Makah Whaling NEG---BRAG Lab--NDI 2014
Topicality
T-Its
1NC – T
A. Interpretation: “Its” means belonging to or that thing
OED 14 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/its
Its A. As adj. poss. pron. Of
or belonging to it, or that thing (L. ejus); also refl., Of or belonging to itself, its own (L. suus).
B. Violation: Indian tribes aren’t part of the federal government – they are their own
government
DOI 10 (Department of the Interior, United States government, 01.16.10, “Tribal Governments”,
http://www.doi.gov/governments/tribalgovernments.cfm, Accessed 07.21.14)//LD
Our nation has a unique legal and political relationship with Indian tribes and Alaska Native entities as provided by the U.S.
Constitution, treaties, court decisions and federal statutes. Within this government-to-government relationship ,
the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs provides services directly or through contracts, grants, or compacts to 564
federally recognized tribes with a service population of about 1.9 million American Indian and Alaska Natives.
That’s a voter for fairness and education –
1. Limits – there are countless groups of people and governments that the aff could
use – explodes the topic and makes it impossible for the neg to prepare
2. Ground – the aff denies access to key DA links like politics by changing the
ground from the government – kills fairness and government education
2NC – Overview
Take a stand before the season starts to shape the direction of this HUGE topic –
voting on T at camp sets a precedent for what is and isn’t topical the whole year. A
topical affirmative must increase federal government development or exploration of
the oceans. That’s key for two reasons:
1. Limits – the aff interpretation explodes the topic because it allows for nongovernmental affs – there are infinitely many groups of people that the aff could use
– this makes neg preparation impossible and forces neg teams to go for stupid
generics – the loss of specific, well-researched strategies and comparison decimates
the best kind of research and cost-benefit analysis that debate can offer – that’s key
to info processing in a world where we are constantly bombarded by too much
information.
2. Ground – the aff interpretation makes it impossible for the neg to go for DAs like
politics and process CPs that change the federal implementation procedure or Ks
that rely on federal action – a standard set of links and competition args is key to
check back the aff bias on such a big topic – prefer our interpretation because
learning about government policy is more important than ever in a world with an
increasingly uninformed public
2NC – AT: We Meet
No you don’t meet. The aff has the Makah tribe develop the ocean through whaling
– our interpretation is that the aff needs to increase federal government
development – this is distinct because Indian tribes are their own government and
not part of the USFG – that’s DOI.
Tribes are their own nation and have autonomy
DOI 9 (US Department of the Interior, Indian Affairs, 06.08.09, “FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS”,
http://www.bia.gov/FAQs/, Accessed 07.20.14)//LD
Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution vests Congress, and by extension the Executive and Judicial branches of our government, with the authority to engage in relations with the tribes, thereby firmly placing tribes
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall
articulated the fundamental principle that has guided the evolution of federal Indian law to the present: That tribes possess a nationhood status and retain
inherent powers of self-government.
within the constitutional fabric of our nation. When the governmental authority of tribes was first challenged in the 1830's, U. S.
Tribes aren’t part of the federal government – they have sovereignty
DOI 9 (US Department of the Interior, Indian Affairs, 06.08.09, “FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS”,
http://www.bia.gov/FAQs/, Accessed 07.20.14)//LD
However, as the foreign powers’ presence expanded and with the establishment and growth of the United States, tribal populations dropped dramatically and tribal sovereignty gradually
tribal sovereignty is limited today by the United States under treaties, acts of Congress, Executive Orders, federal administrative agreements and court decisions,
is nevertheless protected and maintained by the federally recognized tribes against further encroachment by other
sovereigns, such as the states. Tribal sovereignty ensures that any decisions about the tribes with regard to their property and
citizens are made with their participation and consent.
eroded. While
what remains
2NC – AT: Counter-interp
1. Limits debate proves that their interp is bad – explodes the topic by allowing for
all affs that use organizations “related to” the government.
2. Their evidence concedes that “its” is generally used in the context of possession –
<<read line from their ev>> -- the most common usage of the word is the only
predictable interpretation
3. <<Evidence comparison – precision, intent to define, recency, etc>>
‘Its’ is possessive
English Grammar 5 (Glossary of English Grammar Terms,
http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/possessive-pronoun.html)
Mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs are the possessive pronouns used to substitute a noun and to show possession or
ownership. EG. This is your disk and that's mine. (Mine substitutes the word disk and shows that it belongs to me.)
2NC – AT: USFG = People
The Federal government is the central government
WEBSTER'S 76 (NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY UNABRIDGED, p. 833.)
Federal government. Of or relating to the central government of a nation, having the character of a
federation as distinguished from the governments of the constituent unites (as states or provinces).
2NC – Ext. Explodes Limits
Their interp explodes limits – there are 150 types of NGOs that are not under the
jurisdiction of the US government
Merrick 98 (Robert R. Merrick, Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army, “Engagement: The Nation’s
Premier Grand Strategy, Who's In Charge?, April 1 1998, http://www.dtic.mil/cgibin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA342695)
While engagement activities of the various governmental agencies are synchronized by the Ambassador
and the deployed military force fall under the control of the CINC the 150~ NGOs, PVOs and lOs are not
controlled by any single agency. Diplomatic relationships, fostered by mutual respect and concern,
provide the best conduit to influence the strategies of the NGOs, PVOsand 10e. However, it is apparent
that neither the CINC nor the Ambassador can control ALL the engagement efforts in a region. So, while
Selective Engagement remains the most preferred of the post-cold war Grand Strategies, the problem of
implementing a cohesive strategy used by both government and private agencies remains. As long as
private agencies are permitted to operate autonomously, the President’s ability to execute engagement
activities, through his Ambassadors and CINCs, is confined solely to US governmental agencies and
organizations.
EXPLODES limits -- there are over a MILLION NGOs in the use, and they can
participate in any cause imaginable
U.S. Department of State 12 (U.S. Department of State, “Fact Sheet: Non-Governmental
Organizations (NGOs) in the United States”, January 12, 2012,
http://www.humanrights.gov/2012/01/12/fact-sheet-non-governmental-organizations-ngos-in-the-unitedstates/)
Approximately 1.5 million NGOs operate in the United States. These NGOs undertake a wide array of
activities, including political advocacy on issues such as foreign policy, elections, the environment,
healthcare, women’s rights, economic development, and many other issues. Many NGOs in the United
States also operate in fields that are not related to politics. These include volunteer organizations rooted in
shared religious faith, labor unions, groups that help vulnerable people such as the poor or mentally ill,
and groups that seek to empower youth or marginalized populations. Indeed, NGOs exist to represent
virtually every cause imaginable. Their sources of finance include donations from private individuals
(American or foreign), private sector for-profit companies, philanthropic foundations, or grants from
federal, state, or local government. Sources of finance may also include foreign governments. There is no
prohibition in U.S. law on foreign funding of NGOs, whether that foreign funding comes from
governments or non-government sources.
NGOs are impossible to predict – they all have different interests
Merrick 98 (Robert R. Merrick, Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army, “Engagement: The Nation’s
Premier Grand Strategy, Who's In Charge?, April 1 1998, http://www.dtic.mil/cgibin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA342695)
US government agencies engage to promote US National Interests but other agencies that engage, such as
the NGOs, PVOs and lOs, often have quite different interests. These interests vary as much as their
founding charters vary. Some work to promote specific religions, others attempt to improve legal systems,
while others concentrate on creating a stable environment to safeguard the global community as a whole.
These agencies are engaged in virtually every country worldwide to some degree. Their agendas include
everything from tracking human rights violations, to promoting programs for financial aide, to deploying
missionaries and teachers. With all of this activity it is likely that there will be a large number of
potentially competing agendas working within a single country.
AT: Reasonability
1. You’re interp’s not reasonable –limits debate proves you make it impossible to
prepare on the neg, especially because this topic is huge
2. Prefer competing interpretations:
a. Reasonability is arbitrary – competing interpretations is more objective because
we make relative comparisons instead of absolute judgements – which must be
subjective because the judge must use a predetermined baseline to decide if
something is good for the topic
b. Reasonability forces a moral hazard – each round the aff will just introduce a
new self-serving counter interpretation instead of trying to find the best vision of the
topic
Narratives K
Narratives K
Short
Whiteness uses native stories and cultural traditions to re-create itself – every public
advocacy by the oppressed is turned into a tool of exploitation by the dominant force
Moreton – Robinson 04, Aileen Moreton – Robinson, 1/1/04, Moreton – Robinson is Professor of
Indigenous Studies, Division of Research and Commercialisation, and Indigenous Studies Research Network,
“Whitening Race,” NN
When the West is invoked in postcolonial studies it is countries like the United States, Canada,
France, Britain, western Europe, Australia and New Zealand that are designated as having the
imperial gaze (Ashcroft et ah 1995; Frankenberg 1997a). The West is not explicitly associated with
whiteness in most postcolonial work because it functions as a raceless category, fcdward :>aids seminal
text Urietttaltsm (ivfo) pro- duced a theory of representation that has been used by many to analyse the
postcolonial condition. Orientalism posits the idea of the West as an entity confined by its
representations of the Orient.The Orient comes to be known through cultural discourses, systems of
governance, and the production and dissemination of texts produced by the West. Glossed as 'the
West', whiteness remains invisible, unnamed and unmarked; it is omnipresent and effects
representation in multiple ways. Postcolonial theory began to influence the work of scholars in Australia
from the late 1980s. They were interested in examining the idea of a postcolonial Australia at a
time when Australia's immigration and settlement policies were framed by multiculturalism and
when Indigenous issues,'particularly land rights and reconciliation, ranked in the forefront of
politics' (Markus 2001:33). In the 1990s, in particular, scholars began to analyse representations of
Indigenous people, devel- oping an area of study identified as Aboriginal Postcolonial Studies. Some
scholars were concerned with examining negative definitions and descriptions, while others
concentrated on contextualising acts of knowledge about the Indigenous other (Attwood & Arnold
1992; Cowlishaw 1993). One of the earliest collections of such work was published in a special
edition of the Journal of Australian Studies, entitled 'Power, Knowledge and Aborigines' and
edited by Bain Attwood and John Arnold. There are no Aboriginal contributors to this edition,
with the exception of the cover design, a painting by Robert Campbell junior, Ngaku, from
Kempsey which is entitled Aboriginal History (facts) 1988. The painting depicts a narrative of
colonisation, in which the white male body is clearly visible. Campbell, like Tanon, is not
uncomfortable in identify- ing the whiteness of his oppressors.4 He positions himself as a
subject of resistance, making the visible white body the object of that resist- ance. In this way
Campbell's painting inverts the object—subject rela- tionship, which is elaborated in the
contents of the journal. I Iowever, the relationship of the cover to the contents reverses
Campbells inver- sion. Despite its best intentions of mitigating primitivist discourse, the journal
restages it through representing 'the racialised primitive Other ... as the ultimate embodiment of visual
culture and the white intel- Lectual as the ultimate embodiment of the superior power of words' (Lattas
1992:49).The primitive is the body, while the white intellectual is the mind. Here the body stands in
relation to the mind as the cover stands in relation to the journal. The writer-knowcr as subject is racially
invisible, while the Aboriginal as object is visible.The discourse of primitivism deploys the Cartesian
model to separate the racialised white body of the knower from the racialised discourse and knowledge
produced by its mind. In this way the body, which is the marker of race, is erased leaving only the
disembodied mind. Whiteness, as an ontological and epistemologi- cal ci priori, is seductive in producing
the assumption of a racially neutral mind and an invisible detached white body. Some of the best
scholars in Aboriginal postcolonial studies con- tributed to this edition and it is still one of the
few texts that deals with lndigeneity and representation. In the introduction, Bain Attwood
(1992) draws on Said's concept of Orientalism to argue that knowing the Aborigine is
encapsulated within a mode of discourse he refers to as Aboriginalism. For Attwood this
comprises three dimensions: the first being Aboriginal Studies, the teaching, research and
scholarship pro- duced by'European scholars'; second, the ontological and epistemolog- ical
distinctions between 'them' and 'us'; and third, the corporate institutions that govern and
define Aborigines. He asserted that outside of Aboriginalism there are other forms of
knowledge characterised by non-oppressive discursive practices that he identifies as postAboriginalist. The nature of post-Aboriginalist discursive practices entails collaborative relationships
between Aborigines and anthropolo- gists, linguists, historians and curators in museums, land councils
and Aboriginal communities. Attwood further argues that there have been two theoretical
developments in Aboriginal Studies, which challenge Aboriginalism: First, Aborigines are viewed
as socially constructed subjects with iden- tities, which are relational and dynamic rather than
oppositional (in the binary sense) and given.This challenge to essentialism and the teleolog- ica]
assumptions embedded in Aboriginalist scholarship involves his- toricising processes that have
constructed Aborigines, thus revealing how Aboriginal identity has been fluid and shifting, and
above all con- tingent on colonial power relations. This approach necessarily involves a new object
of knowledge — Ourselves, European Australians rather than them, the Aborigines — and this entails
a consideration of the nature of our colonising culture and the nature of our knowledge and
power in relation to Aborigines.These new praxes and knowledges rad- ically destabilise
conventional ways of establishing identity or the exis- tential conditions of being for both
Aborigines and ourselves, but they also have the potential to offer new means for a mutual becoming.
(1992:xv) The point to note about Attwood's analysis is the way in which he identifies a homogenous
group as 'ourselves' — European Australians — yet fails to racialise the same group as white,
despite prevailing dis- courses which used the term 'European' to refer to British and north- ern
Europeans.This resistance to naming whiteness works to deracialise the category Attwood
designates as 'European Australians'. Race is implicit in the construct Aborigine but not
identified as being implicit in the category European Australian. In contrast to whiteness,
Aboriginaliry as a racial construct is identified with blackness and is named and attached to
Aboriginalism and post-Aboriginalism because it is deemed a valid discursive
practice.Techniques through which other racial categories are deconstructed, reconfigured, subverted
and changed, elided and embedded, have not been applied to whiteness. This is because Aboriginalism
and post-Aboriginalism are socially con- structed by whiteness as representations of what it is not.The
new the- oretical challenges to Aboriginalism recognise that what is required is a new object of
knowledge but whiteness as an epistemological <i priori works to assign this object on the basis
of European Australian ethni- city rather than race.This ensures that race continues to belong to the
Indigenous other and whiteness remains hidden, which leads me to ask the question: how is postAboriginalism the new means of our mutual becoming when conventional ways of deploying race have
not been radically destabilised? Similarly, the article by Stephen Muecke (1992) on representation fails
to recognise whiteness as a racial category. According to Muecke, when scholars seek to evaluate a
stereotype against reality all we are doing is comparing one representation with another because both
arc interpretations. Thus, we should be concerned with post-representa- tion, a mode of analysis that
does not deal with 'real-world relations'; instead, it is interested in how images are produced through
available discourses and whether it is possible to create others. Muecke is con- cerned that
Aboriginalist discourse within society conflates culture with Aborigines: This legacy forces
contemporary Aboriginal subjects, in turn, into posi- tions of essentialism (you are Aboriginal),
or representativeness and knowledge (you would know about kinship systems of the Western
desert), and consequently they are constantly called upon to display this essence, or this or that
skill, as if culture were an endowment. This is an enormous burden, and it is the Western version of
culture which gives them this, not the Aboriginal. This is not to say that the Aboriginal version of culture
is the thing to be achieved, the thing that will nec- essarily correct this idea, or complete one's being . . .
This nexus of grandeur and limitations — the inability to be able to see oneself as specifically
culturally focussed — has had the unfortunate effect of inhibiting the formation of a strong
Aboriginal intellectual group in Australia. 'Culture' thus seems to me to be the prison of
twentieth century Aborigines. (1992:40) I agree with Muecke that Aboriginalist discourse works
to circum- scribe self-representation or different constructions of Indigenous people which
could be deemed post-representational. However, to assume there is an absence of'a strong
Aboriginal intellectual group in Australia' due to the constitutive powers of Western discourse is
to place us outside discursive regimes of power and knowledge. The logic of Muecke's argument is
that the disciplinary regime that produces white Australian intellectuals is not also producing Indigenous
Australian intellectuals. Is it possible that in the late twentieth century this is because the whiteness of
post-structuralist theory is the prison of Stephen Muecke? Muecke effaces his own identity as an object
of power and knowledge and acquires the power of subject by making Indigenous people the
problematic objects of his theory. As a knowing subject he is able to simultaneously position Indigenous
intellectuals inside disciplinary power as victims (or in the 'prison of culture') and therefore outside
disciplinary power as non-intellectuals.This may be in part because as a central reference point for poststructuralist intellec- tuals, Foucault also overlooked the importance of naming whiteness in his work.
Yet, as a universal that represents humanity, whiteness has affected the knowledge of things
and their order.'[Whiteness] is the gaze of a universal that stumbles on what it has left out, on
the remain- der that it cannot acknowledge except by projecting it beyond the limits whose
existence it is designed to mask' (Montag 1997:292). As we shall see, despite being prisoners of
disciplinary power, representa- tions of whiteness in the texts of Indigenous scholars reveal a
knowl- edge of whiteness produced from being othered through a range of discursive and
material practices.
Epistemological whiteness is the precondition for racism, sexism, and extinction —it
places whiteness as the measure for all things
Moreton – Robinson 04, Aileen Moreton – Robinson, 1/1/04, Moreton – Robinson is Professor of
Indigenous Studies, Division of Research and Commercialisation, and Indigenous Studies Research Network,
“Whitening Race,” NN
Representations of the Indigenous 'other' have circulated in white Anglo discourse since the
1700s.The most infamous was that given by Cook, who stated that the Indigenous people of
Australia had no form of land tenure because they were uncivilised, which meant the land
belonged to no one and was available for possession under the doctrine of terra nullius. The
representation of the Indigenous other as the nomad justified dispossession. Since then we
have been represented in many ways, which include treacherous, lazy, drunken, childish,
cunning, dirty, ignoble, noble, primitive, backward, unscrupulous, untrustworthy and savage.These apparently uncomplicated representations mask not only the complexity of Indigeneity
but also their role as a set of differences that work to assist the constitution of whiteness as an
epistemological a priori that informs one's ontology. As a categorical object, race is deemed to
belong to the other. This has resulted in many theories about race being blind to whiteness.
Since the Enlightenment, the dominant epistemological position within the Western world has
been the white Cartesian male subject whose disembodied way of knowing has been
positioned in opposition to white women's and Indigenous people s production of knowledge
(Moreton-Robinson 2000). Feminists and Indigenous scholars argue that their way of knowing is
connected to their positioning as sub- jects/knowers of inquiry who are socially situated and
related to others in the actualities of their own living. They acknowledge that not all knowledge
is chosen or actively acquired. Knowledge can be acquired outside experience but knowing is
also connected to experience and understood in relation to situated acts of interpretation and
representa- tion. However, within whiteness's regime of power, all representations are not of
equal value: some are deemed truthful while others are clas- sified fictitious, some are
contested while others form part of our commonsense takcn-ror-grantcd knowledge or the
world. Imbued with a power that normalises their existence, these latter representations are
invisible, unnamed and unmarked. It is the apparent transparency of these normative
representations that strategically enables differentiation and othcring. Foucault explains the
definitive importance of difference in moder- nity's development of knowledge: 'all knowledge,
of whatever kind, proceeded to the ordering of material by the establishment of differ- ences
and defined those differences by the establishment of an order' (1994:346). This has been
particularly evident in the study of race in the human sciences where skin colour is the signifier
of difference. Race continues to be a basic categorical object in the production of knowledge in
modernity and an epistemological given in disciplines such as biology, natural history and
anthropology (Goldberg 1993:149). 1 However, race is reserved for the other and the
assumption is that the raced body of the knower (in contrast to the gendered body that feminists privilege) is irrelevant to knowledge production. A constitutive feature of modernity was
the development of human- ness as a universal, which was incommensurate with inhuman
qualities (Montag 1997:284).The universalisation of humanity appears paradox- ical, given the
existence of racial difference. Sartre articulated this paradox by characterising the colonised
experience as follows: 'your humanism claims we are at one with the rest of humanity but your
racist methods set us apart' (1978:8). However, this paradox was resolved through the
racialised distinction between the animal and the human. The universalisation of humanity
required this separation and was enabled by social and juridical morals. These morals
operated to normalise whiteness as the measure of being human. Montag argues that: the
universal was one of the forms in which the white race historically appeared ... in this way, the
concept of whiteness is deprived of its purely racial character at the moment of its
universalisation, no longer conceivable as a particularistic survival haunting the discourse of
uni- versality but, rather as the very form of human universality itself. (1997:285) it is not
(animal or liminal), thereby staking an exclusive claim to the truly human. In this way, racial
superiority becomes a part of ones ontology, albeit unconsciously, and informs the white
subject s knowl- edge production.
The alternative is to reject the inclusion of native representations in the public space
Discourses of oppression is what re-defines whiteness – keeping narratives and
cultural oppression out of the public is key to stop its cooption
Moreton – Robinson 04, Aileen Moreton – Robinson, 1/1/04, Moreton – Robinson is Professor of
Indigenous Studies, Division of Research and Commercialisation, and Indigenous Studies Research Network,
“Whitening Race,” NN
Representations of the Indigenous other work within discourses to enable and sustain the universality of
whiteness as hunianness which defines itself as what it is not. Primitivism developed during
modernity and is dependent upon established scientific fields such as anthropology and biology
which through their formal character and apparent univer- sality confer authority and
legitimacy to it (Goldberg 1993:149). Whiteness has been historically integral to the emergence of
these authoritative fields while remaining invisible, unmarked and unnamed. It is in this context that
'the primitive' is operationalised to be either in opposition to or supportive of white identity. Andrew
Lattas analyses the way Aboriginal identity is influenced by discourses concerned with the
constitution and future of the nation's identity. He argues that by representing Indigenous people in
discourse as the bearers of primitivism, white people can claim to inhabit moder- nity and
individualism:'[T]he racialised primitive Other is constructed as the ultimate embodiment of visual
culture and the white intellectual as the ultimate embodiment of the superior power of words'
(1992:49). Unlike Muecke and Attwood, Lattas does invoke the racial category 'white' in his
analysis. However, its use is restricted to denoting partic- ular subject positions: white intellectual,
white man, white artists. In this way Lattas fails to distinguish between a racialised subject
position and the power and knowledge effects of racialised discourse. Primitivism is not
recognised as a discursive effect of whiteness which operates beyond identity at the level of knowledge
production. In analysing how representation is constitutive of violence, Barry Morris argues that the
culture of terror exercised on the frontier was enabled through the indeterminacy of the native subject's
shift between ambivalence and fixity. A mimesis occurred between the imputed treachery of the
Aborigine and the savagery of the colonial project: 'The efficacy of such representations of
Aboriginal "treachery" mani- fested itself in the deeper strain of fear and hatred which
characterised the redemptive violence of the colonial frontier' (1992:85-6). Morris's analysis
recognises that representations of the Aborigine both consti- tuted and enabled violence, but the
epistemological a priori of white- ness which also constitutes such representations remains unmarked
and invisible. Whiteness as an epistemological and ontological a priori is seductive in that it underpins
concepts like colonists or colonialism in Australia, but its invisibility means it makes these terms
appear to be deracialised. This is one of the ways in which whiteness remains unmarked as a
discursive formation that is tied to knowledge produc- tion and the exercise of power. What we
can extract from Morris's and Lattas's examinations of rep- resentations of the Indigenous
other is that the system of beliefs, values and knowledge that created a racial hierarchy placed
whiteness at the top. The post-Aboriginalist position of Attwood, and Muecke and others, can
acknowledge the construction of Aboriginality as the 'Other' of the universal humanist subject
of the West. However, they fail to imagine that Indigenous intellectual production might be
inspired by a different understanding of the human subject because whiteness operates as an
epistemological and ontological a priori in their work. As Fanon concluded in The Wretched of the
Btirtlr/For Europe, for ourselves and for humanity ... wc must turn over a new leaf, wc must
work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new [human]' (1978:255). Fanon was not
confused by the intimate connection between the violent face of humanism, on the one hand,
and the white subject behind the mask who dispensed it, on the other.
Long
The white body necessarily reproduces, normalizes, and centers itself through media
and literature by exploitation of the native image
Moreton – Robinson 04, Aileen Moreton – Robinson, 1/1/04, Moreton – Robinson is Professor of
Indigenous Studies, Division of Research and Commercialisation, and Indigenous Studies Research Network,
“Whitening Race,” NN
Dyer highlights the salience or whiteness in modernity s development of knowledge: Research
into books, museums, the press, advertising, films, television, software repeatedly shows that
in Western representation whites are overwhelmingly and disproportionately predominant,
have the central and elaborated roles, and above all are placed as the norm, the ordinary, the
standard. Whites are everywhere in representation. Yet precisely because of this and their
placing as norm they seem not to be repre- sented to themselves as whites but as people who
are variously gen- dered, classed, sexualised and able. At the level of racial representation, in
other words, whites are not of a certain race, they re just the human race. (1997:3) In the guise
of the invisible human universal, whiteness secures hege- mony through discourse by
normalising itself as the cultural space of the West. Sustained by imperialism and global
capitalism, whiteness travelled culturally and physically, impacting on the formation of
nationhood, class and empire (Frankenberg 1997a:2). It would be a mistake, however, to
assume that whiteness is only found in societies inhabited and dominated by white people or
that it functions only where white bodies exist. Whiteness is not just about bodies and skin
colour; instead, it is 'more about the discursive practices that, because of colonialism and
neocolonialism, privilege and sustain global dominance of white imperial subjects' (Shome
1999:107). The hegemony of Western whiteness continues to shape the future of the rest of
the world. The USA, Britain and Australia's pre-emptive invasion of Iraq demonstrates that the
East is now the new frontier for the white West. Despite the fact that there was no evidence to
substan- tiate Iraq as a direct threat to Australia or Britain, Prime Ministers Tony Blair and John
I Ioward were the first to join America and its 'war on terror'. Representing themselves as the
holders of true humanity, these white Anglo nations positioned themselves as the liberators of
Iraq bringing civilisation to an uncivilised people. Australia as a former colony of Britain saw the
transplanting of an English form of whiteness to its shores. English cultural, religious, polit- ical
and economic values shaped the new colony. While English Protestants dominated public life
during the eighteenth century, by the end of the nineteenth century Irish and Scottish Catholics
had gained social mobility (see Chapter 16).These groups may have been divided along ethnic,
religious and class lines but they cemented themselves as a white race in the twentieth century
through the shaping of Australia's constitution.The White Australia policy made Angloccntric
whiteness the definitive marker of citizenship; and a form of property born of social status to
which others were denied access including Indigenous people. Through political, economic and
cultural means Anglocentric whiteness restricted and determined who could vote, who could
own property, who could receive wages for work, who was free to travel, who was entitled to
legal representation and who could enter Australia. These devices of exclusion did not
articulate who or what is white but rather who or what is not white. The discursive formation of
Anglocentric whiteness is a relatively uncharted territory that has remained invisible, dominant
and perva- sive, even as it influences everyday life. 'Like any other complex of beliefs and
practices whiteness is embedded in a highly articulated social structure and system of
signification' (Winant 1997:48). The Anglocentric culture of Australia shares features consistent
with other white Western societies and is a powerful producer of national identity, shaping
ideologies of individualism, egalitarianism, mateship and citi- zenship. Inter-war
representations of Australian mateship, figured through the face of the white digger, embodied
racial exclusion as much as an abstract nationalist idea (Nicoll 2001a). Representations of
whiteness continue to be enshrined and conveyed in curricula, televi- sion, films, newspapers,
novels, museums, performing and visual arts, songs and other material culture. For example,
when Australian egali- tarianism and individualism are personified through sportspeoplc like
Dawn Fraser, Pat Rafter and Ian Thorpe, they are not associated with a particular racial group.
Consider why Cathy Freeman is positioned as running for reconciliation, yet Ian Thorpe swims
for the nation.
Whiteness uses native stories and cultural traditions to re-create itself – every public
advocacy by the oppressed is turned into a tool of exploitation by the dominant force
Moreton – Robinson 04, Aileen Moreton – Robinson, 1/1/04, Moreton – Robinson is Professor of
Indigenous Studies, Division of Research and Commercialisation, and Indigenous Studies Research Network,
“Whitening Race,” NN
When the West is invoked in postcolonial studies it is countries like the United States, Canada,
France, Britain, western Europe, Australia and New Zealand that are designated as having the
imperial gaze (Ashcroft et ah 1995; Frankenberg 1997a). The West is not explicitly associated with
whiteness in most postcolonial work because it functions as a racclcss category, fcdward :>aids seminal
text Urietttaltsm (ivfo) pro- duced a theory of representation that has been used by many to analyse the
postcolonial condition. Orientalism posits the idea of the West as an entity confined by its
representations of the Orient.The Orient comes to be known through cultural discourses, systems of
governance, and the production and dissemination of texts produced by the West. Glossed as 'the
West', whiteness remains invisible, unnamed and unmarked; it is omnipresent and effects
representation in multiple ways. Postcolonial theory began to influence the work of scholars in Australia
from the late 1980s. They were interested in examining the idea of a postcolonial Australia at a
time when Australia's immigration and settlement policies were framed by multiculturalism and
when Indigenous issues,'particularly land rights and reconciliation, ranked in the forefront of
politics' (Markus 2001:33). In the 1990s, in particular, scholars began to analyse representations of
Indigenous people, devel- oping an area of study identified as Aboriginal Postcolonial Studies. Some
scholars were concerned with examining negative definitions and descriptions, while others
concentrated on contextualising acts of knowledge about the Indigenous other (Attwood & Arnold
1992; Cowlishaw 1993). One of the earliest collections of such work was published in a special
edition of the Journal of Australian Studies, entitled 'Power, Knowledge and Aborigines' and
edited by Bain Attwood and John Arnold. There are no Aboriginal contributors to this edition,
with the exception of the cover design, a painting by Robert Campbell junior, Ngaku, from
Kempsey which is entitled Aboriginal History (facts) 1988. The painting depicts a narrative of
colonisation, in which the white male body is clearly visible. Campbell, like Tanon, is not
uncomfortable in identify- ing the whiteness of his oppressors.4 He positions himself as a
subject of resistance, making the visible white body the object of that resist- ance. In this way
Campbell's painting inverts the object—subject rela- tionship, which is elaborated in the
contents of the journal. I Iowever, the relationship of the cover to the contents reverses
Campbells inver- sion. Despite its best intentions of mitigating primitivist discourse, the journal
restages it through representing 'the racialised primitive Other ... as the ultimate embodiment of visual
culture and the white intel- Lectual as the ultimate embodiment of the superior power of words' (Lattas
1992:49).The primitive is the body, while the white intellectual is the mind. Here the body stands in
relation to the mind as the cover stands in relation to the journal. The writer-knowcr as subject is racially
invisible, while the Aboriginal as object is visible.The discourse of primitivism deploys the Cartesian
model to separate the racialised white body of the knower from the racialised discourse and knowledge
produced by its mind. In this way the body, which is the marker of race, is erased leaving only the
disembodied mind. Whiteness, as an ontological and epistemologi- cal ci priori, is seductive in producing
the assumption of a racially neutral mind and an invisible detached white body. Some of the best
scholars in Aboriginal postcolonial studies con- tributed to this edition and it is still one of the
few texts that deals with lndigeneity and representation. In the introduction, Bain Attwood
(1992) draws on Said's concept of Orientalism to argue that knowing the Aborigine is
encapsulated within a mode of discourse he refers to as Aboriginalism. For Attwood this
comprises three dimensions: the first being Aboriginal Studies, the teaching, research and
scholarship pro- duced by'European scholars'; second, the ontological and epistemolog- ical
distinctions between 'them' and 'us'; and third, the corporate institutions that govern and
define Aborigines. He asserted that outside of Aboriginalism there are other forms of
knowledge characterised by non-oppressive discursive practices that he identifies as postAboriginalist. The nature of post-Aboriginalist discursive practices entails collaborative relationships
between Aborigines and anthropolo- gists, linguists, historians and curators in museums, land councils
and Aboriginal communities. Attwood further argues that there have been two theoretical
developments in Aboriginal Studies, which challenge Aboriginalism: First, Aborigines are viewed
as socially constructed subjects with iden- tities, which are relational and dynamic rather than
oppositional (in the binary sense) and given.This challenge to essentialism and the teleolog- ica]
assumptions embedded in Aboriginalist scholarship involves his- toricising processes that have
constructed Aborigines, thus revealing how Aboriginal identity has been fluid and shifting, and
above all con- tingent on colonial power relations. This approach necessarily involves a new object
of knowledge — Ourselves, European Australians rather than them, the Aborigines — and this entails
a consideration of the nature of our colonising culture and the nature of our knowledge and
power in relation to Aborigines.These new praxes and knowledges rad- ically destabilise
conventional ways of establishing identity or the exis- tential conditions of being for both
Aborigines and ourselves, but they also have the potential to offer new means for a mutual becoming.
(1992:xv) The point to note about Attwood's analysis is the way in which he identifies a homogenous
group as 'ourselves' — European Australians — yet fails to racialise the same group as white,
despite prevailing dis- courses which used the term 'European' to refer to British and north- ern
Europeans.This resistance to naming whiteness works to deracialise the category Attwood
designates as 'European Australians'. Race is implicit in the construct Aborigine but not
identified as being implicit in the category European Australian. In contrast to whiteness,
Aboriginaliry as a racial construct is identified with blackness and is named and attached to
Aboriginalism and post-Aboriginalism because it is deemed a valid discursive
practice.Techniques through which other racial categories are deconstructed, reconfigured, subverted
and changed, elided and embedded, have not been applied to whiteness. This is because Aboriginalism
and post-Aboriginalism are socially con- structed by whiteness as representations of what it is not.The
new the- oretical challenges to Aboriginalism recognise that what is required is a new object of
knowledge but whiteness as an epistemological <i priori works to assign this object on the basis
of European Australian ethni- city rather than race.This ensures that race continues to belong to the
Indigenous other and whiteness remains hidden, which leads me to ask the question: how is postAboriginalism the new means of our mutual becoming when conventional ways of deploying race have
not been radically destabilised? Similarly, the article by Stephen Muecke (1992) on representation fails
to recognise whiteness as a racial category. According to Muecke, when scholars seek to evaluate a
stereotype against reality all we are doing is comparing one representation with another because both
arc interpretations. Thus, we should be concerned with post-representa- tion, a mode of analysis that
does not deal with 'real-world relations'; instead, it is interested in how images are produced through
available discourses and whether it is possible to create others. Muecke is con- cerned that
Aboriginalist discourse within society conflates culture with Aborigines: This legacy forces
contemporary Aboriginal subjects, in turn, into posi- tions of essentialism (you are Aboriginal),
or representativeness and knowledge (you would know about kinship systems of the Western
desert), and consequently they are constantly called upon to display this essence, or this or that
skill, as if culture were an endowment. This is an enormous burden, and it is the Western version of
culture which gives them this, not the Aboriginal. This is not to say that the Aboriginal version of culture
is the thing to be achieved, the thing that will nec- essarily correct this idea, or complete one's being . . .
This nexus of grandeur and limitations — the inability to be able to see oneself as specifically
culturally focussed — has had the unfortunate effect of inhibiting the formation of a strong
Aboriginal intellectual group in Australia. 'Culture' thus seems to me to be the prison of
twentieth century Aborigines. (1992:40) I agree with Muecke that Aboriginalist discourse works
to circum- scribe self-representation or different constructions of Indigenous people which
could be deemed post-representational. However, to assume there is an absence of'a strong
Aboriginal intellectual group in Australia' due to the constitutive powers of Western discourse is
to place us outside discursive regimes of power and knowledge. The logic of Muecke's argument is
that the disciplinary regime that produces white Australian intellectuals is not also producing Indigenous
Australian intellectuals. Is it possible that in the late twentieth century this is because the whiteness of
post-structuralist theory is the prison of Stephen Muecke? Muecke effaces his own identity as an object
of power and knowledge and acquires the power of subject by making Indigenous people the
problematic objects of his theory. As a knowing subject he is able to simultaneously position Indigenous
intellectuals inside disciplinary power as victims (or in the 'prison of culture') and therefore outside
disciplinary power as non-intellectuals.This may be in part because as a central reference point for poststructuralist intellec- tuals, Foucault also overlooked the importance of naming whiteness in his work.
Yet, as a universal that represents humanity, whiteness has affected the knowledge of things
and their order.'[Whiteness] is the gaze of a universal that stumbles on what it has left out, on
the remain- der that it cannot acknowledge except by projecting it beyond the limits whose
existence it is designed to mask' (Montag 1997:292). As we shall see, despite being prisoners of
disciplinary power, representa- tions of whiteness in the texts of Indigenous scholars reveal a
knowl- edge of whiteness produced from being othered through a range of discursive and
material practices.
The Native doesn’t belong in the current political system – their narratives, stories,
and cultures continuously get coopted by the system in an ongoing genocide
Bradford 04, William Bradford, nearest date given is 2004, Bradford has a degree in law and is prominent in
the field of Native American law. He works for the Tulsa Law Review, “Another Such Victory and We Are Undone: A
Call to an American Indian Declaration of Independence,”
http://digitalcommons.law.utulsa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2464&context=tlr, NN
Non-Indians, contemplating the political and legal enormity of the task of doing justice by the
subjects of their policies of conquest, genocide, expropriation, legal assaults on tribal land and
sovereignty, and forced political and economic dependency, have long bemoaned their "Indian
problem."9 At least it is a problem of their own making; Indians, by contrast, have been saddled
with a "Euro-American problem"'0 created, maintained, and, as Lara reveals, as yet
unacknowledged by the political and legal system imposed and preserved by the might of the
conqueror. Federal Indian law, not just willfully blind to crucial questions of agency and
responsibility for past wrongs but often overtly racist, is the current instrument of choice
whereby a non-Indian majority thwarts the assertion of sovereign tribal rights to engage in
economic development projects resulting in the transborder movement of goods and persons,"
the production of significant wealth, 2 or the expression of religious or cultural difference. 3
Simply put, Lara, albeit a win for the "good guys," offers nothing to contradict the lesson of
more than two centuries of practice: federal Indian law, and in particular the doctrines of
plenary power and stare decisis, is the thinnest of veneers for "de facto rule over both tribes
and individual Indians without restraint and across all manner of human affairs."' 4 Even if
federal Indian law was not already structurally incompatible with the self-determination15 of
Indian nations and ready-made for exploitation by foes of sovereign governments within the
external borders of the United States, its interpretation, guided by the dominant philosophies
of Western liberal jurisprudence and modern international legal positivism-the former
distrustful of the Indian normative universe and thus bent upon remaking tribes to comport
with a secular, individualist model of governance, the latter unwilling to recognize tribes as
subjects of law and as bearers of natural legal rights actionable in domestic and international
courts-would prove hostile, and perhaps fatal, to territorially based Indian sovereignty. Even
under the moderating influence of the most sympathetic members of the nonpolitical branch,
judicial review of questions of federal Indian law, on balance, has been an engine of the
destruction of tribal self-determination since the founding of the United States. Plenary power
and Indian sovereignty are mutually exclusive, and Lara only partially and temporarily obscures
the existential reality that, for Indians, federal Indian law is an evil legal system.16 Rather than
celebrate Lara, Indians should probe deeper and ask themselves how long before Congress
"fixes" it and divests tribes of nonmember Indian criminal jurisdiction, whether they intend to
mount an effective defense against the destruction of the last vestiges of their judicial
sovereignty, what instruments of power-legal, political, and moral-they can marshal in support
of this mission, and whether their right to self-determine can be meaningfully exercised in
continued association with the United States.
Epistemological whiteness is the precondition for racism, sexism, and extinction —it
places whiteness as the measure for all things
Moreton – Robinson 04, Aileen Moreton – Robinson, 1/1/04, Moreton – Robinson is Professor of
Indigenous Studies, Division of Research and Commercialisation, and Indigenous Studies Research Network,
“Whitening Race,” NN
Representations of the Indigenous 'other' have circulated in white Anglo discourse since the
1700s.The most infamous was that given by Cook, who stated that the Indigenous people of
Australia had no form of land tenure because they were uncivilised, which meant the land
belonged to no one and was available for possession under the doctrine of terra nullius. The
representation of the Indigenous other as the nomad justified dispossession. Since then we
have been represented in many ways, which include treacherous, lazy, drunken, childish,
cunning, dirty, ignoble, noble, primitive, backward, unscrupulous, untrustworthy and savage.These apparently uncomplicated representations mask not only the complexity of Indigeneity
but also their role as a set of differences that work to assist the constitution of whiteness as an
epistemological a priori that informs one's ontology. As a categorical object, race is deemed to
belong to the other. This has resulted in many theories about race being blind to whiteness.
Since the Enlightenment, the dominant epistemological position within the Western world has
been the white Cartesian male subject whose disembodied way of knowing has been
positioned in opposition to white women's and Indigenous people s production of knowledge
(Moreton-Robinson 2000). Feminists and Indigenous scholars argue that their way of knowing is
connected to their positioning as sub- jects/knowers of inquiry who are socially situated and
related to others in the actualities of their own living. They acknowledge that not all knowledge
is chosen or actively acquired. Knowledge can be acquired outside experience but knowing is
also connected to experience and understood in relation to situated acts of interpretation and
representa- tion. However, within whiteness's regime of power, all representations are not of
equal value: some are deemed truthful while others are clas- sified fictitious, some are
contested while others form part of our commonsense takcn-ror-grantcd knowledge or the
world. Imbued with a power that normalises their existence, these latter representations are
invisible, unnamed and unmarked. It is the apparent transparency of these normative
representations that strategically enables differentiation and othcring. Foucault explains the
definitive importance of difference in moder- nity's development of knowledge: 'all knowledge,
of whatever kind, proceeded to the ordering of material by the establishment of differ- ences
and defined those differences by the establishment of an order' (1994:346). This has been
particularly evident in the study of race in the human sciences where skin colour is the signifier
of difference. Race continues to be a basic categorical object in the production of knowledge in
modernity and an epistemological given in disciplines such as biology, natural history and
anthropology (Goldberg 1993:149). 1 However, race is reserved for the other and the
assumption is that the raced body of the knower (in contrast to the gendered body that feminists privilege) is irrelevant to knowledge production. A constitutive feature of modernity was
the development of human- ness as a universal, which was incommensurate with inhuman
qualities (Montag 1997:284).The universalisation of humanity appears paradox- ical, given the
existence of racial difference. Sartre articulated this paradox by characterising the colonised
experience as follows: 'your humanism claims we are at one with the rest of humanity but your
racist methods set us apart' (1978:8). However, this paradox was resolved through the
racialised distinction between the animal and the human. The universalisation of humanity
required this separation and was enabled by social and juridical morals. These morals operated
to normalise whiteness as the measure of being human. Montag argues that: the universal was
one of the forms in which the white race historically appeared ... in this way, the concept of
whiteness is deprived of its purely racial character at the moment of its universalisation, no
longer conceivable as a particularistic survival haunting the discourse of uni- versality but,
rather as the very form of human universality itself. (1997:285) it is not (animal or liminal),
thereby staking an exclusive claim to the truly human. In this way, racial superiority becomes a
part of ones ontology, albeit unconsciously, and informs the white subject s knowl- edge
production.
The government’s exertion of control over Indian Country is rooted in a belief in the
racial inferiority of indigenous people – allowing for native sovereignty is the only
way to decrease less paternalism that upholds the legacy of colonialism.
Jacques et al, University of Central Florida PhD, 2003
[Peter, Sharon Ridge, Grinnell College and University of Iowa PhD, and Richard Witmer, Grinnell College
PhD, 18 J. Envtl. L. & Litig. 223, “Federal Indian Law and Environmental Policy: A Social Continuity of
Violence” Lexis, accessed 3-22-13, TAP]
Currently, federal Indian environmental policy relies on the annulment of treaties that were made in sacred trust between American Indian
tribes and the United States government. In the years since signing these agreements, non-Indians have used racial discrimination against
Indian tribes to justify their maltreatment and dispossession of Indian land. This injustice became institutionalized over time by unilateral
decisions made by the United States Congress and President, and was further supported by numerous Supreme Court decisions. Court rulings
that allowed for the abrogation of treaties at the discretion of the United States Congress are perhaps the most egregious of these injustices.
One of the most pernicious outcomes of these decisions by the Court and Congress has been to sever full tribal relationships with their land, a
central component of the negotiated treaties. This set of broken relationships is at the bottom of an unsustainable and unlivable land
management system that has occurred on a number of Indian reservations.¶ The premise of this Article is that the environmental policy
of the United States government, because it exerts control over Indian nations' natural resources in violation of specific
treaties, is inherently violent. We define violence in this case as a breach of the reciprocal relationship established between Indian tribes
and the federal government through treaties. To demonstrate our premise, we first conceptualize and configure the concept of violence as it
applies to environmental Indian policy. Second, the
violence of broken treaties to gain Indian resources is not a new
phenomenon as we demonstrate in an analysis of the Medicine Lodge Treaty, the subsequent Jerome Agreement, and the Lone Wolf v.
Hitchcock Supreme Court case that officially instituted congressional plenary power over all Indian nations. n1 Third, we demonstrate how
environmental policy operates under visions of racial and ethnic superiority in order to continue colonial
control of Indian resources. This vision of racial and ethnic superiority was institutionalized by Supreme Court precedence, and
continues to put the control of Indian resources in non-Indian hands. [*225] Finally, we suggest that current environmental policy has not only
committed violence against tribes but also against the earth through exploitation of reservations. The
way to end such violence
and exploitation of Indian people and the earth is to retract plenary power over environmental policy and exploitation,
acknowledge treaty relationships as sacred sovereign-to-sovereign promises, and place tribal lands back in tribal hands.¶ I¶ ¶ A
Concept of Violence¶ ¶ To draw out the violence embedded in broken treaties we first describe mainstream understandings of violence in the
modern era. Such understandings of violence are typically blind to the violence committed by government institutions acting in the name of
rationality, progress, or material benefit for the state. Second, we argue that the hierarchical relations, which replaced the reciprocal treaty
relations, are inherently violent because they force one party into the role of a ward with compromised agency.¶ The modern understanding of
violence, as found in social contract theory and the Post-Westphalian state, is particularly important in the case of American Indian law and
policy. Since early discussion of the subject by Greek scholars, in order for an action to be considered violent it must be an illegitimate,
irrational behavior of a minority of individuals in society. n2 During the casting of modernity, this became an axiom of the social contract. One
purpose of the social contract was to keep violence at a minimum so that people could be free to live their lives without the risk of violence that
was thought to exist outside formal social organization. n3 To enter the social contract is to gain civility and the ability to have real property. n4
"What man [sic] loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting;
what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses." n5 Thus, the social [*226] contract provides the civility of imposed limits
on violent human appetites while providing a system where the possession of real property is possible. Outside the social contract there is no
such thing as "private property" to social contract theorists, merely the ability to temporarily use a resource. This is important because, as we
discuss below, the doctrine of discovery allotted private property rights to "discoverers." Indian
tribes possessed only use rights
because they were seen to be outside the social contract, residing in a state of nature. n6¶ Outside the social
contract and within the anarchic state of nature, violence is an expected behavior. For this reason, sacrificing some portion of individual liberty
to a sovereign who would keep order was a rational decision. n7 Thus, violence within modernity is usually conceived of as the erratic behavior
of criminals and has not typically been conceived of as a social continuity perpetrated by rational and civil modernity itself. By definition, the
state becomes a protector from violence, not the perpetrator of violence; and, violence that the state does commit is veiled in legitimacy.¶
Legitimacy of the state's use of violence was articulated by foundational sociologists such as Durkheim and Comte who suggest that the state
was the source of modern and moral authority. n8 Like all political institutions, the state "is a relation of men dominating men," but this
domination serves as a "monopoly of legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." n9 Since the state is the source of legitimacy its
actions are not recognized as violent. Or, if they are seen as violent, the violence is not seen as problematic as it furthers the goals of a social
contract and modern progress. This concept is also reflected in the roots of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, where the state is the ideological
foundation of a good and developing society, an idea Marx would later dismiss. n10¶ [*227] The state's monopoly of the legitimate use of force
was the justification for the violence used against American Indians in the establishment and maintenance of the United States. Taking
and
controlling tribal land was seen as a necessary step in the progress of the state. We reject this thinking,
and argue that the state can be an agent of illegitimate force. This is central to our theory of violence because the lens
of institutional legitimacy has so far kept the operation of federal Indian environmental policy from
foundational criticism. One reason for this is that the same agent (the United States federal government) in the form of the Supreme
Court and Congress has been allowed to both rule in its own interest and then sanction that ruling - a clear violation of even mainstream
pluralist political theory. n11 In other words, in relying on the agent of violence to define legitimate fiduciary responsibility for the tribes, the
Court and Congress are empowered to promote their own interest. In this case, the separation of powers is irrelevant because the interest of
the federal government as a whole is uniformly found in the control of tribal land wealth.¶ While the definition of violence has been subject to
minimal debate or analysis as a concept, it has an assumed meaning in social science that generally includes physical injury with malicious
intent. In this definition of violence, the focus is on the intent of the agent to cause harm. Attempting to define actions as violent from the
agent's perspective, here the federal government, becomes very difficult. Melissa Burchard recognized this complexity of violence and
discusses the concept in the case of non-stranger rape. n12 An especially appropriate example given by Burchard is the case of non-stranger
rape where the rapist often says he did not "mean to do it." n13 As a result, prosecutors have been reluctant to vigorously pursue prosecutions
when the perpetrator of the crime suggested no malicious intent. n14 Thus we are left relying on the agent of violence to define (or not) their
own violent act. In the case of federal Indian environmental policy, it is unlikely that branches of government acting in collusion will recognize
their own violent acts or seek to prosecute them.¶ [*228] This point becomes even more poignant when dealing with an institution or
government whose actual intentions could be numerous and complicated to identify. Further, intention and interest may be hidden in the
modern rational decision-making process which can promote violence. Through the focus on means-end logic, violence may be justified,
considered natural, or simply overlooked as a necessary step in modern "progress." However, the role of this rationality in state-sponsored
violence has been ignored "because the social sciences still largely retain the etiological myth - the belief in an emergence from a pre-social
barbarity into a civilized and rational society." n15 Consequently, modern
institutions are rarely challenged as the root of
systemic violence.¶ Intent to cause harm is often obfuscated by the casting of some social groups
outside of the social contract as non-rational, primitive, and thus incapable of agency. Ecofeminists specifically
point out that social groups associated with the state of nature are tied to a state versus society justification of domination. As a result, they are
compelled to conform to the idea of European civilization. Ecofeminist scholars further suggest that the control of
tribes and the
earth by a dominant society are a related enterprise. n16 This domination is justified by the rhetoric of
paternalism. However, the true goal is to produce material wealth and power at the expense of those
protected. Thus, the efforts to assimilate American Indians into civilized people disguised the primary
goal of taking American Indian land and resources and using them to benefit non-Indians. In fact, the rhetoric
of civilizing the "savage" was a consistent element in contemporary American Indian history, including the Allotment era beginning in 1887.
During Allotment, tribes were divested of reservation with the promise that agriculture and a change in lifestyle would ultimately lead to a
better life. n17 Similarly during the "termination" period starting in 1945, some sovereign tribal governments were terminated with the
implication that American Indians would benefit from becoming full-fledged members of the dominant society if their official tribal affiliations
were dissolved. n18 [*229] Allotment and termination were not viewed as violent since the rhetoric of the federal government was of aid, not
malicious intent. Since mainstream notions of violence do not accurately describe this violence experienced by American Indian tribes, our
notion of violence itself must be reformed.¶ Therefore, the notion of violence employed here is the violence that begins in the minds of men
and women about "others," specifically those perceived to be outside of the social contract. Violence is, first and foremost, a breach of
expectations inherent in a relationship. According to Burchard,¶ ¶ Harm is not only a matter of what damage, physical or otherwise, has been
done, however. It is also, when taken in the context of determining whether violence has been done, an evaluative concept which implies that
some legitimate expectation about what ought to have been done has been breached. That is, part of the understanding of what actions will be
named violence depends on the understanding of the relationships involved in the given context. n19¶ ¶ The focus has now shifted from the
subjective intent of the agent and all of its associated problems to the relationship established between the involved parties. Understanding
what constitutes violent action is recognizing the expectations inherent in that relationship. Breaching these expectations is the core of
understanding whether harm has occurred. n20¶ Harm occurs at the point in a relationship where there is an expectation of an equal
relationship, but one of the parties unilaterally assumes a superior position. The essence of this harm is not just that one party has more power,
but that one entity changes an established or assumed reciprocal relationship with another party for their own gain. Political realists have
observed this phenomenon at least since the time of Thucydides, but typically assert that it is part of an unchanging human nature.
Normalizing violence in this way takes an expectation for circular (non-hierarchical, interdependent, and
balanced) relations out of the frame of reference and the foundation of violence goes unchallenged.¶
[*230] When groups of people interact with each other, we assume that no group of people will view themselves as justifiably inferior to the
other, regardless of relative capabilities. Therefore, on the personal level, even though strangers on the subway or in the alleyway do not have
an established reciprocal relationship, this minimal expectation of reciprocity is presumed. When this reciprocity is formalized into sacred
treaties, breaking this relationship has even more severe consequences because defenses against exploitation may be relaxed. It is assumed
that actions by one party in a circular relationship occur with the consent of the other parties. Thus, non-coercive and non-retributive consent is
a minimum requirement to change the expectations of a reciprocal relationship between equals. If consent is not obtained, the unilateral action
by one side without consent of the other destroys the equality and replaces circularity with hierarchy within the relationship. This hierarchy
results in harm, which then constitutes violence.¶ The establishment of a hierarchical structure is one of the most damaging elements of
violence. The power accumulated in hierarchy facilitates the ability of abusers to keep the abused under their reign. This accumulation of power
then compromises the potential for resistance. American
Indians did not consent to the new hierarchical
relationships that replaced the sacred treaty relationships. The United States government unilaterally
imposed this hierarchy by threat of force justified by the United States Congress and the Supreme
Court.¶ With the original duties and relationships between the federal government and tribes
discarded, the federal government was able to exercise plenary control over native land bases for their
own gain. This has meant extracting vast surplus value through wanton natural resource extraction from
tribal land bases.¶ Two acts of violence are committed when the United States government breaches a
treaty with Indian nations that reserve an area for tribal control. The first relationship broken is that
between the two peoples, Indian tribes and the United States government who have formed a sacred bond. The
second relationship broken is the human/nature relationship between Indian tribes and the land.
Important to our understanding of environmental policy, the agents in this relationship (and thus our theory) can include non-humans such as
animals, plants, rocks, streams, and mountains. Different societies ascribe agency to [*231] differing entities. For many American Indian tribes,
the earth itself was a consistent, active and powerful agent with whom many tribes instituted reciprocal affiliation. While treaties do not spell
out how tribes should think of nature, forcing a utilitarian use of nature where a different relationship previously existed is another violent
dimension of broken treaties. This can be restored with minimal effort by simply following the agreements that were made. ¶ Under the
prevailing conception, Western
ontologies and epistemologies have not recognized the breach of sacred treaty
relationships as a violent action. However, with a new understanding of violence, environmental policy
in Indian Country can be recognized for the dysfunction that it continues to serve. We can better understand this
conception of violence by profiling a Kiowa experience that was later applied to all federal-tribal relationships.¶ II¶ ¶ Twenty-Five Years
Reserved: The Treaty of Medicine Lodge is Allotted¶ ¶ In 1867, the Kiowa and Comanche Nations and the United States government negotiated
a treaty at Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas. Article One reads:¶ ¶ From this day forward all war between the parties to this agreement shall
forever cease. The Government of the United States desires peace, and its honor is here pledged to keep it. The Indians desire peace, and they
now pledge their honor to maintain it. n21¶ ¶ The 1867 Medicine Lodge peace treaty was forged to end potentially protracted fighting that
could have severely damaged both sides. For the United States government, talks were needed to strike a deal with the Kiowas and Comanches
so they would not attack the railroad or wagon trains crossing through their territory on the way west. For the Kiowa and Comanche,
negotiations for a cessation of fighting were meant to ensure the protection of tribal land from further incursions by non-Indians. In negotiating
an agreement, both sides also approved a framework for further agreements. This framework, usually referred [*232] to as the "Indian Consent
Rule," stated that the federal government would have to gather the signed consent from three-quarters of the adult males in the tribe before
any other land cessions were made. This was an attempt by tribal leaders to avert the loss of any additional tribal land and/or rights to the
federal government. The Indian consent requirement was placed in the Treaty "to specifically reassure those Indians who wanted a federal
guarantee of their future, undisturbed use and occupancy of their reserved lands." n22¶ Thus, "in
exchange for certain land
cessions, the federal government explicitly promised the Kiowas that no additional land cessions would
be made without their consent." n23 At Medicine Lodge Creek, the Kiowa ceded original tribal lands that spanned from South
Dakota to large portions of western Oklahoma in exchange for more than two million acres in present day southwestern Oklahoma. n24 The
Agreement is explicit about the extent of control the respective tribes had over this land.¶ ¶ The United States now solemnly agrees that no
person except those herein authorized so to do and except such offers, agents and employees of the government as may be authorized to enter
upon said Indian reservation in discharge of duties enjoined by law, shall ever be permitted to pass over, settle upon, or reside in the territory
described in this article, or in such territory as may be added to this reservation for the use of said Indians. n25¶ ¶ Thus the Medicine Lodge
Treaty provides a legal agreement for the permanent residence, use and benefit of a reservation explicitly for the Kiowa and Comanche people.
Yet despite the explicit language in the original treaty, the Kiowa reservation no longer exists. Kiowa
land holdings are now a
"checkerboard" arrangement of personal property (not tribal) and trust land. Tribal members personally
retain 1200 acres of discontinuous land and an interest in about 3000 acres of trust land. n26 This
represents a loss of 99.7% of the land originally reserved in the Treaty. Some scholars argue this should
be considered an act of genocide due [*233] to the attempt to destroy the land base of land-based
peoples. n27 Part of this act was the necessary hierarchical relationship and exercise of power to
enact these genocidal policies . Moreover, such policies would not have been considered had the original reciprocal duties been
honored and genuinely respected.¶ The loss of permanently reserved land occurred for many tribes through "allotment" via the General
Allotment Act of 1887. Allotment was a policy to reduce tribal holdings and end tribalism by taking tribal reserved land and allotting it to tribal
individuals to be used for farming. Non-Indians advocated the Act under the guise of "civilizing" Indian people by dispossessing tribal land and
privatizing it for individual farming. However, it was also done at a time when the federal government was under pressure to release more land
to settlers. The "surplus" land left from allotments to tribal members was consequently sold off to non-Indian settlers for less than $ 2.00 an
acre. During this period, tribal people lost over 80% of their reserved land (which was already an enormous reduction from previously ceded
land). n28 Before Congress ended the policy of allotment, many individuals' allotments were sold to non-Indians, making tribal holdings a
"checkerboard" of ownership.¶ For the Kiowa and Comanche, allotment was implemented through the Jerome Agreement of 1892.
"Agreement," however, is a contested term in this case because the "Indian consent rule" of the Medicine Lodge Treaty had been broken. It
was broken by David Jerome and Warren Sayre, Federal Indian Commissioners, who told the Kiowas, Comanches and Kiowa-Apache that if they
did not allot their land, the President would do it by force as had been done to other tribes. The Kiowa protested, but the federal officials
forced the matter and left with 456 tribal signatures. n29 The most current census of that time showed that there were 725 adult males on the
reservation. In order to be in accordance [*234] with the Medicine Lodge Treaty, Article 12, the federal government needed 543 signatures.
n30¶ According to our definition of violence, abrogation of the Medicine Lodge Treaty was an act of violence against the tribes as it abrogated
the reciprocal relationship between two sovereigns. Clearly, placing the Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache and Comanche Indians under a hierarchical
relationship forced them to subordinate their rights of self-determination and forfeit their ability to determine policy on tribal land. However,
this violence was consequently legitimated by the Supreme Court holding in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock.¶ III¶ ¶ The Violent Institution of Lone Wolf
v. Hitchcock¶ ¶ Kiowa Chief Lone Wolf appealed the Jerome Allotment to the Supreme Court, citing the fact that the Agreement failed to get a
super-majority from the tribe, thus breaking the Medicine Lodge Treaty. The Kiowa chief lost the case, and the Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock Court
ruled that the United States Congress could abrogate this agreement and all treaties as it saw fit. n31 This decision affirmed congressional
plenary, or nearly unrestricted, power and gave Congress the ability to make final decisions regarding American Indian lands and welfare. n32 In
this decision, Congress is assumed to act as fiduciary to the tribes as a parent acts in the interest of a child; this is the trust doctrine and
continues to be a foundation for justification of plenary power today. n33¶ The Court and Congress never denied that, if the Jerome Agreement
was ratified, it would break the Medicine Lodge Treaty. In fact, the Secretary of the Interior testified to Congress that the treaty had not been
fulfilled. n34 Thus, the issue in the Lone Wolf decision was not whether the treaty was indeed broken - it was - but whether the United States
was bound by the relationships of the Medicine Lodge documents and others like it. n35¶ [*235] Perhaps the key to understanding the scope of
this violence is to understand what the federal government and the tribes expected out of the treaty relationship. The tribes expected that the
treaties had a universal, spiritual, and teleological import. For tribes, treaty making was often viewed as a sacred trust. Treaties were bonds that
had utility and were also bonds that held the promise of multicultural unity and connection. Treaties were a way to bring peace and were seen
in a larger context than simply the absence of physical violence, because the treaty parties would become joined in trust. "First and foremost
with Indians of the Classical Era (and even today) a treaty is a sacred text. It fulfills a divine command for all the peoples of the world to unite as
one." n36¶ The views of Indians towards treaties is further explained by a scholar quoting an Indian superintendent, "'in the making of
treaties'... 'no people are more open, explicit, and direct.' This was because, according to American Indian traditions of law and peace, treaties
created a sacred relationship of trust between two peoples." n37 The relationship forged in treaties could not be more evident. Treaties
connected Indian people with the settler people "literally as relatives." n38¶ The federal government, on the other hand, expected more of a
business deal than a brotherhood. The federal government apparently saw treaties as a means to an end and an instrumental decision to
conclude a conflict and gain resources. This commitment only had rational appeal so long as the agreement was in the government's favor. In
1871, just four years after the Medicine Lodge Treaty, the settler government found themselves in a position of enough power and political will
to end treaty-making with the tribes for good. Apparently the convenience had worn off, even if the sacred trust had not.¶ The settler
government, instead of respecting the specific circular relationships set up in treaties, would come to generalize its hierarchical relationship
over Indian peoples through a universal Indian policy, largely based on plenary power. "As long as we emphasize the generalities, we do
violence to the rights of Indians [*236] as they are articulated specifically in the history of the tribe with the federal government." n39 One such
generalization is the decision of the Lone Wolf Court.¶ Had the Court reversed Allotment and upheld the relationships of treaties in federal
Indian law, it would have had to also remand the purchases made by over 150,000 non-Indian settlers who had bought homesteads at a $ 1.75
per acre. n40 All of these factors were nearly immovably in place despite the fact that the United States very often promised reservation lands
would be available for the sole use by the tribes, "as long as the grass is green and the rivers flow." n41¶ Not only did the Lone Wolf Court
decide that Congress did not have to abide by its promises in the Medicine Lodge Treaty, but it released itself from all treaties with Indian
people.¶ ¶ The power exists to abrogate the provisions of an Indian treaty, though presumably such power will be exercised only when
circumstances arise which will not only justify the government in disregarding the stipulations of the treaty, but may demand, in the interest of
the country and the Indians themselves, that it should do so. When, therefore, treaties were entered into between the United States and a
tribe of Indians it was never doubted that the power to abrogate existed in Congress, and that in a contingency such power might be availed of
from considerations of governmental policy, particularly if consistent with perfect good faith towards the Indians. n42¶ ¶ It should be noted
that plenary power and the power to abrogate, as it is referred to in the ruling, did not always exist in the form that it does now. To proclaim so
denies the reasoning for which the federal government was forced to negotiate treaties with the tribes in the first place. Also, the Court's
apparent presumption that abrogation and plenary power would be administered with the best interests of the tribes in mind is not a point
that has been fully supported by congressional policy. Yet, the Court famously admits, "We must presume that Congress acted in perfect good
faith in the dealings with the Indians of which [*237] complaint is made, and that the legislative branch of the government exercised its best
judgment in the premises." n43 With this understanding of the trust, Congress is said to know the interests of the tribes more than the tribes
themselves and the abrogation of treaties would be made to benefit them. Under this new relationship, control of the structure of Indian life
and resources were placed within the plenary control of Congress. "Furthermore, Congress was judicially authorized to take Indian lands
incident to its exercise of guardianship power over the Indian peoples. The Court's action unleashed the federal government's forced Indian
assimilation program that was aimed at the systematic dismantling of traditional tribal governance and cultural systems." n44 These colonial
inscriptions and the violence inherent in them are the basis for contemporary environmental policy on
tribal lands.¶ IV¶ ¶ Colonialism, the Doctrine of Discovery, and Environmental Policy¶ ¶ "The history of man's effort to
subjugate nature is also the history of man's subjugation by man." n45 Control of Indian people by
controlling Indian land is a poignant example.¶ Given colonial visions of the European superiority in ideas
of religion, government, culture and control of the environment, Indian nations were not permitted to
have the same control of resources as Europeans. Instead, Indian title was a compromised version of
land and resource control that only implied use and occupancy, not mastery of land and resources that the
Europeans assigned themselves. Western ideas of title included fee simple property that could be sold. In
contrast, "aboriginal title" did not allow similar transfer/sale privilege. n46¶ Aboriginal title was not
determined by examining the governance systems in place - which were complex and largely well-organized in egalitarian
and peaceful means n47 - but through race. [*238] This is evident in the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Sandoval. In
Sandoval, Pueblo tribes differed from other Indian nations in that they owned their land in fee title since the time of Spanish contact in New
Mexico. n48 Despite this undisputed title, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could still impose control over the reservation simply because
the people were Indian.¶ The people of the pueblos, although sedentary rather than nomadic in their inclinations, and disposed to peace and
industry, are nevertheless Indians in race, customs, and domestic government. Always living in separate and isolated communities, adhering to
primitive modes of life, largely influenced by superstition and [fetishism], and chiefly governed according to the crude customs inherited from
their ancestors, they are essentially a simple, uninformed and inferior people. n49¶ As the Court proclaims, application of the
federal
trust, plenary power and federal control of environmental policy is based on notions of an inferior race.
This theory allows for the perpetuation of an institutionalized, hierarchical relationship where nonIndians control Indian land and may perpetuate violence "in good faith."¶ Further reinforcing European
notions of racial difference was the divergent relationships Indian peoples and Anglos had with nature.
n50 Anglo conceptions typically viewed nature as an opportunity for material wealth based on the control of
nature. n51 This utilitarian relationship to the natural world promoted vast conversions of natural resources
into usable commodities and industries. n52 These industries were then transformed into increased industrial and military
capacity used to further expansion and to acquire more resources. n53¶ In contrast, many tribal epistemologies did not
recognize the ability to own or master an animate nature. n54 Viewing nature as alive restricts the uses
of natural resources and severely restricts [*239] commodification and industry as a matter of respect.
n55 Conversely, viewing nature as inanimate, as did Anglos, allows for maximum exploitation. n56 Some scholars see this
type of world-view as a foundation for imperialism because societies that extract the most short-term energy
from natural resources gain dominant social positions and power over those who temper their
exploitation. n57¶ A. The Doctrine of Discovery¶ ¶ ¶ The English colonists came up with two justifications for taking
the Native Americans' lands. First, they argued that colonists would civilize the Indians and 'cover their naked
miserie, with civill use of foode and cloathing.' In royal charters given to the companies organizing the colonization, mention was always made
of the obligation to bring Christianity to the 'savages.' The
other part of the rationale was that Europeans could put the
land to a 'higher use,' making it more productive by intensive cultivation and by bringing in livestock. In 1625, Samuel Purchas argued
that God did not intend for the land to remain as 'that unmanned wild Countrey, which [the savages] range rather than inhabite.' n58¶ ¶ From
the very beginning, Europeans sought to control the ontology of nature by imposing western norms of
separating nature from society. Groups with a communal and cohesive relationship with nature were seen as outside of the social
contract and were marginalized as irrational. As such, "savage as the wolf" and "noble savage" constructions were used to imagine American
Indian people as inferior. n59 These
characterizations become the underlying justifications for domination of
people portrayed as "unfortunate children of nature" n60 who need to be controlled, managed and
dominated like nature itself under the rubric of Enlightenment civilization. The first version of colonial
jurisprudence [*240] to utilize this characterization in the United States was the method of dividing
resources for use via title, as understood by discovery tenets.¶ The discovery doctrine gained further legitimacy in United States law
through its application by Chief Justice Marshall. According to Marshall this doctrine leads to a natural assumption about 'use' versus 'title'
property. He elaborates the point in Johnson v. McIntosh. n61¶ ¶ They [American indigenous people] were admitted to be the rightful
occupants of the soil, with a legal as well as just claim to retain possession of it, and to use it according to their own discretion; but their rights
to complete sovereignty, as independent nations, were necessarily diminished, and their power to dispose of the soil at their own will, to
whomsoever they pleased, was denied by the original fundamental principle, that discovery gave exclusive title to those who made it. n62¶ ¶
Federal trust, in light of its discovery legacy, is a legal tool whose primary use is to compromise the title and claims held by tribes. Moreover,
the federal
trust is a colonial instrument used from the beginning to divest the natural resources from
American Indians. This justification by differences in race and ethnicity places aboriginal people outside of the social contract. If they are
placed outside of the social contract, the original, established agreements with the tribes could be broken on the grounds of paternalism.
However, the use of the discovery doctrine to
legitimize the violence done to American Indians through this
unilateral paternalism, even if hidden during treaty making, cannot disguise the harm done to American Indians who were forcefully
removed from their lands and denied their traditional relationship with nature.¶ B. Environmental Policy as Colonial Legacy¶ ¶ Federaltribal environmental land management on reservations reflects the foundational violence committed
through colonial-based plenary power. American Indian leaders, scholars and policy experts agree that these environmental
policies have been a disaster. n63 We contend that the harm done can be traced to the [*241] forced change in American Indian use
relationships with nature that had been protected by treaties. Thus, while
tribes and individual American Indian citizens
often retain traditional values for relating to nature, they are not allowed to incorporate them into the
federal environmental laws that govern policy on tribal lands. As a result, Indian environmental policy, as
dictated by various federal environmental laws, places major decisions about resource use and management in the
hands of the federal government through application of the trust doctrine and the "good faith" which it
is supposed to embody.¶ One function the federal trust affords the federal government, usually the
Department of the Interior, is the ability to approve leases for uranium mines, coal mines, timber harvests and other
extractive industries. The trust doctrine has had a damaging effect on tribal sovereignty as well as
environmental quality. Tribes have been forced to lease out territory for the mining of radioactive material used in civilian and military nuclear
facilities. n64 Such operations usually destroy an area in perpetuity and are often abandoned without being cleaned up. n65 "Tribal
selfdetermination requires the ending of the colonial relationship facilitated by the energy companies and
the government... ." n66 The federal trust responsibility is used in an abusive fashion to exploit the
resources of American Indian people without paying the social costs of doing so. n67 The leases are
producing revenue for the tribes, but at a rate far below their market value. n68 Thus, [*242] the tribes are
not only denied the right to stop exploitation and treatment of nature in a way counter to their beliefs,
they are also cheated out of their share of the profits when resources are extracted.
The alternative is to reject the inclusion of native representations in the public space
Discourses of oppression is what re-defines whiteness – keeping narratives and
cultural oppression out of the public is key to stop its cooption
Moreton – Robinson 04, Aileen Moreton – Robinson, 1/1/04, Moreton – Robinson is Professor of
Indigenous Studies, Division of Research and Commercialisation, and Indigenous Studies Research Network,
“Whitening Race,” NN
Representations of the Indigenous other work within discourses to enable and sustain the universality of
whiteness as hunianness which defines itself as what it is not. Primitivism developed during
modernity and is dependent upon established scientific fields such as anthropology and biology
which through their formal character and apparent univer- sality confer authority and
legitimacy to it (Goldberg 1993:149). Whiteness has been historically integral to the emergence of
these authoritative fields while remaining invisible, unmarked and unnamed. It is in this context that
'the primitive' is operationalised to be either in opposition to or supportive of white identity. Andrew
Lattas analyses the way Aboriginal identity is influenced by discourses concerned with the
constitution and future of the nation's identity. He argues that by representing Indigenous people in
discourse as the bearers of primitivism, white people can claim to inhabit moder- nity and
individualism:'[T]he racialised primitive Other is constructed as the ultimate embodiment of visual
culture and the white intellectual as the ultimate embodiment of the superior power of words'
(1992:49). Unlike Muecke and Attwood, Lattas does invoke the racial category 'white' in his
analysis. However, its use is restricted to denoting partic- ular subject positions: white intellectual,
white man, white artists. In this way Lattas fails to distinguish between a racialised subject
position and the power and knowledge effects of racialised discourse. Primitivism is not
recognised as a discursive effect of whiteness which operates beyond identity at the level of knowledge
production. In analysing how representation is constitutive of violence, Barry Morris argues that the
culture of terror exercised on the frontier was enabled through the indeterminacy of the native subject's
shift between ambivalence and fixity. A mimesis occurred between the imputed treachery of the
Aborigine and the savagery of the colonial project: 'The efficacy of such representations of
Aboriginal "treachery" mani- fested itself in the deeper strain of fear and hatred which
characterised the redemptive violence of the colonial frontier' (1992:85-6). Morris's analysis
recognises that representations of the Aborigine both consti- tuted and enabled violence, but the
epistemological a priori of white- ness which also constitutes such representations remains unmarked
and invisible. Whiteness as an epistemological and ontological a priori is seductive in that it underpins
concepts like colonists or colonialism in Australia, but its invisibility means it makes these terms
appear to be deracialised. This is one of the ways in which whiteness remains unmarked as a
discursive formation that is tied to knowledge produc- tion and the exercise of power. What we
can extract from Morris's and Lattas's examinations of rep- resentations of the Indigenous
other is that the system of beliefs, values and knowledge that created a racial hierarchy placed
whiteness at the top. The post-Aboriginalist position of Attwood, and Muecke and others, can
acknowledge the construction of Aboriginality as the 'Other' of the universal humanist subject
of the West. However, they fail to imagine that Indigenous intellectual production might be inspired
by a different understanding of the human subject because whiteness operates as an epistemological
and ontological a priori in their work. As Fanon concluded in The Wretched of the Btirtlr/For
Europe, for ourselves and for humanity ... wc must turn over a new leaf, wc must work out new
concepts, and try to set afoot a new [human]' (1978:255). Fanon was not confused by the
intimate connection between the violent face of humanism, on the one hand, and the white
subject behind the mask who dispensed it, on the other.
2NC
Link
OV
The link is to the inclusion of exploitive native images, cultural references, and
stories – each native representation leads to the impact of culture loss and the recreation of violence and oppression – inclusion and visibility are a double-edged
sword – they allow the USFG learn the survival strategies of the oppressed – that’s
Moreton - Robinson
Visibility
Whiteness necessarily reproduces, normalizes, and centers itself through media and
literature by exploitation of the native image
Moreton – Robinson 04, Aileen Moreton – Robinson, 1/1/04, Moreton – Robinson is Professor of
Indigenous Studies, Division of Research and Commercialisation, and Indigenous Studies Research Network,
“Whitening Race,” NN
Dyer highlights the salience or whiteness in modernity s development of knowledge: Research
into books, museums, the press, advertising, films, television, software repeatedly shows that
in Western representation whites are overwhelmingly and disproportionately predominant,
have the central and elaborated roles, and above all are placed as the norm, the ordinary, the
standard. Whites are everywhere in representation. Yet precisely because of this and their
placing as norm they seem not to be repre- sented to themselves as whites but as people who
are variously gen- dered, classed, sexualised and able. At the level of racial representation, in
other words, whites are not of a certain race, they re just the human race. (1997:3) In the guise
of the invisible human universal, whiteness secures hege- mony through discourse by
normalising itself as the cultural space of the West. Sustained by imperialism and global
capitalism, whiteness travelled culturally and physically, impacting on the formation of
nationhood, class and empire (Frankenberg 1997a:2). It would be a mistake, however, to
assume that whiteness is only found in societies inhabited and dominated by white people or
that it functions only where white bodies exist. Whiteness is not just about bodies and skin
colour; instead, it is 'more about the discursive practices that, because of colonialism and
neocolonialism, privilege and sustain global dominance of white imperial subjects' (Shome
1999:107). The hegemony of Western whiteness continues to shape the future of the rest of
the world. The USA, Britain and Australia's pre-emptive invasion of Iraq demonstrates that the
East is now the new frontier for the white West. Despite the fact that there was no evidence to
substan- tiate Iraq as a direct threat to Australia or Britain, Prime Ministers Tony Blair and John
I Ioward were the first to join America and its 'war on terror'. Representing themselves as the
holders of true humanity, these white Anglo nations positioned themselves as the liberators of
Iraq bringing civilisation to an uncivilised people. Australia as a former colony of Britain saw the
transplanting of an English form of whiteness to its shores. English cultural, religious, polit- ical
and economic values shaped the new colony. While English Protestants dominated public life
during the eighteenth century, by the end of the nineteenth century Irish and Scottish Catholics
had gained social mobility (see Chapter 16).These groups may have been divided along ethnic,
religious and class lines but they cemented themselves as a white race in the twentieth century
through the shaping of Australia's constitution.The White Australia policy made Angloccntric
whiteness the definitive marker of citizenship; and a form of property born of social status to
which others were denied access including Indigenous people. Through political, economic and
cultural means Anglocentric whiteness restricted and determined who could vote, who could
own property, who could receive wages for work, who was free to travel, who was entitled to
legal representation and who could enter Australia. These devices of exclusion did not
articulate who or what is white but rather who or what is not white. The discursive formation of
Anglocentric whiteness is a relatively uncharted territory that has remained invisible, dominant
and perva- sive, even as it influences everyday life. 'Like any other complex of beliefs and
practices whiteness is embedded in a highly articulated social structure and system of
signification' (Winant 1997:48). The Anglocentric culture of Australia shares features consistent
with other white Western societies and is a powerful producer of national identity, shaping
ideologies of individualism, egalitarianism, mateship and citi- zenship. Inter-war
representations of Australian mateship, figured through the face of the white digger, embodied
racial exclusion as much as an abstract nationalist idea (Nicoll 2001a). Representations of
whiteness continue to be enshrined and conveyed in curricula, televi- sion, films, newspapers,
novels, museums, performing and visual arts, songs and other material culture. For example,
when Australian egali- tarianism and individualism are personified through sportspeoplc like
Dawn Fraser, Pat Rafter and Ian Thorpe, they are not associated with a particular racial group.
Consider why Cathy Freeman is positioned as running for reconciliation, yet Ian Thorpe swims
for the nation.
Whiteness uses native stories and cultural traditions to re-create itself – every public
advocacy by the oppressed is turned into a tool of exploitation by the dominant force
Moreton – Robinson 04, Aileen Moreton – Robinson, 1/1/04, Moreton – Robinson is Professor of
Indigenous Studies, Division of Research and Commercialisation, and Indigenous Studies Research Network,
“Whitening Race,” NN
When the West is invoked in postcolonial studies it is countries like the United States, Canada,
France, Britain, western Europe, Australia and New Zealand that are designated as having the
imperial gaze (Ashcroft et ah 1995; Frankenberg 1997a). The West is not explicitly associated with
whiteness in most postcolonial work because it functions as a racclcss category, fcdward :>aids seminal
text Urietttaltsm (ivfo) pro- duced a theory of representation that has been used by many to analyse the
postcolonial condition. Orientalism posits the idea of the West as an entity confined by its
representations of the Orient.The Orient comes to be known through cultural discourses, systems of
governance, and the production and dissemination of texts produced by the West. Glossed as 'the
West', whiteness remains invisible, unnamed and unmarked; it is omnipresent and effects
representation in multiple ways. Postcolonial theory began to influence the work of scholars in Australia
from the late 1980s. They were interested in examining the idea of a postcolonial Australia at a
time when Australia's immigration and settlement policies were framed by multiculturalism and
when Indigenous issues,'particularly land rights and reconciliation, ranked in the forefront of
politics' (Markus 2001:33). In the 1990s, in particular, scholars began to analyse representations of
Indigenous people, devel- oping an area of study identified as Aboriginal Postcolonial Studies. Some
scholars were concerned with examining negative definitions and descriptions, while others
concentrated on contextualising acts of knowledge about the Indigenous other (Attwood & Arnold
1992; Cowlishaw 1993). One of the earliest collections of such work was published in a special
edition of the Journal of Australian Studies, entitled 'Power, Knowledge and Aborigines' and
edited by Bain Attwood and John Arnold. There are no Aboriginal contributors to this edition,
with the exception of the cover design, a painting by Robert Campbell junior, Ngaku, from
Kempsey which is entitled Aboriginal History (facts) 1988. The painting depicts a narrative of
colonisation, in which the white male body is clearly visible. Campbell, like Tanon, is not
uncomfortable in identify- ing the whiteness of his oppressors.4 He positions himself as a
subject of resistance, making the visible white body the object of that resist- ance. In this way
Campbell's painting inverts the object—subject rela- tionship, which is elaborated in the
contents of the journal. I Iowever, the relationship of the cover to the contents reverses
Campbells inver- sion. Despite its best intentions of mitigating primitivist discourse, the journal
restages it through representing 'the racialised primitive Other ... as the ultimate embodiment of visual
culture and the white intel- Lectual as the ultimate embodiment of the superior power of words' (Lattas
1992:49).The primitive is the body, while the white intellectual is the mind. Here the body stands in
relation to the mind as the cover stands in relation to the journal. The writer-knowcr as subject is racially
invisible, while the Aboriginal as object is visible.The discourse of primitivism deploys the Cartesian
model to separate the racialised white body of the knower from the racialised discourse and knowledge
produced by its mind. In this way the body, which is the marker of race, is erased leaving only the
disembodied mind. Whiteness, as an ontological and epistemologi- cal ci priori, is seductive in producing
the assumption of a racially neutral mind and an invisible detached white body. Some of the best
scholars in Aboriginal postcolonial studies con- tributed to this edition and it is still one of the
few texts that deals with lndigeneity and representation. In the introduction, Bain Attwood
(1992) draws on Said's concept of Orientalism to argue that knowing the Aborigine is
encapsulated within a mode of discourse he refers to as Aboriginalism. For Attwood this
comprises three dimensions: the first being Aboriginal Studies, the teaching, research and
scholarship pro- duced by'European scholars'; second, the ontological and epistemolog- ical
distinctions between 'them' and 'us'; and third, the corporate institutions that govern and
define Aborigines. He asserted that outside of Aboriginalism there are other forms of
knowledge characterised by non-oppressive discursive practices that he identifies as postAboriginalist. The nature of post-Aboriginalist discursive practices entails collaborative relationships
between Aborigines and anthropolo- gists, linguists, historians and curators in museums, land councils
and Aboriginal communities. Attwood further argues that there have been two theoretical
developments in Aboriginal Studies, which challenge Aboriginalism: First, Aborigines are viewed
as socially constructed subjects with iden- tities, which are relational and dynamic rather than
oppositional (in the binary sense) and given.This challenge to essentialism and the teleolog- ica]
assumptions embedded in Aboriginalist scholarship involves his- toricising processes that have
constructed Aborigines, thus revealing how Aboriginal identity has been fluid and shifting, and
above all con- tingent on colonial power relations. This approach necessarily involves a new object
of knowledge — Ourselves, European Australians rather than them, the Aborigines — and this entails
a consideration of the nature of our colonising culture and the nature of our knowledge and
power in relation to Aborigines.These new praxes and knowledges rad- ically destabilise
conventional ways of establishing identity or the exis- tential conditions of being for both
Aborigines and ourselves, but they also have the potential to offer new means for a mutual becoming.
(1992:xv) The point to note about Attwood's analysis is the way in which he identifies a homogenous
group as 'ourselves' — European Australians — yet fails to racialise the same group as white,
despite prevailing dis- courses which used the term 'European' to refer to British and north- ern
Europeans.This resistance to naming whiteness works to deracialise the category Attwood
designates as 'European Australians'. Race is implicit in the construct Aborigine but not
identified as being implicit in the category European Australian. In contrast to whiteness,
Aboriginaliry as a racial construct is identified with blackness and is named and attached to
Aboriginalism and post-Aboriginalism because it is deemed a valid discursive
practice.Techniques through which other racial categories are deconstructed, reconfigured, subverted
and changed, elided and embedded, have not been applied to whiteness. This is because Aboriginalism
and post-Aboriginalism are socially con- structed by whiteness as representations of what it is not.The
new the- oretical challenges to Aboriginalism recognise that what is required is a new object of
knowledge but whiteness as an epistemological <i priori works to assign this object on the basis
of European Australian ethni- city rather than race.This ensures that race continues to belong to the
Indigenous other and whiteness remains hidden, which leads me to ask the question: how is postAboriginalism the new means of our mutual becoming when conventional ways of deploying race have
not been radically destabilised? Similarly, the article by Stephen Muecke (1992) on representation fails
to recognise whiteness as a racial category. According to Muecke, when scholars seek to evaluate a
stereotype against reality all we are doing is comparing one representation with another because both
arc interpretations. Thus, we should be concerned with post-representa- tion, a mode of analysis that
does not deal with 'real-world relations'; instead, it is interested in how images are produced through
available discourses and whether it is possible to create others. Muecke is con- cerned that
Aboriginalist discourse within society conflates culture with Aborigines: This legacy forces
contemporary Aboriginal subjects, in turn, into posi- tions of essentialism (you are Aboriginal),
or representativeness and knowledge (you would know about kinship systems of the Western
desert), and consequently they are constantly called upon to display this essence, or this or that
skill, as if culture were an endowment. This is an enormous burden, and it is the Western version of
culture which gives them this, not the Aboriginal. This is not to say that the Aboriginal version of culture
is the thing to be achieved, the thing that will nec- essarily correct this idea, or complete one's being . . .
This nexus of grandeur and limitations — the inability to be able to see oneself as specifically
culturally focussed — has had the unfortunate effect of inhibiting the formation of a strong
Aboriginal intellectual group in Australia. 'Culture' thus seems to me to be the prison of
twentieth century Aborigines. (1992:40) I agree with Muecke that Aboriginalist discourse works
to circum- scribe self-representation or different constructions of Indigenous people which
could be deemed post-representational. However, to assume there is an absence of'a strong
Aboriginal intellectual group in Australia' due to the constitutive powers of Western discourse is
to place us outside discursive regimes of power and knowledge. The logic of Muecke's argument is
that the disciplinary regime that produces white Australian intellectuals is not also producing Indigenous
Australian intellectuals. Is it possible that in the late twentieth century this is because the whiteness of
post-structuralist theory is the prison of Stephen Muecke? Muecke effaces his own identity as an object
of power and knowledge and acquires the power of subject by making Indigenous people the
problematic objects of his theory. As a knowing subject he is able to simultaneously position Indigenous
intellectuals inside disciplinary power as victims (or in the 'prison of culture') and therefore outside
disciplinary power as non-intellectuals.This may be in part because as a central reference point for poststructuralist intellec- tuals, Foucault also overlooked the importance of naming whiteness in his work.
Yet, as a universal that represents humanity, whiteness has affected the knowledge of things
and their order.'[Whiteness] is the gaze of a universal that stumbles on what it has left out, on
the remain- der that it cannot acknowledge except by projecting it beyond the limits whose
existence it is designed to mask' (Montag 1997:292). As we shall see, despite being prisoners of
disciplinary power, representa- tions of whiteness in the texts of Indigenous scholars reveal a
knowl- edge of whiteness produced from being othered through a range of discursive and
material practices.
The Native doesn’t belong in the current political system – their narratives, stories,
and cultures continuously get coopted by the system in an ongoing genocide
Bradford 04, William Bradford, nearest date given is 2004, Bradford has a degree in law and is prominent in
the field of Native American law. He works for the Tulsa Law Review, “Another Such Victory and We Are Undone: A
Call to an American Indian Declaration of Independence,”
http://digitalcommons.law.utulsa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2464&context=tlr, NN
Non-Indians, contemplating the political and legal enormity of the task of doing justice by the subjects of
their policies of conquest, genocide, expropriation, legal assaults on tribal land and sovereignty, and
forced political and economic dependency, have long bemoaned their "Indian problem."9 At least it is a
problem of their own making; Indians, by contrast, have been saddled with a "Euro-American
problem"'0 created, maintained, and, as Lara reveals, as yet unacknowledged by the political and legal
system imposed and preserved by the might of the conqueror. Federal Indian law, not just willfully blind
to crucial questions of agency and responsibility for past wrongs but often overtly racist, is the current
instrument of choice whereby a non-Indian majority thwarts the assertion of sovereign tribal rights to
engage in economic development projects resulting in the transborder movement of goods and
persons," the production of significant wealth, 2 or the expression of religious or cultural difference. 3
Simply put, Lara, albeit a win for the "good guys," offers nothing to contradict the lesson of more than
two centuries of practice: federal Indian law, and in particular the doctrines of plenary power and stare
decisis, is the thinnest of veneers for "de facto rule over both tribes and individual Indians without
restraint and across all manner of human affairs."' 4 Even if federal Indian law was not already
structurally incompatible with the self-determination15 of Indian nations and ready-made for
exploitation by foes of sovereign governments within the external borders of the United States, its
interpretation, guided by the dominant philosophies of Western liberal jurisprudence and modern
international legal positivism-the former distrustful of the Indian normative universe and thus bent upon
remaking tribes to comport with a secular, individualist model of governance, the latter unwilling to
recognize tribes as subjects of law and as bearers of natural legal rights actionable in domestic and
international courts-would prove hostile, and perhaps fatal, to territorially based Indian sovereignty.
Even under the moderating influence of the most sympathetic members of the nonpolitical branch,
judicial review of questions of federal Indian law, on balance, has been an engine of the destruction of
tribal self-determination since the founding of the United States. Plenary power and Indian sovereignty
are mutually exclusive, and Lara only partially and temporarily obscures the existential reality that, for
Indians, federal Indian law is an evil legal system.16 Rather than celebrate Lara, Indians should probe
deeper and ask themselves how long before Congress "fixes" it and divests tribes of nonmember Indian
criminal jurisdiction, whether they intend to mount an effective defense against the destruction of the
last vestiges of their judicial sovereignty, what instruments of power-legal, political, and moral-they can
marshal in support of this mission, and whether their right to self-determine can be meaningfully
exercised in continued association with the United States.
The attempt to bring to light the other re-inscribes the master-slave relation that
created the oppression in the first place
Oliver 4 Kelly, Chair of the Philosophy Department and Professor of Women’s Studies at Stony Brook
University Witnessing and Testimony Parallax,2004, vol. 10, no. 1, 79±88 +
Contemporary debates in social theory around issues of multiculturalism have focused on the demand
or struggle for recognition by marginalized or oppressed people, groups, and cultures. The work of
Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth, in particular, have crystallized issues of multiculturalism and justice
around the notion of recognition.1 In Witnessing: Beyond Recognition, I challenge what has become a
fundamental tenet of this trend in debates over multiculturalism, namely, that the social struggles
manifest in critical race theory, queer theory, feminist theory, and various social movements are
struggles for recognition.2 Testimonies from the aftermath of the Holocaust and slavery do not merely
articulate a demand to be recognized or to be seen. Rather, they witness to pathos beyond recognition.
The victims of oppression, slavery, and torture are not merely seeking visibility and recognition, but they
are also seeking witnesses to horrors beyond recognition. The demand for recognition manifest in
testimonies from those othered by dominant culture is transformed by the accompanying demands for
retribution and compassion. If, as I suggest, those othered by dominant culture are seeking not only, or
even primarily, recognition but also witnessing to something beyond recognition, then our notions of
recognition must be reevaluated. Certainly notions of recognition that throw us back into a Hegelian
master-slave relationship do not help us to overcome domination. If recognition is conceived as being
conferred on others by the dominant group, then it merely repeats the dynamic of hierarchies, privilege,
and domination. Even if oppressed people are making demands for recognition, insofar as those who
are dominant are empowered to confer it, we are thrown back into the hierarchy of domination. This is
to say that if the operations of recognition require a recognizer and a recognizee then we have done no
more than replicate the master-slave, subject-other/object hierarchy in this new form . Additionally, the
need to demand recognition from the dominant culture or group is a symptom of the pathology of
oppression. Oppression creates the need and demand for recognition. It is not just that the injustices of
oppression create the need for justice. More than this, the pathology of oppression creates the need in
the oppressed to be recognized by their oppressor, the very people most likely not to recognize them.
The internalization of stereotypes of inferiority and superiority leave the oppressed with the sense that
they are lacking something that only their superior dominators have or can give them. The very notion
of recognition as it is deployed in various contemporary theoretical contexts is, then, a symptom of the
pathology of oppression itself. Implied in this diagnosis is the conclusion that struggles for recognition
and theories that embrace those struggles may indeed presuppose and thereby perpetuate the very
hierarchies, domination, and injustice that they attempt to overcome. The notion of recognition
becomes more problematic in models where what is recognized is always only something familiar to the
subject .3 In this case, the subject and what is known to him and his experience are once again
privileged. Any real contact with difference or otherness becomes impossible because recognition
requires the assimilation of difference into something familiar . When recognition repeats the masterslave or subject-object hierarchy, then it is also bound to assimilate difference back into sameness. The
subject recognizes the other only when he can see something familiar in that other; for example, when
he can see that the other is a person too. Only when we begin to think of the recognition of what is
beyond recognition can we begin to think of the recognition of difference.
Essentialism
They essentialize Makah culture – whaling is not a universal trait
Gaard 1
(Greta Gaard is currently a professor of English at University of Wisconsin-River Falls and a community faculty member in Women's Studies at
Metropolitan State University, “Tools for a Cross Cultural Feminist Ethics: Exploring Ethical Contexts and Contents in the Makah Whale Hunt,”
Hypatia, Wiley Online Library)//BB
Historically, whale
hunting was not a universal practice in Makah tribal society; rather, it was limited to
individuals of a specific class, gender, and ethnicity . According to reports of ethnologists and early European explorers, as
well as later anthropological studies, traditional Makah society was divided into three classes: slaves, commoners,
and chiefs (Colson 1953, 15, 202-3; Swan 1857). The slaves were captured in war or purchased from other tribes,
and were therefore seen as aliens to the village; their children were also slaves, and no slaves were permitted to
"intermarry" with freeborn Makah (Colson 1953, 202). Early explorers reported that the Makah "prostituted their slave
women to ships crews from the beginning of contact with Europeans in 1790" (Colson 1953, 57), but it is unclear whether free-born Makah
made sexual use of slave women as well, since such intercourse would run the risk of creating offspring, and "any degree of slave blood
was a permanent stigma against a family line----(Tlhe word 'slave' was a stinging insult" (Colson 1953, 202). The second class of
Makah, the commoners of the village, were descendants of the junior lines of the extended family, but they were not wealthy and had to work for
their living. At the top of the social hierarchy were the chiefs, wealthy leaders who owned smokehouses, held potlatches, bore
important names, and were famous among the tribes to which the Makah were known. Some re- ports say that the status of chief was solely
hereditary, while others claim that even hereditary members had to justify their status through great deeds, such as whale
hunting, or otherwise fall into the class of commoners. Only men from wealthy families could afford to
organize and direct a whale hunt, since only the chiefs had the time and wealth needed for the ritual preparations and for making
the equipment, and the inherited privilege necessary for leading whaling crews of male relatives or slaves (Kirk
1986; Kirk and Daugherty 1978). During the hunt, whalers' wives were expected to help from shore by lying motionless
in a darkened room (Waterman 1920; Erikson 1999): as one whaler's wife recalls, "her utter stillness was intended to keep the whale from
acting in an unruly manner" (Kirk 1986, 138). A single whale successfully towed into the village provided "vast amounts of oil, bone, and meat—
and prestige. No families received more deference than that accorded whalers' families" (Kirk and Daugherty 1978, 90). The desire for high
social status and respect may explain why Elizabeth Colson, an anthropologist who interviewed the Makah in the 1940s, was told by virtually
every one of her informants that while their own family was of upper-class status, descended from chiefs, other families were from low-class
ancestors (Colson 1953, 205-18). It may also explain why, eighty years after the last successful whale hunt, the Makah have come to equate
their cultural identity with the most famous practice of their elite, upper-class male ancestors. Tribes and
nations struggling to reject colonialism and colonized identities often see the reassertion of nationalism and national or
tribal identities as a vital strategy in the struggle for self-determination. In her study of interna- tional politics and the
legacies of colonialism, Cynthia Enloe finds that "na- tionalism typically has sprung from masculinized memory,
masculinised hu- miliation and masculinized hope" (1989,44). Women's experiences are rarely taken as the
starting point for understanding colonization or for reasserting national and cultural autonomy. Instead, women in
nationalist movements are pressured to "be patient," "hold their tongues," and "to wait until the nationalist
goal is achieved" (Enloe 1989, 60, 62). Enloc's analysis sharply illuminates the Makah tribe's efforts to reassert cultural identity after more
than a century of colonization, in both its emphasis on the whale hunting practices of elite upper-class men, and the tribe's current practices of
silenc- ing the dissenting voices of women elders who oppose the renewed hunt. A descendant from a whale-hunting
family of chiefs and treaty-signers, Makah elder Dotti Chamblin had initially protested that "shooting a whale with a machine gun is not a
spiritual way" and that "no one in this village has a direct relationship with the whale any longer" (Hogan 1996). Long before Alberta
Thompson began working with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, both women elders were ostracized and denied services from the
tribe. Thompson was even called a "slave" by Makah tribal council vice chair Marcy Parker and fisheries director Dave Sones
(Hogan 1996). These women elders who have spoken out in defense of a more traditional ecological ethic and cultural iden- tity have been
silenced in the name of Makah cultural whaling and a new tribal identity that is both masculinist and elite.
Inclusion
Incorporation of the native into the public sphere just continues the ongoing
systematic violence against their culture – remaining a separate entity is key to
prevent cooption
Poupart 03, Lisa M. Poupart, nearest date given is 2003, Pupart is an Associate Professor of Humanistic Studies,
First Nation Studies and Womens Studies at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, “The Familiar Face of
Genocide: Internalized Oppression among American Indians,”
http://www.public.asu.edu/~asmfc/18.2poupart.pdf, NN
American Indians have suffered from systematic genocide within Western society, in the forms of
government-sanctioned physical onslaughts and confrontations, murder, land theft, forced removal and
relocation, economic deprivation, incarceration, environmental racism, devastation of tribal sovereignty,
and as a result of continued economic dependency. Acts of genocide committed against Indian people
are founded on and legitimated by Western constructions of abject Otherness. Over 6 ve hundred years
of social, political, and economic domination, Western society enforced its cultural codes of Otherness
upon American Indians to gain our complicity in the power structure. Through formal Western
education, conversion to Christianity, and assimilation into Euro-American culture and the capitalist
economy, tribal people learned to speak the language and to interpret and reproduce the meanings of
our oppressors; our own meanings, languages, and cultures were simultaneously devastated. American
Indian participation in the construction and reproduction of Western language and meaning ensured our
complicity in patriarchal power and aided Euro-American exploitation of our lands, resources, and labor.
Like colonized groups throughout the world, American Indian people learned and internalized the
discursive practices of the West—the very codes that created, re1 ected, and reproduced our
oppression. As American Indians participate in, create, and reproduce Western cultural forms, we
internalize Western meanings of difference and abject Otherness, viewing ourselves within and through
the constructs that de6 ned us as racially and culturally subhuman, de6 cient, and vile. As Western
constructions of abject difference are both forced upon and accepted by American Indians, we de6 ne
ourselves through these 88 Hypatia constructions and subsequently participate in the reproduction of
these codes. For, as we assume the dominant subject position, we often take upon ourselves de6 nitions
of the objecti6 ed, abject Other as (portions of) our own identities and act them out in 1 at, onedimensional caricatures that mirror the dominant culture’s representations. Moreover, as we buy into
these codes, we not only apply them to our individual selves but also to those within our own
marginalized group(s)—our loved ones and community members. Virtually nonexistent in traditional
tribal communities prior to European invasion, contemporary American Indian communities struggle
with devastating social ills including alcoholism, family violence, incest, sexual assault, fetal-alcohol
syndrome, homicide, and suicide at startling rates similar to and sometimes exceeding those of white
society. In their groundbreaking works, authors Maria YellowHorse BraveHeart and Lemyra DeBruyn
(1995; 1996a; 1996b) understand the widespread social ills plaguing American Indians a s manifestations
of internalized oppression. The authors assert that experiences of racism and internalized oppression
contribute to current social ills among Indians as a result of Western imperialism, assimilation, and
Indian identi6 cation with the dominate culture’s codes (BraveHeart and DeBruyn 1996b). In describing
causal factors leading to social problems, they state, “We contend that the high rates of depression . . .
suicide, homicide, domestic violence and child abuse among American Indians can also be attributed to
[the] processes of internalized oppression and identi6 cation with the aggressor” (1996b, 6). Through 6
ve hundred years of assimilation and acculturation, American Indians have internalized Western
discursive practices and so we often view ourselves in ways mirroring the dominant subject position.
However, Indian people also live in a sort of cultural double consciousness, as portions of our traditional
subjective identities persist in the preserved beliefs of our ancestors practiced today. Through the telling
of our experiences and stories in a continued oral tradition and through the preservation of traditional
ways, many Indian people resist the dominant culture’s subject position, knowing t hat we, l ike our
Grandmothers and Grandfathers, have not deserved a history of violence and genocide. Moreover, our
oral traditions preserved many stories recounting the subjugation of our ancestors and these stories
were passed along through generations creating an alternative interpretation, or knowledge, of the
harms in1 icted by white society. American Indians’ knowledge of our historical and continued
oppression is experienced as a profound anguish. As Shirley Hill Witt explains, “Among Native
Americans, the memory of genocide and tribal extinction is a raw unhealing wound” (1974, 35). This
pain is described by Duran and Duran as a “soul wound” (1995, 27). The authors contend the genocidal
efforts of Western imperialism have “in1 ict[ed] a wound to the soul of Native American people that is
felt in agonizing proportions to this day” (Duran and Duran 1995, 27). Lisa M. Poupart 89 Our
experiences of colonization and disempowerment under patriarchal capitalism are silenced by white
society. The perpetration of cultural genocide is whitewashed by the dominant culture in the master
narrative of “discovery” and “manifest destiny.” Like the knowledges and stories of Others under
patriarchal oppression, American Indian people’s pain is not recognized nor validated by the dominant
culture. Instead, white society uses negative constructions of Indians as subhuman and lacking a full
range of human qualities and emotions in order to justify our disempowerment. BraveHeart and
DeBruyn elaborate upon this contention, asserting that American Indians have been socially constructed
as incapable of experiencing emotional responses to pain and suffering. They contend, “[T]he historical
view of American Indians as being stoic and savage contributed to a belief on the part of the dominant
society that Indian people were incapable of having feelings. This belief system intimates that Indians
had no capacity to mourn and, subsequently, no need or right to grieve” (BraveHeart and Debruyn
1996b, 11). Drawing upon the literature on Nazi concentration camp survivors, BraveHeart and DeBruyn
assert that American Indians today experience a phenomenon the authors label “Historical Unresolved
Grief Syndrome” resulting from the “historical trauma”1 experienced under cultural and economic
imperialism. The authors contend that social problems such as alcohol abuse experienced by Indian
people are symptomatic of the past and present traumas we experience, and also symptomatic of the
dominant culture’s denial of the harms in1 icted upon tribal people and from the invalidation of Indian
pain (BraveHeart 1995; BraveHeart and DeBruyn 1996a; 1996b).
Their assumption as the native as a part of the sovereignty of the United States is
problematic – the native is a sovereign in itself that cannot be confined by the
ideology that systematically held them down
Bradford 04, William Bradford, nearest date given is 2004, Bradford has a degree in law and is prominent in
the field of Native American law. He works for the Tulsa Law Review, “Another Such Victory and We Are Undone: A
Call to an American Indian Declaration of Independence,”
http://digitalcommons.law.utulsa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2464&context=tlr, NN
Indian tribes are independent, sovereign nations whose inherent right to self-determine predates and
survives contact with Euro-American peoples. Notwithstanding the Ibero-Catholic presumption that the
indigenous people17 of the Western Hemisphere were a distinctly inferior and barbarous species"'
salvageable only through forcible conversion to Christianity or death, 9 and despite the subsequent
genocide Spain inflicted upon the original population of the Americas, all of the European colonial
powers, including Spain after 1556,20 recognized the formal sovereignty of the Indian nations of the
New World as separate and distinct peoples with whom relations were governed by international,
rather than domestic, law.21 For at least three centuries subsequent to the first contact between Indian
nations and Europeans in 1492, international law recognized a normative order independent of and
higher than the decisions of temporal authority and withheld the imprimatur of law from acts of earthly
sovereigns that violated a universal moral code.22 Under international law, the territory and sovereignty
of nations were sacrosanct, 23 and self-defense, arbitrary refusal to engage in trade, and exclusion of
Christian missionaries constituted the only lawful grounds for the use of force in contravention of Indian
sovereignty.24 Throughout the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, European powers, with the notable
exception of Spain, honored the formal sovereignty of Indian nations as a general rule,25 and
international legal philosophers were openly critical of Spanish conquest in the New World.26 The
conception of Indian nations as sovereign was not merely a European reserve or an academic theory:
indeed, the founders of the United States, successor state to Great Britain, directly incorporated the
international legal conception of Indian peoples as juridically distinct and prior sovereigns in their 27
constitution, and during its first several decades of existence the fledgling United States respected
Indian rights to sovereignty and property consistent with its international and domestic legal
obligations2 Moreover, well into the nineteenth century, the United States continued to regard Indian
sovereignty as a jurisprudential fact, and alliances, trade agreements, and land cessions were
accomplished by treaties29 after peaceful negotiations between mutual sovereigns. 3° Respect for
mutual sovereignty, however, collapsed under the weight of white land hunger and burgeoning U.S.
military capacity. Although prudence restrained U.S. aggression in the early decades of the republic,31
by the nineteenth century a majority of the U.S. population regarded the presumption of Indian
sovereignty under international and domestic law as an obstacle to white notions of progress. It fell to
federal Indian law to legitimate the violent expropriation of Indian lands and the destruction of rival
polities within what would become the boundaries of the United States.
Native inclusion under Euro-American law is a violent form of domination Otherizing American Indians
Meister & Burnett, Associate Professor of Communication, and Associate Professor of
Women’s Studies, both of North Dakota State University, 2004 Mark & Ann, “Rhetorical Exclusion
in the Trial of Leonard Peltier” American Indian Quarterly, Volume 28, Numbers 3 & 4, Spring/Summer
Issue, Pages 721-723
The classic view of power entails two parties, in which A has power over B. In this view,
power becomes metaphorical: power is an object, a location, a force, or a control that is
“up.” In recent years, however, some scholars have recognized that power entails much
more than four simple metaphors. For example, Foucault, well-known for his work on
power, argues that power “is not with, in, or present in one side or interest”; power is
dynamic and relates more to conduct than confrontation. Power is viewed as a process;
the subordinate is “both an effect of a system of power and a vehicle of its production.”
Because we live socially, we automatically become involved in power relations. Agents in
the system subject themselves to power by simply having the basic knowledge of how the
system operates. Bachrach and Baratz expand upon the notion of power by arguing that
power goes beyond concrete decisions and activity. When a makes decisions that, in effect,
limit B’s participation in the political system, B is unable to bring up relevant cultural
issues. Such power may also be characterized as integrative power. Boulding suggests that
integrative power can be productive or destructive. Integrative power has the capability of
building organizations and developing legitimacy but it also has the capacity of alienating
people. The integrative power to which Boulding refers includes social groups, institutions,
and traditions. Certainly, the stereotypical nature of the language describing and
reinforcing these institutions maintains the power of these institutions, and Boulding
notes: “The hierarchy of respect is often reflected in language and gestures.” When we
witness an occurrence, we identify the event with an institution, such as the courts, the
church, or the workplace. Youth are socialized into our institutions, partly through what
Habermas would term “symbolic reproduction” or repetition of particular terms or language.
In fact, Charland states that the moment we enter the world of language, we are subjects
of power. McGee contends that we endow our institutions and traditions with human-like
qualities that become coercive. This personification is particularly true of the law. For
example, the law is more than simply statutes; the embodiment of the law is manifested
by those who enforce it, interpret it, and change it. Fish claims that the law is powerful
because to distinguish the forces it opposes is difficult; the law is compelling because “the
reasons for which we do something or refrain from doing something are reasons only by
virtue of the preconceptions and predispositions we already have.” Fish suggests there is
“always a gun at your head,” meaning that a reason, a purpose, a desire, a need, a law, or an
internalized power will always be a form of coercion. Laws become part of mundane
everyday life, which allow the power to continue and reproduce other power relations.23As
a result, we create a public, shared vision of what the law is and acquiesce to the dominant
power. Language is the key to maintaining power in society. Power resides in “naming” or,
in Foucault’s words, “in a society such as ours... there are manifold relations of power
which permeate, characterize and constitute the social body, and these relations of power
cannot themselves be established, consolidated, nor implemented without the
production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse.” In an American
Indian context, Stuckey and Murphy agree, arguing that political language aided in
colonizing North America; language facilitated oppression and created a negative identity
of native peoples. Edelman argues that “language usage is strategic,” that language is used
to interpret the social order so that power is legitimized. Legitimation occurs, partly, out of
knowledge and acceptance of the dominant ideology; the “dominant impose their own
definition of the world order through the totality of their practices, including verbal
practices, and thereby justify their power.” U.S. v. Leonard Peltier demonstrates how the
legal system inculcates, through rhetoric, values that reinforce power. Specifically, our
analysis shows that Peltier and the Indian culture were “Othered” during the trial. Presently
in rhetorical scholarship, “the Other” refers to all people “the Self” perceives as mildly or
radically different. Therborn contends that domination is achieved when the dominated
resist the Other and when the dominating can mold the dominated according to a
particular image. McKerrow discusses “Othering” in his notion of critical rhetoric that seeks
to “unmask or demystify the discourse of power. The aim is to understand the integration of
power/knowledge in society—what possibilities for change the integration invites or inhibits
and what intervention strategies might be considered appropriate to effect social change.”
To understand how the language of the U.S. legal system delegitimized Peltier in his federal
case, we first profile Indian cultural conceptions of power and legitimacy.
State
Inclusion of narratives of oppression within the state lead to their destruction
Murad 10, Fatima Zahra Habib Mohammed Baqir Murad, nearest date given is 2010, Murad has a master’s
degree in communications and education from the University of Ontario, “NARRATIVES OF HOPE IN ANTIOPPRESSION EDUCATION: WHAT ARE ANTI-RACISTS FOR?”
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/25650/6/HabibMohammedBaqirMurad_Fatima_Z_201011_MA_th
esis.pdf, NN
Institutionalization not only robs community education of its efficacy – it robs it of its soul. As Madonna
Thunderhawk (2007) argues in her essay, “Native Organizing Before the Non-Profit Industrial Complex”
institutionalization brings the state into bed with anti-state activists, it forces us to depend on the good
opinion of governing bodies for our bread and butter and alienates those who cannot fit into the
professionalized model of state-sanctioned activism. Thunderhawk argues that this kills movements. The
experiences of many anti-oppression facilitators mirror this statement. We are not creating structural
change, and as facilitation turns into a profession, those of us who can do the work of community
education form an ever-shrinking pool of people. Even so, Magpie argues in her interviews that there is a
strong case for a limited institutionalization of anti-oppression education, and for many of the same
reasons. As a facilitator who has been working since the early 90s in radical communities around Ontario
and Quebec, Magpie argues that marginalized facilitators need the protection that institutionalization
offers. How are we, as facilitators, supposed to care about capital-C Change when we are abused, derided,
and harassed by the communities we are supposed to be working within? Magpie and I brought up this
dynamic in our interviews, and Min alluded to it; what protection can we as facilitators seek when our
livelihoods are threatened by those we should be in solidarity with? Many facilitators have experienced an
ebb and flow of contracts available to them in accordance with ebbs and flows in 167 community
popularity. I have heard stories of contracts lost or pay cheques denied because of personal conflict –
because a facilitator slept with the wrong person, or disagreed with the wrong person.
Narratives
Exclusive narrative focus is solipsism—it stifles dialogue and is reductionist because
we can never fully engage personal experience in a deliberative way—our
arguments are relevant
David Bridges, Centre for Applied Research in Education, University of East Anglia, 2001, The Ethics of
Outsider Research, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 35, No. 3
First, it is argued that only those who have shared in, and have been part of, a particular experience can
understand or can properly understand (and perhaps `properly' is particularly heavily loaded here) what
it is like. You need to be a woman to understand what it is like to live as a woman; to be disabled to
understand what it is like to live as a disabled person etc. Thus Charlton writes of `the innate inability of
able-bodied people, regardless of fancy credentials and awards, to understand the disability experience'
(Charlton, 1998, p. 128).
Charlton's choice of language here is indicative of the rhetorical character which these arguments tend
to assume. This arises perhaps from the strength of feeling from which they issue, but it warns of a need
for caution in their treatment and acceptance. Even if able-bodied people have this `inability' it is
difficult to see in what sense it is `innate'. Are all credentials `fancy' or might some (e.g. those reflecting
a sustained, humble and patient attempt to grapple with the issues) be pertinent to that ability? And
does Charlton really wish to maintain that there is a single experience which is the experience of
disability, whatever solidarity disabled people might feel for each other?
The understanding that any of us have of our own conditions or experience is unique and special,
though recent work on personal narratives also shows that it is itself multi-layered and inconstant, i.e.
that we have and can provide many different understandings even of our own lives (see, for example,
Tierney, 1993). Nevertheless, our own understanding has a special status: it provides among other
things a data source for others' interpretations of our actions; it stands in a unique relationship to our
own experiencing; and no one else can have quite the same understanding. It is also plausible that
people who share certain kinds of experience in common stand in a special position in terms of
understanding those shared aspects of experience. However, once this argument is applied to such
broad categories as `women' or `blacks', it has to deal with some very heterogeneous groups; the
different social, personal and situational characteristics that constitute their individuality may well
outweigh the shared characteristics; and there may indeed be greater barriers to mutual understanding
than there are gateways.
These arguments, however, all risk a descent into solipsism: if our individual understanding is so
particular, how can we have communication with or any understanding of anyone else? But, granted
Wittgenstein's persuasive argument against a private language (Wittgenstein, 1963, perhaps more
straightforwardly presented in Rhees, 1970), we cannot in these circumstances even describe or have
any real understanding of our own condition in such an isolated world. Rather it is in talking to each
other, in participating in a shared language, that we construct the conceptual apparatus that allows us
to understand our own situation in relation to others, and this is a construction which involves understanding differences as well as similarities.
Besides, we have good reason to treat with some scepticism accounts provided by individuals of their
own experience and by extension accounts provided by members of a particular category or community
of people. We know that such accounts can be riddled with special pleading, selective memory, careless
error, self-centredness, myopia, prejudice and a good deal more. A lesbian scholar illustrates some of
the pressures that can bear, for example, on an insider researcher in her own community:
As an insider, the lesbian has an important sensitivity to offer, yet she is also more vulnerable than the
non-lesbian researcher, both to the pressure from the heterosexual world--that her studies conform to
previous works and describe lesbian reality in terms of its relationship with the outside-- and to pressure
from the inside, from within the lesbian community itself--that her studies mirror not the reality of that
community but its self-protective ideology. (Kreiger, 1982, p. 108)
In other words, while individuals from within a community have access to a particular kind of
understanding of their experience, this does not automatically attach special authority (though it
might attach special interest) to their own representations of that experience. Moreover, while we
might acknowledge the limitations of the under- standing which someone from outside a community (or
someone other than the individual who is the focus of the research) can develop, this does not entail
that they cannot develop and present an understanding or that such understanding is worthless.
Individuals can indeed find benefit in the understandings that others offer of their experience in, for
example, a counselling relationship, or when a researcher adopts a supportive role with teachers
engaged in reflection on or research into their own practice. Many have echoed the plea of the Scottish
poet, Robert Burns (in `To a louse'):
O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us!3
--even if they might have been horrified with what such power revealed to them. Russell argued that it
was the function of philosophy (and why not research too?) `to suggest many possibilities which enlarge
our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom . . .It keeps alive our sense of wonder by
showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect' (Russell, 1912, p. 91). `Making the familiar strange', as
Stenhouse called it, often requires the assistance of someone unfamiliar with our own world who can
look at our taken-for-granted experience through, precisely, the eye of a stranger. Sparkes (1994) writes
very much in these terms in describing his own research, as a white, heterosexual middle- aged male,
into the life history of a lesbian PE teacher. He describes his own struggle with the question `is it possible
for heterosexual people to undertake research into homosexual populations?' but he concludes that
being a `phenomenological stranger' who asks `dumb questions' may be a useful and illuminating
experience for the research subject in that they may have to return to first principles in reviewing their
story. This could, of course be an elaborate piece of self-justification, but it is interesting that someone
like Max Biddulph, who writes from a gay/bisexual stand- point, can quote this conclusion with apparent
approval (Biddulph, 1996).
People from outside a community clearly can have an understanding of the experience of those who are
inside that community. It is almost certainly a different understanding from that of the insiders.
Whether it is of any value will depend among other things on the extent to which they have immersed
themselves in the world of the other and portrayed it in its richness and complexity; on the empathy
and imagination that they have brought to their enquiry and writing; on whether their stories are
honest, responsible and critical (Barone, 1992). Nevertheless, this value will also depend on qualities
derived from the researchers' exter- nality: their capacity to relate one set of experiences to others
(perhaps from their own community); their outsider perspective on the structures which surround and
help to define the experience of the community; on the reactions and responses to that community of
individuals and groups external to it.4
Finally, it must surely follow that if we hold that a researcher, who (to take the favourable case) seeks
honestly, sensitively and with humility to understand and to represent the experience of a community to
which he or she does not belong, is incapable of such understanding and representation, then how can
he or she understand either that same experience as mediated through the research of someone from
that community? The argument which excludes the outsider from under- standing a community through
the effort of their own research, a fortiori excludes the outsider from that understanding through the
secondary source in the form of the effort of an insider researcher or indeed any other means. Again,
the point can only be maintained by insisting that a particular (and itself ill-defined) understanding is the
only kind of understanding which is worth having.
The epistemological argument (that outsiders cannot understand the experience of a community to
which they do not belong) becomes an ethical argument when this is taken to entail the further
proposition that they ought not therefore attempt to research that community. I hope to have shown
that this argument is based on a false premise. Even if the premise were sound, however, it would not
necessarily follow that researchers should be prevented or excluded from attempting to under- stand
this experience, unless it could be shown that in so doing they would cause some harm. This is indeed
part of the argument emerging from disempowered communities and it is to this that I shall now turn.
Narratives are used as tools by the oppressor to continue destruction of the other
Murad 10, Fatima Zahra Habib Mohammed Baqir Murad, nearest date given is 2010, Murad has a master’s
degree in communications and education from the University of Ontario, “NARRATIVES OF HOPE IN ANTIOPPRESSION EDUCATION: WHAT ARE ANTI-RACISTS FOR?”
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/25650/6/HabibMohammedBaqirMurad_Fatima_Z_201011_MA_th
esis.pdf, NN
Razack and Minh-ha caution us that the difference in epistemic power between social standpoints is
ignored at our own peril. Using narrative in anti-oppression education as a means by which to enact
change in systems or individuals is a tricky, treacherous proposition, and one of which facilitators should
be wary. As anti-oppression education becomes institutionalized, so too do our narratives, which are often
seen as part of the product of a workshop. These narratives have been catalogued by organizations and
agencies, and used to demonstrate the variety of experience and success in Canadian society. This, of
course, serves only to reinforce the power of the state and further marginalize the people who share their
stories.
Stories of subjugation lead to alienation and coercision
Murad 10, Fatima Zahra Habib Mohammed Baqir Murad, nearest date given is 2010, Murad has a master’s
degree in communications and education from the University of Ontario, “NARRATIVES OF HOPE IN ANTIOPPRESSION EDUCATION: WHAT ARE ANTI-RACISTS FOR?”
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/25650/6/HabibMohammedBaqirMurad_Fatima_Z_201011_MA_th
esis.pdf, NN
In Looking White People in the Eye, Razack (1998) takes up anti-oppression education as it functions in
community, classroom, and activist spaces, teasing out its many contradictions and limitations. She
explores the pit-falls of the narrative focus antioppression education brings to learning spaces,
deconstructing the desirability of such narratives as part of the colonizing framework. Razack points out
that what narratives are valued, who tells the story, and who listens and what role the narrative ends up
playing in the educational space actually serve to reinforce dominant paradigms. She argues that
narratives of oppression are used to act as a balm for the listener, allowing them to return home feeling
that they “know” the pain of oppressed people, or are absolved from their privileges because they have
endured the harrowing stories of oppression. She also argues that they ways in which we present these
narratives construct larger narratives, narratives that regulate who can feel oppression and how, drawing
us into games of authenticity and pissing matches to prove ourselves Most Oppressed. In short, the use of
narratives in radical education does not reassign epistemic privilege. Instead, it invites marginalized
people to eroticize, reify, and effectively sell their narratives for the edification of systems of privilege.
Further to this, Razack points out that the idolizing of narrative as the pinnacle of radical ways of
knowing in fact coerces people to share their narratives, cutting off possibilities for willing silence
Federal Control
The exertion of control over Indian Country is rooted in a belief in the racial
inferiority of indigenous people – decreasing federal control is the only way to
decrease less paternalism that upholds the legacy of colonialism.
Jacques et al 03, Peter Jacques et al, University of Central Florida PhD, Sharon Ridge, Grinnell college and U
Iowa PHD, an Richard Witmer Grinnell college PHD, 18 J. Envtl. L. & Litig. 223, “Federal Indian Law and
Environmental Policy: A Social Continuity of Violence” Lexis, NN
Currently, federal Indian environmental policy relies on the annulment of treaties that were made in sacred trust between American Indian
tribes and the United States government. In the years since signing these agreements, non-Indians have used racial discrimination against
Indian tribes to justify their maltreatment and dispossession of Indian land. This injustice became institutionalized over time by unilateral
decisions made by the United States Congress and President, and was further supported by numerous Supreme Court decisions. Court rulings
that allowed for the abrogation of treaties at the discretion of the United States Congress are perhaps the most egregious of these injustices.
One of the most pernicious outcomes of these decisions by the Court and Congress has been to sever full tribal relationships with their land, a
central component of the negotiated treaties. This set of broken relationships is at the bottom of an unsustainable and unlivable land
management system that has occurred on a number of Indian reservations.¶ The premise of this Article is that the environmental policy
of the United States government, because it exerts control over Indian nations' natural resources in violation of specific
treaties, is inherently violent. We define violence in this case as a breach of the reciprocal relationship established between Indian tribes
and the federal government through treaties. To demonstrate our premise, we first conceptualize and configure the concept of violence as it
applies to environmental Indian policy. Second, the
violence of broken treaties to gain Indian resources is not a new
phenomenon as we demonstrate in an analysis of the Medicine Lodge Treaty, the subsequent Jerome Agreement, and the Lone Wolf v.
Hitchcock Supreme Court case that officially instituted congressional plenary power over all Indian nations. n1 Third, we demonstrate how
environmental policy operates under visions of racial and ethnic superiority in order to continue colonial
control of Indian resources. This vision of racial and ethnic superiority was institutionalized by Supreme Court precedence, and
continues to put the control of Indian resources in non-Indian hands. [*225] Finally, we suggest that current environmental policy has not only
committed violence against tribes but also against the earth through exploitation of reservations. The
way to end such violence
and exploitation of Indian people and the earth is to retract plenary power over environmental policy and exploitation,
acknowledge treaty relationships as sacred sovereign-to-sovereign promises, and place tribal lands back in tribal hands.¶ I¶ ¶ A
Concept of Violence¶ ¶ To draw out the violence embedded in broken treaties we first describe mainstream understandings of violence in the
modern era. Such understandings of violence are typically blind to the violence committed by government institutions acting in the name of
rationality, progress, or material benefit for the state. Second, we argue that the hierarchical relations, which replaced the reciprocal treaty
relations, are inherently violent because they force one party into the role of a ward with compromised agency. ¶ The modern understanding of
violence, as found in social contract theory and the Post-Westphalian state, is particularly important in the case of American Indian law and
policy. Since early discussion of the subject by Greek scholars, in order for an action to be considered violent it must be an illegitimate,
irrational behavior of a minority of individuals in society. n2 During the casting of modernity, this became an axiom of the social contract. One
purpose of the social contract was to keep violence at a minimum so that people could be free to live their lives without the risk of violence that
was thought to exist outside formal social organization. n3 To enter the social contract is to gain civility and the ability to have real property. n4
"What man [sic] loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting;
what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses." n5 Thus, the social [*226] contract provides the civility of imposed limits
on violent human appetites while providing a system where the possession of real property is possible. Outside the social contract there is no
such thing as "private property" to social contract theorists, merely the ability to temporarily use a resource. This is important because, as we
discuss below, the doctrine of discovery allotted private property rights to "discoverers." Indian
tribes possessed only use rights
because they were seen to be outside the social contract, residing in a state of nature. n6¶ Outside the social
contract and within the anarchic state of nature, violence is an expected behavior. For this reason, sacrificing some portion of individual liberty
to a sovereign who would keep order was a rational decision. n7 Thus, violence within modernity is usually conceived of as the erratic behavior
of criminals and has not typically been conceived of as a social continuity perpetrated by rational and civil modernity itself. By definition, the
state becomes a protector from violence, not the perpetrator of violence; and, violence that the state does commit is veiled in legitimacy.¶
Legitimacy of the state's use of violence was articulated by foundational sociologists such as Durkheim and Comte who suggest that the state
was the source of modern and moral authority. n8 Like all political institutions, the state "is a relation of men dominating men," but this
domination serves as a "monopoly of legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." n9 Since the state is the source of legitimacy its
actions are not recognized as violent. Or, if they are seen as violent, the violence is not seen as problematic as it furthers the goals of a social
contract and modern progress. This concept is also reflected in the roots of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, where the state is the ideological
foundation of a good and developing society, an idea Marx would later dismiss. n10¶ [*227] The state's monopoly of the legitimate use of force
was the justification for the violence used against American Indians in the establishment and maintenance of the United States. Taking
and
controlling tribal land was seen as a necessary step in the progress of the state. We reject this thinking,
and argue that the state can be an agent of illegitimate force. This is central to our theory of violence because the lens
of institutional legitimacy has so far kept the operation of federal Indian environmental policy from
foundational criticism. One reason for this is that the same agent (the United States federal government) in the form of the Supreme
Court and Congress has been allowed to both rule in its own interest and then sanction that ruling - a clear violation of even mainstream
pluralist political theory. n11 In other words, in relying on the agent of violence to define legitimate fiduciary responsibility for the tribes, the
Court and Congress are empowered to promote their own interest. In this case, the separation of powers is irrelevant because the interest of
the federal government as a whole is uniformly found in the control of tribal land wealth.¶ While the definition of violence has been subject to
minimal debate or analysis as a concept, it has an assumed meaning in social science that generally includes physical injury with malicious
intent. In this definition of violence, the focus is on the intent of the agent to cause harm. Attempting to define actions as violent from the
agent's perspective, here the federal government, becomes very difficult. Melissa Burchard recognized this complexity of violence and
discusses the concept in the case of non-stranger rape. n12 An especially appropriate example given by Burchard is the case of non-stranger
rape where the rapist often says he did not "mean to do it." n13 As a result, prosecutors have been reluctant to vigorously pursue prosecutions
when the perpetrator of the crime suggested no malicious intent. n14 Thus we are left relying on the agent of violence to define (or not) their
own violent act. In the case of federal Indian environmental policy, it is unlikely that branches of government acting in collusion will recognize
their own violent acts or seek to prosecute them.¶ [*228] This point becomes even more poignant when dealing with an institution or
government whose actual intentions could be numerous and complicated to identify. Further, intention and interest may be hidden in the
modern rational decision-making process which can promote violence. Through the focus on means-end logic, violence may be justified,
considered natural, or simply overlooked as a necessary step in modern "progress." However, the role of this rationality in state-sponsored
violence has been ignored "because the social sciences still largely retain the etiological myth - the belief in an emergence from a pre-social
barbarity into a civilized and rational society." n15 Consequently, modern
institutions are rarely challenged as the root of
systemic violence.¶ Intent to cause harm is often obfuscated by the casting of some social groups
outside of the social contract as non-rational, primitive, and thus incapable of agency. Ecofeminists specifically
point out that social groups associated with the state of nature are tied to a state versus society justification of domination. As a result, they are
compelled to conform to the idea of European civilization. Ecofeminist scholars further suggest that the control of
tribes and the
earth by a dominant society are a related enterprise. n16 This domination is justified by the rhetoric of
paternalism. However, the true goal is to produce material wealth and power at the expense of those
protected. Thus, the efforts to assimilate American Indians into civilized people disguised the primary
goal of taking American Indian land and resources and using them to benefit non-Indians. In fact, the rhetoric
of civilizing the "savage" was a consistent element in contemporary American Indian history, including the Allotment era beginning in 1887.
During Allotment, tribes were divested of reservation with the promise that agriculture and a change in lifestyle would ultimately lead to a
better life. n17 Similarly during the "termination" period starting in 1945, some sovereign tribal governments were terminated with the
implication that American Indians would benefit from becoming full-fledged members of the dominant society if their official tribal affiliations
were dissolved. n18 [*229] Allotment and termination were not viewed as violent since the rhetoric of the federal government was of aid, not
malicious intent. Since mainstream notions of violence do not accurately describe this violence experienced by American Indian tribes, our
notion of violence itself must be reformed.¶ Therefore, the notion of violence employed here is the violence that begins in the minds of men
and women about "others," specifically those perceived to be outside of the social contract. Violence is, first and foremost, a breach of
expectations inherent in a relationship. According to Burchard,¶ ¶ Harm is not only a matter of what damage, physical or otherwise, has been
done, however. It is also, when taken in the context of determining whether violence has been done, an evaluative concept which implies that
some legitimate expectation about what ought to have been done has been breached. That is, part of the understanding of what actions will be
named violence depends on the understanding of the relationships involved in the given context. n19¶ ¶ The focus has now shifted from the
subjective intent of the agent and all of its associated problems to the relationship established between the involved parties. Understanding
what constitutes violent action is recognizing the expectations inherent in that relationship. Breaching these expectations is the core of
understanding whether harm has occurred. n20¶ Harm occurs at the point in a relationship where there is an expectation of an equal
relationship, but one of the parties unilaterally assumes a superior position. The essence of this harm is not just that one party has more power,
but that one entity changes an established or assumed reciprocal relationship with another party for their own gain. Political realists have
observed this phenomenon at least since the time of Thucydides, but typically assert that it is part of an unchanging human nature.
Normalizing violence in this way takes an expectation for circular (non-hierarchical, interdependent, and
balanced) relations out of the frame of reference and the foundation of violence goes unchallenged.¶
[*230] When groups of people interact with each other, we assume that no group of people will view themselves as justifiably inferior to the
other, regardless of relative capabilities. Therefore, on the personal level, even though strangers on the subway or in the alleyway do not have
an established reciprocal relationship, this minimal expectation of reciprocity is presumed. When this reciprocity is formalized into sacred
treaties, breaking this relationship has even more severe consequences because defenses against exploitation may be relaxed. It is assumed
that actions by one party in a circular relationship occur with the consent of the other parties. Thus, non-coercive and non-retributive consent is
a minimum requirement to change the expectations of a reciprocal relationship between equals. If consent is not obtained, the unilateral action
by one side without consent of the other destroys the equality and replaces circularity with hierarchy within the relationship. This hierarchy
results in harm, which then constitutes violence.¶ The establishment of a hierarchical structure is one of the most damaging elements of
violence. The power accumulated in hierarchy facilitates the ability of abusers to keep the abused under their reign. This accumulation of power
then compromises the potential for resistance. American
Indians did not consent to the new hierarchical
relationships that replaced the sacred treaty relationships. The United States government unilaterally
imposed this hierarchy by threat of force justified by the United States Congress and the Supreme
Court.¶ With the original duties and relationships between the federal government and tribes
discarded, the federal government was able to exercise plenary control over native land bases for their
own gain. This has meant extracting vast surplus value through wanton natural resource extraction from
tribal land bases.¶ Two acts of violence are committed when the United States government breaches a
treaty with Indian nations that reserve an area for tribal control. The first relationship broken is that
between the two peoples, Indian tribes and the United States government who have formed a sacred bond. The
second relationship broken is the human/nature relationship between Indian tribes and the land.
Important to our understanding of environmental policy, the agents in this relationship (and thus our theory) can include non-humans such as
animals, plants, rocks, streams, and mountains. Different societies ascribe agency to [*231] differing entities. For many American Indian tribes,
the earth itself was a consistent, active and powerful agent with whom many tribes instituted reciprocal affiliation. While treaties do not spell
out how tribes should think of nature, forcing a utilitarian use of nature where a different relationship previously existed is another violent
dimension of broken treaties. This can be restored with minimal effort by simply following the agreements that were made.¶ Under the
prevailing conception, Western
ontologies and epistemologies have not recognized the breach of sacred treaty
relationships as a violent action. However, with a new understanding of violence, environmental policy
in Indian Country can be recognized for the dysfunction that it continues to serve. We can better understand this
conception of violence by profiling a Kiowa experience that was later applied to all federal-tribal relationships.¶ II¶ ¶ Twenty-Five Years
Reserved: The Treaty of Medicine Lodge is Allotted¶ ¶ In 1867, the Kiowa and Comanche Nations and the United States government negotiated
a treaty at Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas. Article One reads:¶ ¶ From this day forward all war between the parties to this agreement shall
forever cease. The Government of the United States desires peace, and its honor is here pledged to keep it. The Indians desire peace, and they
now pledge their honor to maintain it. n21¶ ¶ The 1867 Medicine Lodge peace treaty was forged to end potentially protracted fighting that
could have severely damaged both sides. For the United States government, talks were needed to strike a deal with the Kiowas and Comanches
so they would not attack the railroad or wagon trains crossing through their territory on the way west. For the Kiowa and Comanche,
negotiations for a cessation of fighting were meant to ensure the protection of tribal land from further incursions by non-Indians. In negotiating
an agreement, both sides also approved a framework for further agreements. This framework, usually referred [*232] to as the "Indian Consent
Rule," stated that the federal government would have to gather the signed consent from three-quarters of the adult males in the tribe before
any other land cessions were made. This was an attempt by tribal leaders to avert the loss of any additional tribal land and/or rights to the
federal government. The Indian consent requirement was placed in the Treaty "to specifically reassure those Indians who wanted a federal
guarantee of their future, undisturbed use and occupancy of their reserved lands." n22¶ Thus, "in
exchange for certain land
cessions, the federal government explicitly promised the Kiowas that no additional land cessions would
be made without their consent." n23 At Medicine Lodge Creek, the Kiowa ceded original tribal lands that spanned from South
Dakota to large portions of western Oklahoma in exchange for more than two million acres in present day southwestern Oklahoma. n24 The
Agreement is explicit about the extent of control the respective tribes had over this land.¶ ¶ The United States now solemnly agrees that no
person except those herein authorized so to do and except such offers, agents and employees of the government as may be authorized to enter
upon said Indian reservation in discharge of duties enjoined by law, shall ever be permitted to pass over, settle upon, or reside in the territory
described in this article, or in such territory as may be added to this reservation for the use of said Indians. n25¶ ¶ Thus the Medicine Lodge
Treaty provides a legal agreement for the permanent residence, use and benefit of a reservation explicitly for the Kiowa and Comanche people.
Yet despite the explicit language in the original treaty, the Kiowa reservation no longer exists. Kiowa
land holdings are now a
"checkerboard" arrangement of personal property (not tribal) and trust land. Tribal members personally
retain 1200 acres of discontinuous land and an interest in about 3000 acres of trust land. n26 This
represents a loss of 99.7% of the land originally reserved in the Treaty. Some scholars argue this should
be considered an act of genocide due [*233] to the attempt to destroy the land base of land-based
peoples. n27 Part of this act was the necessary hierarchical relationship and exercise of power to
enact these genocidal policies . Moreover, such policies would not have been considered had the original reciprocal duties been
honored and genuinely respected.¶ The loss of permanently reserved land occurred for many tribes through "allotment" via the General
Allotment Act of 1887. Allotment was a policy to reduce tribal holdings and end tribalism by taking tribal reserved land and allotting it to tribal
individuals to be used for farming. Non-Indians advocated the Act under the guise of "civilizing" Indian people by dispossessing tribal land and
privatizing it for individual farming. However, it was also done at a time when the federal government was under pressure to release more land
to settlers. The "surplus" land left from allotments to tribal members was consequently sold off to non-Indian settlers for less than $ 2.00 an
acre. During this period, tribal people lost over 80% of their reserved land (which was already an enormous reduction from previously ceded
land). n28 Before Congress ended the policy of allotment, many individuals' allotments were sold to non-Indians, making tribal holdings a
"checkerboard" of ownership.¶ For the Kiowa and Comanche, allotment was implemented through the Jerome Agreement of 1892.
"Agreement," however, is a contested term in this case because the "Indian consent rule" of the Medicine Lodge Treaty had been broken. It
was broken by David Jerome and Warren Sayre, Federal Indian Commissioners, who told the Kiowas, Comanches and Kiowa-Apache that if they
did not allot their land, the President would do it by force as had been done to other tribes. The Kiowa protested, but the federal officials
forced the matter and left with 456 tribal signatures. n29 The most current census of that time showed that there were 725 adult males on the
reservation. In order to be in accordance [*234] with the Medicine Lodge Treaty, Article 12, the federal government needed 543 signatures.
n30¶ According to our definition of violence, abrogation of the Medicine Lodge Treaty was an act of violence against the tribes as it abrogated
the reciprocal relationship between two sovereigns. Clearly, placing the Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache and Comanche Indians under a hierarchical
relationship forced them to subordinate their rights of self-determination and forfeit their ability to determine policy on tribal land. However,
this violence was consequently legitimated by the Supreme Court holding in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock.¶ III¶ ¶ The Violent Institution of Lone Wolf
v. Hitchcock¶ ¶ Kiowa Chief Lone Wolf appealed the Jerome Allotment to the Supreme Court, citing the fact that the Agreement failed to get a
super-majority from the tribe, thus breaking the Medicine Lodge Treaty. The Kiowa chief lost the case, and the Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock Court
ruled that the United States Congress could abrogate this agreement and all treaties as it saw fit. n31 This decision affirmed congressional
plenary, or nearly unrestricted, power and gave Congress the ability to make final decisions regarding American Indian lands and welfare. n32 In
this decision, Congress is assumed to act as fiduciary to the tribes as a parent acts in the interest of a child; this is the trust doctrine and
continues to be a foundation for justification of plenary power today. n33¶ The Court and Congress never denied that, if the Jerome Agreement
was ratified, it would break the Medicine Lodge Treaty. In fact, the Secretary of the Interior testified to Congress that the treaty had not been
fulfilled. n34 Thus, the issue in the Lone Wolf decision was not whether the treaty was indeed broken - it was - but whether the United States
was bound by the relationships of the Medicine Lodge documents and others like it. n35¶ [*235] Perhaps the key to understanding the scope of
this violence is to understand what the federal government and the tribes expected out of the treaty relationship. The tribes expected that the
treaties had a universal, spiritual, and teleological import. For tribes, treaty making was often viewed as a sacred trust. Treaties were bonds that
had utility and were also bonds that held the promise of multicultural unity and connection. Treaties were a way to bring peace and were seen
in a larger context than simply the absence of physical violence, because the treaty parties would become joined in trust. "First and foremost
with Indians of the Classical Era (and even today) a treaty is a sacred text. It fulfills a divine command for all the peoples of the world to unite as
one." n36¶ The views of Indians towards treaties is further explained by a scholar quoting an Indian superintendent, "'in the making of
treaties'... 'no people are more open, explicit, and direct.' This was because, according to American Indian traditions of law and peace, treaties
created a sacred relationship of trust between two peoples." n37 The relationship forged in treaties could not be more evident. Treaties
connected Indian people with the settler people "literally as relatives." n38¶ The federal government, on the other hand, expected more of a
business deal than a brotherhood. The federal government apparently saw treaties as a means to an end and an instrumental decision to
conclude a conflict and gain resources. This commitment only had rational appeal so long as the agreement was in the government's favor. In
1871, just four years after the Medicine Lodge Treaty, the settler government found themselves in a position of enough power and political will
to end treaty-making with the tribes for good. Apparently the convenience had worn off, even if the sacred trust had not.¶ The settler
government, instead of respecting the specific circular relationships set up in treaties, would come to generalize its hierarchical relationship
over Indian peoples through a universal Indian policy, largely based on plenary power. "As long as we emphasize the generalities, we do
violence to the rights of Indians [*236] as they are articulated specifically in the history of the tribe with the federal government." n39 One such
generalization is the decision of the Lone Wolf Court.¶ Had the Court reversed Allotment and upheld the relationships of treaties in federal
Indian law, it would have had to also remand the purchases made by over 150,000 non-Indian settlers who had bought homesteads at a $ 1.75
per acre. n40 All of these factors were nearly immovably in place despite the fact that the United States very often promised reservation lands
would be available for the sole use by the tribes, "as long as the grass is green and the rivers flow." n41¶ Not only did the Lone Wolf Court
decide that Congress did not have to abide by its promises in the Medicine Lodge Treaty, but it released itself from all treaties with Indian
people.¶ ¶ The power exists to abrogate the provisions of an Indian treaty, though presumably such power will be exercised only when
circumstances arise which will not only justify the government in disregarding the stipulations of the treaty, but may demand, in the interest of
the country and the Indians themselves, that it should do so. When, therefore, treaties were entered into between the United States and a
tribe of Indians it was never doubted that the power to abrogate existed in Congress, and that in a contingency such power might be availed of
from considerations of governmental policy, particularly if consistent with perfect good faith towards the Indians. n42 ¶ ¶ It should be noted
that plenary power and the power to abrogate, as it is referred to in the ruling, did not always exist in the form that it does now. To proclaim so
denies the reasoning for which the federal government was forced to negotiate treaties with the tribes in the first place. Also, the Court's
apparent presumption that abrogation and plenary power would be administered with the best interests of the tribes in mind is not a point
that has been fully supported by congressional policy. Yet, the Court famously admits, "We must presume that Congress acted in perfect good
faith in the dealings with the Indians of which [*237] complaint is made, and that the legislative branch of the government exercised its best
judgment in the premises." n43 With this understanding of the trust, Congress is said to know the interests of the tribes more than the tribes
themselves and the abrogation of treaties would be made to benefit them. Under this new relationship, control of the structure of Indian life
and resources were placed within the plenary control of Congress. "Furthermore, Congress was judicially authorized to take Indian lands
incident to its exercise of guardianship power over the Indian peoples. The Court's action unleashed the federal government's forced Indian
assimilation program that was aimed at the systematic dismantling of traditional tribal governance and cultural systems." n44 These colonial
inscriptions and the violence inherent in them are the basis for contemporary environmental policy on
tribal lands.¶ IV¶ ¶ Colonialism, the Doctrine of Discovery, and Environmental Policy¶ ¶ "The history of man's effort to
subjugate nature is also the history of man's subjugation by man." n45 Control of Indian people by
controlling Indian land is a poignant example.¶ Given colonial visions of the European superiority in ideas
of religion, government, culture and control of the environment, Indian nations were not permitted to
have the same control of resources as Europeans. Instead, Indian title was a compromised version of
land and resource control that only implied use and occupancy, not mastery of land and resources that the
Europeans assigned themselves. Western ideas of title included fee simple property that could be sold. In
contrast, "aboriginal title" did not allow similar transfer/sale privilege. n46¶ Aboriginal title was not
determined by examining the governance systems in place - which were complex and largely well-organized in egalitarian
and peaceful means n47 - but through race. [*238] This is evident in the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Sandoval. In
Sandoval, Pueblo tribes differed from other Indian nations in that they owned their land in fee title since the time of Spanish contact in New
Mexico. n48 Despite this undisputed title, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could still impose control over the reservation simply because
the people were Indian.¶ The people of the pueblos, although sedentary rather than nomadic in their inclinations, and disposed to peace and
industry, are nevertheless Indians in race, customs, and domestic government. Always living in separate and isolated communities, adhering to
primitive modes of life, largely influenced by superstition and [fetishism], and chiefly governed according to the crude customs inherited from
their ancestors, they are essentially a simple, uninformed and inferior people. n49¶ As the Court proclaims, application of the
federal
trust, plenary power and federal control of environmental policy is based on notions of an inferior race.
This theory allows for the perpetuation of an institutionalized, hierarchical relationship where nonIndians control Indian land and may perpetuate violence "in good faith."¶ Further reinforcing European
notions of racial difference was the divergent relationships Indian peoples and Anglos had with nature.
n50 Anglo conceptions typically viewed nature as an opportunity for material wealth based on the control of
nature. n51 This utilitarian relationship to the natural world promoted vast conversions of natural resources
into usable commodities and industries. n52 These industries were then transformed into increased industrial and military
capacity used to further expansion and to acquire more resources. n53¶ In contrast, many tribal epistemologies did not
recognize the ability to own or master an animate nature. n54 Viewing nature as alive restricts the uses
of natural resources and severely restricts [*239] commodification and industry as a matter of respect.
n55 Conversely, viewing nature as inanimate, as did Anglos, allows for maximum exploitation. n56 Some scholars see this
type of world-view as a foundation for imperialism because societies that extract the most short-term energy
from natural resources gain dominant social positions and power over those who temper their
exploitation. n57¶ A. The Doctrine of Discovery¶ ¶ ¶ The English colonists came up with two justifications for taking
the Native Americans' lands. First, they argued that colonists would civilize the Indians and 'cover their naked
miserie, with civill use of foode and cloathing.' In royal charters given to the companies organizing the colonization, mention was always made
of the obligation to bring Christianity to the 'savages.' The
other part of the rationale was that Europeans could put the
land to a 'higher use,' making it more productive by intensive cultivation and by bringing in livestock. In 1625, Samuel Purchas argued
that God did not intend for the land to remain as 'that unmanned wild Countrey, which [the savages] range rather than inhabite.' n58¶ ¶ From
the very beginning, Europeans sought to control the ontology of nature by imposing western norms of
separating nature from society. Groups with a communal and cohesive relationship with nature were seen as outside of the social
contract and were marginalized as irrational. As such, "savage as the wolf" and "noble savage" constructions were used to imagine American
Indian people as inferior. n59 These
characterizations become the underlying justifications for domination of
people portrayed as "unfortunate children of nature" n60 who need to be controlled, managed and
dominated like nature itself under the rubric of Enlightenment civilization. The first version of colonial
jurisprudence [*240] to utilize this characterization in the United States was the method of dividing
resources for use via title, as understood by discovery tenets.¶ The discovery doctrine gained further legitimacy in United States law
through its application by Chief Justice Marshall. According to Marshall this doctrine leads to a natural assumption about 'use' versus 'title'
property. He elaborates the point in Johnson v. McIntosh. n61¶ ¶ They [American indigenous people] were admitted to be the rightful
occupants of the soil, with a legal as well as just claim to retain possession of it, and to use it according to their own discretion; but their rights
to complete sovereignty, as independent nations, were necessarily diminished, and their power to dispose of the soil at their own will, to
whomsoever they pleased, was denied by the original fundamental principle, that discovery gave exclusive title to those who made it. n62¶ ¶
Federal trust, in light of its discovery legacy, is a legal tool whose primary use is to compromise the title and claims held by tribes. Moreover,
the federal
trust is a colonial instrument used from the beginning to divest the natural resources from
American Indians. This justification by differences in race and ethnicity places aboriginal people outside of the social contract. If they are
placed outside of the social contract, the original, established agreements with the tribes could be broken on the grounds of paternalism.
However, the use of the discovery doctrine to
legitimize the violence done to American Indians through this
unilateral paternalism, even if hidden during treaty making, cannot disguise the harm done to American Indians who were forcefully
removed from their lands and denied their traditional relationship with nature.¶ B. Environmental Policy as Colonial Legacy¶ ¶ Federaltribal environmental land management on reservations reflects the foundational violence committed
through colonial-based plenary power. American Indian leaders, scholars and policy experts agree that these environmental
policies have been a disaster. n63 We contend that the harm done can be traced to the [*241] forced change in American Indian use
relationships with nature that had been protected by treaties. Thus, while
tribes and individual American Indian citizens
often retain traditional values for relating to nature, they are not allowed to incorporate them into the
federal environmental laws that govern policy on tribal lands. As a result, Indian environmental policy, as
dictated by various federal environmental laws, places major decisions about resource use and management in the
hands of the federal government through application of the trust doctrine and the "good faith" which it
is supposed to embody.¶ One function the federal trust affords the federal government, usually the
Department of the Interior, is the ability to approve leases for uranium mines, coal mines, timber harvests and other
extractive industries. The trust doctrine has had a damaging effect on tribal sovereignty as well as
environmental quality. Tribes have been forced to lease out territory for the mining of radioactive material used in civilian and military nuclear
facilities. n64 Such operations usually destroy an area in perpetuity and are often abandoned without being cleaned up. n65 "Tribal
selfdetermination requires the ending of the colonial relationship facilitated by the energy companies and
the government... ." n66 The federal trust responsibility is used in an abusive fashion to exploit the
resources of American Indian people without paying the social costs of doing so. n67 The leases are
producing revenue for the tribes, but at a rate far below their market value. n68 Thus, [*242] the tribes are
not only denied the right to stop exploitation and treatment of nature in a way counter to their beliefs,
they are also cheated out of their share of the profits when resources are extracted.
American Indian inclusion is used as an instrument of American Indian assimilation
and cultural destruction
Jarrett 2K, Alfred Abioseh Jarret, nearest date given is 2000, Jarret is Professor Graduate Social Work Program,
Alabama A&M University “The Impact of Macro Social System on Ethnic Minorities in the United States,” p. 258, NN
Polices of the U.S. government have hindered the self help abilities and traditions of Native Americans.
Dependency was encouraged and self determination was not allowed. Therefore, Native Americans as an
ethnic minority stand out as a distinct and unique case. The policies of the federal government traditionally
defined the needs and solutions for Native American people. This included their social welfare needs. What
these people wanted for themselves was in opposition to what the United States wanted for them. In
essence the U.S. government required Native Americans to denounce their lifestyles, culture, language, and
means of survival (Iglehard & Becarra, 1995).
Impact
OV
The incorporation of native stories and culture in public sphere allows for cooption
and genocide – the white always uses the oppressed body’s stories to further its own
agenda of domination – the aff turns itself in its quest to destroy oppression by recreating it through the public sphere – prefer empirics – when the native has
entered the political it has consistently been undermined and its culture destroyed –
That’s Moreton - Robinson
Culture Loss
The oppression of the Native culture has caused racism, xenophobia, and alienation - it has led to the
death of a culture – the US will never stop destroying the Native until it conforms or is eliminated
Bradford 04, William Bradford, nearest date given is 2004, Bradford has a degree in law and is prominent in
the field of Native American law. He works for the Tulsa Law Review, “Another Such Victory and We Are Undone: A
Call to an American Indian Declaration of Independence,”
http://digitalcommons.law.utulsa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2464&context=tlr, NN
In the 1831 case Cherokee Nation v. Georgia," Marshall determined that, despite their retention of
reserved rights to occupy their lands subject only to voluntary cession or conquest 43 and their
irrefutable status as distinct political communities," Indian tribes were, in no small measure by virtue of
their imperfect land tenure judicially imposed in M'Intosh, mere "domestic dependent nations" under
U.S. "pupilage, 45 not sovereign foreign nations or states within the meaning of the Commerce Clause of
the Constitution. As a result, the Court could not exercise original jurisdiction over a case wherein the
Cherokees sought to enjoin enforcement of Georgia law on land guaranteed by treaties.46 Although
Marshall held that the United States owed a common law trust duty to its Indian“wards," he conceded
that such a duty was judicially unenforceable, 47 and an examination of other justices' opinions,
construing the United States-Cherokee relationship as that between a conqueror and a subject
people,48 hinted that the "trust doctrine," true to its roots in cultural racism and xenophobia, 49 would
become yet another legal tool with which to diminish Indian sovereignty. ° Having reduced Indian
nafions from sovereigns to dependencies with a stroke of his pen in Worcester v. Georgia,51 Marshall,
while retreating somewhat from his position in Cherokee Nation, opened the floodgates to Indian 52
subordination. Although he concluded that, as a matter of domestic as well as international law, Indian
nations were distinct political and legal communities that enjoyed full powers of internal sovereignty53
and immunity from the operation of state laws even in a relationship of dependency upon the United
States,54 to support his holding Marshall interpreted the grant to Congress of the power to regulate
commerce with Indian nations-a power denied to the states 5-to afford Congress "plenary" power, to
the exclusion of the states, over Indian affairs. While subsequent opinions have cited Worcester for the
foundational principle of federal Indian law-that the powers of Indian tribes are "inherent powers of a
limited sovereignty which has never been extinguished" 56-Marshall's failure to clearly and precisely
define the term "plenary, 57 has allowed an often hostile Congress to auto-determine its powers
relative to Indian nations.58 Accordingly, in a real sense, Worcester was a battle won and a war lost: by
1900, Congress, with the imprimatur of the Court, had qualified nearly every aspect of tribal life by
legislation,59 and presently Indian nations are subject to the broadest conception of plenary power
pursuant to which their sovereignty "exists only at the sufferance of Congress and is subject to complete
defeasance. ' 60 By merely wielding the crushing force of plenary power, Congress may determine
whether an Indian tribe exists, ascertain its membership, and even legislatively terminate it;61 take
tribal lands with only limited obligations to pay compensation; 62 and "limit, modify or eliminate the
powers of local selfgovernment which the tribes otherwise possess."63 While Worcester was, on its
face, a victory for Indian sovereignty, the judicial invention of plenary power provided a mechanism for
the destruction of its vision of a separate and legally protected status-dependent upon the United States
but yet still sovereign-for Indian nations.
Monologism
There needs to be a degree of dialogue between narrative approaches---demanding
personal engagement fails and is MONOLOGISM
David Bridges, Centre for Applied Research in Education, University of East Anglia, 2001, The Ethics of
Outsider Research, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 35, No. 3
III OUTSIDERS IMPORT DAMAGING FRAMEWORKS OF UNDERSTANDING
Frequent in the literature about research into disability, women's experience, race and homosexuality is
the claim that people from outside these particular communities will import into their research, for
example, homophobic, sexist or racist frameworks of understanding, which damage the interests of
those being researched.
In the case of research into disability it has been argued that outsider researchers carry with them
assumptions that the problem of disability lies with the disabled rather than with the society which
frames and defines disability. `The essential problem of recent anthropological work on culture and
disability is that it perpetuates outmoded beliefs and continues to distance research from lived
oppression' (Charlton, 1998, p. 27). By contrast: `a growing number of people with disabilities have
developed a consciousness that transforms the notion and concept of disability from a medical
condition to a political and social condition' (Charlton, 1998, p.17). Charlton goes on to criticise, for
example, a publication by Ingstad and Reynolds Whyte (1995), Disability and Culture. He claims that,
although it does add to our understanding of how the conceptualisation and symbolisation of disability
takes place, `its language is and perspective are still lodged in the past. In the first forty pages alone we
find the words suffering, lameness, interest group, incapacitated, handicapped, deformities. Notions of
oppression, dominant culture, justice, human rights, political movement, and self- determination are
conspicuously absent' (Charlton, 1998 p. 27).
Discussing the neo-colonialism of outsider research into Maori experience, Smith extends this type of
claim to embrace the wider methodological and metaphysical framing of outsider research: `From an
indigenous perspective Western research is more than just research that is located in a positivist
tradition. It is research which brings to bear, on any study of indigenous peoples, a cultural orientation, a
set of values, a different conceptualization of such things as time, space and subjectivity, different and
competing theories of knowledge, highly specialized forms of language, and structures of power' (Smith,
1999, p. 42).5
This position requires, I think, some qualification. First, researchers are clearly not immune from some
of the damaging and prejudicial attitudes on matters of race, sexuality, disability and gender which are
found among the rest of the population, though I might hope that their training and experience might
give them above-average awareness of these issues and above-average alertness to their expression in
their own work. Even where such attitudes remain in researchers' consciousness, this intelligent selfawareness and social sensitivity mean on the whole that they are able to deploy sufficient selfcensorship not to expose it in a damaging way. Researchers may thus remain morally culpable for their
thoughts, but, at least, communities can be spared the harm of their expression. It is also a matter of
some significance that researchers are more exposed than most to public criticism, not least from critics
from within these disempowered communities, when such prejudices do enter and are revealed in their
work. If they employ the rhetoric of, for example, anti-racist or anti-sexist conviction, they are at least in
their public pronouncements exposed to the humiliation of being hoisted by their own petard. It is
difficult to see the fairness in excluding all outsider researchers on the a priori supposition of universal
prejudice. It is better, surely, to expose it where it is revealed and, if absolutely necessary, to debar
individuals who ignore such criticism and persist in using the privilege of their research position to
peddle what can then only be regarded as damaging and prejudicial propaganda. Secondly, it is plainly
not the case that Western research is located exclusively (as is implied) in a positivist tradition, even
if this tradition has been a dominant one. Phenomenology, ethnography, life history, even, more
recently, the use of narrative fiction and poetry as forms of research representation, are all established
ingredients of the educational research worlds in the UK, USA or Australasia. Contemporary research
literature abounds with critiques of positivism as well as examples of its continuing expression.
I have placed much weight in these considerations on the importance of any research being exposed to
criticism--most importantly, perhaps, but by no means exclusively by the people whose experience it
claims to represent. This principle is not simply an ethical principle associated with the obligations that
a researcher might accept towards participants in the research, but it is a fundamental feature of the
processes of research and its claims to command our attention. It is precisely exposure to, modification
through and survival of a process of vigorous public scrutiny that provides research with whatever
authority it can claim. In contemporary ethnographic research, case-study and life-history research, for
example, this expectancy of exposure to correction and criticism is one which runs right through the
research process. The methodological requirement is for participants to have several opportunities to
challenge any prejudices which researchers may bring with them: at the point where the terms of the
research are first negotiated and they agree to participate (or not); during any conversations or
interviews that take place in the course of the research; in responding to any record which is produced
of the data gathering; in response to any draft or final publication. Indeed, engagement with a
researcher provides any group with what is potentially a richly educative opportunity: an opportunity
to open their eyes and to see things differently. It is, moreover, an opportunity which any researcher
worth his or her salt will welcome.
Not all researchers or research processes will be as open as are described here to that educative
opportunity, and not all participants (least of all those who are self-defining as `disempowered') will feel
the confidence to take them even if they are there. This may be seen as a reason to set up barriers to
the outsider researcher, but they can and should more often be seen as problems for researchers and
participants to address together in the interests of their mutual understanding and benefit.
Colonialism
The government’s exertion of control over Indian Country is rooted in a belief in the
racial inferiority of indigenous people – allowing for native sovereignty is the only
way to decrease less paternalism that upholds the legacy of colonialism.
Jacques et al 03, Peter Jacques, University of Central Florida PhD, Sharon Ridge, Grinnell College and
University of Iowa PhD, and Richard Witmer, Grinnell College PhD, 18 J. Envtl. L. & Litig. q223, “Federal Indian Law
and Environmental Policy: A Social Continuity of Violence” Lexis, NN
Currently, federal Indian environmental policy relies on the annulment of treaties that were made in sacred trust between American Indian
tribes and the United States government. In the years since signing these agreements, non-Indians have used racial discrimination against
Indian tribes to justify their maltreatment and dispossession of Indian land. This injustice became institutionalized over time by unilateral
decisions made by the United States Congress and President, and was further supported by numerous Supreme Court decisions. Court rulings
that allowed for the abrogation of treaties at the discretion of the United States Congress are perhaps the most egregious of these injustices.
One of the most pernicious outcomes of these decisions by the Court and Congress has been to sever full tribal relationships with their land, a
central component of the negotiated treaties. This set of broken relationships is at the bottom of an unsustainable and unlivable land
management system that has occurred on a number of Indian reservations.¶ The premise of this Article is that the environmental policy
of the United States government, because it exerts control over Indian nations' natural resources in violation of specific
treaties, is inherently violent. We define violence in this case as a breach of the reciprocal relationship established between Indian tribes
and the federal government through treaties. To demonstrate our premise, we first conceptualize and configure the concept of violence as it
applies to environmental Indian policy. Second, the
violence of broken treaties to gain Indian resources is not a new
phenomenon as we demonstrate in an analysis of the Medicine Lodge Treaty, the subsequent Jerome Agreement, and the Lone Wolf v.
Hitchcock Supreme Court case that officially instituted congressional plenary power over all Indian nations. n1 Third, we demonstrate how
environmental policy operates under visions of racial and ethnic superiority in order to continue colonial
control of Indian resources. This vision of racial and ethnic superiority was institutionalized by Supreme Court precedence, and
continues to put the control of Indian resources in non-Indian hands. [*225] Finally, we suggest that current environmental policy has not only
committed violence against tribes but also against the earth through exploitation of reservations. The
way to end such violence
and exploitation of Indian people and the earth is to retract plenary power over environmental policy and exploitation,
acknowledge treaty relationships as sacred sovereign-to-sovereign promises, and place tribal lands back in tribal hands.¶ I¶ ¶ A
Concept of Violence¶ ¶ To draw out the violence embedded in broken treaties we first describe mainstream understandings of violence in the
modern era. Such understandings of violence are typically blind to the violence committed by government institutions acting in the name of
rationality, progress, or material benefit for the state. Second, we argue that the hierarchical relations, which replaced the reciprocal treaty
relations, are inherently violent because they force one party into the role of a ward with compromised agency. ¶ The modern understanding of
violence, as found in social contract theory and the Post-Westphalian state, is particularly important in the case of American Indian law and
policy. Since early discussion of the subject by Greek scholars, in order for an action to be considered violent it must be an illegitimate,
irrational behavior of a minority of individuals in society. n2 During the casting of modernity, this became an axiom of the social contract. One
purpose of the social contract was to keep violence at a minimum so that people could be free to live their lives without the risk of violence that
was thought to exist outside formal social organization. n3 To enter the social contract is to gain civility and the ability to have real property. n4
"What man [sic] loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting;
what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses." n5 Thus, the social [*226] contract provides the civility of imposed limits
on violent human appetites while providing a system where the possession of real property is possible. Outside the social contract there is no
such thing as "private property" to social contract theorists, merely the ability to temporarily use a resource. This is important because, as we
discuss below, the doctrine of discovery allotted private property rights to "discoverers." Indian
tribes possessed only use rights
because they were seen to be outside the social contract, residing in a state of nature. n6¶ Outside the social
contract and within the anarchic state of nature, violence is an expected behavior. For this reason, sacrificing some portion of individual liberty
to a sovereign who would keep order was a rational decision. n7 Thus, violence within modernity is usually conceived of as the erratic behavior
of criminals and has not typically been conceived of as a social continuity perpetrated by rational and civil modernity itself. By definition, the
state becomes a protector from violence, not the perpetrator of violence; and, violence that the state does commit is veiled in legitimacy.¶
Legitimacy of the state's use of violence was articulated by foundational sociologists such as Durkheim and Comte who suggest that the state
was the source of modern and moral authority. n8 Like all political institutions, the state "is a relation of men dominating men," but this
domination serves as a "monopoly of legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." n9 Since the state is the source of legitimacy its
actions are not recognized as violent. Or, if they are seen as violent, the violence is not seen as problematic as it furthers the goals of a social
contract and modern progress. This concept is also reflected in the roots of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, where the state is the ideological
foundation of a good and developing society, an idea Marx would later dismiss. n10¶ [*227] The state's monopoly of the legitimate use of force
was the justification for the violence used against American Indians in the establishment and maintenance of the United States. Taking
and
controlling tribal land was seen as a necessary step in the progress of the state. We reject this thinking,
and argue that the state can be an agent of illegitimate force. This is central to our theory of violence because the lens
of institutional legitimacy has so far kept the operation of federal Indian environmental policy from
foundational criticism. One reason for this is that the same agent (the United States federal government) in the form of the Supreme
Court and Congress has been allowed to both rule in its own interest and then sanction that ruling - a clear violation of even mainstream
pluralist political theory. n11 In other words, in relying on the agent of violence to define legitimate fiduciary responsibility for the tribes, the
Court and Congress are empowered to promote their own interest. In this case, the separation of powers is irrelevant because the interest of
the federal government as a whole is uniformly found in the control of tribal land wealth.¶ While the definition of violence has been subject to
minimal debate or analysis as a concept, it has an assumed meaning in social science that generally includes physical injury with malicious
intent. In this definition of violence, the focus is on the intent of the agent to cause harm. Attempting to define actions as violent from the
agent's perspective, here the federal government, becomes very difficult. Melissa Burchard recognized this complexity of violence and
discusses the concept in the case of non-stranger rape. n12 An especially appropriate example given by Burchard is the case of non-stranger
rape where the rapist often says he did not "mean to do it." n13 As a result, prosecutors have been reluctant to vigorously pursue prosecutions
when the perpetrator of the crime suggested no malicious intent. n14 Thus we are left relying on the agent of violence to define (or not) their
own violent act. In the case of federal Indian environmental policy, it is unlikely that branches of government acting in collusion will recognize
their own violent acts or seek to prosecute them.¶ [*228] This point becomes even more poignant when dealing with an institution or
government whose actual intentions could be numerous and complicated to identify. Further, intention and interest may be hidden in the
modern rational decision-making process which can promote violence. Through the focus on means-end logic, violence may be justified,
considered natural, or simply overlooked as a necessary step in modern "progress." However, the role of this rationality in state-sponsored
violence has been ignored "because the social sciences still largely retain the etiological myth - the belief in an emergence from a pre-social
barbarity into a civilized and rational society." n15 Consequently, modern
institutions are rarely challenged as the root of
systemic violence.¶ Intent to cause harm is often obfuscated by the casting of some social groups
outside of the social contract as non-rational, primitive, and thus incapable of agency. Ecofeminists specifically
point out that social groups associated with the state of nature are tied to a state versus society justification of domination. As a result, they are
compelled to conform to the idea of European civilization. Ecofeminist scholars further suggest that the control of
tribes and the
earth by a dominant society are a related enterprise. n16 This domination is justified by the rhetoric of
paternalism. However, the true goal is to produce material wealth and power at the expense of those
protected. Thus, the efforts to assimilate American Indians into civilized people disguised the primary
goal of taking American Indian land and resources and using them to benefit non-Indians. In fact, the rhetoric
of civilizing the "savage" was a consistent element in contemporary American Indian history, including the Allotment era beginning in 1887.
During Allotment, tribes were divested of reservation with the promise that agriculture and a change in lifestyle would ultimately lead to a
better life. n17 Similarly during the "termination" period starting in 1945, some sovereign tribal governments were terminated with the
implication that American Indians would benefit from becoming full-fledged members of the dominant society if their official tribal affiliations
were dissolved. n18 [*229] Allotment and termination were not viewed as violent since the rhetoric of the federal government was of aid, not
malicious intent. Since mainstream notions of violence do not accurately describe this violence experienced by American Indian tribes, our
notion of violence itself must be reformed.¶ Therefore, the notion of violence employed here is the violence that begins in the minds of men
and women about "others," specifically those perceived to be outside of the social contract. Violence is, first and foremost, a breach of
expectations inherent in a relationship. According to Burchard,¶ ¶ Harm is not only a matter of what damage, physical or otherwise, has been
done, however. It is also, when taken in the context of determining whether violence has been done, an evaluative concept which implies that
some legitimate expectation about what ought to have been done has been breached. That is, part of the understanding of what actions will be
named violence depends on the understanding of the relationships involved in the given context. n19¶ ¶ The focus has now shifted from the
subjective intent of the agent and all of its associated problems to the relationship established between the involved parties. Understanding
what constitutes violent action is recognizing the expectations inherent in that relationship. Breaching these expectations is the core of
understanding whether harm has occurred. n20¶ Harm occurs at the point in a relationship where there is an expectation of an equal
relationship, but one of the parties unilaterally assumes a superior position. The essence of this harm is not just that one party has more power,
but that one entity changes an established or assumed reciprocal relationship with another party for their own gain. Political realists have
observed this phenomenon at least since the time of Thucydides, but typically assert that it is part of an unchanging human nature.
Normalizing violence in this way takes an expectation for circular (non-hierarchical, interdependent, and
balanced) relations out of the frame of reference and the foundation of violence goes unchallenged.¶
[*230] When groups of people interact with each other, we assume that no group of people will view themselves as justifiably inferior to the
other, regardless of relative capabilities. Therefore, on the personal level, even though strangers on the subway or in the alleyway do not have
an established reciprocal relationship, this minimal expectation of reciprocity is presumed. When this reciprocity is formalized into sacred
treaties, breaking this relationship has even more severe consequences because defenses against exploitation may be relaxed. It is assumed
that actions by one party in a circular relationship occur with the consent of the other parties. Thus, non-coercive and non-retributive consent is
a minimum requirement to change the expectations of a reciprocal relationship between equals. If consent is not obtained, the unilateral action
by one side without consent of the other destroys the equality and replaces circularity with hierarchy within the relationship. This hierarchy
results in harm, which then constitutes violence.¶ The establishment of a hierarchical structure is one of the most damaging elements of
violence. The power accumulated in hierarchy facilitates the ability of abusers to keep the abused under their reign. This accumulation of power
then compromises the potential for resistance. American
Indians did not consent to the new hierarchical
relationships that replaced the sacred treaty relationships. The United States government unilaterally
imposed this hierarchy by threat of force justified by the United States Congress and the Supreme
Court.¶ With the original duties and relationships between the federal government and tribes
discarded, the federal government was able to exercise plenary control over native land bases for their
own gain. This has meant extracting vast surplus value through wanton natural resource extraction from
tribal land bases.¶ Two acts of violence are committed when the United States government breaches a
treaty with Indian nations that reserve an area for tribal control. The first relationship broken is that
between the two peoples, Indian tribes and the United States government who have formed a sacred bond. The
second relationship broken is the human/nature relationship between Indian tribes and the land.
Important to our understanding of environmental policy, the agents in this relationship (and thus our theory) can include non-humans such as
animals, plants, rocks, streams, and mountains. Different societies ascribe agency to [*231] differing entities. For many American Indian tribes,
the earth itself was a consistent, active and powerful agent with whom many tribes instituted reciprocal affiliation. While treaties do not spell
out how tribes should think of nature, forcing a utilitarian use of nature where a different relationship previously existed is another violent
dimension of broken treaties. This can be restored with minimal effort by simply following the agreements that were made. ¶ Under the
prevailing conception, Western
ontologies and epistemologies have not recognized the breach of sacred treaty
relationships as a violent action. However, with a new understanding of violence, environmental policy
in Indian Country can be recognized for the dysfunction that it continues to serve. We can better understand this
conception of violence by profiling a Kiowa experience that was later applied to all federal-tribal relationships.¶ II¶ ¶ Twenty-Five Years
Reserved: The Treaty of Medicine Lodge is Allotted¶ ¶ In 1867, the Kiowa and Comanche Nations and the United States government negotiated
a treaty at Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas. Article One reads:¶ ¶ From this day forward all war between the parties to this agreement shall
forever cease. The Government of the United States desires peace, and its honor is here pledged to keep it. The Indians desire peace, and they
now pledge their honor to maintain it. n21¶ ¶ The 1867 Medicine Lodge peace treaty was forged to end potentially protracted fighting that
could have severely damaged both sides. For the United States government, talks were needed to strike a deal with the Kiowas and Comanches
so they would not attack the railroad or wagon trains crossing through their territory on the way west. For the Kiowa and Comanche,
negotiations for a cessation of fighting were meant to ensure the protection of tribal land from further incursions by non-Indians. In negotiating
an agreement, both sides also approved a framework for further agreements. This framework, usually referred [*232] to as the "Indian Consent
Rule," stated that the federal government would have to gather the signed consent from three-quarters of the adult males in the tribe before
any other land cessions were made. This was an attempt by tribal leaders to avert the loss of any additional tribal land and/or rights to the
federal government. The Indian consent requirement was placed in the Treaty "to specifically reassure those Indians who wanted a federal
guarantee of their future, undisturbed use and occupancy of their reserved lands." n22¶ Thus, "in
exchange for certain land
cessions, the federal government explicitly promised the Kiowas that no additional land cessions would
be made without their consent." n23 At Medicine Lodge Creek, the Kiowa ceded original tribal lands that spanned from South
Dakota to large portions of western Oklahoma in exchange for more than two million acres in present day southwestern Oklahoma. n24 The
Agreement is explicit about the extent of control the respective tribes had over this land.¶ ¶ The United States now solemnly agrees that no
person except those herein authorized so to do and except such offers, agents and employees of the government as may be authorized to enter
upon said Indian reservation in discharge of duties enjoined by law, shall ever be permitted to pass over, settle upon, or reside in the territory
described in this article, or in such territory as may be added to this reservation for the use of said Indians. n25¶ ¶ Thus the Medicine Lodge
Treaty provides a legal agreement for the permanent residence, use and benefit of a reservation explicitly for the Kiowa and Comanche people.
Yet despite the explicit language in the original treaty, the Kiowa reservation no longer exists. Kiowa
land holdings are now a
"checkerboard" arrangement of personal property (not tribal) and trust land. Tribal members personally
retain 1200 acres of discontinuous land and an interest in about 3000 acres of trust land. n26 This
represents a loss of 99.7% of the land originally reserved in the Treaty. Some scholars argue this should
be considered an act of genocide due [*233] to the attempt to destroy the land base of land-based
peoples. n27 Part of this act was the necessary hierarchical relationship and exercise of power to
enact these genocidal policies . Moreover, such policies would not have been considered had the original reciprocal duties been
honored and genuinely respected.¶ The loss of permanently reserved land occurred for many tribes through "allotment" via the General
Allotment Act of 1887. Allotment was a policy to reduce tribal holdings and end tribalism by taking tribal reserved land and allotting it to tribal
individuals to be used for farming. Non-Indians advocated the Act under the guise of "civilizing" Indian people by dispossessing tribal land and
privatizing it for individual farming. However, it was also done at a time when the federal government was under pressure to release more land
to settlers. The "surplus" land left from allotments to tribal members was consequently sold off to non-Indian settlers for less than $ 2.00 an
acre. During this period, tribal people lost over 80% of their reserved land (which was already an enormous reduction from previously ceded
land). n28 Before Congress ended the policy of allotment, many individuals' allotments were sold to non-Indians, making tribal holdings a
"checkerboard" of ownership.¶ For the Kiowa and Comanche, allotment was implemented through the Jerome Agreement of 1892.
"Agreement," however, is a contested term in this case because the "Indian consent rule" of the Medicine Lodge Treaty had been broken. It
was broken by David Jerome and Warren Sayre, Federal Indian Commissioners, who told the Kiowas, Comanches and Kiowa-Apache that if they
did not allot their land, the President would do it by force as had been done to other tribes. The Kiowa protested, but the federal officials
forced the matter and left with 456 tribal signatures. n29 The most current census of that time showed that there were 725 adult males on the
reservation. In order to be in accordance [*234] with the Medicine Lodge Treaty, Article 12, the federal government needed 543 signatures.
n30¶ According to our definition of violence, abrogation of the Medicine Lodge Treaty was an act of violence against the tribes as it abrogated
the reciprocal relationship between two sovereigns. Clearly, placing the Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache and Comanche Indians under a hierarchical
relationship forced them to subordinate their rights of self-determination and forfeit their ability to determine policy on tribal land. However,
this violence was consequently legitimated by the Supreme Court holding in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock.¶ III¶ ¶ The Violent Institution of Lone Wolf
v. Hitchcock¶ ¶ Kiowa Chief Lone Wolf appealed the Jerome Allotment to the Supreme Court, citing the fact that the Agreement failed to get a
super-majority from the tribe, thus breaking the Medicine Lodge Treaty. The Kiowa chief lost the case, and the Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock Court
ruled that the United States Congress could abrogate this agreement and all treaties as it saw fit. n31 This decision affirmed congressional
plenary, or nearly unrestricted, power and gave Congress the ability to make final decisions regarding American Indian lands and welfare. n32 In
this decision, Congress is assumed to act as fiduciary to the tribes as a parent acts in the interest of a child; this is the trust doctrine and
continues to be a foundation for justification of plenary power today. n33¶ The Court and Congress never denied that, if the Jerome Agreement
was ratified, it would break the Medicine Lodge Treaty. In fact, the Secretary of the Interior testified to Congress that the treaty had not been
fulfilled. n34 Thus, the issue in the Lone Wolf decision was not whether the treaty was indeed broken - it was - but whether the United States
was bound by the relationships of the Medicine Lodge documents and others like it. n35¶ [*235] Perhaps the key to understanding the scope of
this violence is to understand what the federal government and the tribes expected out of the treaty relationship. The tribes expected that the
treaties had a universal, spiritual, and teleological import. For tribes, treaty making was often viewed as a sacred trust. Treaties were bonds that
had utility and were also bonds that held the promise of multicultural unity and connection. Treaties were a way to bring peace and were seen
in a larger context than simply the absence of physical violence, because the treaty parties would become joined in trust. "First and foremost
with Indians of the Classical Era (and even today) a treaty is a sacred text. It fulfills a divine command for all the peoples of the world to unite as
one." n36¶ The views of Indians towards treaties is further explained by a scholar quoting an Indian superintendent, "'in the making of
treaties'... 'no people are more open, explicit, and direct.' This was because, according to American Indian traditions of law and peace, treaties
created a sacred relationship of trust between two peoples." n37 The relationship forged in treaties could not be more evident. Treaties
connected Indian people with the settler people "literally as relatives." n38¶ The federal government, on the other hand, expected more of a
business deal than a brotherhood. The federal government apparently saw treaties as a means to an end and an instrumental decision to
conclude a conflict and gain resources. This commitment only had rational appeal so long as the agreement was in the government's favor. In
1871, just four years after the Medicine Lodge Treaty, the settler government found themselves in a position of enough power and political will
to end treaty-making with the tribes for good. Apparently the convenience had worn off, even if the sacred trust had not.¶ The settler
government, instead of respecting the specific circular relationships set up in treaties, would come to generalize its hierarchical relationship
over Indian peoples through a universal Indian policy, largely based on plenary power. "As long as we emphasize the generalities, we do
violence to the rights of Indians [*236] as they are articulated specifically in the history of the tribe with the federal government." n39 One such
generalization is the decision of the Lone Wolf Court.¶ Had the Court reversed Allotment and upheld the relationships of treaties in federal
Indian law, it would have had to also remand the purchases made by over 150,000 non-Indian settlers who had bought homesteads at a $ 1.75
per acre. n40 All of these factors were nearly immovably in place despite the fact that the United States very often promised reservation lands
would be available for the sole use by the tribes, "as long as the grass is green and the rivers flow." n41¶ Not only did the Lone Wolf Court
decide that Congress did not have to abide by its promises in the Medicine Lodge Treaty, but it released itself from all treaties with Indian
people.¶ ¶ The power exists to abrogate the provisions of an Indian treaty, though presumably such power will be exercised only when
circumstances arise which will not only justify the government in disregarding the stipulations of the treaty, but may demand, in the interest of
the country and the Indians themselves, that it should do so. When, therefore, treaties were entered into between the United States and a
tribe of Indians it was never doubted that the power to abrogate existed in Congress, and that in a contingency such power might be availed of
from considerations of governmental policy, particularly if consistent with perfect good faith towards the Indians. n42¶ ¶ It should be noted
that plenary power and the power to abrogate, as it is referred to in the ruling, did not always exist in the form that it does now. To proclaim so
denies the reasoning for which the federal government was forced to negotiate treaties with the tribes in the first place. Also, the Court's
apparent presumption that abrogation and plenary power would be administered with the best interests of the tribes in mind is not a point
that has been fully supported by congressional policy. Yet, the Court famously admits, "We must presume that Congress acted in perfect good
faith in the dealings with the Indians of which [*237] complaint is made, and that the legislative branch of the government exercised its best
judgment in the premises." n43 With this understanding of the trust, Congress is said to know the interests of the tribes more than the tribes
themselves and the abrogation of treaties would be made to benefit them. Under this new relationship, control of the structure of Indian life
and resources were placed within the plenary control of Congress. "Furthermore, Congress was judicially authorized to take Indian lands
incident to its exercise of guardianship power over the Indian peoples. The Court's action unleashed the federal government's forced Indian
assimilation program that was aimed at the systematic dismantling of traditional tribal governance and cultural systems." n44 These colonial
inscriptions and the violence inherent in them are the basis for contemporary environmental policy on
tribal lands.¶ IV¶ ¶ Colonialism, the Doctrine of Discovery, and Environmental Policy¶ ¶ "The history of man's effort to
subjugate nature is also the history of man's subjugation by man." n45 Control of Indian people by
controlling Indian land is a poignant example.¶ Given colonial visions of the European superiority in ideas
of religion, government, culture and control of the environment, Indian nations were not permitted to
have the same control of resources as Europeans. Instead, Indian title was a compromised version of
land and resource control that only implied use and occupancy, not mastery of land and resources that the
Europeans assigned themselves. Western ideas of title included fee simple property that could be sold. In
contrast, "aboriginal title" did not allow similar transfer/sale privilege. n46¶ Aboriginal title was not
determined by examining the governance systems in place - which were complex and largely well-organized in egalitarian
and peaceful means n47 - but through race. [*238] This is evident in the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Sandoval. In
Sandoval, Pueblo tribes differed from other Indian nations in that they owned their land in fee title since the time of Spanish contact in New
Mexico. n48 Despite this undisputed title, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could still impose control over the reservation simply because
the people were Indian.¶ The people of the pueblos, although sedentary rather than nomadic in their inclinations, and disposed to peace and
industry, are nevertheless Indians in race, customs, and domestic government. Always living in separate and isolated communities, adhering to
primitive modes of life, largely influenced by superstition and [fetishism], and chiefly governed according to the crude customs inherited from
their ancestors, they are essentially a simple, uninformed and inferior people. n49¶ As the Court proclaims, application of the
federal
trust, plenary power and federal control of environmental policy is based on notions of an inferior race.
