Aue, te ngau o te mate! te mamae! te mamae!
Kua tau te kapua pöuri ki runga o Mauao, kua pukepuke nga moana o Tauranga, kua pakaru mai te tangi a nga iwi o Ngati Pukenga, o Ngai Te Rangi, o Ngati Ranginui, o Te Arawa.
E te rangatira, e te whakaruruhau, e te kaiärahi, takoto mai ra, takoto mai ra takoto mai ra.
E te whänau pani, ka tangi hotuhotu mätou, ka pupu ake te aroha ki a kotuou e uhia nei e te kakahu taratara o te mate.
Monte Ohia's Maori Party colleagues are utterly devastated at his sudden death on June 12, 2008. The MPs have been touring Te Tai Tonga with Monte over the past few days, seeing the huge support he enjoyed as candidate, and sharing the excitement of the people.
Monte's collapse at home in Christchurch, as he prepared to travel to Wairau for the final day of the tour, has shattered his family, his friends, and those who shared his dreams.
“Monte was a man of great integrity, unstinting dedication and enormous strength” said Tariana Turia. “We are broken-hearted at this huge loss for us all.”
“Over the last week as we have travelled with Monte, it has been a privilege to observe his leadership and devotion to the people” said Dr Pita Sharples. “Monte inspired us all with his passion, his impressive knowledge and his belief that nothing was impossible' said Dr Sharples.
“But most of all we grieve for a very good man” said Tariana Turia. “A man we have all loved so dearly, a man of great courage and faith. Our tears flow for his beautiful wife, Linda, their children and whanau.”
Monte is a descendant of Ngati Pukenga, Ngaiterangi, Ngati Ranginui, Te Arawa. He was raised in Tauranga, and spent over 30 years in Wellington and the South Island. He was 62 years old.
Monte spent his working life in education. He has held senior positions in wananga, polytechnics, universities, at the NZQA, the Ministry of Education, and a range of independent research organizations, Boards and Councils, and acted as a consultant to national and international organizations. He was most recently Te Pou Matua / Kaiarahi for Te Wanaka o Otautahi (Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology).
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Terre Satterfield and Jamie Donatuto address contemporary risk analysis concerns of indigenous peoples at the 2nd World Congress on Risk in Guadalajar. |
On June 8-11, 2008 in Guadalajara, the Society for Risk Analysis held the second of a series of World Congresses on Risk that are important, logical steps to further develop the field of risk analysis and its applications. The unifying theme for the Second World Congress is “Risk and Governance,” which reflects the worldwide trend toward making better use of risk-oriented concepts, tools, and processes in public decision-making and risk management.
Elaine M. Faustman, Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington and Terre Satterfield, Associate Professor, Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, organized a mini-symposium on Risk Assessment, Risk Management and Indigenous Peoples: Legal, Scientific, Social and Cultural Contexts as part of the Congress. Symposium panelists addressed the following topics.
Elaine Faustman provided an overview of the World Health Organization's Mandate on Indigenous Peoples: Promoting Health and Human Rights. She pointed out that the health status of the world's 300 million indigenous peoples is lower, overall, than that of non-indigenous peoples. The World Health Organization (WHO) is committed to the protection of indigenous peoples' health, which is interlinked with human rights. According to the WHO constitution, “the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being….” World Health Assembly (WHA) resolutions specify focus areas regarding WHO's health protection and promotion efforts. Dr. Faustman described the efforts of WHO's Health and Human Rights Team, which has established a workplan to address those focus areas laid out by the WHA. Key components of this workplan include raising awareness of health challenges, building capacity of public health professionals to address health needs, exposing health disparities, issuing guidelines for health policy makers, and convening partners and catalyzing action to foster the health of indigenous peoples.
Mervyn Tano, President of International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management, described the unique challenges to the efforts of indigenous peoples to develop their economies and governmental systems posed by climate change.
Merv suggested that many of the earlier attempts to engage Indian tribes in the climate change debate could be characterized as neo-colonial, i.e., using tribal stories to support national and international prevention and mitigation objectives by curtailing greenhouse gas emissions and expansion of renewable energy technologies in Indian country. The hyprocrisy of asking tribes to take such actions while not making similar demands on others still eludes most federal bureaucrats, NGOs, and Indian intellectuals. For example, the World Energy Outlook 2007 states that “China and India are the emerging giants of the world economy. Their unprecedented pace of economic development will require ever more energy, but it will transform living standards for billions. There can be no question of asking them selectively to curb growth so as to solve problems which are global.” WEO-2007 goes on to say, “As they become richer, the citizens of China and Indian are using more energy to run their offices and factories, and buying more electrical appliances and cars. These developments are contributing to a big improvement in their quality of life, a legitimate aspiration that needs to be accommodated and supported by the rest of the world.” Are not tribal aspirations just as legitimate?
Merv proposed that Indian tribes and tribal organizations needed to get way beyond the “glaciers are melting” and “native peoples will be the most heavily impacted by climate change” rhetoric and to focus on the identification and characterization of the risks to their cultural, social, political, economic, and other interests.
Only by doing that could the tribes begin to identify and fill the information and science needs to adaptively manage the impacts of climate change.
He said the point is that the tribes need to frame the problems and identify and characterize the risks. An example is the Five-Year plan developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to deal with the legacy of uranium mining on the lands of the Navajo Nation. It's a risk-based approach that seeks to identify those sites that are most contaminated and that expose more people to that contamination. The plan comes fifty to sixty years after these mines and sites were abandoned. Merv suggested that there is another way of defining the problem, i.e, to deal with the low-hanging fruit. The idea is to find the easiest and cheapest site to remediate and then enter to partnerships with the Laguna Construction Company, industry, and others to do the cleanup. The EPA plan is based on the assumption that there will be sufficient funds to accomplish the work. Tano's suggestion is based on the assumption that there won't be. The EPA way promotes passivity, dependence and demonization of industry. My suggestion is action oriented, promotes independence, interdependence and collaboration. It also builds the experience, the workforce and partnerships required to deal with the more difficult sites. Merv's presentation can be found here.
“Socio-Cultural Considerations in Human Health Risk Assessment for Native Americans” was the topic of
Jamie Donatuto, Environmental Specialist, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia.
Jamie's doctoral research is entitled “There is no word for ‘risk' in the Lushootseed language – Redefining human health risk assessments for Native Americans by incorporating socio-cultural factors: a case study.” Ms. Donatuto spoke about her work to develop a novel indigenous community health assessment framework that melds currently utilized human health risk assessment factors with indigenous knowledge as informed by Swinomish principles of community health. For the Swinomish, community health includes biophysical health, as well as socio-cultural health, environmental and ecosystem health, and mental and spiritual health. She emphasized the impacts of shellfish contamination on the tribe as shellfish are considered a culturally and socially ‘keystone' species to the tribe.
Maria du Monceau is a doctoral student in the Resource Management and Environmental Studies Program at the University of British Columbia. Her presentation, “Indigenous sea claims and the protection of coastal resources in Chile” analyzed discourses of risk as they are linked to debates about territoriality and self-governance. Her presentation was based on her study of on emerging politics of risk and identity as they have played out in the context of marine conversation planning and the Mapuche-Lafkenche people, an aboriginal coastal community located in southern Chile. The Lafkenche or “people of the coast” operate within a subsistence economy based on the harvest of shellfish and seaweed. However, these fishing communities are now affected by the discharge of pulp mill waste and by the expansion of fish farms in the coastal area, which restrict aboriginal use and access to marine resources. Neither siting nor environmental impacts assessments are done with open and informed consent of indigenous communities, hence, Mapuche organizations have raised their concerns not only as a threat to their ancestral rights but as a violation of their more fundamental human right to operate and subsist in a safe environment. Specifically, Lafkenche communities are concerned about the impacts associated with the installation of pulp mill pipelines to the sea as well as the long-term possibility of aquaculture companies infringing on essential human rights, including access to food sources and ceremonial sites. One of the strategic goals of these communities is to integrate the coastal zone into their territorial claims, including collective rights over natural resources. This has meant that Lafkenche people have been forced to enter the contentious domain of regulatory practices that, by and large, are governed via principles of risk assessment. Risk assessment is, however, politically and empirically indifferent to questions of the cultural significance of natural resources, in which identity politics and claims about ancestral territories are central.
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As part of its work on the adaptive management of climate impacts on indigenous peoples, the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management has been investigating water reclamation technologies. We think this report on the efforts of Orange County is instructive - water conservation is required but will generally be insufficient. Thus, water reuse is becoming a necessary option so we think tribes and tribal institutions should be looking at the scientifice, technological, ethical, cultural and social issues related to water reuse now.
Orange County has invested $490 million in its new wastewater reclamation facility, which is designed to treat 70 million gallons of wastewater effluent and turn it into drinking water. Considered to be “the world's largest, most modern reclamation plant,” its genesis, development, and future operation provides a case study in successful, large-scale, long-term water resource planning.
With an estimated population of over three million residents, Orange County is the fifth most populous county in the US, and one of the wealthiest, with a median family income higher than $75,000. Orange County is home to a wealth of Americana, from its “Surf City” image, epitomizing the California lifestyle, to the original pop- icon theme park, Disneyland. As a cultural symbol, it is the only county in America with multiple television shows and movies devoted to the county and the lifestyles of the people who live there.
Orange County also happens to be part of the California South Coast Hydrologic Region. This region has experienced a demographic boom, with its population increasing by over 18% from 1990 (16.3 million people) to 2000 (19.3 million). Demographic projections estimate that the region's population growth will continue unabated with the population increasing to over 22 million in 2010 and over 25 million by 2020. That represents a 55% increase in only 30 years (equivalent to an average annual growth rate of about 1.5%).
Average monthly summertime water demand in California's South Coast region (based on 1991 data) varies from 11,250 gallons for small towns like Hemet, to 15,000 gallons for the megalopolis of Los Angeles, to 18,000 gallons for wealthy Beverly Hills. Average winter monthly use varies from 80% to 50% of summertime use. Cost per acre-foot (including service charges) to the consumers varies from about $450 to $875 per acre-foot. Water demand for the region matches that of the state average, approximately 200 gallons per capita per day. The general planning metric for per family annual water demand is about 0.5 acre-feet (21,780 cubic feet or almost 163,000 gallons). The proposed water reclamation and Groundwater Replenishment System will provide enough water for 200,000 families.
Despite strenuous and successful water conservation measures, Orange County has come to realize that conservation is not enough to cover anticipated shortfalls. The responsibility for bridging this gap falls on the shoulders of the county's water district.
Click here to read the entire article.
Nordic cuisine is currently riding a tidal wave of success, not just at home but also internationally. Nordic gastronomy is considered exotic, exciting and new. This is emphasised by a number of gastronomical personalities in a joint opinion piece published in Denmark, Finland and Iceland.
The writers have been appointed as ambassadors for New Nordic Food, a programme launched by the Nordic Council of Ministers in the autumn of 2006. They describe New Nordic Food as an overall concept that embodies much of the Nordic food culture. The aim of the programme is to maintain and develop the positive values associated with Nordic food culture and gastronomy today.
According to the ambassadors there are several factors which sum up Nordic as a whole.
“Our raw materials are characterised by their simplicity and purity. Our unique ingredients are generously used in international cooking competitions, making them highly visible in the food world. Nordic chefs have also enjoyed considerable success in these competitions”, write the New Nordic Food ambassadors.
Bocuse d'Or Europe, the unofficial European championship for chefs, which is being held in Stavanger at the beginning of July, presents an excellent opportunity to further raise the profile of Nordic food culture. Several of the ambassadors will take part in Bocuse d'Or striking yet another blow for Nordic food culture.
The authors of the article include René Redzepi from the Michelin star restaurant NOMA in Copenhagen, TV chef Tina Nordström in Sweden and chef and restaurateur Michael Björklund from Åland. The article was published in Jyllands-Posten in Denmark, Hufvudstadsbladet in Finland and Icelandic Morgunbladid.
In May 2003, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the National Academies organized an international workshop in Moscow on the scientific issues relevant to the establishment and operation of an international spent nuclear fuel storage facility in Russia. Given the broad international interest in this topic, the academies organized a second international workshop on important issues that were not on the agenda or were not adequately discussed at the first workshop. These issues included international monitoring at the facility, transportation requirements, liability and insurance concerns, and status of Russian legislation and regulations that are important in locating and operating a facility. Relevant experience from Europe, the United States, and Asia was also considered in this 2005 workshop. This book contains the papers presented at the 2005 workshop sessions, as well as proceedings from the 2003 workshop. Together they provide an overview of the issues, and useful background for those organizations and individuals involved in further development of an international spent nuclear fuel storage facility in Russia.
The summary of U.S. Nuclear Power Industry Trends in Spent Fuel Management by John H. Kessler of the Electric Power Research Institute although somewhat dated, is still useful.
The proceedings of the workshops can be downloaded here. The downloads are free but registration is required.
Paul Schuster at U.S. Geological Survey is looking for an intern to work on a climate change project underway through a program called SISNAR: Student Interns in Support of Native American Relations.
The intern will work out of the USGS office at 3100 Marine Street in Boulder , mining 50-60 years of climate data on the Yukon River Basin at USGS and serving as liaison to the many tribes in the Yukon River Basin . The intern will most likely be taking a trip to Alaska at some point.
There will be on the job training and so the student does not need a scientific background.
This project is funded and the intern will be paid. Paul is ready to get started right away. This internship could continue for a semester, a year, or longer if the intern desires.
An overview of the USGS Yukon River project can be found at: http://ak.water.usgs.gov/yukon/ . It is a climate change study that is in its 8th year.
Information on the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council can be found at: http://www.yritwc.com/menu.htm .
According to Shuster, during the past four years the USGS has built a strong unique relationship that is folding together modern science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge in an exciting new way. The USGS looking for someone who would serve as a liaison between USGS, YRITWC and the 80+ tribes across the Yukon River Basin in Alaska.
The intern would be help continuing to develop tribal relations so that the USGS and all parties can work together to understand climate change, how it is affecting the landscape and those who depend on it in so many ways.
There is opportunity for this intern to be exposed to both scientific and cultural issues.
Paul's contact information follows. Please contact him directly if you have questions. You can also direct students to contact him for answers to their questions or to apply for the internship.
Paul F. Schuster, Hydrologist
U. S. Geological Survey
3215 Marine Street , Suite E-127
Boulder , CO 80303-1066
Phone: (303) 541-3052
Fax: (303) 541-3084
E-mail: pschuste@usgs.gov
Air Combat Command is preparing an Environmental Impact Statement to analyze the potential environmental consequences of a proposed expansion and enhancement of the Air Force's existing Powder River Complex. The proposed expansion may affect various cultural, environmental, economic, and other interests of several tribes in the Dakotas and Montana.
The proposed plan to restructure and reconfigure the existing PRC Military Operations Area will provide a versatile, scalable complex with more realistic, effective, and efficient air combat training needed by B-1 and B-52 aircrews flying from Ellsworth AFB, S.D., and Minot AFB N.D., respectively. Proposed changes include creating new airspace with a floor of 500 feet above ground level (AGL), eliminating some existing airspace, authorizing use of training chaff and flares, and permitting supersonic flight above 10,000 feet AGL throughout the special use airspace.
The following locations have the potential of being affected by the proposal's overhead training airspace: Montana--Crow and Northern Cheyenne Reservations and the counties of Big Horn, Carter, Custer, Fallon, Powder River, Rosebud, Treasure, and Yellowstone; North Dakota--Standing Rock Reservation and Adams, Billings, Bowman, Golden Valley, Grant, Hettinger, Morton, Sious, Slope and Start counties; South Dakota--Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Reservations, and Butte, Corson, Harding, Lawrence, Meade, Perkins, and Ziebeck counties; and Wyoming--Campbell, Crook, Sheridan, and Weston counties.
For the past year or so the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management has been reviewing the work of Toi te Taiao: the Bioethics Council of New Zealand on pre-birth testing. Their report is now available. It includes sections on the public deliberation process used for the project, how participants worked through the issues, the Council thinking and recommendations to the government. You can view or download the report at http://www.bioethics.org.nz/publications/who-gets-born-jun08/index.html.
Paper copies of the report can be requested via e-mail at: info@bioethics.org.nz, or by mail at:
Toi te Taiao: the Bioethics Council
PO Box 10362
Wellington
Aotearoa (New Zealand)
On August 4-6, 2008 at the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, leaders in industry and government will be joining the Council of Energy Resource Tribes to discuss the future of energy development on Indian lands. Tribes have the opportunity to take the lead in developing their resources, and this conference will cover all facets of current and potential energy development for Tribes.
CERT will also host the 29th Annual American Spirit Award Dinner. Proceeds from the black tie dinner benefit CERT's Indian education programs that are focused on building a skilled and trained professional work force that is vital to the economic success of our communities. This year Southern California Edison will receive the Award for their commitment in working with Tribes and Tribal communities. Please contact CERT at 303-282-7576, or visit their website at: www.CertRedEarth.com for more information.
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On August 19-20, 2008 the Workshop on Adaptive Governance and Climate Change sponsored by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management will be held in Pendleton, Oregon. The workshop is subtitled, “Climate Change is Real: Leadership and Planning are Optional” and incorporates themes such as governance and planning for continuity of services. Click here for more information.
Back to top.There is a shortage of high voltage transmission lines in the United States. Demand is expected to grow at least 20 percent in the next decade. Yet development of transmission line routes is a growing source of public controversy and regulatory scrutiny.
A siting methodology developed by Georgia Transmission Corporation (GTC), Photo Science Inc., and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) addresses these criticisms. The EPRI-GTC Siting Methodology allows external groups to participate in the process and makes decisions by utility professionals more transparent and credible. It uses GIS software called Corridor Analyst to map all geographic features in a study area, assign numerical suitability values to all features, assign engineering constraints, generate corridor alternatives using statistically sound algorithms, automatically generate alternative corridor reports, and automatically create reports summarizing criteria used and values assigned. At least nine utilities have adopted the methodology and it has been used on over sixty projects in at least six states. Click here for more information on the methodology.
On September 23-24, 2008 the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management is organizing the Roundtable on Climate, Tribal Energy Development, and Habitat Protection. The roundtable will bring together high level tribal, NGO, industry, and government leaders and experts in the many fields of energy, environment, wildlife, science and technology, law, and policy in a series of facilitated dialogues to see if and how tribes can design energy development projects that support multiple purposes and multiple uses. Similarly, roundtable participants will see if and how tribes can use intertribal approaches to offset carbon emissions and other environmental impacts that will support multiple purposes including, among other things, enhancing fish and wildlife habitat. A final roundtable objective is to establish a framework for developing and harmonizing tribal energy and habitat protection/expansion policies and institutions.