PHOENIX — 

An Apache group that has fought to protect land it considers sacred from a copper mining project in central Arizona suffered a significant blow Friday when a divided federal court panel voted 6-5 to uphold a lower court's denial of a preliminary injunction to halt the transfer of land for the project.

The Apache Stronghold organization has hoped to halt the mining project by preventing the U.S. government from transferring the land called Oak Flat to Resolution Copper.

Wendsler Nosie, who has led Apache Stronghold's fight, vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court the decision by the rare 11-member "en banc" panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

"Oak Flat is like Mount Sinai to us — our most sacred site, where we connect with our Creator, our faith, our families and our land," Nosie said. "Today's ruling targets the spiritual lifeblood of my people, but it will not stop our struggle to save Oak Flat."

Apache Stronghold represents the interests of certain members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe. The Western Apaches consider Oak Flat, which is dotted with ancient oak groves and traditional plants, essential to their religion.

Oak Flat also sits atop the world's third-largest deposit of copper ore, and there is significant support in nearby Superior and other traditional mining towns in the area for a new copper mine and the income and jobs it could generate.

An environmental impact survey for the project was pulled back while the U.S. Department of Agriculture consulted for months with Native American tribes and others about their concerns.

Apache Stronghold had sued the government to stop the land transfer, saying it would violate its members' rights under the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and an 1852 treaty between the United States and the Apaches.

The majority opinion of the appeals panel said that "Apache Stronghold was unlikely to succeed on the merits on any of its three claims before the court, and consequently was not entitled" to a preliminary injunction.

The dissenting five judges said the majority had "tragically" erred and will allow the government to "obliterate Oak Flat."

Apache Stronghold, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, has 90 days to appeal to the Supreme Court.

"Blasting a Native American sacred site into oblivion is one of the most egregious violations of religious freedom imaginable," said Luke Goodrich, vice president and senior counsel at Becket. "The Supreme Court has a strong track record of protecting religious freedom for people of other faiths, and we fully expect the Court to uphold that same freedom for Native Americans who simply want to continue core religious practices at a sacred site that has belonged to them since before the United States existed."

Vicky Peacey, Resolution Copper president and general manager, welcomed the ruling, saying there was significant local support for the project, which has the potential to supply up to one quarter of U.S. copper demand.

Peacey said it could bring as much as $1 billion a year to Arizona's economy and create thousands of local jobs in a traditional mining region.

"As we deliver these benefits to Arizona and the nation, our dialogue with local communities and tribes will continue to shape the project as we seek to understand and address the concerns that have been raised, building on more than a decade of government consultation and review," Peacey said.

U.S. Representative Raul M. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat, called the court's decision "wrong."

"Tribal communities deserve the same religious freedom protections for their sacred sites that are respected for every other American," Grijalva said. "The court acknowledges that foreign-owned Resolution Copper will completely and irreversibly desecrate Oak Flat, but they're giving them the green light anyways.

"It's a slap in the face to tribal sovereignty and the many tribes, including the San Carlos Apache, who have been fighting to protect a site they have visited and prayed at since time immemorial," he said.

The federal government will fund 17 projects across the United States to expand access to renewable energy on Native American reservations and in other rural areas, the Biden administration announced Tuesday.

The $366 million plan will fund solar, battery storage and hydropower projects in sparsely populated regions where electricity can be costly and unreliable. The money comes from a $1 trillion infrastructure law President Joe Biden signed in 2021.

About a fifth of homes in the Navajo Nation — located in northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah — do not have access to electricity, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates. Nearly a third of homes that have electricity on Native American reservations in the U.S. report monthly outages, according to the Biden administration.

The announcement comes as Native tribes in Nevada and Arizona fight to protect their lands and sacred sites amid the Biden administration's expansion of renewable energy. It also comes days after federal regulators granted Native American tribes more authority to block hydropower projects on their land.

The Biden administration will secure funding for the 17 projects only after negotiating with project applicants, federal officials said. Officials from the Department of Energy prepared to meet with tribal leaders to discuss clean energy projects at a summit in Southern California.

"President Biden firmly believes that every community should benefit from the nation's historic transition to a clean energy future, especially those in rural and remote areas," U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.

The projects span 20 states and involve 30 tribes. They include $30 million to provide energy derived from plants to wildfire-prone communities in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California and $32 million to build solar and hydropower to a Native American tribe in Washington state.

Another $27 million will go toward constructing a hydroelectric plant to serve a tribal village in Alaska, while $57 million will provide solar power and storage for health centers in rural parts of the Southeast, including in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.

WASHINGTON — 

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires federally funded institutions to catalogue, report and return Native American ancestral remains and funerary objects.

With exemptions for cases in which institutions can prove legal ownership, the 33-year-old law known as NAGPRA was updated in January with requirements that researchers obtain tribal or lineal descendants’ consent before exhibiting or conducting research on human remains and related cultural items.

While many Indigenous leaders are encouraged by stronger provisions in the law, anthropologist Elizabeth Weiss says the whole thing should be scrapped because repatriating human remains hinders scientific research.

“A research collection’s ability to inform us never, never dies, because you have new hypotheses that can be used to test, and you also have to retest old hypotheses when new methods develop,” the San Jose State University professor told VOA.

What the law says

Weiss argues that NAGPRA undermines the separation of church and state because it gives traditional Native American religious leaders a say over whether and to whom human remains will be returned.

“NAGPRA was passed with the requirement that two of its [seven] committee members must be traditional Indian religious leaders,” she said. “Further, it allows only one type of religious evidence to be used in repatriation — and that's Native American creationism.”

Weiss says the law has led to institutional guidelines for the handling of remains based on what she calls tribal “mythology,” including a provision at her university that blocked people who are menstruating from handling skeletal remains.

“And the more you allow the acceptance of this kind of superstitious pseudo-religion to creep in, the more widespread it becomes,” she says.

In November 2021, San Jose State’s Anthropology Department issued guidelines on the handling of Native American ancestral remains which read, “Menstruating personnel will not be permitted to handle ancestors.”

The university rescinded that in April 2022.

Long history of grave robbing

Niiyokamigaabaw Deondre Smiles, a citizen of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota, is an Indigenous geographer at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. He says Weiss is misguided.

“On its face, she makes what looks to be [a] convincing and appealing argument that scientists are working for the betterment of humankind and that Indigenous opposition is based in which she terms ‘pseudo-science’ and stifling the process,” he said. “What she doesn't really engage with is a very long history of grave robbing of Indigenous burial sites in the name of science.”

Smiles gave the example of mid-19th Century “craniologist” Samuel Morton who amassed and measured hundreds of human skulls to support his belief in five races, each created separately, whose cranial size determined their place in the racial hierarchy.

“In their mental character, the Americans are averse to cultivation, and slow in acquiring knowledge,” he wrote in his 1839 book, "Crania Americana."

Smiles says, “There's been a really long history of people treating Indigenous remains as just simply objects of curiosity, as things that are made to be studied, rather than belonging to human beings once upon a time.”

NAGPRA previously allowed institutions to retain artifacts they deemed “culturally unidentifiable.” That provision has now been removed, and tribal historians and religious leaders will now have a voice in determining where those items should go.

Attorney Shannon O’Loughlin, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, heads the Association on American Indian Affairs, a nonprofit that helps tribes navigate NAGPRA processes.

“The law is very clear that institutions do not own Native bodies or cultural items unless they can prove a right of possession,” she said. “If some tribes ask for certain accommodations and protocols, that's because they're the true owners.”

O’Loughlin stresses that NAGPRA does not prohibit research or display of Native remains.

“It simply requires consent. The whole point of the law is to bring tribes to the table where they've never been allowed before and to educate museums about items in their collections and why they are significant.”

washington — 

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires federally funded institutions to catalog, report and return Native American ancestral remains and funerary objects.

With exemptions for cases in which institutions can prove legal ownership, the 33-year-old law known as NAGPRA was updated in January with requirements that researchers obtain tribal or lineal descendants' consent before exhibiting or conducting research on human remains and related cultural items.

While many Indigenous leaders are encouraged by stronger provisions in the law, anthropologist Elizabeth Weiss says the whole thing should be scrapped because repatriating human remains hinders scientific research.

"A research collection's ability to inform us never, never dies, because you have new hypotheses that can be used to test, and you also have to retest old hypotheses when new methods develop," the San Jose State University professor told VOA.

What the law says

Weiss argues that NAGPRA undermines the separation of church and state because it gives traditional Native American religious leaders a say over whether and to whom human remains will be returned.

"NAGPRA was passed with the requirement that two of its [seven] committee members must be traditional Indian religious leaders," she said. "Further, it allows only one type of religious evidence to be used in repatriation — and that's Native American creationism."

Weiss says the law has led to institutional guidelines for the handling of remains based on what she calls tribal "mythology," including a provision at her university that blocked people who are menstruating from handling skeletal remains.

"And the more you allow the acceptance of this kind of superstitious pseudoreligion to creep in, the more widespread it becomes," she said

In November 2021, San Jose State's Anthropology Department issued guidelines on the handling of Native American ancestral remains that read, "Menstruating personnel will not be permitted to handle ancestors."

The university rescinded that in April 2022.

History of grave robbing

Niiyokamigaabaw Deondre Smiles, a citizen of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota, is an Indigenous geographer at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. He said Weiss is misguided.

"On its face, she makes what looks to be [a] convincing and appealing argument that scientists are working for the betterment of humankind and that Indigenous opposition is based in which she terms 'pseudoscience' and stifling the process," he said. "What she doesn't really engage with is a very long history of grave robbing of Indigenous burial sites in the name of science."

Smiles gave the example of mid-19th-century "craniologist" Samuel Morton who amassed and measured hundreds of human skulls to support his belief in five races, each created separately, whose cranial size determined their place in the racial hierarchy.

"In their mental character, the Americans are averse to cultivation, and slow in acquiring knowledge," he wrote in his 1839 book, Crania Americana.

Smiles said, "There's been a really long history of people treating Indigenous remains as just simply objects of curiosity, as things that are made to be studied, rather than belonging to human beings once upon a time."

NAGPRA previously allowed institutions to retain artifacts they deemed "culturally unidentifiable." That provision has now been removed, and tribal historians and religious leaders will now have a voice in determining where those items should go.

Attorney Shannon O'Loughlin, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, heads the Association on American Indian Affairs, a nonprofit that helps tribes navigate NAGPRA processes.

"The law is very clear that institutions do not own Native bodies or cultural items unless they can prove a right of possession," she said. "If some tribes ask for certain accommodations and protocols, that's because they're the true owners."

O'Loughlin stressed that NAGPRA does not prohibit research or display of Native remains.

"It simply requires consent. The whole point of the law is to bring tribes to the table where they've never been allowed before and to educate museums about items in their collections and why they are significant."

WASHINGTON — 

U.S. Senator Brian Schatz took to the Senate floor on February 1 to demand that museums and federal agencies comply with the law and return to Native American tribes all ancestral remains and funerary objects in their collections.

Passed in 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, directs all federally funded institutions to catalog all Native American human remains, funerary items and objects of cultural significance in their collections, submit the information to a National Park Service database, and work with tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations, or NHOs, to repatriate them.

A January update to NAGPRA now requires institutions to “obtain free, prior and informed consent from lineal descendants, tribes or NHOs before allowing any exhibition of, access to, or research on human remains or cultural items.”

“Give the items back. Comply with federal law. Hurry,” the Hawaii senator said.

Schatz credited institutions that have stepped up repatriation efforts, including Harvard University, the American Museum of Natural History in New York and Chicago’s Field Museum. But tens of thousands of ancestral remains are still in collections covered by the law.

