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Gwich’in fight termination and protect
Arctic
By Brenda Norrell
Anchorage, Alaska, Oct. 3 — Alaska Natives gathered to
counter anti-Indian legislation aimed at eroding tribal sovereignty
and toward termination, as Gwich’in vowed to protect the Arctic
Refuge from energy development in the pristine wilderness.
“We are under attack as federally recognized tribes from members
of the Alaska Congressional Delegation, in particular Senator Ted Stevens,”
Gwich’in Chief Evon Peter told Indian Country Today.
“Stevens is attaching riders to unrelated Congressional legislation
that is slowly stripping Alaska tribes of federal funding and altering
our government-to-government relationship. He is carrying out this attack
on our tribes without any tribal consultation or negotiation.”
Peter, from Arctic Village, is chief of the Neetsaii Gwich’in in
northeastern Alaska and chairman of the Native Movement. He was among
the Alaska tribal leaders who gathered in Anchorage in August to draft
a position and develop strategy to counter attacks on tribal sovereignty.
Peter said the Gwich’in struggle will continue whether George Bush
or John Kerry is elected president this fall.
“George W. Bush pursued, as did Bush Sr., opening of the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge in his term. Even though there was a Republican
President and a Republican-controlled Congress, we succeeded in defeating
the efforts of George Bush and the oil industry.”
Peter said this makes it clear that even among the Republican Party,
there are those that understand it makes no sense to develop the Arctic
Refuge.
“The Arctic Refuge has become a symbol of hope for protecting the
last pristine ecosystem in North America and respecting the human rights
of an indigenous people,” Peter said.
“The oil industry and George Bush pursue the agenda of development
because it is a symbol and it would open the door to exploiting other
protected lands and continued oppression of indigenous peoples. They
are well aware that even with best estimates, development of this area
would not make any significant difference in domestic oil prices or
supply.”
The same amount of oil, as potentially is in the Arctic Refuge, could
be saved in a year by simple methods, such as properly inflating car
tires or increasing gas mileage standards. He said it makes no sense
to open the Arctic Refuge to oil exploration and development.
“If Bush is elected to a second term we will have to continue using
all our strength and passion to prevent him and the oil industry from
accessing the Arctic Refuge.
“If John Kerry is elected president we can expand our approach
to push for stronger protection on the Arctic Refuge than is already
in place, such as designating it as a Wilderness Area.
“We can never let our guard down in this political struggle for
our way of life.”
Peter is featured in Turtle Island Wars, slated for release this fall,
with Navajo, Northern Cheyenne, and Penobscot fighters for environmental
justice. In Alaska, Peter’s efforts have been vital to the Native
Energy Campaign, which offers education about renewable energy to tribal
leaders.
“We never agreed to be governed by foreign peoples and now leaders
within the United States government and the oil industry are determined
to exploit resources which will devastate our peoples’ way of life,”
Peter told Indian Country Today.
Peter told the gathering in Anchorage that Sen. Stevens, R-Alaska, “used
a back door method” to pass legislation in the form of a rider
known as “Section 112” on a consolidated spending bill. The
rider eliminates specific funds for small tribes and tribes located
in select organized boroughs.
The legislation also calls for the establishment of an Alaska Rural
Justice and Law Enforcement Commission. The members would be appointed
by the US Secretary General and directed to examine a method of placing
tribal governance under state authority.
Peter said there was no collaboration or agreement made with Alaska
Native tribes on this legislation or other legislation that Sen. Stevens,
chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is introducing in Congress.
“This process of eliminating tribal rights and funding has become
known as the process of regionalization,” Peter said.
“In reality, regionalization is a process of tribal termination
that undermines tribal authority and cuts off tribal funding. It is
the exact opposite of tribal self-determination and is in violation
of the government-to-government relationship between federally recognized
tribes and the federal government.”
Peter pointed out that Sen. Stevens said “tribal sovereignty is
not the answer” in a speech to Alaska Federation of Natives in
October 2003.
The following month, the National Congress of American Indians passed
a resolution in support of Alaska Natives and opposing Stevens’
effort to make Alaska Native nations (NCAI) a political subdivision
of the state.
NCAI said Stevens “made clear that his opposition to Alaskan tribes
is not about funding or efficiency issues, but about terminating altogether
the sovereignty of Alaska tribes.”
NCAI said Stevens’ proposal amounts to “nothing less than
the termination of the existing sovereignty of Alaska Native tribes,
and the total submission of all Alaska Native peoples to exclusive state
law.”
Now, Peter said key leaders in the United States opposing tribal sovereignty
use the term “rural” in place of “tribal,” in an
attempt to erode tribal sovereignty and self-determination.
“While ‘rural’ can be used as a descriptive word in relation
to Alaska Native tribes, it should not be used to replace tribal recognition,”
he said.
“As Gwich’in people we are in a struggle to protect our way
of life. It is a fight for our human rights as a nation of people.”
Source: Indian Country Today
Arab, Muslim Americans targeted again
By William Fisher
New York, New York, Oct. 4 (IPS) — Agents of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are again contacting Arab and Muslim Americans
for what they describe as “voluntary interviews,” as the Bush
administration launches a new anti-terrorism campaign designed to thwart
efforts to disrupt the US elections.
