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Wednesday, October 30, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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
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<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.
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Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.