WUWT Exclusive
Amidst the torrent of news of the Trump team flurry of Executive Orders, personnel firings, and policy changes, being reported on X, I noticed one small thing not being reported.
Monday morning.
We create opportunities for Indigenous people at NASA to diversity worldviews within Earth Science.
Because Earth Science needs shamans and medicine bags.
Another excerpt, emphasis mine.
Building Relationships
The Indigenous Peoples Initiative connects, cultivates, and sustains relationships. Our team is focused on engagement, dialogue, and two-way learning through connecting with natural resource managers and community members at conferences and meetings, through co-hosted community events where involving youth and elders, and through listening sessions around EO needs for landscape monitoring and mapping. We believe that “relationships move at the speed of trust” and are dedicated to building lasting relationships with Indigenous communities by creating a trusted, reliable, and Indigenous-centric geospatial community with a focus on environmental justice and climate issues on Indigenous lands and territories.
Today.
Under Construction!
In the past we’ve noticed this waste of taxpayer dollars and corruption of science. It is a joy to see this blight ripped out by the roots.
That one is still available. https://www.usgs.gov/media/videos/incorporating-indigenous-knowledges-federal-research-and-management-understanding-new
With luck, not for long.
I’m sure there are hundreds if not thousands of other examples of unreported accomplishments. The Trump administration seems to be returning sanity to Federal science at blinding speed.
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I tend to be very cynical about “indigenous knowledge” and “sacred spaces”. Deb Haaland acted like a generic green Democrat who was incidentally Native American.
And isn’t there a prohibition against an establishment of religion?
Indigenous knowledge might be relevant to a person’s knowledge of their tribe but otherwise, no such thing.
The NAs had a very jaundiced view about claims of sacred ownership by other NA tribes, Nor were they environmental Stewards. Whence the Noble Savage.
Tom – You should subsist above the Arctic Circle for a year and report back here if you remain cynical about “indigenous knowledge”.
That said, the Biden BS team worked overtime bringing indigenous peoples into their game where all they do is hit balls into left field.
That sort of tradition is real. When it is repackaged green dogma, I doubt it is real.
Nice backpedal
No, it is just a tighter definition. I still think most claims of indigenous knowledge are IndianWashing green dogma.
Thanks for clarifying what you think.
I spent a month in (what was then known as Point Barrow) working out on the ice while in the Army in 1967. Our native driver of the Weasel (tracked vehicle) wore military issue rubber Bunny Boots, albeit he told me about a time when a bulldozer he was driving broke through the ice and he had to walk 20 miles back to the base; he opted to wear traditional mukluks for the trek. Although, I can personally testify that one can walk a comparable distance in the heavy boots as I had to do so when the battery died in the Weasel and I was the lowest ranking guy there. I was ordered to walk back to base, alone and unarmed, for a rescue.
He and other villagers (after working hours) would commute daily on snowmobiles to their hunting camp, drinking beer, playing cards, and shooting the occasional duck that would fly overhead, waiting for the ice to open up so that they could launch their boats. They only used their dog teams to haul the boats to and from the hunting camp, and used the snowmobiles for commuting.
I noted that the locals would drive their snowmobiles, without hesitation, over bare patches of gravel that were abundant in April. That probably contributed to the fact that most of the wood-frame homes there had a snowmobile in need of repair laying upside down in front of the house, reminiscent of the stereotypical southern redneck home with an overturned Chevy, missing the transmission or differential. Speaking of homes, they were all supplied with electricity from diesel/gas generators and the homes were heated with natural gas from a nearby gas field.
The joke was when a tourist would ask to see a native dance, they would oblige by taking the tourist to the local bar with a jukebox.
I don’t recollect seeing anyone wearing a traditional skin parka. Those working at the Army base were all wearing what appeared to be military issue cold weather gear.
Which of those behaviors demonstrated unique “indigenous knowledge” that gave them a special survival advantage above the Arctic Circle?
