ALL CAPITALI$M IS STATE CAPITALI$M

Yoon joined by chaebol leaders on US trip amid concerns of protectionism

By Jo He-rim
Published : Apr 23, 2023

From left: Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin, LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo, Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Chung Euisun, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong attend a Korea-Japan business roundtable held in Tokyo on March 17 upon President Yoon Suk Yeol's summit there with his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida. (Yonhap)

South Korea’s top conglomerate chiefs are heading to the US this week to accompany President Yoon Suk Yeol on his state visit, hoping to find a breakthrough in business uncertainties surrounding increasingly protectionist policies in the all-important market.


Taking his biggest economic delegation to date in his weeklong state visit to the US from Monday, Yoon is expected to relay the difficulties Korean companies face with the US' introduction of the CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act, while also stressing the need to cooperate in advanced technology.

“The economic delegation plans to make tangible results in summit diplomacy centered on the economy, together with South Korea’s No. 1 salesperson, the president,” said Choi Sang-mok, senior presidential aide for economic affairs.

The economic delegation is the biggest in size for Yoon, involving the chiefs of 122 Korean companies, according to the Federation of Korean Industries.

It is also the first time for the chiefs of the country’s top five conglomerate groups -- Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun, LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo and Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin -- and all six economic organizations to accompany a presidential trip.

One of the main agenda items of the state visit is expected to focus on the uncertainties the US protectionist policies have created for Korean companies.

“Korean conglomerate chiefs are expected to address various pending issues that come in the way of their business operations in the US,” an industry official said under the condition of anonymity, explaining that Samsung and SK would likely focus on the US’ CHIPS Act and Hyundai on the IRA.

In summits and other bilateral meetings from encounters with the US President Joe Biden in international events, Yoon has relayed the industrial concerns to the US government to create favorable exceptions for Korean companies, a presidential official said under condition of anonymity.

But Korean businesses feel the US government should be able to make more adjustments, since they are making some tens of billions of dollars investments to the US, industry officials here say. This week's US trip, therefore, would provide the business leaders the opportunity to directly consult with the US on their concerns.

South Korea's chip industry, led by the world's top memory chip makers, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, has been feeling the pressure caused by the US' CHIPS Act, which was initially intended to attract foreign investment to boost the US’ semiconductor industry.

Introducing a chips support program, the US has required global chipmakers to share with them sensitive business information and excess profit in order to receive the subsidies deemed critical for operation on US soil.

With the intention to foster competitive edge in the chips industry, especially against its strategic rival China, the support program also limits the subsidy recipients from expanding production volume and investment in any "country of concern" – among which China is included -- for a decade, posing burdens for chipmakers that have production facilities in China.

Samsung, the world's top memory chip maker, has reportedly submitted an application for the US chips subsidy program. It is currently building a foundry plant in Taylor, Texas. SK hynix is also currently searching for a site for its planned $15 billion advanced chip packaging plant in the US, the company’s first production facility there.

US President Joe Biden (left) and President Yoon Suk Yeol (center) take a look around Samsung Electronics' semiconductor factory in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, under the guidance of Samsung Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong on May 20, 2022. (Yonhap)

Hyundai Motor Group will likely address its stance over the IRA, which excludes its automotive brands, Hyundai and Kia, from the tax credits available for electric vehicles sold in the US due to its protectionist production requirements.

The Korean EV maker, which produces its vehicles in Korea, was left out of the list of the total 16 EV models the US announced as eligible for consumer tax credits of up to $7,500 per unit sold.

Hyundai is speeding up the construction of its EV manufacturing plant in Georgia -- slated to be operational by the end of 2024.

While worries mounted that the Korean automaker would likely see a drastic drop in US sales following the IRA legislation, the presidential office asserted that its diplomatic efforts have led for the US government to offer subsidies for EVs on lease and rentals, securing a meaningful number of sales for Hyundai.

"As the result (of the diplomatic efforts), Hyundai's US sales has been increasing since August last year. For instance, the number of EVs exported to the US in the August was 5,500 units, and the figure increased to 14,400 units in March this year," Choi, the senior presidential secretary told reporters.

In the summit with the US president slated on Wednesday, Yoon is expected to address the overall direction of the two countries’ bilateral cooperation in advanced technology, as well as sensitive issues related to the US' policies, the official added.

Eyes are also on whether Korean companies will announce additional investment plans in the US.

Hyundai Motor is joining hands with two Korean battery makers, LG Energy Solution and SK On, to build EV battery plants in the US, with investments totaling 7 trillion won ($5.3 billion).

Samsung had also announced the investment plan of $17 billion to build the Taylor foundry when Biden visited Seoul in May last year.

Meanwhile, heads of the top Korean conglomerates are also expected to meet with their industry counterparts during their US trip.

Samsung's Lee Jae-yong, making his first business trip to the US since he became the chairman in November last year, may stay longer in the US after the official conclusion of the delegation’s trip on Sunday. His next trial date in Korea over the 2015 merger of two Samsung affiliates is set on May 26.

