Interview
Peter Kalmus: ‘As a species, we’re on autopilot, not making the right decisions’

 

The Nasa data scientist explains why inaction on the climate crisis pushed him to chain himself to an LA bank – and why trusting in the ‘people in charge’ is so dangerous

Peter Kalmus: ‘I desperately want to feel before I die that 

the future is going to be better.

’ Photograph: Michelle Groskopf

Ian Tucker
The Observer 
Climate crisis
Sat 21 May 2022

Last month a Nasa data scientist, Peter Kalmus, chained himself to the entrance doors of the JP Morgan Chase building in Los Angeles. A video of a short speech he gave about global heating before he was arrested was shared multiple times on social media. In the clip, voice faltering, he told the public: “I’m here because scientists are not being listened to … we are going to lose everything and we are not joking.” He spoke to the Observer in a personal capacity.

What drove you to nonviolent protest?

It’s this mounting feeling that I need to do more. I have a sense of desperation, because of the wide gulf between what the science says society needs to do and how it feels like everything is heading in the opposite direction. World leaders and people not understanding that we’re in an emergency.

Then the question comes to me, if I’m sitting with the science every day, and I want to protect my kids and young people and non-humans, what do I do? I’ve been on this 16-year journey trying to answer that question, and civil disobedience seemed like something good to try. I’m ashamed to say that it took me this long.

Do you think more scientists should be talking directly to the public about how they feel?

Oh, absolutely. Because we’re not just brains in a vat, we’re humans. The reason oceanologists, ecologists and climate scientists are studying these living systems is because they deeply love them and care about them. Uniformly, across the board, they’re all seeing these massive declines and they’re seeing these systems dying in front of their eyes. I know they’re feeling strong emotions.

Civil disobedience has been far more effective at communicating urgency than anything else I’ve tried.

Last week the UK Met Office said there was a 50% chance that in one of the next five years, 1.5C of warming will be breached. The aviation industry was found to have met only one of 50 climate targets. And a Guardian investigative report revealed that fossil fuel companies are planning huge “carbon bomb” projects that will drive climate catastrophe. That’s a pretty standard week in the global heating news cycle…

This has been just ramping up and ramping up over the years. It’s only going to get more intense as we go forward. That’s why I feel this desperation to end the fossil fuel industry as quickly as possible. Ending the fossil fuel industry is the main thing we need to do to take the pressure off the Earth system and to at least start to stabilise at where we’re at. Then, these news stories will likely start to stabilise as well. But yeah, it’s getting more intense, isn’t it? That’s where we’re at now. That’s a normal week for 2022. What is 2024 going to be like? What’s 2025 going to be like?

The fossil fuel CEOs are rubbing their hands in glee. They can’t believe their good fortune that Putin invaded Ukraine

The mean temperature on the planet keeps going up with every tonne of fossil fuel we burn. At some point you’re going to surpass all of these different milestones. It’s no secret that the fossil fuel industry has been planning to make as much profit as they can from extracting and selling fossil fuel, no matter what happens to the planet, to us, and to future generations. I don’t think we should just talk about future generations any more, because people are dying right now, all around the world. That’s going to happen more as we approach deadly human heat thresholds in certain regions that the human body can’t actually live through. It’s diabolical that these industrialists wish to take short-term profits at the expense of literally everything.

Are the agreements and pledges made at Cop meetings sufficient or effective? Last week the Guardian ran a story revealing how few of the pledges have been acted on…
The esteemed climate scientist Michael Mann, right after Cop26, wrote an op-ed where he proclaimed victory. He said Cop26 was not a failure. I wrote an op-ed the next day saying that it was absolutely a failure, and that it’s very dangerous not to recognise it as a failure, because that, again, decreases the urgency of dealing with the problem. If we consider that as not a failure, what happened at Cop26, then the public can sort of have this feeling that the “people in charge” are doing what they need to do, which is absolutely not the case. They’re not doing what they need to do.

The fossil fuel industry has deeply penetrated politics and even the Cop process itself. It will do everything it can to throw a monkey wrench in the works and to delay action. It’s up to the leaders of the world to stand up to that and to say: “A livable planet is more important than your profits. We are not going to allow this process of delay to continue.” What worries me is that, in this critical year between Cop26 and Cop27, every signal that we’re getting from world leaders is that fossil fuels will continue to expand.

President Biden is begging Opec to expand production. He’s opening new lands for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and public lands of the US. Right now, what I’m seeing from world leaders, including Biden, is that they’re using the bully pulpit of their position to urge the expansion of fossil fuels. They’ve completely stopped talking about taking climate action.


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The effects of the Ukraine war on energy prices offer a golden opportunity for massive investment in renewable energy and phasing out fossil fuels. But the political class doesn’t see it that way…

The leaders of the world are squandering a historic opportunity to make that transition to renewables. Instead, they’re using it as an opportunity to expand the fossil fuel industry, and the fossil fuel CEOs are rubbing their hands in glee at what’s happening right now. They can’t believe their good fortune that Putin invaded Ukraine.

Can you explain the stranglehold that the fossil fuel industry has over the American political system? Sometimes, as an outsider, you see the wildfires on the west coast, you see that Florida is sinking, and it doesn’t make sense…

There’s this kind of equilibrium of corruption that has developed. They know which politicians’ campaigns to support for maximum return on their investment. For them, it’s a tiny investment. Then, somehow they’ve also managed to capture the media. They certainly have the Fox News network on their side, but somehow, even the non-conservative side hasn’t been reporting the story as it should, that this is an emergency for the planet. The public don’t sense any urgency from the media. Therefore, the politicians that are taking these campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry are not being held to account.

It runs deeper doesn’t it? The right to drive wherever and whenever is part of the American dream, any politician who challenges that gets massive pushback. The price of gas or petrol is an emotive issue.

Three-quarters of global heating is caused by burning fossil fuels. Everything else we talk about – planting trees, carbon captures, carbon offsets – is just rearranging deckchairs.

The thing we’ve got to do to avoid hitting the iceberg is to end the fossil fuel industry as quickly as we can. The problem with not protecting the interest of the working class as we make this transition is that they would effectively rise up against any climate policies that made their lives unlivable because of high energy costs. We saw that happen a few years ago with the gilets jaunes [yellow vests] in France.

The only way we can get the working class on board is if the transition away from fossil fuels is effectively subsidised by the ultra rich, which means there does need to be a redistribution of wealth.

You are talking about systematic change leading to a new economic system. When people hear that, they hear “degrowth”. They feel it’s going to impact their standard of living.

People need to understand that all degrowth really is, is a switch in the goal of the economic system. We need to change the goal of the system from the accumulation of capital to the flourishing of all people, not just people in the global north, also people in the global south, and the flourishing of all life on this planet, because our economic system is embedded in the biosphere. If we take down the biosphere, we lose everything, and we don’t have an economic system any more. That’s why we desperately need to change the goal of the system to the flourishing of everyone and all life on the planet.

