could set up clinics on their land as a way to evade state abortion bans.

But in reality, no tribes have announced plans to offer “abortion on demand.” A complex web of criminal, civil, and state laws would make that an “uphill battle,” says Alex Pearl, a tribal law professor with the University of Oklahoma and enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation. Suppose that a tribe or a Planned Parenthood managed to set up an abortion clinic on reservation land without using federal funds. Under current federal law, states likely wouldn’t be able to prosecute a Native abortion provider who performed an abortion on a Native patient, Pearl says. But fewer than 0.5 percent of registered physicians in the United States are Native American. And the situation becomes more complicated when non-Native doctors and patients are involved.

That’s partly because, just days after the Dobbs decision, the Supreme Court struck a blow to tribal sovereignty with its ruling in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta. The court held that states have the authority to prosecute non-Native people for committing crimes against Native people on tribal land. That means that, in a state where abortion is criminalized, any non-Native doctor could likely be prosecuted for performing an abortion on a reservation.

Beyond that, it’s possible that states like Oklahoma could revoke doctors’ licenses for performing abortions, says Aila Hoss, a professor of health and federal Indian law at the Indiana University. Oklahoma and many other states can revoke state licenses for “unethical and unprofessional conduct,” Hoss says, including for violating criminal laws—even if the doctor isn’t convicted.

Even if tribes were to overcome the legal hurdles, it would be a mistake to take it for granted that they would want to set up clinics on their land, Pearl says. “Tribal communities are not monoliths,” he says. “There are cultural norms, religious views, that are not always going to track the American left-right, conservative-liberal political dichotomy.” Native tribes hold varying beliefs about when life begins. For some, a combination of tribal traditions and the influence of Christianity lead to the belief that life begins closer to conception. At the same time, abortion care has been a practice in many nations since time immemorial. As a Diné woman, Curley says, she grew up learning that bodily autonomy was to be respected, and that she alone should decide when to give birth. If someone needed to terminate a pregnancy, they did so in a holistic ceremony that included care before and after the abortion.

Despite the current threats to abortion access, the Native activists Mother Jones spoke with say they’re hopeful that more comprehensive reproductive care will eventually be available on tribal lands. Activists are lobbying to change laws while also revitalizing traditional maternal medical care. But “those are conversations for us as Indigenous people to have among each other without the influence or the feeling of urgency from white feminists,” says Lorenzo of Indigenous Women Rising. “And our timeline is not the same as white people. We have so much more to consider around our culture, our language, our tradition.”

Biden urged to take steps to finally get rid of Louis DeJoy

Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
August 19, 2022

Louis DeJoy (YouTube/screen grab)

More than a year and a half into President Joe Biden's first term, Louis DeJoy—a megadonor to former President Donald Trump and a villain in the eyes of progressives and many Democratic lawmakers—is still running the U.S. Postal Service.

DeJoy's staying power in the face of widespread outrage over his sabotage of postal operations and his ethics scandals, one of which spurred an FBI probe, can largely be attributed to the loyalty of the USPS Board of Governors, a majority of which has remained supportive of the postmaster general amid repeated calls for his ouster over the past two years.

While Biden lacks the authority to fire DeJoy directly, he does have the ability to alter the composition of the postal board, which can replace the postmaster general with a simple-majority vote.

As The American Prospect's David Dayen explained Wednesday, the president may soon have an opportunity to pave the way for DeJoy's removal by nominating two DeJoy opponents to postal governor spots that will be open in December, when the terms of Republican William Zollars and Democrat Donald Lee Moak—allies of the postmaster general—expire.

"Moak's presence has been one reason why DeJoy has continued in his position, despite Biden having appointed a majority of the board and all of its other Democrats," Dayen noted. "Roman Martinez, a Republican, serves as board chair, despite the fact that Republicans only hold four of the board's nine slots."

"The Postal Service Board of Governors has a requirement that only a bare majority of its members, in this case five out of nine, be affiliated with the president's own party," Dayen continued. "However, board member Amber McReynolds, whom Biden appointed in 2021, is a registered independent. Therefore, it's technically possible for Biden to replace Moak and Zollars with Democrats who align with the vast majority of the Democratic base in opposing DeJoy. That would ensure enough votes to fire DeJoy."

Earlier this month, a coalition of more than 80 advocacy organizations led by Take on Wall Street sent a letter pushing Biden to nominate replacements for Moak and Zollars who are "wholly committed to the task of protecting and expanding our Postal Service."

The 83 groups also expressed alarm over DeJoy's stated plan to "raise postage prices at 'uncomfortable rates' around the country" as part of his decadelong policy vision, which has drawn pushback from postal unions, lawmakers, and Democratic members of the USPS board.

