Johann Hari: How much proof do the global warming deniers need?

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-much-proof-do-the-global-warming-deniers-need-2063077.html

Some pics of progression for 'Transitional Identity'

This is my back kitchen, and these are the happening that have gone on in the last few days, thought I would document a few as part of my performance and also the starting of another project.....well it's a bit like Euston station my house the amount of people that pass through on a daily basis, is phanominal, all rich with knowledge. Some not realising what knowledge they posess until you highlight it by showing interest and bringing it out. Others like Longmore who is overflowing with a lifetime of knowledge and happy to pass on the traditions he's learned...thats what it's all about for me, that interaction between people on a basic level. Learning about what is around you and appreciating it. We all have these grand ideas when we are young, we're going to do this and that and tend to forget, not appreciate what is at hand, at the end of the day its about your family & friends, that's what counts and they are the memories you'll keep for the rest of your life and cherish.

India blocks Vedanta mine on Dongria-Kondh tribe's sacred hill | Business | The Guardian

India blocks Vedanta mine on Dongria-Kondh tribe's sacred hill | Business | The Guardian

Batchewana remains return home

Batchewana First Nation Chief Dean Sayers (right) carries a box containing remains of six Anishinabek who were returned by the Smithsonian Institute, onto the shore at Bellevue Park on Thursday.Michael Purvis Sault StarThe remains of six Batchewana First Nation ancestors returned home Thursday after a 135-year absence.

Chief Dean Sayers said the return of the remains from the United States marked a "moving forward," for Batchewana.


"We want our kids to have good memories," said Sayers. "This is one of those good memories that they're going to be able to tell their children and their grandchildren and their grandchildren."
A crowd lined the St. Mary's River as a box containing the remains of three men and three women was paddled from Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., to Bellevue Park in a 20-foot birch bark canoe. The remains were then loaded in a vehicle for transport to a traditional burial ground at Batchewana's Goulais Mission reserve.

Thursday was the first time the Smithsonian Institution has been involved in transferring human remains back to Canada.

The unidentified Anishnabek as well as four associated funerary objects, had been unearthed from unknown cemetery sites at or near Sault Ste. Marie in 1875 by the U.S. Army surgeon at nearby Fort Brady for the purpose of scientific research.

The skeletal remains, believed to have been buried 50 to 100 years prior to being unearthed, were forwarded to the U.S. Army Medical Museum in 1875 then transferred to the Smithsonian Institution in 1898 – where they were stored and forgotten for over a century.

The Smithsonian, as well as all American museums and institutions, as a result of federal legislation over a decade ago were mandated to take an inventory of their Native American cultural items and human remains for return to their respective peoples.

Cultural and other items have been returned to tribes in Canada in the past, but never human remains, said Eric Hollinger, an archaeologist at the Natural Museum of Natural History, where the remains were housed.

"We have worked with cross-border situations like this before, but this is the first time human remains have been transferred in this way," said Hollinger.

The existence of the Batchewana remains was discovered during a transfer of remains to the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians on the Michigan side of the border. Sault Tribe learned of additional Anishinabek remains and contacted Batchewana.

"The United States, unfortunately, doesn't recognize Canadian tribes, they only recognize Native American tribes in the States, so the Sault Tribe was instrumental in helping us, in sponsoring us, in supporting us through this whole process," said Sayers.

Sayers said it was important that the remains be conveyed across the river in a traditional birch bark canoe, and that they be properly received on the north side.

He said the First Nation took great care in preparing for the burial ceremony at a traditional Batchewana burial ground in Goulais Bay.

"The elders wanted to make sure that our ancestors stayed as close to the earth as they could throughout this whole trip home," said Sayers. "There's comfort with our mother, the Earth, and they feel that and they want to return there and they want to feel that support."

The significance of Thursday's repatriation was not lost on Verna Sewell, who made sure to usher her grandchildren to the river's edge, where they could witness the event first hand.

"It was pretty emotional, it brought back memories – not that I would have had, but of my father and my fathers before that," said Sewell, 54.

She said the river crossing and its symbolism were important nods to a past when her ancestors would have freely travelled the St. Mary's in canoes like the one used Thursday.

The birch bark canoe used to transport the remains from the U.S. to Canada was specially commissioned for the repatriation.

"An elder from the Sault Tribe of Chippewas built it and taught a whole group of our youth," said Sayers. "Our day camps, our men and some of our women learned how to make the birch bark canoe right from scratch, how to pick the birch bark, where to pick it, how big the sheets are, the cedar, the spruce roots."

Hollinger said no DNA or other destructive testing has been conducted on these remains.

What is known about the individuals comes from what was written at the time of their exhumation, the remains themselves, and from four objects – three nails, believed to be from coffins, and a lead ornament that may have been a pendant or other adornment of one of the individuals – which stayed with the remains.

One of the individuals was said to have been killed at Batchewana, and the others likely came from the Whitefish Island burial ground.

"We aren't sure exactly where they were exhumed, except that they were near Sault Ste. Marie or in Sault Ste. Marie," said Hollinger.

Article ID# 2720479

Four Directions

Four Directions UK undertakes research and works with indigenous people to locate human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony in museum and private collections and, where requested, to assist with their disposition or repatriation. For more information go to www.fourdirections.org.uk
This is a group that I have recently become involved with. They are doing great things and I'm really excited about being involved.

A Radical Profeminist: Niyamgiri, a test case for the defense of our fore...

A Radical Profeminist: Niyamgiri, a test case for the defense of our fore...: "photo of Dr. Usha Ramanathan is from here What follows is cross posted from *here*, at Navdanya, Dr. Vandana Shiva's blog. Press Release ..."

Gateway Lodge Progression

My willow lodge is coming along nicely. It's been growing for a few months now. We haven't had alot of rain or sun this year so it doesn't seem to be growing as much as I thought it would. Hope it's filled in by performance time....lol. Even at this stage it is so tranquil sitting in there. I am so glad that I decided to make it, my little sancuary. Deciding to do my performance in my own house & garden has been a good thing it has made me do all those little jobs I've been ignoring because of lack of time so the jobs I would usually do over summer break are still getting done. Feels like I'm killing two birds with one stone, like my mother used to always say. But it also has the worry of I'm taking one step forward and then two back. As all the little jobs I'm crossing off my list are quickly getting undone by my children and their mates. So I've started delegating and making them all pitch in. :)

Buffalo Robe update

After the initial performance to make the robe with my fellow MA VLP class. Unfortunately it fell apart in places when I boiled it...lol...so had to felt it some more. Hard work on your own and once it was wet, was like trying to move a dead body the wieght of it....Found out after the fact that yellow wool is the hardest to felt takes much longer, typical, you learn by your mistakes!!!

Yurok Indians exult at return of sacred cache

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2010%2F08%2F13%2FMN0O1ET3EI.
Yurok Indians exult at return of sacred cache Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer San Francisco Chronicle. Friday, August 13, 2010

The Smithsonian Institution has returned a trove of precious artifacts to the Yurok Indians in California in what is one of the largest repatriations of Native American ceremonial artifacts in U.S. history.

The Yurok, who have lived for centuries along California's Klamath River, received 217 sacred items that had been stored on museum shelves for nearly 100 years. The necklaces, headdresses, arrows, hides and other regalia from the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian are believed to be hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. "It's awesome. It's a big thing with our people," said Thomas O'Rourke, chairman of the Yurok, a tribe that lived next to the Klamath River in far Northern California for 10,000 years before Europeans arrived. "These are our prayer items. They are not only symbols, but their spirit stays with them. They are alive. Bringing them home is like bringing home prisoners of war."To celebrate the return of the items, the Yurok will hold a Kwom-Shlen-ik, or "Object Coming Back," ceremony today in the town of Klamath. The returned artifacts were sold to the museum in the 1920s by Grace Nicholson, a renowned collector of Indian art, who owned a curio shop in Pasadena in the early 20th century. Ceremonial Indian regalia was in vogue among wealthy Americans at the time.The sacred cache is part of an ongoing effort around the country to return Native American burial artifacts, ceremonial items and remains taken by white settlers from Indian villages and indigenous sites. Repatriating belongingsThe 1989 National Museum of the American Indian Act transferred stewardship of more than 800,000 Indian artifacts to the Smithsonian and required the institute to consider repatriating them to federally recognized tribes. Among the items claimed by the Yurok were finely woven baskets, wolf headdresses, eagle and California condor feathers, head rolls made from pileated woodpecker scalps, white deer skins, obsidian blades and flint, all of which have been used for centuries in sacred rituals and dances. "If we were to study or use scientific methods for testing we could probably come up with some rough dates, but generally they are made of materials that aren't readily available anymore," said Buffy McQuillen, the repatriation coordinator for the Yurok. Many of the items, for instance, are woven together using fibers from iris, a local plant that is now rare in the area. Also difficult, if not impossible, to find today are woodpecker scalps, condor feathers and white deer skin, apparently from rare albino-type deer, McQuillen said. "They are definitely old," she said. "They were acquired in the early 1900s, but they were in use and practice many years before that." O'Rourke said the items will be used beginning Aug. 27 in the tribe's White Deerskin Dance, a ceremony designed to give thanks for what nature has provided to the people. They will also be used starting Sept. 24 in the Jump Dance, another traditional ceremony that asks the creator for balance and renewal. The dancers perform nine abreast in full regalia for 10 days, primarily inside a traditional redwood plank house."We are getting (the returned items) ready to dance. They are going to work," O'Rourke said. "It's been a long time since they've heard their native voices and native songs."Largest tribeThe Yurok is the largest tribe in California, with 5,600 members. O'Rourke said most of the tribe members live within 50 miles of the reservation, which encompasses 57,000 acres, including 44 miles of the Klamath.At one time there were more than 50 villages in the tribe's ancestral territory, which covered about 500,000 acres and 50 miles of coastline. The Yurok, who called themselves Oohl, or Indian people, were renowned for fishing, canoe making, basket weaving, story telling and dancing. The Yurok were first visited by the Spanish in the 1500s and later by American fur traders and trappers, including Jedediah Smith, who raved about the abundant wildlife in the area. In 1850, gold miners moved in, bringing with them disease and violence. The Yurok population declined by 75 percent, and the remaining Indians were forcibly relocated to a reservation in 1855.Javier Kinney, a tribal leader who was one of four Yurok selected to go to Washington, D.C., to pick up the ceremonial regalia, said the returned items signify a new beginning."Our responsibilities are to preserve our culture, our language and our religious beliefs not only for us, but for our children and their children," Kinney said. "This signifies a new day for the Yurok. We're not a people of the past that are only in history books."The returned items make up 30 percent of the National Museum's Yurok holdings. E-mail Peter Fimrite at pfimrite@sfchronicle.com.