Republicans turn against the League of Women Voters
Pro Publica
August 19, 2022

Group of people waving American flags (Shutterstock)

LONG READ


For decades, the League of Women Voters played a vital but largely practical role in American politics: tending to the information needs of voters by hosting debates and conducting candidate surveys. While it wouldn’t endorse specific politicians, it quietly supported progressive causes.

The group was known for clipboards, not confrontation; for being respected, not reviled.

But those quiet days are now over, a casualty of the volatile political climate of the last few years and the league’s goal of being relevant to a new generation.

In 2018, the league’s CEO was arrested, along with hundreds of other protesters, for crowding a Senate office building to demand lawmakers reject Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative accused of sexual harassment.

Two years later, the league dissolved its chapter in Nevada after the state president penned an op-ed in July 2020 accusing the Democrats of hypocrisy for opposing gerrymandering in red states while “harassing” the league in Nevada over its activism on the issue.

And two days after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the league’s board of directors called then-President Donald Trump a “tyrannical despot” and blamed him for inciting the violence and for threatening democracy. The league demanded his removal from office “via any legal means.”

As a result, the league is calling attention to itself and drawing criticism in ways that are extraordinary for the once-staid group. Republicans are increasingly pushing back hard against the league, casting it as a collection of angry leftists rather than friendly do-gooders.

And with more right-leaning candidates snubbing the league, voters are less likely to hear directly from those candidates in unscripted and unfiltered forums where their views can receive greater visibility and scrutiny. That pushback sidelines the league at a time when misinformation has become a significant force in elections at every level.

“The League of Women Voters, while that sounds like a nice organization, they don’t do a lot of nice work,” Catalina Lauf, a Republican candidate for Congress in Illinois, said in a video posted in May on Instagram, explaining her reasoning for refusing to participate in a league-sponsored debate.

The league, she claimed, “peddles Marxist ideology” and is “anti-American.” In an interview with ProPublica, Lauf cited the league’s support for the rights of transgender student athletes as one reason she is suspicous of the group. She also claimed the league has endorsed the defunding of police departments, though that is inaccurate. The league has, however, taken stands in favor of sweeping police reforms that would address brutality and racial profiling.

“They need to switch their brand fast,” Lauf said. “Because their hyperpartisanship is turning off a lot of women who just want common sense.”

Conservative candidates for school board and county supervisor in Wisconsin have fired similar broadsides when declining to participate in league debates. And in Pennsylvania this year, only 30% of Republican candidates completed the league’s VOTE411.org informational guide for the primaries, compared with 70% of Democrats, according to the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania. The guide gives voters the candidates’ unedited answers to questions about their qualifications, priorities and stances on certain issues.

Elsewhere, Republican-led policies make it harder for groups like the league to add people to the voting rolls. In Kansas, because of a change in law, the league no longer registers voters — a task that has long been central to its mission.

Under its bylaws, the league does not endorse candidates. And by policy, board members can’t run for or hold any partisan elected office. Nor can they chair a political campaign, or fundraise or actively work for any candidate for a partisan office.

Just as its founders were crusaders, however, the league itself is outspoken on a multitude of issues, including supporting universal health care, abortion rights, affordable child care and clean water. The league has pushed for gun control measures since 1990. And it has been a strong voice nationally for campaign finance reform. In some communities, the league has even weighed in on zoning decisions.

Its viewpoints have long branded the league as a progressive organization. “They’re very fine, but they tend to be a little bit liberal,” the late Sen. Bob Dole, a Republican from Kansas, said of the league during a televised 1976 vice presidential debate in Houston.

Those liberal leanings have been harder to ignore in recent years, forcing the league to defend itself against claims of partisanship.

After its CEO was arrested at the Kavanaugh protest in 2018, the league admitted in a statement that openly opposing a Supreme Court nominee was “an extraordinary step for the League,” but said it believed the action was warranted.

“This situation is too important to sit silently while the independence of our judiciary is threatened.” CEO Virginia Kase Solomón closed her legal case by paying a $50 fine.

The league’s chief communications officer, Sarah Courtney, told ProPublica in a written statement: “Organizations always need to change with the times and current events in order to stay relevant.”

She noted: “The League has been a force in American democracy for more than a century, and we expect to be around in another hundred years. We haven’t gotten this far by doing things the same way we did them in 1920.”

UCLA professor Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert, said that while it’s clear that the league has been more aggressive in taking on controversial issues, it’s the group’s core mission that puts it at odds with some politicians. Supporting voting rights, he said, can be seen as an attack on the Republican Party, which has pushed for laws that make it more difficult to register and to vote. (Republicans say they are doing so to protect the integrity of elections, though there is no evidence of any widespread voter fraud.)