"Additionally, numerous post office locations are set to be shuttered under his 10-year restructuring plan, potentially impacting thousands of employees during a time of economic crisis," the groups wrote. "After DeJoy's numerous failings at the helm, it is imperative that we have a strong, full, and reform-oriented Postal Board of Governors in place to hold him accountable to the true mission and public service goals of the USPS."

"This is one of the last opportunities your administration has to appoint governors to the postal board," they added.

The letter, dated August 1, was sent days after DeJoy announced his goal of slashing 50,000 positions from the Postal Service in the coming years, an effort that the 200,000-member American Postal Workers Union (APWU) condemned and vowed to fight.

"If it's management's intent to weaken our union, attack our pay and conditions, or eliminate family-sustaining union postal jobs, the [postmaster general] will get a strong fight from the APWU," Mark Dimondstein, the union's president, told Government Executive last week.

"We will oppose future job reductions that affect the lives of the postal workers we represent," Dimondstein added. "Rest assured that any such management actions will be met with [the] unbridled opposition of the APWU."

Biden's Visit 'Emboldened' Saudi Arabia to Crack Down on Dissent—Activists

BY KHALEDA RAHMAN ON 8/19/22

President Joe Biden's visit to Saudi Arabia emboldened the kingdom's leader to escalate his crackdown on dissidents, Saudi activists said.

Lina al-Hathloul and Abdullah Alaoudh, whose family members have been detained in Saudi Arabia, spoke to Newsweek after a Saudi woman studying in Britain was sentenced this week to 34 years in prison for her activity on Twitter.

Salma al-Shehab, was initially handed a six-year prison sentence after being detained in January 2021, but an appeals court raised it to 34 years followed by a 34-year travel ban.

Shehab was charged with "assisting those who seek to cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security by following their Twitter accounts" and by re-tweeting their tweets. Shehab may still be able to seek a new appeal in the case.

Al-Hathloul and Alaoudh were among those who had warned that Biden's visit to Saudi Arabia would encourage the kingdom's de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to escalate a crackdown on dissent.

Al-Hathloul said al-Shehab's harsh sentence clearly shows that the crown prince "feels emboldened, and knows he can double down on repression in all impunity."

"Salma al-Shehab's outrageous sentence might be the first of a new pattern," she warned.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, greets President Joe Biden with a fist bump after his arrival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Friday, July 15, 2022.

BANDAR ALJALOUD/SAUDI ROYAL PALACE VIA AP

Saudi Foreign Secretary Adel al-Jubeir, she said, "justified targeting dissidents and affirmed that activism and any kind of dissent is considered terrorism" moments after Biden met with the crown prince last month.

Al-Hathloul is head of monitoring and communications at London-based Saudi rights group ALQST. Her sister is prominent Saudi human rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul, who served a prison sentence and remains under a travel ban.

READ MORE

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Joe Biden's Middle East Trip Defined by Fist Bumps, Blunders and Oil Talks
Biden Should Not Have 'Rewarded' Saudi Arabia With Visit: Bernie Sanders

Abdullah Alaouda, research director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, a nonprofit organization founded by journalist Jamal Khashoggi, echoed her sentiments.

After Biden's visit, the crown prince "was emboldened to get more brutal and rogue as we expected," Alaoudh told Newsweek.

His father Salman Alodah, a prominent scholar, has been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia since 2017 after tweeting his desire for reconciliation between the kingdom and Qatar.

Al-Shehab's sentence is the "beginning of a larger wave and more brutal crackdowns," he told Newsweek. "The responsibility of this wave and victims this time falls on those who emboldened MBS and gave him all what he wanted needed to do this: legitimacy and impunity!"

A White House spokesperson told Newsweek that "exercising freedom of expression should not be criminalized."

"We continue to advocate for human rights defenders at the highest levels of government," the spokesperson added.

"As President Biden said during his visit to Jeddah, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms is a key principle of our foreign policy. And while there, the President privately and publicly underscored the United States' conviction that respect for and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms promotes stability and strengthens national security."

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, welcomes U.S. President Joe Biden to Al-Salam Palace in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, July 15, 2022.

SAUDI ROYAL PALACE VIA AP/BANDAR ALJALOUD

While running for president, Biden had vowed to treat Saudi Arabia like a "pariah" for its human rights abuses. After he became president, he refused to talk directly with the crown prince and ordered the release of a U.S. intelligence report that implicated him in Khashoggi's 2018 slaying.

In an about-face, Biden said he was traveling to the oil-rich kingdom in a bid to "reorient but not rupture" relations with a longstanding strategic partner as his administration grappled with high oil prices, driven partly by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Biden was accused of betraying Khashoggi by traveling to Saudi Arabia and criticism mounted after he greeted the crown prince with a fist-bump.

He later said he had raised Khashoggi's killing at the top of the meeting. "He basically said that he was not personally responsible for it," Biden told reporters. "I indicated that I thought he was."

Sunken WWII Nazi warship exposed as drought drops Danube water levels

The vessels were among hundreds scuttled along the Danube by Nazi Germany's Black Sea fleet in 1944 as they retreated from advancing Soviet forces.

By REUTERS
Published: AUGUST 19, 2022 

Wreckage of a World War Two Nazi German warship is seen in the Danube in Prahovo, Serbia August 18, 2022.
(photo credit: Fedja Grulovic/Reuters)

Europe's worst drought in years has pushed the mighty river Danube to one of its lowest levels in almost a century, exposing the hulks of dozens of explosives-laden German warships sunk during World War Two near Serbia's river port town of Prahovo.

The vessels were among hundreds scuttled along the Danube by Nazi Germany's Black Sea fleet in 1944 as they retreated from advancing Soviet forces, and still hamper river traffic during low water levels.

A serious danger to shipping and fishing in Serbia, Romania

However, this year's drought - viewed by scientists as a consequence of global warming - has exposed more than 20 hulks on a stretch of the Danube near Prahovo in eastern Serbia, many of which still contain tonnes of ammunition and explosives and pose a danger to shipping.

"The German flotilla has left behind a big ecological disaster that threatens us, people of Prahovo."Velimir Trajilovic

"The German flotilla has left behind a big ecological disaster that threatens us, people of Prahovo," said Velimir Trajilovic, 74, a pensioner from Prahovo who wrote a book about the German ships.

Workers in the local fishing industry are also at risk, including from Romania which lies just across the river.

Wreckage of a World War Two Nazi German warship is seen in the Danube in Prahovo, Serbia August 18, 2022. (credit: Fedja Grulovic/Reuters)

Drought and heat waves draining Europe's vital waterways

Months of drought and record-high temperatures have snarled river traffic on vital arteries in other parts of Europe, including Germany, Italy and France. In Serbia, the authorities have resorted to dredging to keep navigation lanes on the Danube open.

By Prahovo, some of the hulks have narrowed the navigable section on this stretch of the Danube to just 100 meters (330 feet) from 180 meters.

Strewn across the riverbed, some of the ships still boast turrets, command bridges, broken masts and twisted hulls, while others lie mostly submerged under sand banks.

In March, the Serbian government invited a tender for the salvage of the hulks and removal of ammunition and explosives. The cost of the operation was estimated at 29 million euros ($30 million).

NEW ZEALAND 

Ex-Celebration Church members believe 'deliverance' harmed them

A former Celebration member believes deliverance - the Pentecostal equivalent of exorcism - has been used to replace counselling, medical care, and even law enforcement at the controversial church. Others say the experience of having a demon 'cast out' made them physically ill or left them psychologically damaged.

Sam Olley, Reporter
@OlleySamantha Samantha.Olley@rnz.co.nz

3 Aug 2022

LONG READ


Celebration pastor Murray Watkinson says he has always thrived on a little bit of opposition. 

Photo: Youtube / Celebration Church TV

She remembers him telling the congregation there was a demon inside her. That her cheeks burned red as he shouted in tongues into the microphone, speakers booming his voice to hundreds of followers in the auditorium. Beneath the stage lights, his spit spattered her face.

Megan* has uncomfortable memories of him grabbing her head tightly and ordering the demon to "be gone". Church leaders circled her, with raised hands, praying for the crying, shaking girl to be 'saved'. She felt hot and dizzy. She was eight.

Megan, now an adult, says it was Celebration Centre Church pastor Murray Watkinson who performed the deliverance: a Pentecostal equivalent of exorcism.

She describes the process as "emotional torture" and says it left her ashamed and shell-shocked. She spent the rest of her childhood wondering if the demon still clung to her.

Megan is one of numerous former Celebration members who independently contacted RNZ to claim deliverance left them psychologically damaged - the latest in a series of allegations levelled at the church, based in eastern Christchurch.

In recent months, ex-members have called it "toxic", "hurtful" and "extreme". They claim they were manipulated and exploited. Some say they gave dozens of hours of unpaid work and hundreds of dollars in monthly tithes for years - all to support the church trusts and businesses (including childcare centres and a cafe), and all exempt from tax in New Zealand under the Charities Act.

Read more
Celebration Church leader accused of hate speech and exploitation breaks silence

Ex-church members want Celebration Centre charity deregistered

'A toxic environment': Former Celebration Church members felt exploited

One former member says he and his wife gave 12,500 hours over seven years. Another says they cannot afford a house because they tithed their savings.

