Struggling to Reopen California’s Only Tribal
College
By Shadi Rahimi, Indian Country Today
After California’s only tribal college, Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl
University, closed abruptly in 2005, the administration ordered
students to leave the campus and seek education elsewhere. Some
students, however, defied the administration and refused to abandon
the land. More than two years later, 25-year-old former student
Chris Yazzie is the lone standoff holdout on the campus’ 643 acres,
where he holds drum circles and gardening classes, records rock
albums, and tirelessly works to rebuild the school. — Cara
Binder
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096415675
Black Ops Jungle: The Academy of
Military-Industrial-Complex Studies
By Chris Colin, Mother Jones
Seventy five students at Maryland’s Joppatowne High School are
learning the ins and outs of homeland security and emergency
preparedness in a new program dubbed by Chris Colin as ‘homeland
security high.’ Defense firms, with help from federal, state, and
local agencies, funded the course, which teaches students about
cybersecurity, geospatial intelligence, and terror attacks.
According to Colin, ‘Critics see the school as a troubling
landmark: a public school, possibly the first of many, that is an
active participant in the war on terror.’ — Cara
Binder
http://tinyurl.com/3cgg87
The Road Home
By Linda Heuman, Plenty
Ten years ago the Zapotec village of Benito Ju?rez took an unusual
approach to counter its growing emigration problem: ecotourism. So
far, Linda Heuman reports, the town has managed to preserve its
indigenous ways, bolster its economy, fend off timber companies,
and stem the tide of young people crossing the border in search of
better paying jobs. — Chris Gehrke
http://www.plentymag.com/features/2007/08/the_road_home.php
Drop Spots
By Brijetta Hall, Dan Phiffer and Ed Purver
A Drop Spot is a grab-bag ‘alternative mailbox’ — half swap-meet,
half interactive art installation. Here’s how it works: You run a
search on the Drop
Spot website, find a Drop Spot near you, take the present
awaiting you, and leave one of your own. The site suggests ‘small
things that you’ve made yourself,’ like a mix CD, or a wacky curio,
perhaps a strange vegetable. It’s like the office Secret Santa, but
without the gnarly candy canes. — Brendan Mackie
http://dropspots.org
The New Land Rush
By Erin Halcomb and Jonathan Thompson, High Country
News
Coloradan hikers are discovering that many of their
beloved mountain trails are now off limits because they cut through
private land dating back to the post-Civil War mining land rush.
While the mineral wealth is long since gone, these claims are
generating a new kind of land rush among real estate developers
looking to build the next fashionable mountain getaway. The land
fever has also created a bureaucratic ‘headache’ as rural counties
try to figure out how to navigate land-use issues ‘in places where
the idea of building a house once seemed preposterous.’ —
Brendan Mackie
http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=17193
Brazil: Quilombo Communities Fight
Exclusion
By Fabiana Frayssine, Inter Press Service via Upside
Down World
In the 17th and 18th centuries, escaped slaves in Brazil would
often band together in isolated jungles or rugged mountains in
communities called quilombo. Now, as sprawling urban areas
absorb the quilombos, revealing their unique culture, but also
their isolation and poverty.?Inter Press Service takes a
look at the government’s development plan to help develop these
areas, which have among the worst childhood malnourishment rates in
Brazil, while still preserving their heritage. — Brendan
Mackie
http://tinyurl.com/36jbwn
