Service learning started for Miami Public Schools the day Cherokee Nation Service Learning Coordinator Nancy Scott proposed the idea to me. With two years in Teacher Corps I had learned the value of volunteering in America and what she proposed sounded like a student version.
 
Miami High School students named themselves the Cherokee Volunteer Society, in preference to the early members' tribal affiliation and the funding source! They began after school only. A directive changed it to doing service learning during the school day. Creative teachers up and down the halls were involved in one or more of their classrooms. When Cherokee Nation offered to purchase items for the teachers' classrooms for projects, that helped. We thought school budgets were tight then!
 
I spent some time with Nancy Scott this week reflecting on the powerful work Miami High School students did for over a decade culminating with their Tar Creek Project. It was exciting to share with her what has happened at the site since 1995. There are still teachers in Miami and in the county weaving service learning into their classrooms with students doing impactful environmental projects that benefit the continued efforts on educating the public about Tar Creek and the multitude of issues that can encompass as well as the other environmental issues effecting us.
 
Nancy shared with me a conversation she had with one of the early EPA officials associated with our site back then who told her in confidence our site could never be cleaned up. No one said it would be quick, but bit by bit it is happening.  It took almost a century to ruin the land and the water and reversing it will take time and if it was fully funded it could be done in our lifetime.
 
George Mayer found mine drainage had ruined his land. He was told the damage was irreversible. What we are learning from University of Oklahoma's Bob Nairn and his passive water treatment system on George Mayer's land in Commerce that IRREVERSIBLE can be REVERSED! Bad water to good. Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, EPA and the Quapaw Tribe are taking bad land to good, now too.
 
But also in our lifetime, we have to look downstream and even globally at the big and bigger world issues and the direction we are on must change and quickly. We are fouling the only planet we have, our very mother. What good will it be if we "fix" our corner of this county if calamity hits the coasts and island homelands with seas rising? Or if man-made earthquakes collapse it all? Greenhouse gases are causing the arctic ice to melt. Climates are changing so quickly we nor those we share this planet with will have no time to adapt. Flooding we certainly know can happen, and serious droughts in other parts of the globe are occurring.
 
Our once beautiful Grand Lake o' the Cherokees is one of a million man-made dams or reservoirs in the world.  Reservoirs are a classic instance of how major human alteration’s to the Earth’s landscape can have unexpected effects. We have seen this lake change over the years as permitted waste water discharges and agricultural nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus are trapped in it causing algal growth.
 
"Flooding large areas of Earth can set off new chemical processes as tiny microorganisms break down organic matter in the water, sometimes doing so in the absence of oxygen — a process that leads to methane as a byproduct," said Bridget Deemer, a researcher with Washington State University. The study has found these reservoirs "to be a major cause of one of the worst greenhouse gases: methane more than natural lakes, ponds, rivers, or wetlands.”
 
Standing Rock Sioux tribe chairman Dave Archambault said recently about their pipeline protest, it is not just to protect their lives but to protect the lives of generations to come. In a recent article by Mary Katherine Nagle and Gloria Steinem, "They are the canaries. We are all living in the mine."  As canaries we know a lot about damage mines can cause.
 
Since the original Cherokee Volunteer Society's Tar Creek Project was such a success, we need to reconvene those members with their children and keep pushing on that front. Then I am thinking we have a great need for our youth to take on more additional projects, Climate Projects, Water Projects, Air Projects, Living Creatures Protection Projects, I could go on. Let's get started, give us a call at LEAD Agency, we will partner with your kids, you and your families, and any teacher. There are projects needing to begin.
 
Your Fellow Canary,
Respectfully Submitted  ~  Rebecca Jim

This National Environmental Tar Creek Conference ended and left us with lots to think about:  lead poisoned children, plants dangerous to consume with no public advisories, irreversible issues being reversed, and more hopes and plans for the future. The future connected with the past quickly for me by attending the Shawnee History Summit and listening to researchers who are finding the connections our local tribes had in the past had carried forward to where they have come to reside. Looking at the maps of the tribes and when they arrived connected me back to what we had learned at the Tar Creek Conference and the plants that have been contaminated by lead and other metals from the superfund sites which by law must deal with the contaminants where they come to reside, on lands several of our tribes have come to reside as well.

There is a great movement to base back to our cultures and we have been blessed with individuals who are making this happen within our local tribes and tribes around the country. One of these leaders Daryl Baldwin has been recognized this week as one of 23 MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant award winners for 2016. Daryl worked for a time with the Miami Tribe's environmental program, but his great interest was the Miami language, which was not frequently spoken by anyone at that time.

How do you revive a language? Get a genius and it can happen quickly.

Miami University and the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma developed a strong relationship with the guidance of Daryl Baldwin, the early vision of former Miami Chief Floyd Leonard which has continued since with their tribal leadership and Miami University's Bobbe Burke. With these relationships knowledge of the Miami language and culture have flourished.

The John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation every year gives innovative visionaries its prized $625,000 genius grant. Although the award has been coined the “genius grant” to be considered for the MacArthur Grant each must exhibit “Exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work " that will advance society in an insightful and inspiring way.

That is exactly what Daryl Baldwin has done as a Miami University linguist to revive the heritage of his people, the Miami "Myaamia" Nation of Oklahoma. Baldwin had a desire to learn more about his heritage thought language would deepen his experience.

He said language and cultural revitalization is necessary for the preservation of the identity of the Myaamia people. That's why he committed to further developing the educational center at Miami University's Oxford, Ohio campus.

A year ago last June, the Miami Tribe held an exhibit in the ballroom at the Coleman Theater of Miami Tribal member Katrina Mitten's outstanding beadwork.  The magic moment was Daryl Baldwin peering intently at the fully restored baby buggy covered with her beadwork. The universal symbols of rebirth adorned the top. Little did I know the significance of that moment. His plans for the future of the Miami Nation is for the children, to learn their language and with it their culture and it begins with the youth. He saw it all and I saw him seeing it and was able to capture that moment in a photo.

Later I stood in that same position admiring the work on the buggy the artist had brought back to life only to learn it had been in the family for generations of children. Now I think about our children and the changes that have occurred and can come to pass and that the future and our hope is in their hands. We are all blessed to have this amazing Miami Tribal member using his talents for the great future of his tribe.

Of course one of my hopes is for Tar Creek to have a genius who would take her on.

Leave it to Richard Zane Smith to sum up in one phrase, the goal of all of the Tar Creek Conferences to bring together affected community members with the federal and state agencies and draw our minds together as one.  We did this and shared time learning and discussing progress and acknowledging losses. With our minds open information comes in generating questions, some were asked, not all answered but many more are coming. We human beings have changed the fate of the earth and it is in our hands to make every effort to save her.

For me personally this 18th conference was "peach seed game full" of emotions, beginning with a former Cherokee Volunteer from Miami High School, Ashley Jenkins greeting everyone as they entered the Miami Civic Center. Students were instrumental in beginning awareness events about this site years before the first Tar Creek Conference.

Ariel Ross a professor of literature at Oklahoma State University took me to the underworld rich with natural resources, rivers and ancient oceans. As a pregnant woman nearing the birth of her baby she comforted her young son during the state's largest earthquake this month brought on by the oil and gas industrial practices of hydraulic fracturing known as fracking and the resulting need to dispose of the contaminated waste water in deep injection wells.

Lots of other places on earth have experienced earthquakes of great magnitude, but Oklahoma's was the only one that man made happen. And though she cries with fear and sadness when these occur she repeated "What can I do?" And answers that she can talk, she can tell her stories and believes these can create feelings that can change minds. We can do the same, tell our stories, and tell hers.

As an environmental conference, climate change is a given topic, but Sara Hill, the Cherokee Nation Secretary of Natural Resources woke us up with a concept: tribes forcibly removed experienced "eco-shift" when moved to different region, zone with new plant species. They had to learn quickly to adapt to their extreme climate shift. According to Cherokee Nation code our responsibility is for the next generation, reminding us as Richard Zane Smith had done the day before that we are not the only inhabitants of this earth. "It is wild out there, let's keep it that way!" Secretary Hill expressed, also stating the stance  Cherokee Nation has on the upcoming state question 777 is a NO vote to be protective of our environment.

We learned about bees and I was spellbound with Jonathan Tinsley's description of the hive as a living organism with  bees wiggle dancing and even becoming lazy if they are located too close to fresh water and flowering plants. This Beekeeper for the Quapaw Tribe produces the needs for the restaurants at the Downstream Casino, and will produce candles and honey for sale, while the bees help pollinate this corner of their lands. We learned from Bob Nairn that the irreversible is being reversible!