Lee is reportedly planning to meet with Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, traveling to Silicon Valley in California in the later part of his US trip.

By Jo He-rim (herim@heraldcorp.com)

Aitkin County Dismisses Line 3 Trespassing Charges Against Winona LaDuke

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Two charges of trespassing against Winona LaDuke have been dismissed by a county judge in Minnesota. 

(Photo: StopLine3.org)

BY DARREN THOMPSON 

 APRIL 22, 2023

A county judge in central Minnesota dismissed two counts of trespassing against activist Winona LaDuke this week.

The charges are related to an incident on December 5, 2020, when LaDuke was charged with two counts of misdemeanor trespass for participating in a prayer lodge on the banks of the Mississippi River. On the day Line 3 construction was scheduled to begin, law enforcement posted “no trespassing” signs around a group of people conducting a ceremony and then demanded that everyone leave.

“I’m grateful for the dismissal,” LaDuke, founder and former executive director of Honor the Earth, said in an interview with Native News Online. “The charges were wrong. We are Anishinaabe and we are water protectors.”

LaDuke’s attorneys defended her right to participate in her religious freedom and alleged the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) in their court documents, “violations of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”

“Judge Metzen’s prudent decision to dismiss these exaggerated charges against Ms. LaDuke once again illustrates that Winona’s rights to exercise her religious and First Amendment freedoms were not in any way criminal trespass,” Frank Bibeau, one of LaDuke’s attorneys, said in a statement.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) made agreements with Enbridge to reimburse for extra policing during the construction of the Line 3 Oil Pipeline Replacement Project. In total, both the Minnesota DNR and Aitken County Sheriff’s Office received at least $8.6 million in reimbursement funding for Line 3 related activity. Nearly 900 people were arrested during the construction of Line 3, from December 2020 to October 2021.

“Aitkin County received over $350,000 from Enbridge to turn water protectors into criminals,” LaDuke said. “There are still many other water protectors who have been charged, all while Enbridge is gunning for the Straits of Mackinac risking the Great Lakes.”

While the courts dismissed the trespassing charges against LaDuke, a White Earth Ojibwe citizen, she is still a defendant in Aitkin and Wadena counties on separate charges related to her opposition of Enbridge’s Line 3 Oil Pipeline Replacement Project.

Enbridge Line 5 was built in 1953 and is a 30-inch oil pipeline that transports crude oil from western Canada to eastern Canada, 645 miles from Superior, Wisconsin to Sarnia, Ontario via the state of Michigan. The most controversial part of the pipeline is in the Straits of Mackinac, the narrow waterway that connects Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.

In 2018, an anchor from a freight ship struck and damaged the Line 5 pipeline while passing through the Straits of Mackinac. While damage from the passing didn’t lead to an oil spill, then-Republican Governor Rick Snyder made an agreement with Enbridge to protect the pipeline from future damage and keep it operational. Enbridge later built a $500 million tunnel under the lake to enclose the Line 5 pipeline.

Two years later, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, ordered Enbridge to cease operations in the Straits of Mackinac, effectively shutting the Line 5 oil pipeline down.Enbridge has refused to end operations, saying it earns an estimated $2 million daily and has been operating the pipeline safely and reliably for decades.

Enbridge wants to replace the pipeline inside a utility tunnel drilled beneath the Straits, arguing that would heighten protections against environmental damages. Enbridge already received permits to build the tunnel from Michigan state environmental regulators and the Mackinac Straits Corridor Authority. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has already begun its environmental impact statement (EIS), and is expected to take several years to complete.

Scramble for clean energy metals confronted by calls to respect Indigenous rights


Protester of Thacker Pass lithium mine.

 (Image courtesy of Max Wilbert via Mongabay)

BY SARAH SAX, MONGABAY

 APRIL 22, 2023

This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, and Native News Online.

NEW YORK — When Francisco Calí Tzay, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples, spoke at the world’s largest gathering of Indigenous peoples, he listed clean energy projects as some of the most concerning threats to their rights.

“I constantly receive information that Indigenous Peoples fear a new wave of green investments without recognition of their land tenure, management, and knowledge,” said Calí Tzay. His statement at the 22nd United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), and those made by other delegates, made clear that without the free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) of Indigenous people, these green projects have the capacity to seriously impede on Indigenous rights.

FPIC has always been an important topic at the UNPFII, but this year it’s taken on a renewed urgency.

“The strong push is because more and more of climate action and targets for sustainable development are impacting us,” said Joan Carling, executive director of Indigenous Peoples Rights International, an Indigenous non-profit that works to protect Indigenous peoples’ rights worldwide. Indigenous people around the world are experiencing the compounding pressures of clean energy mining projects, carbon offsets, new protected areas and large infrastructure projects on their lands as part of post-COVID-19 economic recovery efforts, according to The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) 2023 report.

