1676
Green & indigenous News
125 readers
66 users here now
A community for Green & indigenous news!
founded 1 month ago
MODERATORS
1677
Amelia Schafer
ICT
RAPID CITY, South Dakota – A three-day trial over whether or not NDN Collective founder and chief executive officer Nicholas Tilsen had committed aggravated assault against a law enforcement officer in 2022 resulted in a mistrial.
The 12-person jury was unable to come to a unanimous decision on Tilsen’s three charges after deliberating for nearly six hours Wednesday afternoon. At 8:20 p.m. Mountain Time, a spokesperson from the Pennington County States Attorney’s office reported a hung jury resulting in a mistrial.
The State of South Dakota will have to decide whether to dismiss the charges against Tilsen or retry the case.
The state will be discussing matters over the next few days and come to a decision, the spokesperson said.
“I’m grateful for everyone who stood with me through the latest iteration of this lengthy legal battle – the support of my family, lawyers, spiritual leaders, medicine people, and community means everything to me,” Tilsen stated in a news release. “The fight is not over.”
Tilsen was charged with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer and obstruction of law enforcement stemming from a 2022 incident in downtown Rapid City. The jury also had the option of finding Tilsen guilty of simple assault, rather than aggravated, if they felt his vehicle did not constitute a deadly weapon.
Tilsen took the stand Wednesday morning to recount his side of the story in a trial that has drawn dozens of elders and community members to the courthouse from across South Dakota and neighboring states.
Tilsen said that on June 11, 2022, he was driving back to NDN Collective headquarters where he was staying overnight following his son’s birthday party on the west side of Rapid City. At the time, Tilsen was living over an hour away on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
While driving down St. Joseph’s Street in downtown Rapid City, Tilsen testified that he saw a police officer speaking with a Native American man whom Tilsen said appeared to be homeless. The officer, Nicholas Glass, was conversing with the man at the intersection of St. Joseph’s and Seventh Street on the west side of the Rushmore Pawn building.
Tilsen, who said he intended to monitor Glass’s interaction with the man, circled the block until he drove northbound on Seventh Street, approaching a vacant parking space where the two men were speaking. Glass was standing inside or near the furthest left parking spot on the row and the Native man was standing on the curb, leaning on a parking meter, Tilsen told jurors.
Supporters of Nick Tilsen gather at NDN Collective Headquarters in Rapid City on Jan. 26 for a prayer circle following the first day of his criminal assault trial. Credit: Courtesy of NDN Collective
Tilsen, who said he was unable to see where the officer was standing as his view was blocked by several parked vehicles, began to turn right into the parking spot. Not fully in the spot, Tilsen applied his vehicle’s brakes.
Glass, who had his back turned toward the street facing the pawn shop and the Native man, said he did not know Tilsen was behind him until he heard his engine rev, Glass testified Tuesday.
The Native man can be heard in Glass’s body camera video saying “Look out, you’re gonna get hit by a truck.”
Glass turned to face Tilsen for a second before turning back toward the man.
“I’m not moving,” Glass said in the recording played for the courtroom several times throughout the trial.
Tilsen said he took Glass’s lack of reaction as an indication that it was okay for him to continue to pull into the parking spot.
The video showed that after Glass turned away from Tilsen, Tilsen’s vehicle can be seen abruptly jolting forward slightly to the right of Glass, stopping within one to two feet of his body. While surveillance and body-cam footage showed Tilsen’s vehicle tires pointed right, away from the officer, the state argued that as the charge wasn’t attempted assault but rather the intention of instilling fear, and that it didn’t matter which direction he was moving.
Tilsen testified on Wednesday that he was “surprised” by how his truck, a 2016 Dodge Ram Rebel, abruptly jolted forward.
“It had a little more juice than I expected,” he said.
The lurching/accelerating aspect of the incident was indicated by the state as being the grounds for Tilsen’s assault charge.
Afterwards, Glass radioed for backup and said that he had Tilsen at the scene. Within seconds, several officers arrived on scene, all of whom testified throughout the trial as to what they had seen.
“I thought I was going to die,” Glass testified Tuesday.
The officers testified that Tilsen was let go from the scene that night so as not to cause a scene as a small crowd had begun to gather. Tilsen had refused to exit his truck when law enforcement requested him to, saying he was afraid for his life.
“I felt alarmed,” Tilsen said. “I was surrounded by three officers who were all armed. I was definitely in fear of what could happen. We hear a lot of things in our community [about police violence].”
The state said that the jury could find his refusal to exit his vehicle as grounds for the obstruction charge.
Under South Dakota law, attempting to put an officer in fear of bodily injury can be charged as assault. The aggravated assault charge hinged on whether or not the jury felt Tilsen’s vehicle constituted a deadly weapon. If the jury found that his vehicle did not constitute a deadly weapon, but found that Tilsen had intentionally put the officer in fear of bodily injury regardless, he could be found guilty of simple assault.
Both Tilsen and Glass’s character, truthfulness and overall recollection of the incident were called into question during cross-examination.
During Glass’s testimony, defense attorneys questioned why he stopped the Native man in the first place. Glass had previously testified under oath during a June 2025 evidentiary hearing that the man was jaywalking and “darting in and out of traffic” on Seventh Street, during which he was nearly hit by a vehicle.
The defense, however, pointed out that a surveillance video from the Rushmore Pawn shop showed the man crossing the street within the crosswalk when it was safe to do so. Defense pointed to the incident as giving credit to Tilsen’s claim that he feared the man was being harassed by law enforcement.
Defense also questioned why Glass was seen telling the responding officers that he had to “jump out of the way” of Tilsen’s vehicle, when surveillance footage does not indicate he moved at all prior to walking in front of Tilsen’s vehicle to document the license plate.
Lakota grandmothers and aunties gather outside of the courtroom prior to the first day of Nick Tilsen’s criminal assault trial in Rapid City on Jan. 26. Tilsen was charged with aggravated assault against a law enforcement officer stemming from an incident in 2022. Credit: Courtesy of NDN Collective
During Tilsen’s cross-examination, the state questioned his feelings regarding law enforcement and why he told responding officers at the scene that he witnessed Glass harassing the Native man when he had not.
Olivia Siglin, prosecutor and senior deputy states attorney for the Pennington County State’s Attorney’s Office, questioned Tilsen on his fundraising efforts relating to his legal battle with the state and recent appearance on NDN Collective’s “LANDBACK For the People” podcast in which he told a different account of the incident than the one he had provided in his testimony.
The podcast, which was played for the jury, depicts Tilsen stating in the podcast that he had a conversation with Glass and had directly witnessed him harassing the man. Siglin then questioned Tilsen on why he told a different story in his testimony, to which Tilsen responded that he and Glass had exchanged words and perhaps he misspoke when he said he directly witnessed harassment.
Tilsen also said the podcast was recorded two weeks ago before he was able to review surveillance footage.
During closing arguments Wednesday afternoon, Siglin accused Tilsen of painting a false narrative about the incident in order to garner sympathy and donations from the community and “save face.” Siglin showed the jury NDN Collective’s legal fund website, referencing the first two sentences of Tilsen’s legal fund call to action.
The website claims that Tilsen had witnessed the Native man being harassed and assaulted by Rapid City Police Department, prompting Tilsen to pull over and watch. Tilsen said that he himself did not write the statement.
“He knew the truth wouldn’t earn him sympathies or donations, so he rewrote it,” Siglin said during closing arguments. “What were his motivations in making that statement?”
John Murphy, one of Tilsen’s attorneys, said during closing statements that a majority of the state’s argument hinged on Glass’s feelings during the incident rather than the actual facts. Murphy said this lack of facts prompted the addition of the state’s simple assault charge on Jan. 7.
“This case is about facts, not feelings,” he said. “That’s the cold hard truth, that’s the reality.”
Murphy argued that the state had not provided sufficient evidence of Tilsen’s actual intent or that he had purposely threatened or instilled fear in Glass.
“As you saw repeatedly from the videos… Officer Glass did not move an inch to avoid being hit,” he said. “Why not? Because my client had turned the steering wheel steeply to the right.”
As the incident occurred nearly four years ago, both said their memories of the night’s events were not perfect. Both also commented that the footage presented in court was not a full depiction of the events, particularly the pawn shop footage.
The pawn shop video, taken at a downward angle, was difficult for numerous witnesses to decipher when asked to do so by attorneys.
One witness, Michael Dvoryak, a bystander who witnessed the incident, couldn’t point himself out in the footage until he saw someone moving toward Tilsen’s truck and yelling, at which point Dvoryak said, “Well, that must be me.”
Dvoryak testified he had just exited a bar downtown and was walking home when he witnessed the incident, prompting him to run over to Tilsen’s truck and “intervene.”
The Native man at the center of the dispute was not present for the trial. The Pennington County State’s Attorney’s Office did subpoena him but were unable to locate him, a spokesperson told ICT.
After the interaction, Glass testified that the man was taken to a detox facility. A video of the man being taken into the facility by Glass was entered as evidence but ultimately barred from being presented to the jury.
The post NDN Collective founder’s trial ends with hung jury, judge declares mistrial appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
1679
Darren Thompson
Special to ICT
MESA, Arizona — More than a hundred people gathered at an intersection on Sunday evening to acknowledge 14-year-old Emily Pike’s disappearance one year ago. It was the last place she was seen.
“What we have here means something, not just to us, but to her family, her siblings,” said Jared Marquez, a missing and murdered Indigenous people advocate, at the Jan. 25 vigil. “Not only do we honor the love we have as a community for this girl to the family and her siblings, but we seek justice.
“May we pray here today and hope that fear leaves the body of the person who knows something and let them come forward,” Marquez said.
Pike went missing on January 27, 2025. Her body was found by hikers on February 14, 2025, off Highway 60, near her home community of the San Carlos Apache in Globe, Arizona, more than a 100 miles away from Mesa.
Her death has been investigated as a homicide, but her death remains unsolved. Federal investigators are offering a $200,000 reward for an arrest related to Pike’s death.
Pike’s siblings and family attended the candlelight vigil at the intersection of Mesa Drive and McKellips Road, where she was last seen and not far from the group home she ran away from.
Her disappearance sheds light on the already strained state-funded and managed behavioral health system that has defrauded the state more than $2.8 billion while targeting members of federally recognized tribes from beyond the state of Arizona.
Earlier this month, Pike’s memorial items were removed from the northwest intersection and placed in the trash, but her supporters quickly replaced the site with flowers, signs, balloons, and candles honoring her memory. Several reports indicate that the city of Mesa did not remove her memorial and that a private owner of the vacant lot removed them without not knowing.
A group of Indigenous women sang at a candlelight vigil in honor of Emily Pike on January 25, 2026, where she was last seen at the intersection of Mesa Drive and McKellips Road on January 27, 2025. Credit: Darren Thompson/Special to ICT
There are formal efforts to memorialize Pike though.
A memorial will be added to Fitch Park in Mesa this year and will include a bench and a tree planted in Emily Pike’s honor. An Arizona Department of Transportation highway memorial sign will be erected at milepost 277, north of Gila County Highway 60, near where her body was found.
Several groups of people, including men, women, and youth sang traditional songs to honor Pike. Her story has inspired many and people from various walks of life joined to honor her life.
“She was in the midst of her childhood and you know, still trying to understand what it means to be here, what her purpose is,” said Gabriel Garcia, Tohono O’odham Nation, who sang a traditional O’odham song. “She didn’t get the same family treatment that other kids get. And this is something that all children should be able to experience. The goodness of understanding who they are, where they come from, embracing who they are and where they want.”
He sang about his O’odham ancestors planting crops, and having to nurture each seed so that one day that seed matures and can feed the next generation.
“I wanted to share that song because that’s what I want all of our young ones to experience,” Garcia said. “I want them to be able to have the opportunity to learn what it is, to live life, and understand our role in this life.”
After Emily’s death, the state legislature passed a statewide alert system, called the “Turquoise Alert” and is also known as Emily’s Law. The alert system is similar to other alert systems and is used for at-risk individuals from Indigenous communities whose circumstances do not fit Amber or Silver alert criteria.
An investigative law enforcement agency may request a Turquoise Alert when specific criteria are met, and as established in the statute.
They include when all five of the following criteria:
-
a person who is reported missing must be under the age of 65;
-
the law enforcement agency leading the investigation must have used all available local resources;
-
the person reported missing must have gone under unexplained or suspicious circumstances;
-
belief that the missing person is in danger, in the company of a dangerous person, or that there are other factors indicating that a person is in danger and;
-
there is belief that if a person’s missing is shared with the public that the public can assist in the safe recovery of a missing person.
However, its effectiveness was questioned when last weekend an 8-year-old girl on the Navajo Nation named Maleeka “Mollie” Boone was found dead within 24 hours of being reported missing on Jan. 15.
Many in northern Arizona said they never received the alert that authorities say was issued on the morning of Jan. 16. Her body was later found that afternoon, and there have been no arrests made in connection with her death.
Justine Robertson, White Mountain Apache Tribe, is raising Pike’s other siblings and told ICT, “Everyone has to keep an eye on their kids — that’s the main thing. Awareness that our children can go missing is one thing, and unity and coming together as a community is another thing.”
Kris Dosela, Gila River Indian Community and San Carlos Apache, is the brother of Pike’s mother, Stephanie Dosela, and said at the conclusion of the vigil that typically communities do not gather to sing songs for someone who has passed on.
“This is a different time, so you need that strength, strength that comes with these songs to help, and her justice has not been delivered yet,” he said.
This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundations Fun for Indigenous Journalists: Reporting on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two-Spirit and Transgender People (MMIWG2T).
The post Family, supporters mourn Emily Pike one year after her disappearance appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
1680
1681
1682
1683
2
The hegemony of the dollar behind the attacks and threats against Venezuela and Iran
(www.americas.org)
The world in focus | Analysis column
Renowned US historian Alfred McCoy believes that President Trump’s threats against Iran, Venezuela, Mexico, Greenland, and other countries are expressions of “an empire in decline” that, as it loses power and influence on the world stage, follows a predictable pattern of militarism abroad and political instability at home. “US policy is becoming increasingly twisted and irrational,” says McCoy, adding that this decline “will continue for another decade or two, until US power finally fades away.”
This diagnosis explains the imperial, warmongering, and anti-democratic policy of the US ruling power. President Donald Trump expressed it in his histrionic and undiplomatic manner in his speech at the Davos Economic Forum on January. 21
Riddled with inaccuracies, his megalomaniacal speech masks an internal economic reality that threatens the country’s stability and its role as a global hegemon. It is not true that his administration’s economic growth figures are fantastic and the best in decades. Nor is it true that he has curbed inflation–inflation stood at 2.7% annualized in December, far exceeding the 2% target and driven by the tariffs imposed by Trump, which ultimately fall on the US consumer. Even less true is that the labor market has improved. The 584,000 jobs created in 2025 represent the worst figure since 2020 and contrast with the creation of over 2 million jobs created during 2024.
This is not even what worries the US government the most. The biggest challenge facing the United States is to halt the decline of the dollar’s role as a reserve asset and legal tender in international trade. However, that’s unlikely given the spiraling growth of its debt and the process of de-dollarization taking place around the world. After the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, oil replaced gold as the functional anchor of the monetary system and allowed the dollar to maintain its hegemony, but sanctions imposed on oil-producing countries (Venezuela, Iran, Russia) have led them to use other currencies in their oil sales, which has had a negative impact on the strength of the dollar.
In regional associations such as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the African Union, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), countries are also using local currency to avoid the use of the dollar in their intra-regional trade, following the same logic as the BRICS countries.
The power of the dollar
The US government considers the supremacy of its currency to be an existential issue because it allows it to borrow massively to sustain its economy and finance its vast military apparatus. During the election campaign, Donald Trump said that losing that status would be equivalent to losing a war. Since his return to power, he has declared that any attempt by the BRICS group and other countries to forge an alternative to the dollar will face retaliation from the United States.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
During the first half of 2025, the dollar depreciated against a basket of currencies from the world’s six major economies to an extent not seen in the year-on-year comparison for the same period since 1973.
_________________________________________________________________________________________According to an IMF report, the share of dollar-denominated assets in total central bank reserves worldwide fell from 72% in 2002 to 58.2% in 2025. Globally, China, India, and the United States, in particular, have increased their purchases of gold, which has had an unprecedented upward impact on its price. The days when US Treasury bonds were considered the safest asset in the world are a thing of the past. BlackRock, the world’s largest US asset manager, has warned that the US government’s growing debt could reduce investor interest in long-term Treasury bonds and the dollar and drive investors to seek investment opportunities outside the US.
This mistrust is rooted in the high level of US public debt (124% of GDP) in a context of declining economic momentum since the economic and financial crisis that erupted in 2008. The growing interest payments required to service that debt and a systemic fiscal deficit of around 6% of GDP deepen concern. Added to this is the uncertainty created by Donald Trump’s struggle with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell over monetary policy, the degrading treatment of migrants, the trampling of local and international institutions, and the chaos caused by Trump’s tariff policy imposed on almost all countries, including his allies.
As a result, foreign economic agents and governments are divesting from US Treasury securities or are reluctant to purchase them, forcing the government to offer higher interest rates to make them attractive, which increases the cost of financing its debt service. The three agencies that assess the credit risk of debt issuers such as governments, companies, and banks (Moody’s, Fitch, and Standard & Poor’s) have downgraded the rating of US debt.
Source:SPR Informa
Sanctions and distancing from the dollar
Countries subject to economic sanctions by the United States, such as Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, among others, do not use the dollar in their international trade. Part of the sanctions against these oil-producing countries consists of prohibiting them from trading oil, thereby suffocating them financially. This forces them to use ghost ships with flag changes on the high seas and sell them at a steep discount to countries that defy the economic embargo, mainly China and India, and charge in local currencies and other forms of payment. As the dollar ceases to be indispensable for trade, demand for it declines, and with it its value. During the first half of 2025, the dollar depreciated against a basket of currencies from the world’s six major economies to an extent not seen in the year-on-year comparison for the same period since 1973.
The embargo on financial assets of these three countries deposited abroad (31 tons of gold from Venezuela in the Bank of England, $300 billion from Russia in banks in the United States and Europe, and an undetermined amount belonging to Iran) generates mistrust in other countries. This leads them to divest of their holdings in dollars and US debt securities. China, Japan, the United Kingdom, India, and, recently, Swedish and Danish pension funds have recently divested in response to Donald Trump’s threats to take over Greenland and impose tariffs on European countries that do not support him. These sales and the threats by Macron and other European leaders to do the same caused the market value of US Securities to plummet, prompting President Trump to leave Davos quietly backtracking on his annexation of Greenland and suspending the application of tariffs on European countries that did not support his project.
For Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis, the US dollar’s privilege of being the sole currency governing the global monetary system will vanish within a maximum of ten years due to the decline of the United States’ weight in the global economy and trade. Major factors include the US’s failure of fiscal discipline; the appropriation of the foreign exchange reserves of Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and Afghanistan; and the fact that the US maintains a “primitive” interbank messaging service such as SWIFT.
Petrodollars: the reasons for military aggression against Venezuela and Iran
The United States’ military aggression and threats against Venezuela and Iran seek to regain the dominance of the petrodollar at a time when its hegemony is eroding. The collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971—caused by the United States continuing to issue dollars and failing to guarantee their conversion into gold, as agreed upon at its founding in 1944—should have meant the end of the US currency’s hegemony. The dollar became nothing more than paper without physical backing, but it was able to remain a global reserve asset thanks to the role played by petrodollars. The petrodollar system was a geopolitical decision that turned oil into the material support for US monetary hegemony.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
In 2000, Saddam Hussein announced that Iraq would sell its oil in euros. Three years later, the country was invaded. In 2009, Muammar Gaddafi proposed a pan-African currency, the dinar, for energy trade. In 2011, NATO led by the United States, intervened in the country and killed the Libyan leader.
_________________________________________________________________________________________During the 1973 energy crisis, the US government agreed with Saudi Arabia that all Saudi oil would be sold exclusively in dollars and that a large part of this revenue would be invested in US Treasury bonds. In exchange, the United States would offer military protection and political support to the Saudi monarchy. This agreement was later extended to the other countries of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), created in 1962, whose founding members included Venezuela and Iran. Any country in the world that wanted to buy oil had to have dollars in its reserves.
Thus, the petrodollars that flowed into oil-producing countries to purchase oil were largely directed to the United States to acquire US Treasury bonds that provided them with returns and security. In this way, the money from oil sales financed US spending under a mechanism known as “petrodollar recycling.” In 2000, Saddam Hussein announced that Iraq would sell its oil in euros. Three years later, the country was invaded and Iraqi crude oil was once again traded in dollars. In 2009, Muammar Gaddafi proposed a pan-African currency, the dinar, backed by gold, for energy trade. In 2011, NATO, led by the United States, intervened in the country and killed the Libyan leader.
Iran, Venezuela, and Russia (a member of OPEC+ created in 2016) are prohibited from trading their oil as part of economic sanctions, but they do so sidestepping the dollar, which leads to lower demand for that currency and devaluation and consequent loss of hegemony. A sanction that ends up being a boomerang for the US economy.
To get Venezuela and Iran to use the dollar again in their oil trade, the same playbook is used: a media campaign about the tyranny of the regime, the dispatch of warships and threats of invasion. In Venezuela, four cities were bombed, Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were kidnapped, and the US government took control of the sale of oil. Venezuelan oil is now sold in dollars and not in yuan or other currencies. Something similar is being sought in Iran. This is a struggle in global finance at a time of historic transition.
Drugs, democracy, lack of freedoms, or respect for institutions have nothing to do with it. The United States is not interested in that. The crisis between the United States and Venezuela reached the United Nations Security Council days before the invasion. There, the US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, said that his country would impose “maximum” sanctions on Venezuela to deprive Maduro of the resources he uses to finance the so-called Cartel of the Suns, designated by the United States as a terrorist organization. After the invasion, the Department of Justice stated that no such organization exists.
On Thursday, President Trump announced that a “huge fleet” was advancing toward Iran, which, if true, would confirm repeated announcements about a possible intervention against Iran allegedly for the killing of protesters that the US promoted with the support of Israeli intelligence services. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called Trump a “criminal” for “the victims, the damage and the slander” against his country. That same day, Trump described Khamenei as “a sick man who should govern his country properly and stop killing people,” adding that “it is time to look for new leadership in Iran.” On Tuesday, General Abolfazl Shekarchi, spokesman for Iran’s armed forces, warned Trump not to take any action against the country’s supreme leader, adding, “If any hand of aggression is extended toward our leader, we will not only cut off that hand, but we will also set his world on fire.”
In short, even if Trump were to succeed in defeating Iran’s theocratic regime and controlling oil management and trade, as he intends to do with Venezuela, the loss of the dollar’s hegemony is an irreversible process. Everything points to the institutionalization of a multipolar monetary system in which the dollar will share a predominant role with other currencies. The mechanism of “petrodollar recycling” that sustained the dollar’s hegemonic position in the early 1970s is no longer viable. The United States is approaching a “point of no return” with an unsustainable debt dynamic, which will cause financial markets to lose interest in purchasing bonds issued by the U.S. Treasury, accelerating the loss of the dollar’s hegemony.
“El mundo en foco” es la columna quincenal de Ariela Ruiz Caro para Mira: Feminismos y Democracias. Ariela Ruiz Caro es economista con maestría en procesos de integración económica y consultora internacional en temas de comercio, integración y recursos naturales en la CEPAL, Sistema Económico Latinoamericano (SELA), Instituto para la Integración de América Latina y el Caribe (INTAL), entre otros. Ha sido funcionaria de la Comunidad Andina, asesora de la Comisión de Representantes Permanentes del MERCOSUR y Agregada Económica de la Embajada de Perú en Argentina.
From MIRA via This RSS Feed.
1685
1686
3
In the Brazilian Amazon, community conservation success comes with a cost: Study
(news.mongabay.com)
1687
1688
1690
Mary Annette Pember
ICT
The Trump administration is slashing the federal Office on Violence Against Women, consolidating oversight within the U.S. Department of Justice and recommending funding cuts of nearly a third for programs that include key grants and criminal justice programs for tribes.
The office — created in 1994 to implement provisions of the Violence Against Women Act — was given permanent status in 2004 by Congress as an independent office reporting directly to the U.S. Attorney General.
Starting in February, however, the office will be consolidated with other programs within the Department of Justice, according to Stanley E. Woodward, associate attorney general who oversees the department’s civil rights division and grant-making components.
Woodward detailed the changes at the 20th annual tribal consultation meeting held Jan. 21-23 in Prior Lake, Minnesota, a gathering that for years has included tribal leaders, advocates and representatives of the Office on Violence Against Women.
“Beginning next month, all OVW grants to tribes will be managed by the [Department of Justice] tribal affairs division,” Woodward told participants at the meeting.
He described the change as an effort to simplify the grant process in response to tribal leaders’ calls for more “consistency in how we administer these grants.”
Over two days of testimony at the meeting, however, nearly every tribal leader and advocate expressed opposition to the proposed consolidation plan. ICT attended the meeting virtually and also obtained transcripts of the testimony presented.
Several people testified at the meeting that the Department of Justice has wrongfully used requests from tribes to reduce red tape as an excuse to further restrict tribal access to funding.
“Contrary to what is being communicated to tribes and organizations this [consolidation] is not something tribes are asking for or something that they want,” said Elizabeth Jerue, a citizen of the Anvik Tribe and executive director of the Healing Hearts Coalition in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Glenda Martin, citizen of the Red Lake Nation who sits on the tribal council as the Ponemah District representative, voiced similar concerns.
“Consolidation means years of confusion, delays in funding and interruption in service and collective loss of institutional knowledge among federal authorities,” Martin said during her testimony.
Martin was among several tribal leaders at the meeting who insisted that consolidation of the office would not be allowed under federal law.
“These offices were congressionally established and fought for by advocates who have worked in the field for decades,” she said.
Need for funding
In addition to consolidating the office’s responsibilities, Trump has proposed in the 2026 budget a 29 percent cut to funding for the OVW. Officials who attended the gathering underscored the potentially devastating impact of consolidation.
