What to call seafood made from fish cells

Rutgers study confirms “cell-based” and “cell-cultured” work best

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: FOOD COMPANIES, REGULATORS, MARKETERS, JOURNALISTS AND OTHERS SHOULD USE THE TERMS “CELL-BASED” OR “CELL-CULTURED” WHEN LABELING AND TALKING ABOUT SEAFOOD PRODUCTS MADE FROM THE CELLS OF FISH OR SHELLFISH, ACCORDING TO A NEW RUTGERS STUDY IN THE JOURNAL OF FOOD SCIENCE. view more 

CREDIT: RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

New Brunswick, N.J. (Aug. 9, 2021) – Food companies, regulators, marketers, journalists and others should use the terms “cell-based” or “cell-cultured” when labeling and talking about seafood products made from the cells of fish or shellfish, according to a new Rutgers study in the Journal of Food Science.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture require food products to have a “common or usual name” on their labels, so consumers can make informed choices.

With more than 70 companies around the world developing cell-cultured protein products and more than $360 million invested in their development in 2020 alone, the adoption of one common name is crucial as products move closer to commercialization. 

The study by William Hallman, a professor who chairs the Department of Human Ecology in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, confirmed the results from his earlier study comparing seven potential names for these products.

In the new study, a representative sample of 1,200 consumers evaluated packages of Atlantic salmon designed to mimic those found in grocery stores, labeled with “cell-based seafood” or “cell-cultured seafood”.

The names were evaluated using five criteria to test their ability to meet FDA labeling regulations and producers’ needs to sell their products. These criteria included each term's ability to help consumers distinguish cell-cultured seafood from wild and farmed fish; to signal its potential as an allergen; to be seen as an appropriate term for the product; to not disparage cell-cultured or conventional products; and to not evoke thoughts, images or emotions that the products aren’t safe, healthy, and nutritious.

“The results suggest that both ‘cell-based seafood’ and ‘cell-cultured seafood’ meet FDA regulations,” Hallman said. “They help the majority of consumers understand that the new products are produced in a different way from the ‘wild-caught’ and ‘farm-raised’ fish they may already be buying. At the same time, consumers also recognized that if they are allergic to seafood, they shouldn’t eat the product.”

The study’s participants reported slightly more positive overall impressions, slightly greater interest in tasting and slightly greater likelihood of purchasing the products labeled as “cell-based seafood” than those labeled as “cell-cultured seafood.”

Citing Hallman’s research, the National Fisheries Institute (representing the fisheries industry), the Environmental Defense Fund, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Alliance for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation (representing the cell-cultured protein industry) have begun to coalesce around use of the term “cell-cultured.”

“Both names work well,” Hallman said. “The key is to choose a single term and to get everyone to adopt it. That will reduce confusion and ultimately help consumers understand what they are buying.”

The new products are produced using the same muscle cells, fat cells and connective tissue cells from fish species and are expected to look, taste and have the same nutritional qualities and health benefits as conventional seafood. These new products will be produced in sterile environments, so they will not contain mercury, pesticides, microplastics, antibiotics and other contaminants. Additionally, companies will only produce the parts of the fish that consumers eat, resulting in less food waste, while providing year-round availability, consistent quality and sustainable production practices.

The study was supported by BlueNalu, a San Diego company led by Lou Cooperhouse, former director of Rutgers Food Innovation Center. Hallman has served as director of Rutgers Food Policy Institute and chaired the FDA’s Risk Communication Advisory Committee. He serves on the Standing Committee on Advancing Science Communication of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

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ABOUT RUTGERS—NEW BRUNSWICK
Rutgers University–New Brunswick is where Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, began more than 250 years ago. Ranked among the world’s top 60 universities, Rutgers’s flagship is a leading public research institution and a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. It has an internationally acclaimed faculty, 12 degree-granting schools and the Big Ten Conference’s most diverse student body.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Food Science

DOI

10.1111/1750-3841.15860

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

A comparison of cell-based and cell-cultured as appropriate common or usual names to label products made from the cells of fish

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Aug-2021

 

Climate change ‘double whammy’ could kill off fish species

Warming waters rob fish of ability to both move and adapt to cope

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF READING

Many commonly-eaten fish could face extinction as warming oceans due to climate change increases pressure on their survival while also hampering their ability to adapt.

New research suggests that fish like sardines, pilchards and herring will struggle to keep pace with accelerating climate change as warmer waters reduce their size, and therefore their ability to relocate to more suitable environments.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, also provides the first evidence to counter the scientific theory that decreased movement will result in more species, by suggesting the opposite is true. This means many species will also be less able to evolve to cope with warmer temperatures, increasing their risk of dying out.