In conjunction with the FBI campaign, an agency of the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) is initiating a separate program in major metropolitan
areas that will target Arab communities prior to the Nov. 2 polls.
According to the Washington Post, the campaign will probably include
rounding up and arresting hundreds of aliens from Middle Eastern and
other countries known to be havens for terrorists.
Human rights groups see the initiatives as repeats of the massive sweeps
carried out by the government immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001
attacks on New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon, operations
that reportedly netted more than 5,000 individuals.
The Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) says the DHS project “consists
of a stepped-up effort to arrest a number of non-citizens whose immigration
paperwork is ‘out of status.’”
The Washington, DC-based advocacy group says it is “troubled by
the idea that immigration sweeps are being portrayed by the Bush administration
as successes in the ‘war on terror.’”
“To date it is unclear whether the ICE [Immigration and Customs
Enforcement initiative] initiative will be selectively carried out against
only Arabs and Muslims,” adds the ADC, repeating “its strong
objection to any selective enforcement initiative that is based solely
on race, national origin or religion.”
In September, DHS Secretary Tom Ridge told reporters al-Qaida is continuing
to make plans to disrupt the election.
Attorney General John Ashcroft often uses high-profile press conferences
to announce arrests for alleged terror-related crimes. But such events
are rarely organized when these charges are dismissed or substantially
reduced.
Numerous legal experts, and the websites of many human rights groups
and Arab and Muslim-American organizations, have questioned the effectiveness
of the government’s approach to Arabs and Muslims. How can the
average US citizen judge the effectiveness of the government’s
strategy to protect the homeland? One way is to examine the record.
Between Sept. 11, 2001 and Sept. 1, 2004, the Justice Department obtained
one terror-related conviction. Two Moroccan immigrants were convicted
in Detroit in June 2003 of being a “sleeper cell” for al-Qaida,
the terrorist group that carried out the 9/11 attacks, and of conspiring
to provide material support to terrorists.
But the Detroit cases were deeply flawed by prosecutorial malfeasance
and, on Sept. 2, 2004, after the defendants had spent more than three
years in jail, their convictions were thrown out.
“Until that reversal,” wrote civil liberties law authority
David Cole, in The Nation magazine, “the Detroit case had marked
the only terrorist conviction obtained from the Justice Department’s
detention of more than 5,000 foreign nationals in anti-terrorism sweeps
since 9/11.”
“So [Attorney General John] Ashcroft’s record is 0 for 5,000.”
Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University, told IPS: “If the
attorney general is 0 for 5,000 thus far in terms of actual terrorist
convictions for those foreign nationals subjected to preventive detention
after 9/11, it makes you wonder why he’s now planning another roundup.”
Little is known about most of the 5,000 detainees. The reason is that
they were rounded up and held by what used to be the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, now part of the DHS.
As described by author Mark Dow in his book American Gulag, the prisoners
were locked up, many for extended periods, in INS jails — the US’s
most secret prison system. Some were eventually deported for visa violations
— not for terrorism — and others were finally released. No
one was ever charged with a terror-related crime.
The Justice’s Department’s inspector general, testifying recently
before a congressional committee, confirmed that hundreds of non-nationals
picked up in the post-Sept. 11 sweeps were deprived of basic human rights.
Most of those detained were Muslim males of Middle Eastern or South
Asian origin.
Organizations representing Arab and Muslim-Americans continue to object
to what they claim is government harassment of members of their community.
The ADC says the government’s action “constitutes selective
enforcement of immigration laws based on national origin and racial
profiling.”
In a statement on its website the group said it “finds this form
of collective intimidation of our community extremely curious a month
before a hotly contested election [and] as an effort to divide communities
and reinforce the fear that individuals already feel.”
According to a poll conducted in September in four closely-contested
states, Bush is gaining on Kerry in support from Arab-Americans, although
the Democratic challenger still has the support of 49 percent of decided
voters, versus 31.5 percent for Bush.
The ADC is also concerned “this initiative could be perceived by
the community as intimidation to US citizens [and] an inhibitor to voting,
especially those newly registered to vote.” It adds, “Measures
to combat terrorism should not be confused with immigration law enforcement.”
In a Sept. 30 statement the DHS’s immigration and customs enforcement
(ICE) division said it had been working at a “heightened level”
for several months as part of an inter-agency program that will continue
until the presidential inauguration in 2005.
It added, “ICE is not conducting a ‘round-up’ or a ‘sweep’
in any community; ICE is not profiling based on race or religious affiliation;
ICE is not instituting a blanket detention policy.”
Just as some are questioning the legitimacy of the sweeps only one month
prior to the vote, others have queried recent national terrorism alerts,
particularly one issued the day after Democratic presidential challenger
John Kerry was officially nominated to run against President George
W. Bush.
Meanwhile, federal, state and municipal law enforcement agencies are
reporting record numbers of anti-Islamic hate crimes, including murders,
beatings, arsons, attacks on mosques, shootings, vehicular assaults
and verbal threats. The FBI reports that hate crime incidents rose 1,600
percent in the past year.
Nonetheless, FBI Director Robert Mueller says he is “vitally concerned
that the rights of Arab Americans, Muslims and Sikhs be protected.”
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