From Sungmanitu:
If you don’t know, I’m making an audio documentary about AIM and conducting on the ground research and interviews with organizers new and old about their conditions in order to find out what unity can be built. I will be traveling from Michigan to Colorado and will talk to many
Elders of the movement as well as many youth and people in between. If this seems like something worth supporting to you $ZitkatosTinCan on CA or @Zitkato On ven is where you can send that help. This will help pay for a car rental, gas, emergency shelter if we need it, and most
Importantly for mutual aid and food. You can also help out by offering me a meal or a couch to sleep on. I look forward to sharing what I learn as well as the archive of information and videos I have from the 5 years I’ve been studying AIM and the US conditions
We are at 720/2500
Comrade Sungmanitu has shared the history of the Indigenous movements in Northamerica before here in this community via the ChunkaLutaNetwork here is one of my favorites: Fish Wars, Climate Change, and Forgotten History
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/70873
For generations, Palestinian farmers timed the wheat harvest by the stars and the rain. Now, Israeli settlers set the harvest instead, as their cows graze freely in Palestinian wheat fields across the West Bank after displacing Bedouin herders.
The Palestinian agricultural calendar has long served as a mirror of the environment, organizing farmers’ lives in lockstep with the changing seasons, the movement of the stars, and the cycles of rain. But the succession of Israel’s wars and manufactured crises has battered Palestinians and imposed a harsh political dimension upon nature’s rhythm. Road closures, denial of access to land, and repeated settler attacks have forced farmers to redraw their planting and harvest schedules. The wheat harvest has seen the most dramatic impact.
After the harvest ended, families would often exchange help through the “awnah” system, a collective form of mutual aid in Palestinian society that has organized Palestinian village life for generations. Relatives and neighbors gather to harvest the land together, before journeying to mill the grain into flour.
But disruptions to the wheat harvest schedule have rippled through an entire cycle of relationships and customs built around the grain, says Kbeineh’s wife. “We lost the way we used to live through the season,” she explained. “Everything had its own time. The harvest had its time, the selling had its time, and the celebration had its time.”
From Mondoweiss via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/70388
This story was originally published by Grist.
Aimee Gabay
GristThis story is published through the Indigenous News Alliance.
AI is the transformative technology of our time, with the potential to reshape our world on a global scale. And yet, underpinning its potential is the need for so-called hyperscale data centers that require vast amounts of land, energy, and water. As tech companies and governments continue to develop this infrastructure at a huge scale, Indigenous peoples around the world are responding to this threat in different ways. They are raising concerns about mounting pressure on water resources and inadequate consultation, but in some cases embracing projects for their economic benefits.
The rapid expansion of this massive digital infrastructure has Indigenous leaders, governments, and experts calling on those developing them to comply with the principle of free, prior, and informed consent while exploring whether this infrastructure can be established in ways that advance Indigenous rights and priorities.
During a panel discussion on the second day of the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or EMRIP, Indigenous delegates said that while there must be policies to ensure that AI does not harvest Indigenous knowledge without consent, protections for Indigenous lands and waters are equally important.
“AI is resource-intensive and requires vast amounts of energy. In Sápmi, we already see how large data centers put [immense] pressure on our territories,” said Maren Storslett, who is a member of the Sámi Parliament in Norway. “This forces a conversation about priorities and limits and we need to be at the table on these discussions.”
According to the International Energy Agency, conventional data centers, which store thousands of computer machines and other equipment to power everyday digital life like cloud storage, may draw around 10 to 25 megawatts of power per year. But a hyperscale, AI-focused data center, of the likes being built by or for transnational companies such as Google and Amazon, can require 100 megawatts or more annually, consuming as much electricity as 100,000 households would use over the same time.
All of that energy is needed to power the immense racks of servers that provide the computing power behind things like ChatGPT, Claude, and other platforms. They also require copious amounts of water to keep them cool.
This demand for energy and water, driven in part by the increasing rack power density for AI workloads, is a frequent concern raised by sources at the international Indigenous conference. Research by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that all data centers in the U.S. alone directly consumed approximately 17.4 billion gallons (66 billion liters) of water in 2023. It also estimated that the energy generation consumed 211 billion gallons (800 billion liters) of water.
Other research puts it into perspective: By 2030, the energy required for data centers is expected to double to 945 terawatt-hours — enough to meet the needs of all 1.3 billion residents of Sub-Saharan Africa for 5.5 years. Those facilities would also require enough to meet the domestic water needs of all the same people for a year.
“These technologies … come with environmental cost,” said Aluki Kotierk, who is Inuk from Canada and current chairperson of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. “The data centers that power them consume vast amounts of energy, water, and minerals, resources that are often extracted from or developed on Indigenous peoples lands without their meaningful participation or consent, with potential serious consequences for their rights, livelihoods, and environments.”
Extraction for AI data center resources can result in the degradation of sacred sites and threats to fragile ecosystems, according to Camila Vergada, who is a board member of the Forum for Real Economic Emancipation.
While there are potential benefits for Indigenous people, the electricity and water needs of hyperscale, AI-focused data centers can be detrimental to Indigenous lands that lack the capacity to meet their resource requirements, according to Matthew Rantanen, who is a Cree descendant and advocate for digital equity in Indian Country.
Rantanen, who is a co-chair of two technology-related subcommittees of the National Congress of American Indians, believes an industry shift toward renewable energy and alternative cooling methods is needed to ensure that AI infrastructure aligns with Indigenous priorities and rights.
The permitting needed to build these data centers should require in-depth studies of resource availability and the impacts on communities and ecosystems, as well as the involvement of those impacted throughout the lifecycle of a project — a point that was reinforced by participants at the EMRIP.
Others, like Rochelle Diver, who is a citizen of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe and the U.N. environmental treaties coordinator for the International Indian Treaty Council, are calling for broader support for Indigenous-led moratoriums on data centers. “We are in an urgent situation regarding the infrastructure being built on a massive scale to power AI technology,” she said.
Data centers are often built in water-stressed regions, like Querétaro, Mexico, and Santiago, Chile. In a protest against the construction of a Google facility in Santiago, Indigenous peoples, local communities and workers’ unions rallied around the slogan “no es sequia, es saqueo” (“this is not a drought, this is a robbery”). Last year, the Anacé Indigenous people in Brazil filed an official complaint before federal authorities, requesting the cancellation of a $10 billion data center for the popular social media platform TikTok on their land. Leaders said their right to consultation was violated, and their concerns dismissed.
Roberto Anacé, leader of the community in Brazil, said in a WhatsApp message that the project “hinders our community, first disrespectfully separating relatives, causing fights, personal interests, bringing out ambition and hatred in human beings, and above all destroying our sacred things: Mother Earth, water, climate, air.”
A recent analysis by the London School of Economics suggests that the next wave of climate litigation may relate to the impacts of large data centers that AI relies on. In 2024, due to the efforts of Chilean protesters in Santiago, an environmental tribunal suspended construction of the Google data center, ruling that the environmental impact had not been properly considered. So far, there has been no progress on the Anacé peoples’ lawsuit against TikTok.
In the U.S., a more than $1 billion Meta data center project in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has received mixed responses among Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members. While some support it, others firmly oppose it and have actively campaigned against it. Cheyenna Morgan, who is an enrolled member of the Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Native Americans and the coalition coordinator of Stop Data Colonialism, said in an email that the data center will place a heavy burden on local power and resources.
Meta, Google, and TikTok did not reply to requests for comment.
Through Stop Data Colonialism, Morgan works to stop the rollout of hyperscale data centers on vulnerable lands, and said her community is already experiencing an increase in electricity bills and is expecting further rate hikes. “These impacts will be felt on regular people who didn’t ask to have these in their neighborhoods,” she said.
In March, the city council passed a moratorium to allow more time to assess the project’s impact. Similar moratoriums have been passed by tribes in the U.S., including the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), and the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.
At the U.N., some delegates spoke of direct experience with harmful data centers, while others spoke of the potential risks.
Julia Aka Wille, who is Inuk from Greenland and invited by the Inuit Circumpolar Council to speak at EMRIP, said that even though her homeland does not have any data centers yet, the community is still concerned about their impact on the climate. “They still affect us in that way, because they use so much energy and water, and it will contribute to the general climate change,” Aka Wille said. “The Arctic is the region that is most affected by climate change because the ice is melting, and this affects us that we can’t really have the same way of living anymore.”
Although Aka Wille sees opportunity in AI to help teach and preserve Indigenous languages like hers, she hopes that Indigenous peoples from around the world can work together to ensure AI is used in a responsible way.
In Alberta, some Indigenous nations are embracing the data center boom, emerging as key stakeholders and investors. The Woodland Cree First Nation recently announced plans for a 650 megawatt data center that will utilize an idle power plant for energy generation. Woodland Cree has a 51 percent stake in the project.
Te Kāhui Raraunga, an Indigenous-led initiative in Aotearoa New Zealand, demonstrates how some tribal nations are considering AI-initiatives that respect Indigenous rights and priorities. The organization, linked to the Data Iwi Leaders Group, has created a Māori Data Governance Model and Māori AI Governance Framework focused on data policy and infrastructure.
As part of this initiative, leaders from 85 tribal nations gather each quarter to ensure the communities’ key priorities are upheld.
“These hyperscale data centres come with promises of economic development and digital sovereignty; however, the reality can be much different, and it is vital that iwi Māori have the information they need to make informed decisions,” Erena Mikaere, the digital program lead for Te Kāhui Raraunga, said in an email.
She added that the organization has developed resources for tribal leaders that highlight the impacts of hyperscale data centers, as well as key considerations before signing any agreement allowing one.
At EMRIP, Indigenous delegates stressed the need for meaningful participation throughout the development, implementation, and governance of AI initiatives that affect them.
“We must not only ask what AI can do, but what it should do,” said Maren Storslett. “Respect for the rights of Indigenous peoples must apply across the entire life of AI systems.”
Grist reporter Joseph Lee contributed reporting to this story.
The post Data centers are booming. Indigenous leaders want help protecting their lands. appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/70317
This story was originally published in the Anchorage Press.Subscribe here.
Nathaniel Herz
Northern Journal – Anchorage PressThis spring, ExxonMobil made big news in Alaska.
For years, the multinational oil giant had ignored the periodic auctions for drilling rights on public land in the state, instead investing in projects in other parts of the world like the South American nation of Guyana. Other big companies like Shell and BP had also walked away from holdings in the state — raising fears that Alaska’s oil industry was on the decline.
But in March, after a series of recent big oil discoveries in the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska, ExxonMobil came back in force, placing winning bids on two dozen leases in an auction in the federally owned area. Shell, in partnership with a Spanish oil company, also placed surprise bids of its own, as did an array of other firms that collectively offered $163 million in winning bids.
Four months later, though, the Trump administration has yet to issue most of the leases that ExxonMobil bid on and won. A federal lawsuit filed by representatives of the area’s Indigenous residents has tied up 17 of the company’s 24 plots in legal limbo — with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management blocked by a federal judge from issuing leases to the company.
Other big oil players like Shell and ConocoPhillips won leases that don’t face the same legal complications — though multiple smaller companies’ bids are also caught in the litigation.
Last month, the Trump administration stepped back from an appeal that aimed to unblock the issuing process, leaving an underlying legal dispute to play out in a lower court.
At stake is the future of a huge area of the reserve, roughly 1,500 square miles, that some companies covet for its oil-bearing potential but local residents want conserved to protect caribou that they hunt for food.
Under a deal struck with the Biden administration, oil leasing was barred in the area unless it was approved by a group representing municipal and Native entities in the Iñupiaq village of Nuiqsut, about 50 miles southeast of the lake.
The Trump administration subsequently canceled the agreement and the group sued, winning an early victory from a federal judge who restored the deal. That means the recently auctioned leases can’t, in fact, be granted in the area without the local group’s consent.
“As development continues, it becomes more important to make sure that our subsistence remains healthy and accessible,” said Roxanna Oyagak, a board member of Kuukpik, Nuiqsut’s local for-profit Native corporation, which is part of a municipal coalition participating in the litigation. “We want to make sure that future generations can have that connection going forward.”
Multiple additional lawsuits challenging other aspects of the recent auction are also playing out at the same time. If successful, the litigation could also end up overturning leases that the Trump administration awarded to ConocoPhillips and other companies earlier this year.
Supporters of development are fighting back. In one recent 80-page motion, attorneys for ConocoPhillips wrote that conservation groups have been in “perpetual disagreement” with a policy choice by U.S. Congress to set aside the petroleum reserve for oil development.
“They will never be satisfied because their long-held policy goal of impeding and preventing all oil and gas activities in Alaska (and beyond) irreconcilably clashes with Congress’s mandate for expeditious leasing and development of the Petroleum Reserve,” the brief said.
Oil, birds and caribou
The national petroleum reserve spans an area the size of Indiana on Alaska’s North Slope, and it was originally created a century ago, as the U.S. Navy was converting its fleet from coal to oil power.
While federal geologists say the area could hold billions of barrels of oil, it also encompasses sprawling wetlands and robust populations of migratory birds, polar bears and caribou.
Conservation groups call it the Western Arctic rather than the petroleum reserve, and point to a half-century-old law that directs federal land managers to protect the reserve’s fish and wildlife, and environmental and scenic values.
The reserve sits at the far western edge of the North Slope’s existing oil infrastructure, and companies hadn’t actually produced any petroleum in the area until a decade ago.
Its conflicting characteristics have spawned decades of political battles and court fights over how much of the area to open to the oil and gas industry. And recent huge petroleum discoveries there, including ConocoPhillips’ Willow project, have further charged the debate.
An Obama-era management plan protected roughly half of the reserve, while the first Trump administration opened 82% of the area to leasing.
One area that’s particularly disputed is the 300-square-mile Teshekpuk Lake and its surrounding tundra, near the reserve’s northern coastline. That spot is essential feeding and resting habitat for birds like tundra swans, bar-tailed godwits and buff-breasted sandpipers, and for the Teshekpuk Caribou Herd — a population of some 60,000 animals that residents of Nuiqsut and the North Slope hub town of Utqiagvik depend on for food.
Given its ecological value and importance to traditional hunters, federal officials have long granted the Teshekpuk area special protections, though some Republican presidents, including Donald Trump, have worked to shrink them.
The Biden administration took a new approach, establishing a conservation area around the lake as part of its efforts to offset the impacts Willow — the ConocoPhillips project in the reserve, which faced strident opposition from local and national conservation groups.
In a late 2024 deal with a group representing three Nuiqsut entities — the village’s for-profit Indigenous-owned corporation, its tribal government and city government — the administration protected 1 million acres, banning oil development there without the local group’s consent.
The Biden administration structured the protections as a formal “right-of-way,” citing authority from a 1976 law, the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act.
Then, in late 2025, a top Trump administration official canceled the agreement, saying it gave Nuiqsut’s leaders illegal “veto power” over projects in an area with high oil and gas potential and that the deal blocked an “essential purpose” of the petroleum reserve. The Bureau of Land Management then said it would auction off dozens of plots around Teshekpuk Lake in the March 2026 lease sale.
In response to the cancellation, the Nuiqsut group sued, saying the Trump administration’s action had “clearcut” the government’s obligations to protect subsistence.
On the same day that bids were due in the auction, a federal judge, Sharon Gleason, restored the Biden administration’s agreement and issued a temporary ruling putting the protections back into place. The written ruling, known as an injunction, was notable because Gleason suggested the Nuiqsut group had a good chance of winning its underlying case.
But in the meantime, oil companies had placed bids — one of which exceeded $2 million — to lease land within the protected area. ExxonMobil was the highest bidder on a number of plots directly along the lake’s southwest shore; Epoch Oil and Gas, a Denver-based firm, won a large tract along the lake’s northeast edge.
Epoch and another company that bid in the conservation area subsequently contacted Nuiqsut’s Native village corporation, Kuukpik, to discuss their plans for the area, according to Andy Mack, Kuukpik’s chief executive. ExxonMobil, however, did not, he said.
“I have no idea what they’re thinking or what they’re doing,” Mack said in a recent phone interview. “If they have a plan, I don’t know what it is.”
An ExxonMobil spokesperson, Curtis Smith, declined to comment.
Legal wrangling continues
After the March auction, in written correspondence with ExxonMobil and other companies, the Trump administration said Gleason’s ruling blocked its ability to immediately issue leases in the protected area.
But it said it was “vigorously pursuing” its options, including litigation. And in May, the administration appealed Gleason’s ruling to a federal appeals court.
Then, last month, the Trump administration quietly reversed itself, dropping the appeal in a one-paragraph motion that didn’t explain why. A decision from Gleason in the underlying litigation over the Teshekpuk Lake conservation agreement is expected in the coming weeks or months, according to attorneys following the case.
In an email, a U.S. Department of the Interior official declined to comment, and would not specify what its decision means for the leases that Gleason has blocked the agency from issuing.
The Trump administration did say, in its correspondence with ExxonMobil after Gleason’s ruling, that it had requested a waiver of the Teshekpuk area oil leasing prohibitions from the Nuiqsut group.
An attorney for the Nuiqsut group, Patrick Munson, declined to comment. But officials from Kuukpik — the Indigenous corporation that’s one of the group’s members — didn’t sound inclined to consent to a waiver any time soon.
“That Teshekpuk Lake area is very important to that caribou herd, which the community really, really relies on and still hunts to this day,” said Oyagak, the Kuukpik board member.
Oyagak didn’t rule out that Kuukpik could, at some point, agree to limited development in the conservation area. But she said any such decisions would come only after engagement and conversation.
“We’d have to carefully consider important conditions with that,” Oyagak said. “It’s not about no development. We want to make sure our voices are heard and that our knowledge is included.”
She added: “We have to have a seat at the table. We have to listen to the people who live there.”
Oyagak’s corporation does have a long history of withholding support for neighboring oil developments before ultimately striking deals with petroleum companies that have made concessions — like hiring Kuukpik subsidiaries or adapting projects in response to Nuiqsut residents’ concerns.
Meanwhile, separate lawsuits filed by conservation groups aim to overturn the entire March lease sale — not just the bids in the area of Teshekpuk Lake.
Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, a Nuiqsut health advocate and former village mayor, said her nonprofit, Grandmothers Growing Goodness, is participating in one of the other suits in part because she’s not a Kuukpik shareholder and wants to make sure the community’s broader, non-corporate interests are represented in the courts.
“It’s about protecting our community overall,” Ahtuangaruak said. “It’s about making sure our community is going to be able to live in our lands and waters, and feed our families and our elders.”
The lawsuit from Ahtuangaruak’s group faces broad and vehement opposition from supporters of petroleum development.
Multiple oil companies, including ConocoPhillips, Epoch Oil and Gas and affiliates of Armstrong Oil and Gas, filed lengthy briefs last month arguing for the lease sale’s results to stand, as did attorneys for the state of Alaska.
So did the Alaska Oil and Gas Association trade group, which cited the ongoing war in Iran and resulting high oil prices in saying that the request to set aside the lease sale results is “out of step with the nation’s domestic energy needs.”
The association’s brief cited the 4,500 workers employed in Alaska’s oil industry and some $925 million in wages paid to state residents in 2024 — plus billions more in taxes and royalties collected by state government.
The reserve is one major area that companies have targeted for new projects needed to sustain or increase Alaska’s current oil production levels; if the lease sale is invalidated, the association said, it would threaten the “backbone of Alaska’s economy.”
Decisions on the broader cases are expected, also from Gleason, by mid-October.
The post ExxonMobil won big at a big Alaska lease sale. Months later, its bids are still in legal limbo. appeared first on ICT.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/70287
For nearly three years, Israeli officials and their US backers have denounced United Nations agencies reporting the facts of Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza as lies, but now many of them are citing the latest global hunger study by the United Nations Children's Fund as proof that last year's famine that killed at least hundreds of Palestinians in the coastal exclave was a "hoax."
The UNICEF-led State of Palestine Nutrition Cluster Coordination Meeting report, published on July 22, shows decreased hunger rates in areas of Gaza accessible to those conducting the survey. With Israeli forces controlling the majority of Gaza's territory and much of the strip flattened and inaccessible, the report's authors warned that "the survey findings should therefore be interpreted as representative."
This did not stop the Israeli government and media, and Israel's supporters and sympathetic media abroad, from citing UNICEF—which on Thursday said that Israel is killing about one child a day in Gaza despite a so-called ceasefire—and the broader UN, which they formerly accused of "lies," "antisemitism," "blood libels," and "hoaxes" throughout a war that a UN commission of inquiry called a genocide.
"Once again, facts prevail over fiction," Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon said. "UN bodies are acknowledging that the false narrative against Israel is falling apart."
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee may have forgotten his acknowledgement last year—along with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance—that Palestinians were "starving" in Gaza, aspersing the media for reporting on the starvation.
Eylon Levy—the British-Israeli former spokesperson for Israel known for purveying disinformation like the infamous October 7 "beheaded babies" lie—also ran with the narrative, posting on X that "the 'Gaza Famine' was always a hoax."
Except it wasn't.
UN agencies and other humanitarian groups started sounding the alarm on looming starvation in Gaza in the weeks after Israel began annihilating the strip in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. By February 2024, UNICEF warned that "famine is imminent" in Gaza as the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs cited the deaths of six infants from malnutrition and dehydration.
As Gaza's hunger crisis worsened under Israel's "complete siege," UN agencies, including UNICEF, regularly warned about starvation in the strip. In February 2024, UN officials were accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war—one of the alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Michael Fakhri, the top UN expert on the right to food, accused Israel of genocidal forced starvation of Gazans.
In August 2025, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)—the UN-aided top global authority on hunger crises—declared a Phase 5, or "catastrophic," famine in Gaza as at least hundreds of Palestinians perished from malnutrition and related causes.
“Famine is now a grim reality for children in Gaza," UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said at the time. “As we have repeatedly warned, the signs were unmistakable: children with wasted bodies, too weak to cry or eat; babies dying from hunger and preventable disease; parents arriving at clinics with nothing left to feed their children."
The IPC lifted Gaza's famine designation in December 2025, citing improved—but still highly restricted—access of humanitarian aid into Gaza following a nominal ceasefire agreement reached two months earlier. However, last month the IPC published an analysis showing that from mid-April to the end of June, more than 1.2 million people, or 59% of Gaza’s population, were experiencing Phase 3 (crisis) or worse levels of food insecurity. This included about 212,000 people in Phase 4 (emergency).
"The situation remains fragile," IPC warned.
Many of the people who deny that Israeli forces have killed or wounded a quarter million Palestinians in Gaza or that Israel is committing genocide there—a conclusion reached by numerous UN officials, scholars, jurists, rights groups, and the approximately 20 nations that formally joined South Africa's pending genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice—are the same ones who have denied not only the Gaza famine, but that anyone was ever starving there.
They asked to see photos of starving Palestinians, and when shown them, they, and corporate media outlets including The New York Times, attempted to explain or even dismiss the evidence by claiming the emaciated—or often dead—children suffered from preexisting conditions, as if that somehow absolved Israel for their deaths. Others posted images of a Gaza market stocked with food or overweight Palestinians in a bid to debunk the fact of starvation in Gaza.
Still others dismissed images of starving Gazans as Hamas propaganda, with US media personality Megyn Kelly opining that Palestinians are "fine having their own children starve just as long as they can put them on camera."
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/69849
This story was originally published by WyoFile.
Maya Shimizu Harris
WyoFileLast month, a church pastor on the Wind River Indian Reservation stood before her congregation and prayed for Native people to reject their traditions in favor of Christianity. She delivered her sermon on the last day of the Northern Arapaho Sundance ceremony. The tribal ceremony offers prayers with a “grandfather pipe,” a sacred object that comes from the Arapaho creation story.
“Jesus is the chain-breaker,” Pastor Sarah Lucas said during the July 5 sermon. “He is the only God that we should be praying to. A pipe cannot hear your prayers. It’s just a piece of material. This is a cycle that they’re caught up in.”
Christian Wassana, a cast member on the drama series Yellowstone and a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, shared a clip of the sermon on social media. “It feels like history repeating itself, with attempts to erase and discredit our traditional way of life,” he wrote.
Rather than heed the pastor’s words, hundreds of Native community members rose in protest, and the Northern Arapaho Business Council ordered the church to leave the reservation, reported WyoToday Media, which covers Fremont County and the reservation. The church, Foundations For Nations, which has been on the reservation since 2017 and also operates a food pantry, said it would fight the removal order in court. At present, it doesn’t appear that the church has done so. The church didn’t return a call from WyoFile by publishing time.