A majority of tribes and victims service organizations depend entirely on federal funding to provide services to victims of domestic violence and assault, and to support tribal policing and the judiciary, they said.
Several people lauded the DOJ for the 20-year partnership that contributed to strengthening
legal protections for tribal citizens through the Violence Against Women Act and expanding tribal jurisdiction over non-Native perpetrators of domestic and sexual violence, trafficking, stalking and violence against children in Indian Country.
“The progress we have made demonstrates what is possible when tribes and the federal government work together,” said Tami Treutt Jerue, Elizabeth Jerue’s mother, also of the Anvik Tribe in Alaska. She noted that the success points to the need for continuing the federal funding, commitment and resources.
Several representatives lamented the transient nature of federal funding that they say prevents building sustainable infrastructure for victims and tribal justice services.
“We propose mandatory, non-competitive funding for tribal justice infrastructure including courts, law enforcement and social services,” said Robert Smith, chairman of the Pala Band of Mission Indians in California.
Without reliable funding, tribes are unable to pay officers and court staff competitive salaries or offer benefits, contributing to high staff turnover, Smith said.
Other requests and concerns included calls for an overhaul of federal law to restore tribal jurisdiction over all crimes committed by non-Native perpetrators on their lands and enough federal funding to provide tribal courts and law enforcement with the ability to protect citizens.
Treutt Jerue said meeting those demands would require an annual federal investment of $1 billion for law enforcement, $1 billion for tribal courts and $233 million for detention facilities.
“When the federal government fails to adequately fund tribal courts it doesn’t just create a resource gap, it actively prevents tribes from exercising self-governance,” Jerue said.
She noted that Native American and Alaska Native women face the highest rates of violence in the nation.
“Four out of five have experienced violence in their lifetimes, more than 56 percent have experienced sexual violence, nearly half have experienced physical violence by an intimate partner. Native women are three times more likely to experience sexual assault compared to non-Native women and children.” Treutt Jerue said.
“Most alarming,” she added, “is that Alaskan Native women face a murder rate of up to 10 times higher than the national average.”
DEI need not apply
In late May 2025, the OVW included new restrictive “out of scope” activities for grantees that seemed to fly in the face of the missions of most organizations providing victims services.
Grantees were told that they may not frame domestic violence or sexual assault as systemic social justice issues rather than criminal offenses. The restrictions appeared to stem from President Donald Trump’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion, known as DEI.
According to consultation attendees and advocates, effective justice programming and victims services in Indian Country require an upstream view of the impacts of systemic racism and violence.
“The spectrum of violence against Native women and communities is intertwined with systemic barriers that are embedded within our complex relationship with the federal government,” said Carmen O’Leary, director of the Native Woman’s Society of the Great Plains.
O’Leary, a citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, also called attention to the DOJ’s decision to remove the “Not One More: Findings and Recommendations of the Not Invisible Act Commission,” released in 2023 and authorized as part of Savanna’s Act and the Not Invisible Act signed by Trump in 2020.
The report vanished from the DOJ website in February 2025 shortly after Trump began his second term in office. Language in the report is heavy with terms the administration dismisses as DEI.
“A lot of resources from tribes and the federal government went into producing the ‘Not One More’ report,” O’Leary said.
“What is going to happen to the recommendations made in that report that came from members of communities?” O’Leary asked. “We had families that came from far away to talk about their family members that had been murdered. I would hope that the report could go back up [on the website] and that those recommendations would be funded and followed.”
Treutt Jerue noted that she has been attending the annual OVW consultations for many years in working with various organizations, and continues to push the same concerns.
“Some of the things I am going to say are the same that I said last year and the year before that and maybe even the year before that,” she testified. “I don’t want my granddaughter to be in front of these types of panels when she is my age; it is time to stop this. This needs to stop.”
She continued, “Every role I have carried to these meetings has been shaped for the same purpose, to address generational trauma and a relentless hope for change.”
‘Time to stop this’
The tribal consultation meeting in Minnesota was overshadowed by protests over the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confrontations in the state that have led to sweeping arrests and at least two deaths.
According to those who testified during the consultation, at least 50 percent of attendees chose to cancel their attendance over concerns of being swept up in ICE actions.
Treutt Jerue pointed to the tone-deaf expectation of the federal government in asking tribal leaders and advocates to travel across the country for consultation when people are being racially profiled, stopped and detained by federal agents who may not recognize tribal sovereignty.
“The problem is that many of our tribal members only have tribal identification for their travels,” Treutt Jerue said. “They were very afraid.”
Media representatives for the Department of Justice did not respond to ICT’s emailed questions regarding number of attendees or legal requirements relating to a minimum number of participants required to constitute a valid consultation.
The post Trump administration targets Office on Violence Against Women with ‘consolidation’ appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
1691
1692
The ostensibly barren Mojave Desert is in fact teeming with plants and animals, including a rare species known as the threecorner milkvetch. It’s a member of the pea family, splaying across the ground instead of climbing up a garden trestle. Given the harsh desert conditions, it waits until the arrival of rains to burst from the earth — flowering, fruiting, and reproducing.
Though hardy, the threecorner milkvetch — which is under consideration for listing under the Endangered Species Act — and its fellow species in the Mojave are still sensitive to disturbance, like when solar farms literally break ground. Traditionally, energy companies “blade and grade” habitats, meaning they cut out vegetation and even out the soil, which disrupts the seed banks stored within the ground.
In the desert outside of Las Vegas, the Gemini Solar Project took a gentler approach, instead trying to preserve the ecosystem. According to a new study, it paid off for the threecorner milkvetch: Before the development, scientists found 12 plants on the site, and afterward in 2024 found 93, signifying that the seeds survived construction. Compared to a nearby plot of land, the plants at Gemini grew wider and taller, and produced more flowers and fruits. That might be because the solar panels shade the soil, slowing evaporation, which makes more water available to the plants to grow big and strong. “So you just have the potential for a lot more plants,” said Tiffany Pereira, an ecologist at the Desert Research Institute and lead author of the paper, which was published late last year. “There’s seedlings of so many other species coming up as well. And so the fact that seed bank survived is phenomenal.”
Plants grow among panels in the Gemini Solar Project, outside Las Vegas. Courtesy of Tiffany Pereira
It’s yet more evidence that solar farms can be built in ways that minimize disturbances to ecosystems. (The company behind the Gemini project, Primergy, did not respond to requests for comment.) This technique is called ecovoltaics: Instead of blade-and-grade, facilities are built with native species in mind. To give the ecosystem a boost, for instance, a crew can seed the soils with native grasses and flowers. “Some of those seed mixes do quite well at solar facilities, and they attract pollinators, birds, and other wildlife as a result,” said Lee Walston, an ecologist at Argonne National Laboratory who wasn’t involved in the new paper. “Sort of asking that umbrella, Field of Dreams, question, right: If you build it, will they come?”
In Minnesota, at least, the answer is yes. Walston led a study of two solar sites on converted cropland there, observing the growth of biodiversity over the course of five years. The researchers found that the number of unique flowering plant species increased sevenfold, and the abundance of insect pollinators tripled. Native bees alone increased by 20 times. In a follow-on study across a dozen solar sites, grassland birds flocked to the areas, likely attracted by the abundance of insects — same goes for bats. Birds could also nest among the panels, hiding from predators. “We’ve seen positive outcomes, sort of across the board,” Walston said. “Anytime that you’re seeing increases in insect prey, you’ve got at least a really strong potential for also seeing greater bird activity and bat activity, as they are attracted to those sites.”
Such a significant boost to biodiversity is not a given, though. Certain plant species will need more or less shade from the panels: In the Mojave, Pereira only found one threecorner milkvetch, for example, growing directly under a panel. The rest were popping up in the sunnier spaces between them. Young plants of other species, by contrast, might prefer shadier spots, because too much sunlight can stress them.
An ecovoltaic project teems with flowers, which attract native pollinating species. Courtesy of Lee Walston
Panel height is a major factor, too: Taller ones let bigger plant species grow to their full potential — but the higher the supports, the more a solar company must spend on materials. A facility might also set a specific height to accommodate livestock like sheep and goats, used for “conservation grazing” to clear out invasive weeds, which in turn reduces the fire risk of dead plants. “We’re trying to work with developers,” Walston said, “to say, ‘OK, well, if all you can do is 2 feet, what might be the best mix of seed mixes and management styles that could really optimize the habitat?’”
That mowing might sound destructive, but it mimics the natural order of things, as grazers like deer and buffalo, in addition to wildfires, have historically served the same purpose. Ecovoltaics can also return former agricultural fields to more of their natural state. “I think there is real potential for solar farms to be especially good for biodiversity in prairie ecosystems, since prairies evolved over time to require repeated disturbance,” said Johanna Neumann, senior director of the Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy at the nonprofit Environment America, who wasn’t involved in the new research.
The blade-and-grade alternative, on the other hand, doesn’t just disrupt a habitat. With native plant species cleared out, the earth loses the root structures that keep soils from blowing away. Then, opportunistic and fast-growing invasive species can take over, muscling out the natives. And their flowers might not be as enticing for indigenous pollinators like bumblebees.
Just as endemic plants can grow among solar panels, so too can crops, a technique known as agrivoltaics. Researchers are finding, for example, that things like cucumbers grow like crazy on rooftops. The panels create a unique microclimate that keeps crops from getting too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, and uses about one-third of the water compared to growing in full sun. Now scientists are trying to figure out which crops — especially high-value ones that can make up the cost of installing solar — will do the best growing under panels, both on rooftops and on the ground. “If you’re going to grow something, you want to grow something that a potential farmer could sell for decent profit,” said horticulturist Jennifer Bousselot, who studies rooftop agrivoltaics at Colorado State University but wasn’t involved in the new paper. “You name the crop, and there’s interest.”
All told, ecovoltaics and agrivoltaics have the potential to bolster biodiversity and the food supply while generating clean electricity. “Rather than a moonscape of invasive species and dust blowing into cities, why not strive for something better?” Pereira said. “It’s a wild and beautiful place that we live in, and it’s our job to look out for these species as well.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Solar farms can be havens for rare plants. Just ask the threecorner milkvetch. on Jan 29, 2026.
From Grist via This RSS Feed.
1693
1694
1695
Can a lump of coal ever be … cute?
It’s a question no one was thinking about until last Thursday, when Interior Secretary Doug Burgum posted a cartoon of himself on X kneeling next to “Coalie” — a combustible lump with giant eyes, an open-mouthed grin, and yellow boots, almost like a carbon-heavy Japanese video game character.
Department of the Interior
It might seem like a strange mascot to promote what Burgum calls the “American Energy Dominance Agenda.”
“Especially for this administration, I would have expected a little bit more macho twist to it,” said Joshua Paul Dale, a professor of literature and culture at Chuo University in Tokyo, and the author of Irresistible: How Cuteness Wired Our Brains and Conquered the World.
In Japan, Dale said, seemingly everything gets a cute character attached to it — not just in TV shows and games, but also as part of government public relations efforts. This ultra-adorable aesthetic, associated with rounded shapes and huge eyes, is so common it has a name: kawaii. Even the Tokyo police department has an orange, mouselike mascot, with a disarming cuddliness that serves to make law enforcement feel softer and less threatening.
Coalie appears to do something similar, countering Burgum’s “mine, baby, mine” message with a kawaii-style innocence. “You know, it makes us feel more familiar,” Dale said. “It makes us want to get closer.” Those warm, fuzzy feelings come from how our brains are wired to respond to babylike characteristics. Give a character a round body, big eyes, and chubby arms and legs, and you can even make a lump of coal look huggable.
Coalie is just the latest in a long line of characters used by controversial industries, from tobacco to nuclear energy, that seem designed to make their risks feel less threatening — though they typically looked less cute, at least in the United States. David Ropeik, a risk expert, sees Coalie as part of a tradition of advertising strategies that widely disliked companies use to push back against criticism.
“It’s a common response from cultures that feel themselves under attack, looking for ways to make their case in a less than adversarial way to sell their point of view,” Ropeik said. President Donald Trump has been working on rehabilitating coal’s image as the administration tries to stall the fuel’s decline. Trump has even said he has a standing order in the White House for staff to use the phrase “clean, beautiful coal.” He explained why in November, saying, “It’s ‘clean and beautiful’ because it needs public relations help.”
Even cuteness can backfire, though, if people notice that an extra-adorable character is trying to coax them into liking something dangerous. Consider Pluto-kun, a cherubic mascot from the 1990s who promoted the Japanese nuclear company Tepco — at one point by cheerfully drinking a glass of plutonium as if it were harmless. The character attracted little attention until the nuclear accident at Tepco’s Fukushima plant in 2011, when people began resurfacing Pluto-kun online to point out the irony of its upbeat reassurances as the threat of nuclear disaster felt real and immediate.
Some felt a similar dissonance when Interior Secretary Burgum posted the image of Coalie. Chelsea Barnes, director of government affairs and strategy at Appalachian Voices, an environmental nonprofit, said the character was mocked by some of her friends and colleagues who work to support coal communities because of the serious damage they see firsthand from coal. “There’s nothing funny about climate change,” she said. “There’s nothing funny about black lung disease. There’s nothing funny about the water pollution that many people in Appalachia experience because of coal mining.”
Part of the problem was that the timing was bad, Barnes said. The day after Coalie showed up on Burgum’s social media feed, Trump signed a law that redirects $500 million in funding originally set aside for cleaning up abandoned coal mines to the Forest Service and federal wildfire management programs. On top of that, the administration has been trying to roll back safety programs for miners. To people who care about the health of people working in mines and living near mines, Barnes said, Coalie “comes across as a middle finger, in a way.”
For Coalie’s creators, the backlash was a bit surprising, according to Simone Randolph, the communications director at the Interior Department’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, or OSMRE. The thing is, Coalie wasn’t initially intended as a mascot for “American Energy Dominance.” Its story actually started way back in 2018, when a social media manager at OSMRE put googly eyes on a picture of coal.
“Coalie” became a running joke in the office and an icon on their Teams channel, evolving into different versions over the years, Randolph said. “If you walk down our hallway in the D.C. office, people have pictures of Coalie on their doors.”
Grist / OSMRE
Despite the uproar over Coalie, Randolph hopes the mascot can help people learn about her obscure federal office. OSMRE oversees the permitting and regulation of the country’s coal mines and is responsible for cleaning up old, polluted mining land. The agency has transferred and authorized billions of dollars to restore mining lands for better uses — like what’s now the Pittsburgh Botanical Garden.
“So often, communication boils down to something that’s kind of bland,” Randolph said. “It doesn’t really catch the public’s attention. And so we were hoping to do something that would be a little bit more attention-grabbing.” Last week, OSMRE posted an explainer of its work using Coalie as a guide to walk readers through the agency’s responsibilities.
But the office’s character has notable differences to the version of Coalie that Burgum posted on X, which has tiny pink circles next to its eyes. Its features show a clear link to kawaii, an unusual move for an American institution, Dale said. It’s possible that it’s the result of somebody in Burgum’s department using AI to generate the image. In his own experimentation, Dale has found that AI will often add kawaii features to cute characters. Randolph said that OSMRE’s team uses AI tools, encouraged by Burgum, and that the version of Coalie he posted was designed to align with the secretary’s existing “Cartoon Doug” character.
Randolph said that it was an intentional decision to have the interior secretary introduce Coalie online, to bring more attention to OSMRE’s work. “The response has been extreme on both sides,” she said. “And my hope is that we can capitalize upon this moment to at least show the good work that is happening.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why the government is trying to make coal cute on Jan 29, 2026.
From Grist via This RSS Feed.
1696
2
Indonesia fast-tracks final permit for Papua rice megaproject without Indigenous consent
(news.mongabay.com)
1697
1698
1699
1700