Sunday

PEC 215, a proposed amendment to Brazil’s constitution, threatens to make worse the already fragile plight of the country’s impoverished indigenous communities

Ari Karai, the 74-year-old chief or cacique of Tekoa Ytu, one of two established Indian villages at the base of the peak, says the group intends to resist. “How can they evict us when this is recognised Indian land?” he asks.

The dispute comes at a crucial time for Brazil’s more than 300 indigenous peoples. Earlier this month, more than a thousand indigenous leaders met in Brasília to protest and organise against PEC 215, a proposed constitutional amendment that would shift the power to demarcate indigenous land from the executive to the legislature – that is, from Funai, the Ministry of Justice and the president, by decree, to Congress.

The Indians’ fierce opposition to placing demarcation in the hands of Congress is easy to understand: some 250 members of Congress are linked to the powerful “ruralist” congressional caucus, representing interests including agro-business and the timber, mining and energy industries.

In contrast, there has been only one indigenous member of Congress in the entire history of Brazil: Mário Juruna, a Xavante cacique, who served from 1983-87 in Rio de Janeiro.

The demarcation of Brazil’s indigenous territories, specified in the country’s 1988 constitution, was supposed to have been completed by 1993. Twenty-seven years on, the majority of territory has been demarcated, with 517,000 Indians living on registered land mainly in the Amazon region, but more than 200 applications are still in limbo.


The movement is going to need every bit of solidarity, support and motivation it can muster this coming year, which will almost certainly see a vote on PEC 215. If passed, as it seems will likely be the case, the amendment also allows for the review of previous demarcations, and introduces exceptions to the exclusive use of protected land, including leasing to non-Indians and the construction of infrastructure, “in the public interest”.
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VIDEO

Raven Swamp, 23, of Kahnawake, Quebec, Canada, and a member of the Mohawk tribe, was crowned 2017 Miss Indian World at the 34th Annual Gathering of Nations on Saturday.

 “A part of my platform is going to be focused on language revitalization and Indigenous food sovereignty,” said Swamp.

The 23-year-old currently teaches Kanien’kéha at Karihwanó:ron Mohawk Immersion. She is also heavily involved in a grassroots initiative that aims to establish an organic, self-sufficient farming project that strives toward our community’s economic independence through food sovereignty.

For the past two years, Swamp, along with about a dozen other community members, have been cultivating white corn and other vegetables on land west of Highway 30.

“We’re just getting ready for this coming season. We’re just waiting for it to become spring and begin,” said Swamp.

As a prestigious cultural ambassador for Indigenous people throughout the world, the newly-crowned Miss Indian World will then spend her year traveling, when the opportunities arise, and promoting cultural awareness, diversity and Gathering of Nations.


Last year, Caitlin Tolley a 26-year-old Algonquin from Kitigan-Zibi, was given the title runner up to Miss Indian World.

“To me, Miss Indian World is someone who embodies cultural pride, education, beauty and is also grounded in her traditional teachings,” said Tolley.
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VIDEO

Shane Godfrey had been away for around five weeks, recovering from a period of illness.The two have been inseparable since Shane, from Sanford in North Carolina, found Willie as a stray on his front porch.

In that time, he lost more than 50lb – so much weight that he looked very different when he got back home.

That’s why his dog Willie didn’t realise who it was at first, cautiously creeping forward in guard dog mode, nervous of a stranger – until he got to smelling distance.

‘He sure didn’t realise it from seeing me but all it took was one sniff,’ Shane said.

But it wasn’t until Willie smelled him that he finally realised it was his best friend.

In that moment, his joy is unmistakable.


His tail starts wagging uncontrollably, he leaps up into Shane’s arms and licks his face, jumps and twists around and then finally grabs a toy and runs off in crazy, happy circles around the field when it all gets overwhelming. That, right there, is true love.
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VIDEO

Saturday

Leonardo DiCaprio was spotted front and center supporting Indigenous Communities with a sign that read "Climate Change is Real."

People's Climate March: Best Signs, Including Leonardo DiCaprio, From The Washington D.C. Rally

Early Saturday morning thousands of people met up in Washington, D.C. to rally for the planet at the People's Climate March. The first People's Climate March took place in 2014 in New York City on the eve of the United Nations Climate Summit. People came together Saturday, on President Donald Trump's 100th Day in office, to urge him and other lawmakers to take action on the environment.

While the main march is happening in Washington, D.C., there are satellite marches happening worldwide. There is a live feed of the D.C. march available to stream online if you can't make it to a march but want to follow the progress.

The metro system in D.C. was crowded Saturday morning as people made their way to the Capitol meeting area. Participants started to meet at 9 a.m. in D.C., lining up around 11 a.m., to start marching at 12:30 p.m. The plan was to begin the march and assemble in front of the Capitol Building before marching to the White House to loudly demand action on climate change.

The weather in D.C. was forecasted to reach 92 degrees Saturday, the hottest April 29 D.C. has ever seen is 91 degrees, meaning the day could set an ironic temperature record.


Meanwhile, in Denver, it was snowing but people still showed up to march.
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An intimate chronicle of resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) at Standing Rock, the film bears witness from the first week of September to forced evacuation on February 23rd.

 Focusing on treaties and historical context, framed by the current American political context, Standing Rock becomes both a warning and an inspiration as this country moves into uncharted territory. A work-in-progress feature-length documentary film by Gwendolen Cates

Photographer and documentary filmmaker Gwendolen Cates lives in New York City. She is the author of Indian Country (Grove Press, 2001), a book of photographs taken on reservations and in urban Native communities nation-wide.

Her portraits of well-known figures including Madeleine Albright, Tony Bennett, Kevin Costner, Val Kilmer, and Oprah have appeared in magazines such as People, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair.

Her award-winning film Water Flowing Together, a portrait of Navajo/Puerto Rican ballet dancer Jock Soto, had its broadcast premiere on PBS' Independent Lens in 2007.

At Sacred Stone, people would come all day long to have a prayer ceremony, to pray, to drink water. They brought water from all over the world and put it in the river to help it heal — spiritual leaders from every facet of every indigenous people — Mongolians, the people out of Africa, India, China, Australia, New Zealand. And of course, all of our brothers and sisters in South America and middle America and Canada.


When people want to say, “Who started this?” Nobody. Everybody. There was no one leader. There was no one person. It was everybody. Each with their own journey. In the middle of all of this was the youth, who continued to stand up. Who continued to bring that power, that healing.

VIDEO

'When they are together, somebody is always chasing or jumping on someone else, but when they are apart, they're always calling for each other.

They may be an unusual match but this dog and duck are the best of friends. Four-year-old Pekin Andy and golden retriever Barclay are inseparable despite their love/hate relationship.

Proud owner Pam Ishiguro, from Orange County, California, says the animals always call for each other whenever they are apart.

'Barclay loves to eat duck chow - actually he just likes to eat and knows there's always food in the coop, so whenever he gets a chance, he'll sneak into the coop and eat their food.

'He also likes to drink their bath water and, if he happens to be stealthy enough, he loves to sniff a little duck butt.'

But the dog and duck pairing was not always so friendly. At first Rudy enjoyed chasing Barclay away whenever he tried to approach any of the ducks in the group. Miss Ishiguro explained: 'Rudy is our alpha duck. He is in charge of everyone and everything.


When Barclay tries to sniff any of the other ducks, Rudy is there to stop it. Rudy used to chase Barclay away, and for a long while, Barclay would run away.


'Rudy and Barclay need each other - I think that's why they have such a strong bond, they're like the oddballs on the playground. No one else will play with them, so lucky for them, they found each other.'
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VIDEO

Friday

She has taken in over 500 huskies since falling in love with the breed and spends 16 hours a day caring for them.

She set up Saint Sled Dog Rescue after hearing about a dog, Athena, who was set to be put down as her owner couldn’t afford surgery on her leg. Heather, of Peterborough, Cambs, said: “People say I’m crazy, but I see them as my family and they need me just like children need their parents.

“I fell in love with sled dogs when I got my first husky Sasha 12 years ago.

“Then I rescued two more dogs, taking the total to three. Then they had puppies, so we had eight.

“After that the pack grew and grew and I remember when I had 13 my husband said, ‘If it goes up to 20, I’m leaving’.

“Four years ago it did and to be honest, the relationship broke down for many other reasons. Now I have many dogs and couldn’t be happier.”


Heather has helped re-home 400 dogs and has a team of 30 staff and hundreds of volunteers across the country who help with foster care, home checks and transporting pets to their new families. But her devotion to the dogs has made it hard to find love.


She said: “Not many people want to date someone with so many dogs. They are always going to come first and men don’t tend to like that!”


But caring for her canines isn’t cheap and she is crowdfunding so she can have her own kennels. Money raised by customers paying for boarding can help care for the dogs and give them a suitable place to stay while they are waiting to find a permanent home. She said: “I love sharing my home with the dogs, but if I had a site with kennels I could do so much more to help.”
 Source

(Washington D.C. - Trump Hotel) Hundreds of Indigenous Peoples and allies Round Danced outside Trump Hotel to send a clear message: Indigenous Rights = Climate Justice, Clean Energy, and Job Creation.

April 27, 2017 Hundreds of Indigenous people from around the country converged on the Trump Hotel tonight to project messages of resistance, and hold a traditional round dance that shut down Pennsylvania Ave and 12th St NW for about half an hour starting at 9 p.m. Messages projected on the side of the Trump Hotel included “#IndigenousRising,” “Resist Pipelines,” and “Renew Treaties.”

Speakers talked of the urgent need to keep fossil fuels in the ground, stop climate change, and resist Trump’s aggression towards Indigenous people in his first 100 days.

Native Nations from across the country are in town to lead Saturday’s People’s Climate March.

“Trump is going to do everything he can to eradicate us as Indigenous people. But we are going to stand up and fight back,” said Joye Braun, an early organizer in the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline at the event. “It doesn’t matter what Trump tries to do, we are going to overturn it. When I was in North Dakota protecting our water, the police had water cannons on us for 8 hours in 27 degree temperatures. With everything they’ve thrown at us, we are still standing and we won’t stop now.”

Indigenous people and allies at the event chanted the now infamous anthem of the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline: “Mni Wachoni, Water is Life!” and “Rise! Resist! Protect!” as they held a large round dance taking up a 6-lane intersection.


“Our land is on the line, our water is on the line, our families are on the line,” said Dallas Goldtooth, Keep it In the Ground campaigner at the Indigenous Environmental Network. “Our Indigenous relatives in Alaska are already experiencing the worst effects of climate change. We are leading the People’s Climate March to send a clear message to Trump that fossil fuels belong in the ground, and Indigenous people and our lands are not his sacrifice zone.”

Photos Source

At one point in the event, a man with a drum made it behind gates to lead chants and drumming directly below the “Trump Hotel” sign at the old Post Office Building.


“When Standing Rock happened, it was like a rebirth for many Indigenous people who were called to ceremony and to protect our rights,” said Faith Spotted Eagle, from the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota. “Despite all they have done to us, we are still here. These attacks are deliberate, and they are based on fear. But this climate march is an opportunity, a revitalization of all people of our nation.”
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VIDEOS

Alfre Woodard and Adam Beach will star in an adaptation of Sheila Williams' "Dancing on the Edge of the Roof," which depicts a Black woman's move to Montana in search of a new life.

Netflix just acquired a new movie directed by a Black filmmaker, based on a book by a Black woman, with lead performances from Black and Native actors.

Deadline reported yesterday (April 25) that the streaming service bought the global rights to "Juanita," a feature-length drama adapted from Sheila Williams' 2002 novel, "Dancing on the Edge of the Roof." The book follows Juanita Lewis, a 41-year-old mother of adult children who breaks from the rigors of her life in Columbus, Ohio, when she purchases a one-way ticket to Montana. Lewis struggles to reinvent herself and acclimate to her new surroundings, particularly when her cooking skills bring positive—but unwanted—attention from the locals.

"Juanita" stars Alfre Woodard ("Luke Cage") as the titular protagonist, while First Nations actor Adam Beach ("Suicide Squad"), LaTanya Richardson Jackson ("Rebel") and Blair Underwood ("Quantico") feature in supporting roles. Clark Johnson ("Alpha House") directs Roderick Spencer's ("The Dogwalker") screenplay.

Netflix has not yet announced a release date for this project.

If Dance Me Outside gave Beach a much needed personal outlet, then Smoke Signals offered him a major step up professionally. The film won a Filmmakers Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival in 1998 and also took home the audience award for dramatic feature. The indie flick was a profound turning point in his career and, more poignantly, the experience resonated in his personal life.
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"It was the first time I ever released the emotion of losing my father, how I felt about him, all the anger I had. But also the love that was there. Everything was mixed up. T he last scene in the movie, when I'm standing on the bridge, that was so hard for me. I did it in two takes. Chris Eyre, the director, wanted me to do it a couple more times, but I couldn't. I told him, That's it; and walked away.''



Thursday

What does it mean to be Native American today? To answer this question, filmmaker Kayla Briët explores her Prairie Band Potawatomi roots through the teachings of her father, Gary Wis-ki-ge-amatyuk.

This hypnotic and introspective short film captures part of her childhood and confronts the fear of her cultural identity fading with time.

Weaving together the history, language, dance, and music of her tribe, Kayla Briët's Smoke That Travels keeps her family's heritage alive and celebrates the beauty of culture.

The Short Film Showcase spotlights exceptional short videos created by filmmakers from around the web and selected by National Geographic editors. We look for work that affirms National Geographic's belief in the power of science, exploration, and storytelling to change the world.

The filmmakers created the content presented, and the opinions expressed are their own, not those of National Geographic Partners.

"What a long journey it's been. I started this film at 17, because I had a fear that part of my identity, my native Prairie Band Potawatomi heritage, would be inevitably lost in time. Through music, dance, and color, I'm inviting others to become immersed in the thoughts, histories, and emotions I grew up with."


"Little did I know that this film would take me on a journey for over a year. I got to meet indigenous communities from around the world - from the Sami of Scandinavia, Ainu of Japan, and many more - who were all dealing with the same struggle to preserve their language and culture. I felt so lucky to hear their stories and less alone."

VIDEO

Mette Kvam, 81, has lived alone in her mountainside home ever since her husband died. Life can get a little lonely.

 But four years ago, a hungry stag wandered into Mette’s yard in Aurland, Norway. Mette was instantly taken by the giant deer’s sweet and gentle demeanor. She quickly learned how much he loved to snack on bits of bread.

She named him Flippen, and sure enough, he returned to stand underneath Mette’s window the following day. Since that first fateful encounter, he has visited twice a day every day.

The adorable scene below was caught on camera by a woman named Britt, who spotted Mette and Flippen together while she was walking through the mountains.

The kindhearted widow loves nothing more than to feed and visit with her good pal. Over the years, the two have formed an incredible bond.

To get to his human friend, the wild stag has to stand on his hind legs and reach up to her window, but he does not seem to mind at all. There, he can always count on a special treat, kind words, and some pets for a good measure.


Doesn’t it all look rather like a scene from a Disney movie instead of real life?
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VIDEO

When it comes to green energy, Six Nations development corporation CEO Matt Jamieson knows his stuff. “There are 2,307 solar panels on this roof,” he says with a grin.

He’s standing atop the Oneida Business Park, in Ohsweken, Ontario. The solar project he’s talking about produces 500 kilowatts of power, but that’s just a fraction of Six Nations total green energy holdings.

Jamieson’s First Nation is one of more than 120 that has signed a treaty alliance opposing oil sands expansion and pipelines across North America. Battle lines are being drawn in Vancouver over Kinder Morgan’s planned expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline while other alliance members are in court fighting TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline.

But while many of the alliance’s leaders are invoking standoffs like the Oka crisis and last winter’s Standing Rock in their fight to block fossil fuel energy projects in Canada, they are also looking to green energy alternatives, and to Six Nations as an example of how to do it.

Tsleil-Waututh Nation counselor Charlene Aleck’s first nation, in North Vancouver, B.C., is on the front lines of the campaign to stop the Kinder Morgan project.

“We’re not just the ‘forces of no,” Aleck said. “We are taking steps towards the ‘forces of yes.’ We definitely have a ‘yes agenda’ when it comes to green energy.”


For the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, that means starting small – with a roof-top solar project on the new administration and health centre that’s now under construction. The Six Nations of the Grand River is already leading the country in renewable power projects, and is setting an example for its allies to follow.


The Six Nations development corporation owns half of it. Add that to the other 16 green energy projects that Six Nations is involved in, and the community will see contributions of “well over $100 million over 20 years,” Jamieson said.


Those projects also create more than 900 megawatts of renewable energy that helps feed Ontario’s power grid – enough to light roughly 185,000 homes. Other alliance members are also following suit. Manitoba’s Long Plain First Nation is working with the province to expand a geothermal heating project.

And the Mi’gmawei Mawiomi – three Mi’gmaq in Eastern Quebec are partners in a 150-megawatt wind farm project that’s expected to produce enough power for 30,000 homes. That project went online in December.


While Six Nations is now nearly a decade into its involvement with large-scale green energy projects, Jamieson said getting here wasn’t as easy as throwing a switch.

The Six Nations shift towards green energy projects started in 2009 when Ontario launched the Green Energy Act. One of the first major projects to come out of that plan was the 404-hectare Grand Renewable Solar and Wind farm – part of a larger $5 billion deal Ontario made with South Korean giant Samsung to add more than 1,300 megawatts of green power to the provincial grid.


“The green energy act triggered a lot of development activity around our territory and specifically the Haldimand Tract,” Jamieson said.

Now, eight years on, one of the development corporation’s more modest projects, a 500-kilowatt rooftop solar installation at the Oneida Business Park in Ohsweken, Ontario, was just awarded Aboriginal Project of the year by the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association.
Source

All the government units currently protecting Brazil’s uncontacted tribes from invasion by loggers and ranchers could be withdrawn, according to information leaked to Survival International.

The move would constitute the biggest threat to uncontacted Amazon tribes for a generation.

Agents from FUNAI, the country’s indigenous affairs department, perform a vital role in protecting uncontacted territories from loggers, ranchers, miners and other invaders. Some teams are already being withdrawn, and further withdrawals are planned for the near future.

Thousands of invaders are likely to rush into the territories once protection is removed.

There are estimated to be over 100 uncontacted tribes in Brazil, well over two-thirds of the global population of uncontacted people. Many of them live in indigenous territories, which total over 54.3 million hectares of protected rainforest, an area about the size of France.

These territories are guarded by just 19 dedicated FUNAI teams. It is possible that all 19 teams could be eliminated from the Brazilian state budget, despite the fact that money spent maintaining these teams is equal to the average salaries and benefits paid to just two Brazilian congressmen per year.


The proposals are the latest in a long list of actions from the Temer government, which came to power in 2016 after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, that could have catastrophic consequences for indigenous peoples.

Indigenous activist Sonia Guajajara said: “By cutting down the FUNAI budget, the government is declaring the extinction of indigenous people.”

Paulo Marubo, an indigenous man from the Javari Valley in Brazil’s Amazon said: “If the protection teams are withdrawn, it will be like before, when many Indians were massacred and died as a result of disease… If the loggers come here, they will want to contact the uncontacted, they will spread diseases and even kill them.”


Campaigners have suggested that the government’s close ties to Brazil’s powerful ranching and agribusiness lobbies – which consider indigenous territories to be a barrier to their own expansion – could be part of the reason for the proposal.

Major indigenous protests are taking place this week in Brasilia against government proposals to water down protection for indigenous rights.


Uncontacted tribes are the most vulnerable peoples on the planet. Whole populations are being wiped out by violence from outsiders who steal their land and resources, and by diseases like flu and measles to which they have no resistance.

Survival International is leading the global fight for uncontacted tribes’ right to their land, and to determine their own futures.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “Cuts in government budgets to protect uncontacted tribes are clearly nothing to do with money – the sums involved are tiny. It’s a political move from agribusiness which sees uncontacted tribes as a barrier to profit and is targeting rainforest which has been off-limits to development. The reality is these cuts could sanction genocide.”
Source

This is the season of warm weather and newborn fawns. However, spunky fawns often find themselves in sticky situations and vulnerable to predators and fluke accidents.

During the rescue the doe approached the group several times and was never far from her offspring. Once it was free, the wobbly-legged fawn ran straight to its mom and started nursing.

Finding a Fawn: What To Do

There is a strong probability that you did not find an abandoned fawn. Female deer hide their newborn fawns in tall grass or brush and move some distance away to feed to avoid drawing predators to their offspring. With the proliferation of deer in suburban areas, sometimes this happens right in our own yards.

The fawn simply waits in hiding until its mother returns. Soon, the fawns will be strong enough to follow the does and run from predators, and they no longer need to spend hours alone in hiding.

Though it seems that they are vulnerable, these young fawns are not totally helpless. Their spotted pelts look like dappled sunlight on the forest floor and offer great camouflage. They do not have strong scent that would attract predators.


Fawns are also programmed to keep totally still and quiet when hiding while their mother forages. The combination of the physical attributes and the behavior of both does and fawns are remarkably successful at limiting depredation at such a vulnerable time.


There are cases where it is okay to help lone fawns. If you notice that a fawn is clearly injured or in immediate danger , then it is acceptable to seek help. Start by calling your local animal control department or nature center, who can either take the animal or help locate a licensed wildlife rehabilitator who can. If a hidden fawn is discovered on your property, it’s up to you to keep your pet dogs and your children away from it.

VIDEO

Wednesday

A Mexican wolf born this month at a wildlife center in suburban St. Louis is offering new hope for repopulating the endangered species through artificial insemination using frozen sperm.

The Mexican wolf population once roamed Mexico and the western U.S. in the thousands but was nearly wiped out by the 1970s, largely from decades of hunting, trapping and poisoning. Commonly known as "El Lobos," the species, distinguished by a smaller, more narrow skull and its gray and brown coloring, was designated an endangered species in 1976.

Even today, only 130 Mexican wolves live in the wild and another 220 live in captivity, including 20 at the Endangered Wolf Center in Eureka, Missouri.

A litter of Mexican wolves was conceived by artificial insemination in Mexico in 2014. But the birth April 2 at the Missouri center was the first-ever for the breed using frozen semen.

Regina Mossotti, director of animal care and conservation at the center, learned for the first time Monday that the pup is a boy. He's gaining weight - now at 4.7 pounds after being less than 1 pound at birth - and appears to be progressing well, she said after an exam of the wiggly pup, which has not yet been named.

"He's big and strong and healthy!" Mossotti said as other wolves howled from a distance.


The center has collaborated with the other organizations for 20 years to freeze semen of Mexican wolves. The semen is stored at the St. Louis Zoo's cryopreservation gene bank, established specifically for the long-term conservation of endangered species.

A procedure to inseminate the mom, Vera, was performed Jan. 27. "The technology has finally caught up," Mossotti said.

It's a big deal, experts say, because using frozen semen allows scientists to draw from a larger pool of genes, even from wolves that have died. Mossotti said it's possible the new pup will eventually be moved to the wild, where it would feed largely on elk, deer and other large hoofed mammals. An adult Mexican wolf will weigh 60 to 80 pounds.


The Fish and Wildlife Service began reintroducing Mexican wolves in New Mexico and Arizona starting in 1998, though the effort has been hurt by everything from politics to illegal killings and genetics. Many of the wolves in the wild have genetic ties to the suburban St. Louis center.

The nonprofit was founded in 1971 by zoologist Marlin Perkins, a St. Louis native best known as the host of TV's "Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom." Perkins died in 1986. Mossotti said wolves are a "keystone" species that play a vital role in a healthy ecosystem. She said the caricature of the "Big, Bad Wolf" is a myth about an animal that actually shuns humans.
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 VIDEO

Prehistoric humans — perhaps Neanderthals or another lost species — occupied what is now California some 130,000 years ago, a team of scientists reported on Wednesday.

The bold and fiercely disputed claim, published in the journal Nature, is based on a study of mastodon bones discovered near San Diego. If the scientists are right, they would significantly alter our understanding of how humans spread around the planet.

The earliest widely accepted evidence of people in the Americas is less than 15,000 years old. Genetic studies strongly support the idea that those people were the ancestors of living Native Americans, arriving in North America from Asia.

If humans actually were in North America over 100,000 years earlier, they may not be related to any living group of people. Modern humans probably did not expand out of Africa until 50,000 to 80,000 years ago, recent genetic studies have shown.

If California’s first settlers weren’t modern, then they would have to have been Neanderthals or perhaps members of another extinct human lineage.

“They present evidence that the broken stones and bones could have been broken by humans,” said Vance T. Holliday, an archaeologist at the University of Arizona. “But they don’t demonstrate that they could only be broken by humans.”

San Diego Natural History Museum paleontologist Don Swanson points at a rock fragment near a large mastodon tusk fragment. Photograph by San Diego Natural History Museum

For years, Dr. Deméré and his colleagues struggled to figure out how long ago the mastodon died. The scientists finally contacted James B. Paces, a research geologist at the United States Geological Survey, who determined how much uranium in the bones had broken down into another element, thorium.

That test revealed, to their surprise, that the bones were 130,000 years old. Yet the fractures suggested the bones were still fresh when they were broken with the rocks.

Two mastodon femur balls, one face up and one face down, are among the remains found at the Cerutti site in San Diego.

If early humans really did smash those mastodon bones 130,000 years ago, scientists will have to rethink how humans came to the Americas.

The oldest fossils of anatomically modern humans, found in Africa, date back about 200,000 years. The ancestors of Europeans, Asians, and Australians did not expand out of Africa until somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 years ago, according to recent studies.
 Source National Geo

 A close-up view of a spirally fractured mastodon femur bone from the site.

A recent press release from Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) announced that the city council of Los Angeles voted today to ban the use of wild animals in entertainment!

 The motion, by Councilmember David Ryu, affects circuses, other wild animal exhibitions, and rentals for house parties. An official ordinance is being drafted and will soon be returned to the Council for final approval.

While other cities in the U.S. have taken similar action to prohibit the use of wild animals in entertainment, L.A. is by far the largest city to do so – and the fact that this municipality is known for its entertainers is certainly not lost on us.

It seems that after years and years of campaigns by animal activists, lawmakers and businesses are finally waking up to the harsh reality that animals do not exist for our entertainment.

The majority of animals, who are either taken from the wild or raised captivity, that appear in circuses and other attractions exhibit signs of deep mental and physical distress. A study by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) found that approximately two-thirds of captive elephants exhibit stereotypic behaviors such as head bobbing, weaving, and swaying.

These mindless, repetitive behaviors are thought to be outward expressions of anxiety and stress in captive animals. Sadly, bobbing and swaying are the better manifestations of this illness, aptly dubbed zoochosis, other animals have been known to over-groom themselves to the point of harm, throw or each their feces, or regurgitate their meals. Not exactly signs of happy animals.


In addition, the methods used to train wild animals to perform are nothing short of cruel. Many entertainers deprive animals of food to get them to perform on perfect cue, in addition, they use painful tools such as bullhooks (which incidentally L.A. had already banned) and whips to teach animals through fear and pain. Circuses and animal shows might be fun for us, but they are certainly not for the animals.


Luckily, it seems as if the tide against this cruel form of entertainment is turning. Thanks to the work of organizations like PAWS and the countless activists who have offered their voices to suffering animals, we’re seeing more and more progress towards emptying the cages for good. Ringling Bros. is scheduled to have their last show next month and we can only hope that this, coupled with the news that L.A. has voted to end animals in entertainment, will encourage more cities and businesses to do the same.
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