“It’s hard to be seen as neutral when you have the political parties dividing over questions like voting rights,” said Hasen, who directs the law school’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, which is aimed at researching election integrity.

To Hasen, the league’s evolution is notable. “Generally, there’s kind of a caricature of the league as kind of a group of old women coming together for tea,” he said. “Whereas, I think the league has become much more of a powerhouse in terms of advocating for strong voting rights.”

“Dare to Fight”

It took women more than 70 years of agitating, organizing and marching to convince men to give them the right to vote in 1920. Once the 19th Amendment was ratified, these activist women were wary of the political parties, which wanted their votes but not necessarily their input.

“Women in the parties must be more independent than men,” the league’s founder, suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, wrote, according to papers kept by the Library of Congress. “They must dare to fight for what they believe is right.”

Catt worried that some women would come to believe that all virtue or all wisdom was held by the party, paralyzing their judgment.

The league, which was formed the same year women nationwide were finally granted the right to vote, dedicated itself not to political parties, or the men running them, but to specific causes. One cause helped forge its identity: educating league members and other voters at election time.

Its first political agenda was long, numbering 69 items, and was called a “kettle of eels” by the league’s own president. Many of those items, such as child welfare and access to quality education, have remained league priorities for decades — as has its commitment to voter education. In 2018 and 2020, the league and ProPublica worked together to produce a guide sharing basic, nonpartisan information to help citizens choose among candidates and obtain ballots.

For nearly a century, the league itself seemed to change little, but by 2018 it found itself at a crossroads.

Leadership hired consultants and began to look for ways to reach disillusioned voters, combat misinformation in elections and effectively respond to society’s escalating racial issues, including the disenfranchisement of people of color.

“Although it remains a trusted household name, many stakeholders cannot describe clearly the purpose of the organization and are unclear about its relevance,” a league consultant wrote in a 2018 report. “The membership is much older and whiter than the population at large, and League membership has steadily declined by almost a third over the past few decades.”

Membership plunged from 72,657 in 1994 to 53,284 in 2017, according to the report. (It has since climbed back up to over 70,000, the league said.)

The organization also faced greater competition. Dozens of new nonprofits had emerged to protect voting rights, including Indivisible, NextGen America, Color of Change and Hip Hop Caucus.

According to the consultant’s report, league members long knew that its homogenous membership limited its effectiveness and its appeal to a broader audience. So, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement, the league issued a formal mea culpa.

In an August 2018 blog post, the league’s president and its CEO admitted that “our organization was not welcoming to women of color through most of our existence” and vowed to build “a stronger, more inclusive democracy.” Many of the early suffragists were also abolitionists, but after the Civil War, they were divided over whether to support the 15th Amendment, which at the time gave Black men, but not women, the right to vote. The fissure persisted for decades and had lasting consequences for the league.

“Even during the Civil Rights movement, the League was not as present as we should have been,” the post said. “While activists risked life and limb to register black voters in the South, the League’s work and our leaders were late in joining to help protect all voters at the polls.”

In recent years, the league has been more visible in advocating for racial equity and fairness. It particularly focused on reducing barriers to voting in marginalized communities. The league has fought, for instance, against reductions in the number of polling places or voting hours in minority communities.

After a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd by kneeling on the Black man’s neck in May 2020, the league announced the next month that it would strongly push for reforms in the justice system, including changes aimed at preventing excessive force and brutality by law enforcement.

“The League of Women Voters of Minneapolis is not your grandmother’s League,” Anita Newhouse, the city chapter’s league president at the time, wrote in the MinnPost, a nonprofit news outlet, in August 2020. “We are still the nonpartisan education and advocacy group committed to empowering voters, but with a commitment to identifying racism and dismantling policies that suppress non-white votes.”
Advocates, Progressives or Democrats?

Even within the league, not everyone feels the group applies its principles evenly.

For five years, Sondra Cosgrove, a College of Southern Nevada history professor specializing in multicultural issues, ran the league in Nevada as it took on issues such as gerrymandering.

But she’s no longer part of the organization, and she wonders whether that’s because she was not always clearly in the Democrats’ corner.

In 2019, the league launched a 50-state Fair Maps strategy to combat racial and political gerrymandering. As league president in Nevada, Cosgrove began pushing for a ballot initiative that would create an independent commission to draw legislative district boundaries. The move would have taken power away from the Democrats, who controlled the statehouse and the governor’s office.

