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Friday, September 3, 2021
Something beautiful and powerful happened
Sunday, August 29, 2021
RSN: Charles Pierce | The Texas Legislature Needs to Take a Nap
29 August 21
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29 August 21
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In which House Speaker Dade Phelan bans mentioning “racism” in the chamber.
ou’ll excuse me, but I’d like to begin with a bit of personal business that’s been nagging at the tattered remnants of my conscience for a few days. On August 20, here in the shebeen, I quoted from a really good piece of reporting at the website 100 Days In Appalachia about how West Virginia has become a popular spot to site prisons, because there’s plenty of land and plenty of desperate people out of work. As is customary in the shebeen, I cited the publication, and not the reporter who wrote the story, an obviously talented woman named Emma Kelly. This is just the way we’ve done things since we opened the door almost 10 years ago and I didn’t think much about it. But Ms. Kelly took to the electric Twitter machine to ask why I hadn’t cited her by name. At first, I felt like blowing off her complaint. But some shebeen regulars thought she had a point and that was what put Jiminy Cricket in my ear.
I back up from nobody in my respect for non-profit, independent news sites like 100 Days In Appalachia. The people who work in them are generally young and they work incredibly hard. Many of them are under the tutelage of my man Charlie Sennott, who founded Report4America, and nobody ever had a better mentor. I pray that all those sites live long and prosper because I think they just might save real journalism in this country. They remind me of the function that the alternative press once served, including my own beloved Boston Phoenix, which is where I was working when I was around Ms. Kelly’s age.
Which brings me to my final point. As I thought more and more about it, I remembered what it was like to do good work and wondering if anyone had read it. It’s a terrible period through which most reporters pass. And in going back to those days, I saw that Ms. Kelly’s point was extraordinarily well-taken. It’s one thing to cite The New York Times or the Washington Post institutionally. It’s quite another to miss a chance to point people not only toward a good source for news, but also toward the people working to bring it to them.
Her name is Emma Kelly. She is a reporter.
Remember her name.
The Texas legislature needs to take a long nap. And it’s not just that the voter-suppression law, either. They’re still actively moving to barber their state’s history in distressing ways. And, on Thursday, it moved into that territory that would have seemed ridiculous five years ago. From Channel 13 in Houston:
Before debates began, House Speaker Dade Phelan asked lawmakers, and people in the gallery, to behave. "While we may have strong disagreements on the legislation and policy that will be debated, our rules require that we conduct ourselves in a civil manner and treat our colleagues with respect," said Phelan. While debating SB-1, the word "racism" came into play. That sparked a reaction by Phelan who told lawmakers the word was banned from the chamber. "We can talk about racial impacts with this legislation without accusing members of this body of being racist," Phelan said.
Thus do we have the 21st Century equivalent of the “gag rule” automatic tabling of all anti-slavery petitions that prevailed in the House of Representatives from 1836 until Rep. John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts finally beat it into the ground in 1844. In Texas, you can’t even mention “racism” in the legislature because someone might take it for a personal insult. Of course, that person probably should be concerned about why that was the case, but probably won’t because this isn’t about race, because nothing is ever about race.
Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Stop And Listen” (Erin Harpe and the Delta Swingers): Yeah, I still love New Orleans. And please, all of you down there, batten down and be safe, and know that prayers are going up.
Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here, from 1955, we have the late Prince Philip as assistant to a magician in a fez. This is because you can’t do it without the fez on. Phil seems like he was a good sport. History is so cool.
The Supreme Court’s shadow docket has put some more already struggling people deeper into the shadows. From CNN:
"Congress was on notice that a further extension would almost surely require new legislation, yet it failed to act in the several weeks leading up to the moratorium's expiration," the court wrote in an unsigned, eight-page opinion. "If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it," the court said.
The necessity of Stephen Breyer’s retirement is growing by the hour. It’s either that or blowing up the filibuster and expanding the Court. Or both. The blinking red light is in severe danger of burning out.
Is it a good day for dinosaur news, SciNews? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news.