Professor Chris Venditti, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading, and co-author of the study, said: “Warming waters are a double whammy for fish, as they not only cause them to evolve to a smaller size, but also reduce their ability to move to more suitable environments.

“Our research supports the theory that fish will get smaller as oceans warm under climate change, but reveals the worrying news that they will also not be able to evolve to cope as efficiently as first thought. With sea temperatures rising faster than ever, fish will very quickly get left behind in evolutionary terms and struggle to survive.

“This has serious implications for all fish and our food security, as many of the species we eat could become increasingly scarce or even non-existent in decades to come.”

The study, led by the Center for Advanced Studies in Arid Zones (CEAZA) in Chile and the University of Reading in the UK, used statistical analyses of a large dataset of globally distributed fish species to study their evolution over the past 150 million years. The study provides first solid evidence of how historical global temperature fluctuations have affected the evolution of these species.

It focused on Clupeiforms - a highly diverse group of fish found all over the world, which includes important species for fisheries, such as anchovies, Atlantic herring, Japanese pilchard, Pacific herring, and South American pilchard. However, the findings have implications for all fish.

Fish have thus far only had to deal with a maximum average ocean temperature rise of around 0.8°C per millennium. This is far lower than current warming rates reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of 0.18°C per decade since 1981.

The findings support the long-held expectation among scientists that fish will generally get smaller and move less as world warms, due to having to increase their metabolism and therefore needing more oxygen to sustain their body functions. This will impact fish species because larger fish are able to travel longer distances owing to their greater energy reserves, whereas smaller fish are less able to seek out new environments with favourable conditions as the climate changes.

However, the research contradicts the assumption that an increase in smaller fish will mean more new species emerging because of concentrating genetic variations within local areas.

Instead, the scientists found warmer waters would lead to fewer new species developing, robbing fish of another of their key weapons to cope with climate change.

Overfishing has also been found to make fish smaller in size, so the new study adds to the list of pressures they face as a consequence of human actions.

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JOURNAL

Nature Climate Change

DOI

10.1038/s41558-021-01123-5

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Historic warming consistently decreased size, dispersal and speciation rate of fish

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Aug-2021

 

Why  WHITE middle-class residents want to stay put after floodwaters recede

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RICE UNIVERSITY

Flood disasters like Hurricane Harvey lead some people to move far from the places they had called home. But a new study from Rice University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison finds that middle-class people who made long-term plans to stay in their neighborhoods before they flooded are less likely to relocate even if they suffered significant damage.

The study’s findings are outlined in “Best Laid Plans: How the Middle Class Make Residential Decisions Post-Disaster,” which will appear in an upcoming edition of the journal Social Problems. The paper is now available online.

Researchers Anna Rhodes, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice, and Max Besbris, an assistant professor of sociology at Wisconsin-Madison, examined how Harvey affected the housing decisions made by middle-class residents of Friendswood, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Over the course of two years after the storm, the researchers conducted a series of interviews with residents in 59 households that flooded.

Rhodes, the study’s lead author, said flood victims who stayed put did so because of plans they made before the storm. Most of the people who were interviewed stayed in their homes, even though they not only had the financial means to move, they also faced pressure from friends and family to relocate to less vulnerable places with similar amenities.

“What we found is that massive damage, social pressure and the revealed risk of living near a creek that severely overran its banks during Harvey were not enough to get most residents to consider leaving Friendswood,” Besbris said. “Instead, most people thought they would stay in their homes for many years to come and these plans were very durable.”

On the other hand, most of the households who decided to move after the storm indicated they left because they had already made well-defined plans to a move before the hurricane hit.

“In the face of an unexpected residential decision after Hurricane Harvey, it was residents who were already thinking about moving that were most likely to decide not to return to their flood-damaged homes,” Rhodes said.

She also noted that none of the families who chose to stay or leave were offered buyouts. In order to help people living in vulnerable areas consider moving, Rhodes said it’s important to understand how they ultimately make the decision to stay or leave.

“Future work dealing with post-disaster policies should be designed with mobility in mind,” Rhodes said.

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JOURNAL

Social Problems

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Best Laid Plans: How the Middle Class Make Residential Decisions Post-Disaster

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Jul-2021

Floods in China's southwest impacts hundreds of thousands, state media says

Parts of China’s southwestern Sichuan Province, including Ganzi, have reported heavy rains that began Friday, according to Chinese state media. 

File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 9 (UPI) -- Chinese authorities said that more than 440,000 people in southwestern Sichuan Province have been affected in the aftermath of torrential rains and floods.

Heavy rains of up to nearly 9 inches that began Friday caused rivers to swell and flooded six cities or regions in the province, including Luzhou, Mianyang, Nanchong, Dazhou, Bazhong and Ganzi, state media reported.