Even as Arise and Gloriavale churches face a swathe of negative publicity, Charities Services says it has received more complaints about Celebration than any other charity in the past five years.

Megan's voice still wavers when she speaks about deliverance at Celebration. She is infuriated when she sees the church's social media posts encouraging youth to join.

She has "pretty screwed-up" recollections of congregation leaders telling her to convert her entire family to Christianity or they would "burn in hell".

"It was absolutely terrifying. I would just have nightmares about that, I remember just going into intense panic. To put an eight-year-old through that, it was horrific."

She says Celebration members called her non-Christian mother a "witch".

"It was dark and f*****d up."

'Hocus pocus'

When Russell Kirkpatrick attended Celebration it smelled of astringent chemicals. Pastor Murray Watkinson set up the place-of-worship in remodelled buildings at a former chemical factory site in Wainoni, during the late Eighties and early Nineties. Kirkpatrick considered the buildings "brutalist but efficient".

He was Watkinson's second-in-command, but he believes Watkinson steered the evangelical assembly further and further towards Pentecostalism. Kirkpatrick became dismayed by what he saw as "ludicrous extremes" and "hocus pocus".

Russell Kirkpatrick has felt intense regret over his involvement with Celebration Church Photo: Cat Sparks

He is now talking over Zoom from Canberra, where these days he's an award-winning fantasy author, a "radical leftie" and a geography lecturer, with office walls covered in maps and an email address containing the term 'mapboy'. He adjusts his position in his chair and pauses.

"I've been waiting for this for 25 years. I knew eventually this was all going to come to people's attention."

Inside the former factory, deliverance began to happen regularly, and Kirkpatrick was increasingly worried. People's private struggles became public in church.

Those undergoing deliverance, at the altar, were commonly told they had a spirit of abortion, or homosexuality, in front of the congregation, he says. Sometimes those people had secretly had abortions or same-sex relationships, but other times they were random accusations that fellow churchgoers had relayed to pastor Watkinson.

Kirkpatrick believes, for some, the rituals replaced counselling, medical care, and even law enforcement.

Women who had been beaten were told to deal with it in-house, with deliverance, and not go to the police, he claims. People bereaved by sudden, traumatic death were told the church's cleansing - rather than grief counselling - would ease their pain.

Kirkpatrick recalls preaching that told vulnerable churchgoers that problems like mental illness and sexual violence came from an external force - "some sort of demon that's attracted that behaviour to you, and so you're the one that needs deliverance". He felt repulsed.

He believes the motives were sometimes racist; for example, he claims Watkinson told churchgoers Māori who expressed whētero (protruding the tongue) allowed evil spirits to enter their mouth.

Other times, he believes, the motives were misogynistic.

He alleges Watkinson confided that "a woman he [Watkinson] counselled who made him feel sexually aroused, [and] that was her fault, not his, because she had a spirit, a spirit of lust".

His answer to that?

"She needed deliverance."

Kirkpatrick felt the practice was also an "insidious" means to silence female abuse victims.

On more than one occasion, he says, when a man confessed to abusing his wife, the woman's "obedience" was questioned and she was pressured into deliverance. He saw it as "a way of the church avoiding having to actually deal with anybody's issues. It's awful. It's horrific".

He eventually left but wishes he had done so earlier. Now 61, he has felt deep, intense regret for decades.

"Their [Celebration followers'] lives, are, basically f*****d up by this kind of teaching. And I'm incredibly sorry that I wasn't together enough myself, to be able to give people a hand."

Murray Watkinson says Celebration is getting 'special attention' from the media because it is a 'special church' 

Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon

Kirkpatrick understands why Celebration parishioners become so dedicated to the church and the intense worship, because he's been there. He says he dove deeply into conservative Christianity as a teen, dazed by a difficult relationship with his father and yearning for unconditional love.

"That's what I felt the church gave me; God was going to love me no matter what."

When Kirkpatrick went through deliverance, the "oppressive" drama made him feel deeply uncomfortable, especially when he was "Slain in the Spirit".

He thought it was a "sham".

"When the preacher of power lays their hands on you, you're supposed to fall over, you're knocked over by the power of the Holy Spirit. Well, of course, if you don't, then you're considered to be in rebellion."

He cringed when church members spoke in tongues. He thought it had "no purpose other than to psychologically bind you to the church because you were doing something crazy."

People wail and collapse

It has been 25 years since Kirkpatrick left Celebration, but videos of services posted online recently, show the church continues to practice 'deliverance ministry' en masse, in 'altar calls'.