“One reason is that Laramidia’s geographic conditions were more conducive to the formation of sediment-rich fossil beds than Appalachia’s,” said Brownstein, author of a paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. The specimens he examined were collected in the 1970s from the Late Cretaceous Merchantville Formation in New Jersey and Delaware. “These specimens illuminate certain mysteries in the fossil record of eastern North America and help us better understand how geographic isolation affected the evolution of dinosaurs,” Brownstein said.
Joisey dinos! Do not tell them, “Hey, bite me.” Also, it’s nice to have old bodies resurface in New Jersey without benefit of indictments. But, of course, in this case, the deceased lived then to make us happy now.
The shebeen is going dark next week as the company takes a break. As we get closer to our 10th anniversary, I want to thank you all for your patronage and support. It means the world to us here. Meanwhile, we see you a week from Monday with whatever happened in the meantime. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Wear the damn mask, take the damn shots, and don’t eat the fcking horse paste, OK?
Jacob Blake fully standing on heavily braced legs during a mid-August 2021 physical rehabilitation session.(photo: CNN)
The fireworks triggered what he felt had been a crescendo of pain over a difficult and turbulent year, particularly when it came to gun violence. Blake was in the Chicago area that weekend with family.
He says the anxious episode "was the most painful experience" since he was shot seven times in his side on August 23, 2020 by Kenosha Police Officer Rusten Sheskey after he and two other officers responded to a call for a domestic incident.
A year later, Blake tells CNN that he didn't want to call 911 during the holiday, but he had no other option.
"Before we even got to the 4th of July, the weekend was bloody already, Blake says. "I was watching all of my people dying."
"I'm hearing these booms [fireworks] and it's not scaring me because I got shot, it's scaring me because all of those people have gotten shot so every time a boom went off, I'm kind of imagining people dying."
A year ago, Blake watched from his Wisconsin hospital bed as his story -- his barely lived experience -- played on a nearby TV.
"It made the pain worse," Blake tells CNN.
Since then, he estimated he's watched himself get shot roughly 300 times.
Blake's shooting came toward the end of last summer, which started with the killing of George Floyd and the nationwide protests that followed.
Coming in and out of consciousness while initially handcuffed to the bed around that time, Blake remembers seeing the hundreds that took to the streets in his name.
"I can't really explain the feeling...it was out of body. I felt like I was floating for a while, watching everything happen," Blake says. "It blew my mind that they were that mad about it, that people care about it, that they care about me."
Many of the nights of demonstrations in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and other parts of the US, ended in clashes with police, violence, and even extensive fires.
"I didn't agree with what they were doing, but I understood," says Blake, as he recalls what happened after Rodney King was brutally beaten by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1991.
Blake even remembers talking about Floyd, and the aftermath of his murder, in the weeks leading up to his own shooting. Floyd was killed by former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020, nearly four months to the day before Blake was shot.
"One thing that I said, they're gonna end up shooting the wrong person or killing the wrong person," Blake told CNN. "And a month later it happened to me."
'I don't have the physical strength to be upset'
A year later, he feels nothing is different in terms of policing and the general divisiveness of the world, but he's determined to change that.
"Yeah, I'm here, and yeah I'm about to be walking, but I really don't feel like I have survived because it could happen to me again," Blake says. "I have not survived until something has changed."
Today Blake is proud to even be able to stand, much less walk.
"I was so geeked," says Blake on his first time being able to stand in October 2020. "I forgot how tall I was," he says of his about 6'0 tall frame.
Blake tells CNN he was able to take a few steps during his son's birthday celebration on August 23 this year, an effort that came on the other side of months of physical rehabilitation.
"At one point it felt like someone was sliding my legs through a woodchipper," he says, even as he pointed to improvements. "It's been progress every two weeks...it made it easier for me to be like I'm healing."
The healing process, however, has had to come on multiple fronts, both physically and mentally.
"I'm still going through a lot of pain," Blake says. "Last week I was up for three days straight, slept for a whole day."
It takes a toll on his day-to-day life, one that he told CNN is driven by his Christian faith, but also one where his physical body and his daily mindset are traumatically intertwined.
"When I fall into depression, which I have, it makes my body hurt," Blake says. "I don't have the physical strength to be upset."
Coping with the 'band-aid effect'
Few residents of Kenosha ever expected their hometown to join the list of American cities whose names have become buzzwords for police shootings and unrest.
The city of about 100,000 people is midway between Chicago and Milwaukee.
"You ride through Kenosha you still see the remnants of that tragedy every day," says Ardis Mosley, 72, who was born and raised in Kenosha and works as a parent teacher liaison for the Kenosha Unified School District.
Mosley tells CNN, however, she felt much of the momentum around August 2020 seems to have dwindled, or at the very least slowed, and that it fell victim to a familiar "band-aid effect" that "will never work."
"It's like Halloween, you put on a costume, and then after the day or in the morning you're back to yourself," Mosley says. "It's not fair to say the total population has moved on because they haven't...the movement is active but it's just not as visible."
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers called on the Wisconsin National Guard to respond in Kenosha in the days after Blake was shot, as part of a difficult year "especially for the Kenosha community," and especially for Blake.
"While we are grateful Jacob survived his injuries, we also know Jacob, his kids, and his family have and will face challenges they never imagined having to endure," Evers wrote in a statement this week.
No charges for the responding officers
An investigative report released in January offered an up-close look at Blake's shooting.
"It is my decision now that no Kenosha law enforcement officer will be charged with any criminal offense based on the facts and laws," Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Gravely said, a little over four months after Officer Sheskey shot Blake.
In part because Blake was armed with a knife and that in the moment before Officer Sheskey opened fire, "Jacob Blake twisted his body, moving his right hand with the knife towards Officer Sheskey," Gravely cited from his lengthy report.
The DA's report found the shooting was "justified, in keeping with Wisconsin Law, in keeping with the Kenosha Police Department's use of force training and policy, and widely accepted law enforcement use of force standards."
Laquisha Booker, the mother of Blake's children, initially called police that day telling dispatchers Blake had taken the keys to her rental car and would not return it. According to the Kenosha County District Attorney's report, she feared Blake "was going to take her vehicle and crash it."
Blake's shooting was not captured on body camera video since the Kenosha Police Department did not wear them at the time. However, after the city council voted unanimously in support of adding body worn cameras this month, the department is anticipated to begin using them in the field as early as October.
According to a Kenosha Police spokesperson, they are purchasing 189 body-worn cameras.
Meanwhile, the Kenosha County Sheriff's Office told CNN all of its deputies and supervisors have been outfitted with body cameras and "they've been great."
Sheskey returned to active duty in April.
Despite never being charged at the state level, the US Attorney's Office representing the Eastern District of Wisconsin announced in January 2021 their federal civil rights investigation into the shooting of Blake is ongoing, conducted in part by the FBI, and overseen by prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office and the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division.
A spokesperson would not comment to CNN on the status of the investigation.
When Kenosha Police initially responded in August 2020, Blake had a warrant for his arrest from a prior incident where he was charged with domestic violence offenses and sexual assault, according to the Kenosha County District Attorney's Office.
Blake has since pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct, stemming from the domestic violence related charges, while the other charges were dismissed. He was sentenced to two years of probation on each count, to be served concurrently, court records show.
This week also marks the anniversary of Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly killing Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum on the outskirts of protests on August 25, while wounding a third person, Gaige Grosskreutz.
Rittenhouse now faces two felony charges of murder in their deaths and a felony attempted murder in Grosskreutz's wounding with an expected trial date of November 1.
Blake vividly remembers when that happened.
"That was like a kick right in the you know what," Blake tells CNN. "I was angry, I was furious, and I felt like I had every right to be."
"For the reasons they said they shot me, they had every reason to shoot him, but they didn't," Blake adds. "Honestly if his skin color was different, and I'm not prejudiced or a racist, he probably would have been labeled a terrorist."
Rittenhouse was later arrested and released on $2 million bail, where he remains at an undisclosed location awaiting trial.
Hoping for change, one painstaking step at a time
Blake is cynical about the progress made in policing, community, and the general hatred over the past year in the aftermath of Breonna Taylor and Floyd killings along with his own shooting. But he's not without hope.