In Nanchong, a monitoring station reported 17 inches of rain in a 24-hour time period, Xinhua said Monday.

According to China Central Television, 45 houses had collapsed in the province by Saturday and 118 other homes were severely damaged. Cost of damage at the time was estimated at $38.5 million.

Sichuan provincial disaster relief headquarters said that it has deployed relief workers to five cities and 12 counties.

Evacuations are ongoing, according to state media. On Sunday, authorities said more than 7,000 people were forced to leave their homes, Xinhua reported.

The natural disaster response in China's southwest comes less than a week after China said more than 300 people had died in the aftermath of flooding in Henan Province.

The floods in central China affected 14.5 million people and forced more than 933,000 people to evacuate, according to Henan's provincial authorities last week.

Liu Junyan, Greenpeace East Asia's climate and energy campaigner, said that climate change has made "extreme weather like heat waves and floods more frequent and more deadly in the past 20 years," according to Bloomberg last month.

China has attempted to address flooding with the construction of dams, dikes and levees since the 1950s, but the policy may not be entirely effective.

Kirk Barlow, an analyst with International Rivers in Oakland, Calif., said that as "dams get larger, they tend to complicate flooding controls due to the unpredictability of climate change," according to Christian Science Monitor last month.

Dams in China collapsed this year, according to Barlow.

Hairs of new carnivorous plant trap gnats, but allow bees to pollinate flowers

Triantha occidentalis produces flowering stems with sticky hairs that trap small gnats and midges, and isotopic analysis has confirmed that the plant can successfully digest the trapped insects. Photo by Danilo Lima

Aug. 9 (UPI) -- Botanists have identified a new carnivorous plant in western North America. The species, Triantha occidentalis, represents the 12th independent origin of plant carnivory.

Found in bogs and wetlands from California to Alaska, and as far inland as Montana, Triantha occidentalis sprouts tall flowering stems with small, sticky hairs that trap gnats and midges

According to a new paper, published online Monday in the journal PNAS, more than half the plant's nitrogen is sourced from the small insects ensnared by its hairs.

The insect-eating plant is a member of the Alismatales order, a large group of mostly aquatic flowering plants belonging to the Monocotyledons clade. Monocots include thousands of grass and grass-like flowering plants

"What's particularly unique about this carnivorous plant is that it traps insects near its insect-pollinated flowers," lead study author Qianshi Lin said in a press release.

"On the surface, this seems like a conflict between carnivory and pollination because you don't want to kill the insects that are helping you reproduce," said Lin, who was a doctoral student at UBC at the time of the study.

However, scientists determined that the plant species' insect-trapping hairs aren't all that sticky. The hairs possess just enough adhesiveness to ensnare small species, gnats and midges, while allowing bees and butterflies to come and go undeterred

While surveying the genome of Triantha occidentalis, scientists noticed the plant was missing a gene frequently absent in carnivorous species. Given its close proximity to other known carnivorous plants, researchers estimated the species might also be digesting insects.

Carnivorous plants are most common in habitats where nutrients are scarce but water and sunlight ware abundant.

In the field, Lin fed the plants fruit flies tagged with stable isotope nitrogen-15. After tracking the path of the nitrogen isotope, researchers confirmed that the species acquires some 65% of its nitrogen from digested insects.

RELATEDFlower attracts pollinating flies by mimicking smell of attacked bee

Triantha occidentalis uses the enzyme phosphatase to break down phosphorous-bearing nutrients in the gnats and midges trapped by its hairs.

Though Triantha occidentalis is fairly common and found near many large cities, the plant's carnivory eluded scientists for decades.

Researchers now plan to take a closer look at other members of the Triantha genus to see if other carnivorous plants are hiding in plain sight.

"It seems likely that there are other members of this group that will turn out to be carnivorous," said co-author Tom Givnish, professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin.

that is wonderful said the elephant on the telephone or was it...

E.E. Cummings collection returned to library after more than 50 years

Aug. 9 (UPI) -- An Ohio library said a former patron mailed in an E.E. Cummings poetry collection that was more than 50 years overdue -- just weeks after a Bob Dyan record was returned 48 years late.

The Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library said the poetry book arrived in the mail recently along with an anonymous apology letter and a "lucky $2 bill."

The letter writer said they were recently going through some old boxes of books when they came across the E.E. Cummings collection bearing a Cleveland Heights Public Library stamp.

"It's been over 50 years since I've lived in Cleveland, so this must have gotten boxed up when we moved," the letter reads. "I am so very sorry. Here's a lucky $2 bill for whoever opens this!"

The library said the person would not have faced any late fees, since the facility did away with fines in 2019.