As states around the world trend towards transitioning to clean energy to meet their national and international climate goals, the demand for minerals like lithium, copper and nickel needed for batteries that power the energy revolution are projected to skyrocket. The demand could swell fourfold by 2040 and by conservative estimates, pull in $1.7 trillion in mining investments. Although Indigenous delegates say they support clean energy projects, one of the issues is their land rights: more than half of the projects extracting these minerals currently are on or near lands where Indigenous peoples or peasants live, according to an analysis published in Nature.

This can either lead to their eviction from territories, loss of livelihoods or the deforestation and degradation of surrounding ecosystems.

“And yet […] we are not part of the discussion,” said Carling. “That’s why I call it green colonialism — the [energy] transition without the respect of Indigenous rights is another form of colonialism.”

However, standing at the doorway of a just clean energy transition is FPIC, say Indigenous delegates. FPIC is the cornerstone of international human rights standards like the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the International Labor Organization Convention 169 (ILO Convention 169). Though more than one hundred countries have adopted UNDRIP, this standard is not legally binding. It is rather an instrument to interpret national laws. ILO Convention 169 is legally binding, but only to the 24 states that have ratified the convention.

Because of this, delegates are calling on countries and companies to create binding policy and guidelines that require FPIC for all projects that affect Indigenous people and their lands, as well as financial, territorial and material remedies for when companies and countries fail to do so. According to Carling, this will be the mandatory inclusion of FPIC in international standards such as the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and putting more pressure on national governments to implement policy reforms that include accountability.

However, there is undoubtedly some pushback. The free prior, informed consent process can lead to a wide variety of outcomes, including the right for communities to decline a highly profitable project, which can often be difficult for countries, companies, and investors to abide by, explains Mary Beth Gallagher, the director of engagement of investment at Domini Impact Investments, who spoke at a side event on shareholder advocacy.

A cobalt mine in central Africa. 

Image by Fairphone via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

Indigenous Sámi delegates from Norway drew attention to their need for legally enforceable FPIC protection as they continued to protest the Fosen Vind project farm that the country’s Supreme Court ruled was violating their rights. “We have come to learn the hard way that sustainability doesn’t end colonialism,” said a Sámi delegate during the main panel on Tuesday.

In the United States, the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, the People of Red Mountain, and members of the Fort McDermitt Tribe filed lawsuits against the Bureau of Land Management for approving the permits for an open-pit lithium mine without proper consultation with the tribes. In the Colombian Amazon, the Inga Indigenous community presented a successful appeal for lack of prior consultation from a Canadian company that plans to mine copper, molybdenum, and other metals in their highly biodiverse territory.

Consternation over governments and multinational companies setting aside FPIC has long extended over other sectors, like conservation and monoculture plantations for key cash crops. In Peru, the Shipibo-Konibo Indigenous people are resisting several large protected areas that overlap with their territory and were put in place without prior consultation. In Tanzania and Kenya, the Maasai are being actively evicted from their landsfor a trophy hunting and safari reserve. Indigenous Ryukyuan delegates condemned the ongoing use of their traditional lands and territories by the Japanese government and the United States military for U.S. military bases without their free, prior, and informed consent.

Eyes on the private sector

While delegates put a lot of emphasis on the lack of FPIC, they put equal emphasis on FPIC as a crucial part of the long-term sustainability of energy projects.

“FPIC is more than just a checklist for companies looking to develop projects on Indigenous lands,” said Carling. “It is a framework for partnership, including options for equitable benefit sharing agreements or memorandum of understanding, collaboration or conservation.”

The focus of this year’s conference has emphasized the growing role of FPIC in the private sector. Investors and developers are increasingly considering the inclusion of FPIC into their human rights due diligence standards. Select countries such as Canada have implemented UNDRIP in full, although First Nation groups pointed out irregularities in how it is being implemented. The EU is proposing including specific mandatory rights to FPIC in its corporate sustainability due diligence regulation. Side events at the UNPFII focused on topics like transmitting FPIC Priorities to the private sector and using shareholder advocacy to increase awareness of FPIC.

Gallagher of Domini Impact Investments says companies have a responsibility to respect human rights, which includes FPIC. “If they have a human rights commission or they have a commitment in their policies not to do land grabs, we have to hold them to account for that.”

In 2021, the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, published an expectation that companies “obtain (and maintain) the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous peoples for business decisions that affect their rights.” Large banks like Credit Agricole have included FPIC in their corporate social responsibility policy. But in most cases, even when companies have a FPIC policy, it doesn’t conform to the standard outlined in UNDRIP and is not legally binding.

“It doesn’t do the work it’s supposed to do to protect self-determination. It becomes a check-the-box procedure that’s solely consultations and stakeholder consultation instead of protection of rights and self-determination,” says Kate Finn, director at First Peoples Worldwide.

If communities aren’t giving their consent, the company has to respect that, says Gallagher. “There’s obviously points of tension where investors have different agendas and priorities but ultimately, it’s about centering Indigenous leadership and working through that.”

Not properly abiding by FPIC can be costly to companies in countries that operate where it is a legal instrument. It comes with risks of losing their social operation to license, and financial damages. According to a study First Peoples Worldwide, Energy Transfer Partners and banks that financed the now-completed Dakota Access Pipeline, lost billions due to construction delays, account closures, and contract losses after they failed to obtain consent from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in the United States.