It's why he's among the co-founders of Edifye, a non-profit created after the nearby Milwaukee Bucks refused to leave their tunnel before an NBA game in the summer of 2020 in protest of the Blake's shooting. The group works to raise money for communal bail and legal funds, organize community events, combat modern redlining, and more in part through partnerships with professional athletes.
"I don't want to just sit back cooling out, I just want to help these kids," Blake says. He is especially motivated after the conviction of Chauvin, the former Minneapolis Police Officer serving a 22.5-year sentence for murdering Floyd.
"That hurt everybody, I'm worried about my children, what future do they have in this?" Blake says. "This man traumatized the world by killing a man in slow motion."
"It's absurd the hate that's in the world," he says.
Law enforcement officers stand off against demonstrators at an Enbridge Line 3 pump station during a 'Treaty People Gathering' protest in Hubbard County, Minn., on June 7, 2021. (photo: Nicole Neri/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
Documents reveal Enbridge’s close relationship with police, including offering training on responding to protests.
olice responsible for public safety surrounding the construction of an oil pipeline in Minnesota have repeatedly denied having a close relationship with Enbridge, the company behind the controversial energy project. According to records obtained by The Intercept through public information requests, however, Enbridge has provided repeated trainings for officers designed to cultivate a coordinated response to protests.
By the time construction on Line 3, a tar sands oil pipeline, began last December, a working relationship had been established between Enbridge and police officers. A public safety official even invited the company’s Line 3 security chief to regular intelligence sharing meetings. In one case, the official passed along intelligence to Enbridge’s security chief for Line 3: a list of people who attended an anti-pipeline organizing meeting.
Line 3 opponents have long raised concerns about payments made to law enforcement by Enbridge to cover pipeline-related policing. A special account set up by the state of Minnesota has distributed $2.3 million in Enbridge funds to public safety agencies so far. The records shed new light on the level of close coordination between law enforcement agencies and the Canadian oil company to police the Indigenous-led movement to stop Line 3.
“Local law enforcement has become the brutal arm of a Canadian corporation,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund’s Center for Protest Law and Litigation and an attorney representing opponents of the pipeline. “It’s highly inappropriate for law enforcement to target people based on First Amendment activity, collect identity information and then deliver that information to their political opponents.”
The effort to halt the Line 3 pipeline is the latest flashpoint in the movement to end development of new fossil fuel infrastructure amid a growing climate crisis. In Minnesota, members of the Indigenous-led resistance, known as water protectors, have turned to tactics that directly disrupt construction, sometimes trespassing on private property, blocking roads, or locking down to pipeline company equipment.
“Community police and sheriff deputies are responsible for public safety,” Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner told The Intercept. “Our security call the police when a disturbance occurs. Officers decide when an individual is breaking the law — or putting themselves or others in danger.”
How law enforcement responds to the protest movement is a matter of training and discretion. The documents obtained by The Intercept suggest that Enbridge has stepped in to influence officers’ choices.
Water protectors point to the close working relationship between Enbridge and law enforcement to explain escalating police tactics, with rubber bullets and other “less-lethal” weapons deployed in recent weeks.
Plans to Coordinate
Emails between Enbridge and members of the Northern Lights Task Force — a group consisting of sheriffs and public safety officials coordinating plans for expected protests against Line 3 — describe several joint training exercises and other coordination meetings set up by the energy firm. The largest of the trainings was in Bemidji, Minnesota.
In October 2020, according to emails, Enbridge organized an all-day training at the company’s Bemidji Emergency Operations Center. According to an email sent a day before the event, dozens of Enbridge employees, public safety officials, including local sheriffs along the pipeline route, and an FBI agent were invited to attend. A primary goal for the event: “Coordination between Line 3 project team and L.P.” — an acronym that typically refers to “local police.”
The email sent out ahead of the training included a series of “Incident Briefing Maps” laying out scenarios where Enbridge and law enforcement might need to coordinate a response. The various scenarios had something in common: They all involved protests.
The list of scenarios — which were drawn up by the Response Group, a controversial crisis management firm that works for the energy industry — laid out four possible events: demonstrators blocking traffic, the breach of a construction site, “swarming” of a pipeline hub while streaming on social media, and project opponents locking themselves to the gate of an Enbridge office.
Training participants would be asked to come up with a plan to respond to each of the scenarios, as well as to develop an “Information and Communication Strategy” to keep government agencies, the public, and the media informed of what was happening, according to a list of exercise objectives. Enbridge planned to discuss providing local law enforcement with a project radio, according to an email describing the exercise.
It wasn’t the first conversation of its kind. In advance of a smaller version of the exercise, back in April, members of the Northern Lights Task Force filled out a questionnaire for Enbridge. The public safety officials noted that it was a “priority” for law enforcement to obtain access to Enbridge security camera feeds. It also referenced the possibility of placing an Enbridge liaison inside the two law enforcement emergency operations centers, as well as a law enforcement liaison in Enbridge’s emergency operations center.
The Northern Lights Task Force’s communications team did not answer a detailed list of questions. Aitkin County Sheriff Dan Guida, a member of the task force, said his office never received a project radio nor saw other agencies with one. Guida said that the scenarios served to show law enforcement how Enbridge runs its emergency operations center. “It was for Enbridge to learn. We didn’t get trained by Enbridge,” he said, adding that law enforcement might carry out a similar exercise with a bank. “We assisted them and told them this is how we do it, you do your own thing.”
It’s not clear how many officers attended the trainings offered by Enbridge. Clearwater County Sheriff Darin Halverson was copied on the invite and RSVP’d that he would attend an additional Enbridge security exercise as well as a “sensitive security information” meeting. He told The Intercept that he did not attend any of the gatherings.
Sharing Intelligence
By the time construction on Line 3 began, a comfortable working relationship appeared to have been established between Enbridge and some of the public safety agencies invited to the company’s meetings. Public officials repeatedly expressed interest in exchanging information on pipeline opposition with Enbridge.
In December 2020, a St. Louis County sheriff’s deputy distributed language to be used by officers issuing dispersal orders during protests against Line 3 and also sent a list of potential charges that could be applied to pipeline protesters. Another officer responded, noting that it would be legal to arrest water protectors even if they trespassed without a law enforcement officer present. “Hopefully Enbridge security would be videotaping when able,” the officer said. Other documents affirmed that Enbridge security would be wearing body cameras.
The Northern Lights Task Force, the group of public safety officials, occasionally suggested that Enbridge should be excluded from planning, the documents show. In November 2020, Guida, the Aitkin County sheriff, copied Enbridge public information officers on an email about the task force’s public messaging strategy. Another sheriff advised that the corporate representatives did not belong in the group: “It is not a good idea to have Enbridge employees in our group, but they would certainly be good contacts to have to know what info is being put out,” wrote Carlton County Sheriff Kelly Lake. (Guida told The Intercept he copied Enbridge on the email so that law enforcement and the company could avoid mixed or duplicate messages.)
In other cases, public safety officials actively sought out Enbridge security to assist with law enforcement officers’ efforts, inviting an Enbridge representative to share space and attend meetings. St. Louis County Emergency Management Coordinator Duane Johnson copied Enbridge’s security lead for the Line 3 project on an email inviting first responders to work out of the law enforcement emergency operations center as they monitored intelligence on a potential direct action the next day. “There is considerable intel on something brewing tomorrow. Let me know if you’d like to come over and work out of the EOC tomorrow just in case something pops,” the official wrote, referring to the emergency operations center.
In another email, Johnson requested that Enbridge’s Line 3 security lead attend regular intelligence meetings. “We have missed you on our 0900 intel meetings. Is there another time that would work better for you?” asked the emergency management coordinator in a January 2021 email. “It would be nice to have someone from your company on.”
The Enbridge security officer was kept in the loop. The next day, Johnson copied him on another email, forwarding a list of names of water protectors who had attended a “Line 3 Organizing Meeting” the night before.
“It was all I really got from last night,” Bruce Blacketter, emergency management director for the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, wrote to Johnson in the forwarded email. “Well, this and a slight ‘back of the head’ headache from the musical performances and guided breathing/stretching exercises.”
St. Louis County did not respond to a request for comment, and the Fond du Lac Band declined to comment.
NBA player Jaxson Hayes. (photo: Sean Gardner/Getty Image)
Los Angeles police officer kneeled on the neck of NBA player Jaxson Hayes as he screamed "I can't breathe," body camera video released Friday shows.
Police arrived at the New Orleans Pelicans player's Woodland Hills home on July 28 after receiving a call from his girlfriend's cousin, who was not named. The cousin told police she'd received texts that Hayes was loud and violent, the Associated Press reported.
Once police arrived, Hayes told them he got into an argument with his girlfriend, who began throwing things at him. Officers said they had to enter to interview the girlfriend and asked Hayes and his cousin to wait outside.
The video shows Hayes arguing with the responding officers. Hayes can be seen shoving one of the officers against a wall. A police officer then tases the 6-foot-11, 220-pound player as he resists being pinned to the ground.
The officer repeatedly yelled:" Stop resisting or I'm gonna tase you!"
Hayes screams that he can't breathe, but the officer keeps telling him to stop resisting, to which Hayes replies: "I'm stopping, bro!"
This cemetery on the grounds of Carlisle Barracks holds the remains of students from the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School. (photo: Scott Finger/U.S. Army War College Photo Lab)
fter the remains of more than 1,300 First Nations students were discovered at the former sites of Canada's residential schools earlier this year, the U.S. is now facing its own moment of reckoning with its history of Native American boarding schools. In response to these findings, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (a member of the Pueblo of Laguna) announced a Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative to review "the troubled legacy of federal boarding school policies."
In Carlisle, Pennsylvania, efforts have been underway since 2016 to return the remains of Native children to their proper resting places. Carlisle was home to the first off-reservation Indian boarding school in the U.S. — Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Today, it's an army barracks, home to the US Army War college for senior officers. But from 1879 to 1918, it housed Native students from tribes across America, with the express purpose of assimilating them into American culture.
Barbara Landis, a retired biographer and historian who has studied the school extensively, gives tours of the barracks on occasion. During a tour I attended earlier this month, she pointed out a row of white houses that surround a grassy commons.
"These three cottages you see down along the perimeter of the southern portion of the school grounds," Landis said, "were cottages that were built by Native American children as part of their industrial training." The Carlisle school had academic training for half the day and industrial training the other half - essentially cheap manual labor. Many of the buildings were constructed by students as part of this program, but they would also be sent out into the surrounding community to provide work for non-Native families. The boys were given construction and farm work, while the girls would serve in the home.
But upon entering the barracks, the first thing one will notice is the cemetery: rows of white headstones where students are buried. Over four decades, roughly 8,000 students attended the school, and nearly 200 were buried here. Now, the number of graves at Carlisle is incrementally dropping, since efforts began several years ago to return the remains of students to their tribes and families.
At times, parents of students at Carlisle would receive notice of their child's passing only after they had been buried. The cause was often attributed to disease, although abuse was often rampant at these schools. The entire system of Indian boarding schools has long been condemned by Native Americans as a form of cultural genocide.
The idea for the school, the first of its kind in America, began in 1879 with Richard Henry Pratt, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. "It was born out of his experience as the jailer of a group of Kiowa, Comanche, and Arapaho prisoners of war who were arrested by the United States and sentenced to a three-year imprisonment at Fort Marion, which is now the old Castillo de San Marcos Fort down in Saint Augustine, Florida," Landis said. "And while working with these prisoners, Pratt developed his philosophy in Indian education."
That philosophy is best summed up with a phrase he is often attributed to: "Kill the Indian, save the man."
Pratt was influenced by Puritan beliefs, and in the POW camp converted 12 prisoners to Christianity. He was able to get those 12 prisoners to help him recruit children for the Carlisle Indian School, which became the first class at Carlisle.
"Students, when they came into the school, their hair was cut," Landis said, "They were put in uniforms. They were organized into regiments and units and battalions. Pratt being a military man, he designed the program to be this very regimented structure."
Part of that regimented structure was a ranking system in which the more senior students would mete out punishment to their subordinates if they disobeyed orders.
"So, you can just imagine the psychological impact of that kind of a structure among Native American children and their peers. That was all part of the process of keeping discipline and keeping order at the school."
