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THE ASTORIAN • TuESdAy, dEcEmbER 14, 2021
Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia
ARE YOU AT RISK?
According to a new study by Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine and the National Institute on Aging, men and women
with hearing loss are much more likely to develop dementia and
Alzheimer’s disease. People with severe hearing loss, the study
reports, were 5 times more likely to develop dementia than those
with normal hearing.
Have you noticed a change in your ability to remember?
Ted S. Warren/AP Photo
A person browses offerings in the Raven’s Nest Treasure shop in Pike Place Market on Friday
in Seattle.
Artists charged with faking
Native American heritage
By GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press
SEATTLE — Two artists
are facing federal charges
that they faked Native
American heritage to sell
works at downtown Seattle
galleries.
Lewis Anthony Rath, 52,
of Maple Falls, and Jerry
Chris Van Dyke, 67, also
known as Jerry Witten, of
Seattle, have been charged
separately with violating
the Indian Arts and Crafts
Act, which prohibits mis-
representation in marketing
American Indian or Alaska
Native arts and crafts.
The U.S. Attorney’s
Office said Rath falsely
claimed to be a member
of the San Carlos Apache
Tribe, and Van Dyke falsely
claimed membership in the
Nez Perce Tribe. The goods
included masks, totem poles
and pendants sold in 2019
at Raven’s Nest Treasure in
Pike Place Market and at Ye
Olde Curiosity Shop on the
waterfront.
“By flooding the mar-
ket with counterfeit Native
American art and craftwork,
these crimes cheat the con-
sumer, undermine the eco-
nomic livelihood of Native
American artists, and impair
Indian culture,” Edward
Grace, assistant director
of the U.S. Fish and Wild-
life Service Office of Law
Enforcement, said in a news
release.
Rath and Van Dyke were
due to appear in U.S. District
Court on Friday afternoon.
Their attorneys, federal pub-
lic defenders Gregory Geist
and Vanessa Pai-Thompson,
said in an email Friday they
did not have any immediate
comment on the charges.
Authorities said the
investigation began when
the Indian Arts and Crafts
Board, an Interior Depart-
ment agency that promotes
native art, received com-
plaints that the two were
fraudulently holding them-
selves out as enrolled tribal
members.
Rath is charged with four
counts of misrepresentation
of Indian-produced goods,
which is punishable by up
to five years in prison. Van
Dyke faces two counts of
the same crime.
Rath also faces one mis-
demeanor count of unlaw-
fully possessing golden
eagle parts, and one of
unlawfully
possessing
migratory bird parts.
According to charging
documents, an employee
of Ye Olde Curiosity Shop,
which has been in business
for more than a century, told
investigators that she wrote
an artist biography of Rath
based on information he
provided about his tribal
affiliation.
Matthew Steinbrueck,
the owner of Raven’s Nest
Treasure, told investiga-
tors that the artists told him
they were tribal members
and that he believed them,
according to the documents.
He said he did not know-
ingly sell counterfeit Indian
products.
“I’ve been doing this on
good faith for many years
— for more than 30 years,”
Steinbrueck said. “Our
whole mission is to repre-
sent authentic native art.
We’ve had more than 100
authentic native artists. I’ve
always just taken their word
for it.”
He said his family had a
long appreciation for Amer-
ican Indian culture, dating to
when his great-grandfather
adopted a tribal member.
Steinbrueck’s father, Vic-
tor Steinbrueck, an archi-
tect credited with helping
preserve Pike Place Market
and Seattle’s historic Pio-
neer Square neighborhood,
brought him up to revere
native culture, he said.
Van Dyke told investiga-
tors that it was Steinbrueck’s
idea to represent his work as
Native American.
Steinbrueck denied that,
saying Van Dyke appeared
to be trying to lessen his
own culpability. He called
Van Dyke “a fabulous
carver” who made art in the
style of his wife’s Alaska
Native tribe, including pen-
dants carved from fossilized
mammoth or walrus ivory.
Neither Ye Olde Curios-
ity Shop nor Raven’s Nest
has been charged in the case.
Gabriel Galanda, an
Indigenous rights attorney
in Seattle who belongs to
the Round Valley Tribes of
Northern California, said
that if shops offer products
as native-produced, they
should be verifying the her-
itage of the creators, such as
by examining tribal enroll-
ment cards or federal certifi-
cates of Indian blood.
“There has to be some
diligence done by these gal-
leries,” Galanda said.
California pushes composting
to lower food waste emissions
By KATHLEEN
RONAYNE
Associated Press
DAVIS, Calif. — Banana
peels, chicken bones and left-
over veggies won’t have a
place in California trash cans
under the nation’s largest
mandatory residential food
waste recycling program that
is set to take effect in January.
The effort is designed to
keep landfills in the most pop-
ulous U.S. state clear of food
waste that damages the atmo-
sphere as it decays. When
food scraps and other organic
materials break down they
emit methane, a greenhouse
gas more potent and dam-
aging in the short-term than
carbon emissions from fossil
fuels.
To avoid those emissions,
California plans to start con-
verting residents’ food waste
into compost or energy,
becoming the second state in
the U.S. to do so after Ver-
mont launched a similar pro-
gram last year.
Most people in California
will be required to toss excess
food into green waste bins
rather than the trash. Munici-
palities will then turn the food
waste into compost or use it
to create biogas, an energy
source that is similar to natu-
ral gas.
“This is the biggest
change to trash since recy-
cling started in the 1980s,”
said Rachel Wagoner, director
of the California Department
of Resources Recycling and
Recovery.
She added that it “is the
single easiest and fastest thing
that every single person can
do to affect climate change.”
The push by California
reflects growing recognition
about the role food waste
plays in damaging the envi-
ronment across the United
States, where up to 40% of
food is wasted, according
to the U.S. Department of
Agriculture.
A handful of states and
nations, including France,
have passed laws requir-
ing grocery stores and other
large businesses to recycle or
donate excess food to char-
ities, but California’s pro-
gram targets households and
businesses.
The state passed a law in
2016 aimed at reducing meth-
ane emissions by significantly
cutting down on discarded
food. Organic material like
food and yard waste makes
up half of everything in Cal-
ifornia landfills and a fifth of
the state’s methane emissions,
according to CalRecycle.
Starting in January, all cit-
ies and counties that provide
trash services are supposed to
have food recycling programs
in place and grocery stores
must donate edible food that
otherwise would be thrown
away to food banks or similar
organizations.
“There’s just no reason to
stick this material in a land-
fill, it just happens to be cheap
and easy to do so,” said Ned
Spang, faculty lead for the
Food Loss and Waste Collab-
orative at the University of
California, Davis.
Vermont, home to 625,000
people compared to Califor-
nia’s nearly 40 million, is the
only other state that bans res-
idents from throwing their
food waste in the trash. Under
a law that took effect in July
2020, residents can compost
the waste in their yards, opt
for curbside pick up or drop
it at waste stations. Cities like
Seattle and San Francisco
have similar programs.
California’s law stipulates
that by 2025 the state must
cut organic waste in landfills
by 75% from 2014 levels, or
from about 23 million tons to
5.7 million tons.
Most local governments
will allow homeowners and
apartment dwellers to dump
excess food into yard waste
bins, with some providing
countertop containers to hold
the scraps for a few days
before taking it outside. Some
areas can get exemptions for
parts of the law, like rural
locations where bears rum-
mage through trash cans.
The food waste will go
to facilities for composting
or for turning it into energy
through anaerobic digestion,
a process that creates biogas
that can be used like natural
gas for heating and electricity.
“The more hearing loss you have, the greater the likelihood of
developing dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Hearing aids could
delay or prevent dementia by improving the patient’s hearing.”
-2011 Study by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the National Institute of Aging
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Y
Y
N
Do you feel that people mumble
or do not speak clearly?
Do you turn the TV up louder
than others need to?
Do family or friends get
frustrated when you ask
them to repeat themselves?
N
Do you have trouble under-
standing the voices of women
or small children when they are
speaking?
Is it hard to follow the
conversation in noisy places like
parties, crowded restaurants or
family get-togethers?
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