Cosgrove soon found the league’s ballot initiative challenged unsuccessfully in court by a Black activist and, later, by the Democratic governor, who did not allow petition signatures to be collected electronically during the pandemic.

About a week after her July 2020 op-ed accusing the Democrats of hypocrisy and “harassing” the league in Nevada, officials from the national league office emailed Cosgrove, instructing her to “stop making public statements online and in the media accusing the Democratic party of attacking the League of Women Voters.” The officials clarified that their position would be no different if Cosgrove was criticizing Republicans.

Cosgrove, however, said she told the league’s national office she wouldn’t seek its input on public statements. The league dissolved the state chapter not long afterward, in December 2020. Cosgrove and others quit the national organization and now are with another voting group.

“There was always the feeling the league was run by the Democrats,” said former Nevada league Treasurer Ann Marie Smith. “We tried to fight that to a large degree, but in my opinion the national league has gone down that road much further than they should have.”

Executives in the league’s national organization told ProPublica that the decision to shut down the state chapter was not an easy one and was made “after multiple attempts to resolve policy violations” that went beyond just the clash with the governor.

“Ultimately, the board had no choice but to disband the Nevada league to protect the entire organization,” Courtney, the league spokesperson, said. “Our northern Nevada local league has remained active with a dedicated group of members who are committed to rebuilding the league’s presence in the state.”

The league does sometimes call out Democrats.

In late July of this year, the league released an update on its Fair Maps initiative, saying it had organized public hearings in 24 states, used apps and software to test draw fairer maps in 38 states, and joined 11 state lawsuits and six federal cases challenging maps in California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin. Two of those states feature Democrats in control of the state legislative chambers and the governor’s office. Five of them have Republican control. In the rest, control is split.

But, going forward, the league may find it more difficult to do the work it’s always done.

The league chapter in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, for instance, has faced what one member there called sustained opposition in recent years.

Complaints from a parent, who is also a Republican on the borough council, derailed the league’s annual Running and Winning high school program in 2019, which was to feature female speakers from both parties as a way to encourage young women to pursue careers in politics. The parent argued that the league had a political agenda and was excluding high school boys and male politicians.

Ultimately, the school district canceled the event.

Political tensions only got worse in the months that followed. When the newly created Laker Republican Club emailed an unsolicited mass membership appeal throughout the community, a league board member replied with an email questioning the morals, courage and patriotism of Trump and his supporters. The league defended her, saying she was speaking as a private citizen and she did not reference her role with the league.

Local Republicans running for borough council responded by refusing to participate in league debates in 2020. Former Mountain Lakes Mayor Blair Schleicher Wilson wrote in a local publication that she had been a member of the league for 25 years but now supported the candidates who shunned the league.

Wilson, a Republican, wrote that the local league chapter “has sadly lost their way.” In an interview with ProPublica, she added that she loved being involved with the league but believes it should stick only to voter advocacy. “I always thought their focus should be more on voter services,” she said. “That’s a perfect place for them.”

The chapter lost about 30 members because of the community tensions and is trying to rebuild, said former Mountain Lakes league President Mary Alosio-Joelsson, now the organization’s events leader.

She believes conservatives in Mountain Lakes have changed, not the league. “Many have moved so far to the right that anybody who is walking down the middle of the road looks like they’re on the left,” she said.

The shift in the country’s political climate also has far-reaching implications for what the league considers some of its most essential work. In Kansas, the organization halted registration work a year ago after a measure enacted by a Republican-led legislature made it a felony to engage “in conduct that would cause another person to believe a person ... is an election official.”

The league worried its volunteers could be prosecuted if someone mistakenly believed them to be election officials while registering voters. Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez, a Democrat, agreed there were problems with the law and said she wouldn’t pursue cases of alleged violations.

“This law criminalizes essential efforts by trusted nonpartisan groups like the League of Women Voters to engage Kansans on participation in accessible, accountable and fair elections,” she said in a statement.

But Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Republican, quickly retorted that his office would, indeed, prosecute alleged violators.

The league asked the Kansas Court of Appeals for an injunction that would temporarily prevent the law from being enforced, but the group lost and is now requesting a review from the state Supreme Court.

Despite the setback, Jacqueline Lightcap, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Kansas, said the league intends to continue to work to defend democracy and empower voters. But she said the mission has become harder. Even seeking dialogue with legislators on the ramifications of the registration law is difficult.

“We are not getting much traction,” she said.

Two Spirits, One Heart, Five Genders
Of all of the foreign life ways Indians held, one of the first the Europeans targeted for elimination was the Two Spirits among Native American cultures.