Each time, preachers walk down from a violet and pale blue stage to a crowd, speaking a combination of tongues and English, raising their voices and quickening their speech as they push down vigourously on attendees' heads and necks one by one.

People wail and collapse on each other. Some convulse and scream.

In May, the self-described Hastings-based 'apostle' Mike Connell, led deliverance at a Celebration family service in Christchurch. With Murray Watkinson by his side, he shouted "demons will flush out", rocking and chopping his hand from his chest to his legs for emphasis.

He leaned on the altar and told the congregation, "The thing that people that don't know is [sic] when you stand up in a leadership role in the Holy Ghosts' church is the level of Jezebelic witchcraft and warfare that comes against you."

He alternated between New Zealand and American accents, and declared, with his right hand in the air, "a breaking of all witchcraft assignments".

On Connell's website, under a photo of him wearing dark aviator sunglasses, is a blurb stating he "sets people free from an orphan mindset".

He claims to have "seen many thousands of people trained and equipped to move in the Spirit and minister healing and deliverance".

Connell's approach was less radical than that of Celebration's Rarotongan-based pastor Jonathan Cargill, who has also led deliverance in Ōtautahi.

In a Celebration conference last year he ordered churchgoers to "get a cough going" so he could "command the spirit powers to come out".

"We are going to dislodge some stuff," he added, bending over to demonstrate. "We are going to clean up a bit of a mess and we are going to drive [out] the demonic."

"I take authority over rebellion, in Jesus' name and over immorality. I take authority over every homosexual spirit, in the name of Jesus Christ, I take authority of every unclean demon."

Cargill then scanned the room and called for "spirits of abortion get off". Murray Watkinson paced in the background.

Attendees were stooped, rocking, their chests tensed and jolted. Their shoulders rose and fell as they pushed out coughs.

Cargill pushed their heads down. He pointed at random faces shouting "Ooshakalaba out you come". Some people shrieked back.

Cargill continued to shout through the microphone.

"Get out your homosexual spirit. Lose your hold lesbian spirit, out you get, in Jesus Christ's name. Immortality, vileness, filth: Go."

He continued for 40 minutes.

Sarah* was there for that altar call. It left her physically ill. It was the combination of prolonged pressure on her forehead, the emotional upset and the coughing.

"I've actually got to the point where I vomited. You're like screaming on the floor. You've just got yourself into such a state."

She claims others would throw up too. She recalls some Celebration parishioners talking in strange voices that scared her and that some flailed about "literally gnashing" and had to be physically restrained.

She says she first underwent deliverance as a devoted 18-year-old completing a weekend-long youth camp at Springbank, near Cust. She recounts days spent with dozens of young Christians, doing activities such as listing their sins and nailing them to a cross, followed by evenings of deliverance.

"It would be very, very weird, if you didn't [undergo deliverance]. They would come and find you in the seats, if you still stood on the seats and didn't come to the front," Sarah says.

But deliverance didn't make her feel healed, or pure-instead she felt "broken" and "crushed" by the shaming and hysteria in a large group. Sometimes her self-esteem dropped so low she took the next day off work.

She was most upset by churchgoers' private struggles being made public during deliverance. Sarah claims Wilkinson would reveal churchgoers' abortions, or gang connections, domestic violence, miscarriage and adoptions when speaking through his microphone, attempting to rid their 'demonic' troubles.

Sarah also couldn't stand it when people were singled out and, as she saw it, "coerced".

She says a man in a wheelchair, who was recovering from heart surgery, was told to walk onstage for 'healing' in front of the packed auditorium. He tried but was too weak. The furore of mass prayer and excitement awkwardly died away.

The pressure on him was "not good".

"He was so sick he just couldn't [walk]; the fact that he'd even got to church was a miracle in itself, but then you've got every single person staring at you and you're meant to have this 'faith' and he just literally couldn't do it. It was awful."

Eventually, Sarah left Celebration in her late 20s. She kept her Christian faith but not her friends, who she says, shunned her.

One of the first things Sarah did was get counselling, something she says church leaders had "actively discouraged" before her departure

She had relied on deliverance to remedy childhood trauma, but the depression and anxiety kept coming back.

In fact, the deliverance she underwent and witnessed at Celebration had created new "traumatising" and "horrendous" memories for which she also needed counselling.
'Good judgement goes out the door'

Peter Lineham MNZM finds it "very seriously troubling" to hear stories like these, but the Emeritus Professor of religious history at Massey University says it's not the first he's heard of problems at Celebration Centre Church.

"I have known people who've walked away from that church on exactly the same grounds; that they were troubled by its complete pastoral failure, and by its treating of everything as demonic and dramatic."

But he believes "churches like the Celebration Centre-which are created by their own pastors as a kind of private venture-don't really have a good structure of accountability".

Peter Lineham is concerned there may be an 'extreme' disregard for informed consent at Celebration 

Photo: Massey University

Celebration's website says there are members in Nelson, Warkworth and Kaikohe, as well as overseas in Rarotonga, Los Angeles, San Fransisco and parts of Asia and Africa The church describes itself as evangelical.

But deliverance is strongly associated with Pentecostalists, who, Lineham says, believe demons are constantly attacking humanity and they [demons] must be named and cast out to set people free from sin.

This casting out, called deliverance, is considered a form of Christian exorcism by many religious academics, including Lineham. Others say the practices are similar but ultimately different.

Exorcisms in Anglican and Catholic churches are normally ancient, private, carefully-protected rituals, Lineham says.

"Catholics and Anglicans would be extraordinarily cautious about conducting an exorcism; they would need to be assured that all aspects of mental health and of other physical ailments had been thoroughly explored before giving permission. And it would probably need the permission of the bishop before it went ahead."

But just like Catholic and Anglican exorcisms, Pentecostal deliverance calls on "the power of Christ to remove the occupation of the devil from the person".

Lineham is concerned that at Celebration there may be an "extreme" disregard for informed consent. That amid the congregational excitement, noise and enthusiasm during deliverance, "good judgement goes out the door in a second and the extremist voices carry the pack".

He says the accusations and shaming during deliverance in services can be "outrageous," "deeply shocking" and "not unlike the old witch trials of the 16th century".

"I'm really disturbed that a crowd of people think they have the right to determine the wellbeing of a person when they don't even sometimes know the person's name. And they actually abuse the lack of consent the person has."

Can exorcism, and more specifically, deliverance, be done safely? Lineham says yes, as long as people have given informed consent, are comfortable in the space, and can stop the process if they change their minds. He says they must not be guaranteed change and that exorcism must not be a substitute for health care.

Lineham attends Anglican, Baptist and rainbow congregations, and has visited churches all over New Zealand during his career researching and writing about religious institutions. But Celebration has never been on the itinerary.

Still, Lineham has witnessed deliverance, and was horrified when told he too was afflicted by a devil that must be "carved out".

He declined.

But how to say no at Celebration, a church accused of being fear-based, of fostering a "disease to please", as former members described it?

The existential threat of being outcast is strong even in the top tier of the church, according to one ex-member, Kate*, who ascended into Celebration's tight leadership circle over 20 years.

Now she describes it as a "cult".

She was so invested in the friendships, tithing, 'service' volunteering, bible groups and sermons, that leaving seemed unfathomable, despite her inner turmoil over the pressure to conform.

Some years, she says, altar calls were a weekly rite at Celebration.

Kate reluctantly took part but was continually concerned children and teens were also taking part without knowing what deliverance was, and without giving explicit consent.

"By not doing it [deliverance] you're shunned. You're judged. You don't belong, you don't fit in."

She believes the church was "brainwashing" youth into thinking they were tainted by demons, and she thinks it was a "violation" of their naivety.

"There's a lot of damage done to children."

Even some adults, coming to Celebration for the first time, raised concerns about what they'd unwittingly participated in.

"People that I'd brought would come back and say, 'What the heck just happened, that was freaky'. And you kind of just learned to explain it away, to tell people that it was good, it was okay. But it's actually not."

She feels guilty that she repeated "really manipulative" messages when she was part of the church leadership.

"The narrative was, 'If you aren't comfortable [during deliverance], it's because you've got demons in you that are manifesting against the church'."

In other words, "If you are uncomfortable, it means you need to stay up here and continue going through this process because it's something that's demonic, that needs to be out".

Permission was "sort of just taken rather than asked", Kate says, and people were "definitely" traumatised.

She remains a Christian but wants nothing to do with deliverance anymore.

"I would personally run away."

Today, Kate will see Celebration members at places like the supermarket-but most of the time they pass in the aisles like strangers. She normally gets a "judgmental" side-eye and is otherwise ignored.
Post-traumatic stress

Joseph Bulbulia's religious studies earned him a PhD from Princeton - he is now a psychology professor at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria.

Hearing Celebration leavers' stories make him feel "frustration and grief".

"They were clearly harmed, they have suffered."

He is particularly disturbed by reports of children and teens feeling pressured into deliverance.

"These are emotionally, developmentally, vulnerable human beings."

But Bulbulia can see why members of all ages might find it hard to say no to rituals - they likely fear alienation.

"That can leave people without a network or community - when they stand up to authority," he says.