Big cleanup job. Gonna take a while, but I like the start, as here with NASA.
MBS says the Saudis will invest $600 billion in US. Stellantis will reopen Belvedere in IL. Just told WEF manufacture in US for US market or face certain tariffs. Rubio to Central America next week. SoftBank, Open AI, and Oracle to invest $500 billion in AI. Southern border closed—no more pretend asylum BS.
All NSC detainees already returned to their agencies—no more Vindman bs.
First 14A birthright citizenship lawsuit already got this morning the first official US response, better than I had expected by relying on an 1866 law concerning Native American born on tribal reservation citizenship that preceded the 14A by 2 years that clarifies what Congress must have meant.
And we are not yet done with full day three.
They are walking very carefully .. no word yet what truck will be manufactured in Belvidere.
It used to be a jeep plant, then they closed it. Would drive by on one of two ways to my Wisconsin dairy farm.
I’ve been driving by it regularly since 1966, a year after it opened. It was first as student from the U of Minnesota to a co-op and later permanent job at GM in Michigan.
. I even stopped a few times in Wisconsin for a “Green Bay Packer Burger”, and a legal beer. Later it became to visit my boyhood home in Minnesota, and more recently to visit the Mayo Clinic. Though the plant was a competitor to GM, I was sorry to see it shuttered, and it’s good to see it reopening. I wish them well.
Supreme Court ruled a few years back that anyone (excluding people on ships in territorial waters, diplomats, and a couple of other minor exclusions) born in the US regardless of immigration status are citizens.
So this one will be a fascinating read as it elevates to the Supreme Court.
14th Amendment was specifically intended to recognize former slaves as citizens. Their parents, grandparents, etc., were forced here as we all well know.
Was not a ruling. Was only an obiter dictum. The last court ruling was US v Wong in 1898. Does not apply here since Wong’s parents were both legally in the US conducting only private affairs, so no allegiance to China.
Yes that was my understanding as I waded thru commentary. I have to say it was a nightmare because lots of lefty commentary in press who should know better was like Sparta. They just spew details to back there position as facts but they have never checked them, apparently good journalism is dead.
There’s been a lot of back and forth over “subject to the jurisdiction of” which is in the 14th and “within the jurisdiction of” which is not. Far as I’m concerned, until one becomes a naturalized US citizen you’re still subject to the jurisdiction of another country before that of the US, and owe allegiance to that other country first.
That seems to be the *intent* of Jacob M. Howard but not how what he put in the 14th has been *interpreted* since US VS Wong Kim Ark in 1898.
That’s an issue with a lot of the Constitution. What was plain as day from common knowledge way back then has been muddied over time by people wanting to interpret the document through their contemporary idealism.
There have been many decisions on this topic by the Supreme Court over the ensuing decades.
My point is that it is going to be fascinating to see how it plays out.
I’m quite certain Trump intended this EO to trigger SCOTUS review. I get the impression a lot of them are intended to do that.
It’s kind of funny how many of the same people who maintain that the 2A only applies to Militias are the ones who are arguing in favor of keeping birthright citizenship to children of people illegally in the U.S.
Holy smoke. What a meaningless word salad of platitudes. Who wrote that? Kamala Harris?
Well, whoever did write it, we’re all now unburdened by what was written by
themhim or her.I am curious to see what happens (or has happened) to Peter Kalmus. He represents himself in his X profile ( @ClimateHuman ) as a “climate scientist” but it no longer says NASA.
At the JPL website it still comes up with this.
https://higgs.jpl.nasa.gov/people/pkalmus/
A recent article in the Journal Science it discussed the mistreatment of indigenous peoples animal remains (BONES) at universities eg. Horse bones are sacred to some tribes
Important science that.
Ancient rituals are associated with horses, brought to America by Europeans 🙂
Almost as soon as they arrived in America (about 20,000 years ago?) the ancestors of the Indians hunted the wild horses to extinction. They most likely were also responsible for the extinction of the other large North American mammals. The Spanish brought horses back to America.