The government created these schools to assimilate American Indians into the dominant culture of the day - white American culture - says Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert, professor and head of the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona, and an enrolled member of the Hopi tribe from Northeast Arizona. "The government had created these schools to teach Indian students, some as young as four or five years old, industrial trades so that they could be 'useful members of American society' and take that training back to back to their communities, or take that training into predominantly white communities that surrounded the Indian school."
Gilbert said he believes Haaland will be in a pivotal position to lead the effort to uncover potential gravesites in America's Indian boarding schools. Denise Lajimodiere, recently-retired associate professor of Educational Leadership at NDSU, and a founding member of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NNABSHC), thinks so as well. She recalls hearing an interview with Deb Haaland on a podcast:
"One of the questions they asked her was, 'Do you think that we will find, in the United States, unmarked graves at boarding schools similar to what we found in Canada?' And she said, 'I don't know.' She said, 'I can't answer that.'"
"But I can answer that. Absolutely. A resounding yes, we will find unmarked graves at boarding schools."
One researcher, Preston McBride, believes the number of graves discovered could be as many as 40,000 here in the US. "That's a big number." says Gilbert. "That's more than I had ever thought. And so there's a story there, and I'm glad that with this revelation taking place in Canada, that it will shed more light."
In Carlisle, the process of repatriation is ongoing. In 2016, at the request of a member of the Northern Arapaho, the U.S. Army began collaborating with tribes to repatriate the remains of those buried at Carlisle. The process takes place once a year (with a pause in 2020 due to COVID). The most recent of these repatriations occurred back in July; the majority of those being returned belonged to the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, who held ceremonies in Carlisle and along the journey back to their reservation.
Rosebud Sioux President Rodney Bordeaux attended the final ceremony in South Dakota, where the remains were re-buried. He says the experience was humbling: "Being there, you're basically put back in time just imagining what they went through as young children."
I asked him what he hoped for from the investigation launched earlier this year by Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland into Indian Boarding Schools, and he said he hopes it will bring about the true history of what happened to them.
"This history that happened to us, you know, there's been attempts over and over again to whitewash it, saying that it didn't happen. And it did happen. So it's best for America to learn what actually happened," he said. "And then they can understand our plight, our situation on reservations, but then also understand that... we want to be self-sufficient. We don't want to be dependent on our federal government. We want to move forward."
Sunday Song: U2 | MLK
U2, YouTube
Excerpt: "Sleep. Sleep tonight. And may your dreams. Be realized."
U2, Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jnr. Ireland February 4, 1980. (photo: David Corio)
"MLK" is a song by Irish rock band U2, and is the tenth and final track on their 1984 album, The Unforgettable Fire. An elegy to Martin Luther King Jr., it is a short, pensive piece with simple lyrics. It was because of this song and "Pride (In the Name of Love)", another tribute to King, that lead vocalist Bono received the highest honor of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, an organization founded by Coretta Scott King. -- [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLK_(song)
Lyrics U2 MLK, written by Bono.
From the 1984 album, The Unforgettable Fire.
Produced by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois.
Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thunder cloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Rain down on him
Mmm, mmm, mmm
So let it be
Mmm, mmm, mmm
So let it be
Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thunder cloud
Passes rain
So let it rain, let it rain
Rain on him
The emerald ash borer. (photo: UDSA/Conversation)
The insects don’t sting but they could be the key to controlling the highly destructive emerald ash borer beetle.
he emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) is a deceptively attractive metallic-green adult beetle with a red abdomen. But few people ever actually see the insect itself—just the trail of destruction it leaves behind under the bark of ash trees.
These insects, which are native to Asia and Russia, were first discovered in Michigan in 2002. Since then they have spread to 35 states and become the most destructive and costly invasive wood-boring insect in U.S. history. They have also been detected in the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
In 2021 the U.S. Department of Agriculture stopped regulating the movement of ash trees and wood products in infested areas because the beetles spread rapidly despite quarantine efforts. Now federal regulators and researchers are pursuing a different strategy: biological control. Scientists think that tiny parasitic wasps, which prey on emerald ash borers in their native range, hold the key to curbing this invasive species and returning ash trees to North American forests.
I study invasive forest insects and work with the USDA to develop easier ways of raising emerald ash borers and other invasive insects in research laboratories. This work is critical for discovering and testing ways to better manage forest recovery and prevent future outbreaks. But while the emerald ash borer has spread uncontrollably in nature, producing a consistent laboratory supply of these insects is surprisingly challenging—and developing an effective biological control program requires a lot of target insects.
Researchers believe the emerald ash borer likely arrived in the U.S. on imported wood packaging material from Asia sometime in the 1990s. The insects lay eggs in the bark crevices of ash trees; when larva hatch, they tunnel through the bark and feed on the inner layer of the tree. Their impact becomes apparent when the bark is peeled back, revealing dramatic feeding tracks. These channels damage the trees’ vascular tissue – internal networks that transport water and nutrients—and ultimately kill the tree.
Before this invasive pest appeared on the scene, ash trees were particularly popular for residential developments, representing 20 to 40 percent of planted trees in some Midwestern communities. Emerald ash borers have killed tens of millions of U.S. trees with an estimated replacement cost of $10 to 25 billion.
Ash wood is also popular for lumber used in furniture, sports equipment and paper, among many other products. The ash timber industry produces over 100 million board feet annually, valued at over $25 billion.
State and federal agencies have used quarantines to combat the spread of several invasive forest insects, including Asian longhorned beetles and Lymantria dispar, previously known as gypsy moth. This approach seeks to reduce the movement of eggs and young insects hidden in lumber, nursery plants and other wood products. In counties where an invasive species is detected, regulations typically require wood products to be heat-treated, stripped of bark, fumigated or chipped before they can be moved.
The federal emerald ash borer quarantine started with 13 counties in Michigan in 2003 and increased exponentially over time to cover than a quarter of the continental U.S. Quarantines can be effective when forest insect pests mainly spread through movement of their eggs, hitchhiking long distances when humans transport wood.
However, female emerald ash borers can fly up to 12 miles per day for as long as six weeks after mating. The beetles also are difficult to trap, and typically are not detected until they have been present for three to five years—too late for quarantines to work.
Any biocontrol plan poses concerns about unintended consequences. One notorious example is the introduction of cane toads in Australia in the 1930s to reduce beetles on sugarcane farms. The toads didn’t eat the beetles, but they spread rapidly and ate lots of other species. And their toxins killed predators.
Introducing species for biocontrol is strictly regulated in the U.S. It can take two to 10 years to demonstrate the effectiveness of potential biocontrol agents, and obtaining a permit for field testing can take two more years. Scientists must demonstrate that the released species specializes on the target pest and has minimal impacts on other species.
Four wasp species from China and Russia that are natural enemies of the emerald ash borer have gone through the approval process for field release. These wasps are parasitoids: They deposit their eggs or larva into or on another insect, which becomes an unsuspecting food source for the growing parasite. Parasitoids are great candidates for biocontrol because they typically exploit a single host species.
The selected wasps are tiny and don’t sting, but their egg-laying organs can penetrate ash tree bark. And they have specialized sensory abilities to find emerald ash borer larva or eggs to serve as their hosts.
The USDA is working to rear massive numbers of parasitoid wasps in lab facilities by providing lab-grown emerald ash borers as hosts for their eggs. Despite COVID-19 disruptions, the agency produced over 550,000 parasitoids in 2020 and released them at over 240 sites.
The goal is to create self-sustaining field populations of parasitoids that reduce emerald ash borer populations in nature enough to allow replanted ash trees to grow and thrive. Several studies have shown encouraging early results, but securing a future for ash trees will require more time and research.
One hurdle is that emerald ash borers grown in the lab need fresh ash logs and leaves to complete their life cycle. I’m part of a team working to develop an alternative to the time- and cost-intensive process of collecting logs: an artificial diet that the beetle larva can eat in the lab.
The food must provide the right texture and nutrition. Other leaf-feeding insects readily eat artificial diets made from wheat germ, but species whose larva digest wood are pickier. In the wild, emerald ash borers only feed on species of ash tree.
In today’s global economy, with people and products moving rapidly around the world, it can be hard to find effective management options when invasive species become established over a large area. But lessons learned from the emerald ash borer will help researchers mobilize quickly when the next forest pest arrives.
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