Some called on the tribes to use the “bad men” clause in their treaties with the U.S. government to oust the church from the reservation. Treaties signed in 1867 and 1868 between the federal government and nine Native American tribes — including the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone — have such “bad men” provisions.
Through the provisions, the federal government vowed to compensate Native Americans when they suffer injuries stemming from “any wrong” committed “upon the person or property of the Indians” by “bad men among the whites, or among other people subject to the authority of the United States.”
“Bad men” complaints go straight to the federal government. If the government determines that a “wrong” has been committed, federal agents can arrest the offender and punish them “according to the laws of the United States.”
“You’re generally looking at some sort of physical injury or property crime that would occur,” said John Schumacher, a Riverton lawyer with expertise in Native American law. “Inherent in that is the idea that there’s some action the person took that violated some existing law.”
Schumacher said the clause would likely not apply in the current situation on the Wind River Reservation with Foundations For Nations church, which concerns a differing religious view. “If the tribes are excluding someone, then that would have to be done under their inherent authority as a tribe,” Schumacher said. “There’s no bright line test for that.”
After the sermon, the Northern Arapaho Business Council announced a new policy requiring outside organizations like the church to receive the council’s authorization before conducting activities on land under the tribe’s jurisdiction, according to WyoToday Media, which publishes The Ranger, Lander Journal and Wind River News. After looking through records, the council found that Foundations For Nations Church hadn’t ever received authorization to set up on the reservation.
“This policy is not about preventing anyone from practicing their religion,” Northern Arapaho Business Council Chairman Keenan Groesbeck said in the business council’s July 20 statement about the new policy. “It is about respecting the sovereign government of the Northern Arapaho Tribe.”
The business council noted the “historical relationship between many Christian institutions and Native Nations, including the devastating legacy of forced assimilation, boarding schools, and efforts to suppress Indigenous languages, cultures, and spiritual traditions.
“These historical experiences make it especially important that any outside organization engaging with the Northern Arapaho people do so through respectful government-to-government consultation and with a full understanding of tribal history, culture, and sovereignty.”
The Eastern Shoshone Tribe backed the new policy, calling on the church to stop its efforts to persuade Native people to reject their traditions.
“It is a profound abuse of trust for any outside institution to be welcomed onto the Reservation, endear itself to our community, and then use that access to insult, diminish, or erase the people who offered that welcome,” the Eastern Shoshone Tribe’s statement said.
The Eastern Shoshone Tribe noted that it “respects the individual constitutional rights of all people to practice their faith.”
“What is troubling is the use of religious expression as a cover for targeted efforts to undermine coexisting beliefs,” the tribe’s statement said. Particularly troubling, the statement continued, is the church’s “use of tribal symbols and imagery to gain trust while simultaneously urging our people to turn away from traditional practices.
“Such tactics borrow the appearance of respect while working against the very cultures they claim to assist.”
Tribes have their own laws that govern people living on reservations. People living under tribal jurisdiction don’t have civil rights under the U.S. Constitution, but instead have statutory rights under the 1968 Indian Civil Rights Act, known as ICRA.
The act provides nearly all the same civil rights found in the U.S. Constitution, like free speech rights, to people who live under tribal governance, including nontribal members. But there are some differences that attempt to accommodate tribes’ unique needs. For example, ICRA doesn’t require the separation of religion and government because “religion and religious leaders have always played a central role” in governing some tribes, according to Stephen Pevar, author of “The Rights of Indians and Tribes.”
The only current federal remedy for alleged ICRA violations is a writ of habeas corpus — an order requiring a court to decide if a person’s imprisonment is lawful, Pevar explains in his book. In other words, for situations where no one is imprisoned, ICRA doesn’t really have teeth, though some tribal courts deal with noncustodial ICRA violation cases, according to Pevar. If Foundations For Nations were to fight the removal order, the case would likely land in tribal rather than federal court. “There’s a requirement that before you can go to federal court, you have to exhaust your tribal court remedies,” Schumacher said.
Groesbeck, chairman of the Northern Arapaho Business Council, didn’t respond to WyoFile’s inquiry before publishing time about the status of the removal order against the church.
The church has argued that it can’t be removed “in this manner” because it owns its property, The Ranger reported. It’s not clear whether the tribal order has legal clout, or if the church has an avenue to fight the order.
“Excluding people from the reservation doesn’t happen very often,” Schumacher said, adding that he wasn’t aware of any past cases off the top of his head that fit this particular situation.
Even amid reported threats and the order to leave, the church has continued its Sunday services.
The post Could tribes use ‘bad men’ clause to oust Christian church? appeared first on ICT.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/69957
"The world calls it a ceasefire, but families in Gaza are still burying their children."
That was one United Nations spokesperson's assessment of the ongoing US-backed Israeli assault on Gaza on Thursday, which marked the 300th day since a ceasefire deal was reached between Israel and Hamas—a period during which at least 300 Palestinian children have been killed, the UN reported.
"A ceasefire that leaves an average of one child dead each and every day is failing children," said Edouard Beigbeder, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). "With hundreds more children injured, many severely, children in Gaza are still waiting for the end to the violence they were promised."
Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for UNICEF, noted that in the first three days of August, at least four children were killed across Gaza, and surviving children have been left with "painfully simple" and urgent questions for Israeli officials who had agreed last October to cease hostilities, reopen border crossings, and ensure 600 aid trucks entered Gaza per day to get much-needed food and essentials to Palestinians who had been facing a near-total blockade.
Wateridge said Palestinian children need to know: "When will the killings stop? When will food and medicine reach me at the level needed? When will hospitals reopen? And when will clean water flow again?"
300 children gone in 300 days.
300 days of the ceasefire in #Gaza has seen at least 300 children killed.
"The world calls it a ceasefire, but families in Gaza are still burying their children."
- @UNICEF's Louise Wateridge pic.twitter.com/1rmJz3YExW
— United Nations Geneva (@UNGeneva) August 6, 2026Reports of the mass casualties of children come as Israel and President Donald Trump's Board of Peace raise doubts about whether Israel will accept a deal stipulating the disarmament of Hamas and Israel's withdrawal from the exclave.
UN officials on Thursday expressed hope that the next steps of the peace plan can move forward to save children and other civilians across Gaza.
"Children have heard promises before. This time, agreements must translate into action," said Beigbeder.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Thursday that continued airstrikes have damaged civilian infrastructure, including healthcare facilities and medical supplies.
UNICEF warned that children are continue to face acute malnutrition almost a year after Israel agreed to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, as well as suffering from disease and a lack of sanitation.
An attack on a medical storage facility next to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah last week destroyed supplies that had been delivered by the UN, said the World Health Organization.
The UN is working to help "exhausted and hungry mothers" arriving at health centers with their malnourished children, and are fighting to save newborns born prematurely or with health issues, with extremely limited resources.
“There’s not enough incubators and in some cases [health workers are] saying they see two or even three babies sharing a single machine,” said Wateridge. “In Gaza, children only days old are already fighting to stay alive, born into partially functioning hospitals lacking equipment and medicine. This is what the world has chosen to tolerate. The killing must stop, aid has to enter at scale and children must be protected.”
According to OCHA, at least 1,209 people have been killed and 3,943 have been injured since the ceasefire deal was reached last October.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/69514
Amelia Schafer
ICT
Tuesday’s primary elections in four states resulted in significant wins for Indigenous candidates.
Of the five Indigenous candidates on ballots in Kansas, Michigan and Missouri, three candidates won their primaries Tuesday and two lost.
Sean McCann, Citizen Potawatomi Nation, won in the Democratic primary for Michigan’s Fourth Congressional District. McCann faced another Potawatomi, Diop Harris of the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi.
The Associated Press called the race with 34 percent of votes tallied. McCann earned 63.6 percent of the votes tallied, with Harris garnering 36.4 percent.
Sean McCann, Citizen Potawatomi Nation, will face another Potawatomi tribal member in the Michigan democratic primary for Congressional District 4 on Aug 4. Credit: Courtesy of Sean McCann campaign
“Our win tonight is thanks to every volunteer, supporter, and Michigan voter who put their trust in our campaign to bring change to Washington,” McCann said in a statement. “From the beginning, this campaign has been about standing up for working families and fighting back against corporate special interests and politicians getting rich while leaving our families behind. Every day between now and November 3rd, I’ll keep working to win every vote – to unite Democrats, Republicans, and Independents who believe Southwest Michigan deserves better than Bill Huizenga, who doesn’t work for us because he’s working for himself.”
McCann faces incumbent Bill Huizenga in the general election this fall.
Michigan
Melissa Perron, Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians, won the Democratic primary for Michigan House of Representatives in District 107. Perron defeated Brendan Ryan and will face incumbent Republican Parker Fairbairn in the general election this fall.
Missouri
In Missouri, Justice Horn, a citizen of the Blackfeet Nation, lost the Democratic primary for the District 1 At-Large seat in the Jackson County Legislature. Horn lost to Carla Fields who tallied 49 percent of the votes. Fields also defeated incumbent Jalen Anderson who finished with 27 percent of the vote. Horn garnered 23 percent of the vote.
Horn’s campaign received key endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vermont, and Advance Native Political Leadership.
Kansas
In Kansas, Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin tribal member Sharice Davids wonthe Democratic primary for Kansas’s Third Congressional District. Davids was first elected in 2019, meaning that, if re-elected, this will be her fifth term in congress.
We're just getting started, and we need everyone on board to keep Kansas moving forward!
Get involved today ➡️ https://t.co/oMVW2p70ZB pic.twitter.com/oioxEZBwgr
— Sharice Davids (@sharicedavids) August 5, 2026
ICT was on the ground covering the election.
Washington
Washington’s primary results will not be finalized until days after the election. Approximately 12 Indigenous candidates are running in Washington.
- Jennifer White, Makah Tribe, running for Clallam County Treasurer
- Christopher “Chris” Roberts, Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, running for King County Assessor
- Patrick DePoe, Makah Tribe, running for Washington House of Representatives, District 24 Position 2
- Debra Lekanoff, Tlingit Tribe, running for Washington House of Representatives, District 40 Position 1
- Chandler Torbett, Muscogee Nation, running for Washington House of Representatives, District 45 Position 2
- William Chichenoff, Sun’aq Tribe of Kodiak, running for Washington House of Representatives, District 14 Position 1
- Chelsea Dimas, Nahua, running for Washington House of Representatives, District 14 Position 1
- Kim Harless, Ópata, running for Washington House of Representatives, District 49 Position 1
- Renee Hernandez Greenfield, Cochiti Pueblo, running for Washington State House of Representatives, District 26 Position 2
- Maria Littlesun, Skokomish, running for Washington House of Representatives, District 35 Position 2
- Chris Stearns, Navajo Nation, running for Washington State House of Representatives, District 47 Position 2
- Claudia Kauffman, Nez Perce Tribe, running for Washington State Senate, District 47
The post Natives notch wins in Tuesday primaries appeared first on ICT.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/69616
The same logic that bombed a novelist's car in 1972 is now embedded in today’s content moderation policies, platform architecture, large language model training data, and the deliberate severing of a fibre-optic cable.
On the morning of July 8, 1972, a car bomb exploded outside of a house in Beirut. 36-year-old novelist, editor, and poet, Ghassan Kanafani, was killed, along with his 17-year-old niece, Lamees Najim. He had served as a spokesperson for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Mossad—which built the bomb, wired it to the ignition, and waited—justified the murder as a retaliatory response to the PFLP's Lod airport operation that May. Kanafani never fired a gun in his life, but his dedication to militant anti-imperialist struggle rendered him a culpable target.
Understand what that means: a state with a nuclear arsenal, an air force, and the backing of the world's most powerful military did not send its soldiers after Kanafani, but opted instead to use a car bomb to silence a prominent writer and militant intellectual. Ghassan Kanafani wielded his pen as his weapon of choice, and that pen had become, in the calculus of the Israeli settler state, a genuine strategic threat
Read more via Scalawag: The Assassinated Word: Kanafani at 54.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/68320
A family of three, including their 2-year-old child, were killed by US strikes against a residential building in Iran's Qeshm City, according to reports from Iranian media on Thursday.
Videos posted by the official IRNA news agency showed rescue teams searching through rubble for survivors. Two other children, ages 7 and 9, were found wounded in the wreckage and have been transported to the hospital, according to the agency.
The US attack on the building in the neighborhood of Chah Tangu was one of several launched against residential areas across Qeshm Island in the Persian Gulf overnight in what US Central Command (CENTCOM) said were dozens of strikes on Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) sites across the country.
The IRGC said that it would respond to Thursday's strikes by hitting back against the “aggressor." Iranian strikes on sites in Kuwait and Jordan followed shortly after, leading to the death of a worker in a Chinese-owned building in Kuwait. Iran also claimed that its attacks destroyed US aircraft in Jordan, which has not been confirmed.
The wave of US attacks came after Trump vowed on Wednesday to "beat the fucking shit out of" Iran after it fired ballistic missiles toward US troops in Jordan, the first such strike since a brief bombing pause over the weekend. The US also partnered with Saudi Arabia to carry out attacks on Iran-backed militias in Iraq, which reportedly killed 20 fighters and six Iranian advisers.
In a statement on Thursday, CENTCOM said it had "successfully completed a heavy wave of strikes" against Iran "in response to yesterday’s attempted missile attacks on US forces." It did not specify the strategic reason for the strikes on Qeshm or acknowledge the reported civilian casualties.
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), at least 254 children have been killed in Iran since the US and Israel launched the war on February 28, among more than 1,700 total civilians.
Iran has reported that at least 383 children, including seven infants, had been killed over the course of the war, prior to the resumption of attacks in July. With Thursday’s attacks, at least three more children have been killed since the conflict resumed this month.
Many of those casualties include at least 123 children killed by US strikes on the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab on the first day of the war. Earlier this month, Trump declined to release the findings of a Pentagon investigation into the massacre, saying it would be impossible to ever determine who was at fault.
Since restarting the war earlier this month, the US has focused its attacks on southern Iran in areas near the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has once again functionally blocked travel, despite US demands for unrestricted travel through the waterway, which carried around a fifth of the global oil supply before the war.
Trump's continued escalation comes as Americans are overwhelmingly skeptical of the war. A CNN poll released Wednesday showed that 67% of Americans believe Trump's military actions have "hurt the US" by causing oil prices to spike. Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe Trump does not “have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iran,” according to the poll.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/67142
Kyle DavidsonMichigan Advance
Two state agencies charged with overseeing Michigan’s natural resources and the environment have approved another set of permits for Enbridge’s Line 5 tunnel project, pushing the Canadian energy company closer to the full approval needed to begin construction.
The Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy announced Wednesday that it had reapproved a set of permits that expired earlier this year, concerning wetlands resources and the Great Lakes submerged lands. It follows a 2024 agreement between Enbridge, EGLE and the Bay Mills Indian Community, where the company agreed to redo its Part 303 and 325 permits to incorporate new wetland survey results.
The Department of Natural Resources also approved a Part 365 permit, which will require Enbridge to take steps to reduce its impacts on rare plants and animals while constructing the tunnel.
This map shows the proposed tunnel and the existing dual pipelines crossing the Straits of Mackinac. | (Screenshot from the MPSC Line 5 Issue Brief)
Great Lakes Tribal Nations and environmental advocates have called on state officials to shut down Line 5 for years. The controversial pipeline runs from Superior, Wisconsin to Sarnia, Ontario, with a 4.5-mile segment of dual pipelines running through the Straits of Mackinac, where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet.
Opponents, including Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, have repeatedly raised concerns about the threat of an oil spill in the straits, with the Oil and Water Don’t Mix Coalition arguing that taxpayers could be left on the hook for $4 billion should Line 5 rupture.
In 2018, Line 5 was damaged by a boat anchor dragged along the bottom of the straits, which dented the dual pipelines in three places. Enbridge later agreed to replace the dual pipelines with a new segment housed within a utility tunnel beneath the lakebed.
While Enbridge says the tunnel project will mitigate risks around future anchor strikes and an oil spill, Line 5 opponents are continuing to advocate for a shutdown, arguing the geological conditions of the lakebed are not stable for drilling, and that the construction process could also result in the release of oil or natural gas liquids from the existing pipeline.
Environmental advocates havepointed to the release of 1,900 gallons of drilling fluid amid Enbridge’s effort to reroute Line 5 in Wisconsin as further evidence of their concerns, arguing the release is in violation of waterway and wetland permit conditions.
Opponents say major legal hurdles remain
The project is still awaiting approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and another permit, which would allow Enbridge to discharge up to 6 million gallons of treated wastewater into the Great Lakes each day as the company builds the tunnel, remains under EGLE review.
Another major permit, issued by the Michigan Public Service Commission, is under review by the Michigan Supreme Court following a challenge from the Bay Mills Indian Community, Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, and Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi and several environmental advocacy groups.
Debbie Chizewer, a managing attorney for Earthjustice, which represents the Bay Mills Indian Community, told Michigan Advance they expect to appeal the EGLE permits, as they have done previously.
Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community, called the permitting decision a betrayal.
“The Straits of Mackinac, the sacred place where my Tribe’s creation story begins, have been handed over to a foreign corporation with a history that is nothing short of disastrous,” Gravelle said in a statement. “Enbridge has spilled oil, committed safety violations, trespassed on lands, shattered ecosystems, pierced aquifers, violated our laws, and repeatedly shown contempt for tribal sovereignty. They have left devastation in their wake, and now they’re being rewarded with responsibility over one of the most precious and sacred resources in our state. The Great Lakes are not safe in their hands.”
In a press release announcing the permitting decision, EGLE said its 16-month review of the permit “concluded that the public and private need for the proposed activity outweighed other public interest criteria.”
Critics call permits a betrayal
Following the decision, several environmental advocacy organizations criticized Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and her administration, arguing the governor had softened her stance on the pipeline after pledging to take action against Line 5 in her 2018 campaign for governor.
As governor, Whitmer has authority over EGLE and the DNR and the final say on how or if these projects move forward, Beth Wallace, the climate and energy director for the National Wildlife Federation, told the Advance Thursday.
“EGLE has once again approved a set of permits where they have failed to consider or even look at the harm that is going to be caused from the actual construction of the pipeline,” Wallace said. “Enbridge and Governor Whitmer have allowed a permit to move forward that only looks at shoreline impacts in the wetlands from them starting the construction.”
State Rep. Betsy Coffia, a Democrat from Traverse City, also voiced her discontent with the decision in a Facebook post, where she spoke out against Whitmer’s appearance with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at a groundbreaking for the Saline Township data center, and her decision to veto nine bills passed at the end of 2024, when Democrats held the majority in both the House and Senate.
“I am especially grieved by this profound disrespect to our tribal nations who have been on the front lines on this case for years, fighting to protect our precious Great Lakes,” Coffia said. “Let’s be honest. Michigan government does not have a good track record of keeping our word with our Native brothers and sisters and today is a shameful new chapter in that betrayal to both the tribes and the precious, Great Lakes waters, they have protected for generations.”
Wallace similarly pointed to the governor’s support for data center development.
“You saw yesterday that she has come up with a pledge for data centers to do the right thing, and we’re seeing very much in this moment that those types of commitments have fallen very short and are very shallow, and we actually need leaders to demand better and uphold our laws instead of taking pledges from the corporations,” Wallace said.
Whitmer’s office did not respond to several requests for comment left through text message and voicemail. This story will be updated if a response is received.
While the department’s decision dealt a clear blow to those advocating against the pipeline, Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy said the permits were an important step forward for the project.
“We are reviewing the new permit conditions issued today to assess any impacts on tunnel construction,” Duffy said in a statement Wednesday evening.
The Great Lakes Michigan Jobs coalition, which consists of several business, industry and labor groups, also cheered the permit approvals.
“Union members across the Upper Peninsula back the Tunnel because it protects the Great Lakes, creates and supports great jobs and great paychecks, and it’s a big part of our energy mix,” Mike Smith, the executive director of the UP Construction Council, said in a statement. “Today’s news represents just one more important step on that path, and we’re eager for regulators to give every green light needed to start construction.”
In 2022, an Enbridge consultant determined a shutdown of the pipeline would result in a half-cent-per-gallon increase on gas, jet fuel and diesel in Michigan and Wisconsin, and a 5-cent-per-gallon increase in Ontario.
3:03 pm — This story has been updated after a previous version misstated the amount of drilling fluid spilled.
The post Tribes, environmental advocates decry Michigan’s approval of Line 5 permits appeared first on ICT.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/67073
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday announced actions to tighten and accelerate the illegal occupation and colonization of the West Bank after a Palestinian defending his village from rampaging settlers fatally shot two Israelis—whose companions killed four Palestinians in response—while other members of Netanyahu's government called for more ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
Residents of Tell—located 3 miles southwest of Nablus and less than 2 miles from the illegal Israeli settlement of Havat Gilad—said settlers attacked homes on the outskirts of the town at around 8:30 on Friday morning.
According to The Times of Israel, a group of several dozen settlers invaded the village under the pretense of going on a hike. However, as the newspaper noted, Tell is located in an area of the occupied West Bank that is off limits to Israelis unless they obtain permission from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which the military said they did not do.
Local Palestinian leader Essam Saifi told Reuters that settlers attacked the eastern part of Tell and tried to break into homes there. When residents emerged to confront the settlers, the intruders opened fire on them before leaving.
Backed by IDF troops, the settlers returned around half an hour later. Video recorded by one of the settlers shows an Israeli firing his gun in the air while his companions, who included minors, shout threats while other settlers stormed local residents' land. A Palestinian man snatched a long gun from a member of the Havat Gilad local security squad and shot him and an IDF major, mortally wounding both men.
Israelis returned fire, killing four Palestinians, including the shooter, and wounding four others. IDF commandos later raided a hospital in Nablus and seized two of the wounded Palestinians.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that "this massacre represents a renewed image of the ongoing Nakba to which our Palestinian people are subjected," a reference to the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine by Zionist forces during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
The ministry also condemned "the misleading narratives promoted by the Israeli occupation authorities... in a systematic attempt to turn the executioner into the victim, and to cover up the crimes of murder, field executions, massacres, and grave violations committed by the occupation forces and settler militias against the Palestinian people."
IDF troops subsequently locked down Tell and Nablus while deploying five additional companies to the area and canceling soldiers' weekend furloughs in preparation for imminent "extensive counterterrorism operational activity in the sector.”
Responding to the incident as well as two separate stabbings of Israelis in the West Bank on Thursday, Netanyahu convened a security consultation, which resulted in a joint statement with Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announcing a tightening of the occupation and acceleration of the colonization of Palestine—both already illegal under international law.
The statement said Israel will demolish the family home of the Palestinian who shot the two Israelis, confiscate arms and revoke work permits of Palestinians in "villages acting as terrorist hubs," reinforce IDF units throughout the occupied territories, expedite the "legalization of farm outposts" and establish new ones, and increase apartheid checkpoints and road separations.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich responded to the incident by calling for the destruction and "evacuation"—a term widely viewed as a euphemism for ethnic cleansing—of local Palestinians "for their own protection."
"This is our appropriate Zionist answer to terrorists and terrorism," Smotrich said.
"We will not normalize the erosion of deterrence and the brazenness of our enemies in recent weeks against the pioneers of settlement and the farms," Smotrich, who chairs the far-right Religious Zionism party, said on social media, "I demand that the IDF act with an iron fist against the village of the murderers and its surroundings and restore governance and deterrence."
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who leads the far-right Jewish Power party, demanded the Palestinian shooter's town be obliterated like Beit Hanoun in Gaza, where Israeli forces have been waging a war that United Nations officials, legal and academic experts, and around 20 national governments have called a genocide.
"For every Jew murdered, the enemy must suffer the loss of land and homes," Ben-Gvir said. "This is the language spoken in the Middle East, and just as we spoke it in Gaza, it is time to speak it in [the West Bank] as well."
Yair Golan, who heads the opposition Democrats, accused Netanyahu and Katz of "a clear intent to set the area ablaze."
"Every escalation in the field endangers human lives—Israelis and Palestinians alike," he added.
David Zini, the head of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security and counterintelligence agency, urged the Israeli public “not to take the law into their own hands and to place their trust in the IDF and the Shin Bet, whose mission and duty this is.”
Many settlers rejected Zini's call and instead carried out revenge attacks on West Bank towns and villages, reportedly including Madama, Urif, Burin, Far'ata, Jit, Qabalan, Sarra, and others, resulting in multiple injuries.
Meanwhile, settlers mourned the killing of the two slain Israelis, 32-year-old Havat Gilad civil defense squad member Benayahu Mellet and 27-year-old IDF Maj. Yuval Ezra.
Extremist settler Meir Ettinger eulogized Mellet on social media, saying that "he was never satisfied with recognized roads and fences, and strived continuously to conquer the region."
“Benayahu always insisted on not making a distinction between areas C and B," Ettinger added.
Under the moribund Oslo Accords, the West Bank is divided into Areas A, B, and C. Area A is under full Palestinian Authority control, while Area B is under mixed control and Area C is under full Israeli control.
Israeli efforts to expand West Bank settlement activity have accelerated dramatically since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. Attacks on West Bank Palestinians, including pogroms carried out by mobs of settlers protected and sometimes joined by Israeli troops, have killed at least 1,111 Palestinians—at least 243 of them children—since October 2023, according to the latest report published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Israeli officials say 47 Israelis—including IDF troops, security personnel, and civilians—have been killed by Palestinian attacks over the same period.
According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, more than 620,000 Jews currently reside in over 130 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. While Israel grants every Jew in the world the right to settle there, it has—against UN resolutions and international law—refused to allow the approximately 5 million Palestinian refugees alive today to return to their homeland.
B'Tselem is one of 20 Israeli human rights groups that on Friday issued an "urgent call to the international community to take immediate action to stop Israel's violence and prevent pogroms by settler militias and the Israeli army across the West Bank."
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/66823
For decades, Israel has employed settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as part of its program of ethnic cleansing. However, such violence has sharply increased since the far-right ultra-nationalist government, led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, came to power in 2022.
While settler violence has affected the entire occupied territory over the last couple of years, it has been heavily concentrated in villages east of Ramallah, including Al-Mughayyir, Turmus Ayya, Deir Dibwan, Deir Jarir, Kufr Malik, Mazraa Al-Sharqiyah, and Khirbet Abu Falah.
A convergence of geographic, political, and strategic factors has made this area one of the primary flashpoints for displacement and the takeover of land in the occupied West Bank.
Ramallah’s eastern countryside overlooks the Jordan Valley to the east and the central West Bank to the west, making it a critical visual and geographical crest.
A continuous chain of Israeli settlements and wildcat outposts were established on the hilltops around these villages in order to isolate Palestinian agricultural communities, cutting them off from their surrounding pasturelands, and connecting infrastructure.
The local economy of villages east of Ramallah remains deeply rooted in traditional rain-fed agriculture, notably olive orchards and livestock grazing. This in turn made the area a target for systematic settler violence during harvest periods, severely undermining the long-term economic viability of the land for indigenous farmers.
The semi-nomadic Bedouin and Palestinian herding communities along the eastern Ramallah slopes have also been systematically targeted by aggressive settler groups, who destroy their crops, seize their animals, block their water supply and attack them physically.
Read more: Paradise lost: a Palestinian farmer on settler violence and dispossession
Three Palestinians killed in villages east of Ramallah in one week
On Sunday, July 19, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) and illegal settlers launched a coordinated attack against Palestinians in Deir Jarir town, northeast of Ramallah in the central occupied West Bank.
Odah Abdul-Rahim Farakhna (53), and Ahmad Adul-Rashid Abu Mokho (26) were shot dead, while a third person was injured in the assault.
B’Tselem, an Israeli non-profit organization that documents human rights violations committed by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories, slammed the offensive on Deir Jarir, accusing Israel of promoting ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
“The killing in Deir Jarir is one example of how Israel promotes ethnic cleansing in the West Bank: settlers invade and steal, while the military and police accompany them and shoot Palestinians who try to protect their homes and property,” Yuli Novak, the executive director of B’Tselem noted.
The deadly attack on Deir Jarir was preceded by another tragic incident in Al-Mughayer village, northeast of Ramallah.
Palestinian footballer Fadi Hamdallah Al-Nasaan (17) died on Saturday, July 18, due to injuries he sustained after being shot by the IOF one week earlier during a raid on Al-Mughayer.
According to the Palestinian Football Association, Al-Nasaan is one of 1,013 Palestinian athletes, including 568 from the football community, who have been killed by Israel since October 7, 2023.
Meanwhile, the latest death toll published by Shireen Observatory indicates that at least 79 Palestinians have been killed due to Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank since the beginning of the year. This includes 21 children, five women, two elderly people, three prisoners, and one journalist.
From BT News via This RSS Feed.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/66099
Kalle Benallie and Jourdan Bennett-BegayeICT
TOTAH, New Mexico — Michael Roy held his “I did this, I did that” sign outside the Totah Theater in Farmington, New Mexico, where Navajo Nation presidential candidates were informing Navajo citizens of their platforms on economic development.
“I’m kind of undecided on who to vote for, but I got to hear them out and stuff like that,” Roy, 56, told ICT. “But what I have here on my sign, I’ve heard this before way back ever since I guess the administrations that I was born into, so things never change.” He is from Cudeii, New Mexico.
Roy is one of the many Navajo voters who will go to the polls on July 21 on the Navajo Nation.
Michael Roy, 56, stands outside of the Navajo Nation presidential forum on June 24, 2026, in Farmington, New Mexico. (Jourdan Bennett-Begaye, ICT)
The 16 presidential candidates are vying for the top two spots to move on to the general election in November.
The primary was moved to July 21 due to Arizona’s state and county elections and will only be for Navajo citizens in Arizona. Citizens in New Mexico and Utah have already cast their votes in June. The Navajo Nation has approximately 427,000 citizens.
In the last few months, the candidates have traveled across the southwest for several presidential forums, meeting Navajo voters in urban and rural communities, and sharing their priorities.
The Farmington forum was the first time Eleanor Joe, 65, attended a forum for the Navajo Nation candidates this year.
Navajo Nation ballot examples on the wall for Navajo voters in July 2026. (ICT Staff)
Joe said she isn’t happy with current Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren but some of the candidates she heard from at the forum, she liked. They told her exactly what was going on and what they were planning to do.
She’s looking for a Navajo candidate who can tackle homesight leases, use old buildings to bring businesses to the nation, and advocate for Navajo people with mental health issues or mental illnesses.
Joe said she liked Tom Chee’s focus on the Navajo language and traditions while “Justin Jones, I think he sounds like he’s going to clean house.” She also liked that Crystalyne Curley has experience as Speaker of the House.
A Navajo elder’s soda with voting materials at the Navajo Nation presidential forum on June 24, 2026, in Farmington, New Mexico. (Jourdan Bennett-Begaye/ICT)
Another voter at the forum, Rita James, wants a new administration. She said the system is already set for them, “but we just need to put the right people in there.”
She’s looking for a Navajo leader with “a vision and a leader with unity.”
James continued: “We do not want any other leader that’s going to downgrade the present administration, but we want to move on with you know a president that has a credential and has a future and hope for a new administration is what we’re looking for.”
Her hope is that a Navajo woman would be the next Navajo Nation leader.
“We are at the stage where we need a woman leader,” James, 66, said. “ … because the current administration kind of disrespected the women, so her vice president doesn’t have a voice. So right now we want somebody that has a voice, a woman that can fix the problem that happened with her.”
In 2024, Navajo Nation Vice President Richelle Montoya accused Nygren of sexual harassment. The Navajo Nation Attorney General’s office is currently investigating.
James has voted for Emily Ellison the last two times she ran for president.
Rita James with Navajo Nation Presidential Candidate Emily Ellison after the Navajo Nation president forum on June 24, 2026, in Farmington, New Mexico. This is Ellison’s third time running for president. (Jourdan Bennett-Begaye/ICT)
Presidential nominee and current Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren has faced turbulence in his position. In 2025, the Navajo Nation Council sought to oust Nygren led by presidential candidate and Navajo Nation Council Speaker Crystalyne Curley.
In May, a Navajo Nation District Court dismissed a second ethics complaint that was filed by Special Prosecutor Kyle Nayback for alleged misuse of funds during the fall 2025 budget process. The judge ruled the complaint was better suited for the Ethics and Rules Committee rather than the court. Nayback also filed a complaint against Nygren’s former chief of staff, Patrick Sandoval, for financial benefits from a company that was seeking payment from the office of the president and vice president.
The 15 other candidates running for Navajo Nation president are: Justin Jones, Kevin Cody, Crystalyne Curley, Jordan Begay, Arvin Trujillo, Debbie Nez-Manuel, Tom Chee, Frank Dayish Jr., Donovan Begay, Alexander Chambers, Emily Ellison, Johnny Russell Jr., Larry Noble, Myron Lizer and Andrew Curley.
Kevin Cody’s platform is focused on public safety, healthcare, education, local government, and public safety.
Andrew Curley’s platform is no uranium mining, downsizing the president’s office, better relationship with the Navajo Nation Council, land reform, and water rights.
Debbie Nez-Manuel’s platform is ethics and management reform, veterans, education and public spending, protecting Navajo tradition and culture.
Crystalyne Curley’s platform is safety, infrastructure, economy, preservation of culture and traditions, and a focus on veterans, elders, disabled and the youth.
Jordan Begay’s platform is healthcare, lessening federal government input, strengthening the economy and education.
Arvin Trujillo’s platform is to restore the relationships between the three branches of government, support departments and divisions in the government, and build up the economy.
Tom Chee’s platform is building community, supporting chapters, investing in the youth, building the economy, and preserving Navajo language and culture.
Frank Dayish’s platform is to protect resources, agriculture, expand manufacturing, efficient housing, restart economic activity, and housing.
Donovan Begay’s platform is veterans and healthcare.
Alexander Chamber’s platform is government accountability, infrastructure, safety, energy, strengthening economy, and unifying government branches.
Emily Ellison’s platform is government accountability, sovereignty, infrastructure, supporting local businesses and community.
Myron Lizer’s platform is infrastructure, water access, energy, economic development, jobs, housing, leadership transparency, healthcare, supporting youth, and education.
Important dates and where to vote
Election results are expected to be certified after July 31. Early voting ended on July 17 for in-person voting. Voting registration has closed until July 31, after the primary.
Five election offices to vote include the Chinle Agency Election Office, the Fort Defiance Agency Election Office, the Eastern Navajo Agency Election Office, the Northern Agency Election Office and the Western Navajo Agency.
All 110 chapter houses are polling locations as well.
There are several deadlines for the general election in November. Voting registration closes on Sept. 25, absentee voting begins Oct. 5, the last day to submit an absentee ballot is Oct. 19 and the last day to vote in person is Oct. 30.
The post Navajo Nation voters looking for a president with vision, unity appeared first on ICT.
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This story is published through the Indigenous News Alliance.
The Arctic is warming four times faster than other regions, a trend that disproportionately harms the Indigenous Sámi people — particularly their access to vital traditional resources like reindeer and salmon, which are used for food, clothing, weapons, and more.
As northern temperatures rise, snow is melting and refreezing at an accelerating rate. That forms ice, preventing reindeer from reaching the lichen below and dramatically increasing starvation rates. “Those impacts in nature are severe for our culture and livelihoods,” said Tuomas Aslak Juuso, vice president of the Sámediggi, or Sámi Parliament, of Finland. “So survival of reindeer and then survival of our livelihoods [and] cultures is then questioned.”
Last week, the impacts of climate change and colonialism were among the key issues raised by the hundreds of Indigenous people gathered in Geneva. They’d come from around the world to discuss these mounting threats at the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or EMRIP. They agreed that a multitude of crises will only grow worse unless they are given greater say in international negotiations and decision-making. That’s why in addition to pushing specific policy recommendations on conflict, AI, and other key issues, Indigenous delegates continued their decades-long demand for better representation at the U.N.
“What we are trying to do is to get some implementation resources for us to adapt to the climate change. With Finland, for example, we don’t have any adaptation resources on how to adapt to these situations,” Juuso said. “To be able to bring these issues forward to the global discussion, we would have to have the opportunity to participate.”
Member states are granted access to U.N. gatherings, where they can easily express views, determine policies, and outline their progress implementing international commitments required by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other agreements. But Indigenous advocates say the voices of the peoples directly impacted by such actions aren’t always heard at international forums.
The U.N. structure requires participation through either a member state or a registered civil society agency — for instance, a non-governmental organization, academic institution, or accredited Indigenous organization. But Indigenous nations don’t fit neatly into one of those categories and are reduced to participating as NGOs. Beyond those structural barriers, Indigenous peoples also face financial and other resource challenges that compound the difficulty of making themselves heard at the international level. That’s why those attending EMRIP continued the long fight for what is called enhanced participation, which could finally give Indigenous nations and organizations the same access and power the United States and other countries enjoy.
That increased influence is especially important when many countries ignore Indigenous priorities. Throughout the week, many delegates identified climate and environmental issues as one area where national governments often have different priorities than Indigenous peoples, who consider land and ecosystems more important than economic growth — a value system they believe is at odds with the world’s best interests.
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“We’ve got to try and balance immediate economic interests with longer-term environmental protections,” said Kym Hamilton, who is from the tribes of Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngā Rauru, Ngāti Raukawa in Aotearoa New Zealand. “I think we’ve got a responsibility to protect our descendants.”
In U.N. lexicon, enhanced participation is the catchphrase often used for efforts to elevate Indigenous peoples’ voices. Those gathered in Geneva asserted the right to represent their communities in crucial global discussions that impact them. They are also demanding more respect from member-state governments and other policymakers, something they argue will better help them to survive conflict and other crises.
“The question before us is no longer whether Indigenous peoples should participate more fully in the Human Rights Council,” Hamilton, who spoke on behalf of the National Iwi Chairs Forum that represents 87 tribes, said. “The question now is how quickly we will implement these commitments.”
She offered recommendations for EMRIP’s seven expert Indigenous members, including a clear timeline for creating participatory status for Indigenous peoples’ institutions and appointing Indigenous and state representatives with equal standing to lead the process. She also called for the establishment of an independent and transparent accreditation mechanism to prevent states from vetoing Indigenous representatives, and initiatives to provide predictable and sustainable funding to take part.
Hamilton said Indigenous peoples’ full participation in international deliberations includes the right to decide who represents their communities. “Governments don’t always tell the truth,” she said, citing the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review — which all 193 member states must undergo every 4.5 years — which she said revealed gaps between the reports governments submitted and the actual human rights situations within their jurisdictions.
Kenneth Deer, member of the Mohawk Nation of Kahnawà:ke and longtime international Indigenous advocate, echoed that point. “The government never speaks ill about itself,” he said. “You can’t let government speak for us.”
But the U.N.’s accreditation and recognition process can hinder progress toward collectively tackling the challenges impacting Indigenous peoples, he noted. “For us, as a representative institution, there isn’t actually any clear path to accreditate ourselves — and that leads to them trying to improvise, and try to find ways how we can accreditate ourselves.”
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Indigenous cultural practices are a climate solution, report finds
The National Congress of American Indians also called for increased Indigenous participation at the international level. “Recognition and participation of Indigenous peoples must accommodate the numerous ways we identify, organize, and represent ourselves,” President Mark Macarro said. “It is essential that we participate directly in matters of global concern that affect our environment, health, human rights, and unique rights as Indigenous peoples.”
Deer said he’s seen many caucuses of Indigenous delegates at the U.N. engage in important collaborations. But he wishes they could have a higher profile. “Indigenous peoples want to have a voice,” he said. “They want to be heard.”
A diversity of voices at the U.N.’s highest levels, he believes, would improve the U.N. processes and system to the benefit of all countries. “What we need is the states, now, to agree to a process that was run by Indigenous people,” he said.
Throughout the week, EMRIP delegates identified a host of other barriers to participation. For example, communications technology within remote communities presents challenges to joining global deliberations. Additionally, there are significant financial barriers for under-resourced communities when U.N. forums are held far from their homelands.
The U.N. Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Peoples, which helps finance travel to U.N. forums, is also experiencing budget shortfalls, inhibiting many delegates’ ability to attend. It is seen as an important way to increase participation among delegates from areas where governments do not recognize the Indigenous peoples within their borders. Sheryl Lightfoot, EMRIP’s North America region member, is an Anishinaabe expert in Indigenous rights, global politics, and public policy.
She said states are not involved in how EMRIP officially recognizes Indigenous peoples. “Worldwide, there’s a need — and this is especially true across Africa and Asia — of Indigenous peoples seeking just mere recognition of their existence from their governments,” she said. “States seem to be more resistant now than they were 10 years ago to recognize that peoples are Indigenous peoples and have those rights attached to them.”
Despite Hamilton’s doubts about how much change has been achieved internationally, hearing her peers from other Indigenous nations testify about how they’ve persevered inspired her and restored her hope. “I feel like there’s a real sense of … urgency and concern,” she said. “We don’t want our grandchildren’s grandchildren to have to keep coming here and doing this stuff.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As climate change threatens their lands, Indigenous nations demand more power at the UN on Jul 21, 2026.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/66266
Palestinian officials said an Israel Defense Forces drone strike burned a family of six alive in their Gaza City home on Tuesday, a bombing that followed the massacre of another Palestinian family over the weekend and other attacks—including one on a hospital—as the Israeli genocide continues amid a nominal ceasefire.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said that rescue workers initially recovered the charred bodies of a mother, later identified as Salsabeel el-Masri, and her four children from their home in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City. Husband and father Firas el-Masri was later confirmed killed in the same strike.
The couple's three daughters and son—Faryal, Salma, Amira, and Naeem—ranged in age from 6 to 13.
(Photo by el-Masri family/X)
At least some members of the family—who were sleeping when their home was bombed—were apparently not killed by the blast.
"They were all burned so much that our crews couldn't reach them," said Palestinian Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal. "They were screaming and begging us to get them before they were martyred, but all attempts failed."
Video recordings of the airstrike's aftermath show first responders desperately trying to extinguish the blaze caused by the attack and retrieving the burnt victims' bodies.
Ahmed el-Masri told the Emirati newspaper The National that his brother's "entire family was wiped out from the civil registry."
"Martyred child Ameera Al-Masri, a charred corpse"
Today, from Gaza City, Israel has wiped out the Al-Masri family in a targeted airstrike on their flat. pic.twitter.com/XmLL3Rde0M
— Abubaker Abed (@AbubakerAbedW) July 21, 2026The el-Masri family is one of approximately 2,700 erased from the registry since Israel launched its war on Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, according to an Al Jazeera analysis published in January.
The Israel Defense Forces confirmed the bombing, claiming the strike was targeting a Hamas member. The IDF dramatically loosened its rules of engagement following the October 7 attack, effectively allowing an unlimited number of civilians to be killed when targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking.
Reuters reported at least six more Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes later on Tuesday, including one targeting a vehicle in the central Gaza Strip.
On Monday, an IDF missile attack on the al-Yemen al-Saeed Hospital in northern Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp killed at least two people and wounded 16 others, including women and children.
“The children were having fun and playing football, and suddenly they started screaming,” eyewitness Youssef Akasha told Drop Site News contributor Mohamed Ahmed. “We found many children lying on the ground, women screaming, and young men running to rescue the wounded."
Graphic video footage shows children, including infants, being treated for shrapnel embedded in their bodies.
Israel's attack on the el-Masri family followed a Saturday IDF airstrike on the home of the Nasman family in the al-Nasser neighborhood of Gaza City that killed five people. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Adham Nasman, 42; his wife, Marwa, 40; and three of their children—Arwa, 8, Ibrahim, 16, and Yahya, 18—were killed, and that Adham was apparently the intended target.
The couple's 13-year-old son, also named Adham, was not home at the time of the strike. Video footage published by photojournalist Nahed Hajjaj shows the grieving boy beside the bodies of his slain family.
Ayham Nasman, the sole survivor of his immediate family, returned to find his father, mother, and three siblings killed after an Israeli strike hit their residential apartment in Gaza's Al-Nasr neighborhood.
Ayham survived because he was not inside the apartment when it was… pic.twitter.com/86Co3JlI4r
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) July 19, 2026In another massacre on Saturday, an Israeli drone bombed a funeral in the Nuseirat refugee camp for a man who was allegedly a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who had been killed earlier the same day in another IDF strike. Eight people were killed and 20 others wounded in the second attack, according to Palestinian, Israeli, and international media reports.
Israel's US-backed assault on Gaza has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing since October 2023 and around 2 million people forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened. Over 21,500 children—1,022 of them babies—are among the more than 73,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces during the war that scholars, jurists, human rights groups, a panel of United Nations experts, and others say is a genocide.
Israel is facing a genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice and supported by nearly 20 nations, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant—his former defense minister who ordered the "complete siege" on Gaza that fueled famine and disease—are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.
The IDF's continued attacks come despite a US-backed ceasefire that went into effect last October. Since then, more than 1,160 Palestinians—most of them civilians—have been killed and over 3,750 others wounded by Israeli forces, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
“Nine months after the announcement of a ceasefire, still nowhere is safe for Palestinians in Gaza,” UN human rights spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday. "The killing of civilians in these attacks raises concerns of continuing violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes in Gaza. Under international law, deliberately attacking civilians is a war crime."
Akasha, who witnessed the Jabalia hospital bombing, told Drop Site News, “I don’t feel like there is a ceasefire at all."
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/65003
Anti-fossil fuel campaigners on Wednesday emphasized that Michigan state regulators had issued key permits for the Enbridge Line 5 tunnel in the Straits of Mackinac on the same day that "wildfire smoke from climate change blotted out the Mackinac Bridge from view" and as the US and other countries faced extreme heatwaves.
Despite the mounting evidence that—as energy and climate experts have long warned—continued fossil fuel extraction is heating the planet and causing dangerous extreme weather, Michigan's Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy handed down a permit Wednesday to allow the Canadian company Enbridge to construct a tunnel that EGLE officials acknowledged will likely have "significant impacts" on threatened or endangered species and Indigenous burial ground in the Straits.
“The magnitude of impacts to recognized historic and cultural values of this proposed project exceeds that of any other that EGLE has reviewed,” said EGLE in its statement on the permits.
Enbridge has sought to build a tunnel around its Line 5 pipeline in the Straits for years, following a massive oil spill from its Line 6B pipeline in the Kalamazoo River. Line 5 has been struck by ships' anchors numerous times, heightening concerns.
EGLE said in its explanation that the oil spill risk was found to be "unacceptable" and that the need for the tunnel outweighed its risks.
But opponents who have argued that Line 5 should be permanently shut down, including the Bay Mills Indian Community, condemned the agency for "rewarding" Enbridge with new permits even after its fossil fuel infrastructure has caused hazardous oil spills.
“Enbridge has spilled oil, committed safety violations, trespassed on lands, shattered ecosystems, pierced aquifers, violated our laws, and repeatedly shown contempt for tribal sovereignty," said Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community. "They have left devastation in their wake, and now they’re being rewarded with responsibility over one of the most precious and sacred resources in our state. The Great Lakes are not safe in their hands. This decision is a deep betrayal of our Great Lake State, and we will confront it immediately, fiercely, and without hesitation.”
The state Department of Natural Resources also issued a permit following EGLE's decision, granting permission for the tunnel despite its potential impact on rare plants and animal habitats.
According to Michigan Bridge, about 1.53 acres of wetlands in Mackinac County would be impacted by the tunnel project, as well as 0.17 acres of Lake Michigan bottomlands in Emmet County, where Enbridge is expected to build a water intake structure.
The environmental legal organization Earthjustice, which has helped represent the Bay Mills Indian Community in its legal challenges against Enbridge, said that with the permits, the company will "transform the Straits of Mackinac into an industrial construction zone for at least six years, destroying views, displacing wildlife, and interrupting tourism dollars."
“Our environmental laws, the looming climate crisis, and simple common sense tells us that an oil pipeline doesn’t belong in the Great Lakes,” said Earthjustice managing attorney Debbie Chizewer. “Today’s decision is a setback, but we’re not giving up. A future without oil in the Great Lakes is still possible.”
EGLE is also expected to rule by September 30 on an Enbridge request to discharge millions of gallons of treated wastewater per day into Lake Michigan while it is constructing the tunnel, and the Michigan Supreme Court is considering a lawsuit brought by four Tribal Nations, including Bay Mills, alleging that the Michigan Public Service Commission improperly issued a key tunnel permit in 2023.
The state is also fighting Enbridge over Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's 2020 order to shut down Line 5 over oil spill concerns. She had campaigned in 2018 on a promise to shut down the pipeline. A federal judge ruled last year that the state had no authority to terminate the use of the pipeline, and the state appealed that ruling.
Advocates expressed anger on Wednesday at Whitmer as her government issued the permits.
“It’s incredibly disappointing that a governor who ran on a commitment to the climate and protecting the Great Lakes has now decided to instead endorse a Canadian industrial tunnel project that still threatens the Great Lakes and will contribute fossil fuels to the climate,” David Holtz, coalition coordinator for the anti-Line 5 group Oil & Water Don’t Mix, told Bridge Michigan.
David Gover, managing attorney for the Native American Rights Fund, said that "the Straits of Mackinac are not a piece of Enbridge oil infrastructure; they are the heart of creation for Anishinaabe people and a vital source of life for all who depend on the Great Lakes."
“We will pursue every legal avenue," Gover said, "to defend treaty rights, protect drinking water, and preserve tribal lifeways from another Enbridge disaster.”
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/64898
The family of Palestinian political leader Marwan Barghouti stated on Monday, July 13, that he was shot in the leg with rubber bullets by Israeli prison guards. Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa, said in a post she wrote on Facebook, that the attack “caused him to bleed and suffer a painful injury.”
According to Fadwa, the violent act coincided with a report by the Israel Prison Service (IPS), which incited violence against her husband.
The report alleged that Barghouti continues to declare his support for armed resistance, despite being incommunicado and placed in solitary confinement for the last few years.
It also listed a number of accusations against the veteran Palestinian leader, including disseminating rhetoric that encourages violent struggle, working to unite Fatah and Hamas under a joint leadership, seeking to exert influence over the Israeli political arena through Arab members of the Israeli parliament (known as the Knesset), and inciting terrorism.
The language of the report reveals an attempt to demonize Barghouti by claiming that he certain acts, while cultivating “a moderate international image” and “consolidating his standing as a leading Palestinian Arab figure.”
Incitement fails to erase Barghouti’s influence
Barghouti’s wife argued that the Israeli report was issued “at a time when the international campaign “Free Marwan, Free Palestine” continues to expand, attracting prominent global figures and leaders and receiving significant official and public support around the world.”
“What the occupation has failed to understand throughout the past quarter century – and still fails to understand today – is that Marwan has never wavered in his conviction that freedom is a fundamental right and that occupation is destined to end,” Fadwa affirmed.
“He has rejected both surrender and despair, believing that resisting occupation while striving for a just peace that brings it to an end is both a national and a moral responsibility. He believes in the unity of the Palestinian people and their land. Marwan’s foremost concern has always been to spare every Palestinian child the suffering of occupation and the devastation of war, and his enduring goal has been to secure a life of freedom and dignity for his people,” she continued.
Fadwa further asserted that although the report wanted to condemn her spouse, it acknowledged the extent of his “status, influence, symbolism, and the global campaign demanding his freedom.”
“As for incitement and aggression, they will not change this fact, nor will they take Marwan away from the conscience of his people or from the conscience of the free people of the world, nor will they take away from Marwan his love for his homeland, his love for his people, and his concern for them,” she emphasized.
It is worth noting that Marwan Barghouti secured an overwhelming victory with the highest number of votes in Fatah central committee elections in May 2026, despite being imprisoned in Israeli jails since 2002.
This in turn, denotes that he remains a highly popular figure among the Palestinian grassroots, given that Fatah is the largest national political faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Zoe. , July 15, 2026
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/63860
This story was originally published by Source New Mexico.
Joshua Bowling
Source New MexicoThe New Mexico Department of Justice recently published the results of a yearslong investigation into Gallup-McKinley County Schools and found that the district disproportionately disciplines Native American and Hispanic students, causing them to miss exponentially more instructional time than other students across the state.
Attorney General Raúl Torrez’s report, published Thursday, July 2, found that the district’s students lose “at least twice as many” instructional days as those in other New Mexico districts to out-of-school suspensions. It’s even higher for Native American and Hispanic students, who lose “roughly eight to 10 times” and three to four times as many school days as their white peers, according to the report.
Teachers in the district impose harsher penalties on Native and Hispanic students than on white students, the report says.
Torrez’s office launched this investigation in 2023 following news reports that the district drove New Mexico’s outsized rates of expelling Native students.
In the agency’s new report, titled “Forced Out: How Exclusionary and Disparate Disciplinary Practices at Gallup-McKinley County Schools Rob Students of Instructional Time,” NMDOJ officials wrote that the district “appears to have made progress” in some areas, including reducing its number of expulsions and referrals to law enforcement agencies.
The Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission in March also issued a report that called on district leaders to adopt a new, culturally appropriate disciplinary system in light of these longstanding allegations.
A district spokesperson in a statement to Source NM wrote that under Superintendent Jvanna Hanks’ leadership, district leaders created an Equity Council, which will include positions “designated for members of the Native American community.”
“Gallup-McKinley County Schools is aware of and has been reviewing the New Mexico Department of Justice report and appreciates NMDOJ’s work to help ensure all students are treated fairly, supported appropriately and able to remain engaged in learning,” the statement said.
Broadly, the issue of lost instructional time has been a focus for state lawmakers in recent months. A June Legislative Finance Committee report found that a $2.6 billion investment aimed in large part at complying with the state’s landmark Yazzie/Martinez educational equity lawsuit had done little to rectify the issue of kids missing out on learning time.
Students across the state are required to annually attend a minimum of 1,140 instruction hours. The average absentee student in New Mexico missed about 215 hours in the 2024-25 school year — nearly one-fifth of the total required learning time, according to that report.
However, Kevin Mitchell, president of the Gallup-McKinley County Schools Board of Education, pushed back on the NMDOJ findings. Native American students will comprise the majority of the district’s disciplinary actions because the majority of its students are Native, he said.
The sprawling district sits in the Four Corners region and includes portions of the Navajo Nation. In fact, nearly 54 percent of Gallup’s population is Indigenous, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest data.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out we’re talking about 89% Native American population throughout the whole district…it could be a little higher,” Mitchell told Source NM. “‘You guys are disciplining Native Americans more than other students.’ Well, of course — it’s all we have.”
Mitchell added that many of his district’s schools serve small, rural communities, meaning a handful of chronic offenders in the classroom can skew overall disciplinary rates.
In a follow-up statement to Source NM, Mitchell wrote that he and his elected colleagues on the Board of Education have “consistently fought for quality education for all students,” citing the new Equity Council and the re-establishment of an Indian Education Committee.
“This work does not end with one report or meeting,” Mitchell wrote.
The post New Mexico Attorney General investigation finds Gallup schools more severely discipline Native, Hispanic students appeared first on ICT.
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The Health Work Committees, a prominent Palestinian non-governmental health and development organization operating in the occupied West Bank since 1985, was subjected to a sweeping arrest campaign by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) over the past couple of weeks.
On Sunday, June 21, the IOF stormed the headquarters of the organization in the central city of Ramallah, and shut it down under a one-year military closure order.
According to a well-informed HWC source, who spoke to BreakThrough News anonymously due to security concerns, the IOF arrested all of the organization’s board members, including its chairperson, Dr. Mazen Rantisi (71), before and after the organization’s main office was raided.
Rantisi was arrested from his home in Ramallah in the early hours of June 21. HWC’s financial director, Tayseer Abu Sharbak, was also arrested that same day from his home in Al-Am’ari refugee camp in the central city of Al-Bireh. Meanwhile, a physician, Khaled Ayash, was apprehended from the town of Biddu northwest of Jerusalem in late June.
On Wednesday, July 1, the IOF arrested other HWC staff after raiding their homes in different parts of the occupied West Bank.
The detained staff were identified as:
- Public Relations Director, Dr. Jamila Abu Dahou
- Board members: Etaf Bader, Jamila Kanaan and Myassar al-Faqih
- Accountant, Faten Hanaysheh
- And a driver known as Abu Sree
BreakThrough News learned from HWC’s unnamed source that no indictment has been issued against the arrested staff and leaders yet, and that they are still under investigation.
It is worth noting that the recent crackdown on HWC by the IOF is not the first. In June 2021, the organization was raided and shut down for six months. One month later former director, Shatha Odeh, was illegally detained in Israeli jails for 11 months and fined USD 9,000.
Odeh, who was given a 5-year suspended imprisonment sentence, was released on the condition of not providing health services to people.
The repressive campaigns against the HWC are not isolated incidents, but are part of a broader systematic crackdown on the Palestinian health sector as a whole, reflecting Israel’s ethnic cleansing policies.
Israel’s brutal crackdown on Palestinian health sector as genocidal tactic
Over the last three years, Israel has escalated its crackdown on the Palestinian health sector, deploying it as both a settler-colonial ethnic cleansing policy and a genocidal tactic.
At least 1,722 healthcare workers have been killed by the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) in Gaza since Israel began its genocidal aggression on the besieged enclave on October 7, 2023.
According to UN experts, this equates to killing an average of more than two people per day.
In many cases, Israel targeted rescue workers in their clearly marked ambulances while they were trying to reach casualties. The Hind Rajab massacre represents one of numerous crimes, during which rescuers became the victims for only trying to save the lives of other victims.
Arbitrarily arresting health workers and medics and placing them under administrative detention and inhumane conditions without charge, have been among the atrocities committed by Israel against the Palestinian health sector.
The case of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a pediatrician from Gaza who was arrested by Israeli forces in December 2024 during the siege on Kamal Adwan Hospital, may be the most shocking, but it is not the only one of its kind when it comes to detention incidents.
Read more: HRF urges ICC to issue warrants for 24 Israeli soldiers accused of the murder of Hind Rajab and her rescuers
More than 1,800 health facilities have been partially or completely destroyed over the same period, as per a latest report published by the the UN World Health Organization (WHO).
WHO representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Dr. Reinhilde Van de Weerdt, clarified that the destruction affected not only big hospitals, but also smaller primary health care centres, clinics, pharmacies and laboratories.
Read more: Israeli attacks persist on northern Gaza’s last hospitals
UN experts argue that Israel’s systematic targeting of the Palestinian health sector amounts to “medicide”. The word denotes the war crime of intentionally targeting healthcare workers and medical facilities.
The international community must not remain silent, says PHM
The People’s Health Movement (PHM)issued a statement on Tuesday, June 23, unequivocally denouncing “the arrest of Dr. Mazen Rantisi, the closure order imposed on HWC’s headquarters, and the ongoing repression targeting Palestinian health institutions and civil society organizations.
“HWC is an important part of the People’s Health Movement (PHM), and we stand in full solidarity with the organization, its staff, and the patients and communities it serves.” The statement reads.
The movement called for “the immediate and unconditional release of Dr. Mazen Rantisi and all Palestinian health workers and civil society personnel arbitrarily detained.”
It also demanded “the immediate reversal of the closure order against HWC, and the protection of Palestinian health workers and healthcare institutions from attacks, harassment, and arbitrary detention.”
The PHM stressed that international accountability for violations of the right to health and attacks on healthcare under occupation should be maintained, and international solidarity with Palestinian civil society and health organizations be sustained.
“The right to health cannot exist where health workers are imprisoned, health institutions are shut down, and communities are denied access to care. The international community must not remain silent. Defending Palestinian health workers is inseparable from defending the Palestinian people’s right to health, dignity, self-determination, and freedom.” The movement emphasized.
Viva Salud warns that the crackdown on HWC would contribute to broader climate of pressure and restrictions
For its part Viva Salud strongly condemned the “worrying” measures, which the Israeli occupation authorities took against HWC and its staff.
“The arrest of two senior HWC representatives and the closure of the organization’s headquarters raise serious concerns for the future of its activities and for the continuity of services provided to Palestinian communities. These measures also contribute to a broader climate of pressure and restrictions affecting Palestinian civil society organizations and health institutions,” Viva Salud stated.
The Belgian non-governmental organization further asserted that it will continue to stand alongside HWC – as a partner – and to support its efforts “to ensure that all Palestinians can enjoy their fundamental right to health, dignity and self-determination.”
Zoe. , July 7, 2026
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/61627
This story was produced byHonolulu Civil Beat, a nonprofit news organization covering Hawaiʻi that specializes in accountability and in-depth enterprise coverage. For more stories like this,subscribe to their newsletters.
Hikari Mae Hida
Honolulu Civil BeatAngela Mulligan graduated with a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy last March, hoping to become a couples therapist for clients on the Big Island and give back to the community she calls home.
Instead, she made a difficult decision to build her career online while working toward full licensure, serving clients based in Colorado. Under Hawai‘i’s current system, pre-licensed therapists cannot bill insurance during the thousands of hours they have to work to become licensed, so serving Hawaiʻi patients would mean working for little to no pay, a reality Mulligan cannot afford.
“I didn’t have the option of not working for money,” she said.
“Sometimes, I have guilt because I prefer to be serving where I live, but it hasn’t been possible until now,” she said.
The situation for budding therapists will soon change.
A new state law taking effect Wednesday aims to bridge this chasm by removing the financial barrier driving local therapy graduates out of state. Act 93, signed by Gov. Josh Green in June 2024, creates provisional, associate-level licenses for marriage and family therapists, mental health counselors, and psychologists in training. It allows them to legally bill insurance providers while accruing the clinical hours required for full autonomous licensure.
Applications for the new pathway officially opened through the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs on June 2. But there has been confusion over application technicalities and who needs to apply for the license. Some question how much this law will actually help retain local therapists.
Hawaiʻi has long grappled with a mental health workforce crisis. The federal government designates the entire state as a Mental Health Professional Shortage Area. A 2022 survey by Community First Access to Care found that mental health counseling was the state’s most critically needed medical specialty, cited by 78 percent of local healthcare providers.
The preamble to the bill reads: “This model of living is unsustainable and causes many of these practitioners to permanently move from Hawaii to one of the many other states where insurance reimbursements are allowed.”
‘Brain Drain’
Experts say that aspiring therapists in Hawaiʻi often underestimate the financial and bureaucratic obstacles that await them after graduation.
Under the current system, depending on the therapy license, post-graduate therapists have to accrue 1,000 to 3,000 hours of supervised experience — the equivalent of 25 to 75 40-hour weeks — over a minimum of two years before getting fully licensed.
The problem is that the new therapists cannot get paid for their work. Since there is no mechanism to bill insurance, in most cases, private practices and community clinics have to pay the fledgling therapists out of their own pockets, which many cash-strapped practices can’t afford.
Graduates are left with the choice of working those hours for little to no pay, taking on a second or third job, getting licensed in a state with associate licensing pathways or switching professions altogether, said John Souza, an assistant professor specializing in marriage and family therapy at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa.
Data collected by Souza illustrates this systemic toll. According to his preliminary findings, pre-licensed postgraduate therapists named licensing and bureaucratic barriers as top obstacles to practicing in Hawaiʻi. During grad school, 75 percent of students identified as local, compared to 33 percent percent of people surveyed who had graduated from their programs in Hawaiʻi. The research found that around 44 percent of therapists working toward licensure were paying for supervision in addition to working for free, at an average cost of roughly $8,400.
“These students are kind of walking into this fog,” Souza said. “It’s like they’re going into this blindly and not aware of just how much it’s going to cost for them to enter this career.”
Advocates warn that this financial bottleneck results in a loss of talent that directly impacts the competence of care available to Hawai’i locals.
“You have a terrible brain drain where people are leaving Hawai‘i because they can’t afford to work another year with either no income or very low income,” said Alex Lichton, legislative chair for the Hawai‘i Psychological Association.
And the system ends up perpetuating socioeconomic disparities.
Due to the inability to bill insurance, some younger therapists pursuing full licensure choose to work for private practices that mainly serve wealthier people who are able to pay for therapy in cash, creating even greater disparities in access to care.
“The people that survive the whole process disproportionately tend not to be Native Hawaiian, it’s disproportionately Caucasians,” Lichton said, adding that he received financial support from his family while pursuing licensure.
That demographic imbalance carries heavy clinical consequences. A study published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology demonstrated that racial and cultural mismatch between patient and therapist significantly increases premature dropout rates in therapy.
In Hawai’i, where Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations face disproportionately high rates of historical trauma, the lack of homegrown and Indigenous therapists widens existing healthcare inequities.
Kawaiolaakealiʻi Kapuni, born and raised on Maui, had a white woman as her first therapist whom she was paired with under her insurance at the time.
“I felt like I had to do more explaining about fundamental concepts before getting to the problem itself,” she said. When she switched therapists to a non-Indigenous woman of color, she had a similar experience.
She has never been able to see a Native Hawaiian therapist. “I don’t know how many kānaka ʻōiwi see a future for themselves in that field because there are so many barriers,” said Kapuni, adding that the bill doesn’t go far enough to address how healthcare inequities exist for Native Hawaiians.
In terms of one day having a Native Hawaiian therapist, she thinks there would be a level of intimacy that would make them better able to connect with their clients. “I think it would be life-changing,” she added.
Joanne Okika Shigeko Qinaau, a former PhD student in clinical psychology at UH Mānoa, wrote about the challenges facing local therapists in written testimony supporting the bill.
“The status quo is unsustainable and particularly challenging for those of us from underprivileged backgrounds,” Qinaau wrote, adding, “This bill would improve on-the-job training and cultivate homegrown talent – encouraging folx to stay in Hawai’i and meet the unique needs of our community.”
Uncertainties Remain
The state Office of Wellness and Resilience hosted a town hall meeting on Thursday to answer questions about the new law.
The comment section in the Zoom room flooded with confused applicants. Many worried that a surge of applications could take a long time to process, meaning clinicians whose applications are still in process on Wednesday can be in violation of the law if they continue treating their clients.
“Passing the national licensing exam was the easy part,” said Alexandra Love, who was born and raised in O’ahu and now runs her own private practice in Maui, about the time she applied for her license in 2016. She added that dealing with the department in charge of licensing was, “the true test, because everything is so slow.”
She expressed concern for her supervisees, who are applying for these associate licenses.
Cindy Matsushita, licensing administrator at the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, or DCCA, said during the town hall that the office has received 42 applications and 25 of them have been approved or are “in the process” of being approved, as of noon on Thursday. Previously, DCCA estimated that it would receive between 200 and 300 applicants during the initial one-month rollout window of the new program.
Tia Roberts Hartsock, director of the Office of Wellness and Resilience, wrote in a statement to Civil Beat: “We are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it.”
It is also unclear how much private insurance companies like Hawaii Medical Service Association and Kaiser Permanente will reimburse. While the new law allows associate billing, it does not mandate specific reimbursement rates.
Kathleen Kozak, Medical Director at UHA Health Insurance, declined to share UHA’s reimbursement rates, but said that “CMS reimburses different levels of providers, and we tried to come up with something that was similar in percentages.”
A spokesperson for HMSA said that “eligible services provided by practitioners in training are reimbursed at a lower rate than services provided by fully licensed providers, which reflects their licensure status and supervised role in care delivery.”
If commercial insurance companies set associate reimbursement rates too low, private practices may still struggle to offer livable wages to graduates.
Mulligan, the pre-licensed therapist on the Big Island currently accruing her hours online in Colorado, is in no rush to apply for the associate license.
With only eight months left before she qualifies for full autonomous licensure via her out-of-state remote work, she is uncertain how much applying for the program will change her current situation.
“Even if I can take insurance here, if they offer low rates to associates, I might as well wait to go through all of the paperwork later,” she said.
Civil Beat’s health access reporting is supported in part by the Atherton Family Foundation.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/61918
This story was originally published by Florida Phoenix.
Liv Caputo
Florida PhoenixA Miccosukee Tribe member wants her nation to be the new protector of the so-called ”Alligator Alcatraz” site, calling Friday on Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to give it the territory to conserve.
But there’s a problem.
The DeSantis administration, which controversially seized the land last summer, still hasn’t given it back to the county, even after the state cleared out the lockup’s detainees and declared the center closed for business.
This means Miami can’t begin to sell or transfer the Everglades land to a conservator, as planned — at least not yet.
“The State has not returned the land to the County and has provided no timeline for doing so,” Dianne Fernandez, Cava’s deputy director of communications, told the Phoenix in an email. She provided a letter Cava sent Monday to the governor, asking DeSantis to coordinate the site’s “orderly transition” back to Miami-Dade.
The governor’s office referred the Phoenix to the Florida Division of Emergency Management, the agency in charge of “Alligator Alcatraz” operations, which has not responded to a request for comment.
“Alligator Alcatraz” was hastily built last summer atop the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, a 5,120-acre plot deep within the Everglades complete with a 10,000-foot runway for pilots learning to fly. Although owned by Miami-Dade County — until it was temporarily commandeered last June — the airport pays taxes to Collier County.
The county estimates its value at $20 million. Cava, however, had estimated in early conversations with state government before construction that the plot would be worth closer to $190 million. State officials disagreed, and simply seized the land under emergency declaration instead of paying out Cava’s hefty request.
Remarkably, after a year of bitter debate between politicos and activists over the facility and its alleged wrongdoings — although none have been proven in court — the one point many agree on appears to be the site’s future as an environmental safe haven.
Attorney General James Uthmeier, the mastermind behind the facility, and Cava both have advocated to environmentally protect the land. After DeSantis announced the facility’s shuttering, Cava declared her plan to sell or transfer the site to an environmental conservator, such as the National Park Service.
Miccosukee Tribe member Betty Osceola said her nation is an interested buyer, considering its reservation abuts “Alligator Alcatraz” and it’s been an active environmental opponent of the facility’s construction and operation. The tribe joined most of the legal onslaught against the state for its alleged environmental harms caused by the facility.
“Miami-Dade County has title to the landscape, but all of Florida belongs to the indigenous people, regardless of what name and county you want to give to it,” Osceola said during a Friday press conference. She insisted tribe members would devote “110%” to preserving the land if it were theirs.
“I encourage the mayor’s office to have those conversations with the Miccosukee Tribe to see how [a transfer] could happen,” she said.
However, the Tribe said Osceola speaks for herself — not for them.
“The Tribe’s official positions are established through its elected leadership. At this time, Chairman Talbert Cypress has not issued any public statement or expressed any intention that the Tribe seeks ownership or control of the land,” chief communications officer Alvaro Zabaleta said.
The mayor’s office did not respond to questions about whether aides have spoken with the Miccosukees or any other buyer.
Correction: This story has been updated to show that Betty Osceola’s comments are hers, and not representative of the Miccosukee Tribe.
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/58249
Daniel Herrera Carbajal
ICTThe Tohono O’odham Nation has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security over its plans to construct a border wall on the tribe’s lands.
The suit was filed Tuesday as DHS plans to award contracts in the coming weeks to construct the border wall, according to a press release from Tohono O’odham.
“We do not believe, and we know that Customs and Border Protection has no legal authority to take any of our reservation land nor use it without permission,” said Tohono O’odham Chairman Verlon M. Jose in a speech Wednesday at a National Congress of American Indians event in Memphis, Tennessee.
About 62 miles of the Tohono O’odham Nations land are contiguous with the US-Mexico border.
“To build these walls, (Customs and Border Protection) will have to diminish the size of the Tohono O’odham Nation. … There is no good reason to steal even more tribal land or destroy tribal land” Jose said.
The Tohono O’odham Nation has said building a wall on its reservation would be illegal and DHS and other contracting personnel who enter the nation would be trespassing.
The tribe’s ancestral homelands lie adjacent but on opposite sides of the US-Mexico border. The Gadsden Purchase of 1854 divided the nation’s lands and separated families.
According to the Tohono O’odham Nation, there are more than 3,000 enrolled members who live in the tribe’s ancestral lands in the Mexican state of Sonora.
“The United States-Mexican border was drawn through the heart of our traditional territory, making it more difficult for us to visit our families, our cemeteries, our sacred places, our ceremonies,” Jose said.
The Tohono O’odham Nation has strongly opposed the construction of a border wall on its lands while strongly supporting border-security measures. The tribal nation spends millions of dollars a year on border security and has its own tactical patrol unit under the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency called the “Shadow Wolves” – an all-Native patrol unit whose mission is to delay, disrupt and interdict illicit trafficking, according to ICE.
“We believe in border security, to protect our people and to protect the United States,” Jose said.
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