The book arrived in the mail just weeks after a copy of the Bob Dylan record Self Portrait was returned by a person who checked it out 48 years earlier.

"We can't help wondering if [the E.E. Cummings customer] saw the news about the Bob Dylan album, and the fact that we don't charge fines anymore, and decided the time was right to come clean," Heights Libraries spokesperson Sheryl Banks told Patch.

The Elephant & The Butterfly by e. e. cummings

https://pixels.com/featured/elephant-e-e-cummings.html

Once upon a time there was an elephant who did nothing all day.

He lived by himself in a little house away at the very top of a curling road.

From the elephant’s house,this curling road went twisting away down until it found itself in a green valley where there was another little house,in which a butterfly lived.

One day the elephant was sitting in his little house and looking out of his window doing nothing(and feeling very happy because that was what he liked most to do)when along this curling road he saw somebody coming up and up toward his little house;and he opened his eyes wide,and felt very much surprised. “Whoever is that person who’s coming up along and along the curling road toward my little house?” the elephant said to himself.

And pretty soon he saw that it was a butterfly who was fluttering along the curling road ever so happily;and the elephant said: “My goodness, I wonder if he’s coming to call on me?” As the butterfly came nearer and nearer,the elephant felt more and more excited inside of himself. Up the steps of the little house came the butterfly and he knocked very gently on the door with his wing. “Is anyone inside?” he asked.

The elephant was ever so pleased,but he waited.

Then the butterfly knocked again with his wing,a little louder but still very gently,and said: “Does anyone live here,please?”

Still the elephant never said anything because he was too happy to speak.

A third time the butterfly knocked,this time quite loudly,and aksed: “Is anyone at home?” And this time the elephant said in a trembling voice: “I am.” The butterfly peeped in at the door and said: “Who are you,that live in this little house?” And the elephant peeped out at him and answered: “I’m the elephant who does nothing all day.” “Oh,” said the butterfly, “and may I come in?” “Please do,” the elephant said with a smile,because he was very happy. So the butterfly just pushed the little door open with his wing and came in.

Once upon a time there were seven trees which lived beside the curling road. And when the butterfly pushed the door with his wing and came into the elephant’s little house,one of the trees said to one of the trees: “I think it’s going to rain soon.”

“The curling road will be all wet and will smell beautifully,” said another tree to another tree.

Then a different tree said to a different tree: “How lucky for the butterfly that he’s safely inside the elephant’s little house,because he won’t mind the rain.”

But the littlest tree said: “I feel the rain already,” and sure enough,while the butterfly and the elephant were talking in the elephant’s little house away at the top of the curling road,the rain simply began falling gently everywhere;and the butterfly and the elephant looked out of the window together and they felt ever so safe and flad,while the curling road became all wet and began to smell beautifully just as the third tree had said.

Pretty soon it stopped raining and the elephant put his arm very gently around the little butterfly and said: “Do you love me a little?”

And the butterfly smiled and said: “No, I love you very much.”

Then the elephant said: “I’m so happy,I think we ought to go for a walk together you and I:for now the rain has stopped and the curling road smells beautifully.”

The butterfly said: “Yes,but where shall you and I go?”

“Let’s go away down and down the curling road where I’ve never been,” the elephant said to the little butterfly. And the butterfly smiled and said: “I’d love to go with you all the way down and down the curling road—let’s go out the little door of your house and down the steps together—shall we?”

So they came out together and the elephant’s arm was very gently around the butterfly. Then the littlest tree said to his six friends: “I believe the butterfly loves the elephant as much as the elephant loves the butterfly,and that makes me very happy,for they’ll love each other always.”

Down and down the curling road walked the elephant and the butterfly.

The sun was shining beautifully after the rain.

The curling road smelled beautifully of flowers.

A bird began to sing in a bush,and all the clouds went away out of the sky and it was Spring everywhere.

When they came to the butterfly’s house,which was down in the green valley which had never been so green,the elephant said: “Is this where you live?”

And the butterfly said: “Yes,this is where I live.”

“May I come into your house?” said the elephant.

“Yes,” said the butterfly. So the elephant just pushed the door gently with his trunk and they came into the butterfly’s house. And then the elephant kissed the butterfly very gently and the butterfly said: “Why didn’t you ever before come down into the valley where I live?” And the elephant answered, “Because I did nothing all day. But now that I know where you live,I’m coming down the curling road to see you every day,if I may—and may I come?” Then the butterfly kissed the elephant and said: “I love you,so please do.”

And every day after this the elephant would come down the curling road which smelled so beautifully(past the seven trees and the bird singing in the bush)to visit is little friend the butterfly.