Ultimately, Indigenous people need to be part of decision-making from the beginning of any project, especially clean energy projects mining for transition minerals on their territories, said Carling. “For us, land is life, and we have a right to decide over what happens on our land.”

Indigenous Scholars Release New Report at U.N. on Determinants — and Protectants —of Indigenous Health



(photo: Jenna Kunze)

BY DARREN THOMPSON 

 APRIL 20, 2023

NEW YORK — Indigenous scholars presented a report on Tuesday on Indigenous determinants of health at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) 22nd session.

The study was delegated during UNPFII 21st session and aims to create positive health and wellness outcomes for Indigenous communities worldwide. The study also responds to the U.N.’s adopted 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to eliminate poverty and improve health and economic development for all populations globally.

The 20-page report outlines how social determinants — genetics, behavior, environment and culture — influence the health outcomes of the world’s Indigenous populations. The authors noted that while Indigenous populations vary around the globe, they share critical commonalities: an approach to health as an “equilibrium of spirituality, traditional medicine, biodiversity and the interconnectedness of all that exists” and oppression of culture via colonization.

“The Indigenous determinants of health are varied and cannot possibly capture everybody’s need and truth in one document,” Stacy Bohlen, (Sault Ste. Marie Ojibwe) CEO of the National Indian Health Board (NIHB) said at Tuesday’s announcement. “But the one commonality we share as Indigenous peoples is colonization, and the consequences of colonization internationally have led us to common grounds of cultural erasure, intergenerational trauma, and loss of language and culture, all supported by policies designed to specifically do those things.”

Dr. Donald Warne, Co-Director for the Center for Indigenous Health at John Hopkins University and a contributor to the report, told Native News Online that the report not only highlights determinants of health that contribute to disparities but determinants that support — or “protect” — positive health outcomes, such as connectedness to language, culture, and ceremony.

“Social determinants of health are typically linked to bad health outcomes,” Warne told Native News Online. “What we want to emphasize is that for Indigenous determinants of health, is that we have some very unique strengths.”

The report pinpoints 33 Indigenous determinants and protectants of health, divided into three categories: (a) Intergenerational holistic healing; (b) Health of Mother Earth; (c) Decolonizing and re-Indigenizing culture.

Determinants include institutionalized Indigenous-specific racism, ongoing trauma exposure, erosion of traditional lifeways and more. Protectors of health include acknowledgment of sovereignty and Indigenous rights and belief systems, access to traditional medicine, and land and sacred place.

“The protective factors of Indigenous health and that needs to be promoted,” Warne said.

Scholars hope that more resources will be put toward the research to establish guiding principles of how to improve the overall health and wellness of the world’s Indigenous peoples.

“This is not a document that’s produced with hopeful aspirations, but to actually make commitments and to measure outcomes based on the work related to this,” said Warne. “We’re hoping that it leads to long-term commitment internationally so that it leads to positive Indigenous outcomes.”

At Tuesday’s discussion, the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus —comprised of Indigenous youth from all seven regions within the U.N. — supported the report.

“We strongly support and stand by the report,” Makanalani Gomes, a representative of the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus, said. “We know that inclusion, cultivation, and nurturing of Indigenous youth are social determinants of youth. When we take care and honor the rights of Indigenous youth and Indigenous peoples, we in turn, take care of Earth, our Mother.”

The full report is available here.

New York Public Schools Banned from Using Native American Mascots

Protesters gather against the name of the Washington Redskins in Minneapolis, Minn. (Photo/Fibonacci Blue via CC-by-2.0)

BY NATIVE NEWS ONLINE STAFF APRIL 19, 2023

The New York Board of Regents has officially banned all uses of Indigenous imagery and names as school mascots, per a report from Albany-based paper Times-Union.


The vote came unanimously Tuesday morning following a proposal announced by New York State’s education department in November. Some districts have gotten ahead of the curve by preemptively changing their mascots, the Times-Union reports, but others attempted to make slighter changes in a bid to keep names like “raiders” or “warriors” sans Indigenous imagery.

An advisory group of Indigenous people roundly rejected those proposed changes and called an argument that such terms communicated respect for their subject matter untrue, pointing to the phrases’ implication of “revering an exterminated group.”

The announcement caused a flurry of protests among residents in Rotterdam, N.Y., in the Mohonasen Central School District, which uses the term “Warriors” as their mascot alongside a logo of three Indigenous faces. Facebook groups surrounding the district were inundated with complaints of changing too much, too fast, in the midst of an overly sensitive public.

Mohonasen Superintendent Shannon Shine wrote in a letter to the community that he planned to seek legal counsel regarding the name change.

“Time is needed to digest the information, to seek legal counsel, to see what additional information is put forward from the NYS Education Department and the NYS Board of Regents, and to plan to further engage with our community stakeholders (parents, alumni, students, faculty/staff, and residents) regarding the new regulations,” Shine wrote.

