Greta said that in January. With ice melting at the poles, glaciers around the world disappearing, and chunks of Greenland crashing into the ocean. And the lungs of the earth are on fire, the Amazon in Brazil. There is an urgency in the calm way she states the truth. And stands or sits to make a statement.

A tribal leader asked me this week, how do we get youth activated to care about protecting our earth?
The next one you come across, take the time to talk. Perhaps they already are up to date on what is going on, but have not been given permission to act on it, to speak out loud and say what they feel and talk about their fears and their hopes for the future they hope to have.  Our young people get very little time to express the deeper concerns. Allow this to happen with you.

They are the treasure and the earth's true hope. Just as we were to our parents. We are the era who used our earth's resources, scarred, scraped, raped her and mixed and mashed, and finally burned those precious parts until we have changed her in ways over the last 50 years, 90 years. This earth is hurting and hurling through space, each day on her path around the sun. The earth our home will fail to support the species who has done this. The earth will continue. We will not kill her, we will change her, our only home.

Greta Thunberg first learned about climate change when she was 8 years old.  By the age of eleven she became depressed and got out of it by promising she would do everything she could to change things. She attended marches and demonstrations. In 2018 she was diagnosed with Asperger's, ODC and selective mutism and speaks only when she thinks it is necessary and "Now is one of those moments."

Now 16, she and many young activists around the world are concerned they will bear the brunt of the climate crisis created by earlier generations. This is overwhelming. And this fear already has a phobia name, eco anxiety. You may be experiencing it too, like I am. But like Greta, actually speaking when her age, I avoided, enough so, even transferring colleges to avoid taking speech.

The changes occurring to our climate, the endless rain and tree branches down this season by the winds, that and the fear of ever more flooding. t is all intolerable and hopeless until you invest some time with a group of young people who in barely an hour that group began to look like a MOVEMENT of Social Action. Now that will give you hope.

Find these people, or if you must, practice turning a neighbor, a brother or sister on.  The climate changes we experience in Miami, OK get worse when we have one of our elected leaders in the Senate actually sets the city up for more and even worse flooding by the simple act of slipping an amendment into the most sacrosanct bills Congress passes, the National Defense Authorization Act to benefit recreation over property and livelihood for you or your neighbors.

Greta Thunberg, a Swedish climate activist, has told world leaders: 'I don't want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day and then I want you to act.' In an impassioned warning to act now on climate change, Thunberg told her audience at Davos:  'Either we choose to go on as a civilization or we don’t.

I didn't panic when Brazil elected a president who was bold for economic development, but the indigenous people living in the Amazon did. And their lives and the forest which produces much of the oxygen we need is being allowed to burn so farmers and ranchers can have it. The greater good scientists and most 8th graders know it provides for the world is burning, and all within it will burn as well. Can America or Europe stop this? They did it, too, to their own vast forests in the past centuries.

The North American tribal people experienced this and know it is happening again while they and the world watches. And that is why twenty five years ago, eleven year old Eddie Wade sat up straight after hearing about Tar Creek and said, "We're Indian, we are for the earth!" knowing he must even then start speaking up for her.
Tribal leaders are adopting Rights of Nature giving legal equality to non-human life as adopted by the United Nations. One of our own has been there and spoken up, James Walkingstick.

Fifty-six years ago this week Martin Luther King Jr. gave his I Have a Dream speech and interviewed afterwards he used a couple of phrases that are helpful in these times. With bold and grim determination... we must subpoena the conscience of America... in those days and these he was speaking about racial justice. But these same words could be coming from Greta Thumberg as she is seeking to enlist each human on the planet to act.

There is an urgency because our house is on fire, and my generation and perhaps yours lit the match.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

I have been known to myth build. I think so much of people and their actions and tell their stories so long and often their stories grow in importance in my mind and I project that story, giving their role in what occurred perhaps more worth than might have been considered appropriate.

We need heroes. We certainly need environmental health heroes, the Tar Creek Superfund Site has some, and we deserve more. I was telling one such story to a woman at the Ottawa County Free Fair this week, and with the fans pushing hot air around the building, to tell a story, a person raises her voice. And that is what I caught myself doing while telling this one.

It is an important story how actions taken by the Indian Health Services brought 300 million dollars to Ottawa County and one of those responsible never knew it happened, never claimed his fame.

Don was working for Indian Health Services in the 1990's when I got to know him. He dealt with helping tribal families get access to potable water, either from a well or from rural water districts, served as the safety officer for the facility and made sure tribal nutrition centers were food safe.

Working 9 to 5 in the years before the internet, to earn his Masters Degree in Public Health, he jumped on the turnpike after work to make the evening classes held in Tulsa by the University of Oklahoma. In order to finish his degree he had to produce a thesis, which required research and the libraries he could use were closed the hours of his day he had available.

Surveillance of data for trends could have described one of the duties he took on near the end of his stay in Miami, OK. It was there that he discovered a trend that concerned him, that of lead poisoning of our tribal children, discovering over a third were lead poisoned.

I cannot tell you how often I told this to high school and college students in the years since knowing Don, but he may have done something major to help protect the children in Ottawa County from lead poisoning, but he has inspired countless students to find the ways to do their research, continue their education, just by learning that his very own research could impact such important change. But it wasn’t just the research project, or presenting it, that made Don’s efforts so memorable to me, it was the next step, it was what he did with it. He passed on what he learned to the authorities who for whatever God Blessed reason, took their next step, to confirm his data, and then begin the long process to make the children in Ottawa County safer for the future.

But just as the last steps of this story are important and most significant, they could not have happened without the earlier part of the story. Let us begin with a simple conversation between a nurse and the new woman doctor who worked, at our “Indian Clinic.” The doctor wondered out-loud to her nurse why so many parents were requesting a drug known at that time to help with the symptoms of hyperactivity or Attention Deficit Disorder for their school-aged children. The nurse had read the latest research on lead poisoning suggesting children could have been lead poisoned since lead was being linked to those symptoms. The doctor had been taught in medical school lead poisoning frequently occurred in inner cities due to lead-based paint in deteriorated housing units. How could that be possible here on the plains in small towns? The nurse explained the proximity we are to then abandoned lead and zinc mining district. With that understanding, the doctor ordered all children since to have their blood tested for lead. And all the results were placed in their charts.

And that is where Don Ackerman found those surprising numbers he later reported to the then EPA Region 6 Administrator.

And where the story could have ended, another story began, EPA assessed the possibility the Indian Health Service "underlying" might be on to something. And he was. Not just Indian children but all kinds of children were lead poisoned. EPA’s immediate actions began in 1995 to begin removing the lead and zinc from places children played and the work continues now for places children play, their own yards. Throughout the county, all are eligible to have their yards tested for lead and to have it removed at no cost and replaced with the soil those children could both play and raise a garden of their own.

There are some powerful stories in the history of the county. But you might not have known this one. But you have heard the myth-building story. You can hear Don Ackerman tell his own at the 21st National Environmental Conference at Tar Creek September 17-18. The other thing about Don, he is a poet, and you can be, too. Be sure to come for our Poetry Slam on Sept. 16th at 7 pm in the Ballroom at NEO. The other thing you might get to see happen, Don gets to meet the new EPA Region 6 Administrator, who will be attending the conference.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

Months go into the planning of each of the 21 Tar Creek Conferences, each done to provide an opportunity for our community members, just regular folks to have a chance to meet the people who are doing the work on what is known as the largest Superfund site in the Nation.

We have a chance to see the science, see the results, question the techniques and the reasoning that went into the decisions that are made to make our environment cleaner and safer. Some years we have big crowds of people, some years lots of people, but scant local faces. We want to change that. It is your face in the face of regulators that will make this cleanup as good as it can be. It is your questions that make federal, state and tribal officials re-examine the methods and even the practices that actually may not be practical.

For many of the people who come, it is some sort of reunion, they have been working on this site for decades, and you don't know them. Let's change that. Come early Tuesday morning Sept. 17, walk right up and pick up your packet and walk into the Ballroom at NEO in the Student Union, choose a seat where you can see THEIR faces, follow the speakers after their presentations and meet them and ask the question you wished you had asked aloud. We will save you a seat.

The conference is free to Ottawa County residents, Activists and students. It helps us get you in the door quicker if you will register and you can do that at www.leadagency.org. You can bring a sack lunch or buy a ticket to eat in the college cafeteria at lunch, which is another great time to meet the regulators and deciders who are charged with cleaning up our mess. You will also have easy access to other scientists doing research here, for US, as they learn what happens to our water, how our birds are faring if they live in chat piles, and what happens to those birds when their homes are remediated and what kind of birds like a clean environment.

If you have planted those pollinators and have been watching them all summer out your window, and are seeing the butterflies loving them, then you will LOVE hearing Jane Breckinridge from the Euchee Butterfly Farm. If you have some questions on how much water all these HUGE poultry houses might be consuming you will definitely want to hear about the study two agencies are doing on the Roubidoux and the Boone aquifers. I will be taking notes on that.
We all have been waiting all summer to find out how the cleanup on the asbestos at BF Goodrich has been going and Mike McAteer with EPA will give an update and welcome questions. DEQ will let us know how the benzene cleanup is going, too.