This theory allows for the perpetuation of an institutionalized, hierarchical relationship where nonIndians control Indian land and may perpetuate violence "in good faith."¶ Further reinforcing European
notions of racial difference was the divergent relationships Indian peoples and Anglos had with nature.
n50 Anglo conceptions typically viewed nature as an opportunity for material wealth based on the control of
nature. n51 This utilitarian relationship to the natural world promoted vast conversions of natural resources
into usable commodities and industries. n52 These industries were then transformed into increased industrial and military
capacity used to further expansion and to acquire more resources. n53¶ In contrast, many tribal epistemologies did not
recognize the ability to own or master an animate nature. n54 Viewing nature as alive restricts the uses
of natural resources and severely restricts [*239] commodification and industry as a matter of respect.
n55 Conversely, viewing nature as inanimate, as did Anglos, allows for maximum exploitation. n56 Some scholars see this
type of world-view as a foundation for imperialism because societies that extract the most short-term energy
from natural resources gain dominant social positions and power over those who temper their
exploitation. n57¶ A. The Doctrine of Discovery¶ ¶ ¶ The English colonists came up with two justifications for taking
the Native Americans' lands. First, they argued that colonists would civilize the Indians and 'cover their naked
miserie, with civill use of foode and cloathing.' In royal charters given to the companies organizing the colonization, mention was always made
of the obligation to bring Christianity to the 'savages.' The
other part of the rationale was that Europeans could put the
land to a 'higher use,' making it more productive by intensive cultivation and by bringing in livestock. In 1625, Samuel Purchas argued
that God did not intend for the land to remain as 'that unmanned wild Countrey, which [the savages] range rather than inhabite.' n58¶ ¶ From
the very beginning, Europeans sought to control the ontology of nature by imposing western norms of
separating nature from society. Groups with a communal and cohesive relationship with nature were seen as outside of the social
contract and were marginalized as irrational. As such, "savage as the wolf" and "noble savage" constructions were used to imagine American
Indian people as inferior. n59 These
characterizations become the underlying justifications for domination of
people portrayed as "unfortunate children of nature" n60 who need to be controlled, managed and
dominated like nature itself under the rubric of Enlightenment civilization. The first version of colonial
jurisprudence [*240] to utilize this characterization in the United States was the method of dividing
resources for use via title, as understood by discovery tenets.¶ The discovery doctrine gained further legitimacy in United States law
through its application by Chief Justice Marshall. According to Marshall this doctrine leads to a natural assumption about 'use' versus 'title'
property. He elaborates the point in Johnson v. McIntosh. n61¶ ¶ They [American indigenous people] were admitted to be the rightful
occupants of the soil, with a legal as well as just claim to retain possession of it, and to use it according to their own discretion; but their rights
to complete sovereignty, as independent nations, were necessarily diminished, and their power to dispose of the soil at their own will, to
whomsoever they pleased, was denied by the original fundamental principle, that discovery gave exclusive title to those who made it. n62¶ ¶
Federal trust, in light of its discovery legacy, is a legal tool whose primary use is to compromise the title and claims held by tribes. Moreover,
the federal
trust is a colonial instrument used from the beginning to divest the natural resources from
American Indians. This justification by differences in race and ethnicity places aboriginal people outside of the social contract. If they are
placed outside of the social contract, the original, established agreements with the tribes could be broken on the grounds of paternalism.
However, the use of the discovery doctrine to
legitimize the violence done to American Indians through this
unilateral paternalism, even if hidden during treaty making, cannot disguise the harm done to American Indians who were forcefully
removed from their lands and denied their traditional relationship with nature.¶ B. Environmental Policy as Colonial Legacy¶ ¶ Federaltribal environmental land management on reservations reflects the foundational violence committed
through colonial-based plenary power. American Indian leaders, scholars and policy experts agree that these environmental
policies have been a disaster. n63 We contend that the harm done can be traced to the [*241] forced change in American Indian use
relationships with nature that had been protected by treaties. Thus, while
tribes and individual American Indian citizens
often retain traditional values for relating to nature, they are not allowed to incorporate them into the
federal environmental laws that govern policy on tribal lands. As a result, Indian environmental policy, as
dictated by various federal environmental laws, places major decisions about resource use and management in the
hands of the federal government through application of the trust doctrine and the "good faith" which it
is supposed to embody.¶ One function the federal trust affords the federal government, usually the
Department of the Interior, is the ability to approve leases for uranium mines, coal mines, timber harvests and other
extractive industries. The trust doctrine has had a damaging effect on tribal sovereignty as well as
environmental quality. Tribes have been forced to lease out territory for the mining of radioactive material used in civilian and military nuclear
facilities. n64 Such operations usually destroy an area in perpetuity and are often abandoned without being cleaned up. n65 "Tribal
selfdetermination requires the ending of the colonial relationship facilitated by the energy companies and
the government... ." n66 The federal trust responsibility is used in an abusive fashion to exploit the
resources of American Indian people without paying the social costs of doing so. n67 The leases are
producing revenue for the tribes, but at a rate far below their market value. n68 Thus, [*242] the tribes are
not only denied the right to stop exploitation and treatment of nature in a way counter to their beliefs,
they are also cheated out of their share of the profits when resources are extracted.
Root Cause
Epistemological whiteness is the precondition for racism, sexism, and extinction —it
places whiteness as the measure for all things
Moreton – Robinson 04, Aileen Moreton – Robinson, 1/1/04, Moreton – Robinson is Professor of
Indigenous Studies, Division of Research and Commercialisation, and Indigenous Studies Research Network,
“Whitening Race,” NN
Representations of the Indigenous 'other' have circulated in white Anglo discourse since the 1700s.The
most infamous was that given by Cook, who stated that the Indigenous people of Australia had no form of land tenure because they were
uncivilised, which meant the land belonged to no one and was available for possession under the doctrine of terra nullius. The
representation of the Indigenous other as the nomad justified dispossession. Since then we have been
represented in many ways, which include treacherous, lazy, drunken, childish, cunning, dirty, ignoble,
noble, primitive, backward, unscrupulous, untrustworthy and savage.-These apparently uncomplicated
representations mask not only the complexity of Indigeneity but also their role as a set of differences
that work to assist the constitution of whiteness as an epistemological a priori that informs one's
ontology. As a categorical object, race is deemed to belong to the other. This has resulted in many theories
about race being blind to whiteness. Since the Enlightenment, the dominant epistemological position
within the Western world has been the white Cartesian male subject whose disembodied way of
knowing has been positioned in opposition to white women's and Indigenous people s production of
knowledge (Moreton-Robinson 2000). Feminists and Indigenous scholars argue that their way of knowing is
connected to their positioning as sub- jects/knowers of inquiry who are socially situated and related to
others in the actualities of their own living. They acknowledge that not all knowledge is chosen or
actively acquired. Knowledge can be acquired outside experience but knowing is also connected to
experience and understood in relation to situated acts of interpretation and representa- tion. However,
within whiteness's regime of power, all representations are not of equal value: some are deemed
truthful while others are clas- sified fictitious, some are contested while others form part of our
commonsense takcn-ror-grantcd knowledge or the world. Imbued with a power that normalises their
existence, these latter representations are invisible, unnamed and unmarked. It is the apparent transparency of
these normative representations that strategically enables differentiation and othcring. Foucault explains the definitive importance of
difference in moder- nity's development of knowledge: 'all
knowledge, of whatever kind, proceeded to the ordering of
material by the establishment of differ- ences and defined those differences by the establishment of an
order' (1994:346). This has been particularly evident in the study of race in the human sciences where skin colour is the signifier of difference.
Race continues to be a basic categorical object in the production of knowledge in modernity and an epistemological given in disciplines such as
biology, natural history and anthropology (Goldberg 1993:149). 1 However,
race is reserved for the other and the
assumption is that the raced body of the knower (in contrast to the gendered body that fem- inists privilege) is irrelevant to
knowledge production. A constitutive feature of modernity was the development of human- ness as a universal, which was incommensurate
with inhuman qualities (Montag 1997:284).The universalisation of humanity appears paradox- ical, given the existence of racial difference.
Sartre articulated this paradox by characterising the colonised experience as follows: 'your humanism claims we are at one with the rest of
humanity but your racist methods set us apart' (1978:8). However, this paradox was resolved through the racialised distinction between the
animal and the human. The
universalisation of humanity required this separation and was enabled by social
and juridical morals. These morals operated to normalise whiteness as the measure of being human.
Montag argues that: the universal was one of the forms in which the white race historically appeared ... in this way, the concept of whiteness is
deprived of its purely racial character at the moment of its universalisation, no longer conceivable as a particularistic survival haunting the
discourse of uni- versality but, rather as the very form of human universality itself. (1997:285) it is not (animal or liminal), thereby
staking
an exclusive claim to the truly human. In this way, racial superiority becomes a part of ones ontology,
albeit unconsciously, and informs the white subject s knowl- edge production.
Cultural Genocide
The exploitation of the native image leads to cultural genocide
Smith, 6 – Andrea, Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at UC Riverside, Appropriation of
Native American Religious Traditions, Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America, Vol. 1, pg.
104-105, NN
Native spiritualities are land based — they are tied to the landbase from which they originate. When Native peoples fight for cultural/spiritual
preservation, they are ultimately fighting for the landbase which grounds their spirituality and culture. For this reason, Native religions are
generally not proselytizing. They are typically seen by Native peoples as relevant only to the particular landbase from which they originate; they
are not necessarily applicable to peoples coming from different landbases. In addition, as many scholars have noted, Native religions are
practice centered rather than belief centered. That is, Christianity is defined by belief in a certain set of doctrinal principles about Jesus, the
Bible, etc. Evangelical Christianity holds that one is “saved” when one professes belief in Jesus Christ as one’s Lord and Savior. But what
is of
primary important in Native religions is not being able to articulate belief in a certain set of doctrines,
but being able to take part in the spiritual practice of one’s community. In fact, it may be more important that a
ceremony be done correctly than it is for everyone in that ceremony to know exactly why everything must be done in a certain way. As Vine
Deloria (Dakota) notes, from a Native context, religion is “a way of life” rather than “a matter of proper exposition of doctrines.” Even if
Christians do not have access to church, they continue to be Christians as long as they believe in Jesus. Native
spiritualities, by contrast,
may die if the people do not practice the ceremonies, even if the people continue to believe in their
power. Native communities argue that Native peoples cannot be alienated from their land without
committing cultural genocide . This argument underpins many sacred sites cases, although usually to no avail,
before the courts. Most of the court rulings on sacred sites do not recognize this difference between belief-centered and practice-centered
traditions or the significance of land-based spiritualities. For instance, in Fools Crow v. Gullet (1983), the Supreme Court ruled against the
Lakota who were trying to halt the development of additional tourist facilities in the Black Hills. The Court ruled that this tourism was not an
infringement on Indian religious freedom because, although it would hinder the ability of the Lakota to practice their beliefs, it did not force
them to relinquish their beliefs. For the Lakota, however, stopping
the practice of traditional beliefs destroys the belief
systems themselves. Consequently, for the Lakota and Native nations in general, cultural genocide is the
result when Native landbases are not protected. When we disconnect Native spiritual practices from
their land bases, we undermine Native peoples’ claim that the protection of the land base is integral to the survival of
Native peoples and hence undermine their claims to sovereignty. This practice of disconnecting Native spirituality from its land base is
prevalent in a wide variety of practices of cultural and spiritual appropriation, from New Agers claiming to be Indian in a former life to
Christians adopting Native spiritual forms to further their missionizing efforts. The message is that anyone can practice Indian spirituality
anywhere. Hence there is no need to protect the specific Native communities and the lands that are the basis of their spiritual practices.
Extinction – each loss contributes to an invisible threshold
Stavenhagen, 90 – Rodolfo, Professor @ the United Nations University, The Ethnic Question pg. 73, NN
The struggle for the preservation of the collective identity of culturally distinct peoples has further implications as well. The cultural diversity of
the world’s peoples is a universal resource for all humankind. The
diversity of the worlds cultural pool is like the diversity
of the world’s biological gene pool. A culture that disappears due to ethnocide or cultural genocide
represents a loss for all humankind. At a time when the classic development models of the post war era have
failed to solve the major problems of mankind, people are again looking at so called traditional cultures for at least
some of the answers. This is very clear, for example, as regards to agricultural and food production, traditional
medicine, environmental management in rural areas, construction techniques, social solidarity in times of crises, etc.
The world’s diverse cultures have much to offer our imperiled planet. Thus the defense of the collective rights of ethnic groups
and indigenous peoples cannot be separated from the collective human rights of all human beings.
Alt
OV
The alternative is a clear rejection of the inclusion of the native in the public sphere
through exploiting its stories and cultures – prefer a form of invisibility and
imperceptibility of the native instead so that it can fight against the system on a
micro level – only this alt can solve – extend the fact that oppression can only be
fought through smaller actions – that’s Moreton - Robinson
Micro-Politics
The alternative is to allow the native body to remain in the peripheral to prevent
cooption and utilize micro-politics as a method to fight the oppressor
Discourses of oppression is what re-defines whiteness – preferring micro political
struggle instead of macro politics is key to survival
Moreton – Robinson 04, Aileen Moreton – Robinson, 1/1/04, Moreton – Robinson is Professor of
Indigenous Studies, Division of Research and Commercialisation, and Indigenous Studies Research Network,
“Whitening Race,” NN
Representations of the Indigenous other work within discourses to enable and sustain the universality of
whiteness as hunianness which defines itself as what it is not. Primitivism developed during
modernity and is dependent upon established scientific fields such as anthropology and biology
which through their formal character and apparent univer- sality confer authority and
legitimacy to it (Goldberg 1993:149). Whiteness has been historically integral to the emergence of
these authoritative fields while remaining invisible, unmarked and unnamed. It is in this context that
'the primitive' is operationalised to be either in opposition to or supportive of white identity. Andrew
Lattas analyses the way Aboriginal identity is influenced by discourses concerned with the
constitution and future of the nation's identity. He argues that by representing Indigenous people in
discourse as the bearers of primitivism, white people can claim to inhabit moder- nity and
individualism:'[T]he racialised primitive Other is constructed as the ultimate embodiment of visual
culture and the white intellectual as the ultimate embodiment of the superior power of words'
(1992:49). Unlike Muecke and Attwood, Lattas does invoke the racial category 'white' in his
analysis. However, its use is restricted to denoting partic- ular subject positions: white intellectual,
white man, white artists. In this way Lattas fails to distinguish between a racialised subject
position and the power and knowledge effects of racialised discourse. Primitivism is not
recognised as a discursive effect of whiteness which operates beyond identity at the level of knowledge
production. In analysing how representation is constitutive of violence, Barry Morris argues that the
culture of terror exercised on the frontier was enabled through the indeterminacy of the native subject's
shift between ambivalence and fixity. A mimesis occurred between the imputed treachery of the
Aborigine and the savagery of the colonial project: 'The efficacy of such representations of
Aboriginal "treachery" mani- fested itself in the deeper strain of fear and hatred which
characterised the redemptive violence of the colonial frontier' (1992:85-6). Morris's analysis
recognises that representations of the Aborigine both consti- tuted and enabled violence, but the
epistemological a priori of white- ness which also constitutes such representations remains unmarked
and invisible. Whiteness as an epistemological and ontological a priori is seductive in that it underpins
concepts like colonists or colonialism in Australia, but its invisibility means it makes these terms
appear to be deracialised. This is one of the ways in which whiteness remains unmarked as a
discursive formation that is tied to knowledge produc- tion and the exercise of power. What we
can extract from Morris's and Lattas's examinations of rep- resentations of the Indigenous
other is that the system of beliefs, values and knowledge that created a racial hierarchy placed
whiteness at the top. The post-Aboriginalist position of Attwood, and Muecke and others, can
acknowledge the construction of Aboriginality as the 'Other' of the universal humanist subject
of the West. However, they fail to imagine that Indigenous intellectual production might be inspired
by a different understanding of the human subject because whiteness operates as an epistemological
and ontological a priori in their work. As Fanon concluded in The Wretched of the Btirtlr/For
Europe, for ourselves and for humanity ... wc must turn over a new leaf, wc must work out new
concepts, and try to set afoot a new [human]' (1978:255). Fanon was not confused by the
intimate connection between the violent face of humanism, on the one hand, and the white
subject behind the mask who dispensed it, on the other.
Natives = Starting Point
Indigenous struggles must be the starting point for liberation – it’s the only way to
truly undermine worldwide capitalism and colonization
Churchill 97 Ward, Suppression of Indigenous Sovereignty in 20th Century United States, Zmag
Online http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/may97churchill.html
The route leading to an alternative destiny for native people is just as clear as that prescribed for us in the
newly revised Draft Convention. By relentless and undeviating assertion of the basic rights of
treatied peoples—at all levels, through every available venue, and excluding no conceivable
means of doing so—we can begin to (re)secure them, restoring to ourselves and to our
posterity our/their rightful status as sovereign and coequal members of the community of
nations, free of such pretense as IRA-style "self-governance" and subterfuges like the 1975 "Indian SelfDetermination" Act. Only by achieving success in this enterprise can we eventually position
ourselves to tangibly assist our relatives in other quarters of the globe, untreatied and thus
presently unrecognized as being imbued with the same self-determining rights as we, to
overcome the juridical/diplomatic quandary in which this circumstance places them. Any
such progression, of course, serves to incrementally disempower nation-states even as it
steadily (re)empowers those upon whose subordination statism depends most heavily and
directly for its very existence. This, for its part, undermines a cornerstone on which that rapidly
metastasizing malignancy described by U.S. President George Bush in 1991 as constituting a "New
World Order" is designed to rest. The inestimable benefit to all humanity deriving from a
trajectory of this sort should be readily evident to anyone not already vested in the perpetuation of
planetary business as usual, and may serve to explain why the agenda of indigenous liberation
deserves the broadest imaginable prioritization and support among those who profess
commitment to constructive sociopolitical and economic change.
Framework
Narratives K---Framework---2NC
The judge is an ethical intellectual tasked with interrogating the ideology an
material benefits of the aff – solves all their offense – they get the case and we get the
K
All of our links prove that a policy framework always forces the native to be put in
the spotlight allowing for a constant form of cooption – engagement with policy is
taken for granted by the aff – participation in the legal system by the native has only
led to an ongoing genocide
Even if you don’t prefer our critical framework still weigh the link and impact
against the case – an ongoing cultural destruction which the aff props up through its
interrogation of the native and its stories
Legal inclusion is not in line with the American Indian way of life. The law delegitimizes this
lifestyle and perpetuates racist notions of Indian inferiority
Meister & Burnett, Associate Professor of Communication, and Associate Professor of
Women’s Studies, both of North Dakota State University, 2004
Mark & Ann, “Rhetorical Exclusion in the Trial of Leonard Peltier” American Indian Quarterly, Volume 28,
Numbers 3 & 4, Spring/Summer Issue, Pages 723-725.
The American Indian conception of cultural power and legitimacy differs greatly from the
power imposed by the U.S. federal court system. Lake’s notion of American Indian power is
consummatory, meaning that the instrumental function of protest rhetoric, for example, is
coupled with the purpose of enactment. Beasley describes power and legitimacy in
American Indian culture as spiritual power. Morris outlines the concept of sovereign power
and details the U.S. government’s legal, political, and economic strategies of Indian
subversion. Regarding the Indian construct of spiritual power, 2000 Green Party vicepresidential candidate and American Indian activist Winona LaDuke, among others, argues
that a connection exists between humanity and all living things. Legitimacy and power in
American Indian culture is based on its collectivistic cultural values that reflect “a valuing
of heritage, nature, modesty, stability, and respect for differences in social positions.”
Therefore, American Indian conceptions of power are markedly different from the
dominant cultural views of power. American Indian rhetoric reveals conceptions of power
and legitimacy. For example, Carbaugh concludes that for the Blackfeet, communication is
based primarily on “listener-active silence” and interconnectedness. Later in 1999 Carbaugh
notes that listening in Blackfeet culture is complex because listening “provides a traditional
way of actively co-participating in a largely non-oral, non-verbal, yet ‘real’ and spiritual
world.” Listening provides the Blackfeet with an “enhanced sense of power and place within
the world.” Basso notes that for the Western Apache American Indian, keeping silent “is a
response to uncertainty and unpredictability in social relations,” and Wieder and Pratt
conclude that modesty and permissible, required silence are characteristics of American
Indian communication behavior. In sum, the sovereign power, which Morris profiles as vital
to the rights of American Indians, is based on silence, modesty, and thanksgiving—a
conception that may not mesh with the rational and argumentative workings of the U.S.
legal system. Kenneth Burke’s insights on how the law classifies, masks, and manipulates are
significant in theorizing about cultural differences. According to Burke, “Law also provides
the proper culture for heresy, sect, and schism, as it provides a bureaucratic body of
thought so complex that groups can stress one aspect and neglect other aspects.” Law
becomes a way of dramatizing, of symbolizing, ideals. Threats to the law and the cultural
comfort it upholds are negated, delimited, and “masked.” The “legal scientist,” Arnold’s
term for individuals who articulate the law, “is compelled by the climate of opinion in which
he finds himself to prove that an essentially irrational world is constantly approaching
rationality; that a cruel world is constantly approaching kindliness; and that a changing world
is really stable and enduring,” and that “the function of the law is not so much to guide
society as to comfort it.” In the legal context, the American Indian is situated in an
irrational, cruel, and unstable world, without much hope for comfort. According to
Sanchez, Stuckey, and Morris, “rhetorical exclusion” consists of defining outsiders as
inherently destructive of governmental power. As a result, the law “masks” Indian cultures
as allegedly inferior “in relation to the prevailing lifestyle of [the] Euro-American.” The
legal system may impose masks on the American Indian, such as framing the Indian as
war- like, or the legal system may put a mask on itself, such as taking the role of “the
court” or “the law.”
Legal inclusion is a strategy of obliteration and colonial power – without recognizing
difference the affs inclusion of erases Native Americans
Meister & Burnett, Associate Professor of Communication, and Associate Professor of Women’s Studies, both
of North Dakota State University, 2004 Mark & Ann, “Rhetorical Exclusion in the Trial of Leonard Peltier,”
American Indian Quarterly, Volume 28, Numbers 3 & 4, Spring/Summer Issue, Pages 724-726, NN
In the legal context, the American Indian is situated in an irrational, cruel, and unstable
world, without much hope for comfort. According to Sanchez, Stuckey, and Morris,
“rhetorical exclusion” consists of defining outsiders as inherently destructive of
governmental power.43As a result, the law “masks” Indian cultures as allegedly inferior “in
relation to the prevailing lifestyle of [the] Euro-American.”44The legal system may impose
masks on the American Indian, such as framing the Indian as warlike, or the legal system
may put a mask on itself, such as taking the role of “the court” or “the law.” In particular,
Wilkins asserts that U.S. Supreme Court decisions have masked the American Indian
throughout history. Such “legal masking,” notes Noonan, is conceived as a “set of
communications” and as “magical ways by which persons are removed from the legal
process.” For example, in 1883 the United States Supreme Court, in recognizing the right of
tribes to govern themselves, held that they had exclusive authority to try Indians for criminal
offenses committed against Indians. According to the Supreme Court: It [the non-Indian
court] tries them, not by their peers, nor by the customs of their people, nor the law of their
land, but by superiors of a different race, according to the law of a social state of which they
have an imperfect conception, and which is opposed to the traditions of their history, to the
habits of their lives, to the strongest prejudices of their savage nature; one which measures
the red man’s revenge by the maxims of the white man’s mortality [emphasis added]. The
Supreme Court of Washington state, in a 1916 case, provides another example of masking
and racist stereotyping: “The Indian was a child, and a dangerous child, of nature, to be both
protected and re- strained. . . True, arrangements took the form of treaty and terms like
‘cede,’ ‘relinquish,’ ‘reserver’.’ But never were these agreements between equals... [but
rather] that ‘between a superior and an inferior.’” Such racist reasoning portrays American
Indians as wards of the government who need the protection and assistance of federal
agencies. The government’s obligation is to recreate American Indian governments,
conforming them to a non-Indian model, to establish their priorities, and to make or
approve their decisions for them. As such, American culture views American Indians as
subservient and inferior, without the capacity to govern themselves through their own
means of cultural power, hierarchy, or legitimacy. To dismiss the above federal and state
court rulings as insignificant would be easy, given that they were decided years prior to the
civil rights movement in America. Certainly, American society has become more enlightened
and more willing to demonstrate its tolerance for American Indian “ways.” Perhaps the
government has changed its position between 1883, 1916, and the Peltier trial. Still, even
today, without federal recognition American Indians are seen legally as dependent people.
As Hsu recently reported, the Virginia state legislature dismissed a proposal to grant federal
recognition to eight American Indian tribes in Virginia. By not granting autonomy to the
tribes, the government reinforces legal dependency. In 2000 Virginia state representative
James P. Morgan introduced legislation that would “acknowledge the partial autonomy” of
eight tribes whose presence in the state since pre-colonial times is uncontested. Those
opposing federal recognition feared that legally defining the eight tribes as sovereign could
someday introduce legalized casino gambling into the commonwealth of Virginia. Although
tribal leaders at the time of Hsu’s report had said they were not interested in gambling,
many political leaders opposed federal recognition because “future chiefs may think
otherwise.” The opposition was significant because it essentially guaranteed legal
dependence for years to come.
Perm
Perm do Both
There is nothing to permutate – the aff demands the native is put into the public
sphere and forces them to expose their own personal stories and narratives of
suffering – the neg is a clear rejection of macro politics from the native – instead it is
about recognizing the natives as their own sovereign body detached from the
reaches of the USFG – either the perm fails because you can’t be visible and
invisible at the same time or its severance which is a voter for fairness and education
– makes the aff a moving target
Westernization in the form of the perm destroys Native American culture – causes
assimiliation
Crow, Anchorage Daily Press, 2009 Renee, Anchorage Daily Press, 4/1/09,
http://tribalemployee.blogspot.com/2009/02/assimilation-of-native-americans.html
In the past the American school system and the church could and should be blamed for the
loss of our Alaska cultures, but times have changed greatly. Today we are able to make
choices about the languages our children are taught in with the variety of bilingual programs
offered. We are able to home school our children or choose what high school they attend.
There has never been a better or more important time for parents and community
members to be an integral part of our children's education and life.What is killing our
Native cultures is not our schools but the breakdown of our families. When we choose to
speak English to our children instead of our own language, we are choosing to allow our
language to die.When we allow our children to watch hours of television or play video
games instead of sharing our stories, we allow our culture to die.When we choose to buy
meat at the stores instead of trapping, hunting and fishing with our children, we fail to
teach them how.When we buy Doritos and frozen pizza instead of gathering eggs or
berries, we hurt our culture. When we buy a hat from the store instead of sewing one, we
fail to teach our children. When we go to bingo instead of playing our traditional games
with our children, we fail. While unfortunately prejudice still occurs, the days of Native
peoples no longer having a say over their lives is long over. I am not a victim as my
grandparents and parents were. No one can tell me that I do not belong or that my Native
ways are inferior. Every day I have choices: choices to stay sober, to not watch hours of TV or
not to gamble. I have the choice to love my children and spend important time with them, to
oversee their education, to teach them my culture's traditions and values. We are hurting
ourselves if we continue to see ourselves as victims. The truth is that our children need us
to be part of their lives, to guide their thoughts and dreams. Our children need us to teach
them our language, our culture, our traditions and values. All of these are too precious to
trust to others to teach or allow to be taken from us.
Perm do the Alt
That’s severance
Assimilation DA
Native American Assimilation with the perm causes genocide
Thomas, Author for St. Petersburg Times, 90 Lois, St. Petersburg Times, “Genocide Still Threatens
Native Americans”, 29 March, Lexis
Although the genocide of the Jews has been eliminated, the genocide of the American
Indian continues. The American Indians are constantly subjected to historical
presentations that cruelly remind them that they are the beaten people, the conquered
nations. Archaeologists and historians refer to Indian culture in the past tense, rejecting the
notion that the Indian people are still struggling to survive. Witness what is happening in
Wisconsin with Chippewa treaty rights, or what is happening on the Navajo reservation in
Arizona, the land called "Big Mountain." These are real situations, with real people, not reenactments from a history book or parts of a Hollywood script. In January 1989, a new
federal law went into effect. The law made genocide illegal. Part of the definition of
genocide, as described in the law, reads, "subjects the group to conditions of life that are
intended to cause the physical destruction of the group in whole or in part . " Denying the
American Indians the right to live on their traditional lands, to follow their religion as they
have for centuries, to deny their children the right to be proud of their heritage all these
are examples of genocide. Ask the elders on Big Mountain in Arizona and they'll tell you
about genocide. Ask the Navajo grandmother who wants to stay in her traditional hogan
instead of government provided housing, she'll tell you about the destruction of her
culture, about the need for the lands, the traditions, the way of life, to survive. Ask the U.S.
government about Big Mountain, they'll talk of mining interests and doing what's best for
the Indian. Ask the American Indians their opinion of the government's policy of providing
for "the good of the Indian people." There are no gas chambers for the Indians to face. Their
gas chambers were the U.S. Cavalryand the continued perpetuation of stereotypes and
governmental intervention. There are no concentration camps, only Indian reservations.
There are no secret police or storm troopers, but there is the Bureau of Indian Affairs and
the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Jew and the Indian have both suffered hatred and
discrimination for centuries. The difference is that for the Jew, the self-image is one of a
proud people able to rise above steep odds. The Jewish child does not have any problem
with self-worth or self-esteem. For the Indian child, however, self-worth and self-esteem
are virtually non-existent. He is constantly subjected to subtle degradation via the
entertainment media, educational curriculum, and society attitude. The Indian child is
constantly reminded that he is the "beaten people." He is the "savage," the "pagan," the
"bad guy." He is not told that his people enabled the first colonists to survive, that his
people (the Aztecs) gave the world a calendar more accurate than the one used today, that
his people were responsible for the conception of the U.S. Constitution. Sociologists will tell
you that self-worth and self-esteem are directly related to the incidences of substance
abuse, alcoholism and suicide. The American Indian population has the highest
unemployment, rate of alcoholism and rate of youth suicides, and the lowest life
expectancy of any racial group in this country. This is what the practice of assimilation has
done for the American Indian. On the other hand, Indian nations that have adopted
programs reinforcing traditional teachings and lifestyles have chronicled remarkable
improvements in the alcoholism and suicide ratios on those reservations. The American
Indian wept along with the Jewish people for the horror of the Holocaust. The American
Indian wept for the blacks over the sickness of racial bigotry. But who weeps for the
American Indian? Tears are not enough now. The American Indian needs more than
sympathy. The past cannot be changed, but the future can be. If our educational system
needs to be changed to correct the distortions and stereotypes, then let's do it. If
governmental policies and bureaucratic programs hurt rather than help, let's eliminate
them. If the attitude of the general public is discriminatory and racist, let's change it. Let's
make a difference in the lives of the American Indians, just as they made a difference in the
lives of the first colonists. Our guest columnist is secretary-treasurer of the American Indian
Issues and Action Committee in St. Petersburg.
Colonialism DA
Legal inclusion is rhetorical colonialism – justifies the destruction of Indian nations
Endres, Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Utah, 2009 Danielle, “The Rhetoric of
Nuclear Colonialism: Rhetorical Exclusion of American Indian Arguments in the Yucca Mountain Nuclear
Waste Siting Decision,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies. March, Vol. 6, No. 1, Page 44
Colonialism in all its forms is dependent on the discursive apparatus that sustains it. Mary
Stuckey and John Murphy point out that rhetorical colonialism recognizes that the language
used by colonizers is a crucial justification for the colonial project. Caskey Russell argues
that a “vast justification systems have been set up to keep colonizers from feeling guilty.”
Indian law is an integral part of the discursive system of colonialism that is employed over an
over again to grant political sovereignty while simultaneously restricting it. Political
sovereignty for American Indians is a complex concept that reveals that US Indian Law
views American Indian nations as colonized peoples. It is not based on the inherent
sovereignty of American Indian nations but instead upon the laws of the US that grant
political sovereignty to American Indians. Yet, when sovereignty is granted, it is dependent
upon acknowledgment by the grantor and is therefore vulnerable to coercive restriction.
Although the Constitution, hundreds of treaties, and US Supreme Court decisions affirm the
political sovereignty of American Indian nations, this form of political sovereignty is
egregiously and unilaterally limited by the US federal government through its laws and
policies. Three Supreme Court decisions under Chief Justice John Marshall in the early 1800s
solidified the assumption that Indian sovereignty is granted an introduced the concept of
American Indian nations as “domestic dependent nations.” According to Wallace Coffey and
Rebecca Tsosie of the Native American Rights Fund, “the concept of Indian tribes as
‘domestic dependent nations’ means that tribal governmental authority is to some extend
circumscribed by federal authority.” The domestic dependent status defined by Supreme
Court decisions in the 1860s discursively relegates American Indian nations to a partial and
contingent nationhood. The term “domestic dependents” also calls forth paternalistic
images of American Indians as child-like dependents who need to be protected by the
federal government. Given these restrictions, if American Indian nations attempt to use
Indian Law and its notion of sovereignty granted through federal law in their quest for more
rights within Indian Law. Although political sovereignty may acknowledge that American
Indians have distinct nations and governments, this sovereignty is always defined as
dependent on and subordinate to the US federal government.
Treaties DA
Australia-Japan Relations DA
1NC Australia-Japan Relations DA
Japan’s adherence to recent court rulings over whaling has reaffirmed the JapanAustralia alliance – however, commercial whaling would destroy squo cooperation.
MacCallum 14—a political journalist and commentator (Mungo, “Whaling verdict a victory for
international law,” ABC, 4/7, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-07/maccallum-whaling-verdict-avictory-for-international-law/5371722)//FJ
The decision does not mean that Japanese whaling will cease altogether; the ICJ decision only covers JARPA II, and it will be
open to Japan to hunt in northern waters, or even to start a genuine research program perhaps in concert
with Australia - the court accepts that legitimate research could involve killing some whales. But the decision does mean that
JARPA II - the pseudo-scientific whaling in the Southern Ocean which was the legitimate subject of Australia's
concern - will end as of now, because Japan and Australia both agreed to abide by the court's findings,
and Japan has reaffirmed this commitment. And that's where the really good news starts. The dispute between the two
countries has been prolonged, messy, at times ugly, and has occasionally threatened an important
relationship. It has involved direct action by organisations such as Sea Shepherd, putting the Australian
Government in a real wedge between supporting basic principles and maritime order. There have been
blandishments, bellicosity, bluff and brinkmanship.
The plan would lower the precedent for a whaling quota – allows Japan to gain an
exemption without meeting all requirements. (should I include nutritional need
exemption in tag?)
Peterson 96—a novelist and nature writer, author of 17 books, including a New York Times “Notable
Book of the Year” (Brenda, “Who Will Speak For The Whales? -- Elders Call For A Spiritual Dialogue
On Makah Tribe's Whaling Proposal,” The Seattle Times, 12/22,
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19961222&slug=2366339)//FJ
Whaling nations like Japan, Russia and Norway are watching the Makah because their precedent could
create a new IWC category of whaling : cultural heritage as the only requirement for an aboriginal
quota. As a recent report by Rick Spill of the Animal Welfare Institute points out, Makah whaling could clear the way for
Japan and other countries to practice cultural coastal whaling without demonstrating a nutritional need
and "without having to officially repeal the existing moratorium against commercial whaling." Makah
whaling would also undermine the U.S. in its international stance against whaling. While the federal government
supported the Makah last year in their intent to request IWC support for whaling, the U.S. Congress unanimously passed a bipartisan resolution
opposing the Makah whale hunt.
Current Japanese scientific whaling has already put relations on the brink –
expansion of commercial whaling would collapse the relationship.
Yenko 13—contributor at the International Business Times (Athena, “Australia, Japan Relations
Strained by Commercial Whaling,” International Business Times, 7/16,
http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/490664/20130716/japan-whaling-illegal-whaleculture.htm#.U8U9kvldXIE)//FJ
Australia brought to international court its claim that Japan had abused article eight of the treaty on
scientific whaling to disguise its commercial whaling under the pretext of scientific research. The accusation
revealed that there were over 10,000 Antarctic minke whales sacrificed under Japan's 'whaling for Science.' Today, Japan had an answer
to Australia's accusation saying that the country, a previous friend, is guilty of having a " selective moral
judgment" through tolerating environmentalist activists, like Sea Shepherd, which had been attacking
Japanese whaling fleets. In a report from ABC News, lawyer for Japan Payam Akhavan said that Australia disregarded
other country's culture with its accusation. "If the hijacking of the convention, if the politicization of science persists, if the
tradition and cultures of people are sacrificed to appease other people's sentiments and selective moral judgment, if international law continues to
be disregarded, soon there will be no whaling nations at IWC (International Whaling Commission)." Japan also said that due to Australia's
another controversial accusation against Denmark the country is already at the brink of leaving IWC. Australia go up against Denmark's unilateral
ruling of quotas for subsistence whaling by indigenous cultures - another proof of Australia's "selective moral judgment said Japan. Japan is
nearing its closing arguments before the international court by July 17 but the court will have its final verdict after several months. With this,
Japan thinks that whatever the international court decision is, Australia will persist in its anti-whaling
crusade. Mr Akhavan said, "For Australia this court is nearly one instrument among others to achieve
unyielding purpose of imposing its will on Japan at one way or another. Australia will stop at nothing."
In its answer to Japan's accusation of 'selective moral judgment', Bill Campbell QC led for Australia's case uphold that Japan's whaling is done
purely for commercial purpose. Mr Campbell said, "The position remains fundamentally the same; we say that what's going on is commercial
whaling. We don't believe it falls within the research exception, and that remains the case despite what Japan said this morning." On Monday,
July 15, a report from Sydney Morning Herald said that Mr Akhavan said that Japan opted to remain a member of IWC because of the country's
sincerity to the rule of law and peaceful dispute settlement. Mr Akhavan told the court on Monday that "Australia comes before this
court to take advantage of that commitment, to unfairly and unreasonably portray Japan as a rogue
state at IWC , to level accusations of bad faith against what it deems to be a friendly state that it can
mistreat with impunity." He further told court that even with the case just being heard, Australia's Attorney-general, mark Dreyfus made
it clear that whatever the IWC decision is, whether Australia lost the case, it will continue to campaign against Japan's whaling activities. For Mr
Akhavan this was a clear indication of harassment saying "The
Attorney-general makes clear that Australia will persist
harassing and confronting Japan if this court does not give Australia the decision that it wants." Australia
had already finished its arguments last week through Counsel James Crawford upholding Australia's allegation of commercial whaling against
Japan.
Strong Japan-Australia alliance key to deter Chinese lashout – military might and
increased US involvement.
Carr and White 14—*a research fellow in strategic & defence studies, at the Australian National
University AND **a strategic analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (*Andrew AND
**Harry, “Japanese security, Australian risk? The consequences of our new 'special relationship',” The
Guardian, 7/8, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/08/japanese-security-australian-riskthe-consequences-of-our-new-special-relationship)//FJ
With Abe's speech, Australia and Japan have moved a long way towards creating a de facto alliance. Japan is
pledging to sell advanced defence technology to Australia — ideally as the engine for our future submarines — while opening up its carefully
guarded markets. In return, Australia is offering something that can't be said publicly: Australian support for Japan's regional
power struggle with Beijing. While China builds its economy and military strength at home, Japan under
Abe has gone abroad, to seek regional partnerships and pledges of support. This move would have been unthinkable a
decade or more ago, given lingering fears that Japan had not sufficiently renounced its second world war imperialism. Yet at the recent ShangriLa dialogue and Asia-Pacific roundtable, held across Southeast Asia, Japanese leaders were welcomed with open arms. It's not that Asia has
it is China's aggressiveness over the
last few years , combined with the failure of the Obama administration to implement the "pivot", which
has caused a search for new partners and new ways of seeking security. While Obama used his own speech to the
entirely forgiven Japan — especially with revisionist leaders like Abe at the helm. Rather
Australian parliament in 2011 to declare America was "all in" when it came to the Asia-Pacific, the reality has been anything but. Obama's team
have been unable to put this claim in practice, while allowing themselves to be distracted by the crises of the day; from the Ukraine and Iraq to
the West Bank. With the US president not even bothering to mention the pivot in recent major foreign policy speeches, it is no wonder US allies
and partners in Asia are seeking their own bonds of protection. Of course, Australia and Japan can't explicitly say that deterring China is their
purpose, hence today's focus on issues like trade and cooperation on natural disasters. Abbott is particularly reticent to admit this purpose,
because he knows there is no guarantee the Australian public will support it. Despite five years of much more confrontational behaviour by China
in the South and East China Seas, a recent Lowy Institute poll showed that Australians don't see China and Japan in vastly different lights. There
is no clear evidence Australians would happily sacrifice not only their lucrative trade with China, but also some of their sons and daughters, to
protect Japanese claims to oil and gas reserves in the East China Sea. Hopefully such a conflict will never happen. Given the US's pivot
has failed to deter China, it is for the good of the Asia Pacific that new inter-regional approaches like this
are sought. Today's cooperation between Australia and Japan is just one of a web of agreements and handshakes occurring across Asia.
China won't like it, but isn't likely to retaliate in the short term. After-all, why cripple their own preparations, built on
Australian steel and iron ore? To the casual observer little has changed. The US is still a vital partner in Asia, and China is still an economic
opportunity far more than a military threat. But just in case either of those situations changes we're likely to see more days of regional web
building as we did today. Let's just hope the people of Australia and the wider Asia Pacific are watching closely and know what they're being
signed up for. Shinzo Abe heralded the beginning of a new "special relationship" between Japan and Australia in his address to parliament. Now,
our partnership is about security as well as economics. Despite not mentioning China, that’s what the security part of this partnership is about –
for Japan at least. That means more risk than benefit for Australia. Things look bleak from Tokyo because of the risks posed by China’s rise,
which is why Abe’s government is reinventing Japan’s approach to defence and security. Beijing is growing stronger, and more aggressively
pursuing her territorial claims, including a dispute with Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Chinese relationships with Japan and America
are becoming more deeply adversarial. It’s against that backdrop that Japan wants Australia as a security partner. Our economic relationship with
Japan has been tremendously important to Australia, and we see the world in the same terms. But partnerships between countries are driven by
the pursuit of their interests, not only their values – otherwise we’d be as close with Denmark as we are with America. Australia and Japan
both want a peaceful and secure Asia that looks like the one we’ve enjoyed for the last several decades.
The risk we seek to insure against is the disruption of that order caused by China’s growing power.
The new "special relationship" will be good for Australia where it lessens the risks of conflict with Beijing, and will be bad where it increases the
chances of us being involved in a war we may have otherwise avoided. Can our security partnership mitigate these risks? Despite talk of
international law and norms, it’s hard to see how a security partnership makes us more or less law-abiding. The next idea is that
we could
deter potential Chinese aggression by lending extra military weight . But it’s fanciful to think that the token forces
we could send would have any deterrent effect on a country that has the combined might of America and Japan spooked. What makes the
partnership appealing for Japan is the prospect that in a conflict, Australian support or involvement alongside Japan
would make it harder for Washington to say no . It would be harder to abandon two allies than one, and the more robust
America’s commitment, the more likely Beijing is to be deterred. Maybe that’s right, although it seems optimistic to think that America would be
prepared to abandon Japan, and so its whole position in Asia, but Australia’s involvement would tip the scales. Set against whatever benefit a
security partnership confers on the prospects for peace in Asia, are the increased risks that Australia would find itself in a war with Japan against
China. Helping Japan in the event that it found itself in a conflict is the heart of any meaningful security agreement after all. That’s a serious
prospect – otherwise Japan wouldn’t need new security partners. From Canberra, any increased risk at all of war with China seems like too high a
price to pay for a marginal benefit in deterring Beijing. Of course Australia is at no direct risk compared to Japan, so Tokyo takes on no liability
in exchange for its marginal benefit. We can hardly blame them for asking, let’s hope we don’t come to rue saying yes.
Chinese lashout leads to extinction – draws in the US and leads to nuclear war
Monroe-Hamilton 13 Terresa Monroe-Hamilton, technology consultant, internationally recognized
columnist, 11/1/13, “Cold War Redux: China’s Nuclear Counterbalance”,
http://www.trevorloudon.com/2013/11/cold-war-redux-chinas-nuclear-counterbalance/
For years, Trevor Loudon and I have been warning of the looming threat from China and Russia. We have been called crazy, ridiculed, maligned and ignored. If you
ever needed proof that we were right and that America better get her military ducks in order, this is it. I will say it again… the Cold War never ended — it shifted.
state-run media for the first time showed exactly how Beijing’s nuclear submarines could
attack American cities (see the map above) as a means to counterbalance U.S. nuclear deterrence in the Pacific.
This is a bold and blatant threat. If we get in the way, China will nuke us and they mean it. In the 50′s and 60′s, this threat by China
This week, Chinese
would have put the U.S. on war footing. Now, we hear crickets not only from our military leaders, but the media and our political leadership. From The Washington
Times: On Monday, leading
media outlets including China Central TV, the People’s Daily, the Global Times, the PLA Daily, the China Youth Daily and
reports about the “awesomeness” of the People’s Liberation Army
navy’s strategic submarine force. “This is the first time in 42 years since the establishment of our navy’s strategic submarine force that we reveal on
the Guangmin Daily ran identical, top-headlined
such a large scale the secrets of our first-generation underwater nuclear force,” the Global Times said in a lengthy article titled “China for the First Time Possesses
Effective Underwater Nuclear Deterrence against the United States.” The article features 30 photos and graphics detailing, among other things, damage projections for
Seattle and Los Angeles after being hit by Chinese nuclear warheads and the deadly radiation that would spread all the way to Chicago. The
Chinese subfleet is reportedly the world’s second-largest, with approximately 70 vessels. I contend they are the largest, but in the end
that is splitting radioactive hairs. About 10 of the vessels are nuclear-powered and four or more are nuclear ballistic
submarines that can launch missiles. Our intel is so crappy on China though, I suspect it is much, much
worse than this. And this is only the Navy. They have killer satellite systems that can take out
communications and strike militarily in the blink of an eye. They have so many soldiers, that losing 100s
of thousands is a drop in the military bucket. After all, they are fighting for their homeland and dominance and they hate the barbaric West,
so they are willing to lose millions if need be in their quest for conquest and supremacy. If I have not sufficiently chilled you to the bone, I apologize. The Chinese are
not bluffing: Chinese calculations for nuclear attacks on the U.S. are chillingly macabre. “Because the Midwest states of the U.S. are sparsely populated, in order to
increase the lethality, [our] nuclear attacks should mainly target the key cities on the West Coast of the United States, such as Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco and
San Diego,” the Global Times said. “The 12 JL-2 nuclear warheads carried by one
single Type 094 SSBN can kill and wound 5
million to 12 million Americans,” the Global Times reported. China also has developed land-based intercontinental
ballistic missiles — notably the DF-31A, which has a range of 7,000 to 7,500 miles. “If we launch our DF 31A ICBMs over the North Pole, we can
easily destroy a whole list of metropolises on the East Coast and the New England region of the U.S.,
including Annapolis, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Portland, Baltimore and Norfolk, whose
population accounts for about one-eighth of America’s total residents,” the Global Times said. All the state-run
press reports stressed the point that the PLA’s missile submarines are now on routine strategic patrol, “which means that China for the first time has
acquired the strategic deterrence and second strike capability against the United States.” “Our JL-2 SLBMs have
become the fourth type of Chinese nuclear missiles that threaten the continental United States, after our DF-31A, DF-5A and DF-5B ICBMs,” said the Global Times.
Now, I want you to throw into the mix, the threat of EMPs. If it were me, I would launch those first and take out as much as I could that way to clear the path so to
speak. Consider the fact that most of our electronics are manufactured by China. They claim to have embedded in our electronics ‘kill switches’ that can be triggered
to cause failures and chaos. They also claim that they have back doors into our utility, communications, financial, military and Internet systems. You begin to see the
trouble we are in and how negligent our military and leaders have also been. But wait… there’s more. A surveillance ship from China was spotted in Hawaiian waters
for the first time. It is being described as an unprecedented move and as a provocative retaliation to the U.S. naval presence in the East China Sea. The ship is a 4,000
ton People’s Liberation Army electronic reconnaissance ship and was recently spotted near Hawaii within the U.S. 200-nautical mile EEZ (Exclusive Economic
Zone). It is a spy ship and it got within 2400 miles of San Francisco. Why all this, you might ask. Well, it
is a message to the U.S. to let China
do as she pleases or she will crush us. And Russia is right there with China. This is what you get when you gut your military and have a weak
kneed President. From InfoWars:
2NC A-J Relations – Uniqueness
Japan wants the ban on commercial whaling lifted – Abe says so
Brown 14 (Sophie, “Japan begins whaling season with meat feast for school children,” CNN, 6/27,
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/27/world/asia/japan-begins-whaling-season-meal-for-school-children/)//FJ
Despite the Antarctic ban and growing pressure from the international community, Japan has continued
its northwest Pacific scientific whaling mission. It is also eager to revise its Antarctic program to allow the hunt to continue
while satisfying the demands of the U.N.'s International Court of Justice. In Japan's parliament last month, Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe said he would like the country to resume commercial whaling "in order to obtain scientific information
indispensable to the management of the whale resources." But environmentalists say Japan's whaling research program is a
thinly veiled attempt to circumvent a ban on the commercial whale meat trade.
Japan wants to resume commercial whaling but current ICW bans prevent it.
BBC 14 (“Japan to press for resumption of annual whale hunt,” BCC, 6/9,
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27762292)//FJ
Despite the Antarctic ban and growing pressure from the international community, Japan has continued
its northwest Pacific scientific whaling mission. It is also eager to revise its Antarctic program to allow the hunt to continue while
satisfying the demands of the U.N.'s International Court of Justice. In Japan's parliament last month, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he
would like the country to resume commercial whaling "in order to obtain scientific information indispensable to the management
of the whale resources." But environmentalists say Japan's whaling research program is a thinly veiled attempt to circumvent
a ban on the commercial whale meat trade. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said Japan will step up
efforts to resume its annual whale hunt in the Antarctic. "I want to aim for the resumption of
commercial whaling by conducting whaling research," Mr Abe said. In March, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled
that the whaling programme was not for scientific research as Japan had claimed. Australia, backed by New Zealand, brought the case against Japan in 2010 .
Japan had stopped the hunt in the Antarctic after the ruling but vessels have carried on hunting Minke
whales along Japan's northern coast. Japan says these are also for research purposes. How Mr Abe intends to get around the
international court ruling concerning the hunt in the Antarctic remains unclear, the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports
from Tokyo. Referring to the respect given to whales by those in towns where whaling takes place, Mr Abe said it was "regrettable that this part of Japanese culture is
not understood".
Japan wants to resume commercial whaling but can’t – the UN has suspended all existing whaling
permits
Tharoor 14—staff writer for the Washington Post (Ishaan, “Why Japan’s prime minister wants to hunt
whales,” The Washington Post, 6/10,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/06/10/why-japans-prime-minister-wants-tohunt-whales/)//FJ
On Monday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe signaled his intent to resume commercial whaling,
contradicting a U.N. court ruling thwarting Tokyo-sanctioned whaling fleets from carrying out their annual expeditions to the
Southern Ocean. For decades now, Japan has used a loophole in international law, claiming its whaling
missions were scientific endeavors. But an Australian suit lodged at the U.N.'s International Court of
Justice led to the court ruling earlier this year that the specific whaling permits granted Japan were not
truly for "purposes of scientific research." According to the Guardian, Japan slaughters up to 850 mink whales and 50
endangered fin whales each year. The ICJ ruling led the Japanese to government to call off its planned 2014-2015
Antarctic whaling expedition.
Japan seeking commercial whaling now for profit – strong international regulation key to deter
increased whaling.
Williams 13 (Steve, “Japanese Whaling: Bad For Cetaceans and Humans Alike,” Care2, 11/4,
http://www.care2.com/causes/japanese-whaling-bad-for-cetaceans-and-humans-alike.html)//FJ
Whaling is Big Business Put concisely: it’s about money . Many of the animals that are hunted in the name of tradition are killed
for their meat and blubber. That in itself throws up significant questions, not least of which is the Japanese government’s failure to properly
screen the food products this industry produces: a number of studies show that there are dangerous levels of mercury in the whale meat being sold
to Japanese consumers. In 2003, a Japanese research team found that in national samples of toothed whale red meat, the country’s best selling
whale meat that includes meat from dolphins, porpoises, killer whales and pilot whales, every single sample contained mercury levels in excess of
guideline levels. Some samples were found to contain almost 200 times the allowance. Japan has had significant problems with mercury
infiltration in its fishing supplies, the mercury poisoning incident of Minamata being one ready example, which is believed to have caused a
number of birth defects and neurological problems in children. More recent figures suggest that there may also be a danger from several other
contaminants, for instance polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), with some tested product samples showing around 85 times what is considered a
safe limit. However, it’s not just the food product industry that is keeping Japan’s whale hunts alive. There is a growing market for
smaller cetaceans among aquariums and sea parks, with the EIA estimating that just one sale of a marine mammal can fetch
anywhere between $8,400 and $98,000. This is, in fact, why stopping Japan cetacean hunting is so difficult. There
are strong economic incentives to continue and, by using tradition and the prospect of offending Japanese culture as a shield,
Japan can maintain the industry as a part of a cultural heritage. Yet, with the threat of extinction looming for several species,
and wider concerns about the welfare of those animals it kills, i t will be up to international
governments and outside agencies working with advocacy groups within Japan to intensify efforts to phase out
whaling while remaining committed to a long term total ban and not allow Japan to backslide as it has in
the past.
2NC A-J Relations – Link
Plan sets a bad precedent – leads to whaling exemptions for Norway, Finland, and
Japan.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society 05—an international non-profit, marine wildlife
conservation organization (“Makah Whaling Could Set a Dangerous Precedent,” Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society, 9/22, http://www.seashepherd.org/news-and-media/2008/11/03/makah-whalingcould-set-a-dangerous-precedent-942)//FJ
Captain Watson, who is also a co-founder of the Greenpeace Foundation, disagrees strongly with the recent statement by
Greenpeace oceans specialist John Hocevar who said that "no indigenous hunt has ever destroyed whale populations, and
looking at the enormous other threats to whales and putting the Makah whaling in context, it's pretty different." "Hocevar simply sees this as a
few whales being killed, and in his mind, these animals are expendable in the name of promoting a tribal culture. We see it as a
dangerous, precedent-setting issue where the Icelanders, Faeroese, Norwegians, Danes, and Japanese
can also claim "cultural necessity" to justify their presently illegal whaling practices. Greenpeace, out of fear of
being seen as politically incorrect, simply refuses to see the bigger picture, just as they refused to understand the situation five years ago."
Any Makah quota would be based off cultural subsistence, not nutritional need as
mandated by the IWC – makes Japan whaling inevitable because it has much
stronger cultural ties to whaling than the Makah.
Metcalf 2K—American politician who served as a member of the United States House of
Representatives from 1995 to 2001; represented the 2nd Congressional District of Washington (Rep. Jack,
“Allowing Whale-Hunting By Makah Indian Tribe Will Promote Commercial Whaling Worldwide,”
Capitolwords, Volume 146, Number 10, 2/8, http://capitolwords.org/date/2000/02/08/H239-10_allowingwhale-hunting-by-makah-indian-tribe-will-/)//FJ
Today a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit United States Court of Appeals in Seattle heard the case, and I hope they will make the
correct decision [is to] and stop the outdated and unnecessary practice of whaling by the Makahs. Everyone
who understands this issue knows that this is the first step toward returning to the terrible commercial exploitation
of these marine mammals. In the papers filed by the Makahs with NOAA, they refused to deny that this was a move toward renewal of
commercial whaling. It is important to understand that the International Whaling Commission has never sanctioned the
Makah whale hunt. Under the International Whaling Convention, of which the United States is signatory, it has only been legal to hunt
whales for scientific or aboriginal subsistence purposes. The tribe clearly has no nutritional need to kill whales . In the
face of strong IWC, the International Whaling Commission, opposition to the original Makah proposal, the U.S. delegation ignored years of
opposition to whale-killing and cut a deal with the Russian government in a backdoor effort to find a way to grant the Makah the right to kill
whales. The agreement is to allow the Makah tribe to kill four of the whales each year, that is, to allow the tribe, the Makah tribe to kill four
whales each year from the Russian quota, under the artifice of cultural subsistence. Before this back room deal, the United States has always
Cultural subsistence is a slippery slope to disaster. It will
expand whale-hunting to any nation with an ocean coastline and any history of whale-killing. Much
to the delight of the whaling interests in Norway and Japan, who have orchestrated and financed an
international cultural subsistence movement, America's historic role as a foe of renewed whaling around
the world has now been drastically undercut. In fact, there are hundreds of ethnic groups, tribes, and bands
around the world who have a history of hunting whales. To allow a cultural past as a qualification for
hunting whales would drastically increase the number of whales killed worldwide. Almost all cultures on seacoasts
opposed any whaling not based on true subsistence need.
engaged in some whale-hunting historically. The treaty signed by the Makah tribe in 1885 only gives them the right to hunt in common with the
citizens of the territory, now the citizens of the United States. This provision was to ensure equal rights, not special ones. The Makah tribal
government should not be allowed to kill whales when it is illegal for anyone else in the United States to do so. Besides, it is just plain dead
wrong. It is shameful that the current administration supports a proposal that flies in the face of the values, interests, and desires of the majority of
U.S. citizens. As I have been saying for years, allowing the Makah tribe to continue whaling will open the floodgates
to commercial whaling worldwide. Just count on it. Whales do have commercial value, and there are interests
just waiting to cash in, as they did in the glory days of worldwide commercial whaling, when the whales
were hunted practically to extinction. Now that we have allowed whaling to begin again, what can we say
to Japan and Norway, whose whaling we have opposed for years but who definitely have aboriginal
rights going back many centuries?
Makah quota would lead to subsequent Japanese exemption – they have stronger cultural ties to
whaling.
Dornin 98—award winning journalist with nearly 30 years experience in radio and television (Rusty,
“Despite protests, Indian tribe plans to resume whaling,” CNN, 8/29,
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/science/9808/29/whale.wars/)//FJ
Critics also say allowing the tribe to kill for cultural reasons and not for subsistence will open the door for
Japan and Norway to resume whaling. " This isn't a hunt that's going to kill just four or five gray
whales, " said Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. " The repercussions of this will have an effect on
tens of thousands of whales that will be killed by the Japanese and Norwegians."
2NC A-J Relations – Link – AT: No Cultural Ties=No Quota
Even if the Japanese don’t have cultural ties to whaling, the plan would still allow
them to gain an exemption – distinctions are lost in IWC politics and Makah
whaling will be used as evidence that whale populations are strong enough to allow
for commercial whaling.
Walker 99—assistant professor at the University of Oregon (Peter, “COMMENTARY: MAKAH
WHALING ALSO A POLITICAL ISSUE,” Whale and Dolphin Conservation, 6/2,
http://us.whales.org/news/1999/06/commentary-makah-whaling-also-political-issue)//FJ
IN THE DEBATE over the recent killing of a gray whale by the Makah Tribe of Washington state, both animal
rights advocates and defenders of Native American culture present strong moral arguments. But the debate has largely ignored the
important political implications of the hunt. Specifically, will the Makah hunt be used as a wedge to break
international protections against whaling? And what does the Makah hunt say about the role of "tradition" and culture in our social
choices? No reasonable person denies that the Makah have suffered deep cultural losses, nor that the whale is an important part of their culture.
The question is whether killing whales is indispensable for revitalizing Makah culture and whether this goal outweighs the moral and political
costs. There is much more at stake than the five whales per year that the Makah have permission to kill.
Makah whaling provides a powerful tool for Japanese, Norwegian, Icelandic and Russian whalers
who want to expand whaling globally . At the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission that opened last week,
Japan accused the U.S. government of hypocrisy for endorsing the Makah hunt and even subsidizing it
with a $310,000 grant while rejecting Japan's petition to allow "traditional" Japanese whaling. The two
are not the same: The Makah have a responsible management plan based on cultural needs, whereas Japan
barely disguises its commercial motives. But these distinctions are lost in the global politics of whaling.
The Makah hunt plays perfectly into the hands of the Japanese and other whaling countries who use
loopholes such as "scientific research" to continue commercial hunting. The whaling nations believe the Makah case
will add "cultural need" to the list of loopholes they can exploit. That's why the Japanese offered financial support for the Makah hunt (which the
the Makah hunt is being used by the
Japanese and others as evidence that whale populations globally are strong enough to end the ban
on commercial whaling (scientists disagree).
Makah, mindful of being perceived as pawns of the Japanese, declined). Moreover,
2NC A-J Relations – Internal Link – AT: Whaling=Small Dispute
Even if whaling is a small issue, it’s still a central part of Japan-Australia relations –
worsening incidents could exacerbate tensions between the two nations.
Wilson 10—former Australian Ambassador to Myanmar (Trevor, “Whales Apart: Tensions in JapanAustralia relations,” Asialink: The University of Melbourne, March 2010,
http://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/research_and_policy/the_asialink_essays/past/whakes_aoart_tensions_in_j
apan-australia_relations)//FJ
We must assume no solution will easily be found through science, through legal action or solely through
reliance on the IWC. Official negotiators are hampered by intransigence of their respective governments,
driven by polarised publics. Japan, we hope, will weigh the costs (financial, political and diplomatic) of continuing
whaling against the absence of real or ongoing benefits of any kind. International thinking on whaling has changed:
Japan could cease pelagic whaling and win enormous international support. In the mean time, Australia would be wise to stop
provoking Japan unnecessarily and allow it to back down with some grace. If the dispute is not resolved soon, but
continues to escalate, some damage to bilateral relations is inevitable. Even if this is small, it will not
be forgotten on either side.
2NC A-J Relations – Impact
Strong Australia-Japan relationship key to deter Chinese lashout.
Wardell and Kelly 14—contributors at Reuters (*Jane AND **Tim, “Japan, Australia sign economic
partnership pact,” Reuters, 7/8, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/08/us-japan-abe-australiaidUSKBN0FD0AO20140708)//FJ
Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Australian counterpart Tony Abbott on Tuesday signed an economic partnership pact as well
as an agreement on military equipment and technology transfers, a week after Abe loosened curbs on Japan's military. Earlier Abe told
Australia's parliament that the two nations were launching a "special relationship" of cooperation on
areas such as defence after putting aside any lingering enmity from World War Two. Abe, warily eying China's rapid
military buildup and more assertive claims to islands held by Japan in the East China Sea , has been
courting governments from Canberra to Southeast Asia in recent months. China is Australia's largest
trading partner. "The door for dialogue is always open from the Japanese side so I do sincerely hope that the Chinese side also take the same
posture," Abe told a press conference after signing the Japan-Australian Economic Partnership Agreement. "China along with Japan
and Australia should play a greater role for peace and prosperity in the Asia Pacific region," he said. The
military deal "will make the first cut engraving the special relationship in our future", Abe earlier told a joint
parliamentary session, the first such speech by a Japanese leader. Mirroring a partnership concluded with Britain a year ago, it will establish
a framework for industrial cooperation that could pave the way for a deal on building a fleet of stealth
submarines for Australia. Abe has been forging a more assertive defence and security posture in his year-and-a-half in office. In April,
he eased a four-decade ban on military exports, which could allow Japan to ship submarine components or even completed vessels to Australia. A
week ago, Abe's cabinet reinterpreted the pacifist constitution to allow Japan's military to defend friendly nations under attack.. "As a nation that
longs for permanent peace in the world, and as a country whose economy is among the biggest, Japan is now determined to do more to enhance
peace in the region and peace in the world," said Abe.
Conflict is uniquely likely – multiple flashpoints for conflict.
Farley 14—an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky's Patterson School of Diplomacy and
International Commerce (Robert, “Asia's Greatest Fear: A U.S.-China War,” The National Interest, 6/9,
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/asia-flames-us-china-war-10621)//FJ
Fifteen years ago, the only answers to “How would a war between the People’s Republic of China and the
United States start?” involved disputes over Taiwan or North Korea. A Taiwanese declaration of independence, a North
Korean attack on South Korea, or some similar triggering event would force the PRC and the US reluctantly into war. This has changed .
The expansion of Chinese interests and capabilities means that we can envision several different scenarios
in which direct military conflict between China and the United States might begin. These still include a
Taiwan scenario and North Korea scenario, but now also involve disputes in the East and South China
Seas, as well as potential conflict with India along the Tibetan border. The underlying factors are the
growth of Chinese power, Chinese dissatisfaction with the US-led regional security system, and US
alliance commitments to a variety of regional states. As long as these factors hold, the possibility for war
will endure.
2NC A-J Relations – Impact – AT: China Isn’t Aggressive
China will lashout absent deterrence – sense of manifest destiny.
Pennington 14—reporter on US -Asian affairs for The Associated Press (Matthew, “US intel: Sense of
destiny drives China aggression,” AP, 2/4, http://news.yahoo.com/us-intel-sense-destiny-drives-chinaaggression-165249893.html)//FJ
WASHINGTON (AP) — The chief of U.S. intelligence said Tuesday China's aggressive pursuit of territorial claims in the
seas of East Asia is driven by a sense of historical destiny and is causing great concern among countries
in the region. Director of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said China has pursued a very impressive military
modernization that is designed to address what it sees as America's own military strengths. Clapper was
responding to a question on China's recent actions in the East and South China Seas posed at a House Intelligence Committee hearing on
worldwide threats. The
exchanges reflected deepening concern in Washington over China's assertive
behavior and military modernization that challenges decades of American pre-eminence in the
Asia-Pacific. The U.S. could potentially be drawn into a conflict should one break out between China
and U.S. treaty allies such as Japan and the Philippines. Clapper said China has been greatly concerned by the U.S. "pivot"
to Asia — the Obama administration's attempt to boost America's military, diplomatic and economic presence there — viewing it as an attempt at
containment. "They've
been quite aggressive about asserting what they believe is their manifest destiny , if
over islands and energy resources,
particularly in the South China Sea, create potential flash points for conflict . Beijing denies any aggressive intent. It
you will, in that part of the world," Clapper told lawmakers. He added that disputes
says its claims have a historical basis, including over most of the resource-rich South China Sea, where it has disputes with nations including
Vietnam and the Philippines. Top ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger, described China's November
declaration of an air defense identification zone in the East China Sea — over uninhabited islands controlled by Japan but also claimed by China
— as a "troubling power and land grab" and an affront to international law. Meanwhile, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia urged China not to
declare a similar zone in airspace over the South China Sea. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel also said that China's territorial claims
must be based on international law, rather than sweeping declarations of jurisdiction. "No one can justifiably, in compliance with international
law, simply assert the right to exercise control over great swaths of the sea," Russel told reporters. "The region and the world wants
to see that China's intentions as it grows are to participate in and contribute to the international system as
a country that respects international norms, respects the rights of others, and accepts that rules not
coercion must, at the end of the day, guide behavior," he said.
International Law DA
1NC International Law DA
International law’s legitimacy is strong and it’s key to peace – recent court ruling against Japanese
scientific whaling proves.
MacCallum 14—a political journalist and commentator (Mungo, “Whaling verdict a victory for
international law,” ABC, 4/7, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-07/maccallum-whaling-verdict-avictory-for-international-law/5371722)//FJ
Last week's decision by the International Court of Justice was a real game changer - the kind of event
which goes a long way to restoring faith in our always shaky and sometimes shonky systems of
government. The 12-4 vote upholding Australia's suit to end Japan's so called "scientific" whaling in the
Southern Ocean was hugely satisfying for two reasons. The first, of course, is the obvious one - it was self-evidently the right
decision, arrived at calmly, rationally, impartially and above all through loads of commonsense. The ICJ's presiding judge Peter Tomka did not
sugar-coat the majority judgement with tactful legalese, and there was no equivocation calculated to assuage Japanese feelings. He simply spelled
it out: the scientific permits granted by Japan for its whaling program were not being used for scientific research as defined under the
International Whaling Commission rules. Thus JARPA II, the annual hunt and kill in the Southern Ocean, was not covered by the IWC
convention to which Japan subscribed, end of story. To most observers this was simply stating the bleeding obvious. Over the course of Japan's
program many thousands of whales have been killed, but barely a handful have even been mentioned in the sprinkling of research papers the
country's scientists have published. At times even Tokyo's own officials have by-passed the scientific justification, simply asserting Japan's
traditional right to consume whale meat. Any other verdict would have been laughable. But that did not mean that it couldn't happen; the
courts, and perhaps especially the international courts, are notorious for their ability to confuse, distract
and obfuscate, and all too often for immersing the facts in a legal tangle that leaves a just outcome at best
problematical. But not this time; the judgement could hardly have been more straightforward if it had been
delivered in a public bar. Japan managed to find one face-saver in what even its own officials admitted was a comprehensive defeat: foreign
affairs spokesman Noriyuki Shikata noted that the court did not rule on the cultural and traditional aspects of whaling for the Japanese people.
Indeed it did not, and perhaps Shikata should be grateful that it did not, because here the Japanese case is almost as dubious as was the case for
scientific whaling. It is true that there are villages on some of the islands which have taken whales from their local waters for centuries, but they
are few and far between; whale meat was never a staple or even a common feature of the Japanese diet until after World War II, when the chief of
the occupying command, General Douglas Macarthur, introduced it as a cheap way of covering the post-war food shortages. Whale meat quickly
rose to cover nearly half of the country's intake of protein, and it stayed high for some years after, largely because it became a mandatory part of
the contents of school lunch boxes. But for the past 40 years, whale consumption has been steadily declining; it is still a feature in various trendy
restaurants, in the same way that crocodile and emu appear on Australian menus, but few people will eat it regularly if alternatives are available which these days they invariably are. Today thousands of tonnes of whale meat harvested from JARPA II sit unwanted in Japanese freezers and
when gourmet whale meat is required, freshness is a priority, so it is usually purchased direct from the local village fisherman. If larger quantities
are needed for processing, the cheaper varieties imported from the northern hemisphere - mainly from Iceland - are generally preferred. Large
scale whaling, with high-tech fleets ranging thousands of kilometres from their home ports, was never a Japanese tradition, and if there was ever a
brief demand for it, that demand has long since faded. The decision does not mean that Japanese whaling will cease altogether; the ICJ decision
only covers JARPA II, and it will be open to Japan to hunt in northern waters, or even to start a genuine research program perhaps in concert with
Australia - the court accepts that legitimate research could involve killing some whales. But the decision does mean that JARPA II - the pseudoscientific whaling in the Southern Ocean which was the legitimate subject of Australia's concern - will end as of now, because Japan and
Australia both agreed to abide by the court's findings, and Japan has reaffirmed this commitment. And that's where the really good news starts.
The dispute between the two countries has been prolonged, messy, at times ugly, and has occasionally threatened an important relationship. It has
involved direct action by organisations such as Sea Shepherd, putting the Australian Government in a real wedge between supporting basic
principles and maritime order. There have been blandishments, bellicosity, bluff and brinkmanship. But in the end the issue was resolved
not just by some kind of power play or showdown , or even through the wiles of diplomacy - although these
played their part. It was resolved through an impartial, legal arbitration whose authority was acknowledged by
both participants. It was resolved through the parties submitting to the rule of law. And if global
civilisation means anything, it means this. We talk too often of a new world order as if it means
conspiracies, bullying, rule by the most powerful and survival only of the fittest. But what we saw last
week was a real new world order : justice, transparency, and a fair result from a contest where both
sides were treated as equals . Maybe there's hope for us after all.
Makah cultural whaling exemptions are currently being negotiated under the
MMPA and uphold the IWC’s limits – the plan’s unilateral ban on whaling
undermines the IWC’s legitimacy.
Koppelman 10—an attorney in Seattle, WA (Carol B., “Anderson v. Evans: the Ninth Circuit
Harmonizes Treaty Rights and the Marine Mammal Protection Act,” Hastings College of the Law: WestNorthwest Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Summer 2010, LexisNexis)//FJ
First, waivers to the blanket moratorium of taking marine mammals are possible under the MMPA. The Act
allows precisely what the Makah want, which is the right to hunt whales when other Americans are not
allowed to hunt whales. The Act allows permits to be issued as exemptions from its widespread ban on
hunting of all marine mammals. n319 The permit provides the mechanism for limited and regulated takes of marine mammals,
while ensuring that marine mammals are protected and continue to be a functioning part of the
environment. n320 The permitting system ensures that any takes will not adversely harm marine mammals as a functioning part of the
ecosystem. n321 Without this regulation under the MMPA permitting process, there may be no check on the
Makah's whaling that would look at the species' continued survival on a regular basis in order to determine if there is an effect of the
hunting that is harming the species. Without that check, the tribe could continue hunting, with no oversight or
regulations that could rationalize and impartially assess the takings effect on the species . It would give a blank
check to the tribe that might be exploited - maybe not by the current council, but it certainly could be exploited by unforeseen, future [*385]
councils or factions of the tribe. As demonstrated by the unauthorized whale hunt in September 2007 which resulted in the botched hunting and
lingering death of a resident gray whale, n322 there should be regulation and oversight of Makah whale hunting to ensure that the species is not
Limits Under the MMPA
are Consistent with Limits Imposed by the IWC Any quota that is granted through a waiver under
MMPA that limits the number of whales that the Makah
take would be consistent with a quota issued by the
IWC , which also limits the number of whales that can be taken under an aboriginal subsistence
exemption. The IWC sets taking and strike limits for all aboriginal subsistence hunting. n323 Quotas for aboriginal groups granted by the
harmed by the hunting and possible abuses of hunting rights by the tribe or individual tribal members. B.
IWC are limited to local consumption by those aboriginal groups and strict catch limits. n324 The need of those aboriginal groups is established
and provided to the IWC by the national governments that are a party to the commission; the national governments need to provide evidence of
the cultural and subsistence needs of their citizens. n325 No commercial whaling is allowed under the aboriginal status,
n326 because aboriginal whaling is intended for local needs and culture, not for financial support. This is
consistent with the idea that an aboriginal group would need to whale in order to maintain its original way of life, rather than to make financial
gain in the commercial economy. This restriction is necessary to keep aboriginal groups from using the guise of subsistence whaling to conduct
commercial whaling. Aboriginal groups are not immune to the lure of profit-making enterprises. Indeed, the Makah
themselves long traded in whale oil, and during the 1860s abandoned whaling to engage in the more commercially lucrative seal trade, returning
to whaling when the United States restricted their profits from seal hunting. n327 The aboriginal subsistence exemption is also intended to ensure
that permitted whaling is done for limited reasons that have to do with [*386] aboriginal groups' actual need to retain their cultures and
indigenous diets. The aboriginal subsistence exemption was not developed to allow aboriginal groups to
exploit a loophole in international law for financial gain by killing and selling animals that are off-limits
to the rest of the world's exploitation.
International law forms the lynchpin of peace – extinction becomes inevitable without it – star this
card
Weeramantry and Burroughs 05—*former Vice-President of the International Court of Justice
AND **Executive Director of the New York-based Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy (*Judge
Christopher AND **John, “International Law and Peace: A Peace Lesson,” Hague Appeal for Peace, July
2005, http://lcnp.org/global/Law_and_Peace.pdf)//FJ
International law may well be described as the queen of disciplines which deal with global order.
Leadership in the battle against the factors disrupting global peace is the natural province of international
law. There are many wonderful aspects of international law which every teacher, every schoolchild, and every member of the public should
know. The principles underlying international law are based upon universally accepted values and moral standards. They can be understood by
every schoolchild. When children are informed about them their eyes light up with appreciation that the international world is governed by
principles which are so acceptable to them. International law represents the essence of the progress of civilization
towards a world ruled by law rather than a world ruled by force. It took thousands of years of effort, hundreds of
wars, and the sacrifice of millions of lives to achieve this. It is thus a very precious possession of all human beings,
which must be carefully protected. International law is an essential tool for the abolition of war . War
With weapons of mass destruction
becoming ever more readily available to state and non-state actors, the threat to a peaceful world being
dragged into catastrophic conflict is so great that civilization itself is in peril. Misunderstanding and cross
has been a part of the human condition for thousands of years, but its abolition is now a necessity.
cultural ignorance are among the root causes of war. While global forces demolish geographical barriers and move the world toward a unified
economy, clashes among cultures can have damaging impact on peace. International law draws upon the principles of peace expressed by great
peacemakers and embodied in ancient writings, religions, and disciplines, and places them in the social and political context of today to dissipate
the clouds of prejudice, ignorance and vested interests that stand in the way of world peace and harmony.
2NC I-Law – Uniqueness
Current Makah whaling proposals through the MMPA reinforce the IWC quotagranting process – strong US regulation is key.
Koppelman 10—an attorney in Seattle, WA (Carol B., “Anderson v. Evans: the Ninth Circuit
Harmonizes Treaty Rights and the Marine Mammal Protection Act,” Hastings College of the Law: WestNorthwest Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Summer 2010, LexisNexis)//FJ
G. Whaling Quota from IWC was Granted to the United States, Not the Makah The Anderson decision respects the structure
of the IWC's quota-granting process . The United States is a party to the ICRW. n356 The IWC grants quotas to signatories who
make a request for a quota. n357 In the area of aboriginal subsistence quotas, it is the responsibility of the country
that is a party to the treaty to substantiate both the need and the status of its aboriginal citizens who are
seeking a quota. n358 In turn, the quota is granted to the country, not to a specific aboriginal group. n359 Thus, the Makah only
have a whaling quota because the United States made the request to and was granted the quota from the
IWC. The Makah are not signatories to the ICRW, nor can they themselves be granted a quota. Their only possibility of an IWC
quota is through the United States. n360 As the party that received the quota, the U.S. has obligations to the ICW to
make sure that the quota is adhered to and not violated. n361 Any violation of the quota and enforcement by the IWC will
fall on the U.S. as the [*391] recipient of the quota and as the signatory to the ICRW; it will not fall on the Makah. The United States has the
domestic obligation to ensure that its aboriginal group is meeting the restrictions imposed by the IWC. n362 It behooves the U.S. to take
measures to ensure that the Makah adhere to the IWC quota, and that the tribe does not violate any obligations that the United States has to the
IWC. Therefore, it makes sense for the United States to regulate, monitor and enforce the taking of whales
by the Makah.
IWC transparency reforms have spearheaded the rise in credibility of international institutions –
abrogation of current whaling quotas would destroy this.
Brunnee and Hey 13—*teaches International Law for the Master of Global Affairs at the Munk
School at the University of Toronto AND **Professor of Public International Law at the Erasmus School
of Law (*Jutta AND **Ellen, Transparency in International Law, Cambridge University Press, 11/7,
pp.23-24)
In July 2011 the International Whaling Commission (IWC) adopted a resolution on 'Improving the
Effectiveness of Operations' within it. The fact that this resolution was adopted by consensus, and that it is easily accessible at the
Commission's website, may not seem remarkable. A resolution on 'effectiveness of operations' should not be controversial and, in the age of the
internet, we have become accustomed to being able to follow the activities of international environmental institutions (IEIs) from our offices or
homes, often even in 'real time'. In other words, we have come to take for granted a considerable degree of
transparency in international environmental governance. And yet, transparency is a relative newcomer
to international governance - the traditional mode of international governance, 'namely diplomacy, has
relied on secrecy and confidentiality'.2 The IWC resolution encapsulates the remarkable evolution of
interna- tional law . Its anodyne title masks the fact that the resolution is above all about enhancing transparency.
The IWC has been notorious for clinging to the old modes of diplomacy. Even member States could not obtain official
written versions of IWC decisions until long after they were taken.3 Communications and documents were difficult or impossible to access on the
Commission's website, and the secretariat accepted untraceable cash payments for parties' membership dues.11 While many member States had
been demanding reforms for some time, others vigorously resisted.11 They did so successfully for years, until the IWC resolved, in July
2011, that
its 'procedures should be brought into line with current international good practice'.6 It
acknowledged 'the impor- tance of transparency in international law', the evolution of the 'international
law and practice relating to transparency and participation in international decision-making', the
emergence of good practice under the auspices of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), that its
operations could 'benefit from enhanced transparency', and that such improvements were 'of vital
importance' to the 'authority and legitimacy* of the IWC .7
2NC I-Law – UQ – AT: US Credibility Low
Obama is upholding international law in his second term and correct for past
grievances – continuing this standard is key to maintain credibility in international
law.
Koh 13—Former Legal Adviser to the U.S. Department of State (Harold Hongju, “Experts Outline
International Law Priorities for President Obama's Second Term,” Columbia Law School, 2/25,
http://www.law.columbia.edu/media_inquiries/news_events/2013/february2013/experts-outline-obama2nd-term)//FJ
New York, February 25, 2013—President Obama can strengthen America’s standing in the international
community in his second term by modernizing human rights obligations, overcoming national resistance
to foreign engagement, and building multilateral partnerships to maintain global influence, according to legal
scholars who spoke at a recent Columbia Law School forum. Harold Hongju Koh The panel featured Harold Hongju Koh, who joined Columbia
Law School as a visiting scholar in residence last month after serving more than three years as legal adviser of the U.S. Department of State. He
pointed to some of the overarching strategies that could help the Obama administration achieve these goals. “ The
administration is
using many tools — not just hard power, but smart power ,” which includes diplomatic and economic
levers of influence, he said. Koh was joined on the Jan. 31 panel, titled “International Law in Obama’s Second Term: Priorities and
Problems” by Columbia Law School Professors Sarah H. Cleveland, Michael W. Doyle and Matthew C. Waxman, who each have held high-level
government positions. Dr. Bart M.J. Szewczyk, an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School, moderated the discussion. Obama is
“pulling back from isolationism” and engaging with foreign . But with that precedent, Cleveland suggested there was little
hope for other human rights treaties. She pointed to the “long suffering” Convention on the Law of the Sea, which outlines the maritime rights
and responsibilities of nations in international waters, as another challenging treaty to ratify in the current domestic climate. As for military
engagement in Obama’s second term, Koh pointed out that the use of drone strikes will likely continue in the fight against Al-Qaeda and
associated forces. But he said the U.S. must better explain its legal case for military force by using “translation,” taking post-World War II
treaties like the Geneva Conventions and principles of international humanitarian law and applying them to modern warfare. Professor Michael
W. Doyle Doyle, the Harold Brown Professor of International Affairs, Law and Political Science who was assistant secretary-general and special
adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan from 2001 to 2003, picked up on that theme, arguing that justification for the use of
force needed to be better explained under international law. He stressed the importance of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine in securing the
support of the international community for military intervention against Qaddafi’s regime to prevent humanitarian massacres in Libya. Some
important international treaties and norms have little meaning unless the U.S. has the ability and
willingness to project power, said Waxman, who has served in senior positions at the U.S. State Department, the Department of
Defense, and the National Security Council. He said he feared a diminished role of the U.S. in the world. “The retraction of American power
would be very dangerous,” Waxman said, emphasizing what he called the “power of power.” Professor Matthew C. Waxman “A serious
Responsibility to Protect without the United States’ capability and willingness to uphold and enforce it, will not exist,” he said, pointing out that
freedom of the high seas has been “underwritten by the U.S. Navy” even though our country has not ratified the Convention on the Law of the
Sea. He also warned that without U.S. power projection, human rights in some parts of the world would be not merely diminished but utterly
“extinguished.” Cleveland noted, however, that in some parts of the world, such as Arab Spring countries, leading with U.S. power is not
effective, and that the U.S. must seek other approaches and partners. Koh agreed the role the U.S. plays on the world stage is
“indispensable.” He told the story of a foreign diplomat he worked with at the State Department who described the difference between his
country and the U.S. The foreign diplomat said “when there is a problem in the world, Americans ask ‘what will we do?’” The diplomat then
said, referring to his country, “and we ask, ‘what will the Americans do?’”
2NC I-Law – Link
Breaking the whaling ban weakens international law as a whole – shows that noncompliance has no consequences.
Childress the Third 12—associate professor of law at the Pepperdine University (Donald Earl, The
Role of Ethics in International Law, Cambridge University Press, pp. 69-70)//FJ
Transnational collateral consequences can create powerful incentives for stales to commit to and comply with treaties - incentives that can
sometimes lead states to act in ways that would otherwise be deeply perplexing. Such collateral consequences may motivate states to comply with
their legal com- mitments to demonstrate to other states that they will keep their international agreements, even if the agreements turn out to be
unfavorable for them- In short, such behavior demonstrates a willingness to follow international law because it is the law and thus creates an
independent reason to act. Thus a state may comply with an agreement that it would rather ignore to demonstrate
to other international actors that it is law abiding. However, the reach of this effect may sometimes be limited
by the difficulty posed by the task of monitor- ing compliance ; if states believe that noncompliance will
go undetected, they may have less incentive to comply. Moreover, if an international commitment is
regularly ignored, states may question its status as law and hence may be less likelv to comply with it as
a result.
US violation of international agreements destroys international law credibility – the US is
considered a model nation and its violation of norms encourages unilateralism – the Bush
administration proves.
Kraus 02 —the Chief Executive Officer of Citizens for Global Solutions (Don, “America’s Global
Leadership Measured by International Law,” Foreign Policy in Focus, 6/1,
http://fpif.org/americas_global_leadership_measured_by_international_law/)//FJ
In its ascendancy to power following World War II, the United States was the major force in the establishment of
a web of international institutions and laws . From the United Nations Charter to the Declaration of Human Rights, the United
States took the lead in creating a world where nations limited their actions based on mutually agreed upon treaties and norms. This fabric of
international laws connected other nations to an American-dominated security and economic regime–but also restricted U.S. ability to employ
unrestrained power. In other words, the price of a world order based largely on American values was a reduction in Washington’s freedom of
action. It is the fabric of international law that the United States has swathed itself in that has allowed it to escape the fate suffered by great
empires of the past–being torn down by a group of middle powers. Faced with a hegemonic United States that voluntarily constrains it actions,
England, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and even China have been able to conclude that engaging the United States is more productive than
The Bush administration’s renouncement of the International Criminal Court pulls on a
thread that could unravel the entire cloth. In conjunction with Washington’s rejection of the Kyoto Climate Change agreement,
trying to topple it.
the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban, ABM, Landmines, Rights of the Child, and other less-known treaties, it is not surprising that traditional
U.S. allies are evaluating their relationship with Washington. Add in Washington’s failure to rejoin UNESCO or to live up to its end of the deal
on UN arrears, and it becomes difficult for U.S. “friends” to justify their position to their constituents and policy elites. There are three
reason why “unsigning” the ICC is particularly problematic . First, it goes to the heart of what international
law is supposed to do: protect people from the most heinous of crimes . It is a “law and order” treaty that has been
embraced by all European Union nations. Rejection of a treaty promoting universal law and order, a cardinal tenet of
U.S. law, because of the remote possibility U.S. service personnel might be endangered does not make sense to our
democratic allies. Second, the act of unsigning is unprecedented . No nation has ever repudiated its signature on a UN
treaty before. The decision sets a bad example for world leaders and could become the politically expedient
way to walk away from restrictive agreements agreed to by predecessors. The decision also damages the
credibility of the U.S. presidency, opening the possibility of future presidential signatures being overturned by successors. Finally, unsigning
promotes a new philosophy called “a la carte multilateralism” by some or “one-way multilateralism” by
others . In an attempt to soften the blow to ICC supporters both Under Secretary Marc Grossman and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said,
“The United States respects the decision of those nations who have chosen to join the ICC; but they in turn must respect our decision not to join
the ICC.” This is diplo-speak for “ the
your own.”
United States will cooperate when it is in its interest, otherwise you are on
The Bush administration is right to worry about the actions of Al Qaeda and a few rogue states. However, its apprehension
should also be focused on the frightening possibility that, given the different directions the U.S. and the EU are taking regarding international
law and institutions, current allies could turn into active opponents capable of doing real damage to United States interests. A May 13th EU
this unilateral action may have
undesirable consequences on multilateral treaty-making and generally on the rule of law in
international relations. ” The progress displayed by new Russia-NATO Council and the largely symbolic U.S./Russian nuclear arms
declaration criticized the Bush administration’s ICC policy saying, “The European Union notes that
reduction treaty is encouraging. However, EU nations will have difficulty supporting a policy based only on military/security agreements if
European voters perceive the United States is unwilling to reciprocate on popular human rights and environmental agreements. The roots of this
emerging threat to U.S. security are political and are located within the American conservative movement. In a recent missive, American
Conservative Union chair David Keene describes the ICC as “dangerous internationalist goofiness.” In President Bush’s home state, the Texas
Republican Party’s 2000 Platform called for the United States to withdraw from the United Nations. Conservative think tanks have led the
opposition to expanding Washington’s international commitments. One-way multilateralism is, in part, a reaction to the very vocal
isolationist/unilateralist activism emanating from the Republican Party’s right wing. Conservatives correctly believe that the world can be a very
dangerous place. They distrust institutions where representatives of dictators have a vote equal to representatives of democracies. They fear the
specter of “un-elected officials” claiming sovereignty over the United States. As a result the Senate only ratifies agreements with too much check
and not enough balance. Either the United States tightly controls them through its Security Council veto, by funding, or, like the Bush-Putin
nuclear treaty, agreements are basically toothless. America’s founders were wonderful engineers who designed a political system of checks and
balances that, in the words of Newt Gingrich, “was too inefficient to ever be taken over by a dictator.” Today we clearly live in a world that is
global. Business, religion, communications, culture, and civil society operate globally and exceed the reach of the political institutions designed
to govern them. Rather than fighting this trend, conservatives would better serve U.S. national interests by
doing something that the United States is very good at, namely creating a system of checks and balances that work, answer
conservative concerns regarding sovereignty and democracy, and proactively defines the conditions that would allow the U.S. to
be part of a web of effective international agreements that maintain U.S. leadership and lead to a more
just, safe, and peaceful world . In the meantime the Bush administration would be wise to be gentle with the fabricthat binds our world
together. Although May 6, 2002 may well end up being looked upon as the “beginning of the end” of American global leadership, July 1, 2002–
the day the ICC comes into force–will be looked upon as the “end of the beginning” of the era of true
international law.
Legitimacy is key to effective international law – US abrogation of existing treaties kills it.
Raustiala and Slaughter 07—(*Kal AND **Anne-Marie, “International Law, International
Relations, and Compliance,” UCLA School of Law, 11/8,
http://www2.law.ucla.edu/raustiala/publications/international%20law,%20international%20relations%20a
nd%20compliance.pdf)//FJ
Legitimacy Rules By the end of the 1980s, IL scholars were finally off the defensive of the Cold War years. A decade of obsession with
'regimes', coupled with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the promise of a new era of global cooperation, created an opening for a new scholarly
focus on the particular properties of law. Speaking for the international legal profession, Franck proclaimed that 'we are in a post-on to logi- cal
era' (1992). Freed from the need to demonstrate the existence, much less the relevance, of interna- tional law as law, be set forth a bold argument
about compliance and legitimacy (Franck, 1990). Franck's central thesis was that 'in a community organized around rules,
compliance is secured - to whatever degree it is - at least in part by the per- ception of a rule as legitimate
by those to whom it is addressed' (1988: 706). Despite this prefatory hedging of dependent and independent variables, he
presented the theory as a general theory of compli- ance in which legitimacy is the crucial causal
factor. The legitimacy of rules exerts a 'compliance pull' on governments that explains the high observed
levels of compliance of international law . This notion of compliance-pull, rather than compli- ance itself, is actually the
dependent variable of the analysis. Franck defined legitimacy in terms of four elements. Textual dcterminacy refers to the clarity and
transparency of the commitment itself. This is not simplicity per.se, rather, the rule must be able to clearly 'communicate its intent' in specific
situa- tions. Symbolic validation is the communication of authority through ritual or regularized practice. Coherence refers to consistency in
application and in context with other rules. Adherence means the degree a rule fits within the normative hierarchy of rules about rule-making, or
secondary rules, in Hart's influential schema (Hart, 1994). Together, these four characteristics determine 'right process'. Right process, by
creating the perception of legiti- macy, in turn determines the compliance pull of a rule. Ultimately, the
theory claims a chain (or cycle) of causation between right process and state behavior. Legitimacy determines compliance pull, but compliance
pull is also the measure of legitimacy. While influential in IL circles, Franck's theory faced criticism from IR scholars: from a rationalistinstrumentalist perspective, the argu-ment is essentially circular (Kcohane, 1997: 493). What distinguishes the legitimacy theory of com- pliance
is its focus on rule-making processes, and the qualities of rules themselves, rather than on rational, strategic interaction. While Franck did not
explicitly engage the then-emerging constructivist literature, his argument is quite consistent with many constructivist assumptions and insights.
The theory of state behavior embedded in legitimacy theory is non-instrumental rather than game theory or bureaucratic politics, Franck invokes
theories of legal process and obligation. The recurring image is of international society rather than cooperation under anarchy.
2NC I-Law – Impact
2NC I-Law – Impact [IWC]
The ICW specifically has had unparalleled success in ending commercial whaling –
default to the specificity of our evidence.
Miles et al. 02—(Edward L., Environmental Regime Effectiveness: Confronting Theory with Evidence,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pp. 380)//FJ
What about the behavioral impact of the regime? Initially, the IWC had no or only marginal impact on the behavior of its members. However,
this has increased steadily over time, and over
the last fifteen years the IWC has been quite effective in this regard. The
IWC" desired that commercial whaling should cease, and so it did . This is not commonplace within
international regimes . Still, it should be kept in mind that whaling was in rapid decline at the time when the moratorium on commercial
whaling was adopted in 1982. Nevertheless, it is highly unlikely that whaling would have been as minimal as it is
today in the absence of the IWC To further complicate matters, although there is no doubt that the regime has had behavioral impact,
the direction of that impact may be relevant. Is a regime effec- tive where a majority imposes its will on a very reluctant minority and threatens
economic sanctions if the majority will is not complied with? Probably most ana- lysts would answer yes to this question if members shared
consensus over the goal of the regime. If laggards were slow to phase out their CFC emissions as agreed, a regime contributing to change this
would be seen as highly effective. In the whaling regime, however, there is no consensus over the true purpose of the organization. It is fairly
straightforward to assign a score if we take the official purpose of the Convention as our point of departure. Th e stated goal of the
International Con- vention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), otherwise known as the Whaling Convention) is "to
conserve whales in order to secure an orderly development of the whaling industry" (Preamble to the ICRW).
Gray Whales DA
1NC Gray Whales DA
The plan collapses IWC quotas—destroys the marine environment
Koppelman 10
(Carol B Koppelman is an attorney in Seattle. WA. She received a Juris Doctor, cum laude. in 2009 from Seattle University Law school, and a
Master of Public Affairs from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, “Anderson v. Evans: the Ninth Circuit
Harmonizes Treaty Rights and the Marine Mammal Protection Act,” Hastings West-Northwest Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Volume
16 Number 1 Winter 2010, Hein Online)//BB
Although most gray whales migrate from Mexico to the Bering and Chukchi Seas each summer, the coastal waters off Washington
State attract a group of whales that have taken up residence during the summer It is estimated that about sixty percent of these
whales are returning whales"1 These resident whales are recognizable by scientists and whale-watching
organizations. The Ninth Circuit panel stated that only a full EIS could fully analyze the impact on whaling on these
resident whales.'" If there were outstanding questions that the EA had not answered about the impact on the resident whales that frequent
the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the northern Washington coast, an EIS must be prepared.1" The court found that this critical issue was both
uncertain and controversial within the meaning of NEPA."4 Moreover, the court found that the EA did not address the impact that the Makah's
whaling quota would have on any other IWC countries. The court noted that an EIS is required if a single action establishes a
precedent for other actions that could have a cumulative, negative impact on the environment.'" The court held that
the purposefully vague language of the IWC quota could allow other countries to set their own subsistence quotas for their aboriginal groups."6
This could lead to an increase in whaling worldwide, which would have a significant impact on the
environment."1 The quota that the IWC issued to the United States and Russia was limited to aboriginal
groups 'whose traditional aboriginal subsistence needs have been recognized *"* Because it was unclear what body would
recognize the aboriginal subsistence needs or under what standards, this uncertainty could open the door
for other countries to proclaim the subsistence needs of their own aboriginal groups "9 This in turn would make it
easier for these groups to gain approval for whaling.'40 If that resulted in more groups obtaining whaling quotas, it could
have a significant impact on the environment .”
The gray whale population is recovering now, but the Pacific is still vulnerable.
Mulvaney 13—conservationist and contributor to Discovery News (Kieran, “Gray Whale Recovery
Fuels Whalewatching Success,” Discovery News, 3/6, http://news.discovery.com/animals/whalesdolphins/gray-whale-recovery-fuels-whalewatching-success-130306.htm)//FJ
By 1900, grays had become so rare that some wondered whether Scammon’s prediction had come to fruition; whaling stopped for a
while, but resumed again between 1925 and 1929 and then again from 1933 to 1946 until the gray whale was protected from commercial whaling
with the signing of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (although it was later revealed that Soviet whalers illegally took
grays from 1961 to 1979). Further protections were added with the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972
and listing under the Endangered Species Act of 1973; as a consequence, the population grew . Although
the western North Pacific population is critically low, the eastern Pacific population is estimated to
number somewhere around 22,000. By using whalers’ logbooks to calculate how many whales had been
hunted, scientists initially calculated that this figure was approximately the same as, and possibly in
excess of, the pre-exploitation number ; however, a 2007 study, based on DNA variation among gray whales, suggested that the
original population had been in the vicinity of 96,000 whales and that therefore the population should still be regarded as depleted.
Absent strong international treaty, whaling would cause gray whale extinction.
Jenkins and Romanzo 98—have a private law practice in Washington D.C., specializing in
international and environmental law, and trade and the environment (*Leestefly AND **Cara, “Makah
Whaling: Aboriginal Subsistence or a Stepping Stone to Undermining the Commercial Whaling
Moratorium?,” Colorado Journal of Int'l Envt'l Law and Policy Colorado Journal of International
Environmental Law and Policy, LexisNexis, Winter 1998,
http://www.lexisnexis.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/?verb=sr&csi=152950&
sr=AUTHOR(Jenkins)%2BAND%2BTITLE(Makah+whaling%3A+aboriginal+subsistence+or+a+steppi
ng+stone+to+undermining+the+commercial+whaling+moratorium%3F)%2BAND%2BDATE%2BIS%2
B1998)//FJ
If international
organizations had not encouraged such a strong stance on whale protection, there would be
not be a controversy today, because the gray whale would have been long extinct , along with a number
of other whale species. Although the tribe does not qualify for an ASW quota, the Makah goal of preserving their indigenous culture is
laudable. However, this could be done without weakening the IWC standard for an ASW quota and opening the door to the same degree of
commercial exploitation of whales that previously drove several species to extinction. n158 For example, the tribe might choose to invest in ecotourism in lieu of whaling and [*112] could very likely obtain the political support of the US government and the animal and environmental
protection community as a result of any such efforts.
Whales key to global ecosystem – recycle nutrients. Hold the link to a low threshold
– whale reproduction is slow and thus even limited whaling could trigger the
impact.
Zelko 13—Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont
(Frank, “Hang up the harpoons, Japan,” The Los Angeles Times, 7/23,
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/23/opinion/la-oe-zelko-japan-whaling-20130723)//FJ
Ecologically, whaling is unjustifiable . Most whale species are not even close to recovering from the
massive population crash caused by commercial whaling. From a conservation perspective, it is very unwise to
harvest a large mammal that reproduces very slowly. Fin whales — the second-largest animal ever to live on Earth and a
species that Icelandic whalers continue to hunt — gestate for 11 months and give birth to just one offspring every three
years. Moreover, scientific studies demonstrate that whales play an important role in ocean ecology . By feeding on
deepwater plankton and excreting at the surface, they help prime the "biological pump" that ensures the
continual recycling of nutrients throughout the oceans' depths.
Accelerating ocean loss causes extinction
Rogers
11
Alex David
6/20/ , Ph.D. in marine invertebrate systematics and genetics from the University of Liverpool is a Professor in Conservation Biology
at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford AND Dan Laffoley, PhD on marine ecology at the University of Exeter, and Senior Advisor, Marine Science and
Conservation Global Marine and Polar Programme (IPSO Oxford, “International earth system expert workshop on ocean stresses and impacts”, July 20, 2011,
http://www.stateoftheocean.org/pdfs/1906_IPSO-LONG.pdf)
The workshop enabled leading experts to take a global view on how all the different effects we are having on the ocean are compromising its
ability to support us. This examination of synergistic threats leads to the conclusion that we have underestimated the overall risks and that the
whole of marine degradation is greater than the sum of its parts, and that degradation is now
happening at a faster rate than predicted. It is clear that the traditional economic and consumer
values that formerly served society well, when coupled with current rates of population increase,
are not sustainable. The ocean is the largest ecosystem on Earth, supports us and maintains our
world in a habitable condition. To maintain the goods and services it has provided to humankind for millennia demands change in
how we view, manage, govern and use marine ecosystems. The scale of the stresses on the ocean means that deferring action will increase costs
in the future leading to even greater losses of benefits. The key points needed to drive a common sense rethink are: • Human actions have
resulted in warming and acidification of the oceans and are now causing increased hypoxia. Studies of the Earth’s past indicate that these are
three symptoms that indicate disturbances of the carbon cycle associated with each of the previous five mass extinctions on Earth (e.g. Erwin,
2008; Veron, 2008a,b; Veron et al., 2009; Barnosky et al., 2011). • The
speeds of many negative changes to the ocean
are near to or are tracking the worstcase scenarios from IPCC and other predictions. Some are as
predicted, but many are faster than anticipated, and many are still accelerating. Consequences of
current rates of change already matching those predicted under the “worst case scenario”
include: the rate of decrease in Arctic Sea Ice (Stroeve et al., 2007; Wang & Overland, 2009) and in the accelerated melting of both the
Greenland icesheet (Velicogna, 2009; Khan et al., 2010; Rignot et al., 2011) and Antarctic ice sheets (Chen et al., 2009; Rignot et al., 2008,
2011; Velicogna, 2009);
sea level rise (Rahmstorf 2007a,b; Rahmstorf et al., 2007; Nicholls et al., 2011); and release of
trapped methane from the seabed (Westbrook et al., 2009; Shakova et al., 2010; although not yet globally
significant Dlugokencky et al., 2009). The ‘worst case’ effects are compounding other changes more
consistent with predictions including: changes in the distribution and abundance of marine
species (Beaugrand & Reid, 2003; Beaugrand 2004, 2009; Beaugrand et al., 2003; 2010; Cheung et al. 2009, 2010, Reid et al., 2007;
Johnson et al., 2011; Philippart et al., 2011; Schiel, 2011; Wassmann et al., 2011; Wernberg et al., 2011); changes in primary production
(Behrenfeld et al., 2006; Chavez et al., 2011); changes in the distribution of harmful algal blooms (Heisler et al., 2008; Bauman et al., 2010);
increases in health hazards in the oceans (e.g. ciguatera, pathogens; Van Dolah, 2000; Lipp et al., 2002; Dickey & Plakas, 2009); and
of both large, longklived and small fish species causing widespread impacts on marine
ecosystems, including direct impacts on predator and prey species, the simplification and
loss
destabilization of food webs, reduction of resilience to the effects of climate change
(e.g. Jackson et
al. 2001; Pauly et al., 1998; Worm & Myers, 2003; Baum & Myers, 2004; Rosenberg et al., 2005; Worm et al., 2006; Myers et al., 2007;
Jackson, 2008; Baum & Worm, 2009; Ferretti et al., 2010; Hutchings et al., 2010; WardkPaige et al., 2010; Pinskya et al., 2011). • The
magnitude of the cumulative impacts on the ocean is greater than previously understood Interactions between different impacts can be negatively
synergistic (negative impact greater than sum of individual stressors) or they can be antagonistic (lowering the effects of individual impacts).
Examples of such interactions include: combinations of overfishing, physical disturbance,
climate change effects, nutrient runoff and introductions of nonknative species leading to
explosions of these invasive species, including harmful algal blooms, and dead zones (Rabalais et al.,
2001, 2002; Daskalov et al., 2007; Purcell et al., 2007; Boero et al., 2008; Heisler et al., 2008; Dickey & Plakas, 2009; Bauman et al., 2010;
VaquerkSunur & Duarte, 2010); increased temperature and acidification increasing the susceptibility of corals to bleaching (Anthony et al.,
2008) and acting synergistically to impact the reproduction and development of other marine invertebrates (Parker et al., 2009); changes in the
behavior, fate and toxicity of heavy metals with acidification (Millero et al., 2009; Pascal et al., 2010); acidification may reduce the limiting
effect of iron availability on primary production in some parts of the ocean (Shi et al., 2010; King et al., 2011); increased uptake of plastics by
fauna (Andrady 2011, Hirai & Takada et al. 2011, Murray & Cowie, 2011), and increased bioavailability of pollutants through adsorption onto
the surface of microplastic particles (Graham & Thompson 2009, Moore 2008, Thomson, et al., 2009); and feedbacks of climate change impacts
on the oceans (temperature rise, sea level rise, loss of ice cover, acidification, increased storm intensity, methane release) on their rate of CO2
uptake and global warming (Lenton et al., 2008; Reid et al 2009). • Timelines
for action are shrinking. The longer the
delay in reducing emissions the higher the annual reduction rate will have to be and the greater
the financial cost. Delays will mean increased environmental damage with greater
socioeconomic impacts and costs of mitigation and adaptation measures. • Resilience of the ocean to climate
change impacts is severely compromised by the other stressors from human activities, including fisheries, pollution and habitat destruction.
Examples include the overfishing of reef grazers, nutrient runoff, and other forms of pollution (presence of pathogens or endocrine disrupting
chemicals (Porte et al., 2006; OSPAR 2010)) reducing the recovery ability of reefs from temperaturekinduced mass coral bleaching (Hoeghk
Guldberg et al., 2007; Mumby et al., 2007; Hughes et al., 2010; Jackson, 2010; Mumby & Harborne, 2010) . These multiple stressors promote
the phase shift of reef ecosystems from being coralkdominated to algal dominated. The loss of genetic diversity from overfishing reduces ability
to adapt to stressors. • Ecosystem collapse is occurring as a result of both current and emerging stressors. Stressors include chemical pollutants,
agriculture runkoff, sediment loads and overkextraction of many components of food webs which singly and together severely impair the
functioning of ecosystems. Consequences include the potential increase of harmful algal blooms in recent decades (Van Dolah, 2000;
Landsberg, 2002; Heisler et al., 2008; Dickey & Plakas, 2009; Wang & Wu, 2009); the spread of oxygen depleted or dead zones (Rabalais et al.,
2002; Diaz & Rosenberg, 2008; VaquerkSunyer & Duarte, 2008); the disturbance of the structure and functioning of marine food webs, to the
benefit of planktonic organisms of low nutritional value, such as jellyfish or other gelatinousklike organisms (Broduer et al., 1999; Mills, 2001;
Pauly et al. 2009; Boero et al., 2008; Moore et al., 2008); dramatic changes in the microbial communities with negative impacts at the ecosystem
scale (Dinsdale et al., 2008; Jackson, 2010); and the impact of emerging chemical contaminants in ecosystems (la Farré et al., 2008).
This
impairment damages or eliminates the ability of ecosystems to support humans. • The extinction
threat to marine species is rapidly increasing. The main causes of extinctions of marine species to
date are overexploitation and habitat loss (Dulvy et al., 2009). However climate change is increasingly
adding to this, as evidenced by the recent IUCN Red List Assessment of reforming corals
(Carpenter et al., 2008). Some other species ranges have already extended or shifted polekwards and into deeper cooler waters (Reid et al.,
2009); this may not be possible for some species to achieve, potentially leading to reduced habitats and more extinctions. Shifts
in
currents and temperatures will affect the food supply of animals, including at critical early
stages, potentially testing their ability to survive. The participants concluded that not only are we already experiencing
severe declines in many species to the point of commercial extinction in some cases, and an unparalleled rate of regional extinctions of habitat
types (eg mangroves and seagrass meadows), but we now face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a
single generation. Unless action is taken now, the consequences of our activities are at a high risk of causing, through the combined effects of
climate change, overexploitation, pollution and habitat loss, the next globally significant extinction event in the ocean. It is notable that the
occurrence of multiple high intensity stressors has been a prerequisite for all the five global extinction events of the past 600 million years
(Barnosky et al., 2009).
2NC Gray Whales – Uniqueness
Gray whale population is recovering – removed from endangered species list.
NOAA 13—(National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, “Gray Whale,” 5/13,
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/mammals/cetaceans/graywhale.htm)//FJ
The Eastern North Pacific stock of gray whales was removed from the U.S. List of Endangered and
Threatened Wildlife in 1994, based on evidence that they had recovered to near their estimated original
population size and were not in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of their range. In 1999, a
NMFS review of the status of the Eastern North Pacific stock of gray whales [pdf] recommended the
continuation of this stock's classification as non-threatened. This determination was based on the
continued growth of the population (at that time, rising at 2.5% annually and estimated at 26,600 individuals ) and the lack of
evidence of any imminent threats to the stock. NMFS continues to monitor the abundance of the stock, especially as it approaches
its carrying capacity. The 2008 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species lists gray whales as "least concern."
Status quo whaling doesn’t affect the gray whale population, but recovery is fragile and any new
commercial whaling would decimate population growth.
Weiss and Kaplan 07—(*Kennet R. AND **Karen, “Gray whale recovery called incorrect,” Los
Angeles Times, 11/11, http://articles.latimes.com/2007/sep/11/science/sci-whales11)//FJ
Gray whales are now hunted by native peoples, who are allowed to kill up to 140 animals each year. Nearly
all are harpooned by traditional Russian hunters off the coast of Siberia, although Washington state's Makah tribe has been trying to
reassert its right to hunt gray whales. The DNA-based estimates of historical populations are unlikely to
change those limits, which most experts agree is not high enough to affect the stability of the whale
population. But the new DNA-based estimates undermine the scientific foundation of the whaling
commission's estimates of the health of whale populations in general. "It's going to prompt both the IWC
and the National Marine Fisheries to reconsider this," Baker said. "Whether it will convince them to change management,
I'm not sure." Even judging by anecdotal sources, the current gray whale population is a far cry from the past. When
French explorer Jean-Francois La Perouse sailed into Monterey Bay in the 1700s, he complained that gray whales were so abundant that the
stench of their breath fouled the air. The whales were nearly hunted to extinction in the 1930s, but due to
international protections their population steadily increased to an estimated high of 26,600 in the late
1990s.
2NC Gray Whales – Link
A Makah whaling exemption would lead to an increase in whaling worldwide –
lowers the precedent for obtaining a quota.
Koppelman 10—an attorney in Seattle, WA (Carol B., “Anderson v. Evans: the Ninth Circuit
Harmonizes Treaty Rights and the Marine Mammal Protection Act,” Hastings College of the Law: WestNorthwest Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Summer 2010, LexisNexis)//FJ
Moreover, the court found that the EA did not address the impact that the Makah's whaling quota would have on
any other IWC countries. The court noted that an EIS is required if a single action establishes a precedent for
other actions that could have a cumulative, negative impact on the environment. n235 The court held that the
purposefully vague language of the IWC quota could allow other countries to set their own subsistence
quotas for their aboriginal groups. n236 This could lead to an increase in whaling worldwide, which
would have a significant impact on the environment . n237 The quota that the IWC issued to the United States and Russia
was limited to aboriginal groups "whose traditional aboriginal subsistence needs have been recognized." n238 Because it was unclear
what body would recognize the aboriginal subsistence needs or under what standards, this uncertainty
could open the door for other countries to proclaim the subsistence needs of their own aboriginal groups.
n239 This in turn would make it easier for these groups to gain approval for whaling. n240 If that resulted in more
groups obtaining whaling quotas, it could have a significant impact on the [*377] environment. n241
Makah whaling uniquely destroys the gray whale population – the tribe will likely
violate proposed quotas and will encourage other tribes to hunt illegally.
Koppelman 10—an attorney in Seattle, WA (Carol B., “Anderson v. Evans: the Ninth Circuit
Harmonizes Treaty Rights and the Marine Mammal Protection Act,” Hastings College of the Law: WestNorthwest Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Summer 2010, LexisNexis)//FJ
The panel found that "there is no assurance that the takes by the Tribe of gray whales, including both those
killed and those harassed without success, will not threaten the role of the gray whales as functioning
elements of the marine ecosystem , and thus no assurance that the purpose of the MMPA will be effectuated." n278 The court held
that without the regulation of the MMPA, there was no certainty that future whaling by the Makah would not
jeopardize the gray whale populations under the current management plan or with future quotas. n279 While
the court recognized that the current Makah tribal council has sought a small quota, there was no guarantee that future councils
might not seek to increase their quota or use a different hunting method that might have an impact on the
whales that is currently unanticipated. n280 The Act was intended to protect marine mammals from unanticipated future threats
with its mechanism for review and provisions for permits to be suspended. n281 Further, the panel stated that if the Makah were not required to
comply with the MMPA, there was no guarantee that other tribes might not use this precedent to also claim a
right to hunt marine mammals outside of the restrictions of the MMPA. n282 While the panel acknowledged that only the
Makah have a treaty right to whale, some tribes might use the more general language of "hunting and fishing" rights
in their treaties to hunt marine mammals. n283 This additional hunting would likely have an impact on
the [*381] gray whales that could thwart the conservation purposes of the MMPA.
Makah whaling poses an existential threat to the gray whale population – no
oversight and potential abuse of rights.
Koppelman 10—an attorney in Seattle, WA (Carol B., “Anderson v. Evans: the Ninth Circuit
Harmonizes Treaty Rights and the Marine Mammal Protection Act,” Hastings College of the Law: WestNorthwest Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Summer 2010, LexisNexis)//FJ
Without this regulation under the MMPA permitting process, there may be no check on the Makah's
whaling that would look at the species' continued survival on a regular basis in order to determine if there
is an effect of the hunting that is harming the species . Without that check, the tribe could continue
hunting, with no oversight or regulations that could rationalize and impartially assess the takings effect on
the species. It would give a blank check to the tribe that might be exploited - maybe not by the current council, but it
certainly could be exploited by unforeseen, future [*385] councils or factions of the tribe. As demonstrated by the unauthorized
whale hunt in September 2007 which resulted in the botched hunting and lingering death of a resident
gray whale, n322 there should be regulation and oversight of Makah whale hunting to ensure that the
species is not harmed by the hunting and possible abuses of hunting rights by the tribe or individual
tribal members.
Independently, Makah whaling escalates to whale extinction – society represents
Natives as environmentally-friendly – serves as a guise for reckless whaling –
empirics.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society 05—an international non-profit, marine wildlife
conservation organization (“Makah Whaling Could Set a Dangerous Precedent,” Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society, 9/22, http://www.seashepherd.org/news-and-media/2008/11/03/makah-whalingcould-set-a-dangerous-precedent-942)//FJ
"As Hocevar's claim that no indigenous hunt has ever destroyed a whale population," continued Captain
Watson, "he is disregarding the extinction of the Atlantic gray whale that was killed off by the indigenous
Basque culture. He is disregarding the fact that indigenous people were well represented as harpooners on
the American whaling fleets that decimated the great whale populations."
2NC Gray Whales – Internal Link
Whales keep ecosystems running – it’s a keystone species
Zimmer and Ferrer 07 (Richard and Ryan, professors of Biology at UCLA, “Neuroecology,
Chemical Defense, and the Keystone Species Concept”, The Biological Bulletin, Dec. 2007,
http://www.biolbull.org/content/213/3/208.full)
Consumption of STX-laden zooplankton or their incapacitated predators can have dramatic effects on top pelagic predators. Vertebrates such as
fish (Adams et al., 1968; White, 1980, 1981), seabirds (Nisbet, 1983; Shumway et al., 2003), and marine mammals (Geraci et al., 1989; Reyero et
al., 1999; Doucette et al., 2006) are much more sensitive to STX and its derivatives than are invertebrate grazers. Consequently, after
Massive die-offs of
top pelagic predators such as right whales (Doucette et al., 2006), monk seals (Reyero et al., 1999), and several species of fish
(White, 1980, 1981) can lead to dramatic cascading effects throughout entire planktonic communities
dinoflagellate blooms, large-scale vertebrate mortality arises from ingestion of STX-laden planktonic organisms.
(Carpenter et al., 1985; Myers and Worm, 2003; Bruno and O'Connor, 2005).
Keystone loss spills over to cascading biodiversity loss
McKinney 03 (Michael, Director of Environmental Studies, University of Texas, PHD from Yale,
http://books.google.com/books?id=NJUanyPkh0AC&pg=PA274&lpg=PA274&dq=manatees+%22keysto
ne+species%22&source=bl&ots=rB1vju6y6v&sig=isIAuB81ZM_Hv4PAMp2EKt4lH8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=kaX7T_GoEYiorQHfrZ2LCQ&ved=0CGgQ6AEwCA#v=
onepage&q=manatees%20%22keystone%20species%22&f=false, )
Are All Species Equally Important? With so many species at risk, triage decisions cannot be made on the basis of risk alone.
Conservation biologists therefore often ask whether one species is more important than another. Ethically, perhaps one could argue that all
species are equal; an insect may have as much right to live as a panther. But in other ways, in particular. In ecological and evolutionary
importance, all species are not equal. Ecological importance reflects the role a species plays in its ecological
community. Keystone species play large roles because they affect so many other species. Large predators,
for example, often control the population dynamics of many herbivores. When the predators, such as
wolves, are removed, the herbivore population may increase rapidly, overgrazing plants and causing
massive ecological disruption. Similarly, certain plants are crucial food for many animal species in some ecosystems. Extinction
of keystone species will often have cascading effects on many species, even causing secondary
extinctions . Many therefore argue that saving keystone species should be a priority.
2NC Gray Whales – Impact
Ocean decline causes extinction- synergistic effects create rapid transformation of
ecosystems
Jackson 08( Jeremy B. C. Jackson Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology , McGill University, Ph.D. in
Medical Genetics (2005), University of British Columbia, Marine ecologist, paleontologist and a
professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Senior Scientist Emeritus at the
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in the Republic of Panama. “Ecological extinction and evolution
in the brave new ocean” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) vol. 105 Supplement
1, 8/12/08, http://www.pnas.org/content/105/Supplement_1/11458.full?tab=author-info)//BLOV
The great mass extinctions of the fossil record were a major creative force that provided entirely new
kinds of opportunities for the subsequent explosive evolution and diversification of surviving clades.
Today, the synergistic effects of human impacts are laying the groundwork for a comparably great
Anthropocene mass extinction in the oceans with unknown ecological and evolutionary
consequences. Synergistic effects of habitat destruction, overfishing, introduced species, warming,
acidification, toxins, and massive runoff of nutrients are transforming once complex ecosystems like coral
reefs and kelp forests into monotonous level bottoms, transforming clear and productive coastal seas into
anoxic dead zones, and transforming complex food webs topped by big animals into simplified,
microbially dominated ecosystems with boom and bust cycles of toxic dinoflagellate blooms, jellyfish,
and disease. Rates of change are increasingly fast and nonlinear with sudden phase shifts to novel
alternative community states. We can only guess at the kinds of organisms that will benefit from this
mayhem that is radically altering the selective seascape far beyond the consequences of fishing or
warming alone. The prospects are especially bleak for animals and plants compared with metabolically
flexible microbes and algae. Halting and ultimately reversing these trends will require rapid and
fundamental changes in fisheries, agricultural practice, and the emissions of greenhouse gases on a global
scale.
Ocean decline will cause mass extinction absent action- CO2 emmisions, fisheries
and chemical run-offs are creating deadzones
Harrabin 13 (Roger Harrabin is BBC’s Environment analyst, Visiting Fellow at Green Templeton
College, Oxford and an Associate Press Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge, “Health of oceans
'declining fast'” BBC, 10/3/13,http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-24369244)//BLOV
A review from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), warns that the oceans are facing multiple
threats. They are being heated by climate change, turned slowly less alkaline by absorbing CO2, and suffering from
overfishing and pollution. The report warns that dead zones formed by fertiliser run-off are a problem. It says conditions
are ripe for the sort of mass extinction event that has afflicted the oceans in the past. It says: “We have been
taking the ocean for granted. It has been shielding us from the worst effects of accelerating climate change by absorbing excess CO2 from the
atmosphere. “Whilst terrestrial temperature increases may be experiencing a pause, the ocean continues to warm regardless. For the most part,
however, the public and policymakers are failing to recognise - or choosing to ignore - the severity of the situation.” It says the cocktail of threats
facing the ocean is more powerful than the individual problems themselves. Coral reefs, for instance, are suffering from the higher
temperatures and the effects of acidification whilst also being weakened by bad fishing practices,
pollution, siltation and toxic algal blooms. Atmospheric threshold IPSO, funded by charitable foundations, is publishing a
set of five papers based on workshops in 2011 and 2012 in partnership with the International Union for Conservation of Nature
(IUCN’s) World Commission on Protected Areas. The reports call for world governments to halt CO2
increase at 450ppm . Any higher, they say, will cause massive acidification later in the century as the CO2 is absorbed into the sea. It
urges much more focused fisheries management, and a priority list for tackling the key groups of chemicals
that cause most harm. It wants the governments to negotiate a new agreement for the sustainable fishing in the high oceans to be policed
by a new global high seas enforcement agency. The IUCN’s Prof Dan Laffoley said: "What these latest reports make absolutely clear is that
deferring action will increase costs in the future and lead to even greater, perhaps irreversible, losses. " The UN climate report
confirmed that the ocean is bearing the brunt of human-induced changes to our planet. These findings give us
more cause for alarm – but also a roadmap for action. We must use it." 'Extinction risk' The co-coordinator, Prof Alex Rogers from
Oxford University has been asked to advise the UN's own oceans assessment but he told BBC News he had led the
IPSO initiative because: "It’s important to have something which is completely independent in any way
from state influence and to say things which experts in the field felt was really needed to be said ." He
said concern had grown over the past year thanks to papers signalling that past extinctions had involved warming seas, acidification and low
oxygen levels. All are on the rise today. He agreed there was debate on whether fisheries are recovering by better management following
examples in the US and Europe, but said it seemed clear that globally they were not. He also admitted a debate about whether overall climate
change would increase the amount of fish produced in the sea. Melting sea ice would increase fisheries near the poles
whilst stratification of warmer waters in the tropics would reduce mixing of nutrients and lead to lower
production, he said. He said dead zones globally appeared to be increasing although this may reflect increased reporting. "On ocean
acidification, we are seeing effects that no-one predicted like the inability of fish to detect their environments properly. It’s clear that it will affect
many species. We really do have to get a grip on what’s going on in the oceans," he said.
Impact Modules
2NC Japan SP Module
Whaling hurts Japan’s soft power – upsets trading partners
Mahr 10—TIME's South Asia Bureau Chief and correspondent in New Delhi, India (Krista, “Support
for Japan’s Whaling: On the Verge of Extinction?,” TIME, 6/16,
http://science.time.com/2010/06/16/support-for-japans-whaling-on-the-verge-of-extinction/)//FJ
Having lived in Iceland in 2006 when that island nation decided to resume its own scientific whaling program to much of the world’s dismay,
it’s hard for me personally to understand why nations with bigger fish to fry are willing to risk so much
political capital with their trading partners to fight what looks, to most of the world, like a losing battle. The
continuing hunt for the endangered stocks of bluefin tuna may be wrong, but at least opponents can grudgingly acknowledge there is a economic
and gastronomic incentive worth fighting for there. Whale meat, which is sold in Japan and Iceland, is not much of an
industry, and to this palette, it’s straddling of the beefy-fishy flavor zones is a little gross.\
Whaling kills Japan’s soft power – Australia proves
Zelko 13—Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont
(Frank, “Hang up the harpoons, Japan,” The Los Angeles Times, 7/23,
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/23/opinion/la-oe-zelko-japan-whaling-20130723)//FJ
Politically, whaling causes nothing but ill will and tarnishes Japan's image . The current skirmish with
Australia is merely one example of how Japan has had to expend political and economic capital to
support a deeply unprofitable and unpopular industry. Furthermore, in an effort to overturn the 1986 moratorium, countless
Japanese diplomats have spent the last three decades cajoling poorer nations — most of whom have no
interest in whaling — into joining the IWC and voting with Japan. Ecologically, whaling is unjustifiable. Most whale
species are not even close to recovering from the massive population crash caused by commercial whaling. From a conservation perspective, it is
very unwise to harvest a large mammal that reproduces very slowly. Fin whales — the second-largest animal ever to live on Earth and a species
that Icelandic whalers continue to hunt — gestate for 11 months and give birth to just one offspring every three years. Moreover, scientific
studies demonstrate that whales play an important role in ocean ecology. By feeding on deepwater plankton and excreting at the surface, they
help prime the "biological pump" that ensures the continual recycling of nutrients throughout the oceans' depths. Ironically, the most compelling
reason why Japan and other nations should stop whaling may well be the least likely to persaude them to do so: the cultural shift in people's
attitudes toward whales since WWII. The whaling industry is still struggling to come to grips with the fact that in
Western popular culture, the whale has been transformed from mere blubber and baleen to a sort of
Buddha of the deep — a gentle, peaceful and highly intelligent behemoth that has lived in harmony with
its environment for millions of years.
Japanese soft power is key to solve for Middle East conflict – no historical animosity
and economic influence.
Wagner and Cafiero 13—contributors at The World Post (*Daniel AND **Giorgio, “Japan's
Influence in the Middle East,” The World Post, 10/25, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/danielwagner/japans-influence-in-the-m_b_4159850.html)//FJ
However, Japan has not only relied on its 'hard power' to improve the prospects for stability in the Middle
East. In 2006, Japan initiated the Corridor of Peace and Prosperity, aimed at bringing about
reconciliation between the Israelis and Palestinians. The initiative entails Japanese teachers working in Palestinian
refugee camps in Jordan and Japanese financial support for the Jericho Agro-Industrial Park, which is set to begin in 2014. This month
Japan announced a $60 million humanitarian aid package, much of which is directed toward Jordan and intended to ease the
ongoing financial burden of addressing the needs of Syrian refugees. Agreements between Japan and Saudi Arabia
concerning cultural exchanges and technical assistance have also factored into Japan's 'soft power'
campaigns in the region. Japan understands that the region's instability will prove to be a continual
challenge. While Tokyo firmly supports the establishment of a sovereign and democratic Palestinian state, based on the pre-1967 borders, the
absence of a seat on the UN Security Council limits Tokyo's ability to influence such decision making. Given the tense situation in the Persian
Gulf, the Japanese understand that their economic dependency on oil and gas that transits the Strait of Hormuz constitutes a perennial weakness.
Rising Chinese investment throughout the Middle East is another area of concern for Tokyo, given how influential the Chinese have become in
the region. Japan has therefore sought alternative sources of LNG and made major investments in renewable sources of energy, with the aim of
decreasing reliance on the Middle East for its energy needs. In its pursuit of greater energy independence from the GCC, Japan should have little
difficulty increasing LNG imports from its main non-Middle Eastern suppliers -- Australia, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Russia. Japan may
also be able to increase imports from Algeria, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Peru and the U.S. Although it is
Japan holds some unique cards in the Middle East , maintaining cooperative ties with
both Israel and Iran, for example, while remaining neutral vis-à-vis the conflict in Syria. As the top export
partner for Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, number two for Oman, number three for Saudi Arabia,
and number five for Iran, Japan wields considerable economic influence throughout the region. The
an important U.S. ally,
pressure that the Obama Administration placed on Japan to cooperate with Western-imposed economic sanctions on Iran underscored how
Japanese consumption of Iranian gas and oil was an influential variable in the standoff between Washington and Tehran. In short, although it is
Japan is one of the most influential economic actors in the Persian Gulf -has no historical 'baggage' in the Middle East and
the Japanese are respected on the 'Arab Street'. Given its unique position, it would be a mistake to dismiss Japan as solely an
economic actor in the region. Japan is determined to be a force for peace and stability in the war-torn Middle
East , even if doing so is in its own interest. Japan should ultimately prove influential in helping to determine the
outcome of some of the region's most intractable conflicts .
not widely recognized as such,
something that is unlikely to change in the near or medium term. Japan
Middle East war go nuclear and causes bioweapon use
Russell 09 (James Russell, Naval Postgraduate School National Security professor, Spring 2009, "Strategic Stability Reconsidered:
Prospects for Nuclear War and Escalation in the Middle East"
http://www.nps.edu/academics/sigs/ccc/people/biolinks/russell/PP26_Russell_2009.pdf)
Strategic stability in the region is thus undermined by various factors: (1) asymmetric
interests in the bargaining
framework that can introduce unpredictable behavior from actors; (2) the presence of non-state actors that
introduce unpredictability into relationships between the antagonists; (3) incompatible assumptions about the structure
of the deterrent relationship that makes the bargaining framework strategically unstable; (4) perceptions by Israel and the
United States that its window of opportunity for military action is closing, which could prompt a preventive attack; (5) the prospect that Iran’s
response to pre-emptive attacks could involve unconventional weapons, which could prompt escalation by Israel and/or the
United States; (6) the lack of a communications framework to build trust and cooperation among framework participants. These
systemic weaknesses in the coercive bargaining framework all suggest that escalation by any the parties
could happen either on purpose or as a result of miscalculation or the pressures of wartime circumstance .
Given these factors, it is disturbingly easy to imagine scenarios under which a conflict could quickly escalate in which the regional
antagonists would consider the use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. It would be a mistake to
believe the nuclear taboo can somehow magically keep nuclear weapons from being used in the context of
an unstable strategic framework. Systemic asymmetries between actors in fact suggest a certain increase in the probability of war – a
war in which escalation could happen quickly and from a variety of participants. Once such a war starts, events would likely develop a
momentum all their own and decision-making would consequently be shaped in unpredictable ways. The
international community must take this possibility seriously, and muster every tool at its disposal to
prevent such an outcome, which would be an unprecedented disaster for the peoples of the region, with
substantial risk for the entire world.
2NC Oil/Natural Gas Module
Issuing a waiver for Makah whaling lowers the precedent for obtaining an exemption – allows oil
and natural gas corporations to drill in the Pacific.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society 05—an international non-profit, marine wildlife
conservation organization (“Makah Whaling Could Set a Dangerous Precedent,” Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society, 9/22, http://www.seashepherd.org/news-and-media/2008/11/03/makah-whalingcould-set-a-dangerous-precedent-942)//FJ
The Makah tribe of Washington State may be just the politically-correct tool that the oil and natural gas
corporations need to set a very dangerous precedent for circumventing the Marine Mammal Protection
Act (MMPA). Not once since the Marine Mammal Protection Act came into effect in 1972 has there been a
waiver to ignore the Act. Corporations, developers, and fishing industries have tried, but there is no precedent as of yet, for granting
such a waiver. Whale hunting in Alaska is allowed because it is a subsistence hunt and it was a subsistence
hunt when the MMPA was signed in 1972. It was a subsistence hunt when the United States joined the International Whaling
Commission (IWC) in 1946. The Makah have not had a subsistence hunt for eighty years. The minority of Makah tribal members lobbying for
the hunt are demanding the hunt for reasons of cultural necessity. There is no provision in the MMPA or in the IWC regulations to allow for
whaling for the purpose of cultural necessity. " If a waiver is granted to the Makah for whatever reason," said Captain Paul
Watson, "it
will be a precedent and it will be used by other interests (most notably oil and natural gas
corporations) to request waivers for the ‘necessity' of oil exploration ."
Offshore drilling is susceptible to a litany of environment impacts – spills, chemical
pollution, and wetland loss
Southern Environmental Law Center, 2014 (“Defending Our Southern Coasts” 5/16/2014
http://www.southernenvironment.org/cases-and-projects/offshore-oil-drilling)
Risks of Oil Drilling In February 2014, the Bureau of Ocean Energy
Management released its final environmental
impact statement on the plan to open up the Atlantic coast to seismic surveys for oil and gas. The head of the agency anticipates that
applications to conduct seismic testing could be received by the end of the year. Not only are the air gun blasts used in seismic testing
harmful to marine life such as the critically endangered North American right whale, allowing seismic testing
opens the door to risky oil drilling—under the same lax assessments of risks and precautions that led to the BP Deepwater
Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Despite the BP oil spill in the Gulf, the federal regulatory agency and oil companies continue
operations based on their same claims that there is no significant risk of, or thus impacts from, such oil spills. SELC challenged the agency's
cursory environmental review as illegal and irresponsible in light of the BP blowout and oil spill, and its harmful impacts in the Gulf of Mexico.
In December 2011, SELC filed suit challenging the agency’s continued sales of oil and gas leases in the Gulf, which still are conducted without
adequate environmental analysis and without regard for lessons learned from the BP disaster. Coastal Riches for Wildlife and People The
beautiful and biologically rich coastal areas off Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and our Gulf Coast feature some of the most
productive estuaries in the country, including the Chesapeake Bay, the Pamlico Sound, the ACE Basin, and Mobile Bay. Our coasts attract
millions of tourists, anglers, and other visitors each year and provide important breeding and feeding habitat for rare migratory birds, turtles, and
whales. Tourism and fishing—both commercial and recreational—are the economic backbone of hundreds of communities along our coasts. In
2008 alone, the four Atlantic states yielded $262.8 million in commercial fish landings. Problematic Infrastructure The environmental
impacts of offshore drilling and its accompanying infrastructure and refineries onshore were well known even before
Gulf disaster. Ocean rigs routinely spill and leak oil —and sometimes blow out. Chemicals used to operate oil and gas wells also
pollute the marine environment . Moreover, oil spills and other contamination from onshore refineries, pipelines, and associated
infrastructure would spoil valuable wetland and marsh ecosystems that provide multiple benefits for Southern
communities, including flood control and protection from storms, clean water, and essential habitat for fisheries that sustain our economies and
cultures.
Extinction
Davidson, 2003 (Founder – Turtle House Foundation and Award-Winning Journalist, Fire in the Turtle House, p. 47-51)
But surely the Athenians had it backward; it’s the land that rests in the lap of the sea. Thalassa, not Gaia, is the guardian of life on the blue planet.
A simple, albeit apocalyptic, experiment suggests Thalassa’s power. Destroy all life on land; the ocean creatures will survive
just fine. Given time, they’ll even repopulate the land. But wipe
out the organisms that inhabit the oceans and all life on
land is doomed. “Dust to dust,” says the Bible, but “water to water” is more like it, for all life comes from and returns to the sea.
Our ocean origins abid within us, our secret marine history. The chemical makeup of our blood is strikingly similar to seawater. Every carbon
atom in our body has cycled through the ocean many times. Even the human embryo reveals our watery past. Tiny gill slits form and then fade
during our development in the womb. The
ocean is the cradle of life on our planet, and it remains the axis of existence,
the locus of planetary biodiversity, and the engine of the chemical and hydrological cycles that create and
maintain our atmosphere and climate. The astonishing biodiversity is most evident on coral reefs, often called the “rain forests of
the sea.” Occupying less than one-quarter of 1 percent of the global ocean, coral reefs are home to nearly a third of all marine fish species and to
as many as nine million species in all. But life exists in profusion in every corner of the ocean, right down to the hydrothermal vents on the
seafloor (discovered only in 1977), where more than a hundred newly described species thrive around superheated plumes of sulfurous gasses.
The abundance of organisms in the ocean isn’t surprising given that the sea was, as already mentioned, the crucible of life on Earth. It is the
original ecosystem, the environment in which the “primordial soup” of nucleic acids (which can self-replicate, but are not alive) and other
molecules made the inexplicable and miraculous leap into life, probably as simple bacteria, close to 3.9 billion years ago. A spectacular burst of
new life forms called the Cambrian explosion took place in the oceans some 500 million years ago, an evolutionary experiment that produced
countless body forms, the prototypes of virtually all organisms alive today. It wasn’t until 100 million years later that the first primitive plants
took up residence on terra firma. Another 30 million years passed before the first amphibians climbed out of the ocean. After this head start, it’s
not surprising that evolution on that newcomer-dry land-has never caught up with the diversity of the sea. Of the thirty-three higher-level
groupings of animals (called phyla), thirty-two are found in the oceans and just twelve on land.
Politics
Elections
Link – North Carolina
The non-white voter turnout in North Carolina will make the difference between
winning and losing.
Cillizza 7/16 (Chris, Washington Post, “The 2014 electorate is going to be whiter than it was in 2012.
Here are the Senate races where it matters.”, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/thefix/wp/2014/07/16/the-2014-electorate-is-going-to-be-whiter-than-it-was-in-2012-here-are-the-senateraces-where-it-matters/, Accessed 7/21 //RJ)
The diversity dropoffs in Kentucky and New Hampshire might seem major but are not all that important
electorally speaking because neither state has a terrible diverse electorate. Kentucky is almost 88 percent
white while New Hampshire is 94 percent white. Alaska is a bit of its own special case. The state is 67
percent white but more than 14 percent Native American. Eight percent of people identify as a member of
two (or more races.)¶ North Carolina and Colorado may actually be the most interesting --and, for
Democrats, worrisome -- states in Mehlman's chart. In each state the non-white vote dropped by more
than 13 percent between the 2012 presidential and 2010 midterm elections. In North Carolina,
especially, where non-white votes accounted for almost 31 percent of the electorate in 2012, a
similar drop-off in the diversity of the electorate in 2014 could be the difference between winning and
losing for Sen. Kay Hagan.¶ The chart speaks to the fundamental challenge at the heart of Senate
Democrats' attempts to hold onto control of the chamber this fall. They must find ways to approximate -if not duplicate -- presidential turnout among non-white voters. That's a difficult (and expensive)
proposition -- but not an impossible one.
Indigenous tribes in North California hold the election in their hands; the plan
would send a signal that Dems are ready to work with natives – that mobilizes the
tribes.
Capra 6/25 (Quin La, “Tribe wields huge leverage in NC race”, http://thehill.com/blogs/ballotbox/senate-races/210457-tribe-wields-huge-leverage-in-n-carolina-senate-race //RJ)
This year’s Senate race in North Carolina has given a Native American tribe enormous leverage on a
bill it has been pushing for decades.¶ The contest between Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) and North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis
(R) is expected to go down to wire and could determine which party controls the upper chamber in 2015. Voter turnout is extremely important to
Hagan’s fate, and that’s where the Lumbee Tribe comes into play.¶ North Carolina is home to the most Native Americans
east of the Mississippi River. The Lumbee Tribe is the largest tribal community with more than 58,000 residing in the state, according
to the 2010 census. The tribe usually votes overwhelmingly for Democrats.¶ The Lumbees are seeking a vote in
the Democratic-led Senate on legislation that would give them federal recognition. Federally recognized
tribes are entitled to funding from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and certain benefits, services and
protections because of their relationship with the U.S. government.¶ “[Federal recognition] would give us a better
educational system, more economic development opportunities, a better health system, in effect, a better way to enhance the lives of our people,
” said Paul Brooks, Lumbee tribal chairman.¶ Hagan and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) last year reintroduced the Lumbee Recognition Act.
Similar legislation has passed the House twice in 2007 and 2009.¶ Although the Lumbees lean hard left, Brooks said the tribe is watching both
Hagan and Tillis “very closely, for we do not believe in words anymore, but in what a senator does or does not do.”¶ Brooks noted that
Burr received 40 percent of the votes cast by the Lumbee Tribe in 2010. “That is the winning number for
a Republican candidate in North Carolina Indian Country.”¶ He added, “[Burr] came to us after losing
the Indian vote … and said, ‘I lost your vote, but let’s start again .’ ”¶ Hagan and Burr testified last year
before the Committee on Indian Affairs in support of the Lumbee legislation. ¶ Tillis’s campaign manager, Jordan Shaw, said the Speaker
supports Lumbee recognition.¶ “Obviously, we’re trying to build as broad of a coalition as we can,” Shaw said. “We believe Speaker Tillis
’s message will resonate with people in North Carolina from all walks of life. We’ll campaign across the state to reach [everyone].”¶ The
Lumbee Tribe was first recognized by the state in 1885 and sought federal recognition in 1888. Congress passed The Lumbee Act in 1956, but the
legislation denied Lumbees benefits received by other federally recognized tribes. ¶ “As with so many other tribes, the United
States made promises, but did not provide the tools to secure an economic future,” said Brooks. The law
also mandates the Lumbee Tribe can only be recognized through an act of Congress.¶ The Eastern Band of
Cherokee Indians (EBCI), a smaller population of Native Americans residing in North Carolina, is the only fully recognized tribe in the state. The
Lumbees supported the EBCI when it pursued recognition, but the Eastern Band has been actively opposing Lumbee legislation. ¶ Proponents of
the Lumbee bill say the Eastern Band is blocking the legislation to maintain its monopoly on North Carolina’s gaming industry.¶ On June 6, the
EBCI hosted the North Carolina State Republican convention. The EBCI chief announced the tribe’s support of Tillis, saying, “We need
people to represent the entire state of North Carolina.Ӧ A 2013 report by OpenSecrets.org shows the EBCI spent a total of $180,000 on casino
and gaming lobbying efforts. According to Followthemoney.org, EBCI contributions have tracked with the political winds. In 2008, the EBCI
gave 86 percent of its contributions to Democrats. Since then, the tribe has significantly shifted, giving more to the GOP. ¶ The Eastern Band’s
public relations representative could not be reached for comment.¶ Asked about Lumbee gaming interests, Brooks responded, “It took us many
elections just to get a liquor store … but it happened. We just want the opportunity to help ourselves.”¶ In 2000, tribal voters in Washington
state were pivotal in the unseating of Sen. Slade Gorton (R). In 2002, Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) was reelected to his seat by 524 votes, helped
More recently, Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Heidi Heitkamp
(D-N.D.) won their seats in the 2006 and 2012 elections by 1 percentage point. Native American
voters were overwhelmingly credited with the victories . ¶ Democracy North Carolina, a nonpartisan organization and
tremendously by the Oglala Sioux reservation.¶
advocate of voter participation, reports a 9 percent increase in voter registration among Native Americans from 2008-2014.¶ Brooks said
Senate passage of the measure would “absolutely” mobilize the tribe in support of Hagan .¶ Asked
what he would do if he was the incumbent senator running, Brooks told The Hill, “I have been doing this for almost 40 years. It
’s [going to] to come down to a 1 percent [margin], and we’re that 1 percent. … It reminds me how ironic
history can be that our poor tribe can now determine the 2015 future of the United States Senate and thus
all the promise makers .”¶ “[A Senate vote] is very important. It’s never had to go to the floor, only
committee,” Brooks said. ¶ “As Speaker of the House, yes [we’ve] had a relationship with Tillis. I haven’t had quite the one-onone relationship with Hagan since she’s been in D.C.” said Brooks, who regularly visits Washington to push the recognition issue. ¶ Chris
Hayden, press secretary for Hagan, said the campaign plans to target Native Americans in North Carolina as part of its voter turnout strategy.¶ “
Full federal recognition is critical to the heritage and cultural identity of more than 55,000 North Carolinians and the economic vitality of the
entire Lumbee community,” Hagan said in a statement. “This is an issue of fairness, and I am committed to fighting in the Senate to give the
Lumbee Tribe the full recognition they deserve.Ӧ Hagan and her aides stopped short of promising a vote on the floor this year.
North Carolina is the key state in determining the Senate majority
Kondik 14
Kyle, Managing Editor at Sabato's Crystal Ball, Communications Director at the University of
Virginia Center for Politics, "10 Maps That Explain the 2014 Midterms", May 5 2014,
www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/10-maps-that-explain-the-2014-midterms106347.html#.U6kMUvldW5o
Perhaps the key Senate race in the country is in North Carolina, a Republican-leaning swing
state that both sides suspect could decide the Senate majority. Adjust your eyes when looking at the maps
above, which feature, on the left, Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan’s victory over Republican Elizabeth Dole in 2008 and, on the
right, Republican Sen. Richard Burr’s victory over Democrat Elaine Marshall two years later. In this case, blue is for
Republicans, and red is for Democrats. (These maps are from Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, a first-rate
resource for election watchers.) Hagan took slightly more than 54 percent of the two-party vote against Dole in 2008, four points
better than Obama performed on the same ballot. Two years later, incumbent Burr performed a bit better than Hagan in his
reelection bid, winning 56 percent of the two-party vote. In each of these elections, the winner of the state also
won Raleigh’s Wake County. Hagan took the county by 15 points in 2008; Burr won it by a point in
2010. Wake is North Carolina’s second-biggest county, but it consistently casts more votes than
the biggest—Mecklenburg, home to Charlotte. Because Florida and Ohio, with their famous, key counties
like Hillsborough (Tampa) and Hamilton (Cincinnati), don’t feature Senate races this year, Wake
might very well be the key county this year. Hagan needs to win it again, and not just by a few
points, which will be a challenge given the significant turnout problems Democrats face in North
Carolina midterms.
Link – Indigenous
Native Americans are currently mixed over Obama’s second term, and empirically
they have been key donators to his cause.
Capriccioso 12 (Rob, 11/7/12, “One Who Helps People Throughout the Land Wins Second Term;
Natives Await Proactive Agenda”, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/11/07/one-whohelps-people-throughout-land-wins-second-term-natives-await-proactive-agenda, Accessed 7/17/14 //RJ)
President Barack Obama, adopted as “One Who Helps People Throughout the Land” by the Crow Tribe in
2008, will be leader of the free world for four more years, and Native Americans now eagerly anticipate
his vision for a strong and progressive tribal agenda in his second term.¶ The president’s win came earlier
than many political analysts expected on election night, as he defeated Republican challenger Mitt
Romney, who had expressed support for tribal sovereignty and self-determination during his unsuccessful
bid for the presidency. Several swing states that Obama needed to win, including Ohio, Virginia, and
Pennsylvania, came through for him in the end.¶ Many Native Americans went to bat for Obama during his
long run for re-election, with some making convincing arguments that he has been the best president ever
for Indian country. Some tribes and individual Indians also offered major donations to his campaign .¶ During
his first term, Obama signed into law the Tribal Law and Order Act, the permanent reauthorization of the
Indian Health Care Improvement Act, water and trust settlements, the Helping Expedite and Advance
Responsible Tribal Homeownership (HEARTH) Act, and his administration worked for improved federaltribal policy, including asking for legislative changes that would increase the power of tribes to request aid
from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.¶ Obama also expressed support for the United Nations Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous People, supported economic development on reservations, hired several American Indians to serve in his administration,
regularly met with tribal leaders, and his Department of the Interior worked on reforming the federal Indian trust system.¶ Of late, the president
has been working to get tribal jurisdiction portions of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) through Congress, and his administration has
pressed for a clean Carcieri legislative fix that has been elusive since early 2009.¶ “[With me] as president, you have a voice in the White House,”
Obama told Indian Country Today Media Network in a first-of its-kind interview with the Native press in October. “Since the earliest days of my
administration, we’ve been working hand in hand between our nations to keep that promise through a comprehensive strategy to help meet the
challenges facing Native American communities.Ӧ Obama also specifically mentioned Native Americans in his victory speech as part of his overall
discussion of the future of the nation.¶ At the same time,
all Obama did was not popular with all parts of Indian country.
In particular, some Indians felt that his administration shortchanged Indians in its negotiation of the $3.4
billion Cobell settlement. Some have also said he needs to focus on increased reforms at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, especially given a
series of recent missteps on federal laws involving tribes.¶ Others were disappointed that the president has not visited a
reservation since his first campaign for president in 2008, and that he has not made a verbal apology to
Indians for historical sins of America’s past. Whether he has done enough to support tribal economic and
energy development has also been a major topic of contention that has been highlighted by Republican
Indian affairs leaders in Congress.
AT Obama Won’t Push
Obama has committed to tribes.
ICTMN Staff 7/16 (“Obama Allocates $10 Million for Tribal Climate Change Adaptation,”
indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/07/16/obama-allocates-10-million-tribal-climate-changeadaptation-155890, Accessed 7/20/14 //RJ)
“From
the Everglades to the Great Lakes to Alaska and everywhere in between, climate change is a
leading threat to natural and cultural resources across America, and tribal communities are often the
hardest hit by severe weather events such as droughts, floods and wildfires,” said Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell,
chair of the White House Council on Native American Affairs, in a statement. “ Building on the President’s commitment to
tribal leaders , the partnership announced today will help tribal nations prepare for and adapt to the
impacts of climate change on their land and natural resources.Ӧ
The administration has already pushed for tribal policies
Capriccioso 7/3 (Rob, 7/3/14, “Pushing Obama to Appoint a Tribal Economic Development Council”,
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/07/03/pushing-obama-appoint-tribal-economicdevelopment-council-155632?page=0%2C1, Accessed 7/17/14 //RJ)
The administration has already made tentative and limited progress in improving reservation economies.
During the president’s June trip to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, the White House noted in a press
release that the administration has in several instances already partnered with Native communities by
granting multi-millions of dollars in funding, by providing increased technical assistance on various federaltribal programs, and by pushing for legal and regulatory tribal economy-focused improvements.
AT Link Not UQ
The next few months are critical.
Zimmer 7/11 (Eric S., Indian County, “Obama at Standing Rock: The Next Vital Steps”,
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/07/11/obama-standing-rock-next-vital-steps,
accessed 7/20 //RJ)
Almost three weeks ago, President Obama
became the fourth sitting chief executive to set foot on Native American
land when he visited the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota. During his speech, the president promised to
continue his administration’s efforts to respect tribal sovereignty and help Native communities like Standing Rock find solutions to the structural
problems that have gripped Indian country for so long. But
if the past is any judge, the administration’s actions in coming
months will reveal the depth of their commitment to helping Native communities.
Obama needs to keep his promises to the natives.
Zimmer 7/11 (Eric S., Indian County, “Obama at Standing Rock: The Next Vital Steps”,
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/07/11/obama-standing-rock-next-vital-steps,
accessed 7/20 //RJ)
In the short term, the president has succeeded in grabbing some national media attention for Standing
Rock and making an historic visit to Indian country. It might be too soon to measure the veracity of
his administration’s commitment to Indian affairs. But, as Obama said two weeks ago, he has
tried to be “a president who honors” the “sacred trust” between tribes and the federal
government, as well as one “who respects [tribal] sovereignty.” Hopefully, the next two years will
show that the president stood up after Standing Rock and made those promises a reality.
AT Obamacare Thumps
Republicans’ sole focus on Obamacare undermines their midterms chances.
Nowicki 5/11 (Dan, AZ Central, “Democrats face tough landscape in 2014 midterms”,
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/2014/05/11/democrats-face-tough-landscapemidterms/8962725/ , Accessed 7/20 //RJ)
"I don't think the Democrats are going to take back the House, but you never know," said Pastor, who has
served in the House since 1991 and is the senior member of Arizona's House delegation. "In the Senate, I
think they're going to be able to hold their own. They expected this two years ago and had a number of
candidates in Missouri and Indiana and things didn't go well. Sometimes primaries produce candidates
that are not the best candidate, and you never know in a campaign when you're going to have a misstep."¶
Others said House Republicans may have miscalculated by focusing so heavily on Obama's troubled
health-care rollout at the expense of other issues such as immigration reform . While the health-care
technical embarrassments and other problems have given Republicans a lift, the administration has taken
steps to recover and it's unclear how the issue will play over the summer.¶ "Putting all their eggs in that
'Obamacare' basket might be a mistake," said David Berman, an Arizona State University professor emeritus and senior research
fellow at the school's Morrison Institute for Public Policy. "They hit 8 million (sign-ups), and it's working. Even though a
majority of the people disapprove of it, a majority also want to see it fixed, so I can see that sort of fading
as an issue.”
AT Natives Love Obama
Natives are still mixed over Obama
Zimmer 7/11 (Eric S., Indian County, “Obama at Standing Rock: The Next Vital Steps”,
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/07/11/obama-standing-rock-next-vital-steps,
accessed 7/20 //RJ)
The history of executive visits to Indian reservations suggests we should cast a wary eye on last week’s
trip and what it means for the future of Indian affairs. On one hand, Obama seems more sincere in his
commitment to Natives than most of his predecessors. His interest in Native issues reaches back to at least 2008, when he
was ceremonially adopted by Montana’s Crow Nation and named “One Who Helps People Throughout the Land” during a campaign stop. He has
followed through on the symbolism of that event in a number of ways. Obama hosts a White House Tribal Nations Conference every year, at
which tribal leaders from across the country discuss employment, energy, health care, criminal jurisdiction, and other issues. Last year,
Obama signed an executive order creating the White House Council on Native American Affairs , a group of
policy advisers tasked with planning and executing policies along with tribal communities. Whether this council will have a healthy, meaningful
relationship with tribes remains to be seen. But
the administration has also taken important strides toward improving
infrastructure and economic development in Indian country, supporting tribal businesses, courts, and
healthcare centers in their struggles against poverty, crime, and disease.¶ On the other hand, it is disappointing
that it took the president six years to visit Indian country, and the historic nature of the day will only carry
the administration so far. When it comes to promises, Native communities have seen and heard it all
before. Understanding and respecting tribal sovereignty is the core tenet of effective Indian policy,
seconded by the federal government’s willingness to fulfill the trust responsibility that obligates it to
providing the resources tribes need to overcome the challenges they face.
Even with the recent visit, Obama has not been perceived as pro-native within the
communities.
McKOSATO 7/5 (Harlan, “For Natives, a split in opinion on Obama”,
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/opinion/local_columns/for-natives-a-split-in-opinion-onobama/article_a89d35a1-3ab8-5036-b1a4-2796476affc2.html, Accessed 7/20 //RJ)
Three weeks ago, President Barack Obama made his first visit to an Indian reservation as the sitting president
when he and first lady Michelle Obama dropped in on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in Cannonball,
N.D. Many of us remember when, on the campaign trail before his first term, Obama made a trip to the Crow Rez in Montana, where he was
adopted by the Black Eagle family and given a Crow Indian name.¶ Barack and Michelle arrived in Dakota and Lakota country on the day of
Standing Rock’s annual Flag Day Powwow (which happened to be Friday the 13th). They met with a group of young Native Americans for a
roundtable discussion before heading over to the powwow.¶ They were greeted with cheers, drums, dancers, tepees and a song to honor Mr.
President. They sat next to Standing Rock Chairman David Archambault, who proudly wore an eagle-feather headdress. Archambault, in his
welcoming remarks, said that the great Lakota Chief Sitting Bull once asked the U.S. government to send an honest man to his reservation.¶ “If
Sitting Bull were sitting here today, he’d be honored,” said the chairman. “The best thing that’s happened
to Indian Country has been President Obama being elected. I know [his visit] is not going to undo all the wrongs that have
been done to Native Americans or to Indian Country, but it’s going to inspire a lot of people.”¶ The president, in his 12-minute
speech, touted his administration’s record in dealing with Native Americans. He pointed to settling two key court cases, the Keepseagle and
Cobell litigation. He commended the White House Tribal Nations Conference and the establishment of the White House Council on Native
American Affairs, as well as the passage of the Violence Against Women Act.¶ But
not everyone was quick to praise the
president, including Tex Hall, chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation of North Dakota. He was quoted in The Washington Post:
“There’s been a bad track record. Our fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers have gone to
Washington, and there have been … no promises kept. That’s why we’ve not trusted the federal
government.Ӧ I recently spoke with the acclaimed Native activist and poet John Trudell and asked him about his opinion of the Obama
administration. “I don’t trust them. I think the whole entire political system is corrupt, whether it’s the Republicans and George W. Bush, or the
Democrats and Obama. I think they all serve the corporate fate. In general, the system is filled with lies and tokenism. As Native people, we’re so
far down the list because we don’t have the numbers, and the politicians just show up for photo ops.¶ “When you
look at the
sovereignty, the economics, the cultural well-being of the Native people [Obama] hasn’t done one thing,”
said Trudell. “He’s just like every other U.S. president. I think a lot of Native people are just glad to finally be
acknowledged. You look at the time Obama has been in office, and the teen suicide rates on reservations
are [still] out of control, the poverty is out of control. When you’re surrounded by these statistical dynamics, how can
you have self-esteem? Being acknowledged is an illusion. It might make you feel good for a little while, but
it doesn’t change the overall quality of life for our children.”¶ In his speech, the president referenced Sitting Bull’s famous
quote, “Let us put our minds together to see what we can build for our children.” Obama added, “There’s no denying that for some Americans
the deck has been stacked against them, sometimes for generations. And that’s been the case for many Native Americans. But if we’re working
together, we can make things better. We’ve got a long way to go, but if we do our part, I believe that we can turn the corner. We can break old
cycles. We can give our children a better future.Ӧ Only
time will tell.
Politics---Public Divided---2NC
Whaling is politically contentious – public is divided.
Koppelman 10—an attorney in Seattle, WA (Carol B., “Anderson v. Evans: the Ninth Circuit
Harmonizes Treaty Rights and the Marine Mammal Protection Act,” Hastings College of the Law: WestNorthwest Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, Summer 2010, LexisNexis)//FJ
The Anderson court admirably balanced the protection of whales as required under the MMPA with the treaty rights of the Makah to whale. Still,
whaling remains a controversial subject. As the public comments to the draft EIS indicate, n372 the
public is divided in its support for Makah's whaling rights and strict adherence to the U.S. being a nonwhaling nation. Short of Congressional action, courts and commentators will be left to continue in their
analysis and interpretation of international and domestic law, as well as previous court decisions,
concerning the Makah Tribe's treaty whaling rights.
Agenda Politics
Link – Indigenous
Pushing for indigenous issues saps political capital – GOP backlash and presidential
unwillingness
Capriccioso 11 (Rob, December 12, 2011, “A CALL FOR OBAMA TO SPEND POLITICAL CAPITAL ON
IMPORTANT NATIVE ISSUES”, http://nativestrength.com/tag/obama-administration/page/2/, Accessed
7/17/14 //RJ)
The Atlantic’s Andrew Cohen, who has been increasingly vocal in his magazine on tribal legal issues, is calling
on the Obama
administration to take bolder steps on Native issues. Specifically, he wants the administration to make some
noise on its nomination of a tribal citizen to become a federal trial judge in Oklahoma.¶ “In February, the president
nominated Arvo Mikkanen, an Ivy-educated Native American, to a spot as a federal trial judge in Oklahoma,” writes Cohen. “He would be only the
third documented Native American federal judge in U.S. history. But GOP
Senator Tom Coburn immediately blocked the
nomination and, nine months later, Mikkanen still hasn’t received a hearing, much less a floor vote. Worse,
no one in Washington seems to care.Ӧ Cohen also notes that the United States Supreme Court in June ruled against
American Indian interests in a case styled United States v. Jicarilla Apache Nation: “In a 7-1 decision, the Court ruled that
the U.S. could withhold from lawyers for the Jicarilla Apache Nation hundreds of documents that may be
relevant to the tribe’s long-standing mismanagement claims against the feds. Justice Samuel Alito justified the
decision by reminding his audience that the relationship between the feds and the tribe was less about trusteeship and more about power.”¶ “So
what is the other branch of government, the executive branch, doing for Native Americans as 2011 comes to a close?” asks Cohen. “Is
the
White House pushing for Mikkanen to get a hearing? No. Is it pushing Congress to help change the
procedural rules in Indian trust cases so that American Indian litigants can have more access to federal
documents that pertain to their claims against federal officials? No. Those things would involve the
expenditure of political capital – and the administration has shown repeatedly its unwillingness to spend in
this area.”
Advantage Counterplan
Advantage CP
TERA CP---1NC
Text: The United States Federal Government should end Title V of the Energy
Policy Act of 2005 Section 3504 restrictions that give the Secretary of the Interior
authority to block the production of wind and/or solar energy.
Lifting TERA regulations would allow for greater tribal self-determination and
boosts Native sovereignty.
Kronk 12—Assistant Professor, Texas Tech University School of Law (Elizabeth, Tribal Energy
Resource Agreements: The Unintended "Great Mischief for Indian Energy Development" and the
Resulting Need for Reform, 29 Pace Envtl. L. Rev. 811)
By eliminating the requirement that tribes entering into a TERA come into compliance with a federallymandated environmental review process, tribes would, therefore, have increased decision-making
authority, which in turn increases practical sovereignty that has been shown to increase the likelihood of
success of a project.¶ Furthermore, reduction of the federal government’s role in energy development
within Indian country correlates with the federal government’s goal to promote tribal selfdetermination.153 Although some tribes may not be in a position to take an increased role in decisionmaking within their territories, those that are in the position should be encouraged to take an increasingly
active role, thereby empowering the appropriate tribes to be self-determinating.154 The failure of the
federal government to recognize that many tribes are capable of independent decision-making would see
tribal nations “frozen in a perpetual state of tutelage.”155
TERAs are key to tribal sovereignty – they are a crucial recognition of equality by
the federal government
Hendershot 8—a columnist for the Smoky Mountain News and a freelance writer living in the
mountains of Western North Carolina next to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians' Qualla Boundary
(Don, Between Two Sovereigns, http://www.drinkerbiddle.com/Templates/media/files/news/2008/paulmoorehead-talks-tera-with-native-american-journal.pdf)
TERAs were devised to cut through the red tape and streamline the process by which tribes negotiate and
execute leases regarding energy development and generation. In the past, the Department of Interior's
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has been required to review each individual agreement — a sometimes
stifling prospect that led to costly delays and/or loss of opportunities. A TERA would provide an umbrella
agreement between a tribe and DOI that would allow the tribe to negotiate directly with other business
partners, without federal govern- mental oversight. After a long public vetting process, the TERA
regulations were formally approved April 9 of this year.¶ A long time coming¶ According to David Lester,
an enrolled Muscogee Creek and executive director of the Council of Energy Resource Tribes (CERT),
the Council, in conjunction with other inter-tribal organizations, “began work 10 years ago to create
some kind of TERA-like legislation.Ӧ Paul Moorehead, currently a partner at Drinker Biddle & Rheath
LLC where he specializes in federal Indian law and poli- cy, concurs that TERAs and Title V have had a
long slow journey through Congress. “I served on the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs as chief
counsel and staff director from 1997- 2005, and during my tenure the committee worked with tribal
leaders and others in Congress to fashion precursor legislation to what became the Indian Tribal Energy
Development and Self Determination Act, signed into law in August 2005 by President Bush as part of
the Energy Policy Act,” Moorehead said.¶ Both men see the creation of TERA legislation as a positive
step regarding Indian sovereignty and self-determination. “For every sovereign in the world, energy is a
major concern,” Lester said. “We need to first be able to address our own energy needs, then if there is
a surplus, supply energy to outside customers to increase currency flow and further diversify our
economies.” “This is a big step forward and essentially steps the govern- ment back from a
domineering role,” Moorehead said. “Under current law, even the most sophisticated and savvy Indian
tribe must rely on the Department of Interior to review and approve energy-related leases, business
agreements, right-of-way that involve tribal lands, tribal resources, and tribal populations.Ӧ The nuts and
bolts¶ That shiny new vehicle sits, shimmering like a chimera on the plains, waiting to be taken on a test
drive. But getting a license is a lengthy and detailed process. It is true that once a tribe has a TERA in
place, doing business will be greatly expe- dited; however, the TERA application itself will likely take a
year to complete. “There is no quick and easy form,” according to Darryl Francois, senior program
analyst at the Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development (IEED). “The regulations outline a
spe- cific set of steps that must be taken when applying for a TERA.Ӧ Francois said that a tribe may
approach IEED formally or informally at any time during the application process. “We can sit down
with the tribe and explain all the options so the tribe is not walking blind into the process.Ӧ While there
are specific steps, some of those steps remain vague and subjec- tive. According to Title V regulations,
DOI must determine that a tribe has the requisite capacity to “manage the full scope of administrative,
regulatory, and energy resource development” that the tribe proposes to assume under the TERA.¶
Francois said that IEED has access to engineers, geologists, resource spe- cialists and administrators not
only to help determine a tribe's capacity but also to help the tribe build capacity.¶ “We are also in the
process of creating a Tribal Energy Policy Advisory Committee composed of tribal mem- bers and DOI
personnel to assist in capacity building,” Francois said. And, he pointed out, tribes could rely on their
partners in energy development to provide needed technical and/or admin- istrative expertise.¶ Another
gray area is environmental oversight. Regulations will require that DOI conduct National Environmental
Policy Act (NEPA) reviews over the range of a proposed TERA before approving it. However, there will
be no NEPA review required for each specific action under the umbrella of the TERA. Instead, the tribe
will have to conduct its own environ- mental review, including public comment.¶ Once a tribe submits a
TERA appli- cation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has 30 days to determine if the application is complete.
If it's determined not to be complete the tribe has 45 days to sub- mit a final proposal. Once BIA accepts
the proposal it has 270 days to render a ruling, accepting or denying the TERA.¶ Tribes operating under a
TERA would assume all financial and adminis- trative responsibilities and would suffer the consequences
of poor business decisions. However, Francois noted that federal tribal trust responsibilities “are still
there.”¶ He said that in cases of fraud or where a tribe's physical assets were in dan- ger, “the
department would step in.”¶ TERA options¶ TERAs may not be a fit for every tribe in every instance.
According to Moorehead, “TERA is not for every tribe because some tribes have the kind of demonstrable capacity to develop their resources and manage their physical environments and some do not. It's also
important to note that those tribes that, for whatever reason, aren't comfortable with or don't like the
TERA regime, can continue to operate under existing pre-2005 statutes such as the Indian Mineral
Development Act.Ӧ Francois agrees, noting that tribes, like all entities, have limited dollars to work with
and need to make wise resource decisions. Besides the DOI's Indian Mineral Development Act, tribes also
have access to programs like the Department of Energy's Tribal Energy Program. The main difference
between these “pre-2005” statutes and TERA is the degree of tribal control.¶ Francois said that if a tribe
were on the verge of implementing an energy agreement when TERA took effect, they could insert
language specifying that¶ when the current lease was up they would be free to renegotiate under a TERA.
“Technically there should be no change for any private party, just a regu- latory change between the
government and the tribe.”¶ The future of TERAs¶ “It's a new vehicle,” Francois said. “We welcome the opportunity to work with tribes to enhance their self-determination.”¶ “I think you have to
look at TERAs as part of the broad swings and themes in federal Indian law and policy. The cur- rent
policy stresses tribal decision-mak- ing and tribal political and economic development, as compared to
past poli- cies that put a premium on a paradigm dominated by the federal government. TERAs
present an opportunity for willing tribes to assume greater control and responsibility for energy and
resource development on their own lands without need for the Secretary of Interior's review or approval,
” said Moorehead.¶ “I think the TERA concept is a logical step in Indian energy development in the age
of Indian self-determination and could and probably will be applied to future tribal resource and land
manage- ment statutes. You can also view a TERA for what it really is: a bi-lateral agreement between
two sovereigns governing activi- ties that will be managed by the local sovereign, the Indian tribe itself.
In the old days, these kinds of bi-lateral agree- ments were called treaties.” !
Turns Culture/ AT: Managerialism
Dirty fuels and unsustainable energy degrade native american culture and
sovereignty.
Thomas-Muller 5 (Clayton, Race, Poverty, and The Environment, “Cycle of Destruction: Energy
Exploitation on Sacred Native Lands”, http://reimaginerpe.org/node/307 //RJ)
The link between unsustainable energy consumption in the Americas and the destruction and desecration
of Indigenous homelands and culture is undeniable. As Indigenous peoples, we reject the proposition that our traditional lands
should be sacrificed at the altar of irresponsible energy policies. ¶ Indigenous peoples in the United States, Canada, and
throughout the Americas have experienced systematic and repeated violations by oil, gas, mining, and
energy industries of our treaty rights, particularly those that protect our traditional lands. Oil and gas
developments have consistently violated our human rights and caused unconscionable damage to
traditional territories that have sustained us since time immemorial .¶ In the United States, in contrast to other
regions of the world, about 2/3 of all oil use is for transportation. (In most of the rest of the world, oil is more commonly used for space heating
and power generation than for transportation.) Obviously, a transportation and energy policy that is so heavily dependent upon fossil fuel is
unsustainable. Fossil fuels have a destructive life cycle, which encompasses extraction, transportation of these
raw materials via pipeline, truck, and tanker to refineries, and the processing and shipment of the final
product.¶ For the Indigenous peoples historically traumatized by colonial conquest and subsequent treaty
violations, an energy policy dependent upon fossil fuels creates yet another cycle of destruction
characterized by the devastation of sacred sites, the drying up of aquifers, micro-climate changes, and the
poisoning of our air and soil with toxins.¶ With the birth of the environmental justice movement over twenty years ago, Indigenous
grassroots activist groups, traditional societies, and organizations, such as the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), answered a call to
action in support of indigenous communities disproportionately targeted for energy resource extraction and development. These groups have
recently developed campaign strategies to help tribal community organizers working to either halt energy resource development on Native lands
altogether, or force it to be more environmentally and culturally responsible. The strategies often involve providing long-term
support to grassroots leaders as they pressure their tribal governments to make informed choices about the
direction tribal economies ought to take, especially in regard to dependency on a fossil fuel energy
paradigm.¶ Most consumers in the United States are unaware that the price they pay for gasoline does not reflect the cost of the devastation
caused by the oil and gas extraction and refining process to the livelihoods and economies of Indigenous and other low-income communities.
Most U.S. consumers simply take what they need to feed their addiction to energy and ignore the
disproportionately large price that Indigenous and other low-income communities pay for a fossil fuel–
based energy policy. Nor do they fully comprehend the true implications of this policy in terms of catastrophic global warming and severe
climatic changes.¶ Natural Gas: Not an “Alternative” Fuel¶ Despite the failure of the Bush administration to endorse the Kyoto Protocol to
reduce carbon dioxide releases, many cities are adopting their own standards for good climate stewardship, fuel efficiency initiatives, and energy
conservation measures. Some cities with diesel-fueled transportation systems are seeking more environmentally friendly alternatives, such as
compressed natural gas buses, or light rail and bus systems that run on electricity. This could do wonders for reducing carbon dioxide, other toxic
emissions, and smog created by fossil fuel–dependent transit systems. These changes would be first steps towards addressing
the environmental injustices experienced by low-income and urban Indigenous communities in our inner
cities.¶ However, we often fail to take into account the fact that mass transit systems powered by electricity are connected to a grid that gets its
power from the burning of fossil fuels. In short, America’s reliance on centralized power for heating, transportation, and water services only
Contrary to corporate claims and media spin, there is
no such thing as clean coal or clean natural gas . And despite the new technologies around cleaner, coal-fired power plants
results in more pressure on Indigenous peoples and our lands.¶
and cleaner-burning natural gas options, the fossil fuel industry and its economic system is steering us towards catastrophic environmental
destruction.¶ With 35 percent of the United States’ fossil fuel located either directly on or near Indigenous lands, we are the target of a renewed
form of colonization characterized by largely unrestrained corporate exploitation of Native lands and peoples, resulting in ecological devastation
and gross violations of human rights. An apt metaphor for the current situation is the period, about 300 years ago, when Jesuit Priests in black
robes came into Indigenous communities promising a better quality of life through Christianity. At the time, church and state were virtually
inseparable. Today, the same may be said of the relationship between states and corporations, with capitalism as the new religion. The Jesuit
Priests have been replaced by corporate Chief Executive Officers in black suits who come into our homelands promising our communities and
tribal leaders a better life through industrialization. What results is a change in our attitudes towards the sacredness of Mother Earth.¶ The chain
of oil production, from exploration and transport to refining and distribution, is also a chain of destruction. First, forests are cut for seismic
exploration, holes are drilled, and sludge pits filled. Next, the refining process releases deadly toxins into the air. Finally, vehicles contribute to
smog and pollution. These environmental costs go largely unaccounted for, conveniently masking the actual costs people in the United States and
around the world pay for profits amassed by a few. In recent years, Indigenous communities in North America have begun to document the
environmental destruction caused by energy industries, in an attempt to expose the real price of oil. ¶ The burning of oil, gas, and coal, known
collectively as fossil fuels, is the primary source of humaninduced climate change. By burning these fuels, humans are releasing carbon that has
been sequestered in the ground for hundreds of millions of years and are emitting carbon dioxide into the planet’s thin and chemically volatile
atmosphere at an unprecedented rate. Climate
change, if not halted, will result in increased frequency and severity
of storms, floods, drought and water shortages, the spread of disease, increased hunger, displacement and
mass migration of people, and social conflict. The homelands of the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic
regions are literally melting away before their eyes .¶ The humans of Mother Earth have too much
reliance on fossil fuels. To halt the damage resulting from their use, the industrialized countries must find more
ecologically sound energy sources that don’t threaten the delicate balance that sustains all life. The people of
the world need to re-evaluate their energy consumption patterns and embrace a transition away from dirty and destructive fossil fuels to clean,
renewable energy. Sustainable energy has a minimal impact on the healthy functioning of the local and global
ecosystems. It is energy with very few negative social, cultural, health, and environmental impacts,
and which can be supplied continuously to future generations on Earth.
Solves Culure/ AT: You Speak for them
Energy policy would take into account the natives and establishes a framework for
reclaiming indigenous culture.
LaDuke et al. 10 (Winona, Bob Gough, Tom Goldtooth, Honor the Earth, Intertribal Council on
Utility Policy, “Energy Justice in Native America”,
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zVqjh41VcH4J:treatycouncil.org/PDF/EJ_in_N
A_Policy_Paper_locked.pdf+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us //RJ)
When considering energy production, resource extraction, housing and energy efficiency it ¶ is essential
that the administration take into account the disproportionate impacts of ¶ climate change and energy
development on American Indian reservation and Alaska Native ¶ villages, and the potential for catalyzing
green reservation economies. We ask that the ¶ administration consult with Honor the Earth, Intertribal
Council On Utility Policy and the ¶ Indigenous Environmental Network, representing a network of 250
grassroots tribal ¶ organizations and tribes, to ensure input from impacted communities is fully taken
into ¶ account, and to ensure Native American participation in the green economy of the future. ¶ A just
nation‐to‐nation relationship means breaking the cycle of asking Native America to ¶ choose between
economic development and preservation of its cultures and lands; ¶ renewable energy and
efficiency improvements provide opportunity to do both ¶ simultaneously. A green, carbon‐reduced
energy policy has major national and ¶ international human rights, environmental and financial
consequences, and we believe that ¶ this administration can provide groundbreaking leadership on this
policy. The reality is ¶ that the most efficient, green economy will need the vast wind and solar
resources that lie ¶ on Native American lands. This provides the foundation of not only a green low
carbon ¶ economy but also catalyzes development of tremendous human and economic potential in ¶ the
poorest community in the United States‐ Native America.
AT: You Don’t Solve Structural Violence
Historically, energy policy results in uranium poisoning, poverty, degradation, and
exploitation of natives.
LaDuke et al. 10 (Winona, Bob Gough, Tom Goldtooth, Honor the Earth, Intertribal Council on
Utility Policy, “Energy Justice in Native America”,
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zVqjh41VcH4J:treatycouncil.org/PDF/EJ_in_N
A_Policy_Paper_locked.pdf+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us //RJ)
The history of resource exploitation, including conventional energy resources, in Indian Country has most
recently been highlighted by the Cobell lawsuit against the Department of the Interior on behalf of
individual Indian land owners, which requires both accountability of the federal trustees and a just
settlement for the Indian plaintiffs. The programmatic exploitation of conventional energy resources has
run an equally long and often deadly course in Indian Country, with a distinctly colonial flavor where
tribes have supplied access to abundant natural resources under trust protection at rock bottom prices in
sweetheart deals promoted by the federal government, yet often go un‐served or underserved by the
benefits of such development. Even the most recent federal energy legislation and incentives are still
designed to encourage the development of tribal resources by outside corporate interests without
ownership or equity participation of the host tribes. The toxic legacy left by fossil fuel and uranium
development on tribal lands remains today and will persist for generations, even without additional
development. Mines and electrical generation facilities have had devastating health and cultural
impacts in Indian country at all stages of the energy cycle‐ cancer from radioactive mining waste to
respiratory illness caused by coal‐fired power plant and oil refinery air emissions on and near
Native lands. Native communities have been targeted in all proposals for long‐term nuclear waste
storage. Compensation for uranium miners and their families has not been fulfilled from the last nuclear
era, and every tribal government with uranium resources has opposed new uranium mining developments,
including in the Grand Canyon, as an immoral and untenable burden for Native American communities.
In addition, energy‐related deforestation has serious climate change and human rights impacts for
Indigenous communities globally. Approximately 20% of climate change‐inducing emissions come
from deforestation and land use, often from unsustainable energy projects, biofuel (agrofuel) and other
monocrop development fueled by a need to satisfy tremendous foreign and World Bank debt obligations.
On an international level, the US has yet to sign onto the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples, we believe signing onto this important agreement is an essential early step in the
context of the administration’s dealings with Native America. When considering energy and climate
change policy, it is important that the White House and federal agencies consider the history of energy
and mineral exploitation and tribes, and the potential to create a dramatic change with innovative policies.
Too often tribes are presented with a false choice: either develop polluting energy resources or remain in
dire poverty. Economic development need not come at the cost of maintaining cultural identity and
thriving ecosystems. Providing incentives to develop further fossil fuels and uranium in Indian country
will only continue the pattern of ignoring the well‐being of tribes and Alaska Native villages in favor of
short‐sighted proposals that exploit the vulnerabilities of poor, politically isolated communities.
AT: You Fracture Natives
Renewables development increases inter-tribe dialogue, which fosters
communication and community building.
Meisen 13 (Peter, President of the Global Energy Network Institute, “Renewable Energy on Tribal
Lands”, http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/research/renewable-energy-on-tribal-lands/RenewableEnergy-on-Tribal-Lands.pdf //RJ)
There is also the chance that a Tribe beginning the process of developing ¶ renewable energy may be able
to find another Native American Tribe that has ¶ successfully completed a similar project and is willing to
mentor the inexperienced Tribe ¶ on the technicalities of developing renewables on tribal lands. A
mentoring Tribe would ¶ help an inexperienced Tribe determine what steps they need to take in order to
achieve ¶ their goals and then provide advice on each step based on their experience. The ¶ advantage of
tribal mentors comes from the fact that many of the difficulties faced by ¶ Tribes developing renewables
are unique to tribal lands. Tribes that have successfully ¶ completed a project understand problems faced
by Native American Tribes, whereas an ¶ outside consulting company might not. A Native American
Tribe may have a greater ¶ understanding and respect for the tribal culture of the Tribe attempting
a project. This ¶ allows for easier communication and can result in the Tribe developing the project being
¶ able to learn faster and more effectively. For these reasons, any Tribe planning to develop ¶ their
renewable energy resource should learn as much as possible from other successful ¶ Native American
Tribes who have developed their own renewable energy resources ¶ either from studying what they did, or
more directly by being mentored by members of an ¶ experienced Tribe.
Solves Poverty
Investment into renewables creates a diverse, robust economy
Meisen 13 (Peter, President of the Global Energy Network Institute, “Renewable Energy on Tribal
Lands”, http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/research/renewable-energy-on-tribal-lands/RenewableEnergy-on-Tribal-Lands.pdf //RJ)
Tribal lands contain enormous potential for renewable energy. In fact, according ¶ to the Intertribal
Council on Utility Policy, the wind resources on Tribal lands in the ¶ Great Planes alone could power over
50 million homes.¶ 1¶ When a Tribe or nation develops ¶ their resources of fossil fuels, whether coal, oil or
natural gas, the resources are limited ¶ and will run out. However, if a Tribe or nation develops clean,
renewable sources of ¶ energy, such as its wind, solar, hydro, or geothermal potential, no matter
how long or ¶ how much energy is produced, the resources will still be as plentiful as when they
were ¶ first harnessed. Developing renewable energy gives Native American Tribes a massive ¶ resource
that could provide them with steady revenue and drive the development of the ¶ tribal infrastructure
necessary for the Tribes to complete large projects. ¶ Energy is an exceptionally valuable commodity in
the modern world and is ¶ unlikely to decrease in value or demand. In fact, according to the Energy
Information ¶ Administration (EIA), energy is expected to increase in both value and demand.2¶
Therefore an economy based on the production of energy is fairly stable. It is even more ¶ stable if it is
based on inexhaustible sources of clean energy such as wind or solar power. ¶ It is also possible for a Tribe
to reinvest the capital gained from the sale of energy or the ¶ leasing of land used to produce renewable
energy into projects that allow the Tribe to ¶ further diversify their economy. The Campo Band of the
Kumeyaay Indians in San Diego ¶ County, CA, for example, is reinvesting its income from a 50 MW wind
farm completed ¶ in 2005 into projects, such as an overnight rest stop, to stimulate the economy of the ¶
Tribe. In most cases this reinvesting of capital will lower unemployment and raise the ¶ standard of living
for the Tribe.
Plan creates jobs and allows natives to recover from the past.
LaDuke et al. 10 (Winona, Bob Gough, Tom Goldtooth, Honor the Earth, Intertribal Council on
Utility Policy, “Energy Justice in Native America”,
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zVqjh41VcH4J:treatycouncil.org/PDF/EJ_in_N
A_Policy_Paper_locked.pdf+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us //RJ)
Providing clean renewable energy development and reversing the trend from exploitation toward energy
justice should be top priority in administration energy decisions. Tribes must be provided federal support
to own and operate a new crop of renewable electricity generating infrastructure providing the dual
benefits of low carbon power and green economic development where it is needed most. Tribes should be
targeted with efficiency programs to reduce consumption of fossil fuels for heating and cooling and
creating local jobs weatherizing and retrofitting buildings, helping reduce the tremendous amount of
money that exits communities to import energy.
Tribal lands have an estimated 535 Billion kWh/year of wind power generation potential. • Tribal lands
have an estimated 17,000 Billion kWh/year of solar electricity generation potential, about 4.5 times total
US annual generation. • Investing in renewable energy creates more jobs per dollar invested than fossil
fuel energy. • Efficiency creates 21.5 jobs for every $1 million invested. • The costs of fuel for wind and
solar power can be projected into the future, providing a unique opportunity for stabilizing an energy
intensive economy
Efforts should be made to invest locally first‐ from training green jobs workers locally to using local
building materials to producing energy locally, closing the financial loop will help revitalize Native
America’s strangled economies, making them less vulnerable to volatile external costs and maximizing
the positive impact of the new green revolution. A green jobs economy and a new, forward thinking
energy and climate policy will transform tribal and other rural economies, and provide the basis
for an economic recovery in the United States. In order to make this possible, we encourage the
Obama Administration to provide incentives and assistance to actualize renewable energy development
by tribes and Native organizations.
Coalition DA
Coalitions DA
Coalitions DA 1NC
Coalition building with indigenous movements is key to the success of broader
environmental reform—they’re succeeding now in preventing things like Keystone
XL which causes a laundry list of impacts and imperialism—D-Rule to prevent it.
Moe 5/2
(Kristin Moe reporter about climate, grassroots movements and social change at Waging Non-Violence. Waging Nonviolence is a source for
original news and analysis about struggles for justice and peace around the globe, “When Cowboys and Indians unite — Inside the unlikely
alliance that is remaking the climate movement,” May 2, 2014, http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/cowboys-indians-unite-inside-unlikelyalliance-foretells-victory-climate-movement/)//BB
She prayed. And then she remembered the 1863 treaty between the Ihanktonwan and the Pawnee that was the first recorded peace treaty between tribes. She also remembered that, throughout the
alliances of natives and non-natives in the northern Plains had formed and re-formed to defeat
threats to land and water. Recently, Lakota elders had made moves to resurrect a new Cowboy Indian Alliance
– this time, to take on Keystone XL. In late January of 2013, exactly 150 years after the signing of that first treaty, Spotted Eagle and other
activists convened tribal representatives from across the continent on the Ihanktonwan reservation. Their
purpose was to ratify the International Treaty to Protect the Sacred from Tar Sands and Keystone XL, a
document based on that first 1863 peace treaty. It represented unprecedented unified action from North American indigenous
people, with one new addition: This new treaty also included a few of the ranchers from the Great Plains, who feel their lands
are also threatened by the tar sands pipeline. Spotted Eagle told the visitors of how landowners and tribal members had come together in the
past, and how they had successfully driven industry off their land. This was a version of the cowboy-Indian story these cowboys hadn’t heard.
last several decades,
Meanwhile, Jane Kleeb — an organizer of landowners with Bold Nebraska — was also looking for support for her small but somewhat isolated band of dissidents back home. Phone calls flew
back and forth between South Dakota and Nebraska. Kleeb brought ranchers north to meet with Spotted Eagle and other indigenous leaders; the visitors were nervous and polite, unfamiliar with
tribal customs – yet it became clear that they were connected by this pipeline, as well as everything they stood to lose if it went through. An alliance looked promising. Since then, the alliance has
developed, tentatively, through shared purpose. Last week, from April 22-27, members of the budding Cowboy Indian Alliance joined with activists and representatives from tribes across North
America in a five-day convergence on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., called Reject and Protect. Wearing moccasins and dusty boots, they ate and prayed together, protested, danced, met
with elected officials, and led a 5,000-person march through the streets, beginning each day with ceremony. Their message hung clearly on a banner by the circle of tipis: “No Damn KXL.” A
Keystone that has galvanized the
environmental movement in a way not seen since the anti-nuclear campaigns of the 1980s. The fight has
sparked hundreds of marches, rallies and legal challenges, as well as one of the largest mass civil
disobedience actions in the history of the environmental movement. Time magazine wrote in 2013 that it was turning out to be a
watershed, the Selma and the Stonewall of the climate movement. That remains to be seen. What’s certain is that the campaign against Keystone has already
altered the political landscape. The environmental movement has long come under criticism for being led
by the so-called Big Greens — largely white, middle class membership groups whose interests don’t
often represent those actually living in the frontline communities where the pipeline will be built. But the
coalition of cowboys and Indians offers a radical departure from this history. Moreover, it is a model of relationship-based organizing, rooted
in a kind of spirituality often absent from the progressive world, and — given the role of indigenous leaders — begins to
address the violence of colonization in a meaningful way. It may be that these so-called unlikely alliances offer the only
chance of forging a movement strong and diverse enough to challenge a continent’s deeply entrenched
dependence on fossil fuels. When TransCanada, the pipeline company, began claiming the right to run the Keystone XL through private property, ranchers and landowners
radical departure While native/non-native alliances have been forming in various places to prevent all kinds of industrial projects, it is
said they finally understood, in some small way, what it might have felt like for Native Americans to lose their land. In speaking of the ranchers, Casey Camp-Horinek, an activist and elder of the
Ponca tribe, said, “They, too, are suffering under things like eminent domain. They, too, have had their lifestyles impinged upon by these major corporations.” Bob Allpress rides his horse on the
National Mall at Reject and Protect. (WNV / Kristin Moe) The nightmare that’s fostering kinship The day after Nebraska rancher Bob Allpress rode through the nation’s capitol on horseback in a
cavalry contingent of ranchers and tribal members, he was a little stiff. He doesn’t ride much anymore. But Allpress, with his bandana, boots and well-groomed mustache, still looks every inch
the cowboy. When the pipeline route through Nebraska was changed in 2012, ostensibly to avoid the ecologically sensitive Sandhills, the newly proposed path now cut straight through the
Allpress’ alfalfa field. If built, the pipeline would lie just 200 yards from their house. This is no ordinary pipeline, just as tar sands is no ordinary oil. According to a Natural Resources Defense
tar sands oil is 3.6 times more likely to spill than regular oil
Council report,
. It is also highly corrosive and nearly impossible to clean up.
Residents who live near the path of Keystone 1 — a smaller, already existing tar sands pipeline operated by TransCanada — know this story already. They saw 14 spills — along its route from
Canada to refineries in Oklahoma and Illinois — during the pipeline’s first year of operation. The southern portion of the Keystone XL has already been built through Texas, in spite of grassroots
resistance; now, the last northern section remains. Allpress fears that a tar sands spill would contaminate his land and water, rendering it unusable for years to come. TransCanada used what
Allpress calls “the old slap and tickle” when it notified him that the pipeline would go through his land: a nice offer of some compensation up front, but a warning that under the law of eminent
domain, the pipeline would go through no matter what. “TransCanada’s been nothing but deceitful and a bully the entire time,” he said. And in the words of his wife, Nancy, “We felt like we
were the sacrifice.” But cowboys don’t like to be pushed around. So they told TransCanada to shove it, and joined Bold Nebraska, a four-year-old organization led by Jane Kleeb that has
emerged as one of TransCanada’s most formidable obstacles. When Bold Nebraska began partnering with tribes in South Dakota, the Allpresses were on board. They’ve since attended their first
tribal council meetings, gone to rallies and public hearings, and written op-eds to Nebraska papers, refuting what Allpress calls TransCanada’s massive public relations campaign. Environmental
activism isn’t exactly what the Allpresses had in mind when they returned to Nebraska to retire from careers in government and the military, and investing what they had in their land. “I’m a
redneck Republican,” Allpress joked. He and his wife are both ex-military. “Standing there in cowboy boots and a hat next to people in peace necklaces and hemp shirts” is a little outside his
comfort zone. “It’s been — an experience. A good experience. We’ve enjoyed the hell out of it.” As the sun set on the first evening of the Washington, D.C. gathering, folks sat under a white
tent, eating dinner on paper plates and taking refuge from the tourists who swarm the camp, saying, “Look! Real Indians!” In one corner, the Allpresses were getting advice from fellow rancher
Julia Trigg Crawford from Texas. She’s been fighting Transcanada for years — despite having to concede temporary defeat when the pipeline was installed and began pumping oil through her
family’s property. Crawford filed suit and is now waiting for the Supreme Court of Texas to take up her case. “I’m going down swinging,” she said. The pipeline fight may be these people’s
worst nightmare, but it has fostered a sense of kinship. All along its path, communities are uniting under a shared narrative of fossil fuel exploitation and resistance. Similar patterns are
Like the Cowboy Indian
Alliance, partnerships between natives and non-natives have emerged to fight tar sands — and it’s part of a
larger trend right now across regions and environmental issues. Zoltán Grossman, a professor of Geography and Native Studies at Evergreen
coalescing along the paths of the other tar sands pipelines around the continent, from Vancouver, British Columbia to Portland, Maine.
tribes and fishermen who prevented dams and logging in the
Unist’ot’en clan in British Columbia
have invited busloads of non-natives from all over Canada to help prevent a slew of tar sands and gas
pipelines from crossing their land. The Cowboy Indian Alliance isn’t alone. Fossil fuel fights are also bringing together tribes
State College, has written extensively about such alliances, pointing to examples of
Northwest, as well as Western Shoshone and ranchers who fought bomb testing in Nevada. In recent years members of the
within the indigenous community, some of whom have never had a formal relationship. The tar sands cover parts of Alberta which various First Nations call home, and Crystal Lameman’s
Beaver Lake Cree First Nation is among them. Lameman spent much of the week in Washington flanked by Faith Spotted Eagle and Casey Camp-Horinek, two of the leaders who are mobilizing
Camp-Horinek is a member of the Ponca tribe, which was forcibly relocated from Nebraska to Oklahoma in
1877. The pipeline , which originates near Lameman’s reserve, will carry tar sands along the very same path as the Ponca
Trail of Tears . Camp-Horinek sees this as a direct affront to her people’s memory. And each of the women consider the tar sands a threat to
their tribes along the length of the pipeline.
their sacred land. Camp-Horinek wears her graying braids down over her shoulders, a black shawl, and earrings, round like suns. Lameman is perhaps 30 years younger, with lipstick,
outrageously long eyelashes and hair down to her waist. Despite the age difference, they’re both emblematic of the indigenous women leaders who are serving as mentors, organizers and spiritual
leaders to their communities. They speak deliberately, as if their words matter. They do not say “um” or “like.” They sit up straight and laugh often. Both women’s tribes — along with the
Cowboy Indian Alliance — are some of the signatories to the International Treaty to Protect the Sacred from Tar Sands and Keystone XL. In a show of defiance and unity, several tribal councils
Idle No More, a grassroots indigenous rights
movement that sprang up suddenly in Canada during the winter of 2012, now has 700 chapters in eight
countries. Thanks in part to the rise of digital networks, indigenous peoples today are reaching out to each other in ways that were unthinkable even 15 years ago. Tipis were set up during
in the United States have also passed individual resolutions condemning the Keystone XL. And
daytime hours at the Reject and Protect encampment on the National Mall. (WNV / Kristin Moe) Creating a spiritually integrated environmental movement Each morning, the Reject and Protect
encampment opened with a ceremony around the sacred fire, which was kept burning throughout the week. As smoke drifted up into the morning sun, the circle of participants — indigenous,
white, young and old — would stay quiet as an elder offered a prayer. What most don’t realize is that this would have been impossible until fairly recently. Native ceremonies were illegal for
most of the 20th century as part of the U.S. government’s effort to hasten assimilation by suppressing native culture. American Indian spiritual practices were only protected by federal legislation
the
environmental movement, to be sure, has remained stubbornly secular in the interest of inclusivity and
scientific rationality. But here, people don’t seem to mind. They’re solemn; it gives each day a rhythm, a ritual, a reminder that they’re all
connected to ancestors, earth and each other. Since many of history’s most powerful social movements — from civil rights to antiapartheid — have gained strength from a firm grounding in faith, it begs the question of whether something has been lost by remaining
in 1978. The tribal elders have brought ritual to the Cowboy Indian Alliance, rooting every gathering in native ceremony. Faith often makes progressives uncomfortable;
steadfastly irreligious. And in a country where 80 percent of the population claims some spiritual affiliation, there’s a preexisting organizational network that’s largely untapped by the
environmental movement. It’s possible that the Cowboy Indian Alliance offers a glimpse into what a spiritually integrated environmental movement might look like, honoring diversity while
resisting cooptation. Part of embracing ceremony is slowing down to a more human pace of organizing — one where priority is given to relationships. Naturally, the alliance organizes on
conference calls and on smart phones, but they make time for in-person gatherings, some of which last for several days, where time is given to sitting around and just talking. Telling stories,
an alliance like this, tenuous and young, lives or dies by the
strength of its relationships. Jane Kleeb, Bold Nebraska’s fearless leader, says that these relationships are a part of the strategy. The
introducing their grandkids, spending time out on the land. They know that
early alliance meetings were about “sharing stories and building trust, so that whatever TransCanada tries to do, we were a stronger alliance that they couldn’t break.” Since the alliance lacks
TransCanada’s bottomless bank account, she laughed, “The only thing I can do is build those relationships.” By supporting native rights, the Cowboy Indian Alliance is beginning the dialogue
not just about broken treaties, but about the long history of colonization, the effects of which are ongoing among some of the United States’ poorest populations. Clayton Thomas-Muller, an
indigenous organizer from Canada, said that the alliance “represents an important step towards reconciling America’s bloody colonial history.” This is perhaps why the scene on that first sunny
morning of Reject and Protect was so symbolic. In accordance with custom, the alliance leaders gathered before the Chief of the Piscataway Tribe, Billy Red Wing Tayac, and formally requested
permission to enter Washington, D.C. — what was originally considered Piscataway territory. And so it was that Bob Allpress, a fourth-generation rancher, born and raised on what was once
Lakota land, found himself presenting an offering to Chief Tayac, encircled by a throng of photographers. The weight of history bore down on them all — the forced removals, the outlawing of
native traditions and ceremony, the theft of land guaranteed by treaties the U.S. government never really intended to keep. With the Capitol dome looming pale behind him, Chief Tayac accepted
the handmade blue-jean blanket and said, “We welcome you, and we welcome all cowboys in the fight against the pipeline.” Rancher Bob Allpress at the opening ceremony with Chief Tayac.
(WNV / Kristin Moe)Rancher Bob Allpress at the opening ceremony with Chief Tayac. (WNV / Kristin Moe) Standing on the shoulders of earlier alliances “Unprecedented” is a word that’s
there is a long history of successful alliances between
natives and non-natives, particularly around industrial projects that residents see as a threat to land and water. This is actually a later incarnation of an alliance that was first
formed in 1987 to prevent a Honeywell weapons testing range in the Black Hills, one of the most sacred sites in Lakota cosmology – where, in the 1970s, alliances successfully
fended off coal and uranium mining. In 1980, a rancher, Marvin Kamerer, hosted 11,000 visitors at a Black Hills Survival Gathering to learn about native rights,
heard often in the Cowboy Indian Alliance. What most don’t realize, however, is that
sustainable living and clean energy. According to Native Studies scholar Zoltán Grossman, similar alliances prevented a toxic waste dump on Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in 1990, a hog
alliances have generally dissolved after each campaign, each one set
a precedent for future collaboration. And while they haven’t been easy, they’ve been remarkably effective. Alliances like this go
unreported, Grossman believes, because “they’re more dangerous to the status quo” than stories of conflict — that is, because they might inspire people to work together. “The
Keystone pipeline effort is standing on the shoulders of earlier successful efforts at alliance-building,” he said.
farm and coal trains in the early 2000s, and Kevin Costner’s resort complex in 2002 — to name a few. Although the
“So I’m not surprised that it’s been as powerful as it has been.” In August of 2011, 1,253 people were arrested at the White House protesting Keystone. Indigenous activists came from all over
North America, going to jail side by side with non-native activists. Thomas-Muller, who also organizes with Idle No More, said that 350.org — one of the major facilitators of the action — made
the move to reach out to the indigenous community and that “resulted in the biggest civil disobedience since the Vietnam War.” The choice to focus on the pipeline came after a spectacular
failure of a political strategy in which Big Green threw all of its weight behind the climate bill — officially known as the American Clean Energy and Securities Act. After the bill failed in the
Senate, there was widespread disenchantment with the political process, a sense that the one chance for federal legislation had been lost, that the influence of the fossil fuel industry in Congress
was too great. What resulted was a shift in focus away from Washington and toward local fights over coal, oil and natural gas — and a recognition that a movement isn’t really a movement
unless it’s led by its grassroots base. Enter Keystone. This was everything the climate bill was not: concrete, and easy to understand and get behind. “You’re either for it or against it,” said Jason
Kowalski, Political Director of 350.org, which helped support Reject and Protect. “The oil either flows, or it doesn’t.” And by physically connecting impacted communities in America’s red state
heartland from Alberta to Texas, it also offered a way to connect them through shared opposition — and, ultimately, shared values. Since then, some mainstream environmental organizations
have begun to step back and allow environmental justice organizations to come to the fore, something that Kowalski says hasn’t always happened. “The indigenous people who are here have
been doing this longer, and in a more heartfelt way, than any of us can imagine, on the frontlines of this fight,” Kowalski said. Ultimately, though, there’s only one person who will make a
decision on Keystone: President Obama. And so on Wednesday, April 23, nine leaders from both the cowboy and tribal contingents met with three staffers from the Obama administration to ask
the president to reject the pipeline. There was a buzz in the air at the encampment when they returned— Camp-Horinek, Faith Spotted Eagle and their compatriots were still charged from the
encounter. Each had taken a turn in the meeting telling their stories to the three staffers, in an effort to demonstrate that, in Camp-Horinek’s words, “We’re part of a devastating pipeline story that
is as clear and as connected as they want Keystone XL to be.” But the representatives of the administration, she said, remained “100 percent stone-faced.” These were the presidents of the
Rosebud and Oglala Sioux nations — sovereign nations whose treaties entitle them to meet with similarly ranked heads of state, she noted, before asking, “Where was the President of this nation
to meet with us?” So they walked out. Tribal relationships with the United States government have, for obvious reasons, been fraught with bad feelings. Centuries of land theft, racism, genocide
and forced assimilation cannot be erased overnight. The cowboy contingent stayed, wanting to take advantage of this chance to tell their stories – hoping that some part would make its way up
the ladder. But they left feeling equally discouraged. The distance between Washington and Nebraska seemed great indeed. The White House couldn’t be reached for comment. But, according to
the meeting attendees, there was something good that came out of it: assurance that
the Obama administration had taken note of the coalitions,
the “very different people that are coming together” around the pipeline, said Camp-Horinek. “They’re paying attention.” Casey
Camp-Horinek and Faith Spotted Eagle (WNV / Kristin Moe)Casey Camp-Horinek and Faith Spotted Eagle (WNV / Kristin Moe) The elephant in the room — or, in this case, the tipi — is the
problem of land ownership. What happens when a rancher speaks of “my land” or “my private property” to a room full of people who believe that the land was stolen, and never really belonged
to them in the first place? How to begin to address the competing claims to land that is central to the identity and culture of both groups? The Cowboy Indian Alliance doesn’t seem ready to
address this in public just yet. There are speeches, expressions of gratitude, fortitude, even love. The wounds of history are alluded to, but obliquely. For now, at least, these questions are
secondary to the urgency of fighting the pipeline. “The land doesn’t belong to us — we’re just caretakers” is a sentiment that’s frequently heard. Behind closed doors, however, at the first
meeting of the alliance, the tribal elders laid it all out. “We pulled no punches with them,” Camp-Horinek said. “About how the land that they live on now became land that they could buy and
sell. It was our blood.” She also insisted that “It’s part of their history as well as ours. And it has to be brought out and spoken of, or else there isn’t an alliance.” As much as the alliance
we need to develop an organizing
framework that effectively addresses racism, oppression, misogyny and colonialism.” That work is beginning, he believes,
but there’s a long way to go. While any real dialogue about colonialism has been set aside for the moment, it has by no means disappeared.
represents a step towards healing old wounds, it remains just that — a step. As a movement, said Thomas-Muller, “
Grossman, in his study of history’s successful alliances, writes that this may not be a bad thing; that the “conventional wisdom” which tells coalitions to emphasize sameness, to downplay the
native rights issue in favor of unity, is ultimately self-defeating.
The plan sparks environmentalist and property rights backlash that destroys these
coalitions—turns case
Blow 98
(Richard Blow, is a contributing writer to Mother Jones and a senior editor at George magazine. “The Great American Whale Hunt,” Mother
Jones, September/October 1998 Issue, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1998/09/great-american-whale-hunt)//BB
IWC meetings are usually contentious, but that year's meeting was reportedly feistier than most. If the Makah had a subsistence need, opponents
said, then so did aboriginal peoples around the world who also had not whaled for decades. Already, representatives from Canadian tribes were
proclaiming that they intended to follow the Makah's lead. The United States, environmentalists pointed out, was
broadening the definition of aboriginal subsistence whaling in a way that could undermine the whalehunting moratorium. The IWC's dryly written meeting report speaks volumes about the extent of opposition to the United States' plea:
"France… asked how subsistence requirements could arise after 70 years of non-whaling.… The Netherlands expressed concern at the widening
of the scope of whaling activities…. The People's Republic of China…regretted that the request was not completely in accordance with the IWC
definition of aboriginal subsistence…. Oman asked why the Makah, who had survived without whaling for 70 years, could not continue to
survive without whaling…. Australia questioned whether IWC nutritional subsistence criteria had been met…. Chile expressed its doubts…. The
People's Republic of China and New Zealand had similar concerns on continuity and need, a position shared by Mexico…." Japan, however,
"commended
the USA's presentation and expressed understanding of the welfare of the Makah." Meanwhile,
Shepherd,
PAWS -- that believed the Japanese had either put the Makah up to the hunt, or were covertly backing them.
After all, in 1996, the year of that conference, Japan and Norway had kicked in at least $20,000, according to the Seattle Times,
to help start a pro-whaling group, the World Council of Whalers, just across the strait from Neah Bay in
British Columbia. Even if the Japanese couldn't immediately buy the Makah's whale meat, the hunt was one more assault on the whaling
the reported coziness between the Makah and the Japanese delegation aroused the suspicions of the anti-whaling groups -- Sea
moratorium. Opposition to the U.S. was so vehement that Baker withdrew the Makah proposal, announcing that he would bring it up at the next
IWC meeting, in Monaco in 1997. Why had NOAA decided to support the Makah hunt in the first place? Whaling, Baker says, "has always been
a part of their culture." Even though they haven't whaled for more than 70 years? "They have occasionally come upon stranded whales and have
had no problems dealing with those, butchering them, and sharing them with various members of the tribe," Baker insists, incorrectly. In any
case, is the memory of the whale in a tribe's artistic culture enough to satisfy IWC requirements for aboriginal subsistence whaling, including the
criteria for continuing nutritional need? Baker says yes. What is clear is that the Makah's treaty right allowing them to whale put the government
in an awkward position, torn between an international moratorium and a historical treaty. Which took precedence? NOAA didn't want to test
either one. Challenge the whaling moratorium, and the agency would ignite international fury, not to mention the
wrath of domestic environmental groups. But contest the Makah's treaty, and it would risk a political firestorm from all American
Indians, all of whom live under similar treaties with the federal government. Says one source close to the U.S. delegation at the time, "One
hundred percent of the U.S. decision to back these guys was based on the U.S. not wanting to be in court." The issue was sensitive enough for
Baker to seek a sign-off from the White House -- specifically, according to several sources, the Council on Environmental Quality in the office of
the president. Elliot Diringer, spokesman for the council, confirms that "the vice president was kept apprised." According to Diringer, "The way
things generally work is that agencies proceed and keep us advised of what they're doing, and if somebody feels a course adjustment is needed,
they let it be known." So Baker proceeded with what became NOAA's strategy: the argument that, in fact, there is no conflict between the
Makah's treaty right and the moratorium on whaling because the Makah are a legitimate candidate for the aboriginal subsistence exemption. At
the IWC meeting in Monaco in 1997, the U.S. tried again, this time succeeding. In a "fact sheet" handed out by NOAA, the agency presented its
case: "Subsistence hunting includes far more than physical survival. It is a way of life that includes historical practices and is the cultural 'glue'
that holds the Tribe together." That definition surprised many who were present. "If you set a precedent that changes the standard for the meaning
of aboriginal whaling so that it becomes simply a cultural need, where do you draw the line?" asks one American observer. "Somebody tells me
that Japanese whaling is not cultural? Bullshit. Of course it is. This [precedent] was what the whalers wanted." Under pressure from the American
delegation, the IWC accepted a secretly negotiated plan under which the Makah would be allotted a kill of up to four whales a year, out of nine
attempts. When the Makah heard the news, McCarty says, the tribe erupted in celebration. "People stopped all their work, they got in their cars,
honking their horns like someone got married. It was like winning the Super Bowl." This is a fight that has shattered traditional
political alignments. Liberals in Washington state have been quiet about the Makah hunt, perhaps finding it uncomfortable to
criticize an Indian tribe that claims to be fighting for its cultural survival. Greenpeace says it opposes the hunt but doesn't have the resources to do
anything about it. A spokesman for the Sierra Club says, in the tortured language of politics, "At this point, the Sierra Club has decided to take a
position of not opposing the whaling rights of the Makah tribe." But the Makah are still exposed to attacks from one of their longtime foes, Rep.
Jack Metcalf (R-Wash.), who has filed suit in the District Court of Washington, D.C., to stop the hunt, challenging
that NOAA's new policy violates the government's own environmental laws. Metcalf, however, is an unlikely environmentalist -- he's
a
supporter of the "property rights" movement and receives low ratings from green groups in Washington, D.C. And Metcalf does
have a long history of opposing American Indian rights. "The United States government," Metcalf says, "[is] biased in favor of giving Indians
special rights. I just disagree with that." His beliefs can be traced to his childhood. Metcalf's father was a commercial fisherman who bought land
on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound, east of Neah Bay, just before the Depression hit, and then had to work 18-hour days to keep it. Metcalf grew
up and became a public school teacher with some ardently conservative -- some would say far-right -- beliefs (he has, for example, written a book
calling for the abolition of the Federal Reserve). Metcalf, 70, and his wife of 50 years, Norma, built their house on his father's land, using trees
from the property. Pulling into the driveway of that home, which they have converted into a bed-and-breakfast, it's easy to pass right by the
congressman. Dressed in a blue button-down shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots, he is bent over, hoeing a row of corn. Lanky and white-haired,
Metcalf ambles over and offers a dirty hand through the car window. Elected to Congress in 1994, he was the oldest member of the Republican
freshman class of '94, and among its most conservative. In 1996 he retained his seat by a narrow margin, and this year he's running against a bona
fide political celebrity: Democrat Margarethe Cammermeyer, a former officer expelled from the Army for being a lesbian whose story became a
TV movie starring Glenn Close. Cammermeyer's Hollywood connections -- Close and Barbra Streisand have thrown fundraising bashes for her -are helping her amass a campaign war chest likely to top $1 million. Metcalf's aides admit that they hope the Makah issue can peel
away some Democratic voters disaffected by her noncommittal stance. According to her press secretary, J.R. Baker, Cammermeyer
"really hasn't taken a position" on the hunt. "It's a hot-button issue, and we're trying to stay away from hot-button issues," Baker explains,
pointing out that the Makah aren't even in Metcalf's district. Asked why he's fighting the Makah, Metcalf tells a story of how once, as a young
man, while fishing with his father, they drifted among a pod of orcas. (Later, while doing a news database search, I found the same story, almost
verbatim, in several other articles.) Walking along the beach, Metcalf talks about the fishing he loves when, without warning, he bends down and
plunges his arms into the wet sand up to the elbows. Burrowing with his hands, he throws chunks of sand behind him, like a kid building a sand
castle. Finally he reaches out, holding up a shrimp, 5 or 6 inches long, with one short pincer and one long one waving frantically. Couldn't eat
them, he says, though the flesh makes good bait. He then gives the shrimp a yank with both hands and tears it in half to show its pulpy meat.
Without breaking his stride, he tosses the two halves onto the beach; the top half continues to squirm on the sand as he strolls away. "The whaling
would certainly relieve the boredom of a few young Makah people," Metcalf says. Even if his suit fails, he believes the Makah will face a
backlash. "In the long run, the tribe will lose."
Strong environmental movements averts extinction—coalitions are key
Lerner 97
(Michael Lerner, MD, MacArthur Prize Fellow, is the president of Commonweal, a healing center in Bolinas california, and of smith farm center
for healing and the arts in Washington, D.C. He is Co-Founder of the commonweal cancer help program. “The Age of Extinction and The
Emerging Environmental Health Movement,” 1997, http://www.commonweal.org/resources/publications/the-age-of-extinction-and-theemerging-environmental-health-movement/)//BB
we may be witnessing the emergence of an environmental health movement that could have a
profound impact both on human health and the future of the earth
we live in an Age of
Extinctions
a
critical segment of humanity is awakening to the profound threat
for all life on earth
The premise of this essay is that
. What is certain is that
caused by humanity. It is also certain that
Extinctions poses both for human health and
significant and
that this Age of
. The purpose of this essay is to explore the relationship between this great and irreversible awakening of human consciousness of environmental health and the widely shared hope that this
consciousness is birthing a movement that will make freedom from the chains of a toxic global system of production and consumption one of the great human rights issue of new millennium. It is a fact certain that people around the world are increasingly concerned about the relationship
between their health and the environment. This is a concern that in America we can date back at least to the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. From the 1960s onward, this concern with environmental health has grown with each passing decade. Specifically, people are troubled by
scientific evidence that manmade chemicals, the depletion of the ozone layer, climate change, and the new infectious disease agents emerging from habitat destruction may threaten their health and the health of those they care about. People are awakening to the reality that we live in a sea of
75,000 manmade chemicals, most never tested for their effects on human health. They know that some of these chemicals are partially responsible for the modern epidemic of cancer. They are learning that, even more troubling, some of these chemicals in pregnant women are disrupting fetal
development and affecting intelligence, fertility, and health. People are generally aware that the destruction of the ozone layer is linked to rapidly rising rates of malignant melanoma and weakened immune systems in humans and to devastating effects on other species of life. People are
profoundly uneasy with their growing direct experience that the weather isn’t the same anymore. They know that climate change is increasingly disrupting weather patterns that can drastically affect human well being with floods, droughts, changing infectious disease vectors and many other
impacts. People are increasingly aware that new infectious diseases are emerging from disrupted ecosystems in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. They may be less aware that toxic chemicals and ozone depletion are both weakening our immune resilience both to new infectious diseases
and to old ones. Conversely, awareness is growing that the same forces that threaten human health — synthetic chemicals, ozone depletion, climate change and habitat destruction — are increasingly threatening the health of the biosphere. Environmental health, as I will use the term, includes
both the impact of the environment on human health and the impact of human activity on the environment. 2. InterBeing: A Hundred Year Perspective This observation of a widespread and irreversible public awakening environmental health concerns may seem in itself mundane. Its
implications may not be. If we look back fifty years to 1950, we can see how far awareness of environmental health has come. There was no environmental movement then. Manmade chemicals were seen as a largely unmixed blessing: “Better living through modern chemistry.” Climate
change and ozone depletion were not concerns. Habitat destruction was something that troubled a handful of ecologists. Now let us look forward to the year 2050, a half century hence. Where will awareness of environmental health concerns be then? Will this wakening plateau, or will it
increase further? If it continues, can we imagine where it will go? I believe that, in the hundred year perspective, 1950-2050, environmental health will prove to be one of the most dynamic areas of change in human consciousness. I am proposing that we may now be close to a decisive shift
in our collective sense of the profound connectedness of personal and planetary health — and therefore ineluctably of personal and planetary healing. We have no adequate word in English for environmental health consciousness understood as an awareness of the interweaving of personal
and planetary health experienced in true depth. Environmental health is not a poetic phrase that invites deep contemplation of the great mysteries of the biosphere that surrounds the earth, which, scientists remind us, is proportionately no deeper or less delicate than dew on the petal of a rose.
In fact, Michael McCally has pointed out that “environmental health” as the term is traditionally used is too narrow a concept for what we are exploring in this essay. He suggests that perhaps we should more accurately speak of a “health and environmental” consciousness or movement.
Terminology is always a problem as new forms of consciousness and new movements arise. I have participated for two decades in the debates over what to call the mind-body health movement, for example. We never solved the language problem, but the movement ignored our linguistic
dilemma as it transformed health consciousness throughout much of the world. The great Vietnamese monk and poet Thich Nhat Hanh, who walked with his monks through the fields of fire of the Vietnam war to rescue villagers caught in conflict, calls this deep awareness of the relationship
between health and the environment the consciousness of InterBeing. We are, Thich Nhat Hanh invites us to reflect, one with all life on earth. A skeptic can protest that InterBeing is only a partial truth; that in many obvious respects we are not one. The skeptic is right. Our separateness is
also real. But the direction our deepening understanding of environmental health is taking us is toward a greater consciousness of InterBeing. Watched at any given point in real time, the shift in attitudes in the United States over the past century toward worker’s rights, human rights, and
women’s rights would have seemed painfully uncertain. Yet when we speed up the film, we can see that these revolutions in human consciousness have been dramatically swift in historical terms. In the past quarter century, Americans have also experienced the rapid shift in our awareness of
mind-body health that I referred to a moment ago. This shift in how we see our own health has triggered nothing short of a revolution in self-care, health care, smoking patterns, eating habits, exercise, the dynamic growth of the organic foods and sustainable agriculture movement, and much
the next quarter century may well bring is an environmental health movement
and merge with many other social movements
the
environmental movement can knit together
occupational health concerns, environmental justice issues, and traditional public health issues that
involve the environment
the
environmental
movement can create a potentially majoritarian constituency
more. What I believe
that will merge with the mind-body health movement,
as well. I believe
emerging
health
. While occupational health has long been a concern of working people and environmental justice a deep concern of oppressed minorities, I believe that
emerging
health
by engaging great middle class concerns, based on the growing middle class recognition that the health of children and
families is massively threatened by the toxic production and consumption system. The social and cultural movements around the world that are developing environmental health concerns are not and will not be a unified movement. We seem to be witnessing a wide range of civil society
movements around the world for which environmental health is a leading concern. These movements may, as they adopt environmental health concerns in their local or sectoral agendas, find resonance in a broadening public for which the belief that it is time to heal our relationship with the
biosphere simply seems like urgent common sense. For simplicity, I will refer to this complex of civil society movements as a single environmental health movement, recalling that the labor movement, the civil and human rights movements, the women’s movement and the gay rights
movement and the mind-body health movement have been equally diverse and complex in their evolution. 3. Will Women Lead the Environmental Health Movement? How can we imagine that ordinary people might be able successfully to challenge the overwhelming internal logic of the
global economic system because of concern over environmental health? There is an Ethiopian proverb that when spider webs unite they can tie up a lion. The lion of t he globally destructive patterns of production and consumption may one day be ensnared and ultimately domesticated by the
gossamer webs of human consciousness and community action. What will happen when ordinary people, whose lives are often mortally wounded by the destruction of the biosphere, come to understand that their wounds are so often intimately related to the wounds of the earth? What will
happen when a working woman comes to a realization that her own breast cancer, her husband’s lymphoma, her brother’s melanoma, her son’s learning disability, his best’s friend’s attention deficit disorder, her daughter’s endometrioisis, her niece’s cleft palate, her cousin’s chronic anxiety
and panic disorder, her best friend’s severe chemical sensitivity, her best friend’s daughter’s asthma, her uncle’s infertility, her neighbor’s son’s testicular cancer, and her sister’s daughter’s childhood leukemia, may form a pattern? What will happen when this working woman begins to
understand that these new human pandemics, that affect her family and her community directly, may be profoundly connected to what is happening to the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and the animals of the earth? I believe this working woman will understand that the cancers and
infertility of the fish, the disappearance of the frogs, the cleft palates of the mice, the shifts in gender orientation of the birds, the susceptibility to viruses and infections of the seals, the disappearance of the songbirds, — that all this and much, much more may be telling us a story that is also
our story. The story that the birds and the fish and the mice are telling us is the story of InterBeing — the story that all life on earth is truly, breathtakingly, concretely connected right now, and that what we do to the mice of the field and the birds of the forest, we also ultimately do also to
ourselves and our families right now. I do not believe that we can hide from this story much longer. It is among the great stories of our time. I believe that when this working woman truly understands this story, she may decide that the time to end her silence has come. I believe in fact that she
and her counterparts around the world will play a critical role in the leadership of this emerging environmental health movement. I believe that her silence cannot be bought, and I think it unlikely that she will be dissuaded from this cause. Just as in Argentina the wives and fiancees and
mothers of the disparecidos came forward in the public squares to confront the military assassins, and ultimately brought that oppressive regime down, I believe that women may ultimately decide that this global regime that is so destructive of all life must be transformed. This very human
protest against a massive entrenched global system of production and consumption may seem unrealistic economically and politically. But is it any less realistic than the Quaker protests in Europe and the United States that played such a key role in ending the 350-year-old slave trade? I do
not invoke the parallel to ending the slave trade lightly. For we are as enchained by toxic chemicals and ozone depletion and climate change and the destruction of nature as we were once enchained by slavery. I believe environmental health may be one of the greatest human rights issues of
the millennium. That is our best hope. 4. A Personal Perspective Let me briefly tell one person’s story of this emerging awareness of environmental health, to give you, the reader, a sense of where the personal urgency behind this essay comes from. * Over the past twenty years, my
colleagues and I at Commonweal, a small health and environmental research institute in Northern California, have worked extensively with children with learning and behavioral disorders, with adults with cancer, and on global environmental issues. Let us start with children. Virtually any
clinician or school teacher will tell you that there appears to be an epidemic of learning and social disorders among children, difficult as that assertion is to quantify. There are many genetic, social and environmental factors that contribute to learning and behavioral disorders. But the
mechanisms by which developmental and reproductive toxins interfere with thyroid function and neurological development are increasingly well understood. We do not know what proportion of the apparent epidemic of learning and behavior disorders are related to developmental toxins. But
the fact that every human mother carries traces of hundreds of these chemicals in her bloodstream through pregnancy, and that some of them at infinitely low doses can affect neurological and endocrine development, suggests that chemical exposures account for a significant part of the
epidemic of learning and behavior disorders among children. * Over the past twelve years, I have spent over ninety weeks living with small groups of woman and men facing life-threatening cancers and seeking some way to come to terms with these catastrophic illnesses. This has been one
of the most deeply formative experiences of my life. Most of those who come on the Commonweal Cancer Help Program for a week of exploration of the possibilities for physical, emotional and spiritual healing are women, and many of these women are young women with young children
facing either primary or metastatic breast cancer. There is no question that we can be deeply helpful to those who come to us with cancer in helping them learn how to live and to die with this devastating illness. The question is whether helping people to learn how best to live with cancer and
the other pandemic diseases of our time is sufficient for anyone who thinks truly holistically. I look at these young women with advanced breast cancer and small children, and I think to myself: This is not okay with me. It is not okay with me that we have created a civilization where breast
cancer is epidemic. And it is not enough to help these young women fight for life, or prepare for early deaths, one by one. This, more than any other single thing, has brought me to the work for an environmental health consciousness and an environmental health movement. Less than a
century ago, cancer was rare in the United States. Now by any standard it is epidemic, and not only because we are living longer or because other diseases have been cured. Cancers of children, for example, are increasing, and one cannot say the cause if lifestyle factors. So are testicular and
breast cancer, among young men and women not yet old enough to be threatened by other diseases. We do not know what particular mix of environmental factors cause many of these cancers. But we do know that many of them are diseases of industrial civilization. And we know that some
of them — including some childhood cancers, testicular cancer, and Non-Hodgkins lymphomas — are strongly linked to chemical exposures. * At a more personal level, my father died of cancer. My mother has had cancer. My half-sister Pamela died as a young mother of cancer. I am a DES
son. Had I been a DES daughter I would have had a very high risk of dying of cancer. I have two brothers. The three of us have had a total of four sons. Not a single one of our four sons would be alive today without intensive modern medical interventions. Is it a coincidence that all our
children needed the most advanced modern scientific techniques to survive? * If I look around me at friends and colleagues with whom I work, there are many young women I know whose young lives and potential for motherhood are scarred with the pain of endometriosis. In animals,
endometriosis is known to be related to exposure to dioxin at infinitesimally low levels during key windows of fetal development.. In humans there is a high suspicion that the apparent epidemic of endometriosis is chemically induced. * And how many young couples do I know for whom
pregnancy has been nearly impossible to achieve? The decline in male fertility in industrialized countries is increasingly well documented by meta-analyses of multiple studies. Numerous animal studies have linked declining fertility to endocrine disrupting chemicals. A recent study in the
San Francisco Bay Area recently linked increased spontaneous abortion rates to chemicals in the water supply. It warned pregnant women to consult with their physicians about limiting their intake of tap water. And yet pregnant women are told to drink plenty of water. Many cannot afford
bottled water. And bottled water is by not necessarily any less chemically polluted than tap water. Moreover, many chemicals are absorbed as readily from showering or swimming as they are from drinking water. And while this specific study of drinking water and spontaneous abortion rates
showed no relationship between showering and abortion rates, who knows what other effects on pregnancy these other routes of exposure to developmental and reproductive toxins may have. * Of those couples who do manage to have children, what proportion of families find that their
children have the learning disabilities or related behavioral disorders that we work with at Commonweal? The New York Times reliably estimates that 20% of American children have learning disabilities. But The New York Times never asks why 20% of American children suffer the trials
and often the agonies of a learning disability. Is 20% the level that learning and behavioral disorders have always been at in the human family? Or have the level and nature of learning and behavioral disorders shifted with time and circumstance? In many places and times young minds have
been and are stunted by famine, by infectious disease, and by war, abuse and poverty. But what of the young minds stunted now by chemical exposure in utero and in early childhood? Is an insidiously increasing proportion of contemporary learning and behavioral disorders related to
developmental and reproductive toxins? It is a complex situation. Despite the apparent epidemic of learning and behavior disorders, we cannot ignore the global secular increase in IQ scores over the past three decades, something we would not predict if developmental toxins had reached the
point at which they were overwhelming other factors in driving IQ downward. In every area we consider, complexities like this make definitive statements almost impossible. * And what of those we all know who suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? Or chemical sensitivities? Or
Systemic Lupus or Multiple Sclerosis or other autoimmune diseases? Or with chronic anxiety conditions? Or depression? What of the increasing incidence of teen suicide? What about the five-fold increase in recent decades of asthma in children and adults alike? People can’t breathe. They
lose their stress resilience. Their immune systems lose the capacity to protect them.. Their nervous systems lose resilience. They become depressed. They become more susceptible to infections and more vulnerable to chronic and degenerative illnesses. Can we sort out what — in the
hothouse soup of thousands of chemical exposures, increased radiation exposures, altered diet, altered stress patterns, and other circumstances of an increasingly manmade world — causes what? Usually, we can’t sort out causation. Conclusive scientific evidence is frequently impossible to
come by. But the “weight of the evidence,” a less stringent criterion, often points to suspicious causal patterns. And the precautionary principle — a preventative environmental public health perspective — gives us even more latitude to reverse the burden of proof about environmental
exposures. There is nothing “scientific” that determines for us whether we take a precautionary principle approach, or a weight of evidence approach, or an absolute proof approach to the health impacts of climate change, ozone depletion, manmade chemicals or habitat destruction. Should we
figure out precisely which developmental toxin, at what level and what window of fetal development, causes which specific developmental tragedy, before we start to get these chemicals out of the bodies and breast milk of young women? Except for the fact that fate drew me to work with
troubled children and adults with cancer, there is nothing unusual in middle-class American experience about the health conditions that have affected me, my family, my co-workers and my friends. Cancer, infertility, endometriosis, learning disabilities and behavioral problems, anxiety,
depression, chemical sensitivities, chronic fatigue syndrome, and a wide range of neurological and immune conditions are the commonplaces of American family life. The trouble is that these commonplaces are growing ever more common. And there are deep and legitimate suppositions that
they are often linked to human economic activity and not natural environmental causes. 5. The Four Horsemen of the Age of Extinctions It seems unlikely that the scientific truth that we live in an Age of Extinctions can be hidden from informed public consciousness for too much longer. In
fact, there are those familiar with poll data who would argue that the American public is already widely aware of the broad outlines of what we are sketching here. They simply get no systematic confirmation, no authoritative articulation of what we are describing, from the media. I will speak
here of an Age of Extinctions, because extinction is the most dramatic of the facts of species life today. A more accurate description of our age would be of an Age of Extinctions, Diminishments, and Disruptions of Species. The great naturalist E.O. Wilson of Harvard University reports we
are in the midst of a spasm of extinction that is reducing the number of species on earth to the lowest level since the cataclysmic end of the Age of Dinosaurs 65 million years ago. While ther e is endless debate on the level of these extinctions, Wilson estimates the rate at which species are
dying is now one thousand times the “background level” at which whole species would otherwise disappear. There have been only five great Ages of Extinctions in the history of the earth. How has humanity, in its brief time on earth, come to be the first species to cause a such a spasm of
rapid mass extinction? Eric Chivian of the Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment lists the four principle causes of this Age of Extinctions that I cited earlier: climate change, ozone depletion, toxic chemicals and habitat destruction. We could add other causes, but this list will
do for a start. * Climate change is shifting the weather and temperatures in which species live faster than they are able to adapt to these changes. These changes may become drastic. This is now officially the year of the worst El Nino conditions in a century in the United States. Some
scientists are concerned that a deep freeze settling over Europe. The ice at the South Pole is melting. Many scientists predict that rising sea levels will wipe out Pacific island nations and flood coastal areas around the world. Ultimately, the health impacts on families, communities and nations
of these changes will be so profound that a transformation of understanding of the relationship between health and the environment seems inevitable due to climate change alone. The great scientific debate is about the degree to which the climate change we are experiencing is part of natural
Ozone depletion is exposing species to ultraviolet
immune systems cannot absorb
studies show sunscreen has no effect on preventing skin cancer
climatic variation, or due to solar activity, or changing ocean currents, or human activities, or some combination of all these factors. *
radiation at levels
that their
. In New Zealand and Australia, public awareness of the health effects of sun exposure and incidence of melanoma is now widespread. Radio and
TV programs warn families against sun exposure without a hat and sunscreen. But new
. Does that mean children
should no longer play in the sun in New Zealand and Australia — or should go out with not only a hat but protective long sleeved shirts and long pants? Ultraviolet radiation exposure also lowers immune function, with deadly consequences for many species. Humans cannot be exempt from
the impact of ultraviolet radiation on our immune systems. The thinning of the ozone layer is by no means restricted to the growing holes in the ozone layer over the North and South poles. How many of us, myself included, feel that direct sun exposure “stings” our skin in a way that it did
not forty years ago? I personally feel a deep sense that I can only describe as outrage that it is no longer safe to go out in the sun without covering myself with chemicals that I have no wish to put on my skin and absorb into my body, and which, moreover, scientists now report do not seem to
the Montreal Ozone Protocol
is far from complete
example of the ongoing threat is the continuing use of methyl bromide
and smuggling of banned chlorofluorocarbons
Traces of toxic manmade
chemicals are now found in the hundreds in the bloodstreams of peoples all over the earth
endocrine disrupting chemicals, and other chemicals that function as fetal contaminants or developmental
and reproductive toxins
at infinitesimal doses, these chemicals disrupt the development of human
infants
This
causes a remarkable array of diseases
and disorders that are now at epidemic levels
has begun to control the production of ozone depleting chemicals — but that protection
work. It is true that
reversed. One
and the thinning of the ozone layer has not yet
, which depletes the ozone layer, on strawberry crops in California. A second is the
growing contraband production
. We cannot assume this battle has yet been won. *
. New research on
, shows that,
, and the infants of many other species, while they are still developing in their mother’s wombs.
disruption of the developing fetal endocrine system
in many societies including are own. The final irony is that, when women breast feed, they transfer much of their lifetime burden of some of these lipophilic toxic
chemicals, such as dioxin, in their breast milk to their infants. The scientific fact that we are poisoning our babies in their mothers’ wombs and at their mothers’ breasts is a tragedy by any classical standard. Mother’s milk is now sometimes so toxic that it could not be sold as a baby food
product by FDA standards. This is tragedy in the deepest sense of the word. We should not avert our eyes. To avert our eyes, to succumb to what Robert Lifton has called psychic numbing, is to stumble blindly toward a future we are unwilling to face honestly. The truth is that nothing less
than fundamental restructuring of the petrochemical backbone of industrial society is called for. This is the insight of the great program called The Natural Step, initiated by a remarkable oncologist Karl Henrik-Robert in Sweden, who has dared to think fundamentally about these issues, and
virtually all scientists
agree on which demonstrate that we cannot continue to pollute and degrade the earth and expect
humanity or the rest of life to survive Habitat destruction
cut away the lungs of the planet
as corporate raiders and poor people pour into these awesome storehouses of biological diversity,
viruses and bacteria once safely housed in animals that could tolerate them “jump” into the human
species
has found a way to talk to large numbers of people and to mobilize his society, at least, to begin to reverse course. The genius of Henrik-Robert’s work is that he identified basic principles of scientific consensus that
.*
has many forms. As amoral corporations and desperate poor people cut down rain forests around the globe, they literally
. Climate change in combination with ancient practices of agricultural burning of rain forests create conflagrations like the one that has covered much of Southeast Asia with smoke, and threatens the
Amazon as well. And
. Many science writers exploring this topic have warned that new viruses from these hot zones may spread at any time as we continue our assault on the storehouses of biodiversity. Chivian did not intend this list of drivers of extinction — climate change, ozone depletion,
chemical exposures and habitat destruction — as an exhaustive list. Nuclear war and nuclear radiation could, at any time, join the list of leading drivers of the Age of Extinctions. There are other candidates as well. Population growth is, of course, a leading factor in these extinctions, standing
behind the increase in all four of the drivers that Chivian has listed. A widely used general statement that describes how population growth and technology interact in their impact on the biosphere states that the human impact on the earth (I) is the result of population (P) times consumption
(C) times technology (T), or I= PxCxT. Like everything else, the interaction of population with extinctions is complex, since poor people in southern countries consume so much less than rich peopl e in northern countries. And it is very important to recognize that new and less polluting
technologies can give the (T) in the equation a value of less than 1.0, thus diminishing the human impact as surely as reductions in population or consumption does. And yet, simply put, more and more people, consuming more and more of the earth’s resources, with the application of
frequently (not always) more toxic technologies, driven either by blind affluence or blind desperation, have become the leading cause of basic changes in the biosphere. 6. Effects on Human Health It is simply not credible to maintain that humanity can traverse this Age of Extinctions without
the health of our own species being profoundly affected by it. Yet this is the assumption which undergirds the triumphalist free-market ideology of our time. For the triumphalist free-market ideology maintains that there is no reason restrain or guide the growth of population or consumption
or technology — the three factors that combine to create the human footprint on the earth. In truth, the effects of the unrestrained growth of human population, consumption and technology on our health are already well underway. It is very important to emphasize that some of these global
the effects are dramatically visible.
clouds of smoke and toxic pollution
any died, simply trying to breathe in this unprecedented regional shock
changes will favor the health of some people in some regions for some periods of time, even as they attack the roots of human life and biodiversity around the world. In some parts of the world,
They include wars, famine, and
awesome events like the
their smoke with uncontrolled urban pollution in 1997. Tens of thousands sickened, and m
to environmental health
that hung over much of Southeast Asia from uncontrolled forest fires mixing
.
Independently, Keystone causes runaway warming—that causes extinction
MATTHEWS 3/27
(EDWIN MATTHEWS is a regular contributor to the Litchfield County Times, March 27, 2014, “OPINION: Keystone Armageddon Express,”
Litchfield County Times, http://www.countytimes.com/articles/2014/03/27/opinion/doc53348a1f297b9070989678.txt?viewmode=2)//BB
What should you do if you are a passenger in a car at high speed about to run off the road? Should you just sit quietly? How about getting out to walk? When it comes
to government decisions that may threaten our future, we cannot get off the Earth. We must remain as passengers, but in a democracy we do not have to keep silent!
What is at stake in President Obama’s
decision to approve or disapprove the Keystone XL pipeline is no less
significant. Whether we like it or not, we all will be affected by his decision; even generations far into the future will be affected. But
for a decision this important, there has been little serious public debate. The Keystone XL pipeline is proposed by a Canadian energy company, Trans Canada, to
permit it to extract crude oil from tar sand deposits in Alberta and deliver the crude 2,000 miles to the Gulf of Mexico for export. At issue for President Obama, who
must approve the project, and for us, who must live with his decision, is whether enabling this pipeline to be built is in the interest of the United States, and we might
even say the Earth. Our interests go far beyond those of Trans Canada. Keystone is not just a pipe in the ground. The public debate around the proposed pipeline has
been profoundly disappointing. The implications of this pipeline for our country have been largely ignored and are huge. The Keystone pipeline is not only necessary
to deliver crude oil from Alberta to the Gulf. Even Trans Canada has acknowledged that
it is doubtful that the tar sand deposits can be
commercially developed without this pipeline. Some have argued that Trans Canada could build a pipeline over
the high Rockies through British Columbia to the Pacific or transport the crude oil by rail, but neither alternative has been shown to
be financially feasible. The province of British Columbia has refused to allow a pipeline through its province. Transportation by rail, which would require
a huge investment in special heated trains to carry the hot heavy crude oil, may be prohibitive. Recognized experts and Trans Canada itself have predicted that
without Keystone, the oil in the tar sands may stay in the ground for the future. But whether the pipeline is essential or
not, the overriding question is whether it is interest of the United States by approving this pipeline to enable this massive development of fossil fuels. In making up our
minds and in our president’s consideration of whether this project is in our country’s interest, here are some of the issues that we must think about and that have
largely been ignored: 1. Source of Energy for the United States: The United States is presently headed, due to the development of energy sources other than oil,
including solar, wind and natural gas and increased energy efficiency, to become self-sufficient in energy in coming years. But the Keystone pipeline has nothing to
do with U.S. energy supply. All of the crude transported in this pipeline would be for export to other countries and would not be consumed in the United States. 2.
Jobs: Pipeline promoters claim that the pipeline would “create jobs”. Many folks badly need jobs, but this jobs argument is specious because the pipeline construction
would provide only a hand full of temporary construction jobs and very few local and permanent jobs. These are not the jobs around which we can build the future.
Moreover, every economic activity “creates jobs,” even repairing man-made disasters. That is no argument for disasters. When considering the creation of
employment, the question remains whether the activity is in the public interest and is worthy of our government support. Unless we have sold out to corporate interests
and given up entirely examining what is behind job creation, creating a few temporary jobs cannot be the guide to public policy. 3. Climate Change: Based upon an
overwhelming scientific consensus, the
world-wide consumption of fossil fuels is fueling a change in our climate that
is likely to be disastrous for the future of human civilization and much else. Our responsibility to reduce oil consumption is
clear. Should we fail to reduce soon our emissions of CO2 and other so-called “greenhouse” gasses, it may be too late to address
climate change responsibly. A warming climate produces further warming and at some point, perhaps before we know it, climate change is
likely to accelerate and be beyond human power to slow down. The policy implications of recognized climate science are therefore
that we must reduce human emissions from fossil fuels urgently and substantially. James Hansen, the NASA climatologist
who was one of the first to alert us to the impending threat of climate change, has written that if the Keystone pipeline is built, we will have no
chance of facing responsibly the challenge of climate change. As he has testified, if Keystone is authorized, “the game will be over.” Why is so much at
stake here? After all, is Keystone not just a pipe in the ground? Despite all the green rhetoric floating around, because of human inertia and to selfish denial, we have
barely begun to address the necessary reduction of fossil fuel consumption. In this context, Hansen’s assessment of what is at stake with Keystone is not only based on
the colossal carbon pollution that exploitation of the Alberta tar sands would cause. It is because facilitating this questionable project would mean that as a country we
have shown that we are unable to face our responsibility to reduce fossil fuel emissions. Hansen does not underestimate the difficulty of reducing our consumption of
fossil fuels given the huge interests that are vested in this consumption, including, of course, the habits of all of us who depend hourly on fossil fuels to keep us warm
or cool, to move us from one place to another, to keep us fed, informed and amused. But we cannot allow the magnitude of this challenge nor our own selfish interests
to determine our long range policies, unless of course we are willing to deny the laws of physics or be guided by despair. Facilitating the massive expansion of oil
Keystone becomes
a line in the sand. If allow ourselves to cross this line, or help others to do so, we shall have lost our chance as a country
production from the Alberta tar sands would say that we have failed to face our responsibility to deal with the threat of climate change.
for serious fossil fuel reduction and with it, possibly, our integrity. 4. Tar Sands Project: The oil in the Keystone pipeline would not simply be pumped from the
ground, but would be extracted, with enormous inputs of heat, steam, chemicals and water, from deposits of sand left behind when the tropical forests left North
America. Digging
out the sand and extracting the oil from the sand is itself a dirty process, producing massive waste, many times more polluting than
impair for the rest of human history large areas of the boreal forest of
Canada. This project would also destroy critical habitat for many species, including the endangered
whooping crane and woodland caribou that the United States and Canada are bound by treaty to protect. Because of the irreparable damage it
conventional underground pumping of oil. It would
will do to the land they have held dear for thousands of years, the native peoples of America have raised their voices in opposition to this project. Canada does not
have the environmental controls comparable to those of the United States; Alberta’s environmental regulations are weak and provide no meaningful protection for this
project. The energy required to extract and deliver oil from the sand is many times that required to extract oil from other sources. Indeed, the exploitation
of
oil from tar sands, itself energy intensive, consumes a substantial part of the energy that could ultimately be
obtained from the oil delivered to the Gulf. This is standing energy efficiency on its head. It would be as if we have learned nothing in the past
fifty years about how to produce and use oil wisely. It is the long term policy implications of such a reversal of our fledgling progress in using oil efficiently that
makes the implications of this pipeline so serious. How can our country be seriously committed to energy efficiency if we are complicit in such a wasteful project? 5.
