Promoting Interracial Discord

Public Good Project

April 15, 2016

Further reading: Coast Salish Gathering briefing on treaty rights (2013): for-publication-april-2013-protecting-treaty-rights-sacred-places-and-lifeways

CONSTRUCTION OF A SITUATION

Wrong Kind of Green

January 31, 2016

By Jay Taber

Darkfeather, Bibiana and Eckos Ancheta, Tulalip Tribes. Photographer Matika Wilbur

In April 2013, when I received an email from the editor of the Cascadia Weekly requesting background on CERA (“The Ku Klux Klan of Indian Country”) — which had just held an Anti-Indian conference in his city — I sent him a Letter to the Editor (LTE), which he published. My letter connected the organized racism to propaganda by coal terminal developers. Responding to my LTE, the PR guy for fossil fuel export developers next to the local Indian reservation phoned the editor, expressing his displeasure at his publishing my opinion.

Shortly after, the editor published a column titled A History of Violence, based on my exclusive feature story at IC Magazine a week earlier. Ten days later, the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights in Seattle published a special report titled Take These Tribes Down, which cited two reports on the Public Good Project website.

Reading my LTE, a local researcher, Sandy Robson, contacted me, requesting historical background on the Anti-Indian Movement in the Pacific Northwest. By October 2013, she was ready to go, launching her first expose in Whatcom Watch–a local free community newsletter. In January 2014, Sandy published her detailed account of money-laundering by the export consortium into the hands of CERA-supporting, Tea Party-led PACs.

In February 2014, the PR guy threatened Whatcom Watch with a SLAPP suit, which led to online discussions on local blogs and Facebook about Sandy’s article, and eventually to organizing in local churches, in particular the Unitarians. At this point, a local Unitarian social justice committee contacted me, asking for reading materials they could use in adult education and community forums. In March 2014, Indian Country Today published a feature story on CERA, in which the reporter quoted me three times. (Her story was based on mine.)

The PR guy’s response to all this was to get the local corporate-friendly news monopoly to publish an article claiming the SLAPP suit issue had been amicably resolved, and that the racism charge was overstated by Robson and me, whom she quoted in her article. This article, in turn, propelled the incident into the Greater Seattle Earth Ministry milieu (progressive churches), which began hosting speakers from the targeted Indian tribes, culminating in a national conference of Unitarians in Portland, Oregon in the summer of 2015.

Video: American Indian Movement:

“This video is intended to raise awareness about the American Indian Movement. Often times educators are prepared and expected to educate students about the Civil Rights Movement. But, the American Indian Movement is often left out of the history curriculum. ”

[Jay Taber is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, a correspondent to Forum for Global Exchange, and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal. Since 1994, he has served as communications director at Public Good Project, a volunteer network of researchers, analysts and activists engaged in defending democracy. As a consultant, he has assisted indigenous peoples in the European Court of Human Rights and at the United Nations. Email: tbarj [at] yahoo.com Website: www.jaytaber.com]

Further reading:

• Anti-Indian Conference
• A History of Violence
• How Property Rights Can Become Property Wrongs
• What Would Corporations Do? Native American Rights and the Gateway Pacific Terminal
• Gateway Pacific Terminal Consultant Threatens Journalists
• Craig Cole Threatens Libel Suit
• Gateway Pacific Terminal Consultant Threatens Journalists at IC Magazine, Whatcom Watch
• Coalgate: The Gateway Pacific Terminal Scandal
• Relevant Documents to Libel Threat
• Anti-Indian CERA Doesn’t Like the Law of the Land in United States, or Us, Apparently
• Citizen Journalism Panel Followup
• A Sovereign Nation Stands Tall
• Railroading Racism: Warren Buffett vs Northwest Indians
• Region’s Tribal Leaders Gather In Seattle To Fight Coal Terminal
• Wise Use Terrorism
• Get in the Know About the Flow. . .Chart / Facebook Post, Sj Robson
• On Behalf of the Lummi Nation and Northwest Native Tribes
• Celebrating and Protecting the Salish Sea
• Faith Groups Join Lummi Nation Fight Against Coal
• Interfaith Earth Day: Indigenous Rights, Indignant Wrongs
• Public Witness, General Assembly 2015
• Our Shared Responsibility

Railroading Racism: Warren Buffett vs Northwest Indians

Intercontinental Cry

April 10, 2015

by Jay Taber

 

Warren Buffett’s financial and political clout, from Wall Street to the White House, has created a hubris in the “bomb train” magnate matched only by his partner in crime, Bill Gates. As Buffett and Gates rake in millions from shipping Tar Sands bitumen and Bakken Shale crude, however, a storm is brewing in the Pacific Northwest, where the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI) are fighting Buffett’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF)–which hopes to cash in big on Crude Zones in Washington State.

In May 2013, ATNI adopted a resolution opposing transport and export of fossil fuels in the Pacific Northwest. On April 7, 2015, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, an ATNI member tribe, filed suit in U.S. District Court in Seattle to stop Buffett’s oil trains from crossing their reservation at Padilla Bay. Meanwhile, another ATNI member tribe, Quinault Indian Nation, filed an appeal to stop a major oil train terminal on the Washington coast at Gray’s Harbor.

On January 8, 2015, Lummi Nation, also an ATNI member tribe, requested that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reject an application by BNSF and SSA Marine to develop a major coal export terminal at Cherry Point–home to an ancient Lummi village and burial ground, as well as prolific Salish Sea crab and salmon fishery, that benefits many Coast Salish First Nations in Washington and British Columbia. As Washington tribes fight Buffett and the fossil fuel exporters, sowers of interracial discord are already on the fossil-fueled payroll.

With the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, indigenous cultural survival is now a matter of human rights. As noted at Earth Ministry in Seattle, whose Interfaith Earth Day on April 21 is devoted to discussing how indigenous rights have encountered indignant wrongs from the coal and oil exporters, the devastating impacts of fossil fuel megaprojects on Native American culture remind us of “our shared responsibility to protect Mother Earth”.

Given the convergence of fossil fuel exporters and white supremacists (i.e. Tea Party and CERA) seeking to terminate American Indian tribes, White Power on the Salish Sea could conceivably become a public safety issue, as it did twenty years ago. Hopefully, the intervention of moral authorities will help keep a lid on organized racism funded by fossil fuel. Alas, The Politics of Land and Bigotry.

 

 

[Jay Taber is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, a correspondent to Forum for Global Exchange, and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal. Since 1994, he has served as communications director at Public Good Project, a volunteer network of researchers, analysts and activists engaged in defending democracy. As a consultant, he has assisted indigenous peoples in the European Court of Human Rights and at the United Nations.]