“The U.S. government literally stole people’s bones. Soldiers and agents overturned graves and took whatever they could find. And these weren’t isolated incidents — they happened all across the country,” Schatz said.

"The theft of hundreds of thousands of remains and items over generations was unconscionable in and of itself, but the legacy of that cruelty continues to this day, because these museums and universities continue to hold onto these sacred items in violation of everything that is right and moral — and importantly, in violation of federal law.”

Read more:

Governor, tribal president clash over politics of immigration

Oglala Lakota tribal President Frank Star Comes Out has banned South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation after a speech in which she accused the Biden administration of failing to protect states from an “invasion” of immigrants across the southern border.

“South Dakota is directly affected by this invasion,” she said in a joint address to state lawmakers on January 31. “We are affected by cartel presence on our tribal reservations; by the spread of drugs and human trafficking throughout our communities; and by the drain on our resources at the local, state and federal level.”

Noem invoked the U.S. Constitution and an 18th-century essay by founder Alexander Hamilton to defend states’ rights to send militias to repel invasions. She also said she is willing to send razor wire and South Dakota National Guard troops to Texas to help the state defend its border with Mexico.

“Only entry plus enmity constitutes an invasion,” Star Comes Out countered in a statement posted to Facebook. “The unlawful entry of people into the United States cannot be construed as an invasion.”

He said, "Many of the people coming to the southern border of the United States in search of jobs and a better life are Indian people," including from El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, "and don't deserve to be dehumanized and mistreated."

Star Comes Out said Noem wants to campaign on border issues to get former President Donald Trump reelected “and, in turn, increase her chances of being selected by Trump to be his running mate as Vice President."

Noem responded to Star Comes Out’s Facebook post with a statement saying she has worked for years to build relationships with South Dakota tribes and to deliver services to tribal communities, including health care, economic development, social services, housing, food programs, suicide prevention and drug addiction treatment.

“It is unfortunate that President Star Comes Out chose to bring politics into a discussion regarding the effects of our federal government’s failure to enforce federal laws at the southern border and on tribal lands,” Noem said. “My focus continues to be on working together to solve those problems.”

Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders split over US support for Israelis and Palestinians

Polling shows divided opinion on the war in Gaza among Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. Around half of those surveyed believe the United States is “too supportive” of Israel (48%) and “not supportive enough” (49%) of Palestinians in the current war in Gaza.

AAPI Data and Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs polled 1,091 Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders in early December. Adults ages 60 and older are more likely to view Israel as an ally than younger people in the survey.

About half of AAPI adults view India as primarily a U.S. partner that does not share U.S. interests and values. A majority say Japan is an ally that does share U.S. interests and values, while about one-third of AAPI adults see China as either a rival or an adversary.

The poll is part of an ongoing project exploring the views of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, whose views may not show up in other surveys because of language barriers. Participants were offered the choice to answer questions in English, Mandarin Cantonese, Vietnamese and Korean.

Read more:

Ecologist: Not all Native Americans are ‘exemplary conservationists’

In a lengthy opinion piece published this week on the Wildlife News website, ecologist and writer George Wuerthner disputes what he calls a “false narrative” that Native American tribal groups universally oppose behaviors and practices that are harmful to the environment.

“People are afraid … to suggest that tribal people are like other humans and are capable of good and bad conservation positions,” he wrote. “At the same time, any information that might temper that conclusion is ignored or suppressed.”

He listed dozens of tribal policies and activities that conservationists say harm the environment, including tribal logging projects in several states, wolf and bison kills, and a National Park Service-sanctioned eagle kill in New Mexico.

At least 12 tribes own oil and gas fields on their reservations. The Navajo Nation owns three coal mines in Montana, Wyoming and New Mexico — making it the third-largest U.S. coal company. It also owns a share of a coal-fired power plant and has partnered on a lithium extraction project in Arizona.

While Wuerthner said he recognizes “numerous examples where Indigenous people have promoted environmental protection,” he opposes the Biden administration’s agreements with tribes to co-manage public lands.

Read more: