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‘We know how to survive,’ but U.S. shutdown cut deep for Native Americans

Lynn Provost stands in front of her trailer on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, U.S. January 25, 2019. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith

By Stephanie Keith and Andrew Hay

EAGLE BUTTE, S.D./TAOS, N.M. (Reuters) – The Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma used a GoFundMe page and its own money to feed its many members who were furloughed or worked without pay during the U.S. government shutdown.

On their reservation in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, the Cheyenne River Sioux used third-party funds and dipped into tribal funds to provide food assistance.

The 35-day partial government shutdown affected 800,000 federal workers, but Native Americans were especially vulnerable because they rely mostly on federal contracts for services and jobs in the Bureau of Indian affairs for incomes.

Ivan Looking Horse, a spiritual leader at the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, said they had prepared for an even longer shutdown in the midst of a harsh South Dakota winter along the Cheyenne River.

A worker places packaged food onto a counter inside of a food distribution center on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, U.S. January 25, 2019. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith

“We are the First Nations’ people. We know how to survive,” he said after President Donald Trump announced an end to the 35-day partial government shutdown.

Federal workers caught a reprieve after Trump agreed to reopen the government until Feb. 15, without getting the $5.7 billion he had demanded for a border wall. Over the next 18 days lawmakers in the ideologically divided Congress will try to craft a border security bill acceptable to Trump.

For American Indian tribes and federal workers, that amounts to a period in limbo while they wait to see if a deal will be reached by the Feb. 15 deadline – or if another government shutdown will again take their paychecks hostage.

Looking Horse was cautiously optimistic. “I think they’ll come to a conclusion,” he said. “This country is based on democracy and consensus and good things will come out.”

HUNDREDS OF TREATIES

Native Americans elsewhere were not so sure.

A Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) worker in the Navajo Nation, which spans parts of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico, said the agency would work fast to obtain federal grants for contracts to run basic services like road maintenance and land management.

Tracy Lawrence (R), 51, a furloughed Bureau of Indian Affairs worker, holds his grandson while attending a high school basketball game on the Cheyenne River Reservation in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, U.S. January 26, 2019. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith

“Everyone is going to be working like mad for the next 2-1/2 weeks in case he shuts it down again,” said the employee, who did not want to be identified.

BIA spokeswoman Nedra Darling said in an email, “Indian Affairs is excited to resume our work towards fulfilling our trust responsibility and treaty obligations for the 573 federally recognized tribes.”

While stress from the shutdown – including missed home and car payments, food handouts and burning through savings – affected all federal workers and contractors, it cut much deeper for American Indians.

Generations ago, tribes negotiated hundreds of treaties with the U.S. government guaranteeing funds for things like education, public safety, basic infrastructure and health in exchange for vast amounts of their land.

The services are administered directly by federal agencies or through the tribes and contractors by means of grants.

With BIA offices closed by the shutdown, families receiving federal royalty payments for oil and gas drilling and grazing on former tribal lands did not receive checks that can be their main source of income.

About 9,000 Indian Health Service employees, delivering health care to about 2.2 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives, worked without pay, according to the Health and Human Services Department’s shutdown plan.

“When our funding gets cuts, all these people are getting put on hold for the healthcare they need,” said Terri Parton, president of the Anadarko, Oklahoma-based Wichita and Affiliated Tribes.

Like the Cheyenne River Sioux in South Dakota, the Wichita dipped into tribal funds to prop up social services.

ERODED FAITH

After enduring government shutdowns in the 1990s, the Cherokee Nation changed its operating model from the government’s running many of its facilities to administering services themselves with federal money, said Chuck Hoskin, secretary of state for the Cherokee Nation.

The latest stoppage, the 10th with furloughs since 1976, has further eroded Native American confidence in the federal government, tribal leaders say.

At the Pawnee Nation in Oklahoma, the GoFundMe drive was launched to provide baskets of groceries to federal workers, even those who were not tribe members, struggling to put food on the table, said Jim Gray, executive director of the nation. In 16 days – the drive is no longer accepting donations – it raised $6,343, out of a goal of $10,000.

“We had to give up 99 percent of our land to hang onto this 1 percent and then, in turn, they were supposed to provide these kinds of services as part of that treaty agreement,” Gray said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Keith in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, and Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; additional reporting by Lenzy Kreihbul-Burton in Pawnee, Oklahoma; editing by Bill Tarrant and Leslie Adler)

Nebraska regulators approve Keystone XL pipeline route

A TransCanada Keystone Pipeline pump station operates outside Steele City, Nebraska March 10, 2014.

By Kevin O’Hanlon and Valerie Volcovici

LINCOLN, Nebraska/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Nebraska regulators voted on Monday to approve a route for TransCanada Corp’s Keystone XL pipeline through the state, lifting the last big regulatory obstacle for the long-delayed project that U.S. President Donald Trump wants built.

The 3-2 decision by the Nebraska Public Service Commission helps clear the way for the pipeline linking Canada’s Alberta oil sands to refineries in the United States, but is likely to be challenged in court by opponents who say the project is an environmental risk.

The commission’s approval was not for TransCanada’s preferred route, but for a slightly longer alternative that could prove more difficult and costly to build. It was unclear whether the company will decide to pursue the project as it considers the commercial viability.

TransCanada did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the commission’s vote.

TransCanda stock rose as much as 2 percent to the session’s high of C$63.80 after the decision, while the broader Canada stock index was up 0.2 percent.

Trump, a Republican, has made Keystone XL’s success a plank in his effort to boost the U.S. energy industry. Environmentalists, meanwhile, have made the project a symbol of their broader fight against fossil fuels and global warming.

The proposed line has been a lightning rod of controversy since it was first advocated nearly a decade ago. The administration of former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, considered the project for years before rejecting it in 2015 on environmental grounds, under pressure from activist groups.

Trump swiftly reversed that decision after coming into office this year, handing TransCanada a federal permit for the pipeline in March and arguing the project will lower fuel prices, boost national security, and bring jobs.

Nationwide, Trump has said Keystone XL would create 28,000 jobs. But a 2014 State Department study predicted just 3,900 construction jobs and 35 permanent jobs.

Trump’s decision placed the pipeline’s fate into the hands of the obscure regulatory body in Nebraska, the only state that had yet to approve the pipeline’s route. Permits along Keystone XL’s proposed 1,179-miles (1,897-km) path have been approved in Canada, Montana and South Dakota.

Opposition to the line in Nebraska has been driven mainly by a group of around 90 landowners whose farms lie along the proposed route. They have said they are worried spills could pollute water critical for grazing cattle, and that tax revenue will be short-lived and jobs will be temporary.

A lawyer for the landowners, Dave Domina, said the commission’s decision was a partial victory, because it denied TransCanada its preferred route. But he added: “We will carefully evaluate the Order and meet with our clients.”

Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer denounced the commission’s decision. “We will not stop making our voices heard until this project is dead,” he said in a statement.

Just days ago, TransCanada’s existing Keystone system spilled 5,000 barrels in South Dakota and pipeline opponents said the spill highlighted the risks posed by the proposed XL expansion.

An aerial view shows the darkened ground of an oil spill which shut down the Keystone pipeline between Canada and the United States, located in an agricultural area near Amherst, South Dakota, U.S., in this photo provided November 18, 2017. Courtesy DroneBase/Handout via REUTERS

The project could be a boon for Canada, which has struggled to bring its vast oil reserves to market. But there are questions about demand for the pipeline after a surge in drilling activity in the United States.

(Reporting by Kevin O’Hanlon and Valerie Volcovici; additional reporting by Nia Williams and Ethan Lou in Calgary; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; editing by Grant McCool)

U.S. meat company in ‘pink slime’ case launches fund for ex-workers

The Beef Products Inc (BPI) headquarters is pictured in Dakota Dunes, South Dakota November 19, 2012. REUTERS/Lane Hickenbottom

(Reuters) – The South Dakota meat processor that sued ABC News over the characterization of its top-selling product as “pink slime” in TV news reports has set up a $10 million fund to help former employees and communities affected by the plants it closed in 2012, it said on Wednesday.

The privately held Beef Products Inc sued ABC, a unit of Walt Disney Co <DIS.N>, in 2012, saying ABC defamed the company by using the term “pink slime” and accusing it of making errors and omissions in its reporting.

Walt Disney Co paid at least $177 million, in addition to insurance recoveries, to settle the case against ABC, according to a financial filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The settlement was reached in June after a 3-1/2-week trial.

BPI said in the lawsuit that after the ABC News stories ran, its revenue declined and it had to close three plants in Texas, Kansas and Iowa.

BPI said on Wednesday it is working with former employees to apply for assistance with the help of the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce and other organizations in the affected communities.

The settlement proceeds were not needed or directly used for creating the fund, Rich Jochum, BPI’s general counsel, said in an interview. The company felt it could not launch this effort until after the lawsuit was settled, amid concerns over creating issues that could affect the case, he said.

(Reporting by P.J. Huffstutter in Chicago; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

‘Trial of a lifetime’ plays out in tiny South Dakota town

The welcome sign is seen for the town of Elk Point, South Dakota, U.S. June 3, 2017. REUTERS/Ryan Henriksen

By Timothy Mclaughlin

ELK POINT, S.D. (Reuters) – In this rural outpost of just over 1,900 residents, a local college student has become a courtroom sketch artist, trailers on Main Street are ersatz offices for a major law firm and members of an agricultural youth club are puzzled by a new metal detector at the local courthouse.

The changes are part of Elk Point’s selection as site of a multibillion-dollar defamation case pitting ABC News against South Dakota-meat processor, Beef Products Inc. The company contends that ABC and reporter Jim Avila defamed it by referring to its signature product as “pink slime” in 2012 broadcasts.

BPI calls its product lean finely textured beef (LFTB).

The trial, scheduled to run eight weeks, opened on Monday. ABC is a unit of Walt Disney Co.

While BPI could face an uphill battle to show ABC intended to harm the company or knew its reporting was false, as required to prove a defamation claim, several Elk Point residents interviewed by Reuters this week were sympathetic to BPI and its founder, Eldon Roth.

“I used his products and they were good products,” said one longtime resident, Jim Cody, referring to Roth. “I couldn’t believe that people were saying this crap about them.”

Mark Turner, who owns LandMark Antiques & More, sells his own beef out of a small refrigerator in the shop. BPI is an industrialized meat processor with which he has little in common, Turner said. Even so, he felt ABC unfairly depicted LFTB.

Others, like Bobbye Wendt, who was hoping the trial would bring a boost in business for her coffee shop, were torn. ABC “could have just been reporting,” she said.

During jury selection last week a handful of potential jurors were dismissed because of criticisms of LFTB, BPI or the company founders, the Sioux City Journal reported. The company’s headquarters are not in Elk Point but some 20 miles (32 km) away.

Dane Butswinkas, an attorney for ABC, acknowledged the broadcasting company has no local ties during Monday’s opening statements, but asked that jurors look beyond this and examine the facts. ABC maintains its reporting was fair and accurate.

“No one that I will put on the stand is from here,” he said. “We’re all outsiders,”

BPI has claimed up to $1.9 billion of damages, which could be tripled to $5.7 billion. The local newspaper, the Southern Union County Leader-Courier, has dubbed it “the trial of a lifetime.”

BPI has moved four modular offices into town and purchased another building. ABC is renting Cody’s Homestead, Jim Cody’s shuttered, sun-faded steakhouse, the Leader-Courier reported. ABC declined to comment on the property.

While the trial has not caused a traffic jam on Main Street as some had predicted, the Union County Courthouse was unusually busy this week.

A parade of public relations staff, company officials and lawyers wheeled dozens of boxes of files under the court’s mounted elk head after making the 30-minute drive from hotels in Sioux City, Iowa. Elk Point has only one hotel.

On Tuesday, children sheepishly asked a security guard at the courthouse if they needed to walk through the new metal detector to drop off their farm club paperwork. They did not, he said.

(Editing by David Greising and Matthew Lewis)

Meat packer blames ABC’s ‘pink slime’ for nearly killing company

A grain elevator is seen just behind the Union County Courthouse in Elk Point, South Dakota, U.S. June 3, 2017. Picture taken June 3, 2017. REUTERS/Ryan Henriksen

By Timothy Mclaughlin and P.J. Huffstutter

ELK POINT, S.D./CHICAGO (Reuters) – ABC News’ characterization of a South Dakota meat processor’s ground-beef product as “pink slime” almost put Beef Products Inc out of business, BPI’s lawyer said on Monday in the opening salvo of a closely watched trial.

The $5.7 billion lawsuit pitting big agriculture against big media is the first major court challenge against a media company since accusations of “fake news” by U.S. President Donald Trump and his supporters have become part of the American vernacular.

The trial is expected to run eight weeks.

BPI claims ABC, a unit of Walt Disney Co, and its reporter Jim Avila defamed the company by using the term “pink slime” and making errors and omissions in its 2012 reporting.

But ABC lawyer Dane Butswinkas said “pink slime” was a common term, used more than 3,800 times in the media prior to ABC’s reports.

In the aftermath of ABC’s broadcasts, BPI closed three of its four processing plants and said its revenue dropped 80 percent to $130 million.

“That success took about 30 years to succeed and it took ABC less than 30 days to severely damage the company,” a lawyer for BPI, Dan Webb, said in court.

Butswinkas countered that BPI had already lost multiple customers for LFTB, including major fast food chains, prior to the ABC reports, due to unhappiness with the product.

ABC has said its coverage was accurate and deserved protection under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment which guarantees freedom of religion, speech and the right to a free press.

ABC denies any wrongdoing and is confident its reporting will be “fully vindicated,” a lawyer for ABC and Avila, Kevin Baine of Williams & Connolly, has said.

The trial is being held in Elk Point, South Dakota, about 20 miles (32 km) north of BPI’s headquarters, which employs 110 people. Roughly 6 percent of the area labor force is involved in agriculture and related industries, according to the local chamber of commerce.

Election records show 67 percent of the U.S. presidential vote in Union County, where Elk Point sits, was won by Trump, who uses the term “fake news” to argue that some mainstream media outlets cannot be trusted.

Lawyers for BPI have declined to say if they plan to focus on “fake news” as a tactic at trial. But during a January court hearing, a BPI lawyer, Erik Connolly, said ABC broadcasts and online reports about “lean finely textured beef” (LFTB) used unreliable sources and set out to foment public outrage. The ABC reports amounted to “fake news,” Connolly told the judge.

BPI’s signature product, commonly mixed into ground beef, is made from beef chunks, including trimmings, and exposed to bursts of ammonium hydroxide to kill E. coli and other contaminants.

Webb said in court on Monday that between March 7 and April 3 of 2012, ABC used the term “pink slime” more than 350 times across six different media platforms including TV and online.

Reporter Avila, who was in the courtroom wearing a gray suit and striped tie, had cherry-picked experts who backed up the story he wanted to tell and ignored experts who gave information that differed from this narrative, Webb said.

Webb said Avila cursed at David Theno, a food safety expert, and hung up on Theno when he contradicted parts of Avila’s story.

“That is what happens when someone tells ABC something that’s not consistent with what they want to hear about the product.”

Butswinkas, the lawyer for ABC, described Avila as an “old-school bulldog” journalist and said Theno was paid by BPI and had a close relationship with the company’s founder.

The focus of ABC’s story was not food safety but labeling, Butswinkas said. He said BPI lobbied for years to get its LFTB added to ground beef without labels indicating it was there.

“Until the secret started to get out to consumers, no one knew that there was a product treated with ammonia in their traditional ground beef,” he said.

To win its case, BPI must show the network intended to harm the company or knew what it reported was false when it referred to BPI’s LFTB product as “pink slime.”

The trial is upending the normally tranquil Elk Point, population 2,000. To make room for overflow crowds, the county commission earmarked $175,000 to turn the Union County Courthouse basement into an enlarged courtroom and move records into a specially constructed separate building.

BPI moved modular offices into town to accommodate its legal team, the company said.

(Additional reporting by Mark Weinraub in Chicago; Editing by David Greising, James Dalgleish and Matthew Lewis)

‘Pink slime’ defamation case against ABC under way in South Dakota

Lean, finely textured beef (LFTB) is produced at the Beef Products Inc (BPI) facility in South Sioux City, Nebrask

By Timothy Mclaughlin and P.J. Huffstutter

ELK POINT, S.D./CHICAGO (Reuters) – A South Dakota meat processor’s $5.7 billion defamation lawsuit against American Broadcasting Company opened on Monday, pitting big agriculture against big media, in the first major court challenge against a media company since accusations of “fake news” by U.S. President Donald Trump and his supporters have become part of the American vernacular.

In the closely watched case, Beef Products Inc (BPI) claims ABC, a unit of Walt Disney Co, and its reporter Jim Avila, defamed the company by calling its ground-beef product “pink slime” and making errors and omissions in its reporting.

The 2012 news reports almost put privately held meat processor BPI out of business, a lawyer for the company said in opening arguments on Monday.

“That success took about 30 years to succeed and it took ABC less than 30 days to severely damage the company,” the attorney, Dan Webb, said in court.

In the aftermath of ABC’s reports, BPI closed three of its four processing plants and said its revenue dropped 80 percent, to $130 million.

ABC has countered that its coverage was accurate and deserved protection under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment which guarantees freedom of religion, speech and the right to a free press.

ABC denies any wrongdoing and is confident its reporting will be “fully vindicated,” a lawyer for ABC and Avila, Kevin Baine of Williams & Connolly, has said.

Nick Roth (L), Jennifer Letch (C) and Craig Letch pose for a photograph at Beef Products Inc company headquarters in Dakota Dunes, South Dakota N

FILE PHOTO: Nick Roth (L), Jennifer Letch (C) and Craig Letch pose for a photograph at Beef Products Inc company headquarters in Dakota Dunes, South Dakota November 19, 2012. REUTERS/Lane Hickenbottom/File Photo

BPI’s signature product, commonly mixed into ground beef, is made from beef chunks, including trimmings, and exposed to bursts of ammonium hydroxide to kill E. coli and other contaminants.

Webb said in court on Monday that between March 7 and April 3 of 2012, ABC used the term “pink slime” more than 350 times across six different media platforms including TV and online.

Reporter Avila, wearing a gray suit and striped tie, was in the courtroom on Monday as were BPI’s founders, Eldon and Regina Roth.

To win its case, BPI must show the network intended to harm the company or knew what it reported was false when it referred to BPI’s LFTB product as “pink slime.” BPI also claims ABC made other errors and omissions that unfairly cast its product in a bad light.

Not since talk show host Oprah Winfrey in 1998 took on cattle producers in Amarillo, Texas, have big media and big agriculture squared off in such a high-profile way on the industry’s home turf.

The Texas jury in 2000 rejected claims Winfrey defamed cattle ranchers during a “dangerous food” episode of her eponymous show, when she expressed concerns about eating beef at the height of the panic in Britain over “mad cow” disease.

As in the Winfrey case, the lawsuit against ABC is upending a quiet, rural town. To make room for overflow crowds in the town of 2,000, the county commission earmarked $175,000 to turn the Union County Courthouse basement into an enlarged courtroom and move records into a specially constructed separate building.

BPI moved modular offices into town to accommodate its legal team, the company said.

(Additional reporting by Mark Weinraub in Chicago; Editing by David Greising, James Dalgleish and Matthew Lewis)

South Dakota’s governor vetoes loosening of concealed carry gun laws

FILE PHOTO: Republican Governor Dennis Daugaard of South Dakota listens to remarks during a discussion at the National Governors Association Winter Meeting in Washington, February 23, 2014. EUTERS/Mike Theiler/File Photo

By Tom James

(Reuters) – South Dakota’s Republican Governor Dennis Daugaard on Friday vetoed a pair of bills that would have loosened restrictions on carrying concealed guns in the state, after saying current laws made sense and were adequate.

One measure would have allowed carrying concealed weapons in the state without a permit. The second proposed allowing carriers of an enhanced permit to carry concealed weapons at the state capitol.

South Dakota bars convicted felons and those convicted of some violent or drug crimes from obtaining a concealed weapons permit.

Eleven U.S. states allow gun owners to carry concealed weapons without a permit, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun-control advocacy group. Another 39, including South Dakota, allow concealed carry with a permit.

In a letter accompanying one of the vetoes, Daugaard, who had previously pointed to his own membership in the National Rifle Association, defended the state’s existing concealed weapons laws as reasonable.

“I am unaware of a single instance in which a person who could lawfully possess a gun was denied a permit to carry a concealed pistol,” Daugaard wrote. By comparison, he added, two counties in the state have turned down nearly 600 permit applicants “who were disqualified due to mental illness or due to violent or drug-related crimes.”

The veto echoed statements Daugaard made in a Feb. 11 editorial in the Rapid City Journal, in which he said he viewed the state’s laws as “effective, appropriate and minimal.” Daugaard also vetoed a similar proposal loosening concealed-carry standards in 2012.

Rep. Lee Qualm, who sponsored the proposal relaxing the state capitol restrictions, called the vetoes “frustrating,” and said in a phone interview on Friday that he would try to override them when the legislature returns from recess March 27. An override requires a two-thirds majority in South Dakota, and Qualm said both bills were only a handful of votes short of that threshold in both chambers.

Rep. Lynne Disanto, sponsor of the broader of the two bills, did not respond to calls or emails seeking comment.

The bills’ failure at the hands of a Republican governor pointed to a divide in his party over the regulations. Neither bill received full Republican support in either chamber, and the statewide measure was opposed by about one in five Republicans in the House and one in three in the Senate.

(Reporting by Tom James in Seattle; Editing by Patrick Enright and Richard Chang)

Anti-Christianists Target South Dakota Football Team

A hostile anti-Christian organization has now set its sights on a high school football team in South Dakota.

The virulent anti-Christian group Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a threatening letter to the Aberdeen School District because an alleged “anonymous complaint” to their organization said coaches were praying with the team before football games.

“It is illegal for a public school to organize, sponsor or lead prayers at public school events,” the group claimed. “More notably, federal courts have specifically held public school coaches’ participation in their team’s prayer circles unconstitutional.”

The school conducted an investigation as demanded by the group and ordered all coaches to not pray with the team.

Members of the community were outraged that the out-of-state anti-Christian group is interfering with their local community and local high school.

“I think it is appropriate for coaches to join students in their prayer. After all they are a team, and the coach is part of a team. He is part of that community,” Pastor Bob Myers said. “I think as long as students initiate it, the coach has every right to express himself in that same way. . . . There’s all kinds of school districts that are saying this can’t be done, and you can’t do this, but I think that’s a violation of the coach’s religious rights under the constitution.”

NBC News: Shutdown worsens historic blizzard that killed tens of thousands of South Dakota cattle

An unusually early and enormous snowstorm over the weekend caught South Dakota ranchers and farmers unprepared, killing tens of thousands of cattle and ravaging the state’s $7 billion industry — an industry left without assistance because of the federal government shutdown.

As many as 75,000 cattle have perished since the storm slammed the western part of the state Thursday through Saturday with snowfall that set records for the entire month of October in just three days, state and industry officials said.

Across the state, snow totals averaged 30 inches, with some isolated areas recording almost 5 feet, The Weather Channel reported.

The South Dakota Stock Growers Association estimated that 15 percent to 20 percent of all cattle were killed in some parts of the state. Some ranchers reported that they lost half or more of their herds.

Source: NBC News – NBC News: Shutdown worsens historic blizzard that killed tens of thousands of South Dakota cattle

Winter Storm ‘Q’ Barrels Through Nation’s Midsection

Winter Storm “Q,” which has already dumped a layer of snow in Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California, moves with full force into the eastern Plains and Midwest on Thursday, where it could dump a foot and a half of snow in some areas. Continue reading →

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