Video aims to get more rural Native Americans registered to vote and to the polls

There's always a push to get more youth involved in presidential elections, but there may be a different angle in the concerted effort by College Horizons, a nonprofit organization focused on the higher education of Native American youth. Aura Bogado of The Nation reports that the magazine's newest community journalist, Hillary Abe, has produced a video in Northern Arizona "geared towards mobilizing rural Native youth to vote."

It's perhaps a noble effort, given that 34 percent of Native Americans aged 18 or older in 2008, more than 1 million, did not cast a ballot. Native Vote 2012, a website geared toward getting youth to register, claims that "the Native vote can have a game changing impact on elections at the local, state and federal level, and that's why in 2012 we are working tirelessly to turn out the largest Native note ever."

Tribe divided over tapping their lands' resources

There is great beauty on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana, writes Jack Healy of The New York Times. "But there is also oil, locked away in the tight shale thousands of feet underground," and tribal leaders of the Blackfeet Nation "have decided to tap their land’s buried wealth. The move has divided the tribe while igniting a debate over the promise and perils of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in a place where grizzlies roam into backyards and many residents see the land as something living and sacred. All through the billiard-green mesas leading up to the Rocky Mountains are signs of the boom."(NYT photo by Rich Addicks)

"Oil exploration here began in the 1920s, largely on the plains along the eastern edge of the reservation, but it died off in the early 1980s. Over the last four years, though, new fracking technologies and rising oil prices have lured the drillers back, and farther and farther west, to the mountains that border Glacier National Park," Healy reports. "It is an increasingly common sight for tribes across the West and Plains: Tourist spending has gone slack since the recession hit. American Indian casino revenues are stagnating just as tribal gambling faces new competition from online gambling and waves of new casinos. Oil and fracking are new lifelines. One drilling rig on the Blackfeet reservation generated 49 jobs for tribal members — a substantial feat in a place where unemployment is as high as 70 percent. But as others watched the rigs rise, they wondered whether the tribe was making an irrevocable mistake."

 “These are our mountains,” Cheryl Little Dog, a new member of the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council, the reservation’s governing body, told Healy. Pauline Matt told him, “Ity threatens everything we are as Blackfeet.” But tribal leaders think "Oil wealth could be more lucrative and reliable than any casino," Healy reports. But to find the opposing view, Healy drove just five miles toward the mountains. The divisions are more than disputes over the economy and environment — they represent two visions of the land where Blackfeet members have lived for centuries. It is a division without compromise. (Read more)

New EPA rules for Four Corners power plant could reduce air pollution at national parks

The Environmental Protection Agency issued its final rule aimed at reducing emissions at the largest single source of haze-causing pollution in the U.S., the Four Corners Power Plant in northwestern New Mexico. The agency says plant operators can either reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by upgrading five generators at the plant or permanently shut down three and install pollution controls on the two others.

Either move would cut emissions that can limit visibility at several Western national parks by 80 to 87 percent, reports Felicia Fonseca of The Associated Press. Regional EPA Administrator Jared Blumenfeld said reducing emissions is a "commonsense approach" that will improve air quality at parks that are "crucial to the economy of Four Corners." Arizona Public Service plans to close three units and install pollution controls. The plant provides electricity to about 300,000 homes in New Mexico, Arizona and Texas.

The EPA has long considered whether the Four Corners plant and another on the Navajo Reservation would need upgrades, Fonseca reports. Under the APS's proposal to shutter three generators, it would install $290 million in pollution controls, and spokesman Damon Gross said the Navajo, local economy, customers and the environment would all benefit. However, the Navajo fear a loss of about $9 million a year in coal royalties that would come if three generators are shut down. (Read more)

Once destitute Calif. tribes fight to keep others from benefiting from off-reservation casinos

Thomas  Lozano at the planned
Enterprise Rancheria Casino site
(NYT photo by Max Whittaker)

To pull itself out of poverty, the Maidu Indian Tribe of California in 2002 applied to build an off-reservation casino about 35 miles south of the few acres of reservation land where a handful of the tribe's people live in broken-down trailers. The federal government has approved the plan, but the final decision rests with California Gov. Jerry Brown, who is expected to decide on the fate of the planned Enterprise Rancheria casino and another tribe’s off-reservation proposal by an Aug. 31 deadline. But, reports Norimitsu Onishia of The New York Times, "Plans for the two casinos are drawing fierce opposition and last-minute lobbying in the state capital from an unexpected source: nearby tribes with casinos that they say will be hurt by the newcomers. Leading the fight against Enterprise is the United Auburn Indian Community, whose casino, Thunder Valley, has become one of America’s most profitable and has brought the formerly destitute tribe unimaginable riches."

How unimaginable? Onishia reports that "with 80 percent of its revenues coming directly from gambling, Thunder Valley is so profitable that it has transformed the lives of its owners, the 400-member United Auburn tribe, most of whom received welfare benefits until the casino opened in 2003. The tribal council has provided housing for members, built group homes for troubled children and connected residential areas to water and sewer systems. All members receive free health care and dental benefits. Children making the honor roll receive hundreds of dollars in incentives. The tribe’s 200 adult members each get a share of the casino’s revenues, which local news media have reported as $30,000 per month, and which industry experts have estimate is more. Douglas G. Elmets, a spokesman for the tribe and a former White House spokesman during the Reagan administration, said only that members did not need to work for financial reasons, but that many did in tribal affairs."

Since Indian gambling was legalized in the United States in 1988, only five tribes have gotten final clearance to build casinos off their reservations.  The issue in California now has raised larger issues in Indian communities across the nation about the goals of gambling. A decade ago, tribes were united in their efforts to further Indian gambling, which was supposed to give them the means to become self-sufficient, said Steven Light, co-director of the University of North Dakota’s Institute for the Study of Tribal Gaming Law and Policy. But he said that talk of “fairness and justice” has given way in an increasingly competitive market. (Read more)

State and tribal courts report success in joint effort to help Native Americans get sober

A collaboration of state and trial courts in northern Minnesota to combat drug and alcohol addiction among Native Americans is reporting success, according to The Crime Report. Judges Korey Wahwassuck of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe Tribal Court and John Smith of Cass County Court addressed the National Criminal Justice Association National Forum about the partnership, known as Wellness Court, last week.

The Leech Lake court is working with courts in Cass and Itasca counties on the program, a variation on drug courts that exist in many counties across the U.S. in which participants are helped through a series of programs to curb their addiction. (Minnesota Indian Affairs Council map: Leech Lake Reservation and emblem)

The judges presented two success stories. One involved a mother of four who said she is now "an inspiration to her kids," and a father who had previously been through a dozen treatment programs, none of which worked except Wellness Court, which has kept him sober for 18 months. Wahwassuck said there's been a major "climate change" in his tribe. Members now talk about sobriety and recovery more than about heavy drinking. (Read more)

Two of every five eligible Native Americans not registered to vote

This week the National Congress of American Indians called the problem of access to voting a “civic emergency” requiring an immediate fix, reports Mark Trahant for the Daily Yonder. “Native people have remained one of the most disenfranchised group of voters in the United States,” said Jefferson Keel, president of NCAI, the nation’s oldest and most representative tribal advocacy organization. “Today as a result, two out of every five eligible American Indian and Alaska Native voters are not registered to vote, in 2008 over 1 million eligible Native voters were unregistered.”

One way Native Americans could be added to the voter rolls, argued Keel, is to have state-based public assistance agencies such as Indian Health Services clinics designated as registration agencies as allowed under the National Voter Registration Act. This basic idea has worked in other places where low-income voters register at public assistance agencies. When that law was applied, tens of thousands of new voters were added in North Carolina, Virginia, Missouri, Ohio and Illinois.

Two Indian tribes likely to back settlement for water rights along Little Colorado River

Navajo and Hopi tribal governments are likely to support a settlement with the U.S. federal government that would allow the Navajo Nation to use as much water as they need from the Little Colorado River, right, reports Anne Minard of Indian Country Today Media Network. The Little Colorado River Water Rights Settlement would allow the tribes to pull water from a river aquifer that is on the Navajo reservation in parts of Arizona and New Mexico, and close to the Hopi reservation.

Hopi Chairman LeRoy Shingoitewa and Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly say the settlement "is a boon for future generations," and would secure water supplies for three water projects to deliver drinking water to rural communities on both reservations, something they to which they previously didn't have access. It's a deal they wouldn't likely win through "protracted court battles that are the settlement's alternative," Minard reports.

A group of anti-settlement activists disagrees, saying that the 30 stakeholders in the settlement all had to agree, and they want certain terms met in return for their agreement. In particular, activists are opposed to the extension of the lease for the Navajo Generating Station near Page, Ariz. for 34 years, and the provision that states the Navajo can never sue for past or future water withdrawals from or pollution of the aquifer from coal mining on tribal land. Many activists and locals contend that Peabody Energy and the power plant have already damaged the water beyond repair.

Both the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Tribe are faced with dueling bills on which to vote this week: one that supports the settlement, and one that opposes it. At least 22 Navajo chapters have issued resolutions opposing the settlement, and "the number is growing," Minard reports. (Read more)