News Coverage of Proposal to Utilize Solar Energy as Indian Country Economic Development

Here is the article. And a link to the law review article here.

An excerpt:

There are many ironies in the history of relations between the United States and its indigenous peoples, but one in particular may be a telling illustration of the distribution of power.

Flip on a light switch in any of the great cities of the Southwest, such as Los Angeles, Las Vegas or Phoenix, and much of the time the energy that creates the light will be coming from one of four massive coal-burning electrical plants located on or a few miles from Navajo Nation land in Arizona and New Mexico.

The plants are critically important employers for members of the Navajo and Hopi tribes, about 40 percent of whom live below the poverty line.

The irony is that as many as 20,000 Navajo and Hopi families, surrounded on the south, east and west by power plants that deliver electricity to brightly lit cities hundreds of miles away, don’t have access to the electricity grid themselves.

Seven decades after the Tennessee Valley Authority brought electricity to the rural South, a significant population in the U.S. – estimated at 14 percent of Indian homes on U.S. reservations – has yet to experience a crucial advantage of 20th-century life.

Ryan Dreveskracht believes that solar power may be a way to change that.

 

Squaxin Island: 4th Annual Tribal Water Rights Conference – Climate Change: Impacts to Water, Fish, Cultures, Economies, and Rights

4th Annual Tribal Water Rights Conference – Climate Change: Impacts to Water, Fish, Cultures, Economies, and Rights

When:  October 24-25, 2007

Where:  Squaxin Island Tribe’s Little Creek Casino Resort, Shelton

Agenda and Registration:  http://www.wateradvocacy.org

The Center for Water Advocacy, the Squaxin Island Tribe, and the Indian Law Sections of the Washington and Oregon State Bars are sponsoring the Fourth Annual Northwest Tribal Water Rights Conference to take place at the Squaxin Island Tribe’s Little Creek Casino Resort in Shelton. The conference will address a broad range of areas relating to the impact of climate change on the reduction of stream flows and how such reductions impact tribal interests in the Pacific Northwest.

With your participation, we expect to create a regional dialogue to address an urgent need communicated by tribes to become more united in confronting global warming and protecting tribal fisheries, instream flows, treaty rights, and water quality. This year, we will focus not only on recent information suggesting that climate change is proceeding more rapidly than anticipated, but also on strategies for addressing these issues.

As part of the conference, please join us for a reception and complimentary refreshments hosted by the Squaxin Island Tribe on Wednesday, October 24, at the Squaxin Island Museum Library and Research Center in Shelton from 5:00-7:00 pm. We have invited Winona LaDuke, executive director of Honor the Earth, to be our special guest at the reception.

For questions regarding the conference, please contact: Terry Shepherd, conference coordinator, nepatalk@uci.net or 970-420-9148.

Cost:  $275

Approved for 9.5 CLE credits (includes 1.0 ethics)