Year: 2022

NorCal: Urgent Call for Statewide Support for Threatened Coastal Forests & Tribal Sovereignty

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cross-posted from Save Jackson Forest

Urgent Call for Statewide Support for Threatened Coastal Forests & Tribal Sovereignty

Please join The Coalition to Save Jackson at a  “30×30” Kick Off Rally on September 28th, 2022! The rally begins at 11 am, outside of the California Natural Resources Agency’s 30×30 Kick Off Event at 715 P St, Sacramento, CA 95814.

Our Coalition is supporting the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians as they negotiate co-management of the Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF) in their Pomo homelands. Establishing co-management and ending commercial logging in Jackson, the largest state-owned forest, are necessary if California is to enact the goals of reconciliation with Tribal people and reach its 30×30 goal of preserving lands to slow climate change. Governor Newsom established the 30×30 goal of protecting 30% of the state’s lands and waters by 2030. Scientists have advocated a similar global goal, in the face of accelerating climate change and declines in global biodiversity.

Supporting this campaign has statewide impacts because the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians is negotiating with the State based on Governor Newsom’s little-publicized directive to state agencies to co-manage lands with the Tribes of California. What happens in Pomo Homelands can affect Tribal co-management in all of California. Please join us!

Tribal Chairman Michael Hunter said “For co-management to succeed, it must be a government to government relationship that creates equal decision making powers. I worry that the State does not understand the importance of the words they are using. We must ensure that co-management creates an equal relationship between the State and the Tribes with equal decision making authority.” At the rally we are going to amplify Tribal Elder Priscilla Hunter’s call for “No More Broken Promises” because, after halting logging, road building, and pesticide operations for seven months during negotiations with the Tribe, CalFire and CNRA are attempting to resume these operations before negotiations with the Tribe are complete.

The Tribe and Coalition protest that the State is desecrating Pomo and Coast Yuki Sacred Sites and cultural resources with their logging operations in JDSF. Furthermore, the State is squandering one of its best tools for fighting climate change by logging mature coast redwoods. “Redwood forests have amazing climate mitigation potential and management needs to maximize that potential,” said Sara Rose, a youth activist with Mendocino County Youth for Climate and member of the Coalition. “My generation will have to live with what the planet becomes if we don’t save it. We have to face the reality of climate change.”

Please join us in Sacramento, please share this call for support, and please send us your organization’s  logo if you support the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians and the Coalition to Save Jackson in this campaign. If your organization can write a letter supporting our campaign, thank you. Please click here to sign a petition to shame CAL FIRE’s deception and protest logging in Jackson Demonstration State Forest! For more on this campaign read this background info, check out Savejackson.org, follow @savejacksoncoalition on Instagram, and like Coalition to Save Jackson The People’s Forest on Facebook!

Logos, questions and RSVPs can be emailed to Showing Up for Racial Justice Mendo Coast chapter, a member of the Coalition to Save Jackson: surjmendocoast@gmail.com

You can register for the State’s 30×30 event for free here if you would like to go inside the event and make your presence known.  Our rally will be outside the event.

 

Railway Blockade on Unceded Nitassinan (Saguenay)

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cross-posted from Montreal Counter-Information

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Wednesday evening, a collective of Indigenous and settler activists blocked the Roberval-Saguenay railroad belonging to the multinational corporation Rio Tinto in solidarity with the National Committee for First Peoples’ Rights which is paralyzing for a third consecutive day the railroad line located at the border of Labrador and Schefferville, which is used by the mining company Tata Steel. The solidarity blockade lasted one hour. These actions have the objective of reminding the governments that the members of the Indigenous communities in this country will no longer accept any compromises regarding criminal acts committed against them.

The band councils of Uashat mak Mani-utenam (ITUM) and Matimekush-Lac John are suspected of having obtained the majority of electoral votes through corruption, fraud, extortion, and breach of trust. The alleged acts took place between 2019 and 2022 and involved nearly $1.8 million in bribes and favors of various kinds. In the official complaint formulated to the Sûreté du Québec by the First Peoples’ Rights Committee, a list of evidence coming directly from ITUM’s accounting system shows that there were, without the knowledge of the members, approximately 325 billing payments from registrants for an approximate amount of $1,780,000. This amount would be the result of a contract signed with the mining company IOC Rio-Tinto in 2020, in which Chief Mike McKenzie’s team would have hidden the legal meaning of the numerous clauses of this agreement from the members, which would have had the effect of giving away, in an exclusive manner and without any time limit, all future rights to decision-making about exploitation of natural resources on the unceded Great Nitassinan, the territory of the Innuat people!

Today’s action by the collective in Saguenay is a reminder that the Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOC) and the band councils, which are nothing more than organizations of colonial assimilation set up by the federal government, are not masters of unceded Nitassinan. Agreements signed illegally, by extortion, without the consent of the entire Innuat people, will never again be tolerated. The mining companies have been destroying and polluting the territory of the Innuat for several decades. Our action is a direct act of ancestral sovereignty of the First Peoples. We have been perpetuating this ancestral governance for thousands of years. We are also acting for future generations to leave them a healthy land and to perpetuate our ancestral rights, our sacred relationship with Assi (the Earth) and all living beings. Enough is enough! Today we are acting in the name of a movement by Indigenous people and their allies, to denounce these criminal acts sanctioned by the Canadian and Quebec courts. We call for the multiplication of solidarity actions in relation to this struggle.

Documentary: “STOP COP CITY: Atlanta’s Militant Forest Defenders”

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cross-posted from Rose Warfare

Rad new documentary out about the Atlanta Forest Defense campaign:

“STOP COP CITY is about the militant occupation of Atlanta’s South River Forest. For over a year, a coalition of militant anarchists, community organizers, and eco-activists have been resisting police and contractors to halt the deforestation of hundreds of acres of urban forest.”

Six arrested in Sacramento while protesting JDSF logging

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Six people were arrested while protesting logging of Jackson Demonstration State Forest in Sacramento, where more than 50 reportedly rallied. (Roslyn Moore)

cross-posted from the Mendocino Voice

SACRAMENTO, CA, 8/31/22 — A coalition of Mendocino County activists and allies rallied in the state capital on Tuesday, where six were arrested after blocking the doors to the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) headquarters.

This was the culmination of a week of actions to “Save Jackson Forest,” which kicked off when Cal Fire announced that it would resume logging on open timber harvest plans (THPs) last week with some modifications to those plans, including a pause on cutting larger trees. The announcement came shortly after CNRA debuted a vision for tribal co-management of Mendocino County’s Jackson Demonstration State Forest, a 48,652-acre redwood forest and the site of Pomo ancestral lands. Michael Hunter, chair of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, said last week that the tribe was not consulted or notified ahead of time about the resumption of logging.

Over 50 people rallied in Sacramento on Tuesday afternoon to call for recognition of Pomo tribal sovereignty and for a pause on logging to return. Andy Wellspring, a member of the Coalition to Save Jackson State Forest, told The Mendocino Voice that no one from CNRA emerged to negotiate with activists on Tuesday.

In a phone conversation with The Voice, California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said he was “optimistic” about future management for the forest and “proud of the level of engagement and collaboration” his office has had with Hunter thus far.

“Our interest is in partnerships with all tribes that have the Jackson Forest as ancestral lands, which obviously is numerous tribal governments and communities,” Crowfoot said. “And my understanding is that both in recent weeks and recent days, there has been a lot of interaction with the Coyote Valley tribe about modifications to the timber harvest.”

He also said he feels Cal Fire’s pause on additional THP development while updates to the management plan take place is “really important and meaningful” — but that he feels work should continue on the four THPs that had been paused for about eight months.

“We do have these [existing THPs] that were already approved, went through a public process, were already started, and that local businesses and workers have been counting on,” he said. “We do think it’s appropriate for the already approved, already underway THPs to be completed. And we look forward to really intense work to update the management plan so that future THPs reflect this more modern vision of the forest that takes into account, in a more robust way, ecological restoration and climate science and tribal collaboration.”

But activists understood that a pause would be in place for the duration of negotiations — and have emphasized this point with a refrain of “no more broken promises.” Those protesting in the “Save Jackson Forest” rallies hope for an eventual moratorium on logging in the forest.

Naomi Wagner was among those arrested on Tuesday. (photo submitted by Roslyn Moore)

“Crowfoot needs to keep his promise,” said Anna Marie Stenberg, one of the Mendocino County residents arrested. “He said logging operations would be paused while he was negotiating with the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians. Why is Cal Fire ending the pause?”

The six people arrested at CNRA headquarters were members of Redwood Nation Earth First! who sat in front of the door and linked arms for around two hours beginning at 1 p.m., Wellspring said. Larry Aguilera, Naomi Wagner, Tom Shaver, Stenberg, Marggie Chandler, and Polly Girvin were charged with misdemeanors — failure to disperse, failure to obey a lawful order, and blocking a public egress — and were let go from the police station after receiving citations, for which they’ll appear in court.

“Being a Native American, I can sympathize with the Pomos, because this is their land,” Aguilera, a member of the Miwok tribe who moved to Willits about five years ago, told The Voice. “Wherever I go, I like to acknowledge whose land I’m standing on. … I realize how important sacred sites are.”

A news release from the Coalition described those arrested as “movement elders”; Girvin, a longtime activist in our area, saw the action as an important model for future generations.

“I went to jail today for my great grandchildren Daniel, Courtney, Chloee and Cambree,” Girvin said. “They are members of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians and great grandchildren of Priscilla Hunter. I want them to remember that their auntie stood up for their future, so they can be out there in the forest gathering basket materials, gathering medicine, and learning about all the plants. I am a role model for Pomo youth, and that is why I took a stand today.”

At a Jackson Forest Advisory Group meeting earlier this month, State Forests Program Manager Kevin Conway told The Voice that Cal Fire hopes to host the first public comment period regarding the new management plan as soon as this winter. Crowfoot said he hopes the public will be involved in that development process.

“We’re hopeful that this effort to update the management plan really takes into account all of these perspectives,” he said. “We’re very much committed to really better understanding everyone’s perspective and concerns.”

Here’s our coverage on recent happenings around Jackson: