10 October 22
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Vladimir Putin tried to crush Ukraine. Instead, he made its cultural identity even stronger.
Located at 13 Andriivsky Descent, the Mikhail Bulgakov Museum celebrates a 20th-century author who lived much of his life in my country’s capital but wrote in Russian—and consistently portrayed Ukraine and its people in a negative light. In works such as the 1925 novel White Guard, Ukrainians are violent savages whose language irritates the ears of educated people. One major character describes pro-independence Ukrainians as “scum with tails on their heads”—a disparaging reference to Ukrainian Cossacks’ traditional haircut.
The museum, along with an adjacent sculpture showing the author seated on a bench, is a major landmark in central Kyiv. I pass it regularly while on assignment. This summer, as Russia’s invasion dragged on, the National Writers’ Union of Ukraine called for closing it. In a statement, the group argued that the writer, who died in 1940, no longer deserved the honor and that the exhibits should be passed to the National Museum of Literature. Bulgakov was one of those who laid pillars for Russia’s expansionist ideology, the statement declared. His Ukrainian detractors view the museum much as many Americans view statues of Confederate generals—that is, as an endorsement of a hostile and repugnant value system. “A son of a Russian censor, Bulgakov hated Ukraine as an idea and developed his views in his writing,” the Ukrainian literature scholar Bohdana Neborak, a supporter of the anti-Bulgakov campaign, told me by email. “He jeers [at the] Ukrainian language and disregards the right of Ukrainians to a national state.”
The campaign to cancel Bulgakov stalled only when Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko weighed in on the writer’s behalf last month, declaring, “You should definitely not touch the museum.”
Ukrainian culture, the authorities believe, is rich enough to withstand a dismissive, long-dead literary figure. But the intensity of the debate over Bulgakov underscores how a decade of Russian aggression has made people in Ukraine—including me—far more suspicious of our neighbor’s cultural influence. The current invasion, which began in February, has turned many of us into fierce advocates of our own language, literature, and music.
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently accused us of becoming an anti-Russian enclave. I now believe that he is right. What he fails to mention is that he is the one who made us anti-Russian.
Just as Bulgakov did in the 20th century, many Russian commentators cast aspersions on Ukrainian independence and scoff at the Ukrainian language. Supporters of Putin’s invasion keep claiming that Russia is fighting Nazis and preventing Ukraine from oppressing ethnic Russians in the Donbas and elsewhere. To liberate us from ourselves, the Kremlin’s forces started shelling our major cities, where Russian speakers remain the majority.
Like Bulgakov, I was born in Kyiv—in my case in 1991, the year Ukraine gained independence. Unlike in the west of Ukraine, almost nobody around me spoke Ukrainian. My Russian-speaking parents had grown up in Soviet Ukraine. My grandparents viewed the fall of the U.S.S.R. as a major tragedy. At home, my mother and father would discuss the flourishing culture of Moscow and St. Petersburg. They knew most of the major Russian composers, yet never took the time to look for Ukrainian ones. They thought that Ukrainian literature would never be able to compete with world-famous work of writers such as Dostoyevsky or Bulgakov. They were never taught in school about how the Soviet authorities executed members of the Ukrainian resistance during and after World War II, and they viewed residents of rural Ukraine as forever whining about past miseries.
At school, my underpaid and unenthusiastic teachers murmured about the heroic periods of Ukrainian history and begged us to read tragic masterpieces of Ukrainian literature. But as soon as I left the classroom, I dove into a Russian world. Before 2013, if you wanted to have a good job in journalism, you had to know, speak, and write in Russian, which created opportunities to address a relatively wide audience. Speaking Ukrainian as your primary language meant significant career limits.
In my childhood and early adult years, Ukraine was awash in movies that consistently portrayed my country and its citizens in negative ways. In the crime drama Brat 2, the hero is a Russian chauvinist. Ukrainians are portrayed as gangsters. In Kandagar, a war drama about Russian pilots smuggling arms to Afghanistan, a Ukrainian team member is a coward. On TV shows, Russians were our older brothers—smarter, more urbane, and superior in general. They were the ones who prevailed in World War II and saved all of Europe. Ukrainians were funny younger brothers with a silly language and a primitive culture.
In that era, commentators who urged the Ukrainian public to embrace our genius writers and historical figures fighting for independence from Russia throughout our common history were portrayed as nationalists or even Nazi collaborators.
On pirated copies of American and French movies, I saw people proudly embracing their own heritage, not somebody else’s. But I ignored my nationality, because I thought it was irrelevant in the modern world.
The Euromaidan Revolution of 2013–14 changed that. Many Ukrainians craved closer ties to the West. But our president back then, Viktor Yanukovych, was pro-Moscow to the point of refusing to sign an association agreement with the European Union that our Parliament had approved; instead, he favored closer integration with Russia. His regime beat, illegally jailed, and even killed people protesting his usurpation of power. Street protests forced Yanukovych out. Russia’s subsequent occupation of Crimea and fueling of pro-Russian uprisings in Ukraine’s east and south was a revelation of how far we were from being brothers with Russians. Witnessing all of this, I felt as if I had been struck by lightning.
In this period, I started reading Ukrainian authors and paying more attention to Ukrainian artists. From the historian Yaroslav Hrytsak, I learned that Russia has always treated Ukraine not as an equal or even as a little brother, but as a colony. In the novels and plays of Serhiy Zhadan, I read about how pro-Russian forces had corrupted eastern Ukraine. The electronic folk band Onuka brought traditional Ukrainian instruments back into our popular culture. A decade ago, voices challenging Russian narratives were still hard to find in the Ukrainian media, but that is no longer true. Under a 2016 law passed by our Parliament, a quarter of the songs played on radio stations had to be in Ukrainian; that quota has ratcheted up since then, and stations have typically exceeded it.
Still, in 2020, six years after the start of the Russian invasion, the Russian language still prevailed on Ukrainian television and in the streets of the biggest cities, the civil-society group Prostir Svobody has reported. Like most people I know, I wanted to believe that language has nothing to do with politics. Why couldn’t you speak both Russian and Ukrainian and love both cultures?
Yet even among many of us who grew up speaking primarily Russian, Russia’s aggression has boosted support for a 2019 law enshrining Ukrainian as our country’s only official language. According to an August survey by the Rating Group, a think tank, 86 percent of respondents supported such a rule—more than 20 points higher than before the most recent invasion. By comparison, only half of the respondents said they speak Ukrainian exclusively. Most people realize, as I do, that even if all government business is conducted in Ukrainian, the Russian language will still be spoken widely in Ukraine after more than 200 years of domination by Russia.
The official-language law is less popular in the east and the south of Ukraine, where residents are more likely to speak Russian and where pro-Russian television channels have tried to convince viewers that they are under attack. Protecting these people from Ukrainian nationalists has been one of Putin’s pretexts for war. Yet his invasions have made Ukraine more Ukrainian.
Back in 2012, according to the Rating Group, 57 percent of respondents said Ukrainian was their native language. After the start of the full-scale invasion in February, that number grew to 76. In the past decade, the proportion of Ukrainians who claimed to be native Russian speakers fell by half, from 42 percent to 19. Especially in the east and south, more people are regularly speaking Ukrainian than before this year’s invasion. I decided to switch to Ukrainian as my default language around 2016, after traveling abroad. Hearing me speak to my husband, a woman in Montenegro asked me if I was Russian. I corrected her. Recognizing that I was offended, she responded, “So why do you speak Russian, then?” I had no answer. Who would want to be associated with an invading nation?
Poll data show that Ukrainians have cut back sharply on the number of Russian songs and television shows that they consume. Popular performers have changed their repertoire accordingly. The classically trained pop star Olya Polyakova, Ukraine’s answer to Lady Gaga, used to sing primarily in Russian but is now performing more material in Ukrainian and English. “Nobody forced me to not speak Russian,” she told an interviewer. But, she added, performing in a language connected with the army invading her country was “very painful.”
All of this is a natural reaction to what Russia has done to us. We have seen our supposedly superior brothers killing civilians, ruining our cities, and stealing our washing machines. More and more of my fellow citizens have come to realize that embracing our Ukrainian identity is a matter of survival.
Language and music have proved to be powerful weapons on the home front, just as High Mobility Artillery Rocket System equipment has on the war front. Still more important to today’s Ukraine are shared values. Arrayed against the Kremlin’s army, which erases individual hopes and imposes authoritarian rule from Moscow, are Russian speakers and Ukrainian speakers; Christians, Jews, and Muslims; and people from a variety of ethnic groups—all of whom want a society where differences of opinion are tolerated and even celebrated.
The Bulgakov Museum remains open on Andriivsky Descent. The sculpture commemorating the author still stands nearby. And although some called for his cancellation, other Ukrainians—heirs to a nation that he used to despise so much—covered him with sandbags, to protect him from Russian shelling.
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Protesters marched in an Indigenous Peoples Day rally in Boston on Oct. 10, 2020, as part of a demonstration to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples' Day. (photo: Erin Clark/Boston Globe/Getty Images)
President Biden issued a proclamation on Friday to observe this Oct. 10 as a day to honor Native Americans, their resilience and their contributions to American society throughout history, even as they faced assimilation, discrimination and genocide spanning generations. The move shifts focus from Columbus Day, the federal holiday celebrating Christopher Columbus, which shares the same date as Indigenous Peoples' Day this year.
Biden first issued a proclamation recognizing the day in 2021.
Dylan Baca, a 19-year-old Arizonan who was instrumental in helping broker the first proclamation, was overwhelmed by the gravity of Biden's action.
"I still don't think I've fully absorbed what that has meant," he said to NPR in 2021. "This is a profound thing the president has done, and it's going to mean a lot to so many people."
Five years ago, the Native leader started an organization alongside Arizona state Sen. Jamescita Peshlakai, the Indigenous Peoples' Initiative, with a similar mission: to tell a more positive and more accurate tale of Native Americans by replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day.
What is Indigenous Peoples' Day?
Indigenous Peoples' Day advocates say the recognition helps correct a "whitewashed" American history that has glorified Europeans like Italian explorer Christopher Columbus who have committed violence against Indigenous communities. Native Americans have long criticized the inaccuracies and harmful narratives of Columbus' legacy that credited him with his "discovery" of the Americas when Indigenous people were there first.
"It is difficult to grapple with the complete accomplishments of individuals and also the costs of what those accomplishments came at," said Mandy Van Heuvelen, the cultural interpreter coordinator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.
There are no set rules on how one should appreciate the day, said Van Heuvelen, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe from South Dakota. It's all about reflection, recognition, celebration and an education.
"It can be a day of reflection of our history in the United States, the role Native people have played in it, the impacts that history has had on native people and communities, and also a day to gain some understanding of the diversity of Indigenous peoples," she said.
The idea was first proposed by Indigenous peoples at a United Nations conference in 1977 held to address discrimination against Natives, as NPR has reported. But South Dakota became the first state to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples day in 1989, officially celebrating it the following year.
Biden's proclamation signifies a formal adoption of a day that a growing number of states and cities have come to acknowledge. Ten states and Washington, D.C., now recognize Indigenous Peoples' Day via proclamation, while 10 states officially celebrate it. More than 100 cities celebrate the day, with many of them having altogether dropped the holiday honoring Columbus to replace it with Indigenous Peoples' Day.
Native Americans have borne the brunt of the work to make that happen.
What might seem to some like a simple name change can lead to real social progress for Indigenous Americans, said Van Heuvelen.
"What these changes accomplish, piece by piece, is visibility for Native people in the United States," she said. "Until Native people are or are fully seen in our society and in everyday life, we can't accomplish those bigger changes. As long as Native people remain invisible, it's much more easier for people to look past those real issues and those real concerns within those communities."
What about Columbus Day?
Columbus Day remains a federal holiday that gives federal government employees the day off from work.
The day was first founded as a way to appreciate the mistreatment of Italian Americans, and Congress eventually made it a federal holiday in 1934.
"Italian American culture is important, and I think there are other times and places to recognize that. But I think it's also important to also recognize the history of Columbus Day itself," said Baca. "Should we recognize a man whose labors killed children, killed women and decimated the Native American population here? I don't think that is something that we want to be honored."
Oregon marked its first statewide recognition of Indigenous Peoples' Day, in place of Columbus Day, in 2021 after its legislature passed a bill brought by its Indigenous lawmakers. Rep. Tawna Sanchez, one of those lawmakers, said the movement to recognize the day is an ideal time to capitalize on the momentum of political recognition.