But many individuals like driving, flying and eating beef. They feel the climate movement wants to take away things they enjoy…

They do. There’s different kinds of pleasure in life, right? Like getting deeply involved in your community, or feeling like you’re involved in something deeply meaningful, like humanity getting on a better course and the future being better for your children.

I would argue that, through my experience, those kinds of pleasures are actually more sustaining. They’re deeply satisfying. They’re less superficial. But yeah, I know that it’s a hard sell. It almost takes a spiritual practice to be able to kind of come out of the addictions of modern life, which are very enticing.

That was the reason that I wrote my book [about reducing his carbon footprint by 90%], because I wanted to get the message out that there’s actually a lot of pleasure in making these kinds of changes. I didn’t know whether it would resonate with people or not. It turned out to resonate with a much smaller fraction of people than I expected.

Is there anyone in American politics that you look to, or a generation of younger representatives who might be able to articulate and sell this kind of vision?
Not really, no, it’s pretty bleak. Bernie Sanders, he’s not young, but he was the closest one that I ever saw to articulating this vision. Just understanding that we’re at risk of losing everything. He would say things like: “I know my climate plan is expensive, but what’s the alternative?”

Peter Kalmus and colleague chained to the JP Morgan Chase building, Los Angeles, 6 April this year. Photograph: Brian Emerson

We have to do whatever it takes to save this planet. Because if we degrade the life support systems of this planet, we effectively lose everything. We’re going down this very dangerous slide and we don’t know exactly how far down it takes before we lose X, or before we lose Y, or before this system on the planet breaks down. But we know that the further down we slide, the more we’re going to start going past those sort of collapse points. Bernie Sanders got that. I’ve never seen anything that Joe Biden has said or done to convince me that he understands that. I don’t think he understands what grave danger we’re all in.

Why don’t you run for office, Peter?

Then, I’d have to stop being a scientist. There was a new poll where only 42% of Americans thought that climate change was a “very serious problem” – less than half of Americans. That’s a huge problem for electoral politics.

42% – that’s almost a half-full glass. Only a few more percent, you’re in business.
I will say that whichever elected leader makes climate action their top priority and stops the degradation of Earth, they will be remembered by history as one of the most visionary leaders of all time. Nothing could be more clear to me than that.

I do think there’s a way to sell this kind of stuff I’m saying to the American people. Because the jobs that will be created are a tremendous economic opportunity.

There’s an incredible amount of stuff that we need to build, at least initially. We have to build alternative infrastructure, so that we can feed ourselves, and we can clothe ourselves, and we can transport ourselves without fossil fuels.

Do you feel your own mental health is suffering, because you’re so fluent in the data and the politics of global heating?

I’m constantly fending off this sort of ocean of climate anxiety that’s in my brain. When that ocean rises to a high enough level, I can’t really function any more. I get stressed. I am not very fun to be around. My ability to write degrades hugely. The strongest practice I have to keep that ocean of anxiety at bay is a meditation practice, called Vipassana.


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It takes two hours a day to do this practice. It takes a 10-day silent retreat once a year to kind of build up the batteries. But if I’m doing it, then I have zero climate anxiety. I’m fully aware of the emergency, but it unlocks my ability to be able to do everything I can, to work as hard as I can to sound the alarm, basically.

I used to take vacations in the High Sierra, to kind of recharge through nature, but it doesn’t work any more. Because last summer we took a five-day backpacking trip up there with my younger son and my partner, the three of us. It was too depressing to me, because in the two years that I’d walked on that trail, the John Muir trail, the tree mortality was just outrageous. There were so many dead trees all along the path. Streams and ponds that had once been flowing at that time of year, two years earlier, were bone dry, because of the drought. I can’t go. It’s just too painful for me now. When I’m in the mountains, I’m constantly feeling climate grief. That’s not a way for me to deal with my climate anxiety any more, unfortunately.

Do you understand why some younger people are deciding not to have children, because of the climate crisis?

If I were in their place, I would also choose not to have children. It’s a hard thing to say. It’s so heartbreaking to have this sense that the future is getting worse, and that it’s going to be worse for your kids. Now it feels like it’s getting worse at a very fast rate. One thing I desperately want before I die is to have a feeling that the future is going to be better.

That we’ve switched this corner and we’ve started to change the system towards flourishing for all, and we’ve come out of this madness of billionaires, and fossil fuel, and money in politics. That’s what I want to feel. I’ll feel grief from maybe the loss of the Amazon rainforest, and the loss of most of the world’s coral reefs, but mixed with that grief, I long for a feeling of solidarity. I long to feel a faith in humanity once again, because right now I’m not so sure. There’s some tremendous people out there, but it feels like, as a species, we’re just on autopilot and we’re not making the right decisions. I long to feel that we’re doing things better.

Does turmeric’s reputation translate into real health benefits?

Superman logo formed out of turmeric powder

 Photograph: P Partridge/GNM Imaging

Clinical trials show that curcumin, present in the spice, may help fight osteoarthritis and other diseases, but there’s a catch – bioavailability, or how to get it into the blood

David Cox
Sun 22 May 2022 

While Kamal Patel was probing through the reams of user data on examine.com – a website that calls itself “the internet’s largest database of nutrition and supplement research” – before a planned revamp later this year, he discovered that the most searched-for supplement on the website was curcumin, a distinctive yellow-orange chemical that is extracted from the rhizomes of turmeric, a tall plant in the ginger family, native to Asia.

Patel concluded that this was probably because of curcumin’s purported anti-inflammatory properties. “An astounding number of people experience inflammation or have inflammation-related health conditions, and curcumin and fish oil are two of the most researched supplements that can sometimes help,” he says.

This consumer interest in curcumin hasn’t gone unnoticed by the “wellness” industry. Besides its use in pill supplements, curcumin is increasingly being incorporated into cosmetic products that claim to help treat acne and eczema, prevent dry skin, and even slow down the ageing process. Some reports predict that the global curcumin market size could reach $191m (£156m) by 2028.
The doses of curcumin required to give benefit are very high – typically about 1,000mg a day

The ground rhizomes of the turmeric plant are commonly found in curry powder, but turmeric has also been part of Ayurvedic medicine – a traditional Indian system of treatment – for centuries, and at some point in the last decade turmeric worked its way out of the spice cupboard and took its place at the forefront of the western wellness industry. “As part of the general concept of Ayurvedic medicine and wellness, it’s increased in popularity in lockstep with yoga and meditation,” says Patel.

Turmeric has become the wellness industry’s new cure-all. It has been subject to all kinds of wild and wonderful health claims, including the ability to relieve allergies, prevent cancer, improve heart health, reverse cognitive decline, cure depression and increase longevity.

As with any dietary supplement, separating the hype and the truth is not straightforward, since not all the claims about turmeric are complete hyperbole. Most are based on the curcumin turmeric contains, which has been shown to be a potent anti-inflammatory and antioxidant.

Rhizomes of the turmeric plant, Curcuma longa, from a garden in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The plant is native to Asia and grown in many tropical regions. 

Photograph: Chamila Karunarathne/EPA

This is where it gets more complicated. The proportion of curcumin in turmeric is just 3%, by weight. The scientific studies that have made positive health associations use either pure curcumin or turmeric extract that has been designed to contain mostly curcumin. The doses of curcumin required to give benefit are very high – typically about 1,000mg a day. So despite what manufacturers might claim, consuming turmeric shots and lattes or adding a little extra spice to your meals will not come close to reaching the necessary dose. Some turmeric products have even been found to be contaminated with heavy metals such as lead, which can have adverse effects on your health.

But there is genuine interest from scientists around the world in curcumin’s potential as a natural treatment for a whole range of chronic illnesses. The most convincing evidence so far relates to its ability to relieve joint pain in people with osteoarthritis, an area of medicine where there is a huge unmet need owing to the limitations of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).

“Osteoarthritis is the most prevalent joint disease worldwide,” says Kristopher Paultre, assistant professor of orthopaedics and family medicine at the University of Miami. “NSAIDs have been a staple in treatment but are not without their drawbacks including gastrointestinal, cardiac and renal issues when used chronically.”

But this is just one area of investigation. There are 70 clinical trials around the world that are either active or seeking patients, and are looking at the potential of curcumin to treat chronic kidney disease, cognitive decline, inflammatory bowel syndrome (IBS), macular degeneration, and even to slow down the progression of various forms of cancer.
Advances in drug-delivery techniques

In the mid 1990s, Jack Arbiser and Nancy DeMore were young researchers at Harvard Medical School exploring new treatment options for cancer, when they came across some research suggesting that curcumin could inhibit the growth of different types of cancer cells in a test tube.

Intrigued by this, they went on to find that curcumin could prevent the formation of new blood vessels, a process called angiogenesis, which all tumours require to sustain themselves.

“Together we showed that curcumin inhibits angiogenesis,” says DeMore. “We were very excited about this initial finding. There have since been several studies using curcumin in clinical trials in patients with pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, and multiple myeloma showing that there is some biologic effect.”

An aerial view of a turmeric field in India.

 Photograph: CR Shelare/Getty

However, when scientists moved from testing curcumin in the lab to testing it on humans, there was a catch – one that has dogged curcumin ever since. The compound has notoriously poor bioavailability – the rate at which the body absorbs a substance – making it nearly impossible to get sufficiently high concentrations of curcumin into the blood through oral supplementation alone. This, along with the commercial difficulties of patenting natural products, meant that scientific interest in curcumin soon waned, and would remain in the doldrums for more than a decade.

But in recent years, advances in drug delivery techniques have renewed interest in curcumin. Nanoparticle systems are being explored as ways of potentially getting high doses of curcumin to tumours. Some research has shown that combining curcumin with piperine – a compound found in black pepper – can enhance its absorption into the blood, although it still remains to be proven whether this can help yield benefit in humans. While there are now a whole variety of off-the-shelf supplements that combine curcumin and piperine, there are still challenges for scientists looking to use it medically. One of these is that piperine has been shown to inhibit a variety of enzymes that aid in metabolising drugs, and it remains to be seen whether this could cause an increased risk of side-effects in patients also taking prescription medicines.
In the world of sport, curcumin has gained a reputation as an aid to muscle rehabilitation

“The problem of curcumin’s absorption has been enthusiastically addressed by a number of supplement companies and researchers,” says Wyatt Brown, a researcher at examine.com. “They typically do this by packaging it in highly absorbable lipids of various types so that more of it gets into the body.”

This has been accelerated by a drive for more natural alternatives to painkillers, but also by the fact that in the world of sport, curcumin has gained a reputation as an aid to muscle rehabilitation. Scientists at Northumbria University are planning a clinical trial to study this, while in the US, Paultre is already witnessing the rise of curcumin as a sports supplement.

“Curcumin has seen a significant increase in use in athletics for recovery post-workouts and after games,” he says. “The idea is the same as with osteoarthritis and the goal is to reduce inflammation. We tend to avoid chronic NSAID use in athletes due to side-effects. The evidence seems to be positive, but once again there is still work to be done.”

Turmeric lattes are promoted as a healthy alternative to coffee but the evidence is questionable. 

Photograph: Larisa Duka/Alamy

Potential new delivery methods have sparked interest once again in curcumin’s potential anti-cancer properties, with various researchers keen to explore its uses in patients in the early stages of the disease, as an add-on treatment to more conventional cancer drugs.

DeMore, now a professor of surgery at the Medical University of South Carolina, has returned to studying curcumin after a near 20-year gap, launching a clinical trial to see whether breast cancer patients taking a formulation of curcumin specially designed to enhance its absorption into the blood experience a decrease in tumour proliferation.

At the same time, oncologists at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York state are running a trial to see whether curcumin supplemented with piperine can halt disease progression in patients with low-grade prostate cancer, and prevent them from requiring more aggressive treatment.

In both cases, scientists are keen to emphasise that these trials are very much in the exploratory stage, and even if they produce positive results, far more proof will be needed before curcumin can be officially recommended for cancer patients. For example, even if the data from DeMore’s study shows that curcumin appears to reduce the rate at tumours are growing, it would then require a full randomised control trial – where curcumin is compared against a placebo – to prove that it can actually prolong survival or prevent tumour recurrence in cancer patients who have been through chemotherapy.

Supplement firms claim to have fixed the curcumin absorption problem with pepper, or soy compounds. Photograph: Pixel-shot/Alamy

“The problem is that many of these natural products have not been through the traditional clinical trials to evaluate whether or not they truly are effective,” says DeMore. “If our trial shows benefits, it would allow us to write grants to fund further randomised controlled clinical studies.”

Paultre says it is positive that further independent trials are being funded for curcumin because much of the research on the compound has been acquired through small studies that have been financed by the nutraceutical industry, which has created a perception of curcumin as a miracle cure. “Current studies still have a lot of potential bias in them,” he says. “Nutraceuticals do not have much regulatory oversight, and companies want to make a profit. There is always concern for bias in these studies, which produce amazing results with a specific product.”

While there is ongoing interest in curcumin across a whole spectrum of diseases, there is a lack of concrete evidence for its benefits for conditions such as cognitive decline, IBS, or chronic pain beyond osteoarthritis, while Wyatt describes any claims that curcumin could meaningfully reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease as “speculative”.


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But there are hopes that the anti-inflammatory properties of curcumin could offer benefits for depression. Laura Fusar-Poli, a psychiatry researcher at the University of Catania, Italy describes a number of theories, including that curcumin may be able to restore levels of serotonin in the brains of depressed patients and a possible modulatory effect on the brain-gut axis. But to date, evidence of any of this in humans remains scarce.

Paultre is hoping that the current interest in curcumin will help develop a gold-standard way of delivering it into the body as well as agreements on the best dose to use, which could all make it easier for scientists to quantify its benefits in future.

“The problem is that there is no consensus on appropriate curcumin levels for therapeutic effect,” he says. “Additionally, with so many formulations out there, there are no studies comparing the bioavailability of each one. It’s a bit like the wild west in this regard. Therefore though there is evidence of curcumin being helpful in some conditions, there is still a lot of work to be done.”

‘We’re still here’: past and present collide at a Native American boarding school

Sherman Indian high school – previously called the Sherman Institute – in 1903. Photograph: Sepia Times/UIG/Getty Images

Sherman Indian high school is among the last remnants of a brutal history that students and government are reckoning with


Hilary Beaumont

THE GUARDIAN

Sun 22 May 2022 

With other students’ eyes on her, Wicahpi Medicine’s heart raced, but as she started dancing, she felt proud to embody her Lakota heritage. The beads on her jingle dress swished and her long braids bounced as she moved quickly and lightly in her moccasins.

“People think that we’re extinct – they think we don’t really exist anymore,” said the 17-year-old student, who goes by Kimmi. Dancing at Sherman Indian high school cultural week, she said she was showing “we are still here”.

Medicine is one of more than 200 students from 76 Native American tribes who come from across the country to attend the all-Native American boarding school, which opened in Riverside, California, over a century ago. It was one of hundreds of federally run boarding schools across the US that aimed to assimilate Native American children into white society by taking them from their families, chopping their hair short, and brutally punishing them for speaking their language and practising their culture. In 1901, the institution’s namesake, the congressman James Sherman, declared the school would represent “the redemption of a race”.

Wicahpi ‘Kimmi’ Medicine: ‘We practise our way of life as our ancestors did.’ 

Photograph: Courtesy Wicahpi Medicine

Most of the schools have closed, but the government continues to operate a handful, including Sherman. The US says it has transformed the remaining schools, but students like Medicine feel echoes of the old system.

Today, signposts on the grassy grounds show reservation names and their distances from the school, reminding Medicine how far she is from home: Standing Rock, North Dakota, 1,453.9 miles. “It sucks a lot because there have been times this year that I’ve wanted to go back home, and I can’t,” she said.

Members of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe living in Fort Yates, North Dakota, Medicine’s family smudged, prayed, attended sweats and spoke Lakota.

“We practise our way of life as our ancestors did,” she said.

Medicine lived with her aunt, Kolette Medicine, who is a teacher, in a town of fewer than 200 people where there wasn’t much to do. She said alcohol and drug use were common, which Medicine and her aunt see as a direct consequence of the intergenerational trauma of boarding schools. Medicine attended an off-reservation public school where she felt it was “frowned upon to be Native”, and the on-reservation high school offered little hope. “I probably would have dropped out,” she said.

A friend told her about Sherman – students go on field trips to the beach and Universal Studios in Los Angeles, her friend said. The school also offered a clearer pathway to college. Medicine saw it as a chance to explore the world. She filled out an application form and called every day until she was accepted.

Before attending, she had a conversation with her aunt and grandmother about what it meant to go to boarding school. Few Native Americans are untouched by the dark legacy of the assimilation policy, and her grandmother was no exception. Born in 1946, she attended boarding school in California, where she wore her hair short and was given a white name, Medicine recalled.

“She never really talked about it. I knew it brought up hard feelings for her whenever I would ask,” Medicine said. Her aunt said Medicine’s grandmother shared fond memories of school friends, singing in a choir, and cheerleading.

Her grandmother was the one who passed down the language and culture. She gave her granddaughter the name Wicahpi Win, meaning “star woman”, referencing the belief that Lakota people come from the Milky Way.

“We just talked about the positive, the good things it would be for Kimmi,” Kolette Medicine said. “We thought she would have more opportunities there.”

History and change

The US and Canada are facing a reckoning over their use of boarding schools to assimilate Indigenous children.

A US government report released last week found at least 53 burial sites at boarding schools containing hundreds of graves, with officials expecting to discover thousands more.

Sherman Indian high school’s cemetery, seen last year, as a man encircles each grave with sage smoke. 

Photograph: MediaNews Group/The Riverside Press-Enterprise/Getty Images

A US government report last week found at least 53 burial sites at boarding schools. Photograph: MediaNews Group/The Riverside Press-Enterprise/Getty Images
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The report found that, from 1819 to 1969, there were 408 boarding schools running in every corner of the country. The federal government continues to operate four off-reservation boarding schools for Native American children through the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE), but in 2019, the BIE’s deputy assistant secretary Mark Cruz said the schools were “no longer in the business of assimilation” and “their purpose was transformed to support and respect tribal self-determination and sovereignty”.

The Sherman school, which is included in the report, has a cemetery with more than 60 graves, most containing the remains of students who died of diseases, explained Jean Keller, a historian who wrote a book about the Sherman Institute, as the school was previously known. Several children died in accidents: “One kid was killed because he was on the playing field and they were throwing a hammer and the hammer hit him in the head. Another kid was in the bakery and the oven blew up,” she said.

The US used a twin policy of land dispossession and boarding schools to separate Native Americans from their territories and culture. It was the cheapest and safest way to gain land for white people, the report found. Congress passed laws ordering parents to send their children to the schools and authorised the interior secretary to withhold rations from those who refused. Communities hid their children, but officials sent police to chase and capture them.

Sherman was “a place of incarceration”, said Clifford Trafzer, a history professor at the University of California Riverside who co-authored a book about the institute. Children were taught trades and sent to work on ranches as a way to integrate them into society. Today, Sherman looks very different. The Red Power movement in the 1960s and 70s saw Native Americans push for education that included their cultures and prepared students for college.

Howard Dallas, one of 16 siblings, was sent to Sherman with his three sisters in the 60s because his mother couldn’t care for them all. He said the school was “institutionalised” and taught them vocational training. “You could become a welder, painter, sheet metal worker or carpenter,” he said.

Matthew Levias Sr, another alumnus who attended in the 60s and became a star on the Sherman football team, said the school had taught him leadership. Dallas and Levias joined a student committee to push for better education and wrote a proposal to get the school accredited. “It started with the students. All the ideas came from the students,” Levias said.

The school was accredited in 1971 and renamed Sherman Indian high school, and laws followed: the 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act eliminated the assimilation policy, and the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act guaranteed the right to ceremony.

Today, the school hosts an annual powwow, and students take lessons in Native American fashion, basket weaving, native plant uses and the Navajo language. Most of the teachers and staff are Native American. Students learn a standard high school curriculum, and a Native Studies class teaches them American history, including the doctrine of discovery, an international law that European settlers used to justify taking Indigenous land – and boarding schools. At cultural week in April, students wore orange shirts to honour the children who had died.

Sherman is funded by and answers to the federal government, through the BIE. The school suffers from low student achievement that has been endemic in the BIE system for close to a century, according to a 2018 BIE report. Children leave home for months at a time, and staff are considered “in loco parentis”, meaning “in place of the parent”. And with more than 70 tribes represented but only Navajo classes offered, most students still do not learn their own language.

Sherman is funded by and answers to the federal government. 

Photograph: MediaNews Group/The Riverside Press-Enterprise/Getty Images

Marsha Small, a Northern Cheyenne researcher whose work focuses on another operating off-reservation boarding school, Chemawa in Oregon, said many alumni were not fluent in their own languages. “That language ties them to the land. Their land is what their identity is,” she said. “My question to those boarding schools is: are you teaching that student their language? Because if you’re not, you are still committing the same type of genocide that was originated by the colonial system.”

‘You have to live in both worlds’

Medicine has felt homesick, but unlike in the old days, she Snapchats and calls her aunt.

She enjoys her Native studies class and recently visited SeaWorld and Universal Studios. But she noticed that other students don’t know their culture and language, and they struggle with anxiety, depression and intergenerational trauma. “We’re in a Native school for Native children, and you’re seeing more and more students being whitewashed, in a sense of not knowing their cultural and spiritual ways,” she said.

She explained that many students would rather blend into the non-Indigenous world than express their culture. “You kind of have to live in both worlds,” she said, but some step too far into “the white man’s world” and don’t realise how much harm it does to them spiritually. “It’s sad that a lot of people are scared to embrace who they are. I’m proud to be Native. I’m proud to be Lakota.”

Current and former Sherman teachers said it was rare to find a student who speaks their language. Medicine speaks Lakota, a severely endangered language, according to the Endangered Languages Project. She would enjoy taking a Lakota class if Sherman offered one.

Sherry Means, from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, used to teach Lakota at Sherman but left and was not replaced. She had a positive experience at Sherman before a family matter pulled her home. “Today those boarding schools actually do save a lot of Indian kids from their life of poverty,” she said. But she doesn’t think they have fully reformed; she believes continuing federal control leads to a less creative curriculum that doesn’t allow students to immerse themselves in their languages. “The top-down management has always been in existence and really needs to change,” she said.

Medicine plans to apply to college but is considering her options. She wants to keep exploring the world.

She sees how much boarding school has changed, but with continued government management, she doesn’t believe they are truly reformed. “The only difference now is that we can wear whatever clothes we want, and we can talk to our family whenever we want. But at the end of the day, it’s still institutionalised.”

As we talk on the phone, Medicine digs into her lunch: a sub, fries, Gatorade and macaroni salad. “Sometimes they give us Indian tacos, but I could make it better,” she jokes. “It’s a hit and miss whenever they try. It’s never going to be as good as back at home.”

Books

A Lynching at Port Jervis review: timely history of New York race hate

In the wake of the Buffalo shooting, Philip Dray’s account of a terrible incident from 1892 seems dreadfully familiar

Visitors at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, 

England examine a 1920s-era Ku Klux Klan outfit from Port Jervis, New York.

 Photograph: Russell Contreras/AP


Michael Henry Adams

Sun 22 May 2022

Featuring Irish immigrants and the descendants of enslaved Africans in effect set upon each other by the rich, Philip Dray’s A Lynching at Port Jervis covers only 261 pages but is a sprawling book nonetheless.

The Last Slave Ship review: the Clotilda, Africatown and a lasting American injustice

It details the mob murder of Robert Lewis on 2 June 1892, an incident instantly appreciated “as a portent that lynching, then surging uncontrollably below the Mason-Dixon Line, was about to extend its tendrils northward”.

“The name, Port Jervis, the only city in New York where a lynching occurred between 1857 and 1950, became synonymous with intolerance in the north,” Dray writes.

The picturesque town had been seen not as some outpost for southern-style savagery but as a “satellite” of Manhattan, where shrewd sophisticates took the train to shop.

If, as Dray suggests, the outrage at Port Jervis helped spark the anti-lynching crusade of leaders like Ida B Wells or T Thomas Fortune, it failed, and fails still, to occasion anything close to the “reckoning” cited in his subtitle.

With sufficient thoroughness, Dray catalogues lawless executions up to the present. Thanks to technology, he explains, the shameful spectacle of Black Americans being lynched in modern terms, frequently by police officers, is more pervasive than ever. Footage from cellphones and police body or dashboard cameras purveys racist violence nonstop to an audience larger than ever before.

In contrast to the coldblooded massacre in Buffalo, the lynching at Port Jervis seems almost quaint. Certainly its three protagonists – a conflicted May-to-September white couple and a light-skinned, affable African American – acted with a heedlessness that seems almost delusional.

Intelligent, pretty and dark-haired, 23-year-old Lena McMahon was doted on by her adoptive parents. Though she lived at home, running the candy counter at the family store gave her unusual independence.

Philip Foley, a dandified salesman and “rascally lady-killer”, initially met with approval as a suitor. Once Foley was booted out of his hotel for not paying a substantial bill, Miss McMahon’s guardians saw things differently.

Robert Lewis came to know Foley while working at that hotel, the Delaware House. Foley was an obvious sport and generous tipper, a smooth operator who persuaded the impressionable Black man to pinch food and drink from his employer.

Lewis was fired but remained in Foley’s sway. So did Lena McMahon. Defying her parents, ignoring Foley’s insolvency, she became his lover and schemed to run away to New York. How, without even enough cash for a room, did Foley convince her an elopement would work? The befuddlement induced by love and lust almost makes it understandable. But Lewis being induced by Foley to “take” Lena if he wanted her – Foley saying she would resist at first but it would not matter – how did that happen? What Black man then could believe that would not lead to certain death?

With great meticulousness, Dray tells how after the rape, Lewis was apprehended. He was discovered with fishing gear on a “slow-moving coal barge”. He told his captors how McMahon’s white boyfriend, Foley, “urged him to commit the act”.

So it was that following Lewis’s hanging, in which hundreds took part, and after other Black men came forward to say how Foley offered them $5 to sexually assault his lover, Foley was arrested as Lewis’s “accomplice”. Many white people have murdered lovers and then claimed “a Black guy did it”. But how did Foley know he would escape without punishment?

“Judge” William Crane, a revered Port Jervis attorney, is one heroic figure to emerge from the tragedy. He attempted repeatedly to calm the mob and free Lewis. At one point, hoping to gain time, he seized on the idea Lewis might be brought before his victim, McMahon, so she might identify him beyond any doubt.

”Victims” were sometimes allowed to light the pyre to destroy their alleged attackers, and, expanding on this extraordinary custom, Dray shows the considerable scholarship with which he has enriched his story. Especially chilling is his account of one woman, about to set her actual clandestine paramour alight, being rebuked with a final plea: “How, after we have been such sweethearts, can you do this?”

A memorial, in the wake of a shooting at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters

If nothing more, the Port Jervis lynching gave rise a classic work of American literature. Stephen Crane, William Crane’s youngest brother, was the author of a penetrating novella, The Monster. Its mythologized Port Jervis is stratified by race, ethnicity and social class.


Paul Auster: ‘It’s distress that generates art’

For enlarging our understanding of America’s enduring enthrallment with the violence, guns and control of white supremacy, A Lynching at Port Jervis is superlative.

A 1900 “race riot” and near-lynching of an African American in Akron, Ohio, comes to mind. Louis Peck was held for supposedly attacking a young girl. When it was discovered he had been spirited away to Cleveland, rioters dynamited the stone jail and burned down a municipal building. Peck was tried and convicted in 20 minutes. In 1913, he was found to have been wrongfully imprisoned, and released.

The rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the north during the boom times of the 1920s is also instructive today. So is the subsequent rise of the John Birch Society and a proliferation of riotous rebellions during the civil rights era.

Am I wrong to find Dray’s account of such developments unsatisfying, for its lack of answers? Perhaps there is no answer to race hate, except for the one prescribed by A Lynching at Port Jervis. Investigate, reflect and resolve.

A Lynching at Port Jervis: Race and Reckoning in the Gilded Age is published in the US by Farrar, Straus & Giroux

BOOK REVIEW

His Name is George Floyd by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa review – the murder that shamed the US

‘No longer an anonymous Black man’: a George Floyd mural in Houston, Texas. Photograph: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images

This welcome humanising of Floyd might have benefited from a wider focus, including Black women’s experiences of racism and a global perspective

Kehinde Andrews
THE GUARDIAN
Sun 22 May 2022 

When George Floyd was in high school, his teacher Bertha Dinkins prophetically told the teen: “I want to read about you in the newspaper… that you have made history and done something to change society”. She could never have foretold that Floyd would become a household name because the world watched a video of police officer Derek Chauvin slowly choke him to death with his knee on his neck in 2020.

The killing sparked the largest protests ever against racial injustice, prompting society to discuss racism in ways it has not done for more than a generation. His Name Is George Floyd (written by two Washington Post reporters) attempts to use the life and death of Floyd as a vehicle to examine the bigotry that lies at the heart of the present-day US.

Figures that spark protests are often barely drawn in two dimensions: we have a name, an image and little else. We know Emmett Till – whose lynching in 1955 is credited with sparking the civil rights movement after his mother displayed his disfigured body in an open casket – as a 14-year-old killed for supposedly whistling at a white woman. Trayvon Martin – whose killing by George Zimmerman in 2012 ignited the Black Lives Matter movement – is the teenager in a hoodie who died for going to a shop to buy Skittles.

The authors make a valiant effort to use Floyd’s story to educate society about the ills of structural racism

In this age of misinformation, where the victims of police killings are made out to be the problem, this humanising of Floyd is necessary. The book does not paint him as a saint but explains his flaws in the context of his experiences. Yes, he was an addict, a convict, and even made a porn movie. But these are not separate from his role as a father, friend and the backbone of his family and community. It is welcome that Floyd is no longer an anonymous Black man and you can feel the devastation of his family, friends and community in the interviews that pepper the book.

Samuels and Olorunnipa’s greatest triumph is placing Floyd’s life in the context of white supremacy. Before we get to Floyd, we learn about his ancestors’ struggles as tenant farmers in the period after slavery was abolished, known as “reconstruction”. Rather than abolition marking an end to racism, we grasp how the logic of racism continued. Racist laws and segregation became the tools for keeping the Black population oppressed. Floyd’s great-grandfather was stripped of the land and money he had managed to accumulate in tobacco farming, leaving the family in the poverty that was passed down through the generations.

The authors reflect on the irony of Floyd being killed after allegedly buying cigarettes with a fake $20 bill, given his family’s history with tobacco. Throughout, Floyd’s life is used to discuss issues such as racial terrorism, housing segregation, mass incarceration and racism in schooling. The point is driven home that his life and death were a result of the racism built into American society. David Smith was killed by Minneapolis police in 2010, in an almost identical manner to Floyd, but there was no public outcry.

There is a way in which all the attention on Floyd’s death has in some way limited the conversation: we all agree that his murder was indefensible, Derek Chauvin went to prison, minimal policing reforms occurred… and now we can move on. His Name Is George Floyd adds to this narrative by focusing on this one event and its aftermath. The lack of any global context severely limits our understanding of racism, which, as Malcolm X explained, is “not just an American problem, but a world problem”.

The focus on Floyd also follows the unfortunate pattern of highlighting the plight of Black men, reinforcing how we are drawn to the spectacle. The violence has tended to be public, from lashings on the plantation to lynchings leaving strange fruit hanging from southern trees. The oppression of Black women is more private – sexual violence, evictions and deadly institutional inequalities, such as being four times more likely to die in childbirth – and more difficult to capture on camera.

Activist and professor Kimberlé Crenshaw started the #SayHerName campaign to draw attention to the Black women who were far more likely to be killed by the police than their white counterparts. I couldn’t read this book without thinking how Breonna Taylor, who was killed in her home by police in 2020, would have been a rich subject.

Fear of Black Consciousness by Lewis Gordon review – why minds, not bodies, are the problem

The horrific murders in Buffalo last weekend are a reminder of how a focus on racism can cloud larger issues. Killing sprees by White supremacist males are a symptom of structural racism but they are so violent and public that they, rather than the ways in which society kills Black people every day, become the basis of our discussions.

In defence of the authors, they make a valiant effort to use Floyd’s story to educate society about the ills of structural racism; for many readers this will be the first time they have encountered the history that shapes the present. But it is also a depressing reminder of how much work needs to be done, of the lessons that still need to be learned this deep into the 21st century.

Kehinde Andrews is professor of Black studies at Birmingham City University and the author of New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World

His Name Is George Floyd by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa is published by Transworld.

Trump shares CPAC Hungary platform with notorious racist and anti-Semite


Hungarian talkshow host who has called Jews ‘stinking excrement’ and Roma ‘animals’ addresses rightwing conference

Donald Trump is shown on screen speaking via a videolink at the CPAC conference in Budapest, Hungary, on Friday.

 Photograph: Szilárd Koszticsák/EPA

Flora Garamvolgyi 

and Julian Borger

in Washington

THE GUARDIAN

Sat 21 May 2022 

A notorious Hungarian racist who has called Jews “stinking excrement”, referred to Roma as “animals” and used racial epithets to describe Black people, was a featured speaker at a major gathering of US Republicans in Budapest.

Zsolt Bayer took the stage at the second day of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Hungary, a convention that also featured speeches from Donald Trump, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

The last featured speaker of the conference was Jack Posobiec, a far-right US blogger who has used antisemitic symbols and promoted the fabricated “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory smearing prominent Democrats as pedophiles.


Viktor Orbán tells CPAC the path to power is to ‘have your own media’

Bayer, a television talkshow host in Hungary, has been widely denounced for his racism. During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, he wrote on his blog: “Is this the future? Kissing the dirty boots of fucking [racist epithet] and smiling at them? Being happy about this? Because otherwise they’ll kill you or beat you up?”

In 2011, he used the phrase “stinking excrement” to refer generically to Jews in England, and in 2013 wrote: “a significant part of the Roma are unfit for coexistence. They are not fit to live among people. These Roma are animals and they behave like animals.”

When he was awarded the Hungarian order of merit in 2016 by the country’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, the star speaker on the first day of CPAC Hungary on Thursday, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum protested, saying it “reflects the longstanding refusal of the leadership of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party to distance itself from Bayer, in spite of Bayer’s repeated pattern of racist, xenophobic, antisemitic, and anti-Roma incitement”.

At the CPAC event on Friday, he appeared on stage with a prominent rightwing Hungarian screenwriter talking about gender issues. Bayer focused on deriding Calvin Klein for political correctness, comparing a 2009 ad featuring a white supermodel, whom Bayer called “a very hot woman”, with a 2019 ad featuring the Black rapper Chika who he described as “not so hot”, adding: “it’s clear that this ad was born under the aegis of Black Lives Matter”.

Addressing the conference by video shortly before Bayer’s appearance, Trump poured compliments on Orbán, who was recently elected for a fourth term as prime minister.

“He is a great leader, a great gentleman, and he just had a very big election result. I was very honored to endorse him,” Trump said.

The US thinktank Freedom House has downgraded its assessment of Hungary to being a “partly free” society under Orbán and the Fidesz party, noting “constitutional and legal changes that have allowed it to consolidate control over the country’s independent institutions, including the judiciary”.

It also criticised the government for anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT+ policies and curbs on the independent media universities and NGOs.


Orbán and US right to bond at Cpac in Hungary over ‘great replacement’ ideology

Orbán, like many American Republicans, has embraced the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which involves promoting the belief that the white population is being deliberately reduced by leftist policies and diluted by immigration.

CPAC, which is organised by the American Conservative Union, did not respond to a request for comment on Bayer’s participation. Matt Schlapp, the CPAC chairman, complained on its website that: “Leftist media launched a coordinated smear campaign” on the event.

“Our mission is to increase freedom and opportunity across the globe, including for those living under socialist and Communist regimes,” Schlapp said.

“To hear the condescending whines from socialist boosters in the media like the Guardian, however, you would be led to believe that CPAC stood for something very different,” he added. “In the woke, warped logic of government-financed NPR [National Public Radio], somehow calls for liberty and national sovereignty are akin to racism and authoritarianism.”

‘Extremely active’ jumping worms that can leap a foot raise alarm in California


Earthworm native to east Asia and known for its large appetite poses threat to forest ecosystems, scientists say

Amynthas agrestis. Jumping worms can destroy a forest ecosystem by chewing through fallen leaves, destroying the top layer of soil. 

Photograph: Wikimedia Commons


Maya Yang

Sat 21 May 2022 

An invasive worm species known for its “voracious appetite” and ability to jump a foot in the air is raising alarm in California, where scientists have expressed concerns about the threat the worms pose to forest ecosystems.

The Amynthas agrestis, also known as the Asian jumping worm, Alabama jumper or crazy snake worm, have been spotted in California in recent months. The earthworm is native to east Asia, particularly to Japan and the Korean peninsula. However, in recent years the worms made their way to North America via various landscape plants that have been imported from the region.

Initially spotted in Wisconsin and across the New England area in 2013, the worms have spread westward into dozens of states, and were first seen in California’s Napa county in July.

The worms, which can grow up to 8in in length and have a milky white band around their dark body, are distinctive for their theatrical behavior, including wild movements and even detaching body parts. They’re also hermaphrodites and can reproduce without mating, and produce cocoons at the soil surface.

“These earthworms are extremely active, aggressive, and have voracious appetites,” California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) warned in a report. “True to their name, they jump and thrash immediately when handled, behaving more like a threatened snake than a worm, sometimes even breaking and shedding their tail when caught.”

Of greater concern, however, is the worms’ impact on the environment. Jumping worms can destroy a forest ecosystem by chewing through fallen leaves, in turn destroying the top layer of forest soil upon which many plants and organisms depend.

“They are destructive and cause severe damage to hardwood forests, especially those consisting of maple, basswood, red oak, poplar or birch species that rely on thick layers of leaf litter that serve as rooting medium,” according to the CDFA report, which notes that the “voracious feeders” can devour a cover of organic material in “two to five years”.

“Soil is the foundation of life – and Asian jumping worms change it. In fact, earthworms can have such huge impacts that they’re able to actually reengineer the ecosystems around them,” Mac Callaham, a Forest Service researcher specializing in soils, said in a forest service blogpost.

Experts have recommended several strategies to detect and eliminate the worms, including using a mustard pour - a mixture consisting of water and yellow mustard seeds - over soil to drive out any worms to the surface, and covering moistened soil with a sheet of transparent polyethylene for two to three weeks until soil temperature exceeds 104F for at least three days, destroying the worm’s cocoons.

Another strategy to eliminate the worms is to bag them and throw them in the trash, or place them in a bag and leave them out in the sun for at least 10 minutes before discarding the bag.

Experts have also advised people to take steps to prevent the worms from spreading in the first place. The USDA has warned that because the worms live in soil, they can easily spread in mulch, potting mixes or potted plants. Additionally, raking or blowing leaves can spread earthworms or their egg sacs.

When certain municipalities collect fallen leaves from local residents and then return it in the form of compost, this can also help spread the worms.

The CDFA has warned that the worms will likely be “able to establish a widespread distribution through California’s forest habitat and ornamental production sites particularly in residential and commercial environments.”

“If these worms didn’t spread into forests and natural areas, they wouldn’t be such a problem,” said Callaham. “But unfortunately, they simply won’t stay where you put them. The best way to prevent future invasions is to avoid moving earthworms around.”

Human skull found by Minnesota kayakers 8,000 years old, experts say


Skull discovered in drought-depleted Minnesota River last summer to be returned to Native American officials

The Minnesota River on its way to meet the Mississippi. 

Photograph: Wikimedia Commons/Tony Webster


Associated Press in Minnesota

Sat 21 May 2022 


Native American officials will be given a partial skull discovered last summer by two kayakers in Minnesota after investigations determined it was about 8,000 years old.

The kayakers found the skull in the drought-depleted Minnesota River about 110 miles (180km) west of Minneapolis, Renville county sheriff Scott Hable said.

Thinking it might be related to a missing person case or murder, Hable shared the skull with a medical examiner and eventually to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon dating to determine it was likely the skull of a young man who lived in that area between 5500 and 6000 BC, Hable said.

“It was a complete shock to us that that bone was that old,” Hable told Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist determined the man had a depression in his skull that was “perhaps suggestive of the cause of death”.

After the sheriff posted about the discovery on Wednesday, his office was criticized by several Native Americans, who said publishing photos of ancestral remains was offensive to their culture.

Hable’s office removed the post, according to the sheriff.

“We didn’t mean for it to be offensive whatsoever,” Hable said.

Hable said the remains will be turned over to Upper Sioux Community tribal officials.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council cultural resources specialist Dylan Goetsch said in a statement that neither the council nor the state archaeologist were notified about the discovery, which is required by state laws that govern the care and repatriation of Native American remains.