One route could be securing the blessing of an Indigenous tribe, a venue left open in the Board of Regents’ announcement — but New York State tribes such as the Oneida have already promised to deny such support to anyone, per the Times-Union report.

Tuesday’s vote represents the culmination of an effort that began in 2001 under former Commissioner of Education Richard P. Mills, according to the proposal summary published to the Board of Regents’ website. Mills issued a memorandum “concluding that the Use of Native American symbols or depictions as mascots can become a barrier to building a safe and nurturing school community and improving academic achievement for all students.”

The proposal also builds off of legal precedent established through Cambridge Central School Dist. et al. v New York State Education Dept., et al. in which the Cambridge education board first retired the use of its “Indians” mascot and then attempted to walk that back, prompting a community petition to the Commissioner of Education Betty A. Rosa.

Both Rosa’s initial decision and a later appeal before the State Supreme Court held that Cambridge’s attempt to walk back their retirement of the “Indians” name was “arbitrary” and that the original resolution to retire the name should be upheld.

The decision will go into effect officially on May 3, though education officers expect legal resistance from some schools in the state, the Times-Union reports.

In the wake of historic storms, Māori leaders call for disaster relief and rights


Kerry Marshall / Getty Images

BY JOSEPH LEE, 

GRIST APRIL 19, 2023

This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, and Native News Online.

In February, Cyclone Gabrielle hit New Zealand, bringing devastating floods and powerful winds, destroying homes, displacing thousands, and killing at least eleven people. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins called it “the most significant weather event New Zealand has seen in this century.” Around 70 percent of destroyed homes were occupied by Indigenous Māori, but Māori leaders say that they have been left out of recovery services and funding.

“Because climate events have gotten more and more intense, it’s at a point of our communities will either get wiped out through more storms or have to choose to leave their homelands,” Renee Raroa, a Ngati Porou Māori representative from Mana Taiao Tairāwhiti in eastern New Zealand, said. “We’re running out of options.”

With the frequency and severity of storms increasing, along with other climate impacts like rising sea levels, Māori peoples are facing increasingly dire climate crises and calling on the United Nations for help. At the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, or UNPFII, Māori representatives called on New Zealand to include Māori people in disaster recovery plans, provide support for Indigenous-led climate initiatives, and fully implement the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – a nonbinding resolution that affirms international Indigenous rights. Māori representatives also called on the U.N. to pressure New Zealand to support Indigenous land rights.

“Cyclone Gabrielle exposed the human rights dimensions of climate change disaster,” said Claire Charters, Māori Indigenous Rights Governance Partner at the New Zealand Human Rights Commission. “Māori rights must be part of all climate change and emergency policy and law.”

The Māori say neglect in the aftermath of the storm is just the latest violation of their human rights by the New Zealand government that could be solved by a national action plan to implement the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In 2019, Indigenous leaders and the New Zealand Human Rights Commission began discussions to do just that, but talks were postponed last year, with the government saying that the general public needed more awareness of the plan and its purposes.

But Māori leaders say that the plan fell victim to political maneuvering, with politicians unwilling to tackle a contentious issue ahead of elections. With limited room to work at home, they say bringing their concerns to the U.N. can get conversations moving again in the national system. “We can add pressure back home by being here and by having our public statement heard on the global stage,” Raroa said.

“We must ensure that Māori are centered in the discussions on mitigation and adapting to climate change, and that Indigenous knowledge is more deliberately considered,” a representative from New Zealand’s government said in a statement delivered at the Forum. The representative also highlighted the importance of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, but did not mention any steps to implement it.

Hannah McGlade, an Indigenous Noongar member of the Permanent Forum from Australia, says that New Zealand’s reluctance to actually implement the declaration is common around the world. The U.S., Canada, and Australia have also been called out at UNPFII for their lack of action to implement the human rights standards. “We do see too great a gap between the declaration principles and the actions and conduct of countries globally,” McGlade said. “There has to be proactive commitments made through the plans.”

Meanwhile, as Māori continue to rebuild their own communities, they are also developing climate and environmental programs based on Indigenous traditions and practice, including reforestation and invasive species control. To fully realize these programs, the Māori say they need both more funding and more freedom to make land use decisions.

“We’re going to make the right choices for our land, so just provide the resources to help us get better,” Raroa said.

This article originally appeared in Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

America Was Conceived in Violence; Seemingly, Nothing Has Changed


(Photo/Taken from a banner at the FNX studio in San Bernardino, California by Levi Rickert)

BY LEVI RICKERT

 APRIL 23, 2023

Opinion.

 A week ago on a Thursday evening, Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old black teenager, was asked by his mother to pick up his 11-year-old twin brothers from their friend’s home in Kansas City. Ralph made an innocent mistake of going to the wrong address.

The mistake almost cost him his life.

He went to the door and rang the doorbell. He was met with a bullet to his head without any conversation other than being told his kind did not belong there. He fell to the ground, and was hit by a second bullet in his arm. Somehow, he made it to a door two houses from where he was shot. The resident there told him to stay on the ground with his hands above his bleeding head, as the occupant called the police.

