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Tom B.K. Goldtooth | |
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Born | Bruce Kendall Goldtooth July 27, 1953 Farmington, New Mexico, U.S. |
Nationality | Diné |
Citizenship | American |
Occupation(s) | Executive Director of Indigenous Environmental Network Environmental and Climate Justice activist Filmmaker |
Years active | 1980–present |
Known for | Activism on environmental, climate, energy, water and food justice; and on the indigenous rights and rights of Mother Earth |
Website | Indigenous Environmental Network Indigenous Rising |
Tom B.K. Goldtooth (born July 27, 1953)[ citation needed ] is a Native American environmental, climate, and economic justice activist, speaker, film producer, and Indigenous rights leader. [1] He is active at local, national, and international levels as an advocate for building healthy and sustainable Indigenous communities based upon the foundation of Indigenous traditional knowledge. [2] Goldtooth has served as executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) since 1996 [3] after serving as a member of the IEN National Council since 1992. [4]
Goldtooth (Dibe'lizhini' Clan) is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. [5] [1] He is also huŋka Bdewakaƞtoƞwaƞ Dakota from Minnesota. [6] He is well known by his Dakota name of Mato Awaƞyaƞkapi, [7] given to him by Pete Catches Sr. (Petaġa Yuha Mani),[ citation needed ] a Lakota holy man of the Spotted Eagle Way of the Oglala Lakota Nation. [2] [8] He currently resides near the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Bemidji, Minnesota. [4]
Goldtooth was born Bruce Kendall Goldtooth in Farmington, New Mexico, near the Navajo Nation. His mother is Norma Bell Lee, an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and daughter of Melvin Lee (Dzi l t l'ahnii Clan) and Virginia Peslakai (Dibe'lizhini' Clan). [9] [1] She was the first Navajo[ citation needed ] and one of the first Native American women to earn an undergraduate degree in microbiology, [1] subsequently running medical and hospital laboratories in California, Arizona, and on the Navajo Reservation (Arizona) as a professional medical technologist. [9] Goldtooth's biological father's identity remains unknown, but he is believed to be of Native American descent. Tom was raised by his stepfather, Dennis Wesley Goldtooth, a member of the Navajo Nation from the Tuba City area. Dennis, a retired Navajo Nation policeman, is the son of Frank Goldtooth Sr., a renowned medicine man known as Bȅȅsh Biwoǫ (Iron-Metal [Gold] Tooth). [1]
Goldtooth lived with his maternal grandparents in Farmington as a child while his mother attended college in San Diego. After his mother graduated and married former U.S. marine Dennis Goldtooth, the family moved back to the Navajo Nation. [1] His stepfather became a Navajo Nation policeman [1] stationed in Tuba City, Arizona, and later in the northwestern remote area of the reservation called Navajo Springs, near Marble Canyon, Arizona, and located in the area known as the Vermilion Cliffs-Colorado Plateau area located along the Colorado River.[ citation needed ]
Tom often stayed with his paternal grandmother, Margaret Goldtooth, in Tuba City, and frequently visited his grandfather, Bȅȅsh Biwoǫ. His mother worked as a medical technologist in Page, Arizona, a rural boom town in the 1960s that attracted workers from across the country for the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam, the second-largest dam in the United States. Page eventually became a tourist center for water recreation due to the damming of the Colorado River and the creation of Lake Powell. Tom attended high school in Page. Later, his parents moved from Navajo Springs to Page.
During these years, Tom Goldtooth became active in the Boy Scouts of America and earned his Life Scout award. He was a candidate for the Eagle Scout award, almost completing the requirements, but moved away from Page to Winslow when his mother relocated. In recognition of his youth leadership he was initiated into the Order of the Arrow. He later received the Vigil Honor, as the highest honor that the Order of the Arrow can bestow upon its members. The early scouting experience along with following the Goldtooth family tradition as cattle and horse ranchers along with the Navajo Hunter Way culture and Diné ceremonies, became the building blocks for his leadership in years to come. Through family hunting trips in Arizona, Goldtooth became an outdoor enthusiast and learned to respect and protect the environment.
Goldtooth enrolled at Arizona State University in 1971 [10] with the goal of earning a degree in Industrial Design within the Department of Engineering. He left school in 1973, enlisting in the U.S. Army and becoming a Finance and Accounting Specialist within the Army's payroll division. Goldtooth was stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington and later became active in the Army's Human Relations program, with a goal of undoing racism. Tom became a leader organizing Native soldiers to build solidarity in the post-Vietnam era. Tom was honorable discharged in 1976 and became active in the Puget Sound Native communities in sports, pow-wows and social activities. Tom earned his Associates of Arts (AA) degree from Tacoma Community College (TCC) in Human Services. He was also a Peer Counselor at TCC, helping Native students pursue their higher education goals. As a young man, he volunteered as a board member of the Tacoma Indian Center. It was during this time that he decided to pursue a social work degree that would allow him to work with the social welfare needs of Native American families. After obtaining his AA degree from TCC, he enrolled into the Social Work (Welfare) Program of Pacific Lutheran University but did not finish his degree upon deciding to move to the Navajo Nation (NN).
Goldtooth was hired as Fort Defiance Regional Bi-State Social Services Director of the NN. Through his experience in the Puget Sound region of Washington State in American Indian Child Welfare Act hearings and learning from Northwest Coast Native women about the needs for the protection of children and families, Tom provided leadership in strengthening casework in domestic and sexual abuse cases on the Navajo reservation. Following working on the Navajo reservation, Tom moved with his family to the Lower Sioux Community in southwest Minnesota in 1981.
Goldtooth later became the executive director of the St. Paul American Indian Center, commuting back and forth from rural Minnesota to St. Paul. He developed the American Indian Family Services program, which included an Indian foster care program. It was Wilford Gurneau, Red Lake Anishinaabe, that is credited with helping Tom develop Minnesota State's first all-Indian urban foster care program. It was at the St. Paul American Indian Center that Tom developed the Back to Mother Earth Program that would provide an opportunity for Native children and parents to re-learn indigenous agricultural ways with urban gardening and taking families into the country to learn cultural ways of building lodges, skinning game animals and tanning and sweat lodge ceremonies. In the mid-80's Tom formed a small-scale residential/commercial demolition business that recycled deconstruction materials.
In 1991, Goldtooth became the Coordinator of the Red Lake Nation environmental program focusing on closing three open landfill dumps. It was during this time that he discovered Tribes did not have the capacity for implementing needed environmental protection programs on Native lands. In 1991, he was selected by Native people attending the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held on October 24–27, 1991, in Washington DC as the Native spokesperson in the Summit's plenary sessions. This launched Goldtooth's leadership in environmental and economic justice within Native lands that would continue for years to come.
Goldtooth currently serves as the executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, based in Bemidji, Minnesota. [11] [12]
Goldtooth has been a presence within the Native American community and with Indigenous Peoples globally for over three decades, advocating and organizing with Native-Indigenous communities for environmental and economic justice on a local, national and international level. [13] He holds the indigenous portfolio work[ clarification needed ] on policy issues of environmental protection, climate change, energy, biodiversity, environmental health, water and sustainable development. [13] Goldtooth co-authored the REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) [14] booklet on the risks of implementing the REDD (a mechanism of carbon trading and carbon offsets) program in indigenous territories. He is a member of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change — the UNFCCC's indigenous caucus. [13] [15] Goldtooth is a board member of the Science & Environmental Health Network, a member of the Global Alliance on the Rights of Nature, a member of the Steering Committee of the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) and Coordinating Committee member of Grassroots for Global Justice (GGJ). [16]
Goldtooth also collaborated with Melissa Nelson, executive director of the Cultural Conservancy Project, in San Francisco to establish the first Bioneers Conference Indigenous Forum, starting in 2007. [17] Goldtooth also co-produced "Drumbeat for Mother Earth," an award-winning documentary which explored toxic and synthetic chemicals contaminating the food web, violating indigenous rights set forth in treaties between the United States and Indigenous nations who are situated between their borders, and the cumulative consequences that exposures to these chemicals causes as they bio-accumulate and bio-magnify in the bodies of Native-Indigenous women, children and men that is passed from one generation to the next. [18] [19] Goldtooth's participation as an Indigenous non-governmental organization (NGO) observer in the UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) meetings from 1998 to 2000, in partnership with Sheila Watt-Cloutier, then President of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), elevated the issue of human rights – rights of Indigenous Peoples in these global INC meetings negotiating the reduction of and elimination of 12 toxic chemicals called POPs, which is defined as "chemical substances that persist in the environment, bio-accumulate through the food web, and pose a risk of causing adverse effects to human health and the environment".
Goldtooth was awarded the Gandhi Peace Award in 2015. In 2010, he was honored by both the NAACP and the Sierra Club as a "Green Hero of Color." [10]
Goldtooth currently resides in Bemidji, Minnesota, near the headwaters of the Mississippi River. [4] His son, Dallas Goldtooth is the Keystone XL campaign organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network, Dakota language-instructor, writer, artist, and member of the comedy troupe The 1491s. [20]
Winona LaDuke is an American economist, environmentalist, writer and industrial hemp grower, known for her work on tribal land claims and preservation, as well as sustainable development.
The Navajo Nation, also known as Navajoland, is an Indian reservation of Navajo people in the United States. It occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah. The seat of government is located in Window Rock, Arizona.
The Gandhi Peace Award is an award and cash prize presented annually since 1960 by Promoting Enduring Peace to individuals for "contributions made in the promotion of international peace and good will." It is named in honor of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, but has no personal connection to Mohandas Gandhi or his family.
The American Indian Movement (AIM) is an American Indian grassroots movement which was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July 1968, initially centered in urban areas in order to address systemic issues of poverty, discrimination, and police brutality against American Indians. AIM soon widened its focus from urban issues to many Indigenous Tribal issues that American Indian groups have faced due to settler colonialism in the Americas. These issues have included treaty rights, high rates of unemployment, the lack of American Indian subjects in education, and the preservation of Indigenous cultures.
An American Indian reservation is an area of land held and governed by a U.S. federal government-recognized Native American tribal nation, whose government is autonomous, subject to regulations passed by the United States Congress and administered by the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, and not to the U.S. state government in which it is located. Some of the country's 574 federally recognized tribes govern more than one of the 326 Indian reservations in the United States, while some share reservations, and others have no reservation at all. Historical piecemeal land allocations under the Dawes Act facilitated sales to non–Native Americans, resulting in some reservations becoming severely fragmented, with pieces of tribal and privately held land being treated as separate enclaves. This jumble of private and public real estate creates significant administrative, political, and legal difficulties.
The Navajo are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States.
Ethnogeology is the study of how geological features are understood by indigenous communities around the globe from a "place-based" perspective, in specific reference to traditional knowledge and to the stories and ideas about the Earth that were passed down through traditions and the wisdom of elders. The focus in past research tended to be on the unique ideas and knowledge of minorities and distinct cultural groups, and how this relates to universal and cross cultural knowledge discovered by humanity as a whole. Knowledge claims that are based more on universal discoveries and natural science can be found in the subjects of philosophy, chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics, and geology. The term "ethnogeology" first enters the geological literature through the work of John Murray of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada in the mid-1990s by virtue of his studies of the Northern Cree First Nation geological worldviews in the Province of Manitoba in Canada. At that time, a cadre of geologists and geoscience educators - particularly Dr. Steven Semken of Navajo Community College in Shiprock, New Mexico and colleagues - were examining the interesting connections among Native American traditional knowledge, geoscience concepts, and the unique vision of planet Earth's history as articulated by indigenous ethnogeological wisdom.
Honor the Earth is a non-profit organization founded to raise awareness and financial support for Indigenous environmental justice. The organization was founded by Indigo Girls Amy Ray and Emily Saliers after meeting Winona LaDuke, and after consultation with members of the Indigenous Environmental Network, Indigenous Women's Network and Seventh Generation Fund. Since 2016, Winona LaDuke and other members of Honor the Earth have been active in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.
Kevin K. Washburn is an American law professor, former dean of the University of New Mexico School of Law, and current Dean of the University of Iowa College of Law. He served in the administration of President Barack Obama as Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior from 2012 to 2016. Washburn has also been a federal prosecutor, a trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, and the General Counsel of the National Indian Gaming Commission. Washburn is a member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, a federally-recognized Native American tribe.
The relationship between Uranium mining and the Navajo people began in 1944 in northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah.
The Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) is a coalition of indigenous, grassroots environmental justice activists, primarily based in the United States. Group members have represented Native American concerns at international events such as the United Nations Climate Change conferences in Copenhagen (2009) and Paris (2016). IEN organizes an annual conference to discuss proposed goals and projects for the coming year; each year the conference is held in a different indigenous nation. The network emphasizes environmental protection as a form of spiritual activism. IEN received attention in the news as a major organizer of the fight against the Keystone Pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.
Heid E. Erdrich is a poet, editor, and writer. Erdrich is Ojibwe enrolled at Turtle Mountain.
Peggy Flanagan is an American politician, community organizer, and Native American activist serving as the 50th lieutenant governor of Minnesota since 2019. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), Flanagan served in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019.
The 1491s are a Native American sketch comedy group, with members based in Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Montana. While the members' sketch comedy has had a growing cult following since the mid-2000s, and their videos since 2009, they are perhaps best known for their work in more widely-known shows such as Rutherford Falls and Reservation Dogs.
Dallas Goldtooth is a Native American (Sioux) environmental activist and performing artist. He is a co-founding member of the 1491s, a Native American sketch comedy group and a member of the cast of the television series Reservation Dogs. He is a Dakota language-instructor, writer, artist, and actor.
Karletta Chief is a Diné hydrologist, best known for her work to address environmental pollution on the Navajo Nation and increase the participation of Native Americans in STEM. She is a professor at the University of Arizona.
Nikki Cooley is the co-manager for the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professional's Tribes' Climate Change Program and is the first Navajo person to gain a river rafting guide license for the Grand Canyon.
David E. Wilkins, a citizen of the Lumbee Nation, is a political scientist specializing in federal Indian policy and law. He is the E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professor in Leadership Studies in the University of Richmond’s Jepson School of Leadership Studies and professor emeritus of the University of Minnesota. He studies Indigenous politics, governance, and legal systems, with a particular focus on Native American sovereignty, self-determination, and diplomacy. Wilkins was a student and friend of Vine Deloria Jr., coauthoring two books with Deloria and producing three books about his intellectual impact.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Native American tribes and tribal communities has been severe and has emphasized underlying inequalities in Native American communities compared to the majority of the American population. The pandemic exacerbated existing healthcare and other economic and social disparities between Native Americans and other racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Along with black Americans, Latinos, and Pacific Islanders, the death rate in Native Americans due to COVID-19 was twice that of white and Asian Americans, with Native Americans having the highest mortality rate of all racial and ethnic groups nationwide. As of January 5, 2021, the mortality impact in Native American populations from COVID-19 was 1 in 595 or 168.4 deaths in 100,000, compared to 1 in 1,030 for white Americans and 1 in 1,670 for Asian Americans. Prior to the pandemic, Native Americans were already at a higher risk for infectious disease and mortality than any other group in the United States.
Raymond Darrel Austin is Diné (Navajo) scholar and former Associate Justice for the Supreme Court of the Navajo Nation, where he presided over the case of Navajo Nation v. Russell Means. Since 2016, he is a professor in the Department of Applied Indigenous Studies at Northern Arizona University. Austin has practiced law in both the U.S. and tribal courts systems, and has published extensively on Federal Indian Law and Policy.