I’m planning on being there.

The project will bring more than 200 huge tankers annually through the waters next to their tiny community of 160 in Hartley Bay at the entrance to Douglas Channel on B.C.’s northwest coast. Another 500 Gitga’at live elsewhere, including in Prince Rupert, also on the northwest coast.

The risks and effect of an oil spill are simply not worth any economic benefits, which the first nation views as nil, says Marvin Robinson, a spokesman for the community.

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Inside the Travel Lab

Tlingit Culture in Alaska

It’s a narrow wooden bridge, so when a girl runs past, the reverberations affect us all. She’s a teenager, or maybe older, in classic blue jeans and US sneakers, with flowing blonde hair. A few minutes later I see her again, wrapped in a traditional Tlingit cloak and chanting with her ancestors.

We’ve crossed the bridge to the space outside Chief Shakes’ House, some 1000 miles north of Seattle. Totem poles teeter above our heads and the women close their eyes as they sing. In the fresh, wet grass, the girl’s sneakers peek out from beneath her robe.

That’s the paradox here in Wrangell: all-American freshness trying to revive a damaged past.

“When they took our language,” says a woman with hair the colour of the clouds on the harbour, “they took more than that. They took our history and they took our stories.”

She’s talking about the successive colonial powers who arrived here and who, through religion, industry, deliberate oppression or imported disease, decimated the Tlingit culture that had survived 5000 years. For once, with my British passport I’m not made to feel like the bad guy. Well, not entirely.

Read the rest

Yéil Aan Kaawu Naa Shaadakoox - "Leader of All Ravens"

The Naa Sháadi Háni of my clan, the Teeyhittaan, passed away on 12/29. Blessings to my great uncle and his family in this time of sorrow. Gunalchéesh to all who have sent healing words, good thoughts and prayers. We mourn.

Pictured is our clan’s at.oow, Yéil Aan Kaawu Naa Shaadakoox – “Leader of All Ravens” clan hat. It is the embodiment of who we are, and proof of our rights and privileges. May we look to it and each other for strength.

In it’s beginning stages a revolution need not seek popularity, but fervent commitment. Do you know how to stop a mine in your own lands yet?

Fish stocks in the United Kingdom virtually collapsed in the 20th century, with the amount of fish in British waters falling by 94 percent since 1889, according to a new study. So few fish remain in British waters that fishermen today would have to work 17 times harder than 118 years ago to catch the same amount of fish, according to the study, published in the journal Nature Communications. In 1910, even though most fishermen went to sea in sail-powered vessels, the UK fishing fleet caught four times as many fish as today, the study said. Relentless fishing pressure has not only decimated sticks, but bottom trawling also has badly damaged the sea floor habitat that supported thriving populations of fish such as cod, haddock, and plaice.

I have a hunch that fishing in Tlingit Aani in pre-contact times was very productive and bountiful. In England we see that sail technology in 1910 was bringing in 4 times as many fish as today, due to the abundance of resources. The use of newer technology is a race to the bottom if your depleting your fishing stock!

On 30/11/2011 we set out to spike forest roads in a hunting resort of Naro-fominsk district (Moscow region).

We can’t find words to describe our happiness at discovering a forest service vehicle parked on a remote trail. It was a mystery for us if they were there on an ambush (they were sort of hard to spot initially), or simply taking a rest away from their bosses (as Russian enforcement agents are prone to do). So we spiked about 2 kms of the road in both directions from the vehicle. We wish them a cold and lonely night in the dark forest.

Supreme Court Says Lax Kw’Alaams Cannot Commercially Sell Their Fish
Indian Country Today

“The precontact society was not a trading people, except with respect to eulachon grease,” the judgment noted. “[Such] sporadic trade as took place in other fish products was peripheral to the precontact society and did not define what made precontact society what it was.”

Aboriginal rights are not frozen in time, the judgment said. Their subject matter and method of application can evolve. But, the judges said, the Lax Kw’Alaams’ claim to a commercial fishery would create a righth qualitatively and quantitatively different from the precontact trade in eulachon grease, something the courts could not proceed with.

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More on this later. Basically, salmon is to Pacific Northwest Indians as American bison was to the Plains Indians. The difference is that instead of eradicating this economic foundation (scorched earth war against the Plains Indians) the US and Canadian Governments stole access to the resource and now attempt to define the terms of their theft as some absurd notion of maintaining continuity with our precontact practices.

Juneau Empire Letter to the Editor
By Ryan Olson

In response to the article about Ed Thomas’ talk at the Sealaska Heritage Institute’s brown bag lunch series:

Sealaska Corp. has been inventing their own phrases, like “tribal member shareholder” and “economic self-determination,” because they want merge Central Council Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and themselves into one entity. They want their own seat at the National Congress of the American Indians too.

The Native corporate oligarchy here in Alaska has been living in denial. They believe their own misrepresentations of history. I have two examples.

Example No. 1: “Alaskan tribes were not as directly affected by the idea of Manifest Destiny, the expansion of the United States and white settlers across North America.” — Ed Thomas, November 2011.

If this is true, then why are we a minority on our own homelands with only 5 percent left of our own customs and spirituality. Check Census 2010 for yourself, Alaska Natives are 13 percent of the state’s population.

Example No. 2: “I remember 1971, when the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was before Congress and there was a genuine concern in the country about wanting to improve conditions for Alaska Natives.” — Clarence Jackson, July 14, 2011.

If this is true, why do the state penitentiaries have a 45 percent Native population? And why do most Native people living in rural Alaska live in abject poverty likened to developing nations?

The state of Alaska Department of Commerce, Community & Economic Development website states: “ANCSA corporations’ stock is not freely tradable, Congress decided to exempt these companies from the proxy rules of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In 1971, it was thought that the shares would become tradable in 20 years, at which time the corporations would come back under the SEC’s rules. Shortly before 1991, however, the date for tradable shares became less definite in time.”

Corporate voting isn’t democratic.

Proxy votes depend on how many shares of stock any shareholder has in a corporation during each election cycle. I have 50 shares of stock so I get three votes per one share of stock and that equals 150 votes. If there are five candidates running for the board of directors I can vote for every one of them if I want by splitting it into 30 votes each. One person equals any number of votes. Proxy voting would never be accepted by the American people in elections for state or federal representatives so why should Alaska Natives have it for our political system too?