3 Burst results for "Department Of The Interior"
Native America Calling
"department interior" Discussed on Native America Calling
"If you are aged 45 years or older, it may be time to talk with the healthcare professional about colon cancer screening, Medicare, Medicaid and the marketplace have you covered for more information, visit healthcare dot gov or call 803 one 8 two 5 9 6. A message from the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services. Thanks for tuning in to native America calling. I'm Sean spruce. We're getting an update on the push to name more than 700 square miles of land in Nevada, a national monument. President Biden promised to put of equal may under federal monument protection. However, just last week he postponed a chance to follow through. Do you have a comment or question about today's show? Are you concerned with the delay regarding federal protections for a week will may might mean? Give us a call at one 809 9 6 two 8 four 8 one 809 9 6 two 8 four 8. Our phone lines are open. We've got Taylor Patterson on the line in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she's the executive director of the native voter alliance of Nevada and Taylor before break you were talking a little bit about the uniqueness of Nevada tribes and with regard to this coast stewardship model. Please continue your what you were saying. Yeah, absolutely. So what I was drawing the comparison to is we have a lot smaller tribes in Nevada and frankly are just under resourced to completely manage a big parcel of land like and so what I was talking about before with all of the tribes that have been involved in this project, it really takes a lot of tribes to put work into this to be able to even get the federal designation, let alone to have complete post stewardship over these parcels of land. And so my point while long winded is that we're smaller tribes out here and it's going to take a lot of us to really be able to band together and get this project done. And so we've seen that with E. coli and the entire process of getting everybody that has ancestral ties involved in this. Also on the show today is Alan O'Neill at former National Park Service superintendent. Alan, do you see any drawbacks to national monument status with regard to tribal lands such as of equal me? No, I don't. Obviously, we see this as an opportunity to have the tribes playing a much larger role in planning and stewardship of this area. But I think the national monument designation was the right vehicle because it provides permanent protection and this is something that tries to an interested in a long time. This is their ancestral lands and it's important that we have that they play a large role in how this is eventually stewarded. This is an important cultural historic landscape, but it's also a very important ecological landscape. This is probably the best this is the best desert tortoise habitat. We have anywhere in Nevada, but as important as it does or tortoises, there's also 50 other plant and animal species that are listed as a special status because there's some concern, but their conservation over long-term. So having that concentration of special status species and this landscape is important that they be protected. That's also the eastern terminus of the world's largest Joshua tree force. In fact, the largest Joshua tree in Nevada is found within this landscape and unusual for the Mojave desert. This is a very unique grasslands, which are usually find in the Mojave desert. So there's like 28 species of native grasses that are in here and very significant for measure. I can't recall any place within the Mojave desert doesn't have these kinds of grasslands. So in addition, this is important for bighorn cheap migration. They move back and forth between these mountains. An important birding area, this area is actually by Audubon as an important birding area. So Jason to the Pacific flyway coming up the Colorado River system, but it also has an unusual combination of bird some of which are more common in the sonoran desert. So in terms of raptor species, there's like 28, 18 different raptor species here. It's also Harry has one of the highest concentrations of goal and eagles anywhere in the states. So, you know, from an ecological and cultural standpoint, this is an incredible landscape, but also for resources like dark knight sky and natural quiet and the visual resource this landscape does offer the opportunity to protect some of The Dark Knight sky and kind of the rural lifestyle here. And Alan, if you could share what was the most pressing threat to me, which makes these protections so valuable. Well, it was in gesture development. Primarily wind development. And some solar. There are two really bad wind projects, a searchlight wind project, followed by which was actually a suit brought by private landowner in here and prevailed against BLM and the courts canceled that project. And then the Crescent peak wind project, which was a devastating wind project in terms of here. It created an industrial island surrounded by area that we worked decades trying to protect and that particular project had like 200 over 200 wind turbines, about 700 feet high with about 20 miles of ridge line. So that would have forever changed us landscape. And so when the department interior and December of 2000 18 cancel that Crescent peak wind project, that was kind of a wake up call that we better get our act together here and determine what it is we want to do collectively to protect us landscape or we're going to we're going to be fighting the next bad project and we're all supportive of renewable energy, but like Taylor said it's it depends upon location. We're possible place you could put. Okay. Yeah, and along those lines with regard to location. I mean, what does this mean for the energy supply without a wind farm at this location of equa may? Are there any alternatives for those projects to still provide renewable energy?
