Thank you all who attended Protect the Earth this Year, maybe we’ll see you again next year!
3rd Annual Protect the Earth Great Lakes Community Gathering
Friday, July 30:
Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College, Baraga, MI
1pm Workshop on the National Historic Preservation Act
…2:30pm Student Presentations
5pm Opening Community Potluck Dinner
6pm Featured Guests: Joanne Shenandoah & Winona LaDuke
7pm Film Screening of Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action
Saturday, July 31:
Ojibwa Powwow Grounds, Baraga, MI
8:30am Welcome & Four Thunders Drum
9am Opening Prayer & Remarks
9:30am Keynote Speech by~ Winona LaDuke
10am Environmental Issues Facing the Great Lakes Region
Featuring Lee Sprague (Climate Change Adaptation Strategies), Jeff Gibbs (Biomass) & Kathy Berry & Zak Nicholls (Chemical Valley in Aamjiwnaang First Nation)
12pm Lunch (on your own, vendors)
1pm Presentations & Discussion on Mining in the U.P.
Featuring Al Gedicks (WI Native-Environmental Alliance), Stuart Kirsch (Indigenous Movements), Robert VanZile (Mole Lake Sokaogon Chippewa), Jim St. Arnold (Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission), Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve, Yellow Dog Summer & the Stand for the Land
Evening Events:
Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College, Baraga, MI
5pm Traditional Feast
7-10pm ~Protect the Earth Concert~
Sunday, August 1: Clowry Trail by the Yellow Dog River, MI
11am Picnic by the Yellow Dog River (bring your own)
12pm Annual Walk to Eagle Rock
1pm Speakers & Music at the Fence Line
Wild blueberry picking too!
The plains are full of wild blueberries this time of year. So bring your blueberry pails for the sweetest, tastiest blueberries you’ll ever pick:)
Directions to Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College and the Ojibwa Recreation Area Campground
Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College is located at 111 Beartown Road, Baraga, MI
Mapquest and/or Google Map directions are recommended:
Map including both KBOCC and the Ojibwa Recreation Area Campground (powwow grounds):
Ojibwa Recreation Area Campground: (906) 353-6955
Driving Directions for the Annual Walk
Follow the Signs!
From Marquette: Get onto County Road 550 north of Marquette. Drive 25 miles
along County Road 550 going northwest. At the intersection of County Road 550
and County Road 510, turn left. Drive 3.1 miles until you reach AAA road. Turn right
onto AAA road. Drive 3.1 miles until you reach a Y in the road. Stay left. Continue
for 5.0 miles until you reach the Clowry Road. Turn left and drive until you reach
the bridge over the Yellow Dog River. Park here.
From Baraga: (Coming soon!)
April 2010_MQT Co-1. Eagle Rock Directions
Walking Directions
After everyone is assembled, we will begin the walk around noon from the bridge over
the Yellow Dog River. We will walk up the Clowery Road until we reach AAA road.
Turn left. Continue on AAA road until you see Eagle Rock on your right.
*If you cannot walk a vehicle will be provided for you to ride in. Also, we will have water available to you during the walk. You may also want to bring a folding camp chair, berry picking buckets, sunscreen, bug spray, a hat to shade you from the sun (especially at the fence line at Eagle Rock).
*Please bring your own tableware & utensils to all meals.
Hosted by: Oshkinawe-Ogichidaag Akiing “New Warriors for the Earth”
Sponsored by: the Western Mining Action Network, Indigenous Environmental Network, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve, Save the Wild UP, NMU Center for Native Studies, Keepers of the Water, Yellow Dog Summer & the Stand for the Land
Contact
new.earth.warriors@gmail.com if you have any questions or if you are interested in volunteering or sponsoring. We are seeking additional students interested in presenting their research and organizations interested in having informational booths.
Lodging
Lodging available at the Ojibwa Casino Hotel & The 4 Seasons Inn: (906) 353-7611 & the Best Western Baraga Lakeside Inn: (906) 353-7123
(Ask for the $49/night discounted rate at the 4 Seasons Inn available to Protect the Earth guests & attendees!)
Camping available at the Ojibwa Recreation Area Campgrounds: (906) 353-6955
Rates: http://www.kbic-nsn.gov/html/camp_rates.htm
*No reservations needed, check-in near the marina upon arrival
Read on for a more detailed agenda
1-2 pm Opening Workshop: The National Historic Preservation Act
• Will Gilmore (Archaeologist involved in the drafting of Section 106), Preston Thompson (Ho Chunk Traditional Court Member) & Ritchie Brown (Ho Chunk Tribal Member)
2:30 pm Student Presentations
3:30 pm Speaker from KBIC Natural Resources Department
4:30-6pm Opening Community Potluck Dinner
6-7 pm Featured Guests: Joanne Shenadoah & Winona LaDuke
Grammy Award winning artist Joanne Shenandoah has shared her life experiences around the globe to hundreds of thousands of humans working toward making a better planet for seven generations into the future. Shenandoah has 15 recordings and her music is on over 40 compilations. Her original compositions combined with a striking voice enables her to embellish the ancient songs of the Iroquois. Ms. Shenandoah’s music reflects the indigenous philosophy and culture, which continues to have a profound effect on the world today. From traditional chants to contemporary ballads about Native ways, her music has been described as an emotional experience, a “Native American Trance”. Shenandoah appeared on stage at Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden, The White House, Kennedy Center, Woodstock 94, Earth Day on the Mall, and the Special Olympics performances nationally and internationally.
Winona LaDuke is an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg who lives and works on the White Earth Reservations, and is the mother of three children. She is also the Executive Director of Honor the Earth, where she works on a national level to advocate, raise public support, and create funding for frontline native environmental groups. A graduate of Harvard and Antioch Universities, Winona has written extensively on Native American and Environmental issues. She is a former board member of Greenpeace USA and serves, as co-chair of the Indigenous Women’s Network, a North American and Pacific indigenous women’s organization. In 1998, Ms. Magazine named her Woman of the Year for her work with Honor the Earth. Also in 1997, her first novel, “Last Standing Woman”, was published by Voyager Press. In 1999, South End Press published “All Our Relations”, a non-fiction book on Native environmental struggles.
7-9 pm Film Screening of Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action
One of the most critical but least known human rights stories in America is the savaging of Native American lands and its impact on Native peoples. Nearly all Indian nations sit on land threatened by ruinous environmental hazards – toxic waste, strip mining, oil drilling, and nuclear contamination. The realities that the tribes live with are bleak — children play near radioactive waste, rivers that tribes depend on for food are poisoned and reservations are completely surrounded by strip mines and smoke stacks spewing noxious fumes.
Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action, a ninety-minute documentary, is the first film to take a hard look at these realities. It tells the stories of five remarkable Native American activists in four communities who are fighting these “new Indian Wars” – each in his own way passionately dedicated to protecting Indian lands against disastrous environmental hazards, preserving their sovereignty and ensuring the cultural survival of their peoples. With the support of their communities, these leaders are actively rejecting the devastating affronts of multi-national energy companies and the current dismantling of 30 years of environmental laws.
Saturday, July 31, 2010:
Ojibwa Recreation Area Powwow Grounds in Baraga, MI
8:30 am Welcome: Four Thunders Drum
9-9:30am Opening Prayer & Remarks
9:30-10 am Keynote Speech by Winona LaDuke
10:15-12 pm Environmental Issues Facing the Great Lakes
• Lee Sprague, Little River Band of Ottawa Indians (Climate Change Adaptation Strategies)
• Jeff Gibbs (Biomass)
• Kathy Berry & Zak Nicholls (Sarnia’s Chemical Valley)
Kathy Berry has worked across the St. Clair River from Sarnia’s Chemical Valley for the last 10 years. Kathy began considering the cluster of petroleum refineries and chemical processing plants as more than just an eye sore during a major power outage in 2003. During the outage, the plants across the river had to burn off all of their fuel covering the entire sky with black smoke and raining ash down on the Domestic Violence Shelter where she works. Since then, Kathy has continued to study the adverse health effects that may be related to the effluent and emissions from the plants. A study of Aamjiwnaang, a First Nation reserve surrounded by the plants has shown an abnormal trend in the birth ratio of two female births to every male birth. Kathy has been working on a survey of the experience of Sarnia, ON, residents living in close proximity to the plants for the last year.
Zak has been involved with human rights agencies for nearly 20 years. He realizes that most human rights abuse stems from issues of environmental abuse, either poisoning of the land, or removal of the people, usually poor, who live on the land that corporations want. Locally, Zak became aware of the media slogan “No off site impact” nearly 8 years ago. ESSO (ExxonMobile) released a significant amount of Benzene. Zak had to evacuate his family in the middle of the night. There was no media mention of the event for days, and when ESSO finally admitted something had happened, they used their above mentioned slogan. They, and the rest of the oil/chemical companies use the slogan often. He believes that his efforts as a citizen to create open and accurate communication between ESSO and the south end of Sarnia are unique. He is also conducting a life survey of residents living next door to the oil and chemical companies, and again, this is unique for a private citizen in Sarnia.
12-1pm Lunch (On your own)
1-4:30 pm Presentations & Discussion on Mining in the U.P.
Featuring:
§ Al Gedicks, Professor-Activist at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse (WI Native-Environmental Alliances)
Al Gedicks is an environmental and indigenous rights activist and scholar. In 1977 he founded the Center for Alternative Mining Development Policy to assist Indian tribes and rural communities in the Lake Superior region in resisting ecologically destructive mining projects. He teaches sociology at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and is the author of Resource Rebels: Native Challenges to Mining and Oil Corporations.
§ Robert VanZile, Mole Lake Sokaogon Chippewa
§ Stuart Kirsch, Anthropologist at the University of Michigan (Indigenous Movements)
Stuart Kirsch is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan. He has carried out long-term fieldwork with the Yonggom or Muyu people, who are divided by the border between Papua New Guinea and West Papua, Indonesia. For many years, he collaborated with the Yonggom on their political campaign and legal struggle against the environmental impacts of the Ok Tedi mine. His research interests include corporations, indigenous movements, lost tribes, mining, political ecology, political violence, property, and ritual and myth. He is the author of Reverse anthropology: Indigenous analysis of social and environmental relations in New Guinea
§ Jim St. Arnold, Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission (Treaty Rights)
§ Charles Brumleve, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community Mining Specialist
§ Doreen Blaker, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community Cultural Committee
§ Cynthia Pryor & Chauncey Moran, Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve
§ Gabriel Caplett & Teresa Bertossi, Yellow Dog Summer
§ Charlotte Loonsfoot, Stand for the Land
Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College in Baraga, MI
5-6:45 pm Traditional Feast
7-10 pm Protect the Earth Concert featuring Joanne Shenandoah, Bobby Bullet, E. Halverson, Skip Jones
Wisconsin Folksinger Skip Jones (64) is a Grandfather, Storyteller and Educator. He and his family live on the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohicans reservation in Northeast Wisconsin near Bowler. In his own words, “My family is a his, hers, ours and a few kids in need, who drifted by and stayed kind of family.” The father to 8+ and Grandfather to 15+, Skip believes we have a responsibility to work to create a world where it is easier to be good… A world that is respectful and meaningful… A world at peace with justice for all… A world we can proudly leave for the 7th Generation. While not an easy task, it is one he feels we owe to life.
Sunday, August 1, 2010:
Yellow Dog Plains near Big Bay, MI
11 am Welcome & Picnic at the Yellow Dog River (bring your own)
12 pm Annual Walk to Eagle Rock
1 pm Speakers & Music
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I don’t know if I am in an ultra minority, but are most people not aware that the world is essentially run by one banking system that has virtually all countries of the world, the federal reserve, rio tinto, b/p, enbridge pipelines(oil spill downstate), adnauseum to determining our political candidates and out comes! Google SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN and yo will realize the extent of their power acquired since 1776.
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