And they loved each other always.

e.e. cummings’ Electric Fur. {Sex Poems 1/10}

i like my body when it is with your

body. It is so quite new a thing.

Muscles better and nerves more.

i like your body. i like what it does,

i like its hows. i like to feel the spine

of your body and its bones, and the trembling

-firm-smooth ness and which i will

again and again and again

kiss, i like kissing this and that of your,

i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz

of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes

over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

~e.e. cummings

e.e. cummings

In his poetry, Cummings stressed the theme of individuality over modern conformist living. He innovated and experimented boldly in style, form, and even punctuation and grammar, signing his work “e.e. cummings.”* Cummings is best known for his peculiar approach to both capitalization and punctuation, which are seemingly placed at random, slicing up individual words as well as sentences. Many of his poems are better understood when taken as a whole on the written page. His poetry, idiosyncratic as it might first appear, grapples with something his father said in a sermon — echoing the insights of Emerson, Thoreau, and Emily Dickinson — “The Kingdom of Heaven is no spiritual roofgarden: It’s inside you.” Cummings` poetry is influenced by his Transcendentalist leanings, focusing on love and love of nature, as well as satire, and how the individual copes with the masses and the world around him. The early years Cummings was born Edward Estlin Cummings in October 1894, just outside of Boston in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father was a Unitarian minister and one-time Harvard professor whose support of his son (and daughter) was assiduous. Greek and Latin came to Cummings as naturally as English, and they are given their due in some of his works: Xaipe: (“Rejoice!”) Seventy-one Poems, in Greek; Anthropos ("Mankind"), a play in Greek; and Puella Mea ("My Girl"), in Latin). Cummings graduated from Harvard with a BA in 1915 and an MA in 1916, after being published in the Harvard Monthly and the Harvard Advocate. He was counted among the "Harvard Aesthetes" that included the likes of John Dos Passos (the trilogy U.S.A., comprising The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money) and S. Foster Damon. The war and beyond Much to Cummings’ chagrin, he and friend William Slater Brown, better known as the character “B” in Cummings’ novel/memoir The Enormous Room, were unceremoniously dumped into a French detention camp in a small Normandy town during World War I. The book relates the experiences Cummings and Brown endured during the three-and-a-half month-long nightmare, all due to an administrative snafu following his attempt to volunteer for the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps in France. Cummings and Brown were arrested on suspicion of espionage, even after they openly avowed their pacifist ideology. About the book, F. Scott Fitzgerald lamented, "Of all the work by young men who have sprung up since 1920 one book survives — The Enormous Room, by E.E. Cummings . . . Those few who cause books to live have not been able to endure the thought of its mortality." Significant literary works In addition to The Enormous Room, Cummings achieved notoriety for:

Tulips and Chimneys (1923) (he wanted “&” in the title; his publisher ignored his plea);

is 5 (1926), a collection of 88 poems;

Eimi (1933), a novel recounting his trip to the Soviet Union in 1931, and his disillusionment with that society’s lack of intellectual and artistic freedom;

No Thanks (1935), self-published and bound at the top like a steno pad, meant as a snub to the 14 publishing houses that refused his work;
and

Fairy Tales (1965), containing four short stories published posthumously: "The Old Man Who Said `Why`," "The Elephant and The Butterfly," "The House That Ate Mosquito Pie," and "The Little Girl Named I."

Cummings, the painter Cummings was not just a one-trick pony of the avant garde. Not only did he see himself as a poet, essayist, and playwright, but as a painter, as well. His early influences began during his Harvard years with the artistic movements of Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism. In particular, he admired the work of Pablo Picasso. His drawings and caricatures were published in the philosophical literary magazine, The Dial, during the 1920s.

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*About the lower case signature
Cummings signed his works (after the first few) with no capital letters (e.e. cummings), which led some to believe there were no upper case letters in his collection. That is not the case. He used capitals frequently, albeit not always conventionally. The same goes for spacing, word and line breaks, parentheses, and punctuation, not to mention grammar and syntax. The lower case signature was a kind of talisman for Cummings, a manifestation of his individuality in the world of literature. Debate went on for years as to the upper-lower case conundrum. The widow Cummings, his second wife, insists that, other than his signed work, the upper case is preferred.

e.e. cummings (u-s-history.com)

Herd of elephants wandering in China nearing return home


Aug. 9 (UPI) -- A herd of elephants that have been wandering throughout China neared the nature reserve on Monday that they had departed from more than a year ago.

The 14 elephants were in Yuanjing County on Sunday night, about 125 miles away from the reserve in the southwestern province of Yunnan after days of making their way back south.

The provincial government said officials would continue to work on returning the elephants to their natural habitat as they have tracked the herd with drones and guided them across the Yuanjiang River while opening a path back to the nature reserve.

The National Forestry and Grassland Administration said they were in a "suitable habitat" after making their way across the river.

Experts have also anticipated low temperatures are likely to push the elephants to return to the reserve more quickly.

In June, officials expressed concern as the herd approached the capital city of Kunming in the province of Yunnan.

A herd of 16 elephants began its migration in March 2020 and arrived in Pu'er in the Yunnan province in November, where they settled for five months as a female elephant gave birth.

Two elephants left the group and the remaining 15 continued north.

Later one male wandered away from the pack and was tranquilized and ultimately returned to the nature reserve.

Throughout their journey the elephants traveled more than 300 miles north, capturing the attention of social media and causing more than $1 million in damage including eating whole cornfields and smashing barns and cars.

CANADIAN TELESCOPE

Not guilty verdict for Hawaiian elders protesting telescope
By JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER

August 6, 2021

FILE - In this July 17, 2019 file photo, officers from the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources prepare to arrest protesters, many of them elderly, who are blocking a road to prevent construction of a giant telescope on land that some Native Hawaiians consider sacred, on Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. A judge has found four Native Hawaiian elders arrested in 2019 while protesting a giant telescope planned for Hawaii's highest peak not guilty of obstructing the mountain's access road. (Cindy Ellen Russell/Honolulu Star-Advertiser via AP,File)

HONOLULU (AP) — Four Native Hawaiians arrested in 2019 while protesting against construction of a giant telescope on Hawaii’s highest peak were not guilty of obstructing the mountain’s access road, a judge ruled Friday.

Judge M. Kanani Laubach issued her verdict after a trial that began in January 2020 and saw significant delays because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Keli’i ’Ioane, Marie Alohalani Brown, Maxine Kahaulelio and Ranette Robinson were the first to go to trial out of 38 mostly Native Hawaiian kupuna, or elders, who were arrested during a swelling effort to stop construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope.

The other cases are pending.

Those who oppose the $1.4-billion project say it will desecrate land on Mauna Kea held sacred to Native Hawaiians.

FILE - In this Wednesday, July 17, 2019, file photo, officers from the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources prepare to arrest protesters, many of them elderly, who are blocking a road to prevent construction of a giant telescope on a mountain that some Native Hawaiians consider sacred, on Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. A judge has found four Native Hawaiian elders arrested in 2019 while protesting a giant telescope planned for Hawaii's highest peak not guilty of obstructing the mountain's access road. (Cindy Ellen Russell/Honolulu Star-Advertiser via AP, File)

Hundreds of protesters gathered at the base of the mountain in July 2019 to block construction of the telescope. The kupuna allowed themselves to be arrested and some used canes, while others were taken in wheelchairs to police vans. Those who could walk on their own were led away with their hands in zip ties.

An international consortium has a state permit to build the embattled telescope.

However, in announcing her verdict, the judge noted that during the trial, officials testified that the access road was closed and there were no permits issued for oversized vehicles.

“Evidence that Mauna Kea access road was closed or restricted to the public, coupled with no permits, equals no obstruction,” Laubach said. “There would be no unreasonable inconvenience or hazard.”

The state failed to meet its burden beyond a reasonable doubt, she said.

The state respects the verdict, which can’t be appealed, said Gary Yamashiroya, special assistant to the state attorney general. The ruling is based solely on evidence presented at the trial of the four defendants, he said.

“During the trials of related defendants, the State presented evidence that TMT obtained all necessary permits to move equipment up the mountain,” he said in an email. “It remains a crime to block a public highway, and the State will vigorously pursue the pending cases against the remaining defendants.”

Thirty Meter Telescope representatives didn’t immediately comment on the verdict.

Those arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience while protecting Mauna Kea have been vindicated, Richard Sing, attorney for ’Ioane, said after the hearing.

“This was a petty misdemeanor trial, and it took more than a year and a half to complete,” Sing said. “It was a difficult and lengthy situation for someone to be under threat of criminal prosecution.”

• 
  

The Thirty Meter Telescope ( TMT) is a proposed extremely large telescope (ELT) that has become controversial due to its planned location on Mauna Kea, on the island of Hawaii, the most sacred mountain in Native Hawaiian culture. The TMT would become the largest visible-light telescope on Mauna Kea.

Altitude: 4,050 m or 13,290 ft

Location(s): Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii, United States

Organization: TMT International Observatory

Wavelength: Near UV, visible, and Mid-IR (0.31–28 μm)

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CANADA

Report shows that Catholic Church Spent Millions Meant For Residential School Survivors

(ANNews) – The Roman Catholic Church has spent millions of dollars intended to compensate residential school survivors on lawyers, administration and private fundraising, according to documents obtained by CBC News.

