26 November 22
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The crises of the extremely rich are entertaining to the rest of us, such as the billionaire addicted to inhaling nitrous oxide, which inspired him to think he was crystallizing. And Mr. Amazon who wants to go to the moon. And the ex-president guy who has been there for years. This gives us in the back of the bus some reassurance that vast wealth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In so many critical ways, it’s good to be normal.
I know nothing about software. I use a laptop but nine-tenths of its capability is foreign to me; I use it as an educated typewriter. I love that it makes a squiggly blue line under misspelled words, even exotic ones.
I imagined Twitter was run by robotechnicians, no need for a company cafeteria, just a lube station, but apparently not so. There are human beings there and they have feelings, which is what the rich guy is inexperienced at dealing with. He knows about circuitry but he’s bought a circus and now hundreds of acrobats have quit.
You come to appreciate humanity, living in New York as I do. I walk down upper Broadway and it’s very amiable, like the Minnesota State Fair, throngs of people, the smell of pizza and hot pretzels in the air, bursts of music in passing, a general civility, all that’s missing are the farm implements and barns of giant swine. I’m a Midwesterner, wary of strangers, but walking in New York inspires a feeling that people are good at heart. Of course we’re all Democrats in this neighborhood. That’s all we have. You couldn’t find a Republican if your life depended on it. Thank goodness, the need for one has seldom arisen.
Last week I flew to Detroit and spent a couple days in a suburban landscape of strip malls, a church next to a used-car lot next to a Walmart and hotel overlooking a cemetery, vast acreage of asphalt parking, a landscape that if I hiked a few miles along the main road, I’d feel isolated, threatened, and after dark, it’d be terrifying.
I descend into the New York subway, an institution that is often grieved over but still packed with people taking great care not to bump each other or maintain eye contact for more than a few seconds. I’d rather be on the subway than drive my car through suburbia trying to find a shopping center; I’d slow down to try to get my bearings and the car behind me would honk with real fury. I’ve never encountered fury in the subway. It’d be too scary so people avoid it.
We’ve all experienced a strong centrifugal urge to find loneliness in the woods, a cabin, a beach house, a tent on an island, and I’ve been there and done that and found that silence makes me uneasy and that the presence of birds and small mammals does not constitute company. Hermitude was not appealing and in the fall I heard gunfire and imagined a headline: Writer Slain in Cabin, Sheriff Asks Public for Clues.
So now I am pleased to be in a subway car jammed with people. There’s no other city where you can see so much of America at once as here. The sheer variety is fascinating. The woman with the three small children opposite me: the sight of them speaks to my heart. The tall young woman in the black leggings whose stone-faced expression says she’s tired of people admiring her classic beauty, which, face it, is stunning, but I respect her need to be ignored, I look away, but the image of her is memorable.
New Yorkers feign indifference, but if you should fall down, people will come to your assistance. If Mr. Musk tripped on a curb, people would stop and bend over and ask, “Are you okay?” They wouldn’t say, “I closed my Twitter account you idiot and you know something? I don’t miss it!” He’s human and if he’s injured himself, we’d help him up and call 911, same as we would for you.
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Donald Trump. (photo: Erin Schaff/NYT/Redux)
Democrats, anti-racist groups and some Republicans criticize president for meeting Fuentes at dinner with Kanye West
The meeting is the latest in a long line of incidents involving the former US president and the far right, including once referencing the Proud Boys in a presidential debate and his comments that there were “very fine people on both sides” after 2017 clashes at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one anti-fascist protester dead.
Trump has admitted he met Fuentes – who is open about his extreme racist and anti-semitic views on his podcast – during a dinner with Kanye West, the rapper now known as Ye. Trump said he did not know Fuentes was going to be present at the dinner and had no idea who he was. “[Ye] unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about,” Trump said.
One person present at the dinner, however, said that Trump was impressed by Fuentes. “He was impressed with Nick and his knowledge of Trump World. Nick knew people and figures and speeches and rallies and what surrounded the Trump culture, particularly when it came to the base,” Karen Giorno, a former Trump aide and senior adviser, told the Washington Post.
The meeting was roundly condemned.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League which campaigns against bigotry and antisemitism, condemned Trump’s meeting with Fuentes and expressed shock at the development.
“Nick Fuentes is among the most prominent and unapologetic antisemites in the country,” Greenblatt told the New York Times. “He’s a vicious bigot and known Holocaust denier who has been condemned by leading figures from both political parties here.”
Democrats joined in the criticism. Democratic National Committee spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement that the move should see Trump – who recently announced a 2024 White House run – barred from representing the Republican party.
“If it was any other party, breaking bread with Nick Fuentes would be instantly disqualifying for Trump. The most extreme views have found a home in today’s Maga Republican party,” Moussa said.
Some Republicans too joined in the chorus of condemnation.
“This is just another example of an awful lack of judgment from Donald Trump, which, combined with his past poor judgments, make him an untenable general election candidate for the Republican party in 2024,” said Chris Christie, a former governor of New Jersey, who may also run in 2024 and has become a critic of Trump, despite being a close former ally.
David Friedman, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Israel, tweeted disapproval of the meeting with both Fuentes and Ye, who has also recently made antisemitic comments that have seen him lose a raft of valuable corporate endorsements.
“Even a social visit from an antisemite like Kanye West and human scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable. I urge you to throw those bums out, disavow them and relegate them to the dustbin of history where they belong,” Friedman tweeted.
Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, also slammed Trump.
“We strongly condemn the virulent antisemitism of Kanye West and Nick Fuentes and call on all political leaders to reject their messages of hate and refuse to meet with them,” Brooks told the Washington Post.
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Doctors in Kherson operating on a 13-year-old patient during an electricity outage on Tuesday. (photo: Bernat Armangue/AP)
“Every hour is getting harder.” Russia’s assault on Ukraine’s essential services has caused blackouts in hospitals and cut off power and water in cities.
Generators kicked on to keep life-support equipment running on Wednesday night, and nurses and surgical assistants held flashlights over the operating table, guiding the surgeons as they snipped and cut, working to save the child’s life in almost total darkness.
“So far we are coping on our own,” said Borys Todurov, the director of the clinic, the Heart Institute, in Kyiv. “But every hour is getting harder. There has been no water for several hours now. We continue to do only emergency operations.”
In its increasingly destructive campaign to batter Ukraine’s civilians by cutting off their power and running water, Russia hammered Ukraine’s populace this week with a wave of missile strikes that was one of the most disruptive in weeks. Ukraine’s engineers and emergency crews worked desperately on Thursday to restore services through snow, freezing rain and blackout conditions. And throughout the country, people dealt with the deprivations.
As surgeons donned headlamps to work in the dark, miners were pulled from deep underground by manual winches. Residents of high-rise apartments lugged buckets and bottles of water up the stairs of buildings where elevators stopped running, and shops and restaurants flipped on generators or lit candles to keep business going.
Although Ukrainians expressed defiance at Russia’s efforts to weaken their resolve in the worsening cold, millions remained without power on Thursday night as Russia’s persistent missile strikes took a growing toll. At least 10 people were killed on Wednesday, the Ukrainian authorities said. After each missile strike, repairs have become more challenging, blackouts have lasted longer and the danger for the public has increased.
“The situation is difficult throughout the country,” acknowledged Herman Galushchenko, Ukraine’s energy minister. By 4 a.m., he said, engineers had managed to “unify the energy system,” allowing power to be directed to critical infrastructure facilities.
The barrage on Wednesday, which injured dozens of people, appeared to be one of the most disruptive attacks in weeks. Since a blast on Oct. 8 on the Kerch Strait Bridge, which links the occupied Crimean Peninsula to Russia, the Russian military has fired around 600 missiles at power plants, hydroelectric facilities, water pumping stations and treatment facilities, and high-voltage cables around nuclear power stations and critical substations that bring power to tens of millions of homes and businesses, according to Ukrainian officials.
The strikes on Wednesday took all of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants offline for the first time, depriving the country of one of its most vital sources of energy. But the energy minister said the authorities expected the plants to be working again soon, “so the deficit will decrease.”
The Kremlin on Thursday denied that its attacks were aimed at civilians. A spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said, “we are talking about infrastructure targets that have a direct or indirect relation to the military potential of Ukraine,” according to Russian news agencies.
He added that the leadership of Ukraine “has every opportunity to bring the situation back to normal, has every opportunity to to resolve the situation in a way that fulfills the demands of the Russian side and, accordingly, every opportunity to end the suffering of the peaceful population.”
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has rejected any suggestion of a truce or peace talks at this juncture, saying that Moscow’s war aims have not changed and that a pause in hostilities would only give the Russian military time to regroup from recent setbacks.
In mid-October, President Vladimir V. Putin said strikes on almost a dozen Ukrainian cities were retaliation for the truck bombing of the Kerch bridge, and the Russian military has increasingly targeted civilian infrastructure since then.
But the hail of missile strikes has also reflected Russia’s persistent struggles on the battlefield, as its ground forces retreated from thousands of square miles in Ukraine’s northeast in September and then from a major southern city in November. Trying to solidify its lines on the ground — including with poorly trained, recently mobilized conscripts — the Russian military has resorted to long-range missile strikes as a means to deflect domestic criticism and inflict pain while on the defensive.
Ukraine has put its Western-supplied weapons into action against the strikes, while also pleading for more aid. Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the top commander of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, said Ukrainian air defenses shot down 51 of the 67 Russian cruise missiles fired on Wednesday and five of 10 drones.
Mr. Zelensky, speaking Wednesday night at an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council, decried what he called a Russian campaign of terror.
“When the temperature outside drops below zero and tens of millions of people are left without electricity, heat and water as a result of Russian missiles hitting energy facilities,” he said, “that is an obvious crime against humanity.”
It remained unclear on Thursday whether his new appeal would move diplomats from the European Union any closer to a final deal to help limit Russia’s revenue from oil, an effort encouraged by the Biden administration to starve Russia of funds for the war.
Officials from all 27 E.U. member nations met late into the evening on Wednesday without settling on a top price that traders, shippers and other companies in the supply chain could pay for Russian oil sold outside the bloc. The policy must be in place before an E.U. embargo on Russian oil imports kicks in on Dec. 5.
The embargo applies only to the 27-nation bloc. So to further limit Russia’s financial gains, the group wants to cap how much buyers outside the region pay for Russian oil. That crude could be sold only outside Europe and would have to be below the agreed-upon price. Russia has repeatedly said it will ignore the policy, which analysts have said would be difficult to enforce.
The E.U. ambassadors have been asked to set a price from $65 to $70 per barrel, and to be flexible about enforcing the limit.
The benchmark for the price of Russian oil, known as the Urals blend, has traded from $60 to $100 per barrel in the past three years. In the past three months, the price has ranged from $65 to $75 per barrel, suggesting that the E.U. policy would be of little immediate help in easing a cost-of-living crisis around the world.
As E.U. residents have prepared for a winter of high energy prices and possible rationing of supplies, Ukrainians have increasingly lived with long blackouts and water shortages from the direct damages of the war.
In Kyiv on Thursday afternoon, around one in four homes still had no electricity, and more than half of the city’s residents had no running water, according to city officials. Service was gradually being restored, city officials said, adding that they were confident that the pumps that provide water to some three million residents would be restored by the end of the day.
But the power outages created potentially dangerous conditions around the country. The scene in the Kyiv hospital echoed those in medical facilities around Ukraine, a vivid illustration of the cascading toll Russia’s attacks are having on civilians far from the front lines.
Two kidney transplant operations were being performed at the Cherkasy Regional Cancer Center in central Ukraine when the lights went out, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said on the Telegram messaging app. The generators were switched on, and the transplants were successful, he said.
Christopher Stokes, the head of Doctors Without Borders in Ukraine, said that the strikes on infrastructure were putting “millions of civilians in danger.” They can feed a vicious loop, in which people living without heat and clean water are more likely to need medical care but that care itself is harder to deliver.
“Energy cuts and water disruptions also will affect people’s access to health care as hospitals and health centers struggle to operate,” he said.
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Voters line up to cast their ballots at the start of early voting in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 26. (photo: Alyssa Pointer/Reuters)
Court allows early voting on a Saturday as polling shows Democrat Raphael Warnock with a lead over Herschel Walker
Recent polling commissioned by AARP shows Warnock with a four point lead over the Donald Trump-endorsed Walker ahead of the December 6 election.
The survey by Fabrizio and Associates found that Warnock had 51% of support from respondents – the first time Warnock secured a majority this year –compared to 47% for Walker. That’s higher than the 49.4% of the vote Warnock received in the initial contest on 8 November.
The poll found that Black voters and voters under 50 drove support for Warnock in particular, as well as a growing support from independents.
A week after the election, Warnock’s campaign sued Georgia over its election integrity law that restricted early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving is also a state holiday in Georgia, originally to commemorate Robert E Lee, the Confederate civil war general.
The state’s law notes that counties may start early voting “as soon as possible” after the state certifies results from the general election, with a mandatory period from 28 November to 2 December. On Wednesday, the Georgia supreme court allowed early voting to take place.
The stakes are still high in this year’s runoff, even as Democrats managed to already win 50 Senate seats on 8 November.
For Democrats, a Warnock win would mean they would secure an outright majority in the US Senate, allowing them to hold majority control of committees and making it easier for Joe Biden’s appointees to advance.
It would also give Democratic lawmakers more security when it comes to passing legislation and allow them to rely less on adjusting to more conservative Democrats like Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who have repeatedly blocked legislation.
Most recently, Manchin’s opposition played a crucial role in shaping the Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping $739bn domestic spending and climate change package signed into law in August following negotiations. Still, Congress remains divided as Republicans wrested control of the US House.
Federal Election Commission filings show that Warnock’s campaign holds more than $29m in cash on hand ahead of the runoff, three times more than Walker does ($9.8m). The ad tracking firm AdImpact noted that Democratic-aligned groups have pumped $25m into television ads for the runoff while Republican groups spent $16m.
Notably, while other Republican allies have rallied behind Walker and as Republican groups like the Senate Leadership Fund have spent more than $10m since the general election, Trump has not announced a trip to Georgia to back Walker.
Trump’s standing within the Republican party has taken a hit since the midterm elections when Democrats performed far stronger than expected, holding the senate and restricting Republicans in the House to just a narrow majority. Trump-backed candidates in particular mostly performed poorly.
Walker deflected when asked about Trump’s endorsement, telling Fox Business: “This is not Trump’s race. This is Herschel Walker’s race.”
Barack Obama plans to travel to Atlanta next week to speak at a rally in support of Warnock. Biden has yet to announce a trip.
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President Joe Biden. (photo: Ryan Collerd/Getty Images)
“To forgive me for $20,000 is nothing. I’m 61 years old. I have been working. I’ve been paying tax.”
I spoke to borrowers around the country, ages 24 to 61, about their financial plans now. Some people who had expected Biden’s program to forgive the remaining balance of their loan were frustrated that critical expenses they had been putting off — such as medical needs, saving for a home, retirement — will continue to be delayed. Some are looking for ways to not pay. Others are resigned to resuming payments until their debt is forgiven under another income-driven plan that cancels the remaining balance on a loan if it isn’t fully repaid at the end of the repayment period, such as Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
People who took out their loans later in life said they feel forgotten about, as they do not have as many decades left to work to pay off their debt, even if they wanted to. Student loans are often discussed as an issue primarily impacting young adults, yet more than half of people with federal student loans are 35 years old and older, including 8.9 million people who are older than 50, Federal Student Aid data shows. Borrowers ages 50 to 61 have the highest average student loan debt ($45,000), followed by 35- to 49-year-olds ($43,000), according to an Investopedia analysis of federal data.
Here’s how the uncertainty surrounding student loan forgiveness is impacting people around the US. Their comments have been edited for clarity and length.
Saphronie Harrell
Age 61
Teacher in White Plains, Maryland
Student loan balance:
$20,000 ($15,000 and $5,000 in Parent PLUS loans for her daughter’s bachelor’s in 2014 and one year of college for another daughter)
I just got a letter that I qualify for forgiveness. When payment starts again, I’m not going to pay it. I’m going to tell them to send the bill to Biden. He told me he was going to pay my bill. This is one time I could struggle and try to make the payment, but I’m not. If you can give billions of dollars to businesses and they don’t have to pay you back, somebody had better find some dollars for me, Saphronie Harrell, who has been a public servant for over 35 years. I volunteer. I have been a foster parent for 15 years. I paid my own student loans. But when my daughter went to college, I was eligible for a Pell Grant — as a professional mother. I shouldn’t even qualify for a Pell Grant, but we teachers don’t get paid enough. That’s how I got these loans. The government needs to find a grant or something to pay my debt too. I just don’t think it’s fair. It is not a handout. I’ve worked since I was 14 years old. I truly have worked. I feel like you’re just giving me a drop in the bucket of all the taxes I’ve paid.
The other thing that hurts me the most is the ones who are rich, the people who have had it easy or had enough money in America, it seems to me they have a problem when you try to help the working class. But they don’t have the same problem with the poor, because they want to feel superior. This was one thing the working class, the working poor, would qualify for. To forgive me for $20,000 is nothing. I’m 61 years old. I have been working. I’ve been paying tax. So everything that you’re giving to me right now, I paid for it. You’re not giving me anything I haven’t deserved.
I can’t even retire if I want to. And I’m too old to try a new career. I’m just stuck. I’m just mad because I feel like everything has let me down.
Elias Hansen
Age 32
Civil engineer in Yakima, Washington
Student loan balance:
$46,000 (bachelor’s in 2014)
When Biden said, “Here’s $20,000 in debt forgiveness,” the masks came off. There were people in the government openly saying, “Oh, if we forgive all the debt, how are we going to get people to join the military? If we forgive all the debt, how can we recruit more people to do these types of jobs, or coerce people to work in the public sector?” When you look at that, you realize it was never about the money for them — it was about power. They use it as a means to coerce people into doing specific jobs and tasks that society deems important. Many people who were screaming about student debt forgiveness and how it’s wrong were the same people who said, “Oh, you can’t give people money. That won’t incentivize work. You can’t give out more welfare. That’ll just make people lazy.” People pointed out their hypocrisy for coming out against student debt cancellation when PPP loans were being forgiven and businesses did absolutely nothing. Now we are saying, “No, you can actually help people, and you should help people.” They’re being exposed as frauds. People are realizing the pundits and economists and consultants hate people who are not rich, and they believe poverty is a sin.
I knew for a fact I wanted to work in the government for three reasons. One, I wanted to actually do some service. I told myself a long time ago I’d rather make $70,000 building public housing than make $500,000 a year building Jeff Bezos’s new fucking mansion. Second, government employment, more often than not, there's some security in it. And third, I knew about Public Service Loan Forgiveness before I graduated, and I was planning to do that. It was a very methodical process. When forbearance ends, I will have trouble paying, and it’s not necessarily because of my job. Obviously, prices are going up for everything too, and I’m taking care of a sick family member who’s currently living with me. I’m also trying to help another family member out a little bit too. But some dark money groups decided they want to keep you in debt forever. And it just pisses me off.
Terese*
Ranger, National Park Service
Age 29
Student loan balance:
$53,000 (bachelor’s in 2015 and master’s in 2019)
This might sound pessimistic of me, but I wasn’t surprised when forgiveness went on hold. I was infuriated that one man, a judge, thinks he has the power to keep millions of people in debt. But at the same time, I was still going to be buried under debt. As a federal employee, I qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which means if I make loan payments for 10 years, they’ll finally get forgiven. So realistically, was it gonna change my timeline of payments? No.
I was hired as an entry-level park ranger on the government’s General Schedule payscale, which is supposed to be like your first job out of college to get you on your feet. But in the National Park Service, and in a lot of these land management agencies, people have to do seasonal work at this pay grade for several years to get their foot in the door. If you work seasonally for the federal government, you are not allowed to work more than six months. So essentially your wage is cut in half. If your salary is $44,000 a year, you’re really only making $22,000 and then you have to go find a job in your offseason. So it’s really, really tough to scrape by. On top of that, a college degree is the minimum for many of these jobs, and me and a lot of my coworkers have advanced degrees in archaeology, biology, whatever it is, but we’re still getting hired at these really low-paying grade levels. What is so infuriating is I work a federal job that requires years of experience but does not pay me enough to pay my federal loans and still live a decent lifestyle. The whole system is essentially broken. I qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, but other than that, the government expects me to just rough it and work on a really tight budget for the next 10 years. Now loans are coming up, and a lot of us are already barely getting by. I am lucky I no longer work seasonally, or I could not make payments.
Sean Brennan
Age 59
Data governance manager in Cherry Hill, New Jersey
Student loan balance:
$105,750 (bachelor’s in 2010 and master’s in 2012)
The emotion now is a cross between anxiety, frustration, and anger. Anxiety because I’ll find a way, but it’s gonna hurt in when payments restart. I might take cash advances from credit cards to pay student loan debt some months, which doubles down on my credit card debt. Frustration is more from the social climate of the country right now. The people that are opposing forgiveness, it’s none of their business. The judge in Texas or the people filing the lawsuits, what happens to me is none of their business. Why are we in a country where we feel that we have ownership of somebody else’s life or lifestyle? America was a great idea. But I feel like it’s done now. And my anger — I hate generalizing or painting with a broad brush — but it is squarely on Republicans, period. That moderate voice is gone, and you’ve got lunatics running the farm now.
I graduated from high school in 1981 and it was enough for me to get a job first as a computer operator and then develop a career as a computer programmer. Along the way, I got two associate’s degrees, one in communications and one in information systems, and it was fine. The aspiration was always there to fulfill my dad’s dream for me to go to college, but life happens and you don’t think you need it when you have a career that you love, and you’re doing the things you want. Then in the mid-2000s, offshoring positions started to grow. I knew I had to get a bachelor’s degree. I went through an online program in communications and applied technology, and talking to peers, looking at job postings for things that I would want to do — jobs that I knew that I was qualified for — it was all, We need an advanced degree. So $40,000 in student loan debt for undergrad immediately became $80,000 once I got the master’s degree in information systems. I lost my job in July 2012 and completed the master’s in December 2012. I was unemployed for eight months. I have been in forbearance twice. I think I can’t go into forbearance anymore. And there’s a mountain of credit card debt that’s old and recycled debt — I’m paying around $2,500 a month in credit card debt.
All of the trade practices that opened the borders for my job to get outsourced is part of the thing that put me here. I didn’t have a choice. The people who are against forgiveness are either completely against giving anything to anybody else and devoid of compassion, or they’re so selfish, that they can’t see a perspective beyond their own.
According to the student loan repayment plan that I’ve got, before the pandemic pause, without any forgiveness, I am due to be done paying my loans when I’m 83 years old. I don’t know right now if I qualify for any other forgiveness plan. Best-case scenario is my 401(k) plan is enough for me to live on, so that any social security that I get, provided that nobody decides to cut it, would be paying student loans. When I walk past an 83-year-old on the street, I don’t want him to have to use all of his retirement, that he worked all his life for, on his student loans.
Elizabeth Kornblum
Age 31
Hairstylist in Ithaca, New York
Student loan balance:
$20,000 (bachelor’s in 2013)
I’m in my 30s. If I wanted to buy a house, I couldn’t afford to do that. If I wanted to start a family, I couldn’t afford to do that. I can’t even juggle the cost of my student loan debt. And in the midst of all this, I have a congenital neurodegenerative condition where I am losing my hearing.
During the pandemic, one of my hearing aids fell out and got crushed, and the other died four weeks later, after the warranty expired. I have been wearing my brother’s hearing aids for two and a half years, but they are not the same caliber as the ones I had. I cannot afford to start paying student loan debt and pay for the financing of my $9,000 hearing aids. My ability to hear directly impacts my ability to work and support myself. So it just feels like a door is closing, honestly. I once had a person ask, “Why don’t you just sign?” I was thinking, Bitch, do you sign? I could be incredible at signing, but that’s not going to help me communicate with the general population.
If forgiveness had gone through, I would have been a debt-free adult, for the first time. I really thought for a second that I was going to be in a position where I could make financial decisions from a place in my 30s where my life wasn’t where it was when I was 18, but it just feels like you’re being pressed under a thumb. And you’re just stuck in the same fucking space no matter how hard you try. This, combined with all of the other political hits that we’ve taken in the past couple of years, has just really contributed to feeling stuck and very hopeless. I’m really trying not to let this limit everything. I have a friend who is going to help me look into grants for assistive devices. I’m hoping that I can get partial funding and replace my devices next year because I really have lost a lot of hearing since the pandemic, so I can’t keep functioning with the devices that I have now. It’s just not sustainable.
Claire
Age 24
Data analyst in Minneapolis
Student loan balance:
$21,600 (bachelor’s in 2020)
It’s exhausting, but it’s also kind of familiar. This is just how the government works when it comes to things like this. I’m resigned to the idea that this hold is happening, that it is going to affect a lot people, that we’re going to complain about it, and then five years down the line, whichever way it goes, the government is going to act like it didn’t affect a lot of people and this was OK. You can see the writing on the wall already. And it’s not fun.
I graduated in December 2020 and got an internship. Then I got a full-time job. I was looking at the numbers with my current job at a healthcare company, which I got this year, and I figured out pretty quickly that once loan repayment starts, I wouldn’t be able to put away any money for retirement and savings and things like that, and I would have to put my life on hold. I did my degrees in sociology and environmental studies and they definitely did hire me because I had experience in statistics — if you don’t have a degree, you’d need about four extra years of experience. But on my salary, I need a second job to repay my student loans. It’s bullshit. I found a restaurant in the area that was hiring people to work nights and weekends, which was perfect. I work there about three to four nights a week, and it’s about a six-hour shift each time, so 16 to 20 hours a week. So I work about 60 hours a week now, which sucks. I don’t recommend it.
Rain Rodgers
Age 33
Executive assistant in Baton Rouge, Louisiana (unemployed as of September 2022)
Student loan balance:
$6,750 (associate’s in 2016)
I’m just bummed out. It’s so sad to me that this is what’s happening to so many people. And I know that there are so many people that need this help so much more than I do. And maybe they have more than one kid, or even if they have no kids, to be told we’re going to get this forgiven, that this is what is going to happen, and then just to have a group of people so mad that it’s happening that they stop it, it is so backwards.
We’re all taught you need a college degree to do anything. I didn’t start college until I was 24. I didn’t ever expect myself to make anything of myself. My dad always told me I’d be nothing, so I thought I’d be nothing. My grandpa literally forced me into college. When I started, I felt, Yes, this is amazing. I’m so proud of myself to be here. I’ve paid so much money to go to college and then to still have a $6,750 loan — I know I need to pay it back, but shoot, we’re all trying to be better. We’re trying to contribute to a society that doesn’t give us the opportunity to pay these things back. The reason I still even had that loan is because I was so underpaid for so long.
I was recently getting paid more than I’d ever gotten paid, $42,000 a year. But I was dealing with some issues at work and lost my job in September.
Loan forgiveness was going to be a really good thing for a lot of people who are trying to do what they can with their degrees, or just be good people in society. All we want to do is get an education and go be better people and contribute to society. Let’s help the people who are trying.
I have a beautiful life. I’m just sad to be an American now. I hate to say that. I know people die for this country. But in this moment, I feel, why would you do that? We don’t care about veterans, we don’t care about women, we don’t care about mothers, we don’t care about anything like that, the good things that are being a part of this community. I don’t understand it. It’s just such a bummer.
Ben Bertka
Age 46
Sales engineer in San Antonio
Student loan balance:
$111,000 (bachelor’s in 2010 and master’s in 2012)
I feel like leaders are spending too much time asking for permission when they should have just done it and asked for forgiveness later. We could have been debating whether or not it was OK to cancel interest forever in exchange for giving everyone $10,000 to $20,000 in credit now. Instead, we have to deal with something completely different.
I graduated high school in 1994 and traveled around a bit in the US. In the ’90s, without a college degree, I was looking at $4, $5 an hour. Can you make bagels? Can you make sandwiches? I just needed to get into an office because people in offices get paid more. So I was really just trying to get into one of those buildings.
I started community college because I couldn’t afford just to go to school and I had already taken time off. It took me, while working full time, from 2002 to 2006 to finally have enough credits to transfer. I got a Pell Grant and I got some financial aid to go to UC Santa Cruz, which scared the hell out of me because I had zero debt in my life going into that. I completed a full-time, four-year degree in math and computer science while doing work study. I went directly into doing a master’s in software engineering, which was recommended by a professor, to continue my education. Part of the program at the University of British Columbia required that I do an internship, and I found that what I actually learned in my program was already out of date with the industry. I had to completely re-skill when I entered the job market, and I entered at a really low salary. I came out of my master’s degree in 2012 doing software engineering, but getting paid $55,000 a year. I had a child in 2014.
I think my degrees in the beginning helped me get interviews, but it didn’t necessarily give me the skills that I needed in the workplace. I was getting really good at my specialty, but I had to completely pivot into a different career that paid better. And that’s when I started a career in sales engineering in 2014. I went from $50,000 to $80,000. I started getting commission. But I was still one of the lowest people on the team, in terms of salary. When you look at my resume, I’ve had a lot of jobs at a lot of cool companies, but I’m one of those people who has moved a lot, and that’s because I’ve had to deal with starting at the very bottom with heavy pressure to pay back my loans. I’ve been paying through the pandemic pause, and it’s finally going to principal, but once that ends the interest will pick up again.
I’m 46 years old now, and I have no retirement, maybe just several thousand dollars. I am putting all the money into saving for a home. My parents never owned a house. My parents never went to college. I was the first one to actually go, so they didn’t help me with anything, I had to do it all myself from scratch. And so, I’ve come to the realization that I’m living the American dream, but it’s not going to be like some of these other people. I’m basically working to make sure that my daughter has what she needs. That’s the best I can do and maybe hopefully, if I can get a house, I think that’s the investment that will help me out in the long run.
Deanna McLean
Age 51
Graphic designer in Birmingham, Alabama
Student loan balance:
$20,000 (bachelor’s degree in 2003)
The GOP needs to get out of the way. Let the president do his job. It was one of the things that he ran on, and a lot of people voted for him because of it. And it seems like anything that Biden’s tried to do that would better us in any way has just been blocked. I don’t think it’s fair to people that have been paying on their loans forever. I don’t think it’s fair that a certain political affiliation in this country will say they’re fiscally conservative and not want to spend money on this, but will turn around and pay lobbyists to get money from other special interest groups to push what they want through. It’s very hypocritical. Biden can’t stop people from suing him, or getting an injunction against this plan. I will just keep going every day, doing what I can do and pay my bills; just hope for the best but expect the worst.
I went to college, the first time in 1989, with a partial scholarship for music. I decided it wasn’t right for me at the time. I was more interested in partying, so I dropped out. Around 2000, right before my dad passed away, his wish was for me to finish my education. He convinced me to take another stab at it. I was working as a bartender and some days I’d make really good money, and then some days, I wouldn’t. I didn’t have a whole lot of money saved up, so I started taking out Federal Family Education Loans [loans from private lenders that were guaranteed by the federal government], and I knew that I’d have to pay them back and had no problem with that. I’ve been paying on these loans since December 2003. My balance is more now than it was when I took it out when I graduated, and I’ve paid every month without missing a payment going on 19 years now. I refinanced into a direct consolidation loan to be eligible for relief, but I’m worried I’m going to end up paying longer if they restart my clock. I haven’t made a dent, and it’s very frustrating.
I’m a single mom. I was hoping this was going to put back at least a couple of hundred bucks in my pocket every month so I could put it in my 401(k) or at least in my savings account. But I’ll just have to ramp up my side hustle and try to save more that way.
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A loan that Liliu Ross secured to build a new house on her Hawaii Island lot fell through in 2014 over concerns about unexploded ordnance. She and her son, Kealii Ross, continue to live in a shack that they have spruced up on the property. (photo: Cindy Ellen Russell/Honolulu Star-Advertiser)
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is leading the remediation effort, has been plagued by shoddy work and multiple regulatory disputes, according to an investigation by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and ProPublica.
So, in 2014, Ross secured a loan under a special program funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help Native Hawaiians build or purchase homes on Native lands. An architect created drawings for a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house, complete with energy-efficient appliances and a covered lanai. And she even picked the location for the new home.
Within months, though, her plan collapsed. Ross learned in a phone call from her builder that HUD had imposed a freeze on federal housing funds throughout the region. As it turned out, her property had been part of the Waikoloa Maneuver Area, a 185,000-acre site that was used by the U.S. military for live-fire training in the 1940s. Troops had fired an unknown number of grenades, mortars and other munitions that failed to explode, and many of the potentially deadly weapons remained, hidden beneath years of soil and vegetation buildup. Federal authorities wanted to ensure the land was safe to use.
But the funding freeze had sweeping consequences. Other prospective borrowers on Native lands soon found they could no longer obtain government-insured mortgages, the only type available on such properties. The freeze also meant that local and state governments could not tap the main sources of federal funding to develop affordable housing in the region — a critical need in a state with one of the most expensive housing markets in the nation. The action effectively thwarted a century-old promise by the federal government to return Native Hawaiians to their ancestral lands.
Money would flow again, HUD decided, after the military removed any unexploded ordnance, or UXO, and state regulators vouched for the land’s safety.
Eight years later, though, Ross is still waiting. The now-64-year-old farmer continues to live in the same shack. She is one of hundreds of Native Hawaiians who are unable to secure housing on lands that the government set aside for them in a trust. Many have already waited years — and sometimes decades — for the opportunity to build homes, farms and ranches.
“People are getting old, people are dying,” said Mary Maxine Kahaulelio, a prominent Native Hawaiian activist who lives near the UXO zone. “This is another form of delay for Hawaiians.”
No one can say for sure when relief will arrive. In one area, the state initially projected that the construction of 400-plus homes would be completed by next year. It paved streets, poured sidewalks, erected street lights and installed fire hydrants and road signs. But in 2015 it halted construction amid the federal funding freeze; not a single home has been built. Today, weeds and other vegetation are slowly overtaking the empty lots.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is leading the remediation effort, has been plagued by shoddy work and multiple regulatory disputes, according to an investigation by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and ProPublica. In one case, after state regulators raised concerns, the Corps rebid a contract to assess the UXO risk on the largest Native parcel in the region, prolonging a process that is years behind schedule.
The previously unreported details, laid bare in interviews and hundreds of pages of documents obtained through public records requests, provide further evidence of how government agencies have bungled the timely return of Native Hawaiians to their ancestral lands. The Star-Advertiser and ProPublica reported in 2020 and 2021 how the state was largely bypassing low-income and homeless Hawaiians because of the pricey homes it developed and how the federal government effectively circumvented a reparations law, depriving the program of prime properties suitable for housing. Today, more than 28,000 beneficiaries — the term for people who are at least 50% Hawaiian — are currently waiting for lots statewide, including nearly 6,000 seeking housing on the Big Island.
For its part, Army Corps officials said they are committed to clearing the Native lands as soon as possible. “Keep in mind we’re trying to help,” said Loren Zulick, who until recently served as the Corps’ program manager for Waikoloa, in an interview. But, he added, “our driving factor is to clean up contamination and protect human health and the environment.” In a written response to the news organizations’ findings, the Corps said it is “committed to getting the remediation done right to ensure these areas are safe” and that every acre that goes through the process “is a success toward restoration of lands.”
HUD also defended its Waikoloa policy, saying in a statement that it was developed “to ensure the safety of all occupants of HUD housing, including Native Hawaiians.”
Local leaders, however, say the government needs to move faster to fulfill its obligations to Hawaii’s indigenous people.
“It’s just common sense, common courtesy, basic values everyone is taught as children: If you break it, fix it,” said Robin Danner, chair of the Sovereign Council of Hawaiian Homestead Associations, the largest beneficiary group in the state. “We have the most powerful military on the planet. It’s just unacceptable that the UXO debacle is still ongoing, truly hurting families, keeping them from using our land.”
A Deadly History
After World War II broke out, the U.S. used large swaths of undeveloped land in the Waikoloa region for so-called live-fire exercises, in which Marines trained in battle-like conditions with artillery shells, rockets, grenades, tank rounds and other arms. It was one of several places in Hawaii that the military used for such training. Officials estimated that about 10% of the munitions failed to detonate during the Waikoloa maneuvers, so before leaving in 1946, the military conducted a cleanup operation. Technicians methodically walked the grounds looking for unexploded arms and debris, which were then destroyed or hauled away.
But over the years, there have been a handful of accidents. In 1954, two ranch workers were killed and three colleagues injured when an old mortar shell exploded near them. The accident prompted another round of cleanup, but that effort failed to catch many remaining munitions too: In 1983, two more people, soldiers involved in a military exercise, were injured when an old shell exploded.
Despite the risks, development marched forward throughout the region. The UXO status of the lands was hazy in those early decades, before the Corps took on a formal role. Many property owners assumed that the prior cleanups made their land safe to develop, and those who were unsure hired UXO experts to guide construction. Coastal resorts, shopping centers, residential subdivisions, parks and other developments gradually popped up.
Among the developers was the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, which manages nearly 12,000 acres within the UXO zone as part of the land trust. It was set up in 1921 by Congress to help a people then headed toward extinction. The state took over management in 1959 as a condition of statehood. Under the program, anyone who is at least 50% Native Hawaiian is entitled to lease land for $1 a year and either build or buy a home on it. Over the years, scores of beneficiaries did so within Waikoloa. Both the state and federal governments, as overseers of the trust, are legally bound to ensure the program’s success.
Government remediation efforts picked up again in the 1990s, after federal legislation resulted in the Army Corps being given responsibility for clearing former defense sites such as Waikoloa. And building continued without controversy until 2014, when a Native Hawaiian beneficiary in Puukapu, the same community where Ross lives, applied for a home loan to renovate his residence, as others had before him. This time, though, the lender rejected his application, largely because an appraiser noted that the property was in a UXO zone.
The loan denial alarmed local HUD officials, whose agency had provided millions of dollars each year to DHHL for lot development and housing assistance, including loans to eligible Hawaiians to purchase or build homes on trust land. Federal officials told the Star-Advertiser and ProPublica that they were previously unaware of the unexploded ordnance issue, which local and state environmental reviews had not adequately addressed. DHHL said it conducted such a review before starting construction on a nearby subdivision in 2012, but that it didn’t uncover any UXO. Nevertheless, once HUD learned of the potential contamination problem in the region, it imposed a freeze on funding and HUD-backed mortgages until safety concerns were addressed.
To comply with the policy, DHHL began putting UXO disclosure provisions in the new land leases it awarded to Native Hawaiian beneficiaries. The designation prevented those leaseholders from obtaining government-insured mortgages until the UXO problem in their specific community was resolved. In fact, some lenders had already stopped lending on Native lands in the Waikoloa area.
Regulators Raise Red Flags
Hundreds of Native Hawaiians looked to the Army Corps to step up its work so the freeze could be lifted. Months, however, turned into years. “My balloon is deflated,” said Leolani Kini, 65, whose plans to build a home on the Big Island are on hold. “It’s heartbreaking for me every day.”
Kini and other Hawaiians were counting on the Army Corps to review two key areas.
One was Puukapu, the mostly rural area where Ross lives and Kini wants to move. It’s the largest trust parcel in the UXO zone and includes nearly 450 lots leased by beneficiaries. The other area was Lalamilo, the location of the unfinished 400-home subdivision.
Given the limitations of technology and other factors, all parties acknowledge, it’s impossible to remove all munitions from the UXO zone. Hawaii’s rugged terrain and high iron levels, for instance, interfere with the digital equipment used to search for buried bombs. Instead, the cleanup goal is to reduce the UXO risk to “negligible.” But over the past several years, state health department documents reveal its regulators have raised significant questions about how the Corps performed its assessments in both areas.
In Puukapu, the department issued a scathing response to an initial Corps report, saying “there appears to be intentional efforts to omit and obscure relevant data.” Regulators also objected to the Corps’ finding in the 2018 report that the UXO risk was acceptable and no further action was needed.
“They basically were saying, ‘Hey, we’re done,’” said Sven Lindstrom, the health department regulator who oversees the Corps’ remediation work. “And we were like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. No, we need to talk about this more. You need to allay our concerns that there might still be hundreds of munitions items at this site.’”
The Corps took two years to respond, and after that it had to hire another contractor to help complete the report, which still isn’t finished.
In Lalamilo, regulators questioned the effectiveness of new technology the Corps is using to detect munitions, as well as the reliability of its past sweeps of the area. The skepticism was driven by a series of discoveries by workers in other parts of the UXO zone that the federal agency had previously designated as clear. In 2018, for example, they discovered large fragments on the ground and a foot-long projectile just steps away from a low-income apartment complex. The old shell, which still had the potential to explode, was buried just three inches below the surface.
To allay concerns, the Corps analyzed nine past sweeps of the area that includes Lalamilo. The results, however, were far from reassuring. As it did in Puukapu, the agency backed away from its initial assessment, telling the state it had low confidence in the effectiveness of its prior work. The Corps is now doing a new, more comprehensive sweep of Lalamilo, using state-of-the-art equipment, and is discussing the data with regulators as the work progresses. The technology dispute, however, remains unresolved.
Meanwhile, Native Hawaiian beneficiaries regularly drive by the subdivision site, just off the main road into Waimea. About a dozen told the Star-Advertiser and ProPublica that they often wonder when the project will get back on track. The site’s 2012 groundbreaking sign, which is still standing, touts the name of Gov. Neil Abercrombie. He left office eight years ago.
In response to questions from the news organizations, the Corps acknowledged that the remediation process is time-consuming. But the agency won’t sacrifice quality for speed, according to Lt. Col. Ryan Pevey, who heads the Corps’ Hawaii operations. “At the end of the day, it’s about the safety of the people of Hawaii and the environment,” he said in an interview. The Corps said it is highly confident that the Puukapu assessment, once completed, will allay the state’s concerns and show that hundreds of UXO will not be left in the ground.
The trust lands have been getting special attention in recent years, officials added. “It is a priority for us to try to help the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands with their needs for people who are trying to get loans on their properties,” said Zulick, the former Waikoloa program manager.
The Corps said Lalamilo is currently ranked No. 1 among its Waikoloa priorities and Puukapu is third, designations that direct resources to expedite the UXO work. Just a few years ago Puukapu was No. 22 — a reflection of the fact that the area had not been used as intensively for live-fire training as other sectors, according to the Corps. Some beneficiaries believe no remedy is needed in Puukapu. They say people have worked the land there for decades without incident, and many express frustration that the Corps is taking so long to assess a site they believe is safe.
William J. Aila Jr., who oversees DHHL and the 203,000-acre land trust, reflected on the balance that must be struck to successfully resolve the UXO problem. “Obviously, we would like to see this effort proceed faster, but we understand the Army Corps has a process, and we want them to do a thorough job,” Aila said in a statement.
Native Hawaiians Pay the Price
Native Hawaiians are paying the price for the delays — sometimes, quite literally.
Shirley Gambill-De Rego, a Big Island mortgage manager, recalled the case of a man who, after learning of the UXO delay, paid a private company $25,000 to sweep his mother’s land in Puukapu so he could get a loan to replace her aging home. Given that his mother was elderly, the man concluded that he couldn’t afford to wait for years for the Army Corps to do its job, said Gambill-De Rego, who ultimately helped the family get financing for construction. The new home was completed about seven years ago. The mother has since died.
Others have also had to dip into their own pockets.
Rocky and Kamala Cashman moved to Puukapu with designs for a new home in 2014. The retirees, who were in their 70s at the time, set up shop in a temporary trailer, expecting to live there for a year at most while workers constructed their new prefabricated home. But just before building began, their bank canceled the loan because it was no longer insurable due to the UXO problem. Other lenders subsequently turned them down as well. As a result, the trailer became their home for the next five years.
The rented camper, which measured 240 square feet, had just enough room for a king-sized bed, a bathroom and a small refrigerator. The couple made meals with a toaster oven, microwave, electric frying pan and rice cooker. While the living situation was cramped, Kamala Cashman said, it was offset, in part, by the natural beauty of their five-acre lot, which featured expansive mountain views. “We made it work,” she said.
The financial cost, though, was significant. On top of renting the trailer, the Cashmans paid to lease two shipping containers to hold their household belongings and a third to store the wood and other materials for their new home. Their total five-year rental tab came to about $60,000.
Then, in 2019, the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, an advocacy organization for Hawaii’s indigenous people, stepped in. The group agreed to lend the Cashmans $300,000 through a program designed to assist Hawaiians unable to get more conventional financing. The council approved the loan even though the UXO assessment in Puukapu was still ongoing.
“I knew if we didn’t step in and help, this family would still be in the trailer,” said Kuhio Lewis, the council’s chief executive officer.
The Cashmans moved into their new home in 2020. The three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath cedar-and-redwood residence spans about 2,500 square feet of living space — more than 10 times the size of their rented trailer — and features a dome-shaped great room and a wraparound balcony facing Mauna Kea.
“It’s sad that it took five years for us to move into something that should’ve happened in a few months,” said Kamala Cashman, who is now 81.
“That shouldn’t be happening at their age,” added Noe Aiu, Cashman’s daughter.
The HUD freeze is impacting Native Hawaiians in other ways too.
Those who have wanted to sell their homes in the region have had to look for all-cash buyers because of the unavailability of financing. And some have been unable to refinance existing mortgages, which prevented the homeowners from taking advantage of record-low interest rates in 2021. Rates have since rebounded to two-decade highs.
The result, advocates say, has been that Native Hawaiians have been deprived of building financial equity during a period in which Hawaii real estate values have soared. If any other group were denied such an opportunity, government officials would “move mountains to turn that faucet back on,” said Rolina Faagai, vice chair of Hawaiian Lending & Investments, a beneficiary-run organization that helps Hawaiians obtain mortgages on trust lands. “Not for our community. Why is that?”
A Plea for Help
Given how long beneficiaries have suffered under the freeze, Native Hawaiians and their advocates are now calling for the Corps and the state’s congressional delegation to expedite remediation.
“They’ve got to prioritize this,” said Lewis, head of the Native Hawaiian advocacy council, citing the state and federal governments’ long-standing legal duty to beneficiaries as overseers of the land trust. “This is a trust obligation to Native Hawaiians, an obligation that is being unfulfilled, unmet.”
The Star-Advertiser and ProPublica reached out to Hawaii’s four members in Congress about the Waikoloa cleanup process. Just two responded: U.S. Sens. Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz.
Hirono did not answer the news organizations’ questions but issued a general statement saying more needs to be done to ensure the governments’ trust obligations are fulfilled.
Schatz was more specific. In written responses, he said he would push for more funding to speed up the cleanup effort to help ensure no one waits longer than needed. “It’s a dangerous job that understandably takes time,” he said of the remediation work. “But for beneficiaries, every delay in the process has a real impact.”
In recent years, Congress has approved additional monies for Waikoloa, according to Schatz, who sits on the Senate’s appropriations committee. A decade ago, the project was getting about $10 million annually. This year, the total hit more than $18 million, a record, Schatz said. Much more, however, is needed. The Corps estimates $375 million will be required to finish the job.
Danner, the beneficiary leader, urged DHHL to help supplement the remediation effort. “If the lots were good enough to issue to our families, then they are good enough for DHHL to spend resources to clear the lands for safety,” she said. But the department, which received a record $600 million from the state this year to boost the Native Hawaiian homesteading program, said the federal government is obligated to pick up the tab and should.
For now, Ross continues to wait. Several years ago, she added a second room to her shack and now has running water and a power generator. But she is losing hope that she’ll ever see an actual house.
“There’s a lack of concern for the Hawaiian people,” she said. “So we’ll just continue to be successful on our trust land.”
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Wild bison. (photo: Joel Sartore/National Geographic)
Herds burgeon on reservations as Native tribes seek to re-establish balance after historical slaughter by European settlers
Descendants of bison that once roamed North America’s Great Plains by the tens of millions, the animals would soon thunder up a chute, take a truck ride across South Dakota and join one of many burgeoning herds Heinert has helped re-establish on Native American lands.
Heinert nodded in satisfaction to a park service employee as the animals stomped their hooves and kicked up dust in the cold wind. He took a brief call from Iowa about another herd being transferred to tribes in Minnesota and Oklahoma, then spoke with a fellow trucker about yet more bison destined for Wisconsin.
By nightfall, the last of the American buffalo shipped from Badlands were being unloaded at the Rosebud reservation, where Heinert lives. The next day, he was on the road back to Badlands to load 200 bison for another tribe, the Cheyenne River Sioux.
Most bison in North America are in commercial herds, treated no differently than cattle.
“Buffalo, they walk in two worlds,” Heinert said. “Are they commercial or are they wildlife? From the tribal perspective, we’ve always deemed them as wildlife, or to take it a step further, as a relative.”
Some 82 tribes across the US from New York to Alaska now have more than 20,000 bison in 65 herds and that’s been growing in recent years along with the desire among Native Americans to reclaim stewardship of an animal their ancestors lived alongside and depended upon for millennia.
European settlers destroyed that balance when they slaughtered the great herds. Bison almost went extinct until conservationists including Teddy Roosevelt intervened to re-establish a small number of herds largely on federal lands.
Native Americans were sometimes excluded from those early efforts carried out by conservation groups. Such groups more recently partnered with tribes, and some are now stepping aside. The long-term dream for some Native Americans: return bison on a scale rivaling herds that roamed the continent in numbers that shaped the landscape itself.
Heinert, 50, a South Dakota state senator and director of the InterTribal Buffalo Council, views his job in practical terms: get bison to tribes that want them, whether two animals or 200. He helps them rekindle long-neglected cultural connections, increase food security, reclaim sovereignty and improve land management. This fall, Heinert’s group has moved 2,041 bison to 22 tribes in 10 states.
“All of these tribes relied on them at some point, whether that was for food or shelter or ceremonies. The stories that come from those tribes are unique to those tribes,” he said. “Those tribes are trying to go back to that, re-establishing that connection that was once there and was once very strong.”
Bison for centuries set rhythms of life for the Lakota Sioux and many other nomadic tribes that followed their annual migrations. Hides for clothing and teepees, bones for tools and weapons, horns for ladles, hair for rope – a steady supply of bison was fundamental.
The US interior secretary, Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary, said in an interview that settlers “wanted to populate the western half of the United States because there were so many people in the east”.
“They wanted all of the Indians dead so they could take their land away,” she said.
The thinking at the time, she added, was “‘if we kill off the buffalo, the Indians will die. They won’t have anything to eat.”’
Coinciding with widespread extermination of bison, tribes such as the Lakota were robbed of land through broken treaties that by 1889 whittled down the “Great Sioux Reservation” established in 1851 to several much smaller ones across the Dakotas.
Without bison, tribal members relied on government “beef stations” that distributed meat from cattle ranches. The program was a boon for white ranchers. Today, Cherry County, Nebraska, along Rosebud reservation’s southern border, boasts more cattle than any other US county.
Removing fences that crisscross ranches there and opening them to bison is unlikely, but Rosebud Sioux are intent on expanding the reservation’s herds as a reliable food source.
Others have grander visions: the Blackfeet of Montana and tribes in Alberta, Canada, want to establish a “transboundary herd” ranging over the Canadian border near Glacier national park.
Other tribes propose a “buffalo commons” on federal lands in central Montana where the region’s tribes could harvest animals.
“What would it look like to have 30 million buffalo in North America again?” said Cristina Mormorunni, a Metis Native American who has worked with the Blackfeet to restore bison.
With so many people, houses and fences now, Haaland said there was no going back completely. But her agency has emerged as a primary bison source, transferring more than 20,000 to tribes and tribal organizations over 20 years, typically to thin government-controlled herds so they do not outgrow their land.
“It’s wonderful tribes are working together on something as important as bison, that were almost lost,” Haaland said.
Bison demand from tribes is growing, and Haaland said transfers will continue. That includes up to 1,000 being trucked this year from Badlands, Grand Canyon national park and several national wildlife refuges. Others come from conservation groups and tribes that share surplus bison.
At Wolakota buffalo range on the South Dakota-Nebraska border, tribal elder Duane Hollow Horn Bear, 73, said as a child his grandparents told him creation stories revolving around bison. But then he was forcibly enrolled in an Indian boarding school – government-backed institutions where tribal traditions were stamped out with beatings. The bison were already gone, and the schools sought to erase their stories.
Horn Bear spoke about a carefully-selected bison that had just been shot and all its parts harvested for meat and hide for local families.
He said it brought back the traditions that were almost lost – the culture, economy, social fabric.
“It’s like coming home to a way of life,” he said.
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