Now comes the Coalition for Outdoor Education and Renaming with the following statement:
Category Archives: bearings
Bending Towards Justice
Now comes the voice of John Echohawk, Executive Director of the Native American Rights Fund, as relayed from a Letter to Supporters:
This January 20 we recognize Martin Luther King Day. It is a day on which many in the United States remember and honor Dr. King’s work and the long and ongoing fight for civil rights and social justice that he helped foster.
I wanted to take this opportunity to assure you, our supporters and colleagues, that we at the Native American Rights Fund will stay strong and committed in the ongoing fight for justice. In the spirit of Martin Luther King, we will not back down in the face of hate. We will not crumple under the pressure of injustice. The fight for Native rights, for Tribal sovereignty, and for a more just nation continues.
When they threaten to take away our national monuments and sacred places, we will be there to stop them. When they try to disenfranchise Native voters, we will be there to amplify the Native voice. When corporate greed endangers our homelands and waters, we will not back down. We will continue to be at attention as long as it takes to ensure that justice is served. We remember our past to protect our future. We fight for our sacred lands. We fight for our sustained cultures. We fight for our people and our Tribal Nations.
This is a long fight, but we are committed. With your support and the support of people like you, we have been representing Tribal Nations and Native people for more than fifty years. We do not always win, but we never give up because losing is not an option. We are the last line of defense for Native rights. We will not back down in holding governments accountable. We will not back down in protecting Native lands, culture, and people.
Know that together, as we have so many times before, we will make progress.
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Sprawl of the Human
To begin our 2025 voyage, we bend an ear to the lucid vibrancy of ecological citizen Eileen Crist, with excerpts from a recent essay posted on Earth Tongues, titled The Secret Garden:
Later in the essay, we underlined this crucial passage:
The entire piece is worth careful consideration.
The entanglement of the twin dyings is well underway,
and will soon become irreversible.
Onward we stumble, into the gathering storms.
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Steady In Every Storm
Now comes the Deputy Director of the Berkshire Environmental Action Team, Brittany Ebeling, with the following solstice missive:
“Together, we experience the darkest day of the year each winter solstice. As defenders of wildlife and the environment, it often feels as though our struggles for clean air, water, and soil face a distressing long darkness of their own.
We are asking ourselves what it means to join with our neighbors to build meaningful healing to our hurting ecosystems in these times. Poet Jane Hirshfield writes,
The long darkness offers us new ways to gather together so our resilience is as robust and wise as that of a tree: open to new possibilities, ready to change in response to unexpected challenges, and steady in every storm. “
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Bridging Sacred Places
From Native American Rights Fund, we relay the following video that addresses how access to sacred places can relieve the intense loss and grieving experienced by Indigenous communities following extractive damage.
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Consider the Caterpillar
Now comes esteemed DP correspondent Joseph A. Jackson with a lucid & concise commentary on recent events within our beleaguered Republic:
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Drill, Baby, Drill
First off, we relay yesterday’s press release from the nonpartisan conservation organization, The Center for Western Priorities:
DENVER—President-elect Donald Trump announced at Mar-a-Lago tonight that he intends to nominate North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum to serve as Secretary of the Interior.
The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Executive Director Jennifer Rokala:
“Doug Burgum comes from an oil state, but North Dakota is not a public lands state. His cozy relationship with oil billionaires may endear him to Donald Trump, but he has no experience that qualifies him to oversee the management of 20 percent of America’s lands.
“Running the Interior department requires someone who can find balance between recreation, conservation, hunting, ranching, mining, and—yes—oil drilling. If Doug Burgum tries to turn America’s public lands into an even bigger cash cow for the oil and gas industry, or tries to shrink America’s parks and national monuments, he’ll quickly discover he’s on the wrong side of history.”
In April 2024, Doug Burgum and oil billionaire Harold Hamm organized a dinner at Mar-a-Lago where Donald Trump suggested oil and gas executives raise $1 billion for his campaign. At the dinner, Trump promised the executives they’d save far more than that after he repealed President Biden’s climate policies.
Quick facts
- The federal government owns less than 4 percent of North Dakota’s land — 1.7 million acres out of 44.4 million total acres.
- Seventy percent of Western voters want to protect clean water, air quality and wildlife habitats while providing opportunities to visit and recreate on public lands, compared to just 26 percent of voters who would rather ensure more domestic energy production by maximizing the amount of public lands available for responsible oil and gas drilling and mining, according to Colorado College’s 2024 State of the Rockies poll.
- Prioritizing conservation over maximizing energy production received majority support among Republicans, Democrats, and independents in the poll.
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Second, regarding the utter disgrace of COP29, we relay a quote from Dawda Cham, representing the Gambian NGO HELP-Gambia :
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Big Gifts For A Little Man
Now comes the brilliant master of photomontage John Heartfield with a timely broadside, dating from the 1930s.
MOTTO: MILLIONS STAND BEHIND ME
This Terrible Swamp
We are grateful for a DP correspondent for steering towards an excellent essay by the distinguished critic of hypertrophic technophilia, Andrew Nikiforuk , first published by The Tyee in January.
Excerpts below, with an image & caption added by DP.
FETISH OBJECT SUBJECTED TO SCRUTINY, CRITICISM AND CONTROL
Desperado Philosophy 