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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 30, 2019)
2 Wednesday, October 30, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O Daylight Sa Saving Time Ends at 2 a.m. Sunday, November 3 Robert C. Koehler Fall Back Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer9s name, address and phone number. Let- ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor. The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday. To the Editor: Attended the Sisters Science Club presenta- tion about bees. Been looking forward to this talk since announced. Wanted to see what else we can do to help our bee population. Been growing our own food and freezing it all sum- mer as well as many, many wildflowers and bird seed, feeders, etc. Instead we were charged the usual $5 admission which we expected, but because we sat upstairs we did not get the 3D glasses required to see the pictures. And we learned that <the only place in the U.S. that did not experience climate change was the White House...= and <That Republicans don9t eat!= I did not know that bees were political! I9m sorry, but I will not attend another sci- ence club lecture, I came to hear about bees, not political views of one person whose opin- ion is more important than facts. Roger Engstrom s s s To the Editor: Hello. I really, really think you need MORE letters printed to the editor from Mr. Mackey. Or, is it that you get so few letters to the editor you HAVE to print what you receive? I will go with No. 2. Gary Pogue s s s To the Editor: This is my second letter to your publication. I have rarely written to newspapers in my past, but I am very concerned about both the lack of transparency and the lack of support provided to children in the Sisters School District. It is my understanding that the SSD com- pleted an in-depth investigation about bully- ing, harassment, and abuse by coaching staff, and allegations were found to be true. To quote a portion of the investigation <...I do find that the coaches9 conduct meets the definition of harassment, intimidation or bullying set forth in the District Policy JFCF. Their actions inter- fered with the educational benefits, opportu- nities and performance and created a hostile educational environment... and psychological wellbeing= of five Sisters High School athletes. It is my understanding that these coaches were not fired, and that at least one of them remains on the SSD payroll as a teacher and coach. I have so many questions about this decision and the related concerns, but of pri- mary importance is the question of transpar- ency with the parents of the children in the classroom of this teacher. How much of this information has been shared, and have the findings above been duly noted? Most surprising to me is some informa- tion that I have learned recently. Although I am not privy to all the information going into decision-making about the daily workings of Sisters High School, I do know that plans have been put in place for the safety of some stu- dents related to this issue, and that those plans require children to modify their behavior to avoid the adults who have been found guilty. See LETTERS on page 14 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Sunny Mostly sunny Sunny Sunny Partly Cloudy Partly Cloudy 49/25 60/27 52/27 61/34 64/34 60/35 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. N Editor in Chief: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Easterling Graphic Design: Jess Draper Community Marketing Partners: Vicki Curlett & Patti Jo Beal Classifieds & Circulation: Lisa May Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Owner: J. Louis Mullen The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $45; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2019 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. assumes no liability or responsibility for information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition- ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts. <When the U.S. Constitution was ratified, women, indigenous peoples, and slaves were treated as property, without rights.= In the same vein of exploitative ignorance, we9re still treating a living, life- sustaining, crucial being as property: the ecosystem. And in the process, we9re choking our own habitat 4 that is to say, ourselves 4 to death. But as Mari Margil, who is quoted above, points out: <... that is beginning to change, thanks to the Rights of Nature movement.= It9s happening, liter- ally, all around the world. It began more than a decade ago, in South America, when Ecuador and then Bolivia gave constitutional recog- nition to Pachamama 4 Mother Earth 4 declaring that she has the right to live. And the movement contin- ues to bubble, at levels both national and local. Sweden, for instance, has recently proposed a constitutional amendment giving nature the right to <exist, flourish, regenerate and evolve.= And tribespeople and municipali- ties all across the planet are demanding that legal per- sonhood be recognized for imperiled natural resources: the Klamath River in California; the River Frome in England; the Whanganui River in New Zealand; even Lake Erie (the Great Lake whose waves caressed my childhood), long poisoned by toxic agricultural runoff, which has spurred voters in Toledo, Ohio, to pass a Lake Erie Bill of Rights. Matthew Green, writing at Reuters about the resi- dents of the town of Frome, a hundred miles west of London, whose residents are petitioning the British government to grant <legal personhood= to the river that flows through it, put it this way: <In throwing down this gauntlet, the town has joined a global 8rights of nature9 movement linking river basins in New Zealand to rainforests in South America and towns in the U.S. Midwest. In each case, com- munities are reimagining ways to harness the law to defend the Earth9s living tis- sues, and the places they call home. Some have dubbed it Mother Earth9s MeToo moment.= This is the essence of our perilous new times: the need to harness not nature but the law! We need to harness, in short, ourselves. A living planet! What does that even mean? Perhaps we can relearn. <One way to rediscover the practices that helped Homo sapiens survive for over 200,000 years is to pay more attention to indigenous wisdom and traditional place-based knowledge (where it has not already been completely lost),= wrote Daniel Christian Wahl at Medium.com. <Indigenous human cultures are an expression of generations of co-evolution of humans within the ecosystems they inhabited. <... Indigenous world- views around the planet share a common perspective: the world is alive and mean- ingful and our relationship with the rest of life is one of participation, communion and co-creation.= Can the <civilized=4 non-indigenous 4 branch of humanity step beyond its arrogance and learn from its own past, which it has been trying for several millennia to dismiss? Wahl believes it9s possible for the world to <re-indigenize.= <Even in the so-called 8developed world9 much of the traditional knowledge of how to meet needs within the limits of biologically regenerative resources of the region was still predomi- nant only 150 years ago,= he writes. <That is only a few generations! If we re-value what that knowledge and indigenous wisdom holds for us, we can recover much of it and blend indigenous wis- dom in creative ways with the best of modern technol- ogy and science.= When we begin con- sciously and systematically doing this, we can, indeed we will have to, let go of the concept the Rights of Nature, because it implies that nature is something separate from human beings. This seems true only when we are caged in our ignorance. In reality, we9re all in this together, co-evolving. © 2019 Tribune Content t Agency, LLC Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.