The shooter was a 84-year-old white man, who told the police he was “scared to death.” So, he shot the 5’8” 140-pound teen.

By all accounts Ralph is an exemplary student who is taking college-accredited courses with hopes of someday attending Princeton. Frankly, does that really matter? If Ralph were a black juvenile delinquent who rang the wrong doorbell, he still should not have been shot.

The story of the shooting made national news. When I first read about it, I was appalled.

Of course, I am constantly dismayed by all of the gun violence in the United States. Breaking news comes to my phone all day; oftentimes I find myself reading about another mass shooting in process. Schools are not safe. Shopping malls are not safe. Even churches and synagogues are not safe from gun violence.

When the shootings occur, politicians are quick to say the victims and families of the victims are in their “thoughts and prayers.” The refrain is worse than a broken record, because absolutely nothing changes.

As Native Americans, we know America was conceived in violence. Our ancestors faced an onslaught of violence from the beginning of European contact. It has been said that the non-Natives came with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other. If they could not “save” us, they would kill us.

Wars were waged against Native Americans for centuries. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), now under the U.S. Department of the Interior, originated in the War Department, the forerunner to the U.S. Department of Defense, in 1824. Given its origin, it is clear the War Department’s BIA was not created to help Native tribes to become prosperous.

Throughout the 1800s, our ancestors faced massacres filled with violence. As Native Americans we remember the gun violence of Wounded Knee in 1890 and the Sand Creek Massacre where hundreds of men, women, and children were massacred. Those are only two of the acknowledged massacres.

We know that violence is not only perpetrated against Native Americans. American society is so obsessed with guns, it bleeds over to innocent segments of society often.

A new KFF-Washington Post partnership survey released earlier this month says “about one in five adults saying that they have personally been threatened with a gun (21%) or had a family member killed by a gun, including by suicide (19%). One in six say they personally witnessed someone being shot.

The American obsession with guns is literally killing us.

Sadly, guns are still causing the deaths of Native Americans and the trend is worsening. Giffords reported in October 2022, that from “2000 to 2020, the total number of gun deaths among American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) people more than doubled, and from 2019 to 2020 alone, gun deaths in this group rose 34 percent.”

To be clear, I am not a proponent of taking away all guns in American society. Clearly, Native Americans have been hunters since before European contact and have used guns to hunt since they were introduced to our ancestors. However, I am a proponent of establishing gun control with strong background checks so that mentally unstable people and criminals cannot own guns.

Further, I believe Americans need to push back hard on the politics of hate that causes unfounded fear. That was the case of the Kansas City elderly man who shot an innocent teen who was only trying to pick up his twin brothers.

As a Native American man, I can hope that America gets over its obsession with guns.

Senators Push Universities, Museums to “Expeditiously Return” Native Ancestors

Repatriation
Yahoo News

Sens. Lisa Murkowski (left) and Brian Schatz (right) 

at an Indian Affairs Committee oversight hearing on 

NAGPRA on Feb. 2, 2022. 

(Photo: Senate Committee on Indian Affairs). 

 BY BRIAN EDWARDS APRIL 21, 2023

WASHINGTON – A bipartisan group of 13 U.S. Senators is asking universities and museums with large collections of Native American human remains why they’ve failed to repatriate them to tribes—more than 30 years after a federal law was passed that compelled them to do so.

In letters sent to the University of California-Berkeley, Harvard University, Illinois State Museum, Indiana University, and the Ohio History Connection, the senate group—led by Sens. Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Lisa Murkwoski (R-AK) of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs—urged the institutions to comply with the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and “expeditiously return” cultural items and ancestral remains.

Signed into law in 1990, NAGPRA directs federal agencies and museums with possession or control over holdings or collections of Native American human remains and funerary objects to inventory them, identify their geographic and cultural affiliation, and notify the affected Indian tribes or Native Hawaiian organization.

The five institutions that received the letters possess some of the largest collections of Native American human remains, according to federal records. Many were identified in recent media reports, including Native News Online reporting and a ProPublica and NBC News investigation that highlights how prestigious universities and museums have delayed repatriation requests and failed the mandate set by NAGPRA.

“Delayed repatriation is delayed justice for Native peoples,” the senators said in letters to the five institutions. “For too long, Native ancestral remains and cultural items have been unconscionably denied their journey home by institutions, desecrated by scientific study, publicly displayed as specimens, left to collect dust on a shelf, or simply thrown in a box and forgotten in a museum storeroom.”

In the letters, the senators requested that the universities and museums provide an update over the next 60 days on their current process and pace of repatriation, as well as information about their policies and practices pursuant to NAGPRA.

The letters were also signed by Senators Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), Patty Murray (D-WA), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), Tina Smith (D-MN), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Jon Tester (D-MT), and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

The letters note positive impacts that NAGPRA has created, but also mentions “troubling testimony” about the failure of institutions to complete repatrations in a timely manner.

“While NAGPRA has had positive and far-reaching impacts, such as improved relationships between museums, institutions, federal agencies, and Native peoples, and significant, successful repatriation of many cultural items and ancestral remains, Congress continues to receive troubling testimony detailing ongoing issues related to the timely completion of NAGPRA repatriations,” the senators write.

National Congress of American Indians President Fawn Sharp issued a statement commending the Senators' bipartisan efforts. "For centuries, our cultural items, our sacred items, and our ancestors have been taken from us and kept from us, but today's efforts acknowledge what we have long said: there is no acceptable reason to continue this practice and no acceptable reason for delays—now is the time to right this historic and ongoing wrong," Sharp said.

The Largest Global Gathering of Indigenous Leaders at the UN. Here’s what you need to know.

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Grist / Getty ImagesBY JOSEPH LEE,

 GRIST APRIL 17, 2023
This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, and Native News Online.

Indigenous peoples have long argued that they have done little to contribute to climate change but that they’re the most affected and are expected to make steep sacrifices to fix it. Funding for green energy projects continues to skyrocket despite clear and growing threats to Indigenous peoples’ lands and rights. Indigenous leaders persistently express concern over global conservation programs that remove communities from their traditional territories, while record numbers of environmental, Indigenous, and land defenders are killed.

That context is sure to inform conversations at this year’s United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, or UNPFII, which opens its 22nd session today in New York with a key thematic focus: Indigenous peoples, human health, planetary and territorial health, and climate change. An advisory agency with the United Nations since 2000, UNPFII is one of only three U.N. bodies that deal specifically with Indigenous issues, with a major focus on advocating for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP, a nonbinding resolution that affirms international Indigenous rights but is irregularly followed or applied by nations, and sometimes even by U.N. agencies. UNPFII offers Indigenous peoples, leaders, organizations, and allies an opportunity to raise specific issues to the agency in the hope of winding those issues through the international system to world leaders and policy makers.

“We are going to the U.N. because in our countries they are not hearing us,” said Majo Andrade Cerda, Kichwa member of the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus from Ecuador. “It’s a way for us to say we are still alive, because we don’t know when the states and the extractive industries are going to kill us. We are threatened every day.”

With COVID-19 restrictions continuing to loosen around the world, the forum will be conducted completely in person for the first time in four years at the United Nations’ headquarters in New York. And while travel costs can be immense for many Indigenous leaders, forum members say that in-person is generally more productive as many communities have struggled with poor internet connections. It also offers a rare chance for collaboration and networking among Indigenous peoples around the world. More than 2,000 participants have registered to attend this year.

According to forum members, past virtual and hybrid sessions have seen a lower number of attendees. Cerda hopes that more women and youth will be here this year, noting that their voices are critical and often overlooked. “Women are the holders of the ancestral knowledge,” she said. “We want to live in our communities, in our lands, for the rest of our lives and for the future generations.”

One key report on Indigenous determinants of health will be discussed this session. Based on a study conducted by forum members in 2022, it highlights factors that influence Indigenous health outcomes, including food systems, intergenerational trauma, access to traditional foods and plants, and sovereign rights. The authors recommend the U.N. and member states adopt a raft of strategies and programs, including incorporating Indigenous traditions in health assessment, offering medical services in Indigenous languages, and launching national awareness campaigns to combat misdiagnoses of Indigenous health issues. How to get those recommendations adopted by world leaders will be the biggest question. Attendees are expected to address specific health concerns from their communities, which will inform the recommendations that the forum ultimately makes to U.N. agencies and member states.

“Our goal with this report was to provide a structure and a framework to not only define what Indigenous determinants of health are, but to also provide a guide for U.N. agencies and stakeholders, as well as member states and countries, on how you approach health with Indigenous people,” said Geoffrey Roth, a Standing Rock Sioux descendent, one of the report’s authors, and an elected member of the permanent forum.

Last year in its final report, UNPFII called on member states and U.N. agencies to create and implement mechanisms that would better protect Indigenous peoples’ rights and territories, specifically calling out the United States and Canada to create action plans to actually implement the UNDRIP within their borders. Both countries have signed on as supporters of the declaration, but have not braided its recommendations into law and regularly violate the declaration’s principles. For example, in the U.S. a major copper mine is on track to destroy Oak Flat, a sacred area to the Apache, with the backing of the Biden administration. For years, it has faced resistance from tribal nations and Apache Stronghold, a coalition of Indigenous leaders, activists, and allies. Last month, President Biden approved ConocoPhillips’s Willow project in Alaska, an oil-drilling project, despite some local Indigenous communities’ opposition and climate concerns. In Canada, Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs have been protesting the Coastal GasLink pipeline on their lands for years, facing violent reprisals and arrests.

In the previous session, forum members and Indigenous leaders also highlighted the importance of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent — an international human rights standard that gives Indigenous communities control over development projects that impact them. Last year, Sámi leaders flagged a major wind-energy project in their traditional reindeer-herding territories that was established illegally and without their consent. That project sparked protests in Norway last month, culminating in the shutdown of multiple ministries by Sámi and environmental activists for nearly a week. Norwegian representatives have apologized for violating the Sámi’s human rights, but the windmills are still operational.