"That [again] can leave them exposed to post-traumatic stress, to employment issues, to problems in their own relationships ... the magnitude of these problems shouldn't be underrated."
Lost hope

Ex-members told RNZ the church would not respond to requests for comment. They were right: RNZ's calls, texts and emails over several months went unanswered.

Pastor Murray Watkinson, however, has inadvertently confirmed receipt of the messages-he has lambasted them in services the church has posted on YouTube.

In late May, he warned the congregation a "fairly interesting article" was coming out, and the media had been "hunting" him.

A church musician nodded behind him onstage, as he said: "They've got about 20 accusations for us. But I just thought, 'Man, I'm not going to be, you know, influenced by that'."

RNZ's initial accusations challenged Watkinson's financial links to the church.

Celebration's facilities are based in Wainoni and Aranui, two of the most deprived suburbs in Christchurch. The church has amassed 13 properties worth more than $18 million in the last three decades, and its latest financial reporting (to 2020) shows it pays $110,000 per year to rent a property from one of Watkinson's family trusts.

It also pays more than $442,000 to remunerate Watkinson and four other church leaders. Two of them are his family members.

But he told followers the church was getting "special attention" from the media because it was a "special church".

He challenged media coverage again when ex-members called for the church's charitable status to be removed.

Preaching the next day, Watkinson was enthused, saying he "always thrived on a little bit of opposition".

In a sermon last month he said: "I don't want anybody whining to the newspaper saying 'I volunteered four hours a week for six years'. And, what a load of garbage. Weren't you doing it for God? Who were you doing it for? 'I gave a whole lot of money to the church and then I couldn't afford [mumbles]. What are you doing? You're not even Christian. You're just backslidden - bitter, twisted, backslidden people who have lost their way."

He has lobbed criticism in other directions too - declaring Covid-19 vaccinations don't really work, that Christians will love their enemies while "Muslims will kill you" - but he persistently comes back to the media.

In Watkinson's words, media contacting the church have "lost hope, they've lost sight of God".

But for ex-members interviewed by RNZ, it was not God they lost hope in, but Murray Watkinson himself.

The former second-in-command, Russell Kirkpatrick, was fed up with Watkinson refusing to take his advice and instead becoming bolder and bolder.

He fears the pastor has gone without checks and balances on his power and that Wilkinson "setting himself up as sole authority and not being accountable" is really dangerous.

Despite Kirkpatrick's perpetual cognitive dissonance and growing doubt over Watkinson's leadership, Kirkpatrick's dedication to the church was extreme. He has calculated that one year, he spent just three evenings at home. The 362 others were consumed by Celebration meetings, Celebration home visits, and Celebration music practice.

And while the ex-member thinks he did some good, he considers it highly likely that overall, his influence was negative.

"There was a fellow on the eldership, when Murray first joined, who took one look at him and said 'This guy's trouble'. And he left. And I should have listened to him. He was absolutely right."

NEW ZEALAND 

Emissions Trading Scheme: What you need to know

The Emissions Trading Scheme is one of the most important drivers of the changes needed to have any hope of avoiding the catastrophic impacts of climate change.

Hamish Cardwell, Climate reporter
@HamishCardwell hamish.cardwell@rnz.co.nz
20 July 2022


Photo: PHOTO NZ

Since it was launched nearly 15 years ago it has been under constant reform - and the government is working on yet more changes right now.

The recent forestry-related proposals to restrict some carbon farming have incensed Māori, and could end up in the courts, while sheep and beef farmers argue that rural communities could be destroyed without the moves.

Meanwhile the Climate Change Commission is expected to release its ETS advice to the government shortly.

Here is what you need to know about the ETS.

What is the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)?

It is a market managed by the government, and a key force to get long-lived climate gases to net zero by 2050.

Businesses that generate damaging gases have to buy units off the ETS.

The number of units available shrinks over time which causes their price to go up incentivising businesses to find ways to emit less.

The costs can be passed on to consumers, like they are with petrol prices, making lower emissions options more attractive.

Trees absorb carbon, so eligible forest owners can sell units to polluters at a price set by the ETS market.

The ETS covers about half of all emissions in Aotearoa including almost all from fossil fuels, industrial processes and waste.

The scheme is very effective because of that reach - although agriculture, which is a major emitter, is not covered and has been allowed instead to work with government officials to come up with a plan to price emissions by 2025 as an alternative to the ETS.

Revenue gathered from the scheme is used to fund efforts to reduce emissions - with nearly $3 billion in spending in the next four years announced during Budget week this year.

Some businesses and economists claim the ETS alone will get us to our reduction targets, but the Climate Change Commission, the IPCC and most experts say additional government policy is needed.
How does it work?

The basic idea is it makes businesses pay for the invisible but real effect of releasing damaging climate gases.