"I don't know that we'll ever get to a place where people have their land back or have the recognition of who they are, to the degree that we that we need to or should. But the fact that people are paying attention at this very moment — that's important, because we will have a greater opportunity to educate people and help them understand why we are where we are right now," she told NPR in 2021.
"History is always written by the conqueror," said Sanchez. "How do we actually tell the truth about what happened and where we sit this very moment? How do we go forward from here?"
A woman shelters in a basement of a building during a Russian missile strike. (photo: Gleb Garanich/Reuters)
ALSO SEE: Shock and Horror in Ukraine as Playgrounds and Bridges
Hit by Russia's Wave of Strikes
Kyiv residents, who were used to a sense of relative calm, are once again hiding in shelters after Putin escalated the war.
“I heard three. One made the house shake,” the 64-year-old nurse told Al Jazeera.
Her apartment building is close to the Bessarabsky Market, a fortress-like landmark in central Kyiv named after a region czarist Russia conquered after repelling the 1812 Napoleonic invasion.
These days, Moscow’s military might is minuscule in comparison with its heyday – especially after a string of humiliating defeats and withdrawals from Ukraine’s north, east and south.
That’s why Monday’s blasts in Kyiv and 11 other cities throughout Ukraine seem to have one purpose – to sow panic among Ukrainians, officials say.
Russian President Vladimir “Putin’s only tactic is terror on peaceful Ukrainian cities, but he will not break Ukraine down,” Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said in a tweet.
Explosions across Kyiv
The explosions Mutkevych heard occurred less than two km (one mile) from her home in central Kyiv.
At least one more district in Kyiv and three sites in the Kyiv region have been hit. Authorities reported at least 10 people dead and dozens wounded across the nation, but the death toll is expected to rise.
Photos posted on social media and news websites show firefighters next to burning cars, civilians wounded and gaping holes in buildings and roads. One hole was in the middle of a children’s playground.
Many expect the shelling to continue after months of calm in Ukraine’s capital.
Mutkevych spent the first three nights of the war, which started on February 24, in the subway station near her house.
It was jam-packed with women trying to calm crying babies, men smoking nervously and elderly residents who often had no mattresses or chairs and slept on the granite floors.
Later, Mutkevych occasionally hid in the basement of her apartment building, but it was crammed with used furniture and construction materials and had no heating or electricity.
“It was damp and dark, we were freezing there,” she said. “My arthritis got worse.”
Then she – as well as hundreds of thousands of other people living in Kyiv – ignored air raid sirens, sarcastically calling them “lullabies” as the threat of deadly attacks eased.
Unlike on Monday, Russia did not shell central Kyiv in the first weeks of its invasion. Instead, it primarily targeted the city’s outskirts and a military plant where advanced weaponry is manufactured.
“We concluded that Putin wanted to keep downtown intact because he wanted to be there for a military parade” on May 9, the anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, Mutkevych said.
But the parade never took place, and by late March, Russian forces withdrew from around Kyiv and four more northern regions, leaving behind thousands of civilians they are accused of torturing, maiming, raping and killing.
Bomb shelters in Kyiv were mostly empty – until Monday.
Adding to the danger are the targets of Monday’s attacks. The Russian shelling hit civilian infrastructure that millions of urban residents depend on, observers said
“They will try to hit as many civilian infrastructure sites as possible – power stations, central heating [generators] and so on,” Kyiv-based analyst Ihar Tyshkevich told Al Jazeera.
Ukraine’s prime minister says 11 civilian infrastructure sites in Kyiv and eight other regions were damaged on Monday morning.
“One has to get ready for temporary interruptions of electricity, water supply and [cell phone] communication,” Denys Shmygal said on Telegram.
Crimea bridge blast
Putin said the renewed shelling is revenge for Saturday’s attack on the Crimean Bridge, which links the annexed peninsula to mainland Russia.
Kyiv has not directly claimed responsibility for that blast, but some officials have celebrated the attack on a key supply line for Moscow’s troops.
Putin on Monday warned of more “harsh” attacks.
At a meeting of Russia’s Security Council, he said: “A massive strike was carried out with long-range, high-precision air, sea and land-based weapons on Ukraine’s energy, military command and communications facilities.
“If attempts to carry out terrorist attacks on our territory continue, Russia’s responses will be harsh and, in terms of their scale, will correspond to the level of threats posed to the Russian Federation. No one should have any doubts about this.”
The bridge was Putin’s pet project. It spans 19km (12 miles) across the Kerch Strait, cost billions of dollars and symbolises Russia’s hold on Crimea, a Soviet-era Riviera with subtropical flora and sandy beaches.
The style of shelling seen on Monday is all Russia’s military is capable of today, analyst Tyshkevych said.
“Yes, this is revenge, but this is what Putin can afford for now,” he said. “Russia has no chances of quickly changing the situation on the front lines.”
Russia most likely used strategic bombers, cruise missiles and Iranian-made Shaheed “kamikaze” drones, military analyst Alexander Kovalenko said in televised remarks.
The use of such assorted weaponry more than 48 hours after the Crimean Bridge attack means that Russia does not have much left in the way of arms, he said.
“This looks more like the enemy’s convulsions, [as they hit] with the remaining weapons,” he said.
Another military analyst said Russia laid the political groundwork for the attacks a week and a half ago.
Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions on September 30 led the Kremlin to claim it had a right to use weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to defend “Russian” territory, Lt Gen Ihor Romanenko, former deputy chief of the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, told Al Jazeera.
“Within the framework of the Russian legislation, Putin has the right to use the WMDs,” he said.
The annexation, which was widely condemned internationally as illegal and meaningless, coincided with the panicked flight of thousands of Russian soldiers from the northeastern region of Kharkiv.
Since then, Ukrainian forces have advanced in parts of neighbouring Donetsk and Luhansk. The latter had been almost fully seized in early July.
Both southeastern regions, known collectively as Donbas, had been partially controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014 when a Russia-instigated conflict erupted, displacing millions of people and killing more than 13,000.
In recent weeks, Ukraine also recaptured a swath of the strategic southern region of Kherson, which borders annexed Crimea.
“We are capable of moving on,” Romanenko said.
However, Ukrainian forces are engaged in “very heavy defence” fighting in other parts of Donetsk, where Moscow has concentrated its offensive, he said.
Most everyday Ukrainians are adamant their country will prevail.
“Like hell he will see us grovel at his feet,” Mutkevych said through tears, referring to Putin.
“I will live to see the day of our victory when he is carried out of the Kremlin feet first.”
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Venezuelan migrants. (photo: Luis Chaparro/Vice World News)
VICE World News followed a migrant bus from El Paso, Texas, to New York. And it was miserable.
But as they drew within 60 miles of their destination in New York City, most on the bus believed the worst of their journey had to be over. “We thought, everything that could have gone wrong went wrong,” Vanessa Ospina, a 20-year-old Venezuelan traveling alone with two toddlers, told VICE News. “There is nothing else that could go bad, we thought.”
That’s when a loud bang woke everyone up. The tired, old bus with yellow front lights and the words “Magical Travel Tours” written in pink on its side, once again hobbled to the side of the I-95, where they were forced to wait another six hours for a tow truck to show up to fix a flat tire.
The two-bus caravan was carrying 44 mostly Venezuelan migrants, a few of the thousands who’ve been arriving in El Paso after making the arduous 2,800-mile journey mostly by foot from South America to the Mexican border in order to cross into the U.S. to ask for political asylum. As of September, El Paso’s Customs and Border Patrol authorities reported over 1,300 Venezuelan migrants arriving to be processed every day.
To handle the influx, El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser started to offer migrants a free bus trip to New York City or Chicago under the controversial program launched in March 2021 by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, “Operation Lone Star,” promising meals, a place to stay, and the possibility of a job on arrival.
Faced with full shelters and the prospect of sleeping on the street, many migrants took Leeser up on the offer, but what they found is a new level of misery: more than 40 hours on a bus in horrible conditions, frequent breakdowns, lack of food and water, and virtually none of the promised shelter and safety on the other end of the journey.
“They gave us a sandwich and a bottle of water in El Paso, but they said they will be giving us meals along the way,” said Claudia Roble, a Venezuelan migrant riding one of the buses.
“The kids are starving; we have nothing else to give them but water.”
Yennifer Arguello, 19, decided to board the bus to New York after she was told that she and her 3-year-old daughter would be arrested if they slept on the streets of El Paso. A slight teen with curly hair, Yennifer’s voice is soft. She’s on alert, paying attention to details around her, picking up conversations about the trip she’s on. Every now and then she smooths her hair and combs her daughter’s, before taking a selfie of them together.
“They told me there was no space for me to stay in a shelter here and that I needed to go somewhere else, but I don’t have anyone here,” Arguello said.
Arguello had become separated from her husband crossing the border, but she decided to go anyway. “I’m going,” Arguello said. She grabbed a child’s backpack and a Walmart plastic bag, which held all of her belongings: a secondhand shirt, a bomber jacket for her daughter, and both of their immigration documents.
A night before departing, the migrants were provided with a contract in English stating they will not hold the City of El Paso responsible for any injury, property damage, or any other misfortune while on the bus.
“Can you help me translate this?” Arguello asked one of the volunteers, wanting to know what she’d just signed.
Arguello couldn’t really sleep that night. She called her sister in Venezuela and cried about her husband. “If Alberto reaches out to you, tell him I left for New York, to meet me there,” she said.
When three buses arrived to pick up migrants at the new El Paso welcome center, they brought a tremendous sense of hope. The buses were new and clean, with Wi-Fi service and TV screens. Volunteers handed each person a white paper bag with a sandwich, a piece of fruit, and a small bottle of water, and then they were off.
That good fortune lasted about 10 hours, the time it took to drive from El Paso to Dallas.
The new buses were only contracted to get the migrants as far as Dallas, according to one of the drivers, who preferred not to share his name. Pulling into a gas station at midnight in Dallas, he broke the news that the migrants would be getting off there and boarding a different bus. “Where is the bus?” Arguello asked the driver as they filed off. “It should be here in no time,” he replied over his shoulder as he prepared to head home.
There was a tense moment as the migrants gathered around the drivers pleading not to be left alone in the middle of the night.
“We don’t even know where we are, or if the other bus is really coming,” said one woman, holding her sleeping baby in her arms.
It was then that the three old replacement buses pulled in. One of them had “Magical Tours” written on its side, and they all had worn-out seats, a stinky bathroom, and were much smaller. This is what they would have to ride for the next 30 hours. The migrants lined up and jumped in to restart the journey.
But not everyone. Enrique Sierra, a 33-year-old Venezuelan, stayed behind at the gas station. He said he had felt pressured to catch the free bus from El Paso and had no desire to go to New York anyway.
“I really didn’t want to go to New York,” Sierra told VICE News. “I’m going to Miami, but I couldn’t depart from El Paso since they didn’t give me time to get a plane ticket.”
“There goes the first one,” driver Ramón Escalante said as Sierra got off. “They jump out all through the way, and by the time the bus arrives in New York, the buses are half empty most of the time.”
For migrants boarding buses leaving Texas, drivers take full control of their welfare and existence, even though they don’t have resources to provide. Nevertheless, they sometimes buy food for migrants, or find other ways to help out, such as taking detours to get them closer to their desired destination.
After Sierra got off the bus, he started looking for a way to earn money to get to the bus station. He found a couple of men trying to fix a flat tire on their pickup truck, so he jumped in to help.
During the night, the buses crossed through Arkansas and then made a stop in Memphis, Tennessee, at dawn. The migrants jumped out, starving.
Many gathered around the front of a convenience store at the gas station, begging for money or food. A family with three kids gathered on the side of a dumpster. Two of the kids started to cry.
The mother of the three kids walked up to the doors of the store and extended her hand to a passerby. She didn’t say a word, guessing the man wouldn’t understand her Spanish. But before she noticed, another migrant was showing a photo of his daughter on his cellphone to the same man, who eventually handed over a few coins to him.
The young mom returned back to the corner with her family with watery eyes and sat beside her kids.
Escalante, the driver, came out of the store carrying some chicken and water for them. A second driver also bought sandwiches, candies, and a few bottles of water for several of the migrants on his bus. “We’ve been paying for their meals out of our own pocket. We can’t leave them like this. This was not supposed to happen,” Escalante said, on the verge of tears.
Governments on both ends of the trip, he said, have put too heavy a responsibility on the drivers.
“We are responsible for choosing if we want to go off-route to get the migrants that are not going to New York a bit closer to their destination. We are also responsible for their meals, for their safety…it’s too much!” he said.
Catherine Cole, from the migrant-support organization Grannies Respond, said that group has spent $24,000 in September alone to help migrants buy bus tickets from New York to their final desired destination.
Back on the road, the buses got to Nashville, where the weather was very hot–and the air conditioning broke down. The curvy, uphill highways of Tennessee also made the bus motor overheat, prompting the driver to stop and check: The motor was smoking and a thin line of water started pouring from the muffler. He decided they needed to wait for at least 20 minutes.
When the bus reached Knoxville, Yanet, a 39-year-old Venezuelan traveling with her daughter and son, decided to get off. She’d told the driver she was hoping to get to Atlanta. “Since the moment I crossed the border, I said Atlanta was my destination, but still, they pressured me to get on this bus and asked me to ask the driver to leave me as close as he could,” she said.
Yanet and her kids stood outside a gas station looking at the trucks passing by.
“How do you say ‘un aventón’ (a ride) in English?” Yanet asked a man putting gas in his truck. Then she went back to the highway to ask for a ride.
VICE News later learned that Yanet and her sons had left their immigration documents inside the bus by mistake but managed to recover them eventually, and made it to Atlanta.
The final night of the journey covered the long stretch from Tennessee to New York, non-stop. Arguello, the 19-year-old traveling alone with her daughter, looked exhausted in her seat near the back of the bus.
She didn’t have a phone, so every opportunity she got, she asked nearby passengers for a phone to check for news on her husband.
The migrants tried to sleep in silence, despite their hunger. A few babies were still crying, but the chilly breeze from outside had cooled the bus enough for many to get some rest. Once in New Jersey, they started seeing road signs for New York.
That’s when a tire exploded.
All of the tires on the bus were very worn, and at least one wheel was missing a bolt. “We don’t have the tools or a spare tire on these buses,” Escalante said, visibly desperate on the side of the road.
He called the bus behind him, also coming from El Paso, but that driver had no equipment either. “We are going to have to wait until the morning to call a workshop for help,” he said.
After a six-hour wait on the side of the road for help, they finally fixed the tire and rolled on, arriving in New York just after 1 p.m. on a Thursday. The migrants gathered by the windows looking to catch the first images of New York. The bus crossed through Times Square where many rushed to take photos and video of the iconic flashing lights and enormous screens streaming ads and news.
At their arrival to the Port Authority Bus Station, they were taken to yet another processing center. But their journey was far from over. The day they arrived, all of the shelters around the city were full. At least a dozen migrants had to be driven around until 2 a.m.—by then the TV crews and politicians who’d been waiting for them earlier had already left—but they finally got shelter.
That night, Arguello slept in a bed for the first time in over three months. The volunteers in New York put her and her daughter in a Holiday Inn turned shelter in the heart of the Bronx. “We finally made it! What an ordeal we just lived through,” she said. “This is not what we expected. But what are we going to do? A free ride is a free ride, and when you have nothing, you take all the help you can get, even if this is not what you wanted.”
Two nights later, Arguello and her husband, Alberto, were reunited. After he was taken to Laredo,Texas, from El Paso and then flown to San Antonio, a private donor bought him a ticket to New York.
“We are here to work. To give my family what they deserve. They have been such warriors,” Alberto said.
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Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally on October 9, 2022 in Mesa, Arizona. (photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Trump baselessly claimed that other presidents, including Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, had mishandled classified information yet faced no legal consequences.
"I had a small number of boxes in storage. There is no crime. They should give me immediately back everything they have taken from me because it's mine," Trump said.
He went on to accuse the FBI of planting evidence, and alluded to reports that documents containing nuclear secrets had been seized in the raid.
"They plant documents. Let's see, is there a book on nuclear destruction or building of a nuclear weapon, let's put that book in with Trump," the former president told supporters, appearing to paraphrase those plotting against him.
The Department of Justice has in court filings alleged that Trump wrongly took government records, including highly classified information, storing them in unsecured locations at Mar-a-Lago after he left office.
Trump was repeating defenses at the rally he's made for weeks, but which his lawyers have notably not made in court appearances linked to the case.
Some of Trump's claims are aimed at riling up his core supporters ahead of a widely anticipated announcement of a 2024 presidential, analysts have said.
Scores of government records were recovered in the Mar-a-Lago raid, and Trump at the rally gave offered no argument for why they should be returned.
His lawyers have argued that some of the documents are private and should be returned under privilege rules, but DOJ officials who sorted through them have found only a small number fell into those categories.
Trump's lawyers have offered no evidence to back his claim that evidence was planted in the raid.
Trump's claims that other former presidents mishandled government records after leaving office is misleading, said fact checkers.
All observed the usual process for obtaining government records after leaving office for display in their presidential libraries, applying for permission to borrow them from the National Archives having handed them over to the government on leaving office.
Trump was campaigning Sunday for Blake Masters and Kari Lake, Republican candidates he's endorsed in Arizona's senate and governor races.
Both have embraced his baseless claims the 2020 election was stolen from him by fraud, and will have key election-administration roles if they win.
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A protester holds aloft a Puerto Rican flag during a demonstration outside the governor’s mansion in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on January 23, 2020, after a warehouse full of emergency aid was discovered undistributed to those in need. (photo: Ricardo Arduengo/AFP/Getty Images)
A broken governance structure, climate disasters, and the legacy of a colonial past have combined for a perfect storm.
For Puerto Rico — where over 3 million people were left without electricity and 760,000 without clean water after Hurricane Fiona flooded the archipelago last month — talking about solutions yet again can feel like déjà vu.
It’s no wonder. Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico in mid-September, right before the fifth anniversary of Hurricane María, the Category 4 storm that led to the death of thousands of people in 2017 and knocked out the power grid for many islanders for nearly a year. In the immediate aftermath of María, politicians, NGOs, and economists rushed to craft potential solutions to make Puerto Rico more resilient against future climate events, ranging from privatizing the electrical grid to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding approximately $28 billion for construction and economic revitalization projects. Yet despite the damage and the death toll, only $5 billion of that money was actually disbursed and spent. And four-fifths of that went not to broader resiliency for future disasters but to emergency relief, according to the New York Times. That pattern holds true for other federal funds, such as the Housing and Urban Development department (HUD), too.
So when President Joe Biden visited the island Monday to announce $60 million in flood protections, he emphasized that Puerto Rico will receive “every single dollar promised.” There will also be a “grid recovery modernization team,” led by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, to help usher Puerto Rico toward progress, Biden said. Biden’s trip provided a clear contrast to the previous administration’s efforts. When former President Donald Trump visited after María, he threw paper towels into a crowd of hurricane survivors. Later, he told New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman that he saw the island as a place with “absolutely no hope.”
Beyond Trump’s opposition to funding disaster recovery, a major reason why Puerto Rico’s uptake on adaptation plans has been slow lies with the unique bureaucratic obstacles it faces because of its territorial status and pre-existing debt. Despite the money it did ultimately receive, Puerto Rico’s infrastructure is no better today than it was before María. In fact, it’s even worse. While Fiona was a much smaller storm than María, the hurricane revealed just how vulnerable the island remains. “Given that our collective ability to overcome these events has actually diminished since Hurricane María in 2017,” Raúl Santiago-Bartolomei, a professor of urban planning at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, told me by email, “both federal and local government policies in these areas have proven to be failures.”
Puerto Rico’s vulnerability to hurricanes goes beyond its location on a highway of tropical storms. The island is a poor place by any calculation — with a median household income at $21,000 and a poverty rate hovering around 40 percent, Puerto Rico is twice as poor as Mississippi, the most impoverished American state. And poverty is what can help make natural disasters so deadly and dangerous. But much of the reason why Puerto Rico is so poor boils down in large part to the long-term consequences of colonialism, which has held the territory back from making progress.
Although Biden likely has a better-intentioned game plan in mind for Puerto Rico’s recovery than his predecessor, the problems on the island run much deeper than poor electricity infrastructure and sea walls. According to activists and scholars in Puerto Rico and in the diaspora, adaptation plans alone won’t be enough to improve the lives of everyday people living on the island. There will need to be a major reevaluation of the colonialist underpinnings — the debt crisis and Puerto Rico’s political structure, for one — in order for any kind of climate-resilient infrastructure to happen.
Puerto Rico’s political landscape, explained
From its 400 years as a colony of Spain to its ceding to the US after the Spanish-American War in 1898 to its organization as a US territory in 1917, there hasn’t been a moment where Puerto Rico has been independent as a nation-state. That might be surprising for almost half of Americans, who did not know that Puerto Ricans were US citizens at all, according to a 2017 survey by the Morning Consult.
In fact, Puerto Ricans have been American citizens since the Jones-Shafroth Act was signed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1917 (which also meant that Puerto Rican men were eligible for conscription — convenient timing given the US entrance into World War I that year). The act also established the Puerto Rican Senate, which has 27 elected members who work to pass laws. Despite having citizenship, Puerto Ricans have never been able to vote in general presidential elections and have no voting representative in Congress. Puerto Ricans also do not pay federal income taxes, but they do have to pay, and are eligible for, social security and Medicare taxes.
While Puerto Rico has power over its internal affairs — which are delegated through its own executive, judicial, and legislative branches — the US has control over its foreign relations, commerce, trade, and more, as long as there is a US law that supersedes Puerto Rican law. The same is true for states, but without voting representatives in Congress or a voice in presidential elections, Puerto Rico doesn’t have a say in federal laws that may impact its operations. Congress is also the only body that can change Puerto Rico’s political status from a territory into a state or into an independent nation, which again means that decision would be taken — or not — without the will of Puerto Rican voters.
That’s all intentional, said Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, a professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “You will see that the reason why Puerto Ricans were not granted statehood [at the time] was precisely because the United States — including the president, congressmen, and academics as well — did not think that Puerto Ricans were fit to govern themselves.”
This ethos of paternalism has influenced almost every aspect of Puerto Rican politics since. Starting in the 1970s, the Puerto Rican government embraced a neoliberal approach to foreign investment. In addition to granting citizenship, the Jones-Shafroth Act made Puerto Rico’s bonds — which are essentially loans from an investor to a government or company — tax-free at the local, state, and federal levels. Because Puerto Rican bonds aren’t taxed, unlike most bonds from the state or federal government, they were more appealing to investors — so Puerto Rico used them as a strategy to fund its expenses.
So the territorial government received money from foreign investors (US investors are considered foreign), and, in return, Puerto Rico agreed to pay these investors back with interest on their investment. But the island’s ability to repay investors was hampered, since the US limited other ways the island could grow economically. Its agricultural industry was hampered by the 1920 Jones Act, which required that the transportation of goods between two US ports must be done with American-owned and operated ships. Puerto Rico, being an island, depends on ships — and Jones Act-compliant ships are expensive. And Operation Bootstrap, led by the Puerto Rican government with support from the mainland, replaced the island’s predominantly agriculture and textile industries with manufacturing in the 1940s. But once corporations left the island for cheaper labor abroad, islanders mass-migrated to the mainland for work.
Over the course of almost five decades, the island accrued more than $72 billion in bond debt, leading to a major debt crisis in 2014 that left little room for any government spending that wasn’t directed toward repayment. The crisis came at the heels of a decade-long recession, but peaked when several creditors downgraded Puerto Rican bonds to “junk status.” Investors no longer wanted to funnel money into Puerto Rico, and it had no way to fund itself, or to pay back returns. “Since 2006, we knew that the debt that Puerto Rico was accruing was unpayable,” Meléndez-Badillo said. “So this is basically the legal and economic infrastructure of Puerto Rico that has been collapsing for two decades now.”
In response to the crisis, US Congress passed the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) in 2016. Its main action was to establish a fiscal committee, appointed by the president, to restructure Puerto Rico’s crippling debt.
The policy was widely supported by Congressional politicians across the aisle in Puerto Rico. After six years of work, the board finished restructuring the debt in March 2022 and Puerto Rico exited what was essentially bankruptcy and resumed repayments to bondholders. The board will remain in power until Puerto Rico has four consecutive balanced budgets. The seven president-appointed members do not all live in Puerto Rico and are not all Puerto Rican.
While PROMESA has been touted as a potential model for other states by publications like the New York Times, it has come at a great cost to people living on the island. In order to balance the budget, the board implemented austerity measures that led to hundreds of public schools closing and pension cuts for the elderly. Known colloquially as “La Junta,” the board has “severely hindered” access to essential services and “extended its reach beyond fiscal policy,” said Santiago-Bartolomei, the urban planning professor. Today, any political moves made by the Puerto Rican government that require spending must have the fiscal board’s approval.
“These sets of policies have substantially reduced local government capacity, which was made readily apparent in the aftermath of Hurricane María, the 2020 southern earthquakes, the Covid-19 pandemic and, now, Hurricane Fiona,” Santiago-Bartolomei said.
The disaster capitalism of it all
Because of the sheer amount of destruction caused, Hurricane María slowed down Puerto Rico’s efforts to repay its existing debt. It also created opportunities for cheaper land and profit-making, and infrastructure projects for non-Puerto Rican investors with resources — the most obvious example being the 2021 privatization of the electricity grid by LUMA Energy, an American-Canadian company.
As Vox’s Umair Irfan wrote last month, Puerto Rico’s public utility company, PREPA, was already bankrupt by the time Hurricane María hit. Eleven months with no power only eroded trust in a company that was already rife with mismanagement and allegations of corruption against it. LUMA came in at a time when faith in the electricity grid was already low. That faith has gotten lower among Puerto Ricans, who faced an increase in blackouts (to the point where reggaetón artist Bad Bunny wrote a chart-topping song about it), even as Puerto Ricans were charged more for less reliable electricity.
Even before Fiona made landfall, it was clear that the electricity grid had no ability to withstand the stress of another storm. (The attorney general of New York is now calling for an investigation into LUMA after the failures last month.) “In the five years since Maria, people’s lives have even been more devastated by things like the energy privatization,” said Sarah Molinari, an anthropologist studying how communities organize in the face of disaster in Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico’s “public-private partnership” strategy to attract foreign investors to assist in recovery efforts goes beyond LUMA, too. The individuals and corporations who have moved to Puerto Rico in the last year, incentivized by friendly tax laws, tend to invest in tourism rather than infrastructure. As a result, Puerto Ricans are being displaced because of rent increases, in large part because beneficiaries have been purchasing properties all across the island for short-term rentals.
“The resulting disparities from local residential displacement, lack of affordable housing, and decreasing access to jobs, services, and opportunities likely outweigh any [economic] benefit”, said Santiago-Bartolomei.
Both the tax laws and LUMA’s privatization were intended to bring outside income to the island to help it financially recover from the debt crisis and Hurricane María, but the implementation has faltered, according to experts. The gentrification has further turned Puerto Ricans against Governor Pedro Pierluisi, whose delayed denouncement of LUMA’s continued blackouts only increased public anger.
It’ll be difficult to move away from dependence on non-Puerto Rican entities to fund the island, since both LUMA and Act 60 — the tax law — are advocated for by La Junta. “The number one strategic approach is to reinforce a dependence on the tourist economy and these outside investment schemes,” said Marisol LeBrón, co-editor of Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm.
The prioritization of non-Puerto Ricans, time and time again, is a historical pattern. What had always felt subliminal was brought to the forefront in 2019 when Governor Ricardo Rosselló’s incendiary group chat with other Puerto Rican elites was made public, leading to mass protests. In the Telegram app messages, Rosselló and his allies had mocked hurricane victims, gay people, and women — reigniting resentment in everyday Puerto Ricans who were already struggling with recovery. Rosselló resigned after two weeks of escalating protests.
“I see the future” and it’s wonderful, wrote publicist Edwin Miranda in the chat. “There are no Puerto Ricans.”
Reimagining Puerto Rico’s future
After María struck, Puerto Rico did create plans to rebuild infrastructure in a way that would be better prepared for climate impacts, but its government — hampered by La Junta and debt — had a slow and mangled response. It seems likely that the response after Fiona will be similar. To be certain, that’s not the fault of Puerto Ricans themselves. The island’s government has operated the only way it knows how to at this point: under the colonial rules instituted by the US. You can’t succeed when you’re set up to fail.
It’s moments like these when calls for statehood seem pretty appealing — support for statehood skyrocketed after María — but LeBrón urges other possibilities, such as independence. “A lot of people are like, ‘This is exactly the reason why Puerto Rico needs statehood,’” LeBrón said. “As if there’s not a water crisis in Mississippi right now, as if this didn’t happen during [Hurricane] Harvey, or through the wildfire season in California. Citizenship is not going to shield Puerto Ricans, just like it didn’t for other marginalized groups, from total government neglect.”
But there is hope for community action. People organized mutual aid groups after María and they worked to remove Rosselló from office in 2019. In 2020, after reports that Rosselló’s replacement, Governor Wanda Vázquez, allegedly knew about unused emergency aid left in a warehouse after María, Puerto Ricans returned to the streets. They wheeled out a literal guillotine to the streets in front of the governor’s mansion. (Vázquez was recently charged with bribery.)
Molinari, the anthropologist studying communities, told me that collective rage had been building for years. “It wasn’t new, but it was a manifestation of their anger, a continued activation of the ways we saw people coming together right after María,” she said. “It’s something to keep an eye on. People’s anxiety and anger is very high right now after Fiona. This might open up another political moment, where all kinds of possibilities and horizons are on the table.”
The fate of Puerto Rico, however, shouldn’t all be left to individuals. The current approach isn’t going to bring new jobs or money, and it certainly isn’t going to reshape the systemic problems plaguing the archipelago on its own. Both the US and Puerto Rican governments must take action to reinstate local power away from La Junta. Santiago-Bartolomei suggests instituting a Puerto Rico Development Authority, like the one proposed by the Center for a New Economy (a nonpartisan Puerto Rican think tank), to help improve governance issues. Such a group could have representatives from local and federal agencies, as well as the civil sector, to prevent the “austerity regime” we’re seeing implemented now by the fiscal board.
Meléndez-Badillo echoed the sentiment of needing economic projects that are based on community and solidarity, not on individual, colonial logic. But for right now, the focus should be on survival.
“Survival in Puerto Rico is a political act,” he said. “We need to rephrase Miranda: I see the future and it’s beautiful. It’s a Puerto Rico full of Puerto Ricans.”
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On Indigenous Peoples’ Day. (photo: Mongabay)
So far this year, Native American tribes have been involved in multiple conservation and climate mitigation efforts as the U.N. biodiversity conference, COP15, and the climate conference, COP27, loom over the horizon. Both conferences are set to make decisions with wide-ranging impacts on people and societies around the world. Key on the agenda of many communities is ensuring Indigenous participation in environmental and climate efforts and providing solutions embedded in their traditional ecological knowledge.
“Stewardship of the Earth is a big part of our culture,” says John Settlemyre, a conservation outreach coordinator and Muscogee Nation citizen in modern-day Oklahoma. “So [the U.N. biodiversity conference’s goal] aligns with my tribe’s values.”
From conserving some of the last old-growth redwood forests in California to halting oil drilling in Alaska’s arctic, Mongabay rounds up five of this year’s most inspiring stories to mark Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
By cultivating seaweed, Indigenous communities restore connection to the ocean
In Hawai‘i, a community group called Limu Hui seeks to both restore the health of Hawai‘i’s red algae species (known as limu kohu), and pass on the ancestral knowledge of limu held by elders to the next generation.
Limu Hui’s work reflects a much broader trend: many Indigenous communities are working to restore degraded seaweed species that support traditional diets. (Many of these projects work with algae, including limu and kelp, though some touch on seagrasses, a marine plant.) In doing so, these communities are restoring both ecosystems and these species’ traditional cultural functions, a practice known as biocultural restoration.
These projects take many forms, including education, ecosystem restoration, commercial farming, research, or a combination thereof. The group is breaking new ground as it tests methods of transplanting limu species grown in tanks to the wild ocean. Yet the group’s members emphasized that Limu Hui’s true focus is encouraging relationships with limu itself.
“The idea of limu restoration is not so much just limu planting; it’s a pathway for community cohesion,” says Wally Ito, a co-founder of Limu Hui. “To get younger kids out of the house, and get them to touch the limu. Smell the limu. Taste the limu. We have this taste, this ‘ono, of limu. But we cannot pass on that taste to the next generation. They gotta taste it for themselves.”
California redwood forest returned to Indigenous guardianship, conservation
Ten Native American tribal nations, forming the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, have received ownership of 215 hectares (532 acres) of California’s redwood forest. The tribal council is partnering with Save the Redwoods League, which donated the land, to protect and restore their traditional coastal forest. Together they have developed a 30-year conservation plan to protect endangered species such as the northern spotted owl (Strix Occidentalis Caurina) and marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus mamoratus).
The conifer forest located on the north coast of the state in Mendocino County, is home to endangered old-growth redwood trees (Sequoia sempervirens), the tallest trees in the world.
In a statement, Save the Redwoods League said that they will be working with the tribal council to apply “a blend of Indigenous place-based land guardianship principles, conservation science, climate adaptation and fire resiliency concepts and approaches to help ensure lasting protection and long-term healing for Tc’ih-Léh-Dûñ and its diverse flora and fauna.”
The transfer of the forest’s ownership, was funded by the Pacific Gas … Electric Company’s (PG…E) Compensatory Mitigation Program. According to the League, PG…E is mitigating potential habitat loss that may result from its operations and maintenance activities throughout the utility’s northern and central California service area.
The forest has been named Tc’ih-Léh-Dûñ in the Sinkyone language as a testimony to the Sinkyone Indigenous peoples who inhabited the region before they were forcibly removed by European and American settlers.
Second oil company exits Arctic amid fierce Indigenous opposition, energy squeeze
For decades now, the Gwich’in Steering Committee in Alaska has taken the protection of the Arctic’s Coastal Plain into their own hands and mounted a fierce opposition against oil drilling in the region – resulting in the exit of the second oil company last month.
The company is Knik Arm Services’ (KAS), which had a 19,669-hectare (48,603-acre) lease in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
“These exits clearly demonstrate that companies recognize what we have known all along: drilling in the Arctic Refuge is not worth the economic risk and liability that results from development on sacred lands without the consent of Indigenous peoples,” said the Gwich’in Steering Committee in a press statement.
The Gwich’in people learned that the Coastal Plain of the ANWR would be at risk from oil development during the second year of the Trump administration. They then doubled down on their efforts to encourage banks and insurance companies to align with Indigenous rights and speak out against oil and gas development on the reserve.
According to the committee, 29 global banks have implemented a policy to decline underwriting oil and gas projects on the refuge and 14 international insurance companies have said they will not insure development projects in ANWR.
‘The return of land to Indigenous people is key’: Q…A with Shinnecock Kelp Farm’s Tela Troge
The Shinnecock Kelp Farm is the first Indigenous-owned seaweed farm on the East Coast. Its founders hope that it may alter the course of a bay devastated by pollution — and, perhaps, restore the sovereignty of the tribe that cultivated these waters for millennia.
Tela Troge is one of the six women running the farm. Troge is also a member of the Shinnecock Nation, the tribe that has lived on the bay since the end of the last Ice Age.
“We’re taught to think ahead for the next seven generations,” she tells Mongabay. “It’s really a lot of what drives us in educating and sharing our message, and hopefully getting others engaged in taking action to protect the water now.”
Soon after its founding, the Shinnecock Kelp Farm formed a collaboration with the Sisters of St. Joseph, a Catholic organization that focuses on environmental justice. The nuns donated space in their retreat center that sits directly on the edge of Shinnecock Bay. There, the newly minted farmers nurtured sugar kelp (Saccharina latissima) from microscopic cells to young plants ready to transport into their farm.
The team hopes that the harvested kelp — and, in the future, farmed shellfish — can absorb some of the excess nitrogen in Shinnecock Bay, reversing decades of pollution. But Troge says her team can’t fix this problem alone.
Indigenous oyster fisheries were ‘fundamentally different’: Q…A with researcher Marco Hatch
A new study published in Nature Communications studied 28 oyster fisheries along the coasts of North America and Australia and found that Indigenous communities in the region sustainably managed oyster fisheries for more than 5,000 years.
The researchers put together historical sea level data and derived oyster catch records using evidence from archaeological records of oyster middens (heaps of oyster shells). They found oyster fisheries thrived better in these regions than under the European settlers’ management of commercial oyster fisheries. With millions, and sometimes billions of shells harvested, some middens were as tall as 30 feet (about 9 meters), and served as important ceremonial, sacred and symbolic spaces.
Despite the bounty, large-scale depletion or declines of oysters were rare and localized due to traditional knowledge of harvest practices, consumption patterns and farming technologies.
The knowledge of these traditional practices can guide sustainable fisheries management today, say the authors.
“What’s really powerful [about studying Indigenous practices] is that these coastal ecologies, [which have been] sleeping or dormant, are being reawakened,” says Dr. Marco Hatch, a marine ecologist involved in the study and a member of the Samish Indian Nation.
“A community I’m working with now [is] creating the first clam garden in the modern era. Clam gardens are vibrant ecosystems because people have modified them, tended them and harvested them. All of that has created positive feedback where the environment is in fact more abundant—there are more clams and they grow faster.”
This article was originally published on Mongabay.
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