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|  WHEN: Wednesday, July 29, 2009
1 - 6 pm
WHERE: Lake Bemidji Waterfront, Rotary Pavillion
Everyone interested in supporting this cause is welcome to attend. Native and non-native speakers and musicians will provide entertainment throughout the day. Please bring signs and banners to line the streets.
Click here to view, download and print poster (jpg - 8.5 x 11)
For more information contact:
Marty Cobenais, Indigenous Environmental Network, (218) 751-4967, (218) 760-0284 (cell),
Email: martyc@ienearth.org
Leech Lake Tribal residents file petitions to Leech Lake RBC requiring a Referendum Vote against the signed agreement with Enbridge and files lawsuit against Enbridge in Leech Lake Tribal Court
For Immediate Release
Contact: Marty Cobenais, Indigenous Environmental Network, (218) 751-4967, (218) 760-0284 (cell), Email: martyc@ienearth.org
Bemidji, Minnesota – On July 22, 2009, the tribal grassroots environmental justice group, “IN ZHA WEN DUN AKI” in Ojibwe meaning “Loving Mother Earth” of the Leech Lake Ojibwe reservation filed two petitions to the Leech Lake Reservation Business Committee (RBC) concerning the Enbridge Alberta Clipper and Southern Diluent pipeline project. Enbridge, a Houston, Texas corporation is contracted by large oil companies to transport the “Dirty Tar Sands Oil”. The group is challenging the terms of an agreement with Enbridge that would allow construction of the Alberta Clipper and Southern Lights Diluent pipelines on tribal lands. The first petition asks that the Leech Lake RBC rescind the resolution ratifying the agreement with Enbridge. The second petition requests that the agreement be put to a referendum vote. The Leech Lake RBC is the governing body of the Leech Lake Indian reservation, located in Northern Minnesota.
Click here to read rest of the press release
Click here to learn more...
Tell Secretary Clinton we want a clean energy future, not the dirtiest oil on earth
Right now, while the United States is working to move into a clean energy economy, a stealth dirty oil mega project is sneaking across the border.
It's up to us to stop it.
The mega project is called the Canadian oil sands, a.k.a. Alberta tar sands, and it's quietly making its way into the U.S., pipeline by pipeline, refinery by refinery, permit by permit.
Now only one person has the power to stop the dirtiest oil project on earth: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Click here to send a letter and let Secretary Clinton know that we want clean energy jobs, not more dirty oil.
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Recent and Upcoming Events and Other News: |
| Red Butte Gathering 
United We Stand to Protect Mother Earth - July 23 - 26, 2009
Click here to listen to presentations by participants at EarthCycles.net!
Image: Children stand before sacred Red Butte during the Havasupai Gathering to halt uranium mining in the Grand Canyon.
If you couldn't make the Red Butte Gathering in person, you can listen to recordings by clicking the link above.
This event was hosted by the Havasupai Tribe and supported by the Indigenous Environmental Network, Red Butte Gathering Committees, Red Rock Foundation, Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter and EJ Programs, Center for Biological Diversity, Grand Canyon Trust, Black Mesa Water Coalition, Cloud Forest Institute and others!
With the Supai in the language of love
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
RED BUTTE, HAVASUPAI TERRITORY -- Sometimes it is hard to put into words the beauty, grace and love. That is the case of being with the Supai elders from the canyon as we gathered at sacred Red Butte. The gathering was to oppose uranium mining in the Grand Canyon, but it was so much more. The people spoke with the language of love and carried out their ceremonies with the assurance of things that are to come that are now unseen.
Click here to continue reading this article and to see more images, video, and read more stories from the gathering. IEN will publish more news and reports from this gathering in our next issue coming the first of August.
Visit our website www.ienearth.org for statements and more.... |
IEN Needs your Help!
Please click the image above to make a donation on our secure site. |
Join Us: ACTION ALERT/INVITATION FROM THE MOBILIZATION FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE 
Protest Chevron — Join the Mobilization for Climate Justice!
August 15th, 2009
Richmond BART (16th St & MacDonald Avenue)
11:30am Festival/Rally, followed by 1pm March on Chevron oil refinery
Organized by the Mobilization for Climate Justice - West
For More Information:
Phone/email: 415 373 3825, mcjbay@gmail.com
For more information visit the Website at: http://actforclimatejustice.org/west | Dooda Desert Rock International Music Jamboree & Solar Fest 
August 14 & 15, 2009
Click here For More Information |
New NASA Satellite Survey Reveals Dramatic Arctic Sea Ice Thinning
Arctic sea ice thinned dramatically between the winters of 2004 and 2008, with thin seasonal ice replacing thick older ice as the dominant type for the first time on record. The new results, based on data from a NASA Earth-orbiting spacecraft, provide further evidence for the rapid, ongoing transformation of the Arctic's ice cover.
Scientists from NASA and the University of Washington in Seattle conducted the most comprehensive survey to date using observations from NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite, known as ICESat, to make the first basin-wide estimate of the thickness and volume of the Arctic Ocean's ice cover. Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., led the research team, which published its findings July 7 in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans. Click here to continue reading and view startling images....
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Revealed: The Secret Evidence of Global Warming Bush Tried to Hide
Image: Last week, images depicting the impact of global warming in the Arctic that were kept secret during the Bush administration were declassified. (Photo: Jeremy Harbeck / NASA)
Sunday 26 July 2009
by: Suzanne Goldenberg and Damian Carrington - The Observer UK
Photos from US spy satellites declassified by the Obama White House provide the first graphic images of how the polar ice sheets are retreating in the summer. The effects on the world's weather, environments and wildlife could be devastating.
Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months.
The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
One particularly striking set of images - selected from the 1,000 photographs released - includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore. A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free. Continue reading....
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The Climate Bill Shouldn't Give Coal a Free Pass 
by: Bruce Nilles
Image: The Senate is debating a version of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which environmentalists say includes massive loopholes for the coal industry. (Photo: api.ning.com)
Now that historic US climate legislation, the American Clean Energy and Security Act - (ACES), has passed the House of Representatives and the Senate is debating its version of energy/climate legislation, let's talk about what must be fixed before it gets to the president's desk.
Big Coal has long sought and enjoyed loopholes for their dirty industry - anything to keep the money rolling in as they avoid cleaning up. And now, over objections of our clean energy champions, this bill gives them another massive loophole that the Senate must correct. Continue reading....
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IEN Needs YOUR Help!
Through our program work and campaigns the Indigenous Environmental Network ~ IEN, strives to empower indigenous communities; to build community leadership, capacity and strength to protect and maintain the health of communities and Native Nations! Click here or the image link above to access our secure donation server.
With your help IEN will keep our doors open and phones on: We will continue to assist indigenous communities fighting to protect their homelands, culture, health, economies, and environment for the benefit of not only our children but for all future generations.
The IEN online newsletter readership has grown to over 4,000 strong in just one year. If each of us give $5, we will raise $20,000 ~ $10 each and we will raise $40,000~ and $20 each will raise a whopping $80,000, which would support our energy and climate program for the next year!
Thank you!
IEN staff, volunteers and board
Click here to learn more....
Click here or the image link above to access our secure donation server. |
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Oil sands no longer easy sell in Washington
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'Green' Obama administration puts lobbyists on defensive
By Sheldon Alberts, Canwest News ServiceMay 23, 2009
When the government of Alberta opened its Washington offices inside the Canadian Embassy four years ago, its mission was challenging, if relatively straightforward: Promote a little-known but secure source of petroleum to an at-war nation itching to break its addiction to Middle East oil.
At first, it seemed Alberta could do no wrong in Uncle Sam's eyes. There were invitations to meet at the White House with Dick Cheney, then vice-president and the string-pulling architect of Bush-era energy policy. CBS's 60 Minutes aired a documentary advising Americans that the province's vast oil sands were about "to become more important to the United States than all the oil that comes to us from Saudi Arabia."
And then there was Alberta's controversial postcard moment in July, 2006 -- parking a giant oil sands dump truck on the National Mall, an iconic urban green space framed by the dome of the U. S. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial.
But all that is so last administration. Click here to continue reading....
For more information contact:
Clayton Thomas-Mueller, Indigenous Environmental Network
Canadian Tar Sands Campaign, (613) 789-5653, Email: ienoil@igc.org  |
Tribal members fight Enbridge oil pipeline Some members from Fond du Lac and Leech Lake bands will petition Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to block the Enbridge project.
By: John Myers, Duluth News Tribune
Saying the environmental damage to their native brothers’ land in Canada is too great, tribal dissidents on two Minnesota Indian reservations are battling a major new oil pipeline across northern Minnesota.
Members of both the Fond du Lac and Leech Lake bands of Ojibwe are starting a petition drive for tribal referendums on whether Enbridge Energy Corp. should be allowed to build an oil pipeline across both reservations. They also are threatening legal action within tribal courts. Continue reading....
For more information contact:
Marty Cobenais, Indigenous Environmental Network,
(218) 751-4967, (218) 760-0284 (cell), Email: martyc@ienearth.org or
Clayton Thomas-Mueller, Indigenous Environmental Network
Canadian Tar Sands Campaign, (613) 789-5653, Email: ienoil@igc.org
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Navajos and Environmentalists Split on Power Plant
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Image Caption: Elouise Brown, foreground, protesting the Navajos’ planned 1,500-megawatt power plant near Burnham, N.M., with her sister Victoria Alba. Credit: NYTimes
By FELICITY BARRINGER
Published: July 27, 2007
BURNHAM, N.M. — For the Navajo nation, energy is the most valuable currency. The tribal lands are rich with uranium, natural gas, wind, sun and, most of all, coal.
But two coal-fired power plants here, including one on the reservation, belch noxious fumes, making the air among the worst in the state. Now the tribe is moving forward with plans for a bigger plant, Desert Rock, that Navajo authorities hope will bring in $50 million a year in taxes, royalties and other income by selling power to Phoenix and Las Vegas.
The plan has stirred opposition from some Navajos who regard the $3 billion proposal as a lethal “energy monster” that desecrates Father Sky and Mother Earth and from environmental groups that fear global warming implications from its carbon dioxide emissions.
New Mexico, which has no authority over the tribal lands, has also expressed misgivings and has refused to grant the plant tax breaks.
The struggle is a homegrown version of the global debate on slowing climate change. Continue reading....
For more information contact:
Jihan Gearon, Indigenous Environmental Network - Energy & Climate Justice, (928) 214-8301 Email: ienenergy@igc.org |
WE ARE A THREAT TO THE OIL INDUSTRY
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By Mike Mercredi
Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
July 27, 2009
ATHABASCA CHIPEWYAN FIRST NATION LEADERSHIP APPALLED AND SHOCKED BY THE CANADIAN DEFENSE AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS INSTITUTE
The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation's leadership is shocked and appalled by a recent study released by the Canadian Defense Security and Foreign Affairs Institute (CDFAI) describing the First Nations people as a “threat to the oil industry”. Industry has been negotiating and working with First Nation communities for some time now and it appears that they are committed to work on a plan to develop a sufficient sustainable development program that will protect the traditional way of living for the First Nations people on future proposed extraction and land reclamation projects. Now, with the release of this report by Tom Flanagan which alleges First Nations people as a “threat” to the industry, all negotiations may now be more time-consuming and complicated than anticipated instead of progressing forward confidently with the First Nations of Treaty 8. Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations says “It’s very disappointing that a study done by the CDFAI which was sponsored by an oil company is claiming that we are a high risk threat to the oil industry by assuming scenarios of First Nations acting as eco-terrorists”. By accusing First Nations people of “tacit support to illegal activities”, the CDFAI want to create fear among Canadians by stereotyping our youth as disaffected and likely to be recruited into imagined “warrior society eco-terrorist groups”.
What the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation intended to do is raise the awareness of the health issue’s that the people of Fort Chipewyan are facing. The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation believes that this report is a maneuver by industry and Government to prevent anyone who advocates opposition and then label them as a terrorist while pushing back even further negotiations; meanwhile the oil sand companies will continue to develop without limitations by removing the “Indian” threat to the industry in Canada. Oil companies based in Canada are exploiting Indigenous people around the world and are using Governments to deal with the local indigenous people by funding militia’s to violently remove them from their homes so they can develop their traditional lands into mines; this is parallel to what is going on here in Alberta with the Government and First Nations people. Continue reading....
NOTE: The article "Violence likely to continue against oil and gas industry: report" that summarizes the report written by Tom Flanagan and sponsored by Nexen Inc., a Calgary-based energy company, is included in this newsletter below.
For more information contact:
Clayton Thomas-Mueller, Indigenous Environmental Network
Canadian Tar Sands Campaign, (613) 789-5653, Email: ienoil@igc.org
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Uranium Contamination Haunts Navajo Country
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Image Caption: Fred and Clara Slowman near their newly rebuilt home near Teec Nos Pos, Ariz. Many homes were contaminated with uranium. Credit: NYTimes
By DAN FROSCH
NY Times - Published: July 26, 2009
TEEC NOS POS, Ariz. — It was one year ago that the environmental scientist showed up at Fred Slowman’s door, deep in the heart of Navajo country, and warned that it was unsafe for him to stay there.
The Slowman home [shown above], the same one-level cinderblock structure his family had lived in for nearly a half-century, was contaminated with potentially dangerous levels of uranium from the days of the cold war, when hundreds of uranium mines dotted the vast tribal land known as the Navajo Nation. The scientist advised Mr. Slowman, his wife and their two sons to move out until their home could be rebuilt.
“I was angry,” Mr. Slowman said. “I guess it was here all this time, and we never knew.”
The legacy wrought from decades of uranium mining is long and painful here on the expansive reservation. Over the years, Navajo miners extracted some four million tons of uranium ore from the ground, much of it used by the United States government to make weapons.
Many miners died from radiation-related illnesses; some, unaware of harmful health effects, hauled contaminated rocks and tailings from local mines and mills to build homes for their families. Continue reading....
For more information contact:
Jihan Gearon, Indigenous Environmental Network - Energy & Climate Justice, (928) 214-8301 Email: ienenergy@igc.org
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Commentary: Beware of B.C.'s proposed Recognition and Reconciliation Act
 | By Arthur Manuel
Premier Gordon Campbell is trying to use the proposed British Columbia Recognition and Reconciliation Act to overcome the economic uncertainty that B.C. has been experiencing since the Supreme Court of Canada recognized aboriginal title. Aboriginal title is an exclusive property right of indigenous peoples. This is the Achilles’ heel of B.C., as the provincially created property rights, like fee simple or forestry tenures and mining leases, are put in question because they fail to take into account aboriginal title.
Aboriginal title could even operate to oust provincial control over lands and resources, so what the province is really seeking through the proposed act is recognition of Crown title by indigenous peoples.
The much advertised recognition of aboriginal title is contingent upon recognition of provincial Crown title in return. This position has historically been rejected by indigenous peoples insisting that their relationship is with the federal Crown and not with lower levels of government. The Gordon Campbell strategy is to plug the “First Nations leadership council”—consisting of the executives of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations, the First Nations Summit, and the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs—into existing provincial government business schemes. The result will be benefit-sharing agreements under existing provincial resource law. This will undermine aboriginal title and indigenous efforts to protect the environment from increased resource exploitation. Continue reading....
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At what price 'white man's money'?
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The candidates vying to succeed Grand Chief Phil Fontaine pretty much agree that economic development is the key to prosperity for Canada's native people. Many others, however, fear the cost...
Shawn McCarthy
Ottawa — From Globe and Mail
Each spring, Art Sterritt and his family gather at his wife's ancestral home among B.C.'s Gitga'at people to harvest seaweed, clams and cockles on the shores of Hartley Bay near Kitimat.
The event is more than vacation; it connects the 60-year-old grandfather and his growing family to a way of life that has existed for a millennium.
But the Gitga'at and other aboriginal people on the isolated coast worry about a new and dire threat to that natural abundance that forms the basis of their cultural identity.
Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. plans to build a 1,170-kilometre pipeline to carry oil-sands crude from Edmonton. Double-hulled tankers would navigate 80 kilometres up Hartley Bay to Kitimat to take it the rest of the way to Asia and the U.S. West Coast.
First nations in the region adamantly oppose the tanker traffic, fearful that spills and even heavy wakes from the massive vessels would disrupt the tidal environment that nourishes them. Continue reading....
| Violence likely to continue against oil and gas industry: report
Kelly Cryderman, Canwest News Service
CALGARY-- Violent acts or blockades against Canada's oil and gas industry will likely continue in the years ahead, but the disruptions are unlikely to be organized or widespread unless disparate groups come together, a new report says.
The Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute report -- sponsored by Nexen Inc., a Calgary-based energy company -- was completed before the two most recent explosions at EnCana Corp. facilities in northeastern British Columbia. However, author and political scientist Tom Flanagan says his conclusions still hold true.
"I don't see any evidence of an organized group doing it," Flanagan said of the blasts near Dawson Creek, B.C., a community about 600 kilometres northwest of Edmonton. Continue reading....
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