Its strength is that it lets firms weigh up their options and make fine-grained decisions about how to most cost effectively cut their own emissions (rather than, for example, have the government decide) or whether to pay others to reduce emissions.

They can buy units at government auction or from other market participants, but some businesses also get given a bunch of free units.

These are firms that produce large amounts of emissions and which need to compete with offshore producers.

The freebies are to stop emissions from industrial production from simply shifting to other countries.

The Climate Change Commission estimates that in 2019 (barring forestry) free units made up about a fifth of gross emissions from ETS sectors.

The ETS was launched in NZ in 2008 and essentially did not work very well.

Businesses bought a bunch of cheap units overseas from places like Russia and Ukraine which undermined the incentive to reduce gross emissions in New Zealand.

Our ETS has been domestic only since mid-2015 and serious reform began in 2016.

It was not until last year that the first government auctions were held.
What's happened since 2021?

The price of a unit of carbon has gone up big time - from about $30 a unit to more than $70.

There is a stability mechanism that either limits or releases units to try and slow price changes to stop sectors from getting absolutely whacked by hikes.

Despite the fact the price is going up there is actually an oversupply of units which have accumulated over time - but more on that later.

The large increase in unit prices is driving higher rates of planting of fast growing exotic forests (to be left alone rather than harvested, something called carbon farming).

Increased exotic afforestation has caused an outcry as it is gobbling up land that could be used to farm or grow food, and is displacing options to plant in indigenous species.

Again, more to come further down.

But the emissions price is expected to keep increasing - and the government is now reviewing the rules.

Striking a balance

Relying too heavily on exotic forestry long term has challenges because eventually you do need to cut the trees down - that's why having a mix of natives is important, and why the country needs to actually cut emissions not just rely on planting huge numbers of trees.

Some other countries, and some climate activists here, argue that while forestry has an important role to play in reducing climate change, we have to stop putting the emissions into the atmosphere in the first place.

They say the only thing that is going to actually help tackle climate change is to stop putting the emissions into the atmosphere in the first place.

The OECD has also warned New Zealand that relying on tree planting rather than making actual cuts may not hold water international much longer.

But it will take time for the country to make the large cuts needed in transport and agriculture, and to electrify factory processes, and tree planting will always be part of the mix to offset unavoidable emissions.

Currently forests offset, or capture, about a third of our gross emissions. Under government rules, not all of this counts toward our international and domestic targets.

It's a little complicated but basically if you own a forest established after 31 December 1989 you can choose to join the ETS and earn units as the trees grow.

You can sell units to other market participants. Forest owners have to pay back the units they have earned if they deforest. For post-1989 forests registered through 2019, forest owners also have to pay back units when they harvest. And there are new rules coming in 2023.

As of early 2022, 50 percent of post-1989 forest had joined the scheme.

There are changes coming at the start of next year designed to incentivise foresters to join the ETS and establish a larger number of permanent forests.
ETS changes demanded by farmers, but Māori promise to fight them

The government is looking at changing the ETS to discourage the planting of new permanent exotic forest by excluding them from the ETS (though not trees destined to be logged).

The large price increase since ETS auctions started last year has seen a ramping up in planting of these species.

It has prompted outrage from sheep and beef farmers and rural communities that productive land will be swallowed up.

They say farms employ people who spend money in the community and put their children into local schools.

They say carbon farming means large empty plots of land quietly sequestering but also only making money for the owners, with little benefit for the community.

Poorly managed exotic forests can also harbour pests and be a fire danger - which can be a threat to our national stores of carbon held in our forests.

But the government's proposed changes have been labelled disastrous for Māori, and there are moves to take legal action.

Māori are major forest owners (about a third of plantation forestry, and it will tip over 40 percent as more Treaty settlements are completed), and make up about 40 percent of the forestry workforce.

Much of these forests existed before 1990 meaning they are not eligible for units under the ETS.

Their holdings are often all that was left after more desirable land was confiscated, or what was returned to them as part of the Treaty process.

It is often marginal, scattered and difficult to monetise, and Māori see the opportunity to finally make some money from them by selling units on the ETS potentially being yanked away from them.

Meanwhile, there are fears that long-term overplanting exotics could also lead to lower ETS prices, disincentivising investment and innovation in low-carbon technology and suppressing moves to make actual reductions in emissions.
The stockpile problem

At three of the six auctions since 2021 the price has got high enough to hit a trigger point releasing more units.

There is already a large stockpile of units left over from previous iterations of the ETS and, coupled with the extra units from recent auctions, means that's a lot floating around out there that can be surrendered instead of real cuts to emissions being made.

This could undermine the government's ability to hit its reduction targets, and the government is currently investigating.