Indigenous Peoples Call for Global Ban on Uranium Mining

By Brenda Norrell

Indigenous peoples from around the world, victims of uranium mining, nuclear testing, and nuclear dumping, issued a global ban on uranium mining on native lands.

The declaration, signed during the Indigenous World Uranium Summit, held Nov. 30-Dec. 2, 2006 on the Navajo Nation in Window Rock, Arizona, brought together Australian aboriginals and villagers from India and Africa. Pacific islanders joined with indigenous peoples from the Americas to take action and halt the cancer, birth defects, and death from uranium and nuclear industries on native lands.

Brenda Norrell is a freelance writer based in Tucson, Arizona, focusing on indigenous rights in the Americas. She has covered Indian country news for 23 years, serving as a staff reporter for the Navajo Times and Indian Country Today and a stringer for the Associated Press. She is a contributor to the IRC Americas Program at www.americaspolicy.org.

See new IRC article online at:
http://americas.irc-online.org/amcit/3963

With printer-friendly pdf version at:
http://americas.irc-online.org/pdf/series/0702Uranium.pdf

EPA delegates Clean Water Act authority to Southern California Tribe

Release date: 10/31/2006

Contact Information: Mark Merchant, (415) 947-4297

(10/31/06 -- SAN FRANCISCO) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced its approval of the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indian’s application to administer federal Clean Water Act programs on tribal lands.

The announcement was made today at the 14th annual EPA Region 9 tribal conference in San Francisco. The Twenty-Nine Palms Tribe is the 38th tribe out of 563 federally recognized tribes nationwide with delegated authority over water quality protection programs to administer water quality standards and a certification program.

“The EPA and tribes attending this conference are pleased to celebrate this achievement with the Twenty-Nine Palms Tribe,” said Wayne Nastri, the regional administrator of the EPA’s Pacific Southwest region and host of this year’s conference. “We will continue to work together to protect and restore precious water resources not only on lands belonging to the Twenty-Nine Palms Tribe, but every tribe in the Pacific Southwest.”

The tribe will work with the EPA on a government-to-government basis to develop and adopt water quality standards which, once approved, will form the basis for water quality-based effluent limitations and other requirements for discharges to waters within the tribe’s jurisdiction.

The tribe is also authorized to grant or deny certification for federally permitted or licensed activities that may affect waters within the borders of their lands

Under Clean Water Act requirements, the tribe must be federally recognized, have a governing body to carry out substantial governmental duties and powers, have jurisdiction to administer the programs within the boundaries of its reservation, and be reasonably capable of administering the program.

The Twenty-Nine Palms Tribe has a reservation that consists of two properties, in Riverside County in the city of Coachella and in San Bernardino County between Twenty-Nine Palms and Joshua Tree. There are currently no tribal members residing on the reservations but the tribe wants to ensure that present and future beneficial uses of the water bodies on the reservation are protected from degradation.

Tribal representation signals growing collaboration

In a move to foster government-to-government collaboration, SANDAG unanimously approved a proposal to add a San Diego County representative from the Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Association (SCTCA) to its Board of Directors, and Transportation, Regional Planning, and Public Safety Policy Committees. The decision was finalized with an SCTCA vote on December 19, 2006.

A representative from the SCTCA has served as an advisory member on the agency’s Borders Committee since June 2005. This expanded participation at the policy level took effect on January 1, 2007.

The decision to include representatives of this intertribal council as advisory members on the SANDAG Board and its Policy Committees stregthens the growing cooperation and collaboration among the region's jurisdictions and tribal governments.

“San Diego is home to 18 Native American reservations governed by 17 federally-recognized tribal governments – more than any other area in the United States,” said Gary Gallegos, SANDAG Executive Director. “SANDAG has reaffirmed its belief that local Native Nations play a critical role in the growth, prosperity, and cultural landscape of the region.”

The SCTCA is a well-established intertribal consortium of 19 federally-recognized Indian tribes in Southern California (including all of the tribes in San Diego County).

Project Manager:
Garry Bonelli, Communications Director
gbo@sandag.org; (619) 699-1960

Issues in Tribal Environmental Research and Health Promotion

Novel Approaches for Assessing and Managing Cumulative Risks and Impacts
of Global Climate Change

URL: http://es.epa.gov/ncer/rfa/2006/2006_star_tribal.html

Open Date: 09/25/2006 - Close Date: 01/23/2007

Summary: There is an increased awareness that subsistence tribal populations may be differentially impacted by two ubiquitous phenomena: (1) cumulative chemical exposures and (2) global climactic changes. EPA is interested in supporting community-based participatory research to generate data which identify (a) subsistence resources, (b) sensitive subpopulations within tribal communities, (c) complex chemical exposures from multiple sources and routes, and (d) links between environmental stressors and health outcomes. In addition, EPA is interested in research proposals which develop culturally relevant strategies for exposure mitigation and/or health promotion.

Re-imagining Indian Country: American Indians and Cities in Modern America

3:00 to 5:00 pm Tuesday, February 7, 2006
338 Administration , UC Irvine

American Indians have increasingly made their way to U.S. cities over the last century, and a majority now live in urban areas. Yet scholars, policymakers, and the general public continue to treat American Indians as a reservation-based people, cut off from the currents of modern life. This presentation is drawn from my current research project, a history of American Indians and cities in modern America. It will focus on the lives of American Indian actors who worked in Hollywood from the 1910s to the 1930s, highlighting broader themes of mobility and migration, racialized power structures, and subaltern agency. The talk will conclude with comments about how this history of American Indians in Hollywood continues to inform present-day struggles over race, labor, identity, and cultural space in America. Nicolas G. Rosenthal received his Ph.D. in American history from the University of California, Los Angeles, and is currently a Kevin Starr Postdoctoral Fellow in California Studies at the UC Humanities Research Institute. His work, which focuses on race and ethnicity, the American West, and American Indian history, appears in several anthologies and journals.
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Announcement copied from http://www.uchri.org/main.php

Indigenous Communities Set Border Environment Agenda

Indigenous Communities Set Border Environment Agenda
By Talli Nauman

Representatives of the first peoples of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States have issued a joint communiqué they hope will set the new year’s agenda for protection of the environment they have shared since long before a national border separated them. Negotiators for 26 Mexican indigenous communities and U.S. tribes who felt their concerns were sidelined in a 2005 binational declaration on border environment, released their own statement in response. Last year marked the first time the Indian populations participated in the U.S.-Mexico Border 2012 National Coordinators Meeting, where they had a voice in the cross-boundary programs sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency. Yet they deemed it necessary to distinguish their priorities from those outlined at the meeting by the representatives of other jurisdictions in the 2,000-mile-long border area. The Native American leaders put forward recommendations for conservation of land, air, and water. Some of the counsel differs from that given by non-Indian citizens, while some of it reflects worries held in common.

This article originally appeared in The Herald Mexico / El Universal on Jan. 8, 2006. Talli Nauman is the IRC Americas Program Associate and editor at large (online at americas.irc-online.org).

American Indian Heritage month programming

"SHELLMOUND" will air this Sunday, November 6th at 6:30pm on KQED-TV, channel 9 as part of American Indian Heritage month programming. http://www.kqed.org/topics/history/heritage/amerindian/tv.jsp
"SHELLMOUND" examines the decisions made during the toxic cleanup, excavation, and construction through the eyes of the City, the developer, the archaeologists, and the native Californians who worked on the site.www.shellmoundthemovie.com