The other churches involved in the landmark 2005 residential schools compensation agreement — Anglican, United and Presbyterian — paid the full amount of compensation owed without any issues.

One of the documents, a 53-page factum from the federal government for a 2015 court case, notes “a large number of serious accounting discrepancies that are alarming to Canada” from the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church never had to account for these discrepancies, because Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Neil Gabrielson closed the case after approving a buyout from the Church on the eve of the 2015 hearing.

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, a former Saskatchewan provincial court judge and director of the University of British Columbia’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre in Vancouver, called the Church’s conduct “unbelievably, absolutely gross” and “completely wrong” after the CBC provided her with the documents.

“How could anyone do something like this?” she asked rhetorically.

A representative of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) told the CBC that the CCCB was not a party to the agreement, as individual dioceses and orders established an arms-length corporation to oversee the deal.

Video: Millions meant for residential school survivors spent on Catholic Church lawyers, administration (cbc.ca)

The spokesperson said Church officials “are committed to continue engaging and listening”, citing the “historic delegation” that is travelling to the Vatican in December to request the Pope visit Canada to apologize for the Church’s leading role in operating residential schools.

As part of the initial settlement, the Church was required to pay $29 million with strict criteria for its use.

Of that $29 million, the Church paid $2.7 million to lawyers for unrelated legal representation, $2.3 million in administration costs that no other church that was party to the agreement required, $1.6 million in donations to unapproved projects with a First Nations component, for which no invoices or further explanation was provided, and an $8-million deduction for compensation paid prior to the 2005 agreement.

The latter expense is permissible under the agreement, but the Church hasn’t mentioned it publicly, nor did it provide annual financial statements until 2012, as required.

During the same time period, the Church spent in excess of $300 million on church renovations.

According to a Globe and Mail investigation, the Catholic Church had net assets of at least $4.1 billion in 2019 and gave out $886 million in donations to 3,446 to Catholic Church-affiliated charities that year.

This makes the Church by far the largest charitable contributor in the country, outspending second-place World Vision by $669 million.

Jeremy Appel, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Alberta Native News

American Indigenous schools leave legacy of generational scars

By CLAIRE CLEVELAND

August 8, 2021


DENVER (AP) — When Dzabahe was 11 years old, she went to her first government-run boarding school in rural Arizona around 1953. She left everything she knew on the Navajo reservation where she grew up..

“You became an orphan on that day,” she said. “My life was a shamble because everything that I was, everything that I believed in, my language, everything, I learned I was doing it all wrong.”

At the school, she was told not to speak her Navajo language. Her Navajo clothing and moccasins were sent back home with her parents. Her hair was cut, something that is taboo in Navajo culture. And even though she didn’t speak English or understand American customs, she was punished for not doing things the way the school wanted her to.

“I stood in a corner a million times until I was ready to faint,” she recalled. “And then the spanking and the harshness, and if you’re being punished you couldn’t eat dinner or breakfast or any meal. And then there’s a lot of shame that came with it.”

Dzabahe was also given a new name: Bessie Smith, which she still uses today.

Smith’s parents sent her to the school after state officials came to the reservation and told families with children who were not in the school that they had to send them. Her father also realized that she would need an education even if that went against what was traditionally done in the Navajo culture.

In May, 215 children’s bodies were discovered in a mass grave at an Indigenous Boarding school in Canada, prompting U.S. officials to look at the legacy of such schools in the U.S.

“We just want to make sure that families today get the information that they’ve wanted for decades and decades,” said Deb Haaland, secretary of the interior.

“And so we’re gonna work to identify every single boarding school in the country and absolutely find a way to make sure that we are assisting local communities that will involve a lot of tribal consultation,” she said.

Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary in U.S. history, visited Colorado in July and announced the new federal program but did not yet have a timeline. In Colorado, there are at least three Indian boarding schools, the Teller Indian School in Grand Junction, the Southern Ute Boarding School in Ignacio and a school that is now Fort Lewis College in Durango.

The Teller Indian School, later known as the Teller Institute, opened in 1886. At the turn of the century, there were a couple hundred students enrolled in the school. It was one of more than 350 federally run schools in the nation to assimilate Native American children, according to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.

The schools were created out of the 1869 Indian Peace Policy, which was introduced by President Ulysses S. Grant to create “permanent peace,” through what he believed were non-violent alternatives. The boarding schools were intentionally created to assimilate children and eliminate Native cultures.

The first was the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, which opened in 1879, and was a model for subsequent schools. While some Native families chose to send their children to boarding schools, many more were forcibly removed from their homes.

