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[Music] [Music] [Applause] standing this is indian country today escuali thank you for joining us i'm patti talonhomba here are the headlines for thursday december 17th president-elect joe biden is picking some experienced deal makers and fighting for a climate team he will ask to remake much of the u.s economy many progressives union leaders energy lobbyists and others support biden's latest cabinet picks popular ex-south bend indiana mayor pete butterjudge will lead transportation and former michigan governor jennifer granholm will lead energy and longtime environmental regulator gina mccarthy will serve as biden's domestic climate chief biden has pledged to make climate change a focus of his government along with the yet to be named heads of epa and the interior department these appointees will be part of a new effort they will rapidly build and develop technology to retool the country's transportation and power grid systems away from petroleum and coal with a new focus toward a greater reliance on solar wind and other cleaner forms of energy the associated press says new mexico representative deb holland remains the front runner to lead the interior department and on wednesday holland picked up a key endorsement house speaker nancy pelosi pelosi says congresswoman holland knows the territory and if she is the president-elect's choice for interior secretary then he will have made an excellent choice an announcement is expected soon holland a laguna pueblo citizen would be the first native american ever to lead a cabinet agency across indian country scenes of people getting vaccinated are playing out as the first shipments of the covet 19 vaccine arrive at the muskogee creek nation in oklahoma healthcare workers were the first in line to receive the vaccine next up first responders tribal elders 65 and older and other high-risk populations will then get the vaccination as more doses become available the tribe's department of health will offer the vaccine to tribal citizens and the general public principal chief david hill who tested positive for the virus yesterday says there are they are excited to receive their first shipments of the covet 19 vaccine hill points to the tribe's department of health as a shining example of pandemic mitigation strategies tribes have the option to receive covid19 vaccines through state or federal channels in montana the confederated salish and kootenai tribes blackfeet nation and little shell tribe are opting to receive the vaccine through the state while all five of the state's urban indian health centers are choosing to receive the vaccine from the indian health service chelsea kleinmeyer tribal health director for the confederated salish and kootenai tribes says they chose to work with the state to retain continuity she also says their plan is to immunize front line health care workers across the reservation the environmental protection agency is awarding nearly 660 thousand dollars to federally recognized tribes in virginia the environmental funding is part of the tribal environmental general assistance program five tribes have already received their first one hundred and ten thousand dollar gap grants for twenty twenty they are the eastern division of chickahominy the monacan the nansemond nations rappahannock tribe and upper matapani tribe tribes like the chickahominy who are in their second year of gaap grant funding will continue to develop their environmental department and the epa along with seven federally recognized tribes are creating a regional tribal operations committee there's a widespread effort among some church groups in the u.s to make amends to african-americans and native americans for past injustices the episcopal church in maryland created a one million dollar reparations fund in september to finance programs supporting black students seniors and businesses and the minnesota council of churches announced its own initiative in october the council's ceo reverend curtis deyoung says they are seeking to address social justice concerns of african americans and native americans in a unified way to me it's not successful if there isn't actually some investment happening whether it's the return of land or in cultural uh spaces or actual investment in black families you know so far the episcopal church has been the most active major denomination to announce reparations others like the roman catholic church and the southern baptist convention have not embraced reparations georgia senators david perdue and kelly loffler say they adamantly oppose any efforts to rem to rename atlanta's professional baseball team still joshua hunt is the vice chairman of the committee of 500 years of dignity and resistance and he says he's hopeful a name change will happen and impact more teams and we hope that this serves as the blueprint for the other professional and collegiate teams and the nearly 200 schools in ohio that still have a native american sports mascot or team name according to the team's leadership they are continuing to listen and collaborate with the native american community and those are the headlines from indian country today for thursday december 17th i'm patty thalohunga coming up how are indigenous people responding to the coronavirus vaccine we'll hear from people in canada and alaska [Music] as the covid 19 vaccines arrive in canadian provinces this week many first nations people are applauding this momentous occasion but online there's a different conversation happening brittany hobson from aptn reports on how the medical community is trying to calm fears and skepticism this was a scene in quebec in ontario where healthcare workers and the elderly eagerly lined up to be the first to receive the pfizer covid19 vaccine in the country and while many view this as a momentous occasion some are voicing their concerns all it takes is a quick scroll through facebook or twitter to find people are divided when it comes to taking the vaccine this is especially prevalent in indigenous communities one person writes i feel that the vaccines are being given out to first nations to use us as lab rats so in case anything goes wrong the canadians won't have to suffer another writes i don't trust the government at all hashtag genocide on the other end some are taking caution it depends on your level of risk and how much information you have on the safety and efficiency of the vaccine one person writes while another says i'm not about to run out and get it asap but if i see it's working out well i have nothing against it these conversations aren't surprising to michelle drieger me t professor of community health sciences at the university of manitoba driedger previously did h1n1 research with urban first nations and metis these comments were similar to what she heard at that time there was a considerable amount of distrust with respect to the pandemic h1n1 vaccine particularly when it was initially rolled out and a lot of the concerns that were being raised by participants was that they felt they felt that the vaccine was being tested on them to make sure that it was safe before it would be given to the white guys in the case of h1n1 in manitoba indigenous people were prioritized to receive the vaccine after severe outbreaks in the island lake region but this decision didn't provide the relief it was meant to because people feared they were being tested on i guess when you think about historically when have people of first nations inuit and metis ancestry ever been prioritized to perceive anything good before so some of the the the concerns that citizens were expressing made sense in that context history is a basis for many people's fears in the 18th century there are stories of settlers giving smallpox infested blankets to native americans in sanatoriums residents spoke of medical testing and experiments and most recently a class-action lawsuit was launched after several indigenous women say they were sterilized without their consent dr veronica mckinney says these instances in ongoing systemic racism within the health care system need to be addressed and i think again it has to do with the treatment that they've had through the years and and it it kind of speaks to me more about how i wonder if we're actually doing a a good enough job on education and it's not just you know education isn't it's good for you take it but really helping people to understand what is this and what are some of those little nuances the assembly of manitoba chiefs hosts weekly facebook live meetings on the pandemic the vaccine has been top of mind for the past two weeks i think the risk of indigenous people being rushed into taking the vaccine would be um significantly lower than any delays in getting the vaccine available for indigenous peoples indigenous peoples are considered a priority group for the coven 19 vaccine but it could be weeks before communities see it because of the limited amounts and storage requirements in the meantime leaders are urging those with concerns to seek out reliable sources of information there's a lot of misinformation out there and so i really encourage our people to look at these scientific studies to look at the scientific journals to try and wade through them to really understand what the facts are so far the visor vaccine is the only one approved by health canada the federal government announced they are on track to approve the moderna vaccine health canada has said people with allergies to any ingredients in the visor vaccine should refrain from getting it brittany hobson aptn national news from first nations people in canada to alaska natives the challenges of getting the vaccine and getting people to take the vaccine vary megan sullivan is a freelance journalist based in anchorage and she recently filed this story hard hit southwest alaska receives vaccine welcome megan hi well southwest alaska received a large shipment of the vaccine and from your reporting did you find anyone who is fearful of taking the vaccine like we saw among the first nations people in canada you know not for this particular story um there wasn't anyone too concerned i think more of the general sentiment was around the excitement that it was actually reaching these remote areas um but i think as you saw in the canadian story as well as you're seeing across the nation right now there are some concerns um so i i i bet there are some people who might be a little bit concerned about it but kind of the general sentiment is that people are more excited that it's able to reach um so many of these remote villages it is an effort to get the vaccine out to these remote villages and they've named it project togo give us a little bit of background on why that name is so appropriate for this delivery of vaccinations so a big part of alaska history is the story of the 1925 diphtheria outbreak which occurred in remote alaska kind of specifically in gnome and so at the time there was no um serum there antitoxin serum that could kind of save the people in the village from this outbreak and to get the antitoxin serum there they basically had to take on this multi-day journey and the heart of winter to get um the the vaccine equivalent to gnome and to do that they had to take this was in 1925 right so they didn't have a lot of transportation and they had to take this dog sled team all the way to gnome in these horrible winter conditions this was led by the the famous sled dog togo and also balto and so naming this operation project togo is kind of reminiscent of alaska's past incidences of vaccination kind of endeavors to get it way out there and remote alaska so i think that might be another reason too why people are a little bit less kind of concerned about uh this vaccine coming to ramona alaska right now is that you know we've had incidences of this in the past and it's kind of a repeat of history almost now give us an idea of how high the coveted rate is there in southwest alaska because the state alone received more than thirty five thousand doses the yukon kosokum region which is where southwest alaska is um is i think one of our highest infection rates in the entire state and um you know some villages are hit harder than others and what's really shocking is that a few of them around five a quarter of the people have actually um had covid so and once you have kind of a big outbreak in the village it's it's hard to stop it from spreading just because these are such close-knit communities um they're far away from other kind of hospital medical treatment available so you're definitely seeing high high spread rates there and i believe there's something like 56 villages in that area that will be receiving the vaccine here uh you know today and in the next few days here so one thing that hasn't changed is the weather there's still a lot of challenge when it comes to weather and these teams have not just bush pilots but now they have to carry trained vaccinators to come out and give the vaccine to the people talk a little bit about that process and how they're able to accommodate such a large state in such remote areas yeah so it's going to be kind of an intense operation so the vaccines are shipped to bethel where they're stored and bethel is kind of the regional hub amongst the 56 villages and then from there um these bush pilots and these vaccinators are going to kind of hop to each village um and they give the vaccine as soon as they get there um we've heard reports that they're kind of setting up vaccine vaccination stations near the airports actually so that it can be a very fast process um and so they can get it to you know all the villages in in a quick amount of time and then again this vaccine is a two-part vaccine so you get the initial vaccination and then you have to return a second time to get the follow-up vaccination otherwise it doesn't work so it's a two-part vaccination they're going to have to do this all over again in a few more weeks yeah so that's kind of one of the concerns people have because the weather can be very unpredictable in rural alaska and sometimes you have to reschedule flight or move it to the next few days um if there's extreme weather and for the vaccine you're trying to get it um the second dose to the people within a certain amount of time around 21 days so people are kind of apprehensive they don't know if weather could prevent this from happening um in the amount of time that it should happen and then again in about six weeks i think there was one uh political leader who said they expect to see results from the vaccinations in about six weeks yeah so i think people are really looking forward um to the next few weeks just seeing how this is going to play out the good thing about this operation is that alaska does have um you know a long history of tribal health measures that have been able to get other medicine out to the villages other vaccines so this isn't the first time they've done something like this there's kind of infrastructure already there but it's a little bit more high stakes at the moment so i think you know kind of all eyes are on this process right now and tribes have the option to either get the vaccines from the state or directly from the indian health service how were tribes in alaska opting to get the vaccine you know from my reporting with this story i think a lot of people are going through the alaska native tribal health consortium um and in this case they're in kind of partnership with the yukon kuskokwim health corporation um so it's kind of more top-level tribal health to regional tribal health um and they have a good working relationship already um that's they've been the ones kind of getting the testing out to the various regions so i kind of feel like people are are used to that process by now all right and again you can read megan's story hard hit southwest alaska receives vaccine on our website megan thank you for joining us thank you and when we come back more news from alaska as the governor jumps into the fight over drilling in the arctic national wildlife refuge [Music] on tuesday alaska's governor mike dunlavy announced he was going to introduce legislation to cut off banks and lenders who oppose drilling in the arctic national wildlife refuge jacqueline estes is ou national correspondent and wrote this story alaska governor aims to punish financiers opposed to arctic drilling jacqueline they are put rushing to beat a deadline will they make it well the trump administration is rushing to sell oil and gas leases in the refuge before president-elect joe biden takes office and it looks like they are going to get it done just days before the inauguration on january 20th there is opposition to the drilling six banks including wells fargo bank of america and citibank among others have said they will not finance development in the refuge so dunlap dunleavy said it doesn't make sense for the state to let them benefit from dealings with the state while working against alaska's interests and he says it's in alaska's interest to have a robust oil and gas industry 90 of state government here is financed with oil revenues and it's been like that since the 1980s 60 the state has 65 billion dollars in savings from oil revenues so the state definitely has an interest in keeping oil revenues coming in and the state also pulls some of that money out every year for an annual dividend to alaska state residents are they concerned about that dividend fund the fund itself going down and the dividend itself also shrinking they're very concerned about well so here's the thing alaskans know that the dividend come that they get a annual dividend and it's it comes out of the permanent fund and alaskans are very aware of the fact that if the legislature takes money out of the permanent fund to spend on state services that could mean or will mean less money for the dividends so that makes the politicians really conscious of that and they do want to keep the balance up however on the other hand dunleavy just i think last week said he's he's going to submit a budget that would increase the permanent fund dividend from one or two thousand dollars a year to five thousand dollars per person so i'm not i'm not sure how he expects to fund that but yeah that's on the table it's a big issue on the table well that sounds like that's also why he's pushing so hard to open up the drilling so they have more production that would add to their permanent dividend fund but tell us why tell us about the refuge and why this issue is so important to alaska natives oh gosh i wish i could go up there i've seen so many pictures and it's uh the arctic national wildlife refuges it's um in the upper right-hand corner of alaska next to canada it's uh got a mountain range in it part of the mountain range the brooks range and it extends from that mountain range down to the beaufort sea the scenery from the pictures i've seen are the scenery is just spectacular and this is a wilderness area so try to imagine an area the size of south carolina with a population of 150 people and um so instead of instead of people they have animals and there are grizzly bears polar bears wolves hundreds of thousands of birds a lot of them migrate every year from other parts of the country or the world there are geese swans hawks and falcons offshore you have whales and walrus and seals but the big thing the thing about the uh refuge is uh the caribou hundreds of thousands of caribou migrate from canada to the refuge to the calving grounds on the coastal plain of the refuge caribou are are sacred to the gwichin athabascan people of alaska and canada and they're concerned that if development is allowed that'll there will be oil platforms pipelines roads buildings support facilities and all that could harm all the activity could harm the caribou so they have filed suit to stop the lease sales they're one of 13 organizations that are involved in that suit there's also opposite opposition from other tribes and from conservation environmental groups yet uh there's also support for the drilling by another alaska native group tell us about that situation yeah so the in inupiat people uh live in in the refuge on the coast and and to the west of the refuge and um west of the of the refuge is barrow or utkiyogvik which used to be called barrow and the arctic slope regional corporation has its headquarters there um arctic slope gets it had three billion dollars in revenues in 2019 and some of those earnings came from support services for oil development so the arctic slope regional corporation supports drilling in the refuge alaska's congressional delegation supports drilling they and their predecessors have been working for decades to get it opened saying it will boost alaska's economy they also say that the footprint of the project isn't going that big it isn't going to be that big and it won't harm wildlife they also say oil from the refuge will make the united states less dependent on oil from outside the country to tell you the truth saudi arabia pretty much sets the price of oil by opening or tamping down its oil spigot but shale oil production in the lower 48 also brings the price down so the effect of oil development in the refuge is it's unclear how much if uh how much effect that might have how much effect that might have on the price of oil so an interesting story there again you know it's something that's so divisive uh even within the alaska native community there um what is the forecast you know how how soon will we know if um these leases go through because of that deadline you know it's it's weeks away from the inauguration at basically at this point so what's the next step what are we looking for the bids are due on january 6 and then sometime between then and january 20th the government will open the bids and tell everybody which which are the winning bids so um we'll find out something between you know well between the sixth and uh 20th of january you can read jacqueline's story alaska governor aims to punish financiers opposed to arctic drilling on our website thank you jacqueline you bet my pleasure and thank you for watching um take care of yourselves your life is precious i'm patty the lahunga join us again tomorrow [Music] indian country today is recorded at the phoenix indian school visitor center in phoenix arizona this is indian country today