Native America Calling
"department interior" Discussed on Native America Calling
"National native news is produced by quantic broadcast corporation with funding by the corporation for public broadcasting. Support by sinofsky chambers law, championing tribal sovereignty and Native American rights since 1976 from opioids litigation to treaty rights to tribal self governance, with offices in Washington, D.C., New Mexico, California, and Alaska. Sinofsky chambers law. Support by vision maker media, envisioning a world changed and healed by understanding native stories in the public conversations they generate. 45 plus years of native stories and indigenous knowledge through film and media can be found at vision maker media dot org. Native voice one the Native American radio network. This is native America calling. I'm Sean spruce. Hope rose briefly when The White House announced president Joe Biden would fly to Nevada and formally dedicate 450,000 acres into the aviko may national monument. The administration abruptly canceled that trip, tribes and others say they await further communication from The White House and department of interior on what happens next. Biden has promised the national monument status for the area that at least a dozen tribes consider sacred. Much of the land is already controlled by the bureau of land management. A monument designation will add additional protections while preserving tribal access for cultural and spiritual reasons. the importance of the aviko meland and the work that's been done to gain federal protection. We want to hear from you. What do you think about working together with the federal government to protect important land? Give us a call at one 809 9 6 two 8 four 8. That's one 809 9 native. Joining us now from Las Vegas, Nevada is Taylor Patterson. She's the executive director of the native voter alliance of Nevada. She's bishop paiute, Taylor, welcome back to native America calling. Thank you so much, Sean. Good morning. And I'm so excited to be here. Good morning to you as well, Taylor. And joining us from Henderson, Nevada, is Alan O'Neill. He's the adviser for the national parks conservation association, founder of get outdoors, Nevada, and a former National Park Service superintendent. Alan, welcome to native America calling. Thank you so much, John. It's a real pleasure to be here. Taylor, this postponement of the national monument dedication. What do you know about the delay and how concerning is it to you? It's definitely disappointing. So this past Friday, march 10th was actually a hundred days since President Biden announced at The White House tribal summit, his intention to designate. So I'm definitely disappointed, you know, we had this big high moment of excitement when news broke and a bunch of leaks happen that the president would be coming out to Las Vegas and would be finally designating the monument. Once we had also learned that those plans had been walked back, it was very disappointing. So I'm just hoping that we can get it soon. And to my knowledge, there's no big issue or I know that was the question on a lot of people's minds was, oh no, is this putting the monument at risk? Is there an issue? Is this not going to be designated moving forward? But I still remain really hopeful that things are going forward as planned. It was just a scheduling issue. Alan, same question to you. I know it's been a few years since you've been personally involved, but how do you feel now that the president is so much closer to designating of equal May as a national monument? Well, we're excited. This will have been a long process. We started this process, I would say, back in the late 1990s, when we were working to get spirit mountain itself designated as a traditional cultural property. And we've been through long process to try and get this landscape protected, fighting really bad industrial level projects in this landscape and our efforts to really work on the national monument started and. Three years ago when the department interior canceled the Crescent peak wind project we got together and decided that if we didn't do anything quickly, we're going to lose us landscape to industrial development, which forever changed the character of this because there's a lot of work over the years that have been done to protect part of the Mojave landscape on the California side with the Mojave national preserve and the Mojave trails national monument and the castle mountains national monument. But that same level of protection wasn't done on the Nevada side over the years. So we even though some of this lot of this landscape was overlaid with area of critical environmental concern to protect the desert, tortoise that was an administrative determination that could be changed by future administrations and sets. So we wanted to have permanent protection. So this effort started in earnest I would say in about march of 2000 and 19 so about three years ago, Taylor, until recently, tribes have been a little bit weary of partnering with the federal government and protecting sacred lands. Can you tell us, what are the advantages and disadvantages that come with this? So of course, I completely understand that weariness and sort of the hesitation because so often we've had issues in the past working with the federal government. I don't need to tell Indian countries how rough it's been for us with the federal government. But when you're looking at a place specifically like Nevada, where we're over 85% public lands, most of the lands that we held sacred are not in tribal control. They're not land that we already have access to nor is Atlanta that we are able to either buy back or to get sovereignty over. So working with the federal government is essential in putting us back into that process and putting tribal leadership back into the conversation. I think it can be really dependent to on the agency you're working with. I know everybody has a different experience in Nevada. We really heavily work with bureau of land management and I know for a lot of the tribes I speak with that are on both sides of the border, whether that's California, Nevada, Arizona, Nevada, you know, we have a lot of tribes that are in both states all over the border of Nevada, the difference in BLM can really vary depending on which side of the border you're on. So it's a process that can be really tough, but I think what's important is that we're the federal government and agencies are getting better at consultation. Is there leaps and bounds that they have to go? Absolutely. But the more we push to work with them, the more they're going to get better at it. And so I think it's a good process. I think we can still grow a lot and I know at the federal level, there's been an effort placed on consultation and going into meaningful consultation. I also know that the state of Nevada has worked at the state legislature level to try to strengthen that Bond. But I know all of the states surrounding us have been working on that process as well. I think some of the issue that occurs when working with the federal government is really
AP 24 Hour News
What Deb Haaland's historic confirmation means to Native Americans
"40 vote confirms to Mexico congresswoman Deb Holland as interior secretary, making her the first Native American to lead a Cabinet department and the first to lead the federal agency that is wielded influence over the nations tribes for nearly two centuries. Democrats and tribal groups hailed her confirmation as historic, saying the selection means that indigenous people will for the first time see a Native American lead the powerful department. Interior also oversees a host of other issues, including energy development on public lands and waters, national parks and endangered species. Two