Sure we have been having these conferences for 21 years, but we have had BAD WATER flowing down Tar Creek for 40 years come fall. That is just too long. A couple of generations have lived in a town that shunned that creek, but it will help us put the PRESSURE on these agency people if we show our LOVE for that little creek of ours and that we want it better.

There will be many speakers coming from all over the country, that is why it is a national conference and with all the topics, that is why it expanded to be environmental rather than specifically only Tar Creek.

Wonder why all this extra money is being spent cleaning up this site? It is because there is lead in that mess and lead can poison children and it poisoned lots of ours. The fellow who made that public, Don Ackerman is coming this year as a keynote speaker. He didn't even know that his little letter revealing that 1/3 of our Indian children were lead poisoned has been the catalyst to bring EPA back in force to find ways to remove it to protect the future generations. He also writes poetry and that is another thing you must get set to do. Write your own environmentally themed poem and enter the Poetry Slam we will have the evening before the conference starts.  All of this is open to the public, because folks, it is for you we do this work.

LEAD Agency will be posting the whole agenda soon, but it will be packed, so save the dates on your calendar, register early so you will be able to go right past the long line and get coffee, a Danish and settle in or you can select the sessions of greatest interest and slide in just in time for those.

Some of the most influential individuals in our community have attended these conferences in the past, but many have passed on and you must take their place, take some responsibility and become the informed public that you need to be. We need you to do this.

                                          ...the care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy
                                        and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility.  - Wendell Berry

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

It is that season a person who is wild about WILD PLUMS could  only have dreamed about. Whatever we want to say about the climate changing weather we have had this year, it somehow has been the most perfect conditions for the crop of a lifetime for both of my favorite fruits: blackberries and wild plums.

I anticipated making mansion out of a pigsty when a WHOLE field of mine gave it up and went full blackberry. People recommended POISON to get rid of them. But they did not know the way these little guys make me smile as I contort to pick the ripest berry as the sun catches on the smooth surfaces of each tiny segment.

So with the plan for the field made, I brushhogged rows only wide enough to be able to pick from both sides and not have to OvER reach to the middle. I kept the rows mowed. Until, if you remember the monsoon season hit and the field was TOO soggy to continue mowing. I know this because I got one tractor stuck and almost the second one getting the first one out. I picked lots of blackberries, for sure, but the rains knocked those ripest plumpest ones off, but the crop was good, the grasses TALL and wet to walk through to pick. For a month it looked like I had voted in every election in countries that require marking a finger with indelible ink, to prevent subjects from voting multiple times on election day. I am a marked woman during blackberry season.

Then the quiet time as anticipation builds as the wild plums take their time to ripen. The little trees were covered. High winds, heavy rain did not do them in, these trees are producing the most amazing beauties ever. Red, ripe ones almost jump into your hand and if they don't they will in a few days. Some make the leap when no one is watching and lay on the ground for me to find like that candy we used to get at the movie theater, those bright red chewy treats in a flat box. While picking these jewels, it is tempting to pop them in your mouth to get an instant delight. But they for the most part are more like bright red marbles than anything else I can compare them to.

Every day for weeks, I go back to my favorite places. My dad and I tried over and over to transplant some to my property because he knew how much I loved them. He would be so happy to know they came on their own, in their own time.

Just as picking blackberries gets a bad rap because of the chiggers, which are known to have a symbiotic relationship with that fruit. It is best to get right out of your picking clothes and into water right away to deter some of them. For the plums, I am finding it most important to do the same practices, but the followup that is necessary is to take a long close look on this skin you are in and inspect for the tiniest of meanness's: the mite.

A young friend of mine declared fond memories of picking wild plums with his mother and seemed excited to be invited to come do some picking with me. We picked on that hottest day we had, both of us sweating. He filled a bucket and I filled containers of varying sizes until almost dark. I have taken a few other young people to pick, but none who showed such signs of pleasure at the quiet effort of picking.

It wasn't that day the mites got me, that happened today. I am sure that the native relations who hunted these plains put a big black X on their winter counts for this place ensuring only visitors, no permanent communities were built as they discovered the weapons of war the land here uses to protect herself: chiggers and mites. The wee ones.

They and the ticks got the last fellow to escape from what we locals call the Vinita Prison. He escaped in the heat of summer, after blackberries and before plums. He was walking up my dirt road when I met him. I was hot riding in my Gator and was out of water.

He asked for water and I responded I wished I had some, too. When he asked to use my cell phone, I asked what number he might want me to dial for him. He replied with his mother's number and when she answered, I told her where he would be waiting for her: a hill about 2 miles from my house. From there he could watch for her. He walked on and I called the sheriff and they were sitting up on the hill waiting for the reunion of the mom and her son, when the escapee gave up and walked out of the bushes. He told them he was thirsty and covered with chiggers and ticks. But you know he had to have those little mites, too, they were the ones that brought him in and should have gotten some kind of reward.

There was another escapee. I would have thought he would give up because of these little varmints, but regretfully when he was found he had committed suicide on the grounds where he had taken shelter from a rainstorm.

Respectfully Plum Crazy ~ Rebecca Jim

The last chief of the Cherokees before statehood lived in Vinita, IT (Indian Territory) and I knew his last living daughter, Margarette Buffington Garner as my old friend. I mean she was old when she allowed me to become her friend.

What a gift she gave, of herself, of the old ways, and an example I hope to pass on to the young people in my life who allow me to be their friend. She used to call me out of the blue, once saying she wanted to give me something. I went to visit and she regretfully stated she had something that had come over the Trail of Tears, but had broken it that morning. She had placed the blue and white pitcher and bowl. She had put the bowl in the sink to wash it and the temperature of the water had broken it, into 3 pieces. She explained it's history, first the trip from the Cherokee homeland, then how it was buried packed with hay along with many of the other family treasures in their backyard during the Civil War. It glued back together and the set has been a joy now for over 50 years.

Generations of separation begin not to matter when we simply take the time to talk through them and understand the significance and pass them on.

Evans Ray Satepahoodle, say that fast, was a great big full blood Kiowa who remembered all the old songs, and created many for his tribal family members. He would call late at night and tell me the story of how a song was created, where and who was there, and why and then sing it. He was desperate to pass these on. He called me one evening and said he was in the 4th quarter, and as a former football player, he meant he had made it to 75 weaving in his football heritage. I would try desperately to take notes of the story and try writing the Kiowa words by how they sounded. But thankfully Huge Foley at Rogers State University learned of Evans Ray and recorded many of his stories and the accompanying songs. You can find them on YouTube, honest.

Evans Ray had been an Indian Counselor during many of the same years I had been, so we knew each other well enough, if he had had a bad day at work, serious issues lay on us as counselors, he would call and say simply, "The counselor needs counseling," as a signal it had been one of those heavy days. As a counselor, sometimes having a listener made all the difference.

We were connected even before I ever heard of him. One of my distant Cherokee cousins Sparlin Norwood had told a story about meeting ER as we called him, when life was not going so well for him. What Sparlin  did after listening was to reach over and tap him on his chest and say simply, "There is a good man in there." Those words made all the difference to him and he spent the rest of his life being that good man. Sparlin was known to speak up and out for cause.

These elders allowed me into the tail end of their lives and have given that generational sharing gift I intend to pass right along.

And this week, a young woman who I had come to know after she knocked on the front door at LEAD Agency as a freshman at NEO College, Maddie Geiger came to visit, bringing her love and her loved one with her. We talked of the past, only slightly, but on to the lives we live now. One of my questions was how to have a Poetry Slam at this year's National Environmental Conference at Tar Creek Sept. 17-18. Did I learn a lot? Oh, yes, so get to thinking now about the poetry, or the story you want to share with the broad topics we will cover this year: Tar Creek, of course, BF Goodrich, lake level flooding, Poultry and by golly climate change.

Are friendships only with people? Not so to me, this land, this piece of the earth I live upon and the earth that stretches beneath all of our feet, leaving still room for others. We have not filled each spot, we have room, and all of it needs our care, our, if you would dare to say, it needs our love.

Our earth, much of the solid ground we have been counting for the future will be going under, as the ice melts at the poles, in the glaciers around the world, our seas will cover more of our ground. There will be less ground to share and peoples along the coasts, and our island people will be heading for higher ground. As Sally Whitebird said 25 years ago, "We have only one mother." She meant our mother earth and all of her children are going to be scrambling to stay dry.

That Sparlin Norwood, I spoke of earlier had a great deal to do with the establishment of the National Indian Education Association and they had a conference in Alaska that I won a trip in a raffle to attend. And while there was able to visit briefly a glacier. Peering into the ice was a blue I will never forget. Old ice. Our old friends are passing on, our old ice is melting away adding daily to the steady rise of the oceans.

I'd like to keep my old friends longer and keep our glaciers and poles frozen longer.
One is silver and the other blue...  Friends are warm and the ice caps cold, (my new versions of that song about friends sung by the Brownies/Girl Scouts).

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim