provocatoria:

digatisdi:

BY TODD CROW
Reporter

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – State Sen. Greg Treat has authored a bill calling for the exclusion of federally recognized tribes from the state’s environmental policymaking process.

As of March 27, the bill had passed through the Senate and was in the House of Representatives.

As an amendment to existing legislature, the primary change included in Senate Bill 1050 is the word “tribal” being removed. For example, “An electric utility subject to rate regulation by the Corporation Commission may file an application seeking Commission authorization of a plan by the utility to make capital expenditures for equipment or facilities necessary to comply with…federal, state, local or tribal environmental requirements which apply to generation facilities.”

Treat told The Oklahoman the bill would do “nothing to prohibit the tribes from having input in environmental policies.”

“The law still allows consultation,” Treat said, “it just does not allow tribal laws to be considered by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission to increase cost on ratepayers, or tribes to block the construction or upgrades to a refinery.”

Treat also said the Environmental Protection Agency has a “liberal agenda,” and is using the tribes “as a vehicle” to expand its power.

Read the rest at CherokeePhoenix.com

Greg Treat telling folks “We’re not stabbing you in the back, but we are going to press this knife into your spine.”

Makes total sense  -_-

ayiman:

The central mystery of Jamestown is why the badly led, often starving colonists were eventually able to prevail over the bigger, better-organized forces of the Powhatan empire. In other parts of the Americas, colonizers had their way smoothed for them, so to speak, because they landed in places that already had been devastated by Eurasian illnesses like smallpox, measles, and typhoid—diseases that had not existed in the Americas. When the Pilgrims came to Massachusetts in 1620, for instance, they established Plymouth village literally on top of an Indian village that had been emptied two years before by an epidemic (apparently spread by survivors of a French vessel that shipwrecked on Cape Cod). In Virginia, despite previous contact with Europeans, the Powhatan had somehow avoided any epidemics and were going strong when the Jamestown colonists arrived. Yet by the late 17th century, the Powhatan too had lost control of their land. What happened?

One answer emerging points to what historian Alfred Crosby calls “ecological imperialism.” The tassantassas replaced or degraded so much of the native ecosystem that they made it harder and harder for the Indians to survive in their native lands. As the colonists bitterly came to realize that Virginia had no gold and that the Indians weren’t going to selflessly provide them with all the food they needed, they began to mold the land to their needs. Unable to adapt to this foreign landscape, they transformed it into a place they could understand. In doing so, they unleashed what would become a multilevel ecological assault on North America. Their unlikely weapons in this initial phase of the campaign: tobacco, honeybees, and domestic animals.

Awesome article.

Earthworms? earthworms.

Wow. I’m gonna have to read this. Definitely not what they teach you when you got to Jamestown, that’s for sure.

(Source: azspot, via adailyriot)