Our Native Friends

We’d like to circle the wagons again, around the Dakota Access Pipeline issue — following our Tuesday commentary — and make sure the issue doesn’t devolve into a racial epithet crossfire wherein no one is safe and many are left with wounded feelings.

To start, we have many Native friends and our first reaction to the Standing Rock tribe’s Dakota Access Pipeline protest was that local folks might be mistreated.  We know that the Sioux Nation has had a troubled relationship with the federal government for well over a century, though it is important to distinguish past dealings from present responsibilities.  We’ve learned to ‘keep our powder dry’ and draw conclusions after studying such issues in detail.  

With apology to our dear readers, we offer this brief personal defense of our relationships with some of North America’s indiginous people as we provide more comment on the Dakota Access issue.

It all began for us when, after leaving the Army and completing graduate school in 1970, our little family drove up to Flin Flon, Manatoba and flew 26 miles from there by float plane to Laurie River Lodge.  For a summer, we managed the Lodge along with a dozen Cree Indian guides.  We had a great, successful summer, complete with a lot of lake trout, Walleye and Northern Pike, and some wild adventures in the middle of the Canadian north with our local Indian friends.

At summer’s end, we drove from Flin Flon to Anchorage.  

In 1971-72 we worked with then BIA Area Director Morris Thompson.  Our assignment was to develop and execute a worldwide communication program that would attract Alaska Natives everywhere to enroll with the new Regional and Village Corporations established under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.  We recruited Cher Bono, Jay Silverheels and Chief Dan George to cut radio public service announcements to assist in that effort.

A few years later we had the pleasure, as director of public affairs for the Arctic Gas Consortium, of sponsoring Emmitt Peters, a great Native musher from Ruby, Alaska…later known as the “Yukon Fox”, winning the world renouned Iditarod Race from Anchorage to Nome.  Equally excited with that win was our secretary, a wonderful Alaska Native woman.

During that Arctic Gas era, we were also able to create a way for Native newspaper publisher Howard Rock’s Tundra Times to financially survive by working with University of Alaska – Fairbanks Journalism Professor Jimmy Bedford.  Through Jimmy, we were able to provide the struggling but important publication with a steady stream of young, dedicated Alaska Native journalism student “interns”.  Free reporters for Howard!  We called our program, “The Howard Rock Journalism Fellowship”.

A few years later, when working as director of government relations for Atlantic Richfield Company, we arranged for the first Alaska Native joint venture businesses with the oil industry.  We also took leaders of the Native Regional Corporations to New York to participate in a gathering of the National Congress of American Indians–thanks to Chairman Robert O. Anderson who lent me his 747 for the weekend.

This web page, over the years attracted hundreds of North American Native readers and several of their corporations have at various times sponsored Northern Gas Pipelines.  We have involved many Native speakers in our programs as Chairman of the Alaska Oil & Gas Congress, Calgary’s and Houston’s Oil & Gas Symposia, and Edmonton’s Aboriginal Oil & Gas Conference.

We hope this briefing will explain why we felt badly about the email below, which we received from a wonderful Alaska Native friend who is very emotionally attached to the Standing Rock Tribe.  Similarly, several very close friends — also Native Facebook friends — have commented on their oppoition to the Dakota Access Pipeline.  

We appreciate those comments, however, for they provided us with an opportunity to further explore this important issue.  Hopefully, our exploration will lead to improved understandings of the issue for readers and us — rather than division among friends.

Read the email and our response, below left.  Then, if you would, review the facts presented in our Tuesday posting.  Finally, we present another important viewpoint appearing in the Wall Street Journal, column right.

Hopefully, our readers will continue to appreciate that we prize the concept of charity toward all and malice toward none.  We believe that those values are best defended by critical thinking and factual analysis.

In that spirit, we invite any reader with additional comments to submit them in the comment block below.

Peace….


 

Here is Tueday’s commentary on the Dakota Access trespass matter.

Below is an email from an Alaska Native friend and reader of this webpage…followed by my response today.

Hopefully, she will have time to read in full the original links and Congressman Cramer’s Wall Street Journal Opinion piece in the right column.

With further hope, we are confident that when our readers study all sides of an issue that concerns them, they have the best chance of developing a solid position on that issue.   -dh


On Wed, Dec 7, 2016 at 12:18 AM, xxx wrote:

😡😡😡 I don’t like your newsletter today. Those people are not poor. They and WE are rich in heritage, our beliefs and in our rights! We have the right to protect what was rightfully ours and was taken away so violently and with no regard to the human lives it has forever effected throughout the many years of time.
Sincerely,

xxxxxx


Our response:

Dear xxxxxxxx:

 

Thank you for your note.  My email did not represent my review of the issue, only an invitation to read the daily commentary.

 
Here is a link to that Tuesday commentary.  I went on to note your concern, while not revealing your identity, and provided even more information today, including a Congressman’s valuable comment (Right column).
 
I hope you find this useful, xxxxxxxx.  Please keep in touch.  I appreciate your comment.
 

Dave