Risks to our land: To build the Keystone pipeline, Trans Canada would condemn a large swath of precious land through the middle of America. This
pipeline
would invade productive agricultural land, cross thousands of rivers, lakes and marshes and threaten
irreplaceable aquifers on which millions depend. Pipelines are inevitably risky. Spills always occur. Over the past twenty years
there have been more than 5,600 spills from pipelines, resulting in the destruction of land and critical water supplies and the loss of
hundreds of lives. If the pipeline is not authorized, this risk is entirely avoided. How do we tell ranchers and farmers who have cared for their land, struggling for
generations to support themselves and feed our country, that solely for its profit a foreign company can take their fields and pastures to install a risky pipeline? Such a
discounting of rights in the land and water should only take place where it is necessary for a compelling national interest, such as a war or natural disaster. In this case,
the sole interest served would be to make profitable the investment in the tar sands of a foreign oil company. Trans Canada profits should not come before our farmers
and ranchers and the preservation of our natural resources. The Keystone pipeline debate has so far been set by those with a business interest in promoting the project
and by their hired spinners. Even the review of our State Department has been biased and compromised by consultants who were previously employed by promoters
of the pipeline. The public debate, meagre as it is, has largely ignored the questions outlined above. As it determines whether this project is in national interest, our
government owes us to face these questions honestly and objectively. We now must rely on our President to have the foresight and political courage to reject this
project. Will it be too much to ask that we not be willingly complicit in a wasteful and destructive project? How
can we as a country take the lead to
support practices that are required further to nourish and sustain human civilization, if we cannot even
decline to support a wasteful destructive project such as Keystone. If Keystone is allowed, we shall have proven once again that
there no limit to the power of corporate profit?
Movements UQ
Recent march on Washington proves they’ll win
The Nation 5/22
(Zoë Carpenter is a reporter in The Nation's Washington, DC bureau, on April 22, 2014, “Why the Campaign Against Keystone XL Still
Matters,” http://www.thenation.com/blog/179479/why-campaign-against-keystone-xl-still-matters)//BB
A few years ago, it would have seemed implausible that a group of Midwestern ranchers and Native
Americans would gather on the National Mall in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, as they did on Tuesday.
Not because the union is so unlikely, but because the pipeline’s approval seemed all but certain. “We bring
you pickles from the heartland,” said a farmer in a red baseball cap, extending a jar to a Native American elder. At his feet lay other gifts—
jewelry, blankets and more homemade preserves—exchanged between members of the Cowboy and Indian Alliance, a coalition of
ranchers, farmers and Native American tribes leading a weeklong protest against the Keystone pipeline. “All farmers and
ranchers and Native Americans are environmentalists, because without the water and the land we have nothing. It’s our livelihood,” said Mike
Blocher, who raises Quarter horses in Antelope County, Nebraska, on land TransCanada has claimed for the pipeline route. “If that oil runs out
on my land, my grass is gone. My water’s gone. My farm ground is gone. My livelihood is gone. And what will they do? Say, ‘Here’s a few
bucks.’” Later, riders on horseback made their way down the National Mall towards a cluster of teepees, which will be the hub for other action
throughout the week: traditional water ceremonies to highlight the threat the pipeline poses to water resources like the Ogallala aquifer; an
undisclosed “bold and creative action” at the White House on Thursday; and a rally on Saturday that organizers expect to draw several thousand
people. Earth Day may be a shadow of its initial self, but there is still something vital in the anti-Keystone campaign, the most significant
environmental movement in the United States today. No other campaign has drawn as much attention to the issue of
climate change. Few environmental causes include such diverse stakeholders, from major green groups to ranchers concerned about
property rights, to indigenous leaders to urban residents worried about pollution from refineries at the pipeline’s end point. Still, there is a
growing tendency to trivialize the decision about the pipeline, as The New York Times did in an article on Tuesday that pointed out that the
greenhouse gas emissions from KXL would amount to “an infinitesimal slice of the global total.” The campaign against Keystone
isn’t ultimately about the impact of a single infrastructure project. The link between the pipeline and the future climate is
indirect—the real point is the campaign itself. While the outcome of the Environmental Protection Agency’s rule-making process for
carbon emissions from power plants may make a bigger contribution to the climate fight in absolute terms, there is no single law or decision that
can “solve” the present crisis. Besides, it’s hard to imagine people chaining themselves to the White House fence while advocating for stricter
bureaucratic standards. The first Earth Day illustrated how popular movement precedes political action. The 1970 demonstrations
brought out some 20 million Americans, seemingly spontaneously. Within four year the agencies and legislation that undergird all of the
environmental protections that matter today became law: the EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Clean Air Act, the
Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act, to name a few. Now, one of the most needed regulations is a tax on carbon—a way of making
fossil fuel companies pay for damage caused by their product. Such a tax could provide funds for badly needed investment in renewable energy
and sustainable infrastructure while creating some incentive to keep fossil fuels in the ground. We know 80 percent of discovered reserves need
to stay there if we want a chance to keep warming below the two degree Celsius threshold scientists say is critical. As Chris Hayes writes, this is
essentially asking energy companies to give up at least $10 trillion in wealth. Currently the path to regulation of this sort is politically impassable.
But the anti-KXL campaign, with its ability to stoke energy and build diverse coalitions, right now looks like one of our our best chances to
provoke the political shift necessary for more radical change. The decision about the pipeline does itself matter, however. Given the
overwhelming sense of paralysis, it’s easy to forget that inaction is a choice. We are electing a future of massive suffering. What Keystone
illustrates so well is that we—the public and policymakers—make decisions about our climate future in any number of ways, both large and
small, every day. Whether we drive or bike; whether we seek out modest ways to live or consume as much as we can afford; whether we drill
deeper in search of profits or walk away from them. Many of these actions don’t feel like choices, and all of them are trivial in isolation.
Together, however, they are the sum of our fate. Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50! The scale of climate
change is such that all “solutions” will be inadequate and imperfect. Rejecting Keystone isn’t a solution, but it would be a signal
that the easy cycle of business as usual can be disrupted. That radical choices can be made, the kind that have
nothing to do with buying a Prius instead of an SUV. That even as the avenues to democratic participation are closed off, there is still
power in popular protest.
Keystone coalitions are impacting keystone development now—more galvanized
than ever
StateImpact 3/10
(A reporting project of NPR member stations, Mose BUCHELE is an Austin-based reporter, “Filmmaker Chronicles Anti-Keystone XL Pipeline
Movement in Texas,” StateImpact, MARCH 10, 2014, http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2014/03/10/filmaker-chronicles-anti-keystone-xl-pipelinemovement-in-texas/)//BB
Filmmaker John Fiege followed that group and premieres his movie “Above All Else” at this year’s SXSW Film Festival in Austin. Fiege makes
no secret of his opposition to the pipeline, but the movie is more than a political statement. He says he wanted to chronicle the
moment in time when the American environmental movement became more galvanized than it had been
in decades. Fiege sat down with StateImpact Texas to talk about the current state of environmentalism in the country, what protesters hoped
to accomplish through “tree sitting,” and what the future may hold if the pipeline is ultimately approved by the Obama administration. The
Context “The context, I think, is the failure of the cap and trade legislation in 2009. The environmental movement put all of its
energy into passing legislation intended to address climate change, and it failed early in President Obama’s
administration. Then the environmental movement turned to the Keystone XL pipeline issue, and they went
back out into the streets and demanded change. And we haven’t seen that kind of mass movement develop since the 1970s.” On
the Logic Behind Efforts to Stop or Slow Pipeline Construction “One of the points the environmental movement has been making all along is that
tar sands are right on the edge of being economically viable to turn into oil. And only because of the inflated gas prices that we’ve been
experiencing since all of this turmoil in the Middle East, that’s been going on since the Iraq war. So if oil prices were to drop, suddenly tar sands
production would shut down. So the flip side of that is, if you can make it too expensive to get tar sands to market, it will
shut itself down. That’s been one of the key strategies of the environmental movement. So, the oil industry says, ‘Oh, we’ll
just ship it by rail. We’ll just ship it over the Rockies through First Nations lands.’ But those things are harder and
more expensive and will really cut down on the margin that’s required for the tar sands to be a viable source of oil.” How Keystone Protests Were
Different “That was one of the first things that caught my attention. The environmental movement has always had its strongest presence in urban
coastal areas among upper middle class folks. The movement has struggled to branch beyond that. And the Keystone XL pipeline fight
made enormous progress in connecting with people in the middle of the country. Ranchers, farmers, everyday
folks.” RELATED POSTS Keystone XL Will Impact Climate, But Isn’t Make or Break, State Dept. Says As Oil Flows in the Keystone XL
Pipeline, Opponents Vow Scrutiny Keystone XL Pipeline Gets First Barrels of Oil On Way to Texas TOPICS What is the Keystone XL Pipeline?
How Eminent Domain Works in Texas On the Failure of Civil Disobedience in Texas “The short of it is, even though the southern leg of the
pipeline was built and tar sands oil is now flowing from Alberta down to the Texas Gulf Coast, its not going at the rate that TransCanada and
other companies were going for. President Obama still has not approved the northern leg of the pipeline, to the surprise of
everyone involved. The State Department was on track to approve this a couple years ago. I think the
environmental movement, even
been very successful in having an impact on this project in a very
tangible way. And to really raise the profile of the climate change conversation in the media as a result of it.” What Happens if President
Obama Approves the Pipeline “I think if President Obama approves the northern leg of the pipeline, then the environmental
movement will grow even bigger and even stronger, because people are very passionate about this issue.
though they’ve lost part of this battle, they’ve
The science is unbelievably clear how important it is that we reduce our carbon pollution into the atmosphere. And the other thing that this fight
has revealed is how unbelievably inter-twined money and politics are. How much power and influence the oil industry has. I think the
environmental movement, while fighting its traditional battle about conservation and climate change, is really going to start to focus on removing
money from politics.”
Even if we lose movements can’t prevent keystone, the loss causes new efforts that
do succeed
Farrell 3/11
(Bryan Farrell is an editor at Waging Nonviolence, where he writes about environment, climate change and people power. “There’s no success
like failure, when it comes to movement building,” March 11, 2014, http://wagingnonviolence.org/2014/03/theres-success-like-failure-comesmovement-building/)//BB
Perhaps what’s needed to put the scope of the Keystone XL battle into perspective is a better understanding
of failure. In fact, the environmental movement was built on failure — not just the failure of industrialized civilizations
to take into account the limits of growth, but also the very environmental campaigns fighting against such arrogance. The first time the
merits of civilization and growth were debated on a national level in this country, the outcome was a failure for
those protecting the interests of nature. It was December 1913, and wilderness advocates had fought a hard five-year battle to
save the Hetch Hetch Valley — a wilderness preserve within California’s Yosemite National Park — from being turned into a
reservoir for San Francisco’s growing water needs. Led by naturalist and author John Muir, the wilderness advocates managed to
incite hundreds of newspapers to publish editorials in support of preservation and thousands of letters to
Congress from women’s groups, outdoors and sporting clubs, scientific societies and university faculty. But, ultimately, it was not
enough to save Hetch Hetchy. President Woodrow Wilson approved the legislation allowing for its damming, noting that the
opponents’ “fears and objections were not well founded.” While the decision was a crushing blow to wilderness advocates like
Muir, who died a year later, he nevertheless took consolation in the fact that “the conscience of the whole country
has been aroused from sleep.” Furthermore, as environmental historian Roderick Nash explains in his seminal book Wilderness and
the American Mind, “the defenders of wilderness discovered their political muscles and how to flex them by
arousing an expression of public opinion [that would not easily be forgotten]. In fact, immediately after the Hetch Hetchy
defeat the fortunes of wilderness preservation took an abrupt turn for the better.” The National Park Service was
established in 1916, which inspired continued national interest in preservation issues. And by the 1950s, wilderness advocates were
able to successfully fend off a dam in Dinosaur National Monument, generating the necessary momentum
for a national policy of wilderness preservation with the Wilderness Act of 1964. All this is to say that failure is a complex
term. Much like success, it is rarely complete. Within the failure of Hetch Hetchy were the seeds of success for
other campaigns that ultimately grew into the modern environmental movement. If the campaign
against the Keystone XL fails to stop the pipeline, it may still succeed at the far more necessary and longterm goals of building a powerful movement that spells the end of fossil fuels’ dominance . That, of
course, is too soon to predict. But it means there’s time to continue building the conditions for such an eventuality. We must — in short —
recognize, as Bob Dylan once said, “There’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all.”
AT: Politics Blocks
Politics doesn’t block—means movements are key
Schild 2/12
(Cindy Schild is senior manager for oil sands and refinery policy programs at the American Petroleum Institute. “Keystone Is a Win-Win for
Those on Every Side of the Debate,” NY Times, Feb 12, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/02/12/is-the-keystone-xl-pipelineworth-the-fight/keystone-is-a-win-win-for-those-on-every-side-of-the-debate)//BB
With climate concerns settled long ago and economic benefits repeatedly confirmed, Keystone XL is now, as former Energy Secretary Steven
Chu recently noted, a “political” decision. With the vast majority of voters, policymakers on both sides of the aisle, the
labor community and many of President Obama’s former appointees and top informed experts in favor of building
the pipeline, politics may be the easiest aspect of Keystone XL to assess. Former Obama national security advisers
Tom Donilon and Gen. Jim Jones vouch for the national security benefits of Keystone XL, former Interior
Secretary Ken Salazar touts the energy security advantages and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka endorses the
pipeline and its job creation potential. The latest State Department Environmental Impact assessment
confirms Keystone XL is a win-win for those on every side of the debate.
Link Wall
The plan spills-over and disrupts general coalitions between natives and other
groups—makes sustainable conservation impossible
M'Gonigle 99
(Michael M'Gonigle is a professor of law at the University of Victoria and holds the Eco-Research chair of environmental law and policy. “More
than one whale for the killing The Makah's hunt may have a wide ripple effect,” The Globe and Mail (Canada) May 27, 1999, Lexis)//BB
Meanwhile, outside the aboriginal community, much more is at issue with the reintroduction of whaling than
the liberal sensitivities of urban news readers. With
the large volume of whale meat associated with even a single kill, there can
ultimately be only one destination for the products of multiple kills: the international marketplace. In 1997,
aboriginal and non-aboriginal whaling interests established the World Council of Whalers, based in B.C. The council ardently supports the
Makah hunt off Washington state and renewed whaling in B.C., but its general objective is even larger: the resumption of commercial whaling
worldwide. This week, aboriginal leaders of the World Council of Whalers are present at the IWC to pressure it to this end. The IWC remains the
biggest obstacle to a resumption of commercial whaling. Pro-whaling nations such as Japan and Norway threaten its regulations at every turn.
Illegal whaling has never ended, a scourge of the IWC's attempt to enforce international law. Norway hunts whales in open defiance of
commission regulations, while Japan whales under the guise of a so-called scientific permit. All this meat ends up on the market,
making conservation enforcement for the many highly endangered species almost impossible. Whale meat
from even the most depleted species, including the near-extinct blue whale, has recently been found in Japanese markets. As aboriginal
whalers pursue their path, one of the greatest potential victims is, ironically, the growing non-aboriginal
movement to support Native communities as "co-managers" of land and coastal resources. Throughout B.C.,
and around the world, Native and non-Native communities argue that together they are the proper stewards of
the land and the sea. Unlike profit-seeking corporations and remote bureaucracies, they argue that they have to live with the consequences
of their actions and are therefore best equipped to take proper care of them. Given past failures in resource management, many people have been
sympathetic to this argument. However, most governments and businesses are not. In Native land-claims negotiations, for example, one of the
prime considerations of federal and provincial negotiators is to ensure that whatever authority is devolved to local bands will not reduce the level
of continued exploitation of local resources. This bias against local interests applies in spades to West Coast fisheries, where the brunt of
conservation measures and tradeoffs with the Americans in negotiations over the Pacific Salmon Treaty is being borne by small fishers,
aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike, in dying coastal communities. To reform unsustainable resource exploitation, and give
life to rural communities, Native leaders will need to work with a range of interests -- non-aboriginal
fishers, environmentalists, supportive civil servants and politicians, and urban sympathizers. It is in everyone's
interests that they do so. Instead, renewed aboriginal whaling on the West Coast ignores these groups, and does so
with actions that will inevitably undermine one of the hard-won, yet still fragile, successes in international
environmental law.
Empirics prove
Thompson 99
(Wendy-Anne Thompson, journalist, “This was one expensive meal: the aboriginal-green alliance is shattered by the Makah whale hunt,” Alberta
Report. 26.25 (June 14, 1999), Lexis)//BB
Environmentalists have long portrayed the noble Indian as high priest of the ecosphere. The myth benefited both
parties. It provided a spiritual cloak to the greens' anti-development campaigns, while the Indians received organizational muscle for their land
claims. But the alliance was wounded, perhaps mortally, when Makah Indians killed a single gray whale last month offshore Washington. Canadian greens responded with racist vitriol not heard in public for decades. The Vancouver Province, for instance,
compared Indian whale-hunting to female genital mutilation in Africa. As B.C. Indians also asserted their traditional right
to hunt whales, Premier Glen Clark balked. He is perfectly willing to have the province carved up by First Nations, but First Nations carving up
whales remains intolerable. On May 17, the 50-foot beast was killed in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, just off the tip of Washington's Olympic
Peninsula, about 60 miles west of Victoria. As members of the tribe watched, the Makah (reserve population, 1,200) harpooned a gray whale for
the first time in 70 years. It was dispatched using a combination of traditional and conventional equipment: a cedar canoe with hand-carved
paddles, harpoons, .50-calibre rifles and motor boats. Under misty skies, the seven-man crew stalked their prey about 250 yards off-shore. The
canoe's long, narrow bow, carved to represent a wolf's head, was steered directly above the mammal, while animal rightists hurled
themselves between the harpoons and the whale in an effort to save its life. Shortly after dawn, blood surfaced on the
water after hunters repeatedly stabbed the mammoth mammal. The whale tried to swim away, dragging the canoe behind it. Hunters in powerboats then shot it at least twice within 10 minutes of the initial hit. Indians on the beach then organized a celebration at their community centre
seven miles away. Four thousand Makah and members of other bands feasted for two days, stripping the meat from the carcass and consuming it
as tribal drums were beaten. "The whole thing brought the tribe together," says Makah band member Kirk, who wishes to be known only by his
first name. "We view this as having cultural significance and is in a way part of religious freedom. People who don't understand us
call us savages. I call them extreme missionary zealots." Zealotry was certainly in the air. B.C. newspapers printed hundreds of letters from
the outraged, who referred to the whale as a "gentle, peaceful giant," "completely trusting," "spiritual" and "intelligent." The hunt was described
as "disgraceful," "sick" and "disgusting." Telephoned death threats poured into the reserve. Kirk relates that one fanatic told
him he hoped that all of the Makah, adults and children, died "just like the whale." The Makah began planning the hunt four years ago. Interest in
reviving it had grown after an archeological dig at the nearby village of Ozette in 1970, which uncovered thousands of artifacts bearing witness to
a 2,000-year whaling tradition. Many Makah believe health problems on the reserve are the result of the loss of their traditional diet of seafood
and sea mammal meat. They also believe that delinquency among the band's young people stems from a lack of discipline and pride which the
hunt could restore. Commercial whaling of the western Pacific gray whales did not begin in earnest until the animals' calving areas off Baja
California were discovered in 1847. By the 1920s grays were almost extinct, prompting a hunting ban in 1937. The gray whale population
gradually recovered, and the species was removed from the endangered list in 1994. Its numbers are now estimated at 26,000. Only subsistence
hunting of 140 grays a year by Indians in Alaska, Siberia and Washington is permitted by the International Whaling Commission. An 1855
federal treaty, the only one in America, allows the Makah to hunt whales. The tribe is authorized to take up to five per year over a five-year
period. The hunt is sanctioned by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the IWC. Canada imposed a moratorium on the commercial whale
hunt in 1972 and pulled out of the IWC in 1982, arguing there was no further reason to remain a member since the commission's mandate is to
ensure the orderly development of the commercial whaling industry. University of Calgary anthropology professor Milton Freeman argues the
Makah have a cultural right to their hunt, which is no threat to the gray whale species. He points out that Norway has a sustainable whaling
industry (they take 760 minke each year) and that Canada is the world's third-largest whaling nation in the world, with 47 communities killing
whales for food and ceremonial purposes. That the gray whale is no longer endangered is completely irrelevant to animal rightists. To
them, whales
are not just another species struggling to survive on this planet--they are deeply spiritual, even sacred
beings, equal to, if not superior to, human beings. The urban environmentalist fascination with the whale (and sea mammals in
general) began in the 1960s. Many of the various species were then endangered, and sensitive folk were sickened by pictures and descriptions of
these prehistoric survivors butchered by commercial whalers. White environmentalists now claim their erstwhile Indian
allies have betrayed them. Greenpeace co-founder Bob Hunter wrote in the Georgia Straight, "So much for one of the
abiding myths of the environmentalist movement, namely that the natives could be counted on to treat
nature with more respect than the white man. Some activists have long argued that environmentalists should support all native land
claims because the aboriginals will automatically do a better job of preserving the wilderness than the rest of us...Oh well, another lovely hippie
fantasy bites the dust." Judith Stone, president of the Animal Advocates Society of B.C., goes so far as to call the Makah "savages that threw the
harpoon." She says she now realizes that "No spirituality is superior to another--especially when it requires killing the helpless and the innocent.
It was so untrendy to tell the truth--that natives are just humans, warts and all. They were never superior in any way, at any time." She warns, "No
more innocents sacrificed to money and power. If it is necessary to take up arms to protect the innocents, then how many are ready?" Prof.
Freeman argues an approach based on animal rights rather than science is irrational. He says that whales have been studied for decades and
there exists no strong scientific evidence they are particularly more intelligent than other species. In response to the "savages" charge, he contends
the best society can hope for in killing animals is that death is as quick and as painless as in the food industry that kills billions of cattle, sheep,
pigs and chicken every year. The anthropologist characterizes the outrage at the Makah hunt as " cultural imperialism." He says of animal
rightism, "It's grown into an urban movement that tends
are basically saying, `We don't eat whale meat and therefore you can't.' "
to attract people who are culturally insensitive. They
AT: Doesn’t Block Tar Sands
Yes it does—keystone prevention key to end global oil supply
Hughes 2/12
(J. David Hughes, a geoscientist, is the president of Global Sustainability Research Inc., “Stopping the Keystone XL Pipeline Is the Right Thing
to Do,” NY Times, Feb 12, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/02/12/is-the-keystone-xl-pipeline-worth-the-fight/stopping-thekeystone-xl-pipeline-is-the-right-thing-to-do)//BB
Keystone XL is the right issue for environmental groups like 350.org to focus on. Indeed, the petroleum industry's own statistics show that
existing pipeline capacity will be full within a year. The bulk of Western Canadian oil production is from the tar sands. Tar
sands developments require extremely large upfront expenditures that will not be made unless operators
are assured of a return on the investment. The failure to build Keystone XL, which is likely the quickest and
most expedient way to increase Canadian export capacity, will effectively cap oil production and
discourage investment in future projects and the expansion of existing ones. And using rail transport to
replace the pipeline is not feasible given that most of the capacity is already used and questions are being
raised on safety since the Lac-Mégantic and other disasters. Alternatives to Keystone XL, including the Northern
Gateway and Transmountain Expansion pipelines to Canada's West Coast, are earlier in the regulatory process
and face high levels of public opposition, making their construction doubtful at best. Tar sands are one
of the few sources of new oil in the world capable of substantial growth . Capping expansion will
materially reduce global oil supply and increase price, which, at the end of the day, is what most people
understand when it comes to personal oil consumption. Reducing consumption is the key to making
meaningful inroads on climate change.
Keystone is key—several projects won’t be developed without it
Farrell 3/11
(Bryan Farrell is an editor at Waging Nonviolence, where he writes about environment, climate change and people power. “There’s no success
like failure, when it comes to movement building,” March 11, 2014, http://wagingnonviolence.org/2014/03/theres-success-like-failure-comesmovement-building/)//BB
The existence of more pipelines flowing out of Alberta’s tar sands is not evidence that the broad-based campaign against the Keystone
XL was misguided to begin with, as many pundits have argued. For one thing, it has
elevated the first cries of protest from
people living along the pipeline route and exposed the ways in which the fossil fuel industry exploits those unfortunate enough to
live on the front lines of its dirty practices. Secondly, despite the multitude of contingency plans the tar sands industry
has in place should the Keystone XL not gain approval, none are as important as the Keystone XL itself.
Recent reports have shown that many tar sands projects will not be economically viable without the Keystone XL.
More broadly speaking, however, should a campaign that took a little-known project on the fast track toward approval and made it a national
issue of debate, delaying progress for nearly three years, really be considered a failure, or a waste of time and energy? At worst, the
campaign against the Keystone XL has galvanized a national climate movement at an utterly critical
moment — given these two other tar sands pipelines and the many other fossil fuel projects in progress around the United States and Canada.
Keystone Key to Broad Action
Win on keystone key to more activism
Pica 2/12
(Erich Pica is the president of Friends of the Earth U.S., “Building Keystone Would be a Big Mistake,” NY Times, Feb 12, 2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/02/12/is-the-keystone-xl-pipeline-worth-the-fight/building-keystone-would-be-a-big-mistake)//BB
The fight against the pipeline has galvanized a coalition of young people, environmentalists, ranchers,
Native Americans and others who understand it’s time for the United States to prioritize progress and a commitment
to renewable energy over the interests of oil industry. The pipeline represents the very worst aspects of fossil fuel
extraction. It would result in the building of new infrastructure to support the movement and refining of the dirtiest and most polluting type of
oil, instead of devoting such resources to support cleaner, renewable and more sustainable types of energy. Denial of the Keystone
XL pipeline would empower more climate activism , as well as prevent a dirty energy source from being exploited.
President Obama must stop that development if he hopes to have any kind of climate legacy.
Sets an international precedent
McKibben 2/12
(Bill McKibben, the Schumann distinguished scholar at Middlebury College, is the founder of 350.org and the author of "Fighting Global
Warming Now" and other books. “ Keystone XL Is a Fight That Has Galvanized the Public” NY Times, Feb 12, 2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/02/12/is-the-keystone-xl-pipeline-worth-the-fight/keystone-xl-is-a-fight-that-has-galvanized-thepublic)//BB
As it turns out, Keystone XL is the issue that has brought more activists into the street than any environmental
question in a generation. That's because they understand that if we're ever going to tackle global warming
we actually have to leave some carbon in the ground. And they understood that this was one place where
President Obama, acting by himself, could make an enormous difference. Should he do the right thing, it
would be the first time a world leader has said: Here's a project we won't build because of its effect on the
climate. That might help reopen the international negotiations that the State Department wrecked at Copenhagen in
2009, in the greatest foreign policy fiasco of the first Obama term.
Ogallala Impact
Keystone development risks collapse of the Ogallala aquifer
Kleeb 2/12
(Jane Kleeb is the founder of Bold Nebraska, an advocacy group working with landowners along the proposed Keystone route. “The Keystone
Pipeline Will Destroy Our Land and Our Water,” NY Times, Feb 12, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/02/12/is-the-keystonexl-pipeline-worth-the-fight/the-keystone-pipeline-will-destroy-our-land-and-our-water)//BB
The pipeline potentially risks our Sandhills, nearly 2,400 family wells, our prized Platte and Niobrara rivers and our
state’s economic lifeblood — the Ogallala aquifer. The U.S. State Department’s report does not say that this massive pipeline will not risk
our water or contribute to carbon pollution. It’s a neutral report and one more step in a long journey for families and national groups all bound
with a common message to President Obama: The Keystone export pipeline is not in our national interest. Pundits and lobbyists can pontificate
on why fighting this pipeline, at this moment, does not make political sense. For us, it was never a question. There was never a pause. We witness
how TransCanada treats our neighbors. TransCanada threatens eminent domain. TransCanada bullies farmers and ranchers with one-sided
contracts that shift the economic liabilities of tar sands spills on to families’ shoulders. To see that we are in the right fight, all
we have to do is look to our neighbors still cleaning up the tar sands spill in the Kalamazoo River or the
oil in the backyards and basements of Mayflower, Ark.
Ogallala aquifer is key to prevent extinction
Zellmer 8
(Sandra Zellmer is a Law prof and co-director of the Water Resources Research Initiative at the University of Nebraska, Book Review: Boom and
Bust on the Great Plains: Déjà vu All Over Again, April 2008, 41 Creighton L. Rev. 385, p. Lexis)//BB
CONCLUSION "Water is life ... . Each drop is a benediction." 226 Reforms - especially agricultural reforms - are hard to
come by. According to Jim Lyons, a former U.S. Agriculture Under Secretary, "the big commodity groups have a stranglehold on policy. And
there's not a lot of stomach for new ideas." 227 William Ashworth points out, however, that the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer is
an impending crisis that we ignore at our own peril. 228 Given that the aquifer produces around twenty percent of the U.S.
harvest, the ripple effects of its demise could be cataclysmic, nationally and even internationally. 229
Impact Calc
Neg
Extinction First
Even a tiny reduction in an existential risk has to come before any other public
“good” – extinction causes the ends of all current and future lives
Bostrom 13 (Nick, University of Oxford, Feb 2013, “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority”,
Global Policy, Vol. 4, Issue 1, Accessed 07.18.14)//LD
To calculate the loss associated with an existential catastrophe, we must consider how much value would come to exist in
its absence. It turns out that the ultimate potential for Earth-originating intelligent life is literally astronomical. One gets a large number
even if one confines one's consideration to the potential for biological human beings living on Earth. If we suppose with Parfit that our planet will remain
habitable for at least another billion years, and we assume that at least one billion people could live on it sustainably, then the potential exist for at
least 10^16 human lives of normal duration. These lives could also be considerably better than the average
contemporary human life, which is so often marred by disease, poverty, injustice, and various biological limitations that
could be partly overcome through continuing technological and moral progress. However, the relevant figure is not how many people could live on Earth but how many
descendants we could have in total. One lower bound of the number of biological human life-years in the future accessible
universe (based on current cosmological estimates) is 10^34 years.7 Another estimate, which assumes that future minds will be mainly implemented in computational hardware
instead of biological neuronal wetware, produces a lower bound of 10^54 human-brain-emulation subjective life-years (or 10^71 basic computational operations) (Bostrom, 2003).8 If we make
the less conservative assumption that future civilisations could eventually press close to the absolute bounds of known physics (using some as yet unimagined technology), we get radically higher
Even if we use the
most conservative of these estimates, which entirely ignores the possibility of space colonisation and software minds, we find that the expected loss of
an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 10^16 human lives. This implies that the expected value of reducing
existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percentage point is at least a hundred times the value of a million
human lives. The more technologically comprehensive estimate of 1054 humanbrain-emulation subjective life-years (or 1052 lives of ordinary length) makes the same point even more
starkly. Even if we give this allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologically mature civilisation a mere 1 per cent chance
of being correct, we find that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth
of one percentage point is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human lives. One might consequently argue that even
the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an expected value greater than that of the definite provision of
any 'ordinary' good, such as the direct benefit of saving 1 billion lives. And, further, that the absolute value of the indirect effect of
saving 1 billion lives on the total cumulative amount of existential risk—positive or negative—is almost certainly larger than the positive value of
the direct benefit of such an action. Maxipok These considerations suggest that the loss in expected value resulting from an existential catastrophe is so enormous that
the objective of reducing existential risks should be a dominant consideration whenever we act out of an impersonal
concern for humankind as a whole. It may be useful to adopt the following rule of thumb for such impersonal moral action: Maxipok Maximise the
probability of an 'OK outcome', where an OK outcome is any outcome that avoids existential catastrophe.
estimates of the amount of computation and memory storage that is achievable and thus of the number of years of subjective experience that could be realised.9
Util
Only by maximizing lives saved and being willing to sacrifice some for many gives
equality to all rational beings – that’s key to value to life
Cummisky 96 (David, professor of philosophy at Bates College, Kantian Consequentialism, pg.
145)//LD
We must not obscure the issue by characterizing this type of case as the sacrifice of individuals for some abstract “social
entity.” It is not a question of some persons having to bear the cost for some elusive “overall social good.” Instead, the question is whether
some persons must bear the inescapable cost for the sake of other persons. Robert Nozick, for example, argues that to use a
person in this way does not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the only life he has.” But why is this not equally
By emphasizing solely the one who must bear the cost if we act,
we fail to sufficiently respect and take account of the many other separate persons, each with only one life, who will bear
the cost of our inaction. In such a situation, what would a conscientious Kantian agent, an agent motivated by the unconditional value of rational
true of all those whom we do not save through our failure to act?
beings, choose? A morally good agent recognizes that the basis of all particular duties is the principle that “rational nature exists as an end in itself” (GMM 429).
Rational nature as such is the supreme objective end of all conduct. If one truly believes that all rational beings have
an equal value, then the rational solution to such a dilemma involves maximally promoting the lives and liberties of
as many rational beings as possible (chapter 5). In order to avoid this conclusion, the non-consequentialist Kantian needs to justify agentcentered constraints. As we saw in chapter 1, however, even most Kantian deontologists recognize that agent-centered constraints require a non-value-based
How can a concern for the value of rational
beings lead to a refusal to sacrifice rational beings even when this would prevent other more extensive
losses of rational beings? If the moral law is based on the value of rational beings and their ends, then what is the rationale
for prohibiting a moral agent from maximally promoting these two tiers of value? If I sacrifice some for the sake for
others, I do not use them arbitrarily, and I do not deny the unconditional value of rational beings . Persons may
have “dignity, that is, an unconditional and incomparable worth” that transcends any market value ( GMM 436)., but persons also have a
fundamental equality that dictates that some must sometimes give way for the sake of others (chapter 5 and 7). The
rationale. But we have seen that Kant’s normative theory is based on an unconditionally valuable end.
concept of the end-in-itself does not support the view that we may never force another to bear some cost in order to benefit others. If one focuses on the equal
value of all rational beings, the
equal consideration suggests that one may have to sacrifice some to save many.
Utilitarian calculus is essential to government action
Gillick 6 (Michael H, JD PhD Lawyer, “We hold these truths: the rebirth of the American ideal after
Levinas,” Centennial Conference on Levinas and Law, 9/17,
http://ccll.mcgill.ca/presentations/gillick.html
The point here is that the actions of a government, if truly grounded in the inalienable rights of all Others, will necessarily be
a calculus, much like the utilitarian calculus, and will necessarily involve a failure to honor some of those inalienable rights. To use
terminology that I very much dislike because of the religious connotations with which it has been burdened, no one is innocent. If the failure to satisfy all demands
can be called guilt, then we are all constantly and unavoidably guilty. In a world where
there is a scarcity of goods, the government
must adopt policies regarding the distribution of those goods, and every such policy will necessarily involve a failure to
satisfy everyone’s need for such goods. If it is the function of government to provide protection against harm from nature or from aggressors, the
providing of that protection will necessarily involve the denial of basic human rights to some. Restraint, detention, even injury, even killing, may
be necessary in the calculus of human rights for all.
Every person has negative responsibility for extinction events – failing to stop
someone from ending the world is as bad as doing it yourself
Bok 88 (Sissela Bok, Professor of Philosophy, Brandeis, Applied Ethics and Ethical Theory, Ed. David
Rosenthal and Fudlou Shehadi, 1988)//LD
The same argument can be made for Kant's other formulations of the Categorical Imperative: "So act as to use
humanity, both in your own
an end, never simply as a means"; and "So act as if you were
always through actions a law-making member in a universal Kingdom of Ends." No one with a concern for humanity could
consistently will to risk eliminating humanity in the person of himself and every other or to risk the death of all members in a universal
person and in the person of every other, always at the same time as
Kingdom of Ends for
the sake of justice. To risk their collective death for the sake of following one's conscience
would be, as Rawls said, "irrational, crazy." And to say that one did riot intend such a catastrophe, but that one merely failed to
stop other persons from bringing it about would be beside the point when the end of the world was at
stake. For although it is true that we cannot be held responsible for most of the wrongs that others commit, the Latin maxim presents a case
where we would have to take such a responsibility seriously - perhaps to the point of deceiving, bribing, even killing
an innocent person, in order that the world not perish.
Their impact framework is morally bankrupt – allowing people to die when you could
have prevented it is the greatest inhumanity one can commit
Nielsen 93 Professor of Philosophy, University of Calgary (Kai, “Absolutism and Its Consequentialist
Critics”, ed. Joram Graf Haber Pg 171-72)//LD
Anticonsequentialists often point to the inhumanity of people who will sanction such killing of the innocent, but
cannot the compliment be returned by speaking of the even greater inhumanity, conjoined with evasiveness, of those who will
allow even more death and far greater misery and then excuse themselves on the ground that they did not intend the
death and misery but merely forbore to prevent it? In such a context, such reasoning and such forbearing to prevent seems to me to
constitute a moral evasion. I say it is evasive because rather than steeling himself to do what in normal circumstances would be a
horrible and vile act but in this circumstance is a harsh moral necessity, he allows, when he has the power to prevent it, a situation
which is still many times worse. He tries to keep his 'moral purity' and avoid 'dirty hands' at the price of utter moral
failure and what Kierkegaard called 'double-mindedness.' It is understandable that people should act in this morally evasive way but this does not make it right.
My consequentialist reasoning about such cases as the case of the innocent fat man is very often resisted on the grounds that it
starts a very dangerous precedent. People rationalize wildly and irrationally in their own favor in such situations. To avoid such rationalization, we must
stubbornly stick to our deontological principles and recognize as well that very frequently, if people will put their wits to work or just endure, such admittedly
monstrous actions done to prevent still greater evils will turn out to be unnecessary.
AT: Probability
A risk of extinction makes probability irrelevant – the loss is so great that even a 1%
chance must be regarded as 100% certainty
Kateb 86 (Dissent p. 163)
It is of no moral account that extinction may be only a slight
one has yet credibly denied that by some sequence or
other, a particular use of nuclear weapons may lead to human and natural extinction. If it is not impossible it must
be treated as certain: the loss signified by extinction nullifies all calculations of probability as it nullifies all calculations
of costs and benefits.
Nuclear discourse must vividly register that distinctiveness.
possibility.
No one can say how great the probability is, but no
High probability of nuclear conflict – conventional war could inadvertently escalate
Posen 82 (Barry R, Professor of Political Science, MIT, 1982, "Inadvertent Nuclear War?: Escalation
and NATO's Northern Flank." International Security, pp 28-54)//LD
Could a major EastWest conventional war be kept conventional? American policymakers increasingly seem to think so.
Recent discussions of such a clash reflect the belief that protracted conventional conflict is possible, if only the West fields sufficient
conventional forces and acquires an adequate industrial mobilization base. Indeed, the Reagan Administration has embraced the idea of preparing
for a long conventional war, as evidenced by its concern with the mobilization potential of the American defense industry.1 Underlying this
policy is the belief that the United States should be prepared to fight a war that, in duration and character, resembles World War II. American
decisionmakers seem confident of their ability to avoid nuclear escalation in such a war if they so desire. That confidence is dangerous
and unwarranted. It fails to take into account that intense conventional operations may cause nuclear
escalation by threatening or destroying strategic nuclear forces. The operational requirements (or preferences) for
conducting a conventional war may thus unleash enormous, and possibly uncontrollable, escalatory pressures despite
the desires of American or Soviet policymakers. Moreover, the potential sources of such escalation are deeply rooted in
the nature of the force structures and military strategies of the superpowers, as well as in the technological and geographical
circumstances of large-scale East-West conflict. If the escalatory pressures that could attend a major conventional war are to be prevented from
driving decision-makers toward decisions they neither intend nor wish to make, those pressures must be recognized and guarded against by the
leaders of both superpowers.2 Moreover, underestimating the escalatory risks that would accompany conventional war has several
significant negative
consequences, even in peacetime. First, American decision-makers pay insufficient attention to the
posture and operations essential to the limitation of war. Too many agree with the observation that
"both sides understand conventional warfare, they know that it can be controlled in the present age."3 Second, leaders who fail to
appreciate fully the dangers of nuclear escalation may not be cautious enough about both the initiation and the conduct of direct
confrontations between Soviet and American military power. Third, nuclear deterrence may be undermined by excessive public
confidence in the limitability of superpower conventional war. The "threat to lose control" is an important element of NATO's
details of conventional
flexible response strategy, and must be preserved. It would be unfortunate if the public pronounce- ments of Western strategists encouraged the
Soviets to believe that they could easily avoid nuclear punishment for "conventional" aggression. Fourth, emphasis on protracted
conventional conflict weakens Western Europe's confidence in America's nuclear guarantee. Emphasizing instead the
difficulty of keeping conventional war conventional might ameliorate Alliance fears that the U.S. nuclear umbrella no longer shields them.
Unfortunately, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to analyzing and understanding this path to nuclear war. Escalation has
generally been conceived of as either a rational policy choice, in which a leadership decides to preempt or to escalate in the
face of a conventional defeat, or as an accident, the result of mechanical failure, unauthorized use, or insanity. But
escalation arising out of the normal conduct of intense conventional conflict falls between these two categories:
it is neither a purposeful act of policy nor an accident. What might be called "inadvertent escalation" is rather the unintended
consequence of a decision to fight a conventional war. Defense analysts have long believed that nuclear war is most likely to emerge
out of a conventional conflict, but the idea of inadvertent escalation has somehow escaped their attention. It nevertheless is as
plausible a route to nuclear conflict as many of the scenarios that have received extensive scrutiny, and probably more likely than many.
Because nuclear escalation could destroy everything that we value, the West must be careful that the way it
intends to defend itself conventionally does not bring about the very destruction it hopes to avoid.
Defense of Just-war Theory
Just war theory is always evolving and self-correcting – controls conduct during
wars and allows for speedy resolution
DiMeglio 5 (Major Richard P, Judge Advocate, US Army, 2005, “The Evolution of the Just War
Tradition: Defining Jus Post Bellum”, Military Law Review, Vol. 186, p. 116)//LD
The just war tradition has been in perpetual evolution for nearly two thousand years; indeed, the very essence of the tradition
requires constant scrutiny, appraisal, and refinement. Its origins were in early Christianity as a means to refute Christian pacifists and
provide for certain, defined grounds under which a resort to warfare was both morally and religiously permissible. In the fifth century A.D, Augustine of Hippo (Saint
Augustine) searched for a means to reconcile traditional Christian pacifism with the need to defend the Holy Roman Empire from the approaching vandals by military
means.13 From Saint Augustine's initial writings providing for a limited justification for war, philosophers, theologians, theorists, and scholars including Saint
Thomas Aquinas, Francisco de Victoria, Francisco Suarez, Hugo Grotious, and Immanuel Kant, have developed and advanced the theory, principles, and criteria over
the course of nearly two millennia.14 The expansion continues today as just
war scholars continue to apply moral reasoning within historical
the issues of war and peace.15 This progression of ideas and debates, manifested today
throughout religious writings, international laws, treaties and conventions, is collectively known as the just
war tradition.16 Brian Orend, a professor of philosophy at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and a prominent contemporary just war theorist,
describes the just war tradition in the following manner: Just war theory . . . offers rules to guide decision-makers on the
appropriateness of their conduct during the resort to war, conduct during war and the termination phase of the conflict. Its
over-all aim is to try and ensure that wars are begun only for a very narrow set of truly defensible reasons, that when wars break
out they are fought in a responsibly controlled and targeted manner, and that parties to the dispute bring their war to
an end in a speedy and responsible fashion that respects the requirements of justice. Michael Walzer, a Professor at the Institute of
and contemporary perspectives to
Advanced Studies at Princeton University, and author of the 1977 seminal work on just war theory, Just and Unjust Wars,18 remarks on the enduring nature of the just
war tradition: "Just
war theory is not an apology for any particular war, and it is not a renunciation of war itself. It is designed to sustain a
constant scrutiny and an immanent critique."19 As an international paradigm, just war theory finds its niche squarely
between the alternate extreme perspectives of realism and pacifism.20 A realist believes that war "is an intractable part of an anarchical world system;
that it ought to be resorted to only if it makes sense in terms of national self-interest; and that, once war has begun, a state ought to do whatever it can to win."21 From
a realist's vantage point, "if adhering to a set of just war constraints hinders a state in this regard, it ought to disregard them and stick soberly to attending to its
fundamental interests in power and security."22 In short, for a realist, "[t]alk of the morality of warfare is pure bunk."23
Case
Not Key to Culture
1NC
Whale hunting isn’t tied to Makah culture – no reason to lift the moratorium.
Jenkins and Romanzo 98—have a private law practice in Washington D.C., specializing in
international and environmental law, and trade and the environment (*Leestefly AND **Cara, “Makah
Whaling: Aboriginal Subsistence or a Stepping Stone to Undermining the Commercial Whaling
Moratorium?,” Colorado Journal of Int'l Envt'l Law and Policy Colorado Journal of International
Environmental Law and Policy, LexisNexis, Winter 1998,
http://www.lexisnexis.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/?verb=sr&csi=152950&
sr=AUTHOR(Jenkins)%2BAND%2BTITLE(Makah+whaling%3A+aboriginal+subsistence+or+a+steppi
ng+stone+to+undermining+the+commercial+whaling+moratorium%3F)%2BAND%2BDATE%2BIS%2
B1998)//FJ
The main arguments articulated by these conservation-minded communities, outlined here, form the basis for this article. As argued in this
introduction, if the IWC allows the Makah an ASW quota, this may establish a slippery slope IWC precedent based on minimal cultural need,
which could realistically open the door for other prowhaling countries to receive similar culture-based quotas, thereby rendering the current
moratorium on commercial whaling essentially meaningless. Part II of this article demonstrates why, as a legal matter, the Makah tribe
does not satisfy the narrowly prescribed IWC requirements for obtaining an aboriginal whaling quota. The
Makah cannot prove more than a weak (or nonexistent) cultural, or nutritional-subsistence need to
whale for two reasons: (1) the Makah do not meet the stringent cultural need component of the IWC test
for an ASW quota, because they lack a continuing traditional dependence on whaling, having voluntarily
discontinued whaling over eighty years ago while successfully adapting their culture in the absence of
such whaling; and (2) the Makah do not fulfill the nutritional-subsistence need component of an ASW
quota, because they do not intend to engage in the traditional form of opportunistic hunts required for the
exemption, and because they have no dietary reliance whatsoever on whale meat.
Issuing a Makah whale quote would ensure a quota for Japan as well – similar
cultural ties.
Jenkins and Romanzo 98—have a private law practice in Washington D.C., specializing in
international and environmental law, and trade and the environment (*Leestefly AND **Cara, “Makah
Whaling: Aboriginal Subsistence or a Stepping Stone to Undermining the Commercial Whaling
Moratorium?,” Colorado Journal of Int'l Envt'l Law and Policy Colorado Journal of International
Environmental Law and Policy, LexisNexis, Winter 1998,
http://www.lexisnexis.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/?verb=sr&csi=152950&
sr=AUTHOR(Jenkins)%2BAND%2BTITLE(Makah+whaling%3A+aboriginal+subsistence+or+a+steppi
ng+stone+to+undermining+the+commercial+whaling+moratorium%3F)%2BAND%2BDATE%2BIS%2
B1998)//FJ
For over a decade, the Japanese have been unsuccessful in their attempts to receive a quota from the IWC fo r
their alleged "cultural need," despite extremely vigorous efforts to substantiate an ongoing Japanese
"cultural tradition" of whaling. These culture-based arguments have never been accepted by the IWC, and the IWC has voted
against all attempts by the Japanese to receive an aboriginal or small type coastal whaling quota [*81] on
this basis. n24 The IWC has not acceded to Japanese requests for a coastal community quota based only on cultural need because the
issuance of such a quota would undermine not only the strict legal requirements but also the
conservationist spirit of the current moratorium on commercial whaling. n25 Because the Makah claim of a
"cultural need" to whale invokes very similar slippery slope problems of legal precedent , the IWC
should similarly reject the Makah petition for an ASW quota.
No continuing traditional dependence on whaling – died off a century ago and
replaced by seal hunting.
Jenkins and Romanzo 98—have a private law practice in Washington D.C., specializing in
international and environmental law, and trade and the environment (*Leestefly AND **Cara, “Makah
Whaling: Aboriginal Subsistence or a Stepping Stone to Undermining the Commercial Whaling
Moratorium?,” Colorado Journal of Int'l Envt'l Law and Policy Colorado Journal of International
Environmental Law and Policy, LexisNexis, Winter 1998,
http://www.lexisnexis.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/?verb=sr&csi=152950&
sr=AUTHOR(Jenkins)%2BAND%2BTITLE(Makah+whaling%3A+aboriginal+subsistence+or+a+steppi
ng+stone+to+undermining+the+commercial+whaling+moratorium%3F)%2BAND%2BDATE%2BIS%2
B1998)//FJ
While the Makah Tribe may be able to prove through archeological and anthropological studies that their whaling culture dates back over a
thousand years, n26 this fact alone does not prove cultural "necessity." The
Makah voluntarily terminated their whale
hunts more than eighty years ago, primarily because their whaling traditions were practically nonexistent by
the turn of the century when their whaling chiefs died and no Makah elders remained who possessed the
cultural knowledge to properly train other tribal members in the traditional hunt. n27 As a result, many
generations of Makah have now lived without the cultural experience of a whale hunt or direct exposure
to whaling traditions, thereby breaking the continuity of that whaling tradition. n28 The last Makah known to hunt whales died in 1907,
n29 although some claim that the last hunt took place in 1926. n30 In any event, the Makah have not whaled for at least
seventy years , and it is likely that they have not whaled for ninety years. Moreover, these claims of a hunt in 1926 may simply be an
attempt to downplay the actual length of time since the Makah broke with their whale hunting traditions. And, regardless of this temporal
question, the transition to other means of [*82] economic subsistence actually occurred as early as the
1800s, when the Makah began to capitalize on seal hunting due to an abundant seal population and a
prosperous market for the valuable seal skins. n31
mid-
2NC
The Makah tribe does not meet the cultural requirements of moratorium exemptions – whales are
not intrinsically tied to their culture.
Jenkins and Romanzo 98—have a private law practice in Washington D.C., specializing in
international and environmental law, and trade and the environment (*Leestefly AND **Cara, “Makah
Whaling: Aboriginal Subsistence or a Stepping Stone to Undermining the Commercial Whaling
Moratorium?,” Colorado Journal of Int'l Envt'l Law and Policy Colorado Journal of International
Environmental Law and Policy, LexisNexis, Winter 1998,
http://www.lexisnexis.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/?verb=sr&csi=152950&
sr=AUTHOR(Jenkins)%2BAND%2BTITLE(Makah+whaling%3A+aboriginal+subsistence+or+a+steppi
ng+stone+to+undermining+the+commercial+whaling+moratorium%3F)%2BAND%2BDATE%2BIS%2
B1998)//FJ
The absolute necessity of the bowhead whale to the continuing cultural integrity of the Alaskan Eskimos serves as the defining case study for
understanding the cultural need prong of the ASW test. The lengthy debate in the IWC surrounding the Alaskan bowhead quota reveals that the
"cultural" requirement means more than simply cultural heritage -- rather, it connotes that whaling must be an
absolute cultural necessity . In the case of the paradigmatic Alaskan bowhead quota, which now serves as a
prototype for all subsequent ASW quota considerations, a panel of experts [*80] was convened to help determine whether a quota for bowhead
whales should be given to the Alaskan Eskimos. This panel of experts found that "the complex of whaling and
associated activities is perhaps the most important single element in the culture and society of north
Alaskan whale hunting communities. It provides a focus for the ordering of social integration, political leadership, ceremonial
activity, traditional education, personality values, and Eskimo identity." n23 This shows that the aborigine exception was narrowly interpreted as
a means of avoiding undue hardship for Alaskan natives. Preserving a broadly defined cultural tradition -- the assertion at
base of the Makah claim for an ASW quota -- simply does not fall within the parameters of this exception
when measured by the Alaskan bowhead case. The Alaskan natives possess an absolute necessity for the bowhead whale to
remain within their culture: the whales are not just a part, but the central focus, of their community and culture. To
remove the bowhead from the Eskimos would thus be tantamount to removing the stock market from Wall Street -- one does not function in the
absence of the other. In short, the Alaskan bowhead case reveals that mere cultural heritage alone is insufficient to constitute an absolute cultural
necessity to whale. The Makah are unable to satisfy the cultural need prong of the ASW quota requirement for
the following reasons: (1) their
cultural need arguments are simply too broad to satisfy the narrow IWC criterion
for an ASW quota; (2) they cannot illustrate an ongoing traditional dependence on whaling that is
connected to strong community, familial, and cultural ties surrounding active whaling traditions; and (3) their
proposed whaling plan cannot revive Makah traditions, since it relies primarily on modern whaling
methods and only retains superficial elements of traditional whaling techniques.
Makah tribe is evolved without whaling -- engaged in other types of fishing and
hunting.
Jenkins and Romanzo 98—have a private law practice in Washington D.C., specializing in
international and environmental law, and trade and the environment (*Leestefly AND **Cara, “Makah
Whaling: Aboriginal Subsistence or a Stepping Stone to Undermining the Commercial Whaling
Moratorium?,” Colorado Journal of Int'l Envt'l Law and Policy Colorado Journal of International
Environmental Law and Policy, LexisNexis, Winter 1998,
http://www.lexisnexis.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/?verb=sr&csi=152950&
sr=AUTHOR(Jenkins)%2BAND%2BTITLE(Makah+whaling%3A+aboriginal+subsistence+or+a+steppi
ng+stone+to+undermining+the+commercial+whaling+moratorium%3F)%2BAND%2BDATE%2BIS%2
B1998)//FJ
Because Makah whaling practices have remained dormant for an extended period while the Makah culture has nevertheless survived intact,
whaling is not an absolute cultural necessity for the tribe. After ceasing whaling, the Makah continued
to
engage in other types of fishing and hunting that were a traditional part of their culture, while further
adapting to increased contact with Western civilizations. n32 During the 1800s the Makah whaling tradition was
driven by commercial whaling interests, and market demand for resources like whale oil were associated
with a huge trade. n33 When this trade ceased to be as profitable, however, fishing, logging, and tourism displaced
whaling as the major occupations on the Makah [*83] reservation. n34 Furthermore, not only has the culture adapted and
survived over the years, but the Makah have maintained cultural pride and the , integrity of their history and
traditions without whaling. One of the foremost anthropologists on the Makah writes that, beginning in the 1970s, the
tribe experienced a "cultural renaissance ." n35 This has today resulted in the creation of a state-of-the-art museum that
celebrates the Makah tribal culture, housing traditional artifacts along with archival, linguistic, educational, ethnographic research, and outreach
programs. n36 And the Makah Cultural and Research Center, which opened in 1979, has "administered one of the most active and successful
language preservation programs in the United States." n37 The effective cultural development of the tribe this century, in
the absence of whaling, readily distinguishes the Makah from the Alaskan Eskimos and their absolute
cultural necessity to whale. In short, the Makah do not have a cultural necessity to whale in the same strict sense as the aborigines
which have in the past been granted an ASW quota.
Calls for cultural reclamation is merely a guise for the desire to gain economic profit
– Makah leaders have intimidated and silenced opponents of the treaty
Jenkins and Romanzo 98—have a private law practice in Washington D.C., specializing in
international and environmental law, and trade and the environment (*Leestefly AND **Cara, “Makah
Whaling: Aboriginal Subsistence or a Stepping Stone to Undermining the Commercial Whaling
Moratorium?,” Colorado Journal of Int'l Envt'l Law and Policy Colorado Journal of International
Environmental Law and Policy, LexisNexis, Winter 1998,
http://www.lexisnexis.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/?verb=sr&csi=152950&
sr=AUTHOR(Jenkins)%2BAND%2BTITLE(Makah+whaling%3A+aboriginal+subsistence+or+a+steppi
ng+stone+to+undermining+the+commercial+whaling+moratorium%3F)%2BAND%2BDATE%2BIS%2
B1998)//FJ
Seven Makah elders signed a petition against whaling in 1996, which they presented at the 48th Annual IWC meeting in
Aberdeen, Scotland. n38 These elders essentially believe that "cultural need" is a code for economic greed . The published
statement by the elders concludes: "[we] think the word 'subsistence' is the wrong thing to say when our people haven't used or had whale
We believe the hunt is only for money." n39 Indeed, when the Makah decide
to exhume a tradition that has lain dormant for three-quarters of a century, one cannot but suspect that the
estimated value of $ 1 million per gray whale n40 would influence the decision. These dissenting Makah elders, as
meat/blubber since the early 1900s . . . .
well as some Nuu-Chah-Nulth similarly opposed to members of their tribe who would like to resume whaling, have expressed strong concerns
that the Indian bands are being manipulated by powerful commercial whaling interests. American [*84] politicians
have also expressed similar concern over undue influence by commercial interests: "it's very significant that seven tribal elders oppose this
request . . . . They rightfully fear that the hunt will become a commercial enterprise. In fact, the tribe's leaders have been seeking the counsel of
whalers from Japan and Norway." n41 Makah members opposing whaling have experienced threats and pressure
from other Makah, and there has been an attempt within the Makah tribe to silence dissenters and cover
up the dispute. n42 Undaunted, those Makah opposing the proposed whale hunt will again be present at the 1997 IWC meeting in Monaco to
object to the ASW quota request. n43 Although the tribal council members in favor of the whale hunt claim to have the support of seventy
percent of all Makah families, this statement is deliberately misleading: the vote taken by the counsel was impromptu, and therefore only a small
portion of the Makah community actually voted on the proposal. According to Alberta Thompson, a seventy-three-year-old Makah: The council
went ahead without consent of the tribe . . . . They say they have 70 percent, but that isn't so . . . . The tribal council isn't telling the
world that we Makah are really split on this issue and there is a silent majority that is just afraid to
speak out against whaling because the tribal counsel tells them it will threaten our treaty rights. n44
[*85] The World Council of Whalers (WCW), n45 a recently formed body in favor of aboriginal whaling which consists of many Nuu-ChahNulth members who generally side with the Makah's whaling petition, even felt compelled to publicly condemn the inappropriate handling of
dissent within the tribe. n46 Ironically, some Nuu-Chah-Nulth members have publicly expressed similar resentment, complaining that the WCW
has publicly expressed tribal support for a resumption of whaling despite the fact that Nuu-Chah-Nulth members also lack unanimity on this
issue.
Specifically, a Makah quota would set a low benchmark for the nutritional
requirments of the moratorium – leads to Japanese whaling
Jenkins and Romanzo 98—have a private law practice in Washington D.C., specializing in
international and environmental law, and trade and the environment (*Leestefly AND **Cara, “Makah
Whaling: Aboriginal Subsistence or a Stepping Stone to Undermining the Commercial Whaling
Moratorium?,” Colorado Journal of Int'l Envt'l Law and Policy Colorado Journal of International
Environmental Law and Policy, LexisNexis, Winter 1998,
http://www.lexisnexis.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/?verb=sr&csi=152950&
sr=AUTHOR(Jenkins)%2BAND%2BTITLE(Makah+whaling%3A+aboriginal+subsistence+or+a+steppi
ng+stone+to+undermining+the+commercial+whaling+moratorium%3F)%2BAND%2BDATE%2BIS%2
B1998)//FJ
A Makah ASW quota based upon cultural heritage arguments would indicate that a very minimal
showing of nutritional and subsistence need could satisfy this prong of the ASW test . If arguments for
nutritional and subsistence needs are not strictly construed as paramount to the ASW exemption, even modern affluent societies might only need
to make a weak argument showing a cultural need for whale meat. Under such a scenario, the Japanese desire to maintain a
pleasing diversity of protein sources, along with local, coastal community preferences for whale meat,
might become sufficiently compelling arguments to support an ASW quota.
AT: Treaty of Neah Bay
The Makah tribe has no legal right to whale – whaling moratorium supercedes the
Treaty of Neah Bay
Jenkins and Romanzo 98—have a private law practice in Washington D.C., specializing in
international and environmental law, and trade and the environment (*Leestefly AND **Cara, “Makah
Whaling: Aboriginal Subsistence or a Stepping Stone to Undermining the Commercial Whaling
Moratorium?,” Colorado Journal of Int'l Envt'l Law and Policy Colorado Journal of International
Environmental Law and Policy, LexisNexis, Winter 1998,
http://www.lexisnexis.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/?verb=sr&csi=152950&
sr=AUTHOR(Jenkins)%2BAND%2BTITLE(Makah+whaling%3A+aboriginal+subsistence+or+a+steppi
ng+stone+to+undermining+the+commercial+whaling+moratorium%3F)%2BAND%2BDATE%2BIS%2
B1998)//FJ
Part IV argues that the United States has no compelling legal reasons, either internationally or domestically, to support an
aboriginal quota for the Makah, because the commercial whaling moratorium supersedes the Makah's
domestic rights to whale under the Treaty of Neah Bay and because the domestic implementing
legislation for the moratorium constructively abrogates the Makah's treaty right to whale. In addition to these
compelling legal reasons for denying the tribe's request, awarding an ASW quota to the Makah would be unwise in light of the very real
possibility that the tribe intends to eventually engage in commercial whaling.