Scars Upon Sacred Land VI: 2013 Snapshot of Indigenous Action

Indigenous protestors in Ecuador, November, 2013.
Photo credit Chevron's Dirty Hand Campaign; all rights reserved.

Author's Note:  This piece first appeared at Daily Kos as part of my series "This Week In American Indian News" on September 30, 2013, hence the references in the introductory section. It is posted here with minor edits as a component of my regular Scars Upon Sacred Land series. My original intent was to post a brand-new entry in the series today, as well — an entry planned for yesterday as part of the Daily Kos blogathon to promote the final days of the public comment period prior to the Obama Administration's decision regarding the Keystone XL Pipeline. Life intervened and while there will be no post related to the blogathon, but there will be many more entries upcoming in this series. 
Today, we have a special environmental edition. 

On several occasions over the last few weeks, I've had to make last-minute revisions to accommodate developing stories. The result is that stories sometimes get bumped for a week or more. Last week, I realized that we were reaching a critical mass of stories addressing environmental issues affecting American Indians, and so I elected to hold some of them for this week for an edition dedicated exclusively to such topics.

Yes, there's a great deal of new and important Indian news out there, not least of which are last week's [as of this posting, last September's] developments in the Baby Veronica story. But with our news, each story deserves to be covered in a manner that addresses the issues properly within their cultural and historical contexts — accuracy is often better served by a short delay that permits proper coverage than by trying to be first out of the gate with a given story. We'll get to them, never fear. But this week, the stories that are ripe for covering are environmental ones. And while this week's edition is, as a result, unusually lengthy, it is by no means comprehensive. There are many more environmental issues in Indian Country that have yet to be covered, and they will be.

Over the last few years, I've written an intermittent series of diaries under the title Scars Upon Sacred Land. They're diaries that focus on environmental issues in Indian Country. Some focus on infliction of new scars on the body of Mother Earth; others, upon attempts to prevent them; and still others, upon rehabilitation and reclamation afterward.

This week's edition explores the latest in scars upon sacred land.