The four dams on the Klamath River in far Northern California are under relicensing, something that only occurs every 50 years. The dams are owned by billionaire Warren Buffett, who purchased Pacificorp, one of the lowest-cost electricity producers in the United States, three years ago. Many Californians were hopeful this purchase would mean the end to the dams, but their concerns for the salmon fell on deaf ears. Once again, Warren Buffett rebuffed salmon advocates.

On Saturday, May 3, 2008, American Indian tribes and salmon fisherman failed to gain a private audience with Buffett and were ignored at the Berkshire Hathaway Inc. meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. Protesters shouted, “Un-dam the Klamath! Bring the salmon home!“, while shareholders enjoyed complimentary cocktails Friday night. For two years, an unprecedented alliance of tribes, businesses, conservation groups and commercial/recreational fishermen has tried to reach an agreement with Buffett for dam removal. Buffett said that his company would not decide the fate of the Klamath dams, but Berkshire will defer to regulators in California and Oregon. Ironically, dam removal is cheaper than building the fish ladders regulators are recommending.

Salmon fishing has been canceled this year and declared a “disaster” in California and Oregon, largely because of the Sacramento River; however, the previous fisheries disaster was due to the Klamath salmon population. This year’s closure amounts to a loss of $255 million and 2,263 jobs to California coastal communities. Just as hard hit, or even harder hit, are the Native Americans in the region, many who traveled to Omaha in protest of the Klamath dams. “It’s the fight for the salmon, and it’s the fight for our species,” said Yurok member Frankie Myers. The salmon have not had full access to the Klamath River since the first dam was built in 1916.

Related posts on the Klamath River and Salmon:
Why the Klamath Dams Don’t Provide “Green” Energy
Sobering News for This Fish Lover

Told by Darryl “Babe” Wilson, “Two Moons” is a “warning” story of what might happen to the Earth if we don’t heal the “sickness” of our planet. “Jui ja wa. The old people would say jui ja wa. Jui ja wa, that means the Earth is sick.” Darryl was born on the north side of Sul’ma’ejote (Fall River) at its confluence with It’ajuma (Pit River), which is east of Mt. Shasta. He has doctorate in English and the author of The Morning the Sun Went Down, a honest autobiography about what it is like to grow up Native American in rural California. Based on the recommendation of a Modoc colleague, I read this book over seven years ago, but the story has remained in my heart as if I read it yesterday.

Darryl “Babe” Wilson tells the story of “Two Moons” on When the ancestors whisper… , about how the Moon became a moon. According to the old timers, the Moon used to be like the Earth, with trees, deer, birds, and salmon.

But there was the moon, it was like this Earth at one time. Then two thinkings came: they called thought thinking. Two thinkings came. One thinking nobody knows where the thinking came from, but one thinking said, This is mine; this Earth is mine. That was an Earth at that time. This Earth is mine and I’m going to use it the way I want to use it. The other thinking said, No, you don’t have any right to do that; there’s generations of children coming; we have a responsibility to save this for them so they’ll have a chance to live and be happy too. So those two thinkings got into a big argument, and their big argument turned into a war.

The side that wanted to use the Moon’s resources up started attacking the side that wanted to defend the Moon. The people defending the Moon had to use up all of their resources in defense, and the other side used up all of their resources on the offense. Soon, the Moon caught fire, and there was no water left to put it out. The Moon became a moon.

For me, this story foreshadows what could happen to Earth. One side staunchly supports using resources and ignores the facts regarding climate change. The other side is frantically defending the Earth, but will it be enough? Will the Earth become another moon?

And this world, in my lifetime, I can look and see there are two thoughts, that’s the private possession, human rights above everything else ownership, which translates into the right to abuse ownership. So there’s that thinking there. It’s been there ever since America started on this continent. The thinking is just right there. It’s big and huge and ugly, but there are also more people in my lifetime who said, Wait, we’ve got to be careful with this world.

We’ve got to solve the problem before the “war” erupts on Earth. We’ve got to think of the Earth as our mother and heed the wisdom of the Native American elders. We’ve got to stop “taking and taking and taking” and be responsible for our planet’s health. We’ve got to help Earth sing its beautiful song again!

Image courtesy of California Indian Storytelling Association.

So what do we teach to our children? We usually pass on unquestioned what we all received in our own childhood classrooms. I have come to know both the truths and the myths about our “First Thanksgiving,” and I feel we need to try to reach beyond the myths to some degree of historic truth.

How will you teach your children about this day of thanks, that initiated the genocide of Native Americans? Here are some highlights from Teaching About Thanksgiving:

1. The Puritans were political revolutionaries who believed in Armageddon. They believed they were the “chosen elect” mentioned in Revelations. “They strove to ‘purify’ first themselves and then everyone else of everything they did not accept in their own interpretation of scripture. Later New England Puritans used any means, including deceptions, treachery, torture, war, and genocide to achieve that end.”
2. The Wampanoag Native Americans were members of the confederacy of the League of the Delaware. Their religion embraced charity and hospitality “to anyone who came to them with empty hands.”  Squanto, the Indian hero of the Thanksgiving story, had a very close relationship with British explorer John Weymouth, before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth. Squanto associated the Puritans with Weymouth’s people.
3. “To the Pilgrims the Indians were heathens and, therefore, the natural instruments of the Devil. Squanto, as the only educated and baptized Christian among the Wampanoag, was seen as merely an instrument of God, set in the wilderness to provide for the survival of His chosen people, the Pilgrims.”
4. A generation later, the attendees of the first Thanksgiving “were striving to kill each other in the genocidal conflict known as King Philip’s War”. By the end of the war, most of the New England Indians were either exterminated, refugees in Canada, or sold into slavery.

As I watched a Yurok family yesterday shopping for their Thanksgiving meal, I wondered how they taught their children about this holiday. This week, my daughter has brought home from school the typical coloring sheets, dot-to-dots, pamphlets, etc. regarding this holiday, and my thoughts have dwelled on the honesty in education. A wonderful resource for teachers and parents is the book Rethinking Columbus, which has many ideas and resources for presenting this part of history to our children.  I especially like the article on a Native American stepping off an airplane in Italy and declaring he had “discovered” the country.  How can you discover a country when people are already living there?

As we feast with our families and friends today, we must be thankful for the stability in our lives and not forget that genocide is still occurring in Dafur.  I am also thankful for the good health my family and friends enjoy.  Just three years ago, my extended family spent Thanksgiving in the hospital.  My infant son had open-heart surgery the day before Thanksgiving. There is so much to be thankful for today, but I am not sure world dominance is one of those things.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Fire Race is beautifully illustrated by Sylvia Long, and the illustrations hold true to Karuk traditions in the garb of the animal characters. For example, Coyote wears a basket cap traditional to the Karuk Tribe. The Karuk Tribe resides in far northern California along the Klamath River. Fire Race tells the traditional tale of how Coyote appealed to the vanity of the yellow jacket sisters to steal their fire. The race begins, with many local animals passing the fire to one another as the yellow jacket sisters chase them. Eventually, the fire is swallowed into the wood, where it is stored today for us to burn and stay warm.

I just love this book! It has always been one of my favorites as a teacher and a parent. There are so many things to discuss, such as the vanity of the Yellow Jacket Sisters and the cooperative effort of the animals. I love to connect the story to our hearth for our children, as we give thanks for the warmth our woodstove provides us. It is a gift from the land.

Arizona is making an effort to bring electricty to it's Native American residents through a new program called the Tribal Rural Electrification Program (in PDF). Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano announced the new initiative Wednesday, saying the first phase will bring solar power to at least 100 reservation homes by the end of the year.

The Arizona Department of Commerce Energy Office will run the program, with the help of Arizona State University Polytechnic Campus' Photovoltaic Testing Laboratory. Arizona utilities and solar power companies will also partner in the initiative.

This post originally appeared on Green Options.

Back to school time is rapidly approaching, and it is a good time for parents and teachers to make plans for environmental education (EE). EE involves teaching children about the natural world and the way ecosystems work. According to the US EPA,

Through EE, people gain an understanding of how their individual actions affect the environment, acquire skills that they can use to weigh various sides of issues, and become better equipped to make informed decisions. EE also gives people a deeper understanding of the environment, inspiring them to take personal responsibility for its preservation and restoration.

Whether your child is homeschooled or attends public/private school, EE is an important part of education. Many school districts feel that they fulfill their EE requirements by sending sixth graders to outdoor camp, but EE should occur throughout the year. Concerned parents should ask their children’s teachers what their plans for EE are for the year.

The following EE curricula are ones I have particular experience with in K-8 education. Many curricula exist, and my approach has always been to pick and choose the best units from assorted curricula to provide EE in my classroom. Project Wild, Project Learning Tree, Keepers of the Earth, and Adopt-a-Watershed are my favorite EE curricula.

Project Wild is the most widely-used EE and conservation curriculum used in K-12 education, and most sixth grade outdoor camps use this curriculum as a basis for their programs. Project Wild emphasizes that wildlife has intrinsic value, and humans need to develop into responsible citizens of the planet. “Project WILD’s mission is to help students learn how to think, not what to think about wildlife and the environment.” Project Wild also includes an aquatic curriculum and Spanish translation. One activity I remember from Project Wild involved creating a food web. Children represented different animals, plants, insects, etc. A ball of string was used to connect the children, as they made choices as to where the string should be connected. In my classroom, we extended this activity by creating a collage of an ecosystem on cardboard, then taking string and thumbtacks to make a visual representation of a food web. The only way to obtain Project Wild materials is by attending a workshop.

Project Learning Tree is a 30-year-old curriculum of the American Forest Foundation. Just like Project Wild, Project Learning Tree “helps students learn HOW to think, not WHAT to think, about the environment.” Project Learning Tree is divided into eight modules: energy and society, forest ecology, forest issues, municipal solid waste, risk, places we live, biodiversity, and forests of the world. A children’s literature list is included to accompany each activity. One Project Learning Tree activity is the Environmental Exchange Box, in which children collect photographs, stories, samples of local food, natural objects, etc. representative of their local environment. This box is then exchanged with another box from a different school in a different locality. Children can use this box to compare and contrast the contents to their own environment. Just like Project Wild, you must attend a Project Learning Tree training to receive materials.

Keepers of the Earth is an EE curriculum based on Native American stories. “A collection is presented of carefully chosen North American Indian stories and hands-on activities that promote understanding and appreciation of, empathy for, and responsible action toward the Earth and its people.” This curriculum is divided into ten topics: creation, fire, Earth, wind and weather, water, sky, seasons, plants and animals, life, death, spirit, and unity of Earth. A common theme throughout the stories is that the world is a family: “earth as our mother, sun as our father and the animals as our brothers and sisters. The stories foster an ethic of stewardship by clearly showing that we are entrusted with the responsibility to maintain the natural balance, to take care of our mother, to be keepers of the earth.” There are several other books that have been written in the series, such as Keepers of Life and Keepers of the Animals. Keepers of the Earth is readily available through bookstores and online merchants.

Adopt-a-Watershed is a lesser know curriculum, which enables students to adopt a local watershed, study it, conserve it, etc.

OUR VISION is for education to serve as the
cornerstone of a sustainable community, in which all citizens live their lives consciously choosing actions that ensure a healthy quality of life for current and future generations.

Adopt-A-Watershed’s place-based learning programs promote this vision by engaging students in meaningful activities that lead to an understanding of sustainability and how their choices and actions impact the community and the overall environment.

OUR MISSION is to empower communities to care for their watersheds and enhance student learning by providing leadership development, educational tools, and access to a national network of resources.

As an Adopt-a-Watershed school, my classroom conducted bird surveys, planted trees, and raised steelhead from roe to fry in our classroom. The steelhead were then released in our adopted watershed. There are 18 units in the curriculum, and it is used throughout the world.

Environmental education is an important part of any child’s education. Parents and teachers can facilitate this learning through the many curriculums that exist. EE is one aspect of education that may not appear on a standardized test, but it is very important for our children and planet.

A Hopi friend of mine feels it is inappropriate for children to play in teepees, as they promote stereotypes about Native Americans. Obviously, not all tribes live/lived in teepees; however, they have become a symbolic representation of all native people in America. For my daughter, we never associated the teepee with any culture and simply enjoyed the unique structure for play. We did not pretend to be cowboys or Indians. If she would have been older, I would have been sure to teach her about all of the various housing structures utilized by tribes across this vast continent.

Don’t forget to read Green Family Values this week!