DUANE BRAYBOY

"The New World." This romanticized term inspired legions of Europeans to race to the places we live in search of freedoms from oppressive regimes or treasures that would be claimed in the name of some European nation.

Those who arrived in the Native American Garden of Eden had never seen a land so uncorrupted. The Europeans saw new geography, new plants, new animals, but the most perplexing curiosity to these people were the Original Peoples and our ways of life. Of all of the foreign life ways Indians held, one of the first the Europeans targeted for elimination was the Two Spirit tradition among Native American cultures. At the point of contact, all Native American societies acknowledged three to five gender roles: Female, male, Two Spirit female, Two Spirit male and transgendered. LGBT Native Americans wanting to be identified within their respective tribes and not grouped with other races officially adopted the term "Two Spirit" from the Ojibwe language in Winnipeg, Manitoba, 1989. Each tribe has their own specific term, but there was a need for a universal term that the general population could understand. The Navajo refer to Two Spirits as Nádleehí (one who is transformed), among the Lakota is Winkté (indicative of a male who has a compulsion to behave as a female), Niizh Manidoowag (two spirit) in Ojibwe, Hemaneh (half man, half woman) in Cheyenne, to name a few. As the purpose of "Two Spirit" is to be used as a universal term in the English language, it is not always translatable with the same meaning in Native languages. For example, in the Iroquois Cherokee language, there is no way to translate the term, but the Cherokee do have gender variance terms for "women who feel like men" and vice versa.

Old Prejudices In The New World

The Jesuits and French explorers told stories of Native American men who had "Given to sin" and "Hunting Women" with wives and later, the British returned to England with similar accounts. George Catlin said that the Two Spirit tradition among Native Americans "Must be extinguished before it can be more fully recorded." In keeping with European prejudices held against Natives, the Spanish Catholic monks destroyed most of the Aztec codices to eradicate traditional Native beliefs and history, including those that told of the Two Spirit tradition. In 1530, the Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca wrote in his diary of seeing "soft" Native Indian males in Florida tribes dressing and working as women. Just as with all other aspects of the European regard for Indians, gender variance was not tolerated. Europeans and eventually Euro-Americans demanded all people conform to their prescribed two gender roles.

Squaw Jim / Osh-Tish (Finds Them and Kills Them), Crow tribe. On the left is Squaw Jim, a biological male in woman’s attire, his wife to the right. Afforded distinctive social and ceremonial status within the tribe. Squaw Jim served as a scout at Fort Keogh and earned a reputation for bravery after saving the life of a fellow tribesman in the Battle of the Rosebud, June 17, 1876.

The Native American belief is that some people are born with the spirits of both genders and express them so perfectly. It is if they have two spirits in one body. Some Siouan tribes believed that before a child is born its soul stands before The Creator, to either reach for the bow and arrows that would indicate the role of a man or the basket that would determine the role of a female. When the child would reach for the gender-corresponding hand, sometimes The Creator would switch hands and the child would have chosen the opposite gender's role and therefore casting its lot in life.

Native Americans traditionally assign no moral gradient to love or sexuality; a person was judged for their contributions to their tribe and for their character. It was also a custom for parents to not interfere with nature and so among some tribes, children wore gender-neutral clothes until they reached an age where they decided for themselves which path they would walk and the appropriate ceremonies followed. The Two Spirit people in pre-contact Native America were highly revered and families that included them were considered lucky. Indians believed that a person who was able to see the world through the eyes of both genders at the same time was a gift from The Creator. Traditionally, Two Spirit people held positions within their tribes that earned them great respect, such as Medicine Men/Women, shamans, visionaries, mystics, conjurers, keepers of the tribe's oral traditions, conferrers of lucky names for children and adults (it has been said that Crazy Horse received his name from a Winkte), nurses during war expeditions, cooks, matchmakers and marriage counselors, jewelry/feather regalia makers, potters, weavers, singers/artists in addition to adopting orphaned children and tending to the elderly. Female-bodied Two Spirits were hunters, warriors, engaged in what was typically men’s work and by all accounts, were always fearless.

Traditional Native Americans closely associate Two Spirited people with having a high functioning intellect (possibly from a life of self-questioning), keen artistic skills and an exceptional capacity for compassion. Rather than being social dead-enders as within Euro-American culture today, they were allowed to fully participate within traditional tribal social structures. Two Spirit people, specifically male-bodied (biologically male, gender female) could go to war and have access to male activities such as the sweat lodge. However, they also took on female roles such as cooking, cleaning and other domestic responsibilities. Female bodied (biologically female, gender male) Two Spirits usually only had relationships or marriages with females and among the Lakota, they would sometimes enter into a relationship with a female whose husband had died. As male-bodied Two Spirits regarded each other as “sisters,” it is speculated that it may have been seen as incestuous for Two Spirits to have a relationship with each other. Within this culture it was considered highly offensive to approach a Two Spirit for the purpose of them performing the traditional role of their biological gender.