Since the last session, Indigenous representatives say their advocacy sparked some progress. Agencies within the U.N., like the World Health Organization, will host side events on Indigenous women and mental health, issues raised at the Forum last year. However, more concrete recommendations, including calling on the United States to grant clemency to Indigenous political prisoner Leonard Peltier, have gone unheeded. “We do not have more power to really push them to come and to do the things in the right way,” Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, an Indigenous Mbororo forum member from Chad, said. “It is their responsibility. It is their mandate to work with the Indigenous peoples.”

This year’s UNPFII also marks the anniversary of a 100-year fight waged by Indigenous leaders for influence at the international level. In 1923, Chief Deskaheh of the Iroquois League went to the League of Nations in Geneva to advocate for Indigenous sovereignty but was turned away. In 1925, Maori leader T.W. Ratana was also blocked from the League of Nations, where he hoped to protest the breaking of a treaty that affirmed Maori control over their lands in New Zealand.

Establishing UNPFII has been an important victory, but the forum still has no enforcement power over other U.N. bodies and little sway with member states. This year may see another shift in the forum, however. This session, the president of the U.N. General Assembly, H.E. Csaba Kőrösi, will hold a hearing on “enhanced participation” — a move that could put UNPFII and Indigenous nations on the same level as member states and allow participation in major meetings, like the General Assembly. Currently, that ability does not exist for forum members and other Indigenous leaders without a specific invitation from member states to major meetings, agencies, or hearings. “I wish that we could move forward on that conversation and find a meaningful way for tribal nations to be respected and have a voice within the U.N. system,” Roth said.

R. Múkaro Agüeibaná Borrero, member of the Guainía Taíno Tribe and president of the United Confederation of Taíno People, who has attended every session of the permanent forum since it began in 2000, acknowledges that progress at the forum can seem slow, but believes that their efforts pay off in the long term. “We know that the struggle is long, but as Indigenous peoples we know we have to be in that struggle for the long haul,” Borrero said.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

University of Minnesota Commited Genocide Against Native Peoples, New Report Shows

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(photo:University of Minnesota Instagram)

BY NATIVE NEWS ONLINE STAFF APRIL 11, 2023

For seven generations, the University of Minnesota has profited off of Indigenous land and perpetrated genocide against its original inhabitants, according to a landmark report published today by a Native-led research group.

Now, the state’s 11 federally recognized tribes are asking the university for land back, representation among administrators and the student body, and a commitment to “repatriations in perpetuity.”

The research was spurred by the March 2020 High Country News publication of an investigation into the land grab universities across the United States that continue profiting from Native land.

But the Dakota land cessions of 1851, in which four bands relinquished nearly all Dakota territory in Mni Sota Makoce (what is now called Minnesota) at the threat of violence, provided land to more universities than any other cession, HCN reported.

The University of Minnesota was founded in 1851 but closed in 1857 because of financial hardship. It wasn’t until President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act of 1862 that the university was able to reopen in 1867, through the seed money generated from close to 100,000 acres of land taken from the 11 Minnesota tribes. The Act allowed states to establish public college financed by the development or sale of association federal land grants. More than 10 million acres of the grants were expropriated from tribal lands.

“Nearly 830,000 acres from this treaty — an area almost three times the size of Los Angeles — would help fund the endowment of 35 land-grant universities,” reporters Tristan Ahtone and Robert Lee wrote. “Mni Sota Makoce furnished one out of every 13 acres redistributed under the Morrill Act.”

As a result of the HCN reporting, the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council in 2020 called for a specific accounting of Mni Sóta Maḳoce’s land grab. They created the TRUTH Project—Towards Recognition and University-Tribal Healing, funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation— to research university-tribal relations from an Indigenous perspective.

Local tribal members combed through academic literature, university records, legislative records, and Indigenous histories to complete their 215-page report on how the University of Minnesota has and continues to undermine tribal sovereignty.

“The University of Minnesota’s founding as a land grant/grab institution in 1851—and then again in 1867— extracted vast amounts of wealth from Tribal Nations,” The TRUTH Project Core Research Team said in a statement. “The institution must account for the perpetual harms that accompany that land expropriation. The U of M must also enact policies that prioritize and maximize the benefits to Indigenous peoples.”

The report calls on the University of Minnesota leadership to work towards healing through reparations, truth-telling, policy change, and transformative justice projects.

“In light of these findings, the institution must formally recognize the harm and genocide committed against Native American peoples, including the theft of language, culture, community, and land that has led to the depressed social determinants of well-being among Indigenous peoples, including education, healthcare, and housing,” the report reads.

Robert Larsen, President of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council and President of the Lower Sioux Indian Community, said in a statement that the report just scratches the surface.

“I hope people realize these stories are meant to heal, not hurt anyone, and to help more people understand the true history of how we have gotten to the point we are today,” Larsen said. “The work needs to continue. Only when we know better can we do better for our present and future together.”