By 1900, there were 20,000 Native children in boarding schools and by 1925, that number was more than 60,000.

In 1926, nearly 83 percent of all Native children of schooling age were in boarding schools, according to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.

“When children returned to their communities, they were unable to communicate with their loved ones and were sometimes ostracized by their own communities,” said Southern Ute Indian Tribal Council Chairman Melvin J. Baker in a statement. “This traumatic experience produced intergenerational trauma that continues to manifest itself in numerous ways throughout Indian country, such as abuse, such as substance abuse, as well as psychological and emotional disorders, which result in lower graduation rates, poverty and lower life expectancy.”

The Teller Institute closed in 1911 and was transferred to the state of Colorado, which turned the facility into a home for people with intellectual disabilities in the 1920s. Over time, the original school buildings were remodeled or torn down. A cemetery, if there was a marked one, was also lost to time.

Archaeologist John Seebach, who works at Colorado Mesa University, has studied the Teller Institute and discovered death notices in archival newspaper clippings of 21 children who died while attending the school.

“We can’t be sure that every single person who died and was buried was mentioned by the newspaper,” he said. “So there could be many more out there than we know of and in fact that’s probably the case.”

The federal government kept records on students who attended the schools, but after the school closed the records were sent to Leavenworth, Kansas, where they were destroyed in a fire. Seebach plans to search for more information in federal records kept in Washington, D.C., but it’s not clear how many children might be buried on the grounds.

In 2019, Seebach and a team of cadaver dogs explored part of the grounds of what is now the Grand Junction Regional Complex, still home to people with physical and intellectual disabilities. Seebach picked part of the grounds based on aerial photographs and his research into where the cemetery for children might be. He said the dogs picked up a scent but more research is needed.

Earlier this year, the state started a Teller Institute Task Force.

Seebach is on the task force with 8 other people, including tribal representatives and state officials.

“It’s not an archeological site in a lot of ways, really what we’re doing is more akin to like crime scene investigation,” said Holly Norton, the state archaeologist. “And using my archeological training, not for science, but for helping to find these children and help return them in some fashion to their communities, and to their, to their tribes, I think is a really important part of what I’m doing here.”

Once the task force has determined next steps, Norton said it’s likely they will conduct searches on the grounds of the complex to locate a cemetery and remains.

Eleven people with disabilities still live at the Grand Junction Regional Complex. In 2016, state lawmakers decided it was too expensive to maintain, and passed two bills requiring the sale or transfer of the complex.

“We’re approaching this in a very sensitive manner for everyone that is involved. Our goal here is to get our individuals that have intellectual and developmental disabilities relocated into a community and integrated into community because that’s our first priority,” said Yolanda Webb with the Colorado Department of Human Services who oversees the complex. “And to work with our Native American partners that are part of this task force in really getting to some closure on that very painful history.”

Seebach argues that the sale or transfer of the land is in violation of the original agreement between Colorado and the federal government when the land was transferred to the state.

“The main stipulation was that the campuses would be maintained in perpetuity,” Seebach said. “I don’t think they’re valid law because of a prior agreement at the federal level.”

Fort Lewis College in Durango was also the site of a federal boarding school, originally in Hesperus. When the state took over the land it had to meet two conditions: that the land would be used for an educational institution, and was “to be maintained as an institution of learning to which Indian students will be admitted free of tuition and on an equality with white students” in perpetuity, according to Fort Lewis College. Seebach said the same conditions would have applied to the Teller Institute.

There was another boarding school in Ignacio on the Southern Ute reservation. The tribe is considering its options for preserving what remains of the school and memorializing the history of boarding schools.

It’s not yet clear what will happen to the land that was formerly the Teller Institute. In a statement, Chairman Baker said the land’s future is best guided by the communities who were and continue to be affected by the U.S. government’s ethnocide initiated during the Indian Boarding School era.

“In order to heal from the generational trauma, we must confront the past and shed light on the hidden cruelty,” Baker said.

Smith, now 79, said she learned over time how to talk about what she experienced at the federal boarding schools and how those experiences impacted the way she felt about herself and the world around her. She said she struggled while working, for example, to not question herself constantly.

“There is more emotional and psychological damage that we have been dealing with,” she said. “It is so strong that nobody can see it. It is so strong that many people don’t even want to talk about it.”

But her struggle and pain isn’t her whole story.

After going through multiple schools in her teens, she left Arizona to attend Fort Lewis College. There she met her now husband and had children. She’s lived in Denver ever since where she worked as the director of patient admissions at the University of Colorado health science center. After retiring in 1994, she worked as a Navajo translator for the state, which she still does alongside making jewelry with her daughter.

“We want to focus on how we can wake up and get back on our feet,” Smith said.