Goetsch said the Facebook post “showed a complete lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the individual a Native American and referring to the remains as “a little piece of history”.

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State University, said Wednesday that the skull was definitely from an ancestor of one of the tribes still living in the area, the New York Times reported.

She said the young man would have likely eaten a diet of plants, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small region, rather than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

“There’s probably not that many people at that time wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years ago, because, like I said, the glaciers have only retreated a few thousands years before that,” Blue said. “That period, we don’t know much about it.”

Tamil refugees detained by UK on Chagos Islands go on hunger strike


Forty-two hunger strikers are part of group of 89 Sri Lankans whose boat was intercepted in Indian Ocean by UK military

Diego Garcia, a joint military facility of the UK and the US based on the largest of the Chagos Islands, which a UN court has ruled were unlawfully detached from Mauritius by the UK.

 Photograph: CPA Media Pte/Alamy

Haroon Siddique 

Legal affairs correspondent

THE GUARDIAN

Fri 20 May 2022 

Dozens of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who have been detained for more than seven months in a military base on an overseas territory claimed by Britain have gone on hunger strike in despair at their plight.

The 42 hunger strikers are part of a group of 89 Sri Lankans, including 20 children, whose boat was intercepted and escorted to Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean by the British military after running into distress while apparently headed to Canada from India in October.

Diego Garcia is part of the Chagos Islands, which a UN court has ruled were unlawfully detached from Mauritius by the UK when it granted Mauritius independence in 1968. The UK, which calls the archipelago British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) has refused to cede sovereignty over the islands.

The UK law firm Leigh Day, which is representing 81 of the Sri Lankans, says since their arrival on Diego Garcia, which is home to a US military base, the group have had very limited contact with the outside world and for the first six weeks were held without being able to communicate with anyone.

They are being kept in a tented compound away from the island facilities and are understood to have made clear to the authorities that they are seeking international protection but no steps appear to have been taken to allow individuals to claim asylum.

Leigh Day has written three letters to the foreign secretary and BIOT commissioner saying that returning the group to Sri Lanka could put them at risk of serious harm and be incompatible with the UK’s obligations under domestic and international law. It further says that refusing to allow them to communicate regularly with the outside world, including family members and their legal team, is unlawful.

The latest letter, sent this week, says: “Our clients feel increasingly desperate at the conditions they are enduring on Diego Garcia and the lack of any apparent progress towards finding a solution for them. They have been given no information about how, when or where they will be afforded the opportunity to claim international protection, how long they are to be kept on the island, where they might be sent, and/or when (if ever) their conditions might improve.

“We remind you that the group includes victims of torture and 20 children, many of whom are under the age of 10. The mental state of many of our clients can best be described as utterly despairing.”

The letter says that such is the state of mind of its clients that they have asked what what the UK government will do in the event of their deaths on the island, with some requesting that should they die their organs should be donated to the British people.

Sri Lanka’s civil war ended with the defeat of the militant Tamil separatist group, widely known as the Tamil Tigers, in 2009. But human rights organisations and the UN have reported an escalation of the harassment, surveillance and arbitrary detentions of – and land seizures from – Tamils over the past two years.

The Leigh Day partner Tessa Gregory said: “It cannot be right for the UK government to leave this vulnerable group, which includes victims of torture and 20 children, stranded with limited access to communication, no education and without an opportunity to seek international protection.

“Understandably the group are getting increasingly desperate and we have serious concerns for their mental and physical wellbeing. Immediate action is needed to ensure that a durable solution is found without any further delay.”

A UK government spokesperson said: “The UK government has rescued a number of people in damaged fishing boats since last October and escorted them to the British Indian Ocean Territory. We have been working tirelessly since to find a long-term solution to their current situation. At all times their welfare and safety have been our top priority.

“We have helped to provide dedicated 24-hours-a-day medical support, as well as temporary healthcare, food and telecoms.”

This ‘super reserve’ is not just for the birds. It could change the landscape of Britain

A wildlife-watcher’s paradise, the Somerset site will also serve as a blueprint for sustainable countryside management

A great white egret in Avalon Marshes. 

Photograph: Michael Hannon/Alamy

Stephen Moss
Sun 22 May 2022

The creation of a “super nature reserve” in Somerset is a gamechanger for wildlife conservation. But the real question is: what happens next?

“Build it, and they will come”, to paraphrase the 1980s feelgood movie Field of Dreams. And they have. Since former peat diggings were transformed into the Avalon Marshes 30 years ago, a host of new species have colonised these watery flatlands. Cranes, bitterns, spoonbills, glossy ibises and three kinds of elegant, snow-white egrets – little, cattle and great white – are now a regular sight here.


Fifty years ago, when I began birding, I would have seen just one long-legged waterbird here – the grey heron. Today I can find all these species just a short cycle ride from my home. And, on winter evenings, the nightly murmuration of hundreds of thousands of starlings, watched by crowds of awed spectators from all over the country.

Now this wildlife-watcher’s paradise, created from a post-industrial landscape, has become a “super national nature reserve”. Good news for the birds, of course. Good news for local people: the wetlands act as reservoirs to hold back flood waters, thus safeguarding thousands of homes. Good news for Somerset’s economy, with tourists flocking here throughout the year, bringing much-needed revenue. And good news for us all, because managing this land for nature helps capture and store carbon, mitigating the global climate emergency.
If we are to truly transform the way we manage our countryside, this is just the start

But amid the celebrations, I must sound a note of caution. If we are to truly transform the way we manage our countryside, to create a resilient and sustainable landscape for the future, this is just the start. Conservation organisations need to replicate this project throughout the UK. We must look at the rural landscape in a more holistic way, so we can continue to produce food – even more essential during the current cost of living crisis – without marginalising wildlife.

The government would claim this is exactly what it is doing, by pledging to protect 30% of Britain for nature by 2030. But not only is it likely to miss that target, it is also focusing on quantity, not quality. Our existing national parks are included in that 30% target; yet many are “natural” in name only.

This reserve can inspire communities to demand the same where they live, genuinely increasing biodiversity, with the many economic benefits that brings. As is happening in Somerset, conservationists need to work with farmers and landowners to develop new ways to create sustainable schemes that work for everyone. Though the news that hard-right Tories are opposing plans to manage farmland in an environmentally sensitive way does not bode well for the future.

For too long, decisions about how our land is used and managed have been in the hands of people who claim to be “custodians of the countryside”, yet remain mired in the old and discredited ways, championing intensive farming, game shooting and blanket forestry. It’s time to call their bluff, by showing how a new and inclusive way of working for places, people and wildlife can provide a wealth of opportunities.

As one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, Britain has a long way to go. Somerset’s super nature reserve is a great start; but it must also be an opportunity to change the way we regard and manage the countryside for the 21st century.

Stephen Moss is an author, naturalist and president of the Somerset Wildlife Trust