The bones of the massacred dead were never sacred. Nor were the bones of the cannibalized.
That’s a theory. But if a handful of people wiped out horses in NA, then why didn’t vastly more humans eliminate horses in Asia? Explain that anomaly.
Another theory posits that the Younger Dryas had something to do with post-LGM extinctions in NA. That theory depends on differential effects of the YD between NA and Asia, which may also be tenuous speculation.
The mystery is not solved yet.
btw, warfare, cannibalism, etc. were not exclusive attributes of paleo North Americans, Pat. Your ancestors weren’t Boy Scouts, either. If they had been, you wouldn’t be here.
Because the “natives” over here didn’t come up with the concept of getting on the backs of animals to ride them. Just like they never thought up the keystone arch, or the wheel (though an ancient toy llama or alpaca with wheels was found somewhere in South America) or concrete or iron refining on this side of the planet. They did do long term genetic modification of maize to corn (by crossbreeding) and figured out how to chemically break down corn to make it more digestible for humans.
Disease….carried by fleas on dogs that came across the Bering Strait bridge with people…possibly killed the large NA animals. Who would bother to hunt a mastodon or a Sabre toothed tiger when you can catch a fish or chase a buffalo over a cliff ? Humans might have killed off say Glyptodonts although we haven’t succeeded in extincting their cousin armadillos.
While that claim may be true, one should examine it in the light of most megafauna becoming extinct about the same time, except grizzlies, polar bears, moose, alligators, and notably bison. Depending on the definition of “megafauna” one should be prepared to explain why smaller animals like pronghorn antelope, various species of deer, and elk survived both climate change and the arrival of humans.
Science mag is now the woke successor to Look mag. The listing of articles is about 75% political, or maybe 95%. That is not a surprise, considering the editor. The surprise is that there are still real science articles worth plowing through the dross for the gold nugget.
As soon as they could acquire them, the Plains’ Indians adopted the horse. The early Siberian migrants apparently thought only ‘eat-eat’, not ‘ride-ride’. Later Indian generations understood ‘ride now, eat later’ since they had the European example. The Spanish also brought pigs, many of which became feral, thus the large Missouri wild boar. There is also growing evidence that more than 21,000 year bp, Europeans had arrived in North America. making them the original human inhabitants who were then displaced by Siberian immigrants.
Finally, do NOT ascribe any positive motives to the previous administration concerning Indian interests. Thacker Pass, NV is a prime example. The Biden people pushed a lithium mine as fast as possible, right over an Indian burial ground, completely disregarding the Indian protests and environmental concerns of which there are many. Battery EVs were a high priority with the Biden collective cohort. Trump may alleviate the Indian concerns which are fully justified. American troops, whites and blacks, left the Indians bodies strewn about after the battle at Thacker Pass.
Is that all horse bones, or only those descended from horses introduced by the Spaniards?
It’s good to see that the Kerbal Space Program (AKA NASA) is being updated! I look forward to great things!
Speaking of NASA, I’m very curious to know what might happen to Gavin Schmidt at GISS given President Trump’s tendency to disbelieve the climate alarmist narrative.
I would suggest to him that he start keeping his mouth shut about the climate issue lest he end up being forced to quit or gets fired for continuing to spout off about a supposed “climate crisis.”
Gavin Schmidt is not the worst. He acknowledged that the models were too hot, and he acknowledged that the climate scientists cannot explain the recent global warming. A little honesty can go a long way, and bear in mind how easily honest people could lose their jobs under the previous regime’s thought regime.
If Gavin Schmidt isn’t the worst, then all of the alarmists at NASA and NOAA should start reconsidering their positions on the CAGW narrative. Trump is just getting started, and a lot of shakeups relating to CAGW could be in the works.
That is a far cry from the original charter of NASA:
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/85/hr12575/summary
Which has at the top of the list of goals:
It’s always essential that “experts”(Xperts?) stick to their lanes of expertise.
Just because many have an ‘X’ account, doesn’t mean they possess knowledge that must be shared or is essential, even relevant to the good order and conduct of civilisation.
The hubris is usually very strong in these ones, Luke.
Here here, Clyde!
A paragraph or two of those goals should be recited each morning by the civil servants who are going to be at their work spaces each morning henceforth, just like the Pledge of Allegiance our kids recite.
The thing I’ve encountered and find annoying is the acknowledgment at the start of public meetings of the prior occupants (tribes) of the land. Most often the person reading the statement cannot pronounce the words correctly and seemingly has zero concern. If I got the chance to insert a couple of false references, say to a clan from Africa or the Amazon basin, would the reader notice? I think not.
Full disclosure: I have friends of the Yakama Nation and live on land that they ceded to the US in 1855.
Unrelated. I do find the creation legends, stories, and myths of the tribes quite interesting. These differ considerable across North America. That is not to imply that other places on Earth do not have equally interesting legends, stories, and so on.
It is possible that some indigenous knowledge might prove useful.
It took a while to recognize willow was a natural source of aspirin, but women bit on it during childbirth and that helped with the pain.
Certainly possible that academic, repeat academic studies of indigenous knowledge might occasionally find a diamond in the rough, so to speak.
Willow bark was known as a pain killer during the time of the ancient Greeks.
According to Chandler, first published in 1930, Introduction to Parasitiology quinine was brought back to Europe from Peru in 1640, as the bark of the cinchona tree that the natives used to cure malaria. There is also a peyote cult/culture in South Texas. Astute scientists didn’t ignore any source of value. Never was a need like now when we must have Ethics Committees.
Land acknowledgements should be as follows:
We hold this meeting on conquered land of the xxxx tribe.
It is ours now due to the success of moral and technical superiority.
My choice: Say nothing about it and get on with the function. As a famous American has said: At this point, what difference does it make.
“infamous” American.
I was in Auckland NZ some years back and was speaking to a parttime baggage handler at the hotel where I was staying. I asked him about the Moari land claims. His reply …my dad said we took it from them fair and square.
Also when in high school many years ago a friend and I climbed a flat top mesa on the Jemez NM reservation. The settlement which was fairly large was abandoned about 800 years ago. There was a stream running through there at that time.
Notable were defendant positions built into the access points to repel invaders. At the time only other Indian tribes would have been the enemy.
Coronado set up an encampment at what is now Bernalillo NM in the early 1500’s. They got along well with the Indians.
“There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and bloodshed.” ― Mark Twain
What I’d like to know is where they learned the English punctuation marks that render place names unpronounceable.
The pre-Columbian North American Indians were basically a late paleolithic age culture.
They lived in small tribes which were in a continuous state of war with each other, they had no metal, no written language, had no real cities, hadn’t yet invented the wheel, had only crude living structures, and in the southwest and maybe other places they practiced occasional cannibalism.
In Mexico, Central America and Peru they had advanced to the cultural level of early Mesopotamia, and they might have gone further if they had been left undisturbed.
But the North American Indians sure as H*** were not some kind of wise advanced civilization with great spiritual knowledge. That’s just BS.
There were some decent sized settlements among Mississippians and Northern bands at least worked copper.
Only because Michigan UP blister copper is ‘pure’ (minor traces of silver). I have a nice self collected sample from the Pennsylvania mine in my mineral collection. No need to smelt it.
I think the largest pure copper nugget is from the UP and sits in Smithsonian.
Yup. From Ontonagon, MI. Weighs 3709#.
Being told what is ok to eat. Which snakes bite. Or which people can’t be trusted is useful knowledge if passed on.
All snakes can bite.
Many can also inject venom as they bite.
But not always.
Best advice – treat all snakes as if they were Taipans.
I understand that slavery was normal practice too. That’s ultra topical but unlikely to be discussed where it could upset the official narrative.
“the official narrative”.. .
On the topic of “official narrative”, the historical volume discussed in this article was formerly available but recently deleted from our public library collection.
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-10-11-indigenous-peoples-day-special
Don’t participate in the pecking party, Mike. Your ancestors had slavery, too. May have been slaves. Or slave owners.
The idea that your forebears were saints and geniuses, while other folks came from ignorant savages, and that makes you a preferred human being today, through no meritorious actions on your part, is disreputable if not contemptible.
You’re above all that. You know it, so show it.
PS — official narrative my backside. There is no official narrative. We are free people. We are not slaves today to any narrative. No shackles. Act like it.
Mike didn’t say that his ancestors were saints or geniuses. He didn’t comment on whether they owned slaves or not. He was only pointing out that indigenous people’s held slaves, and therefore were not saints, and not worthy of any special reverence. That’s hardly participation in a pecking party.
Not only did some Native Americans own Black slaves, but some freed Blacks owned Black slaves. The attitude towards slavery was quite different from today.
My best friend in high school had a surname of “Schiavo,” which is Italian for slave.
There is slavery in the 21st century in several different forms.
That peculiar practice has not yet been exorcised by human civilization, sadly.
Marty,
NASA’s mission is not paleo anthropology or cultural DEI. Period.
You don’t have to denigrate any particular culture to make that point. Ancient Sumerians had wheels, bronze, cities, etc. Yet NASA should NOT be incorporating ancient Sumerian knowledge (ASK) into their space studies. That would be silly, don’t you agree?
Bigotry regarding ancient cultures is so unpleasant. I sigh when reading that crap. It tempts me to slander your less-than-civilized ancestors. Which you had, Buddy. And that’s a biological fact, Jack.
So cool it on the “they were knuckle-dragging troglodytes” shit. It ain’t necessary. Hey up?
Indigenous knowledges = the true NET ZERO. Interestingly, it IS written” knowledges”, which my spell checker does not recognize. Each indigenous knowledge is independent of reality. It was the late 19th century before bloodletting really stopped.
Why did those societies so slowly progress? Because of “knowledges” which were contrary to reality. The shaman, witch doctor, held a lot of power; the power of superstition. The FORMER administration was perfused with superstition. The new one, not so much.
Rumour has it that Hopi artefacts were found in Mare Tranquilitatis. Just saying ….
It looks like they’ve reverted back to the original webpage. I clicked on what is supposed to be the “Under Construction” page and I’m not getting it. It would be awesome if what you showed were true.
Applied Science instead of Political “Science” or Lawfare – what’s not to like?
Oh to have an applied science and engineering push generated during the Kennedy years in the 1960’s. His Rice University speech is a classic, regardless of whether you were red or blue.
Note how everyone was seated outside in the Texas heat – sweating profusely and fanning themselves – a different generation.
“We choose to go to the moon in this dee-cade and do the other things. Nawt because they are easy, but because they are hawd.”
Very nice, the government needs a lot of help, mainly getting the hell out of our business. They have done far too much damage already.
Government at it’s finest. NASA will consider indigenous knowledge in space science but California and the US Forest Service refuses to consider controlled burns of overgrown brush, a technique used by indigenous people.
Yes times 42.
The former residents over the last 15,000+ years had enough common sense to burn off the brush on a regular basis. After all, the landscape was their grocery store, hardware store, fuel depot, and everything they had. Allowing the vegetation to build up to catastrophic burn levels would have wiped them out.
Modern sophisticates, with such a puerile and snooty opinion of their own superiority, turn out to be dumber than paleo savages who didn’t even invent the wheel. Dumber than dirt, in fact, although it’s not nice to shame the victims. Sorry about that, crispy libtards.
“The former residents over the last 15,000+ years had enough common sense to burn off the brush on a regular basis. After all, the landscape was their grocery store, hardware store, fuel depot, and everything they had. Allowing the vegetation to build up to catastrophic burn levels would have wiped them out.”
Sorry, I don’t buy it.
I do.
If your survival and that of your family depends on an intimate knowledge of the local area, the seasons, and the flora and fauna, you get to know these things very well. Ask any old farmer.
We’re unlikely to know if the knowledge of the benefits of cool mosaic burns were brought to new areas as people migrated to them, or came from observation of the effects of natural or escaped fires.
These burning practices seem to be common to any semi-arid areas, whether they be in the USA, sub-Saharan Africa or Australia. Wetter landscapes have different approaches, such as slash and burn agriculture.
The other side of the coin is that what works well in one area can be extremely counter-productive in another. The early British settlers in Australia learned this.
Can you cite where, when, and how Indians performed “controlled” burns?
Any number of articles show up by searching “Native American controlled burn”. Here’s one from the National Park Service. Today there is more emphasis on the spiritual side of the practice, but it does state in the article the burns were needed for getting resources from the land.
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/fire/indigenous-fire-practices-shape-our-land.htm?trk=public_post_comment-text
There is a classic study that makes the claim that the redwoods of California are the result of fires that were set purposely by generations of the indigenous people. Perhaps Zorzin or Jim Steele can cite it off the top of their head.
Why has NASA been allowed to be involved in things more properly under the purview of NOAA?
One might also ask the question of why NASA has been allowed to take so much credit for the Landsat remote sensing program, instead of the US Geological Survey, whose director was responsible for it, and staffs the processing center in Sioux Falls.
One might also ask why geology is at risk of playing second fiddle to biology at the USGS. Actually, that one is easy. No one would give credence to a federal agency known officially as US BS.
First, NASA should leave well enough alone. Their job is scientific knowledge not any kind of “justice” to past peoples.
Second, my adopted son is a Native American tribal member. I have learned a lot from participating in rituals and education. Their creation stories are allegorical, not necessarily fact based truth. Not dissimilar to Genisis.
Lastly, their culture respects the land and its denizens. You know what, that isn’t far from what farmers and ranchers respect either. Their culture is different based upon their experience from the past. We should learn what respecting the land truly means. It doesn’t mean no prescribed burning, covering the land with solar panels, or building large homes on acres of land only for what money can be made from increased population.
DEI is being eliminated in real time.
NASA soon will be back to their core mission.
Diversity I can embrace. The EI, no. For me, that means understanding other cultures, learning what I can, and improving my life with that knowledge and, if possible applying the good to improving the world around me.
Basically, what I am saying, is I agree.
Call me when they close Gavin Schmidt’s climate hysteria propaganda shop in New York City which is misleadingly named Goddard Institute for Space Studies
The name is misleading because all they do is climate hysteria propaganda. It doesn’t study space or rocketry (which they are opposed to because fossil fuel).
And ozone layer depletion.
In the 1992 movie, Medicine Man, Sean Connery was researching to find a cure for cancer.
The bulldozes making a road destroyed the ant colony. The cure for cancer was lost.
While fictional, it does point out that there is much we do not know. A review of indigenous knowledge could be fruitful.
That said, it is not behooving to NASA to conduct such research.
How about the CDC or NIH, or give grants to private organizations like the Mayo Clinic?
And your evidence is a movie? You understand that Hollywood produces agitprop fictions not anything remotely related to reality, don’t you?
Indigenous speech, is sometimes very direct.
“Police Motu”, Papua/New Guinea. “Kai” – food; “Kai -Kai” – to kill.
It’s called ‘the blob’ for a reason. A decapitating strike leaves it unchanged.
I have no particular issue with Ms Boykin, but I also have no reason to think her new job as a ‘senior executive’ is anything more than the old job operating under a different name. I hope I’m wrong.
But if I’m not, it just proves the job of draining the swamp requires much more than just a Presidential Executive Order.