Finds Them and Kills Them

Osh-Tisch, also known as Finds Them and Kills Them, was a Crow Badé (Two Spirit) and was celebrated among his tribe for his bravery when he attacked a Lakota war party and saved a fellow tribesman in the Battle of the Rosebud on June 17, 1876. In 1982, Crow elders told ethnohistorian Walter Williams: "The Badé were a respected social group among the Crow. They spent their time with the women or among themselves, setting up their tipis in a separate area of the village. They called each other 'sister' and saw Osh-Tisch as their leader." The elders also told the story of former B.I.A. agents who tried to repeatedly force him to wear men's clothing, but the other Indians protested against this, saying it was against his nature. Joe Medicine Crow told Williams: "One agent in the late 1890's...tried to interfere with Osh-Tisch, who was the most respected Badé. The agent incarcerated the Badés, cut off their hair, made them wear men's clothing. He forced them to do manual labor, planting these trees that you see here on the B.I.A. grounds. The people were so upset with this that Chief Pretty Eagle came into Crow agency and told the agent to leave the reservation. It was a tragedy, trying to change them."


8 Things You Should Know About Two Spirit People

Pressure to change also came from Christian missionaries. In 1903 a Baptist minister arrived on the reservation. According to Thomas Yellow Tail, "He condemned our traditions, including the Badé. He told his congregation to stay away from Osh-Tisch and other Badés. He continued to condemn Osh-Tisch until his death. That may be the reason no others took up the Badé role after Osh-Tisch died."

Closer To Home

On February 11, 1712, Colonel Barnwell of South Carolina attacked the Tuscaroras at Narhantes, a Tuscarora fort on the Neuse River, North Carolina. Barnwell's troops were surprised to find that the most fierce of the Tuscarora warriors were women who do not surrender "until most of them are put to the sword." It was an Iroquois custom to put Two Spirits on the front lines to scare the enemy. A warrior woman and man in women’s clothes were as frightening to Euro-Americans then as they are now. John Lawson wrote of the Tuscarora: "During their move to winter hunting quarters, women carried grain and other provisions. After arriving, most of their time was spent in getting firewood, cooking and making craft items. Men who were poor hunters, possibly berdaches, procured bark for the cabins, ran errands back to the town where the old people were left, made wooden bowls and dishes and clay tobacco pipes." By the early 1900s, it had been claimed that there were no alternative genders among the Six Nations Iroquois/Haudenosaunee, despite documentation and oral histories. Most, if not all tribes had been influenced by European prejudices.

Perhaps one of the most famous Two Spirits of the past was We'wha (1849-1896), of the Zuni nation. We'wha was biologically a male and engendered with a female spirit. By all accounts, she was a very intelligent person who became the Zuni Ambassador in Washington, D.C. and was celebrated by the Washington elite as "The Zuni man-woman." This photo depicts We’wha in traditional Zuni female clothes.


Berdache, LGBT or Two Spirit?

Before the 20th century, anthropologists were widely using the term “Berdache” as a generic term to reference Two Spirit people. This inflamatory term is based on the French“Bardache,” to imply a male prostitute and the word originates from the Arabic “Bardaj,” meaning “captive” or “slave.” LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered) is a cultural term invented by Euro-Americans who typically define themselves through their sexuality. LGBT Native Americans were looking for a way to remove themselves from a culture that emphasizes sexuality over spirituality and a way to reconnect with their own tribal communities. Adopting the Two Spirit term was the answer. The term is sometimes referenced more abstractly to indicate two contrasting spirits such as “Warrior and Clan Mother” or “Eagle and Coyote.”

Colonization Takes Its Toll

As Europeans forced their way into North America, colonial governments eagerly formed white power structures, land grabbed from Natives and implemented the genocidal conversion tactics that has defined the relationship between Native Americans and Euro-American governments. When Christopher Columbus encountered the Two Spirit people, he and his crew threw them into pits with their war dogs and were torn limb from limb. The inhuman treatment Christians offered was only the beginning of the Native American holocaust.

