John Muir in Native America
Muir s romantic vision obscured Indigenous ownership of the land but a new generation is pulling away the veil
Photo-Illustrations by Cristiana Couceiro
Gerard Baker began his illustrious career with the National Park Service at 20. As a young patrol ranger in the 1970s, he often overheard the park interpreters while he collected trash or mowed lawns. One thing I noticed, the Mandan/Hidatsa man from the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota told me, is that we were never talked about. From the early, early days of the philosophies on American Indians, we were looked at as being nothing but so-called animals without even a soul. The animal that they move out of the way so they can have the land. And so, when they start making national parks, they didn t think about taking Indian land. They didn t think about that we had spiritual places. They didn t talk about that. When Baker started out in the Park Service, the park interpreters were mostly whi
In summary
By Kathleen McAfee, Special to CalMatters
Kathleen McAfee is a professor of international relations at San Francisco State University, kmcafee@sfsu.edu.
Should oil refineries in California be allowed to emit extra greenhouse gases if they “offset” their effects by paying hog farmers in Iowa to reduce methane from animal waste? Or by paying landowners to promise to take better care of their trees? In other words, should offset trading based on projects like these remain part of our state’s climate policy?
This is a big question facing the California Air Resources Board at a hearing this week and over the coming year as they revise the rules of the state’s climate law, AB 32 / AB 398. Under that law’s cap-and-trade section, any California company that purchases approved offsets may emit more planet-heating gasses than would otherwise be allowed.
Australian artist delves into Native American history for Kumeyaay mural project
Ocean Beach resident Simon Melnyk has painted murals including this marlin at Mariscos Mar de Cortez restaurant in Ramona.
(Julie Gallant)
The next mural to be showcased in Ramona will be a tribute to the Kumeyaay Native Americans. And if artist Simon Melnyk stays true to his ambitions, it will be an historically accurate rendition that celebrates how the tribe lived in harmony with nature for so many years.
Melnyk is just getting started on the 1,200-square-foot mural that will take up about two-thirds of the blank canvas on the Verizon building at 1530 Main St.
As the bleak winter of 1862 dragged on into 1863, the isolated, ramshackle town of Los Angeles was visited by a terrifying scourge smallpox.
With its telltale fever and disfiguring skin rash, the highly infectious disease jumped from adobe to adobe, killing more than 100 people and sickening hundreds of others. If those numbers don t sound like much, remember L.A. had only 4,000 or so souls at the time and the outbreak wiped out half of its indigenous residents. The city s smallpox wagon, dubbed the black Maria, was a frequent and disheartening sight as it rolled through the streets carrying victims to the city hospital, or pesthouse, writes John W. Robinson in