As Europeans and subsequently Euro-Americans moved from east to west, they spread diseases and imposed European culture and religions onto Natives. In the 20th century, as neurotic prejudices, instigated by Christian influences, increased among Native Americans, acceptance of gender diversity and androgynous persons sharply declined. Two Spirits were commonly forced by government officials, Christian representatives or even their assimilated Native communities to conform to standardized gender roles. Those who felt they could not make this transition either went underground or committed suicide. The imposition of Euro-American marriage laws invalidated the same-gender marriages that were once common among tribes across North America. The Native American cultural pride revivals that began in the 1960s / Red Power movements brought about a new awareness of the Two Spirit tradition and has since inspired a gradual increase of acceptance and respect for gender variance within tribal communities. It was out of this new tribal and self respect that encouraged the shedding of the offensive “Berdache” term that was assigned by Europeans.

I will leave the last words to the late Lakota actor, Native rights activist and American Indian Movement co-founder Russell Means: “In my culture we have people who dress half-man, half-woman. Winkte, we call them in our language. If you are Winkte, that is an honorable term and you are a special human being and among my nation and all Plains people, we consider you a teacher of our children and are proud of what and who you are.”

ARCHIVED

UPDATED:
SEP 13, 2018
SEP 7, 2017

This story was originally published on January 23, 2016.

How Anti-Government Groups Moved from the Left to the Right

Aug 19, 2022
CNN

The history of ​movements against the U.S. government has deep roots on both the left and the right. Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has covered the history of anti-government movements around the world. Kleinfeld joins Reality Check’s John Avlon to discuss a dangerous shift happening in the U.S. as right-wing militia movements are rallying against the government to defend former president Donald Trump. === The one thing that terrifies White nationalists is what makes America great Opinion by Dean Obeidallah The horrific attack in Buffalo this weekend by an 18-year-old White gunman that left 10 people dead was, per the local sheriff, a "straight up racially motivated hate crime." The US Department of Justice backed up that view. They said they're investigating the mass shooting at a grocery store frequented mostly by Black customers "as a hate crime and an act of racially-motivated violent extremism." What motivated the killer? While the investigation is in the early stages, a manifesto obtained by CNN, attributed to the suspect, expressed resentment that the White population in the United States is dwindling in size.

Read more at: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/16/opinio...

UK

What nationalising energy companies would cost – and how to do it

By Andrew Fisher, originally published by Open DemocracyAugust 19, 2022


When 62% of Conservative voters want energy run in the public sector, it’s fair to say the left has won the argument (75% of Labour voters agree, 68% of Lib Dems).

Yet public ownership is opposed passionately by the Conservative government, while the leader of the opposition has said he is “not in favour” of it – despite his election on a platform that committed to “bring rail, mail, water and energy into public ownership to end the great privatisation rip-off and save you money on your fares and bills”.

Public ownership is on the media’s radar, too. When Labour leader Keir Starmer announced his policy to freeze bills this week, he was asked why he wouldn’t also nationalise energy, replying that: “In a national emergency where people are struggling to pay their bills … the right choice is for every single penny to go to reducing those bills.”

But so long as energy remains privatised, every single penny won’t. Billions of pennies will keep going to shareholders instead.

The energy market was fractured under the mass privatisations of the Thatcher governments in the 1980s. It contains three sectors: producers or suppliers (those that produce energy), retailers (those that sell you energy), and distribution or transmission (the infrastructure that transports energy to your home).

It is important to bear this in mind when we’re talking about taking energy into public ownership. We need to be clear about what we want in public ownership and why.

By 2019, Labour had a detailed plan on how to do this – worked up by the teams around then shadow business and energy secretary Rebecca Long Bailey and then shadow chancellor John McDonnell. The plan is not the only way, but it illustrates what exists and how one could go about re-establishing a public energy ecosystem, run for people not profit.

The recent TUC report shows the cost of nationalising the ‘Big 5’ energy retailers – British Gas, E.ON, EDF, Scottish Power and Ovo – to be £2.8bn, which would go on buying all the companies’ shares. That’s a lot of money, equivalent to more than the annual budget of the Sure Start programme in 2009/10 (its peak year). But it’s a one-off cost, not an annual one.

And it’s not like the current privatised system doesn’t have its costs: since June 2021, the UK government has spent £2.7bn bailing out 28 energy companies that collapsed because they put short-term profits ahead of long-term stability – companies like Bulb Energy. We have spent billions of pounds already to get nothing in return. So £2.8bn is not a large amount of money to pay to gain these assets, rather than just bailing them out.

The big energy retail companies made £23bn in dividends between 2010 and 2020 according to Common Wealth, and £43bn if you include share buy-backs. What you choose to do with that surplus in public ownership is another matter: you could use it to invest in new clean energy or to lower bills or fund staff pay rises, rather than subject your workers to fire-and-rehire practices as British Gas did last year.

Labour’s previous plan also involved taking the distribution networks – the National Grid – into public ownership. This would end the profiteering at this level, too – with £13bn paid out in dividends over the five years prior to 2019. As Long Bailey said at the time, we need “public driven and coordinated action, without which we simply will not be able to tackle climate change”. Like previous nationalisations, the purchase of the grid and distribution networks could be achieved by swapping shares for government bonds. By international accounting standards, the cost is fiscally neutral as the state gains a revenue-generating asset, which more than pays for the bond yield.

The final part of the plan – and the most complicated – is production and supply. It would be impossible to nationalise the oilfields of Saudi Arabia or Qatar – and for good reasons we should want to leave fossil fuels in the ground, anyway, rather than contest their ownership.

And so what Labour proposed in 2019 was a mass investment in new renewable energy generation projects, with the public sector taking a stake and returning profits to the public. For example, under the ‘People’s Power Plan’, we proposed 37 new offshore wind farms with a 51% public stake, delivering 52GW alone by 2030, equivalent to 38 coal power stations. There were additional proposals for onshore wind, solar, and tidal schemes, as part of a 10-year £250bn Green Transformation Fund, which included other schemes like the Warm Homes insulation initiative.

Labour’s new shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has promised a similar level of investment – a £28bn a year climate investment pledge.

Any surplus energy would then be sold on international markets, with a People’s Power Fund – a sort of sovereign wealth fund – to deliver public investment in local communities’ social infrastructure: a genuine levelling-up fund, perhaps.

Many people will say this can’t be done, but of course it has been before. The 1945 Attlee government nationalised energy and successive Conservative governments – including those of Churchill, MacMillan and Heath – were happy to have a nationalised asset. Harold MacMillan famously accused Margaret Thatcher of “selling off the family silver” when she privatised state industries.

When I was born in 1979, the National Coal Board, British Gas and British Petroleum were all publicly-owned or majority publicly-owned companies. Between them, they were the major suppliers of our energy. Our gas bills came from British Gas and our electricity bills from our regional electricity board (in my case Seeboard, the South Eastern Electricity Board), and coal and oil fuelled our power stations.

The regional electricity boards had been brought into being by the Attlee government’s Electricity Act 1947, when electricity companies were forcibly merged into regional area boards and nationalised. The Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946 and the Gas Act 1948 had together brought energy into public ownership.

Seeboard was privatised in 1990, and later became part of EDF Energy – ironically, the nationalised French energy company, whose profits from the UK’s stupidity are used to subsidise French consumers.

The French government has now fully nationalised EDF (previously it was 84% publicly owned), and household energy bills rose by just 4% this year – compared to over 50% in the UK and a forecast 200% by January 2023.

If Starmer doesn’t want to listen to me (or his own commitments from 2020), perhaps emulating the centrist Emmanuel Macron in this instance would be palatable?

In his later years, Robin Cook argued:

“The market is incapable of respecting a common resource such as the environment, which provides no price signal to express the cost of its erosion nor to warn of the long-term dangers of its destruction.”

From the depletion of fish stocks to the burning of the Amazon, profit has proved a failed regulator for use of our natural resources. The market has also failed to decarbonise at pace, or to end the scourge of fuel poverty.

On the media this week, shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband said Labour is “continuing to look at what the right long-term solution is for our energy system”. It is up to all of us to campaign for that solution to be public ownership – whether that’s from within the Labour Party (like me) or from the outside.

Teaser photo credit: By Rept0n1x – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7546481

Texas public schools required to display “In God We Trust” posters if they are donated

Brian Lopez, The Texas Tribune
August 19, 2022

Students and teacher in a classroom (Shutterstock)

By Brian Lopez, The Texas Tribune
Aug. 18, 2022

A new law requiring Texas schools to display donated “In God We Trust” posters is the latest move by Republican lawmakers to bring Christianity into taxpayer-funded institutions.

Under the law, Senate Bill 797, which passed during last year’s legislative session, schools are required to display the posters if they are donated.

The law went into effect last year, but these posters weren’t popping up then as many school officials and parents were more concerned about new COVID-19 strains and whether their local public school would even open for in-person classes.

The “In God We Trust” law was authored by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, the East Texas Republican who crafted Texas’ Senate Bill 8, which restricted abortion to the first six weeks or so of pregnancy starting Sept. 1, 2021. The abortion law artfully skirted legal challenge by relying on the public instead of law enforcement to enforce it.

Hughes’ “In God We Trust” poster law is also precisely written. Texas public schools or colleges must display the national motto in a “conspicuous place” but only if the poster is “donated” or “purchased by private donations.”

After an appearance for a Northwest Austin Republican Women’s Club event on Tuesday, Hughes touted the new law and praised the groups stepping up to donate the posters.

“The national motto, In God We Trust, asserts our collective trust in a sovereign God,” Hughes wrote on Twitter. “I’m encouraged to see groups like the Northwest [Austin] Republican Women and many individuals coming forward to donate these framed prints to remind future generations of the national motto.”

Patriot Mobile, a Texas-based cellphone company that donates a portion of its customers’ phone bills to conservative, “Christian” causes, on Monday donated several “In God We Trust” signs to all Carroll Independent School District campuses, claiming it is their “mission is to passionately defend our God-given, Constitutional rights and freedoms, and to glorify God always.”

“Patriot Mobile has donated framed posters to many other school districts in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and we will continue to do so until all the schools in the area receive them,” the company said in a Facebook post. “We are honored to be part of bringing God back into our public schools!”

Carroll ISD includes Southlake, the mostly white, affluent Dallas-Fort Worth suburb. The community’s struggles with a school diversity and inclusion plan — as well as how parents opposed to the plan started a political movement there — were the subject of a seven-part NBC podcast released last year.

The Southlake Anti-Racism Coalition, or SARC, said in a statement that is not happy that the law mandates public schools put up these posters.

“SARC is disturbed by the precedent displaying these posters in every school will set and the chilling effect this blatant intrusion of religion in what should be a secular public institution will have on the student body, especially those who do not practice the dominant Christian faith,” the statement read.

 

 Donations of the “In God We Trust” posters have also been made to the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District, in the Houston area. The posters were a donation from The Yellow Rose of Texas Republican Women.

Moms for Liberty, a conservative nonprofit organization, donated posters for Round Rock Independent School District campuses, said Jenny Caputo, a spokesperson for the district. Most campuses have the signs up in a hallway near the front of each campus.

The Keller Independent School District in Tarrant County has received posters from a private citizen for all its facilities, and they are displayed mainly in front offices, said Bryce Nieman, a spokesperson for Keller ISD.

Erik Leist, a Keller resident and a father of a soon-to-be kindergartner, said the motto represents America’s founding and believes the law allows communities to do what they think is best.

“If it’s important to communities, the community will come behind it,” Leist said. “If it’s not something that the community values, it’s not gonna end up in the school.”

Leist also said he sees it as just the nation’s motto, not pushing any one religion.

The Yellow Rose of Texas Republican Women and the Northwest Austin Republican Women’s Club did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Texas Tribune reached out to Hughes as well as Aaron Rocha, Leigh Wambsganss and Scott Coburn with Patriot Mobile to discuss the poster law. None responded immediately to the Tribune’s request for comment.

WHICH GOD IS THAT

“In God We Trust” origins

In 1956, Congress passed a joint resolution that made “In God We Trust” the nation’s motto, replacing “e pluribus unum (one from many).” Lawmakers did this partially to differentiate itself during the Cold War from the Soviet Union, which embraced atheism.

The “In God We Trust” national motto can be found on money and government buildings and has proven to be bulletproof when it comes to legal challenges that assert the reference to God could be seen as government-endorsed prayer, impinging on Americans’ First Amendment rights.

In a 1970 case, Aronow v. United States, a federal appeals court ruled “It is quite obvious that the national motto and the slogan on coinage and currency ‘In God We Trust’ has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion.”

From motto to movement

In this century, there’s been a growing movement to place the motto in more visible government spaces.

Since 2015, efforts to place “In God We Trust” on police cars, for example, have spread. There’s even a website, ingodwetrust.com, that specifically states the movement is about protecting citizens’ “First Amendment right to religious liberty, a freedom that is being threatened through a well-organized and well-funded effort to remove all vestige of God from the public domain in America.”

For Patriot Mobile, this is the company’s latest effort in its plan to “put Christian conservative values into action” and it has been targeting Texas’ public schools through its political action committee, Patriot Mobile Action.

During the past spring and leading into the May school board elections, the Patriot Mobile Action PAC raised more than $500,000 for conservative school board candidates across North Texas, including Carroll ISD.

The full program is now LIVE for the 2022 The Texas Tribune Festival, happening Sept. 22-24 in Austin. Explore the schedule of 100+ mind-expanding conversations coming to TribFest, including the inside track on the 2022 elections and the 2023 legislative session, the state of public and higher ed at this stage in the pandemic, why Texas suburbs are booming, why broadband access matters, the legacy of slavery, what really happened in Uvalde and so much more. See the program.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/18/texas-schools-in-god-we-trust/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

‘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.