With Ean Garvin's presentation of the Six Treaty Tribes study of metals in edible plants found outside the boundaries of the Tar Creek Superfund site and hearing the results I could hardly breathe, in some areas zero plants are safe to consume, not even one bite of one. Our transplanted tribes who learned to adapt to this area have since 1870 or earlier been consuming plants loaded with toxic metals.

My heart hurts for the damage to the earth that has occurred and for all who have been damaged by consuming her gifts. "That compulsion to dig” a line from Maryann Hurtts poem has had consequences including lead poisoning in local children with numbers rising once again in Ottawa County. But the hope now is the DEQ and the County Health Department are working together to get children tested for lead but also to get their yards sampled for lead. DEQ's Brian Stanila said they are not done and the rise of lead poisoned kids has been a wakeup call for the agency. They have no intention of stopping until all is done and I have no intention to stop advocating for the children.

With the conference passed we are left with the question: what can we do? We can stand up as Casey Camp-Horinek tells us, we can tell our stories as Ariel Ross says, we can vote NO on 777 as recommended by the Cherokee Nation. The list goes on. But to complete the list of what we might also do, we may cry for the losses and damage, but we may also smile a bit when we think of the Linda Warner story of coyote's entrapment by the Rubber Boy or those bees doing the wiggle dance.

Human emotions, we have them. Experience and feel them and then stand up.

 

"Down by the creek the Colemans had put in a watergate and that is where the girls put the boat in. They would get in delighted about the adventure and push off, and float. How free it felt and fun, as they floated with the current slowly, able to look about them and enjoy the beauty of the clear creek and the banks covered with green grasses and wild flowers. The voyage always ended too quickly when they reached the bridge where they would have to get out and by clear instructions given by their uncle - walk the boat back which was not an easy task. But the effort difficult as it was, soon was forgotten after the boat returned to her place and the next adventure planned for the day."

The beginning of an entry for the Science and Art sought by LEAD Agency? No, but it should be. Actually this was a recollection of the marvelous memory of a woman who is a declared environmentalist. She relayed this memory to me this week, when reflecting on the loss of what she remembered as a treasured part of her childhood growing up living in Rockdale with a relationship with our Tar Creek. A town with the prestige Miami had, was built in a way to show off her creek. We know this because some of the nicest homes were constructed there, as well as her shining jewel, a college.

Truly 'a creek runs through it' was the theme then and it is this year for the 18th National Environment Tar Creek Conference which will be September 13 and 14 at the Miami Civic Center. Art and science entries will be entered in a drawing for prizes, which will include a covey of bicycles of all sizes for the winners. The first drawing will be Sept. 14 at the conference, the second on Earth Day, April 22. All ages are encouraged to enter.

The great effort the City of Miami went through recently to set their long range vision included returning Tar Creek into the asset side of the page, seeing that a creek that runs through it could be maximized to bring people outside again, perhaps with walking or biking paths along the creek's route through the city. LEAD Agency agrees with that plan and is encouraging others to also. 
 
Across the U.S., public health professionals are seeking to reduce inequities in the way our environments affect our health. Dr. Edd Rhoades from the Oklahoma Department of Health and his staff will be at this year's conference to update us on the trends in Ottawa County for lead poisoned children and stressing the great need to reduce those numbers here. The U.S. government’s Healthy People 2020 program has specific goals to  improve air quality, reduce lead levels in kids, reduce environmental hazards and improve access to healthy foods.
 
 All of these will improve our health, but to do that we must remember it will be easier if we "Heal the Earth." For us, this will take plans, purpose and probably politics, since it will be funded with the help from Congress. We can encourage they take action to put the tax back on polluters as the Superfund was designed and the long range cleanup might speed up.
 
Lots of black boards in years passed greeted students with a quote for the day, I guess that could be one reason we are drawn to them. This year's conference theme is a quote by David Orr, "When we heal the Earth, we heal ourselves."

My friends who are dealing with health issues that could have direct links to the exposures we face from the legacy lead and zinc mining that made great wealth for some and a living for many, or for those who have lost loved ones from such diseases make this quote one to remember. We have to want this place better and as community members put some energy into it. Water is life, but also beauty and a means to float calmly on a summer afternoon. It has been way too long since it was safe for children to launch a boat on Tar Creek.

To find information on the Art and Science Drawing or to register for the 18th National Environmental Tar Creek Conference call 918-542-9399 or go to www.leadagency.org.

Respectfully Submitted  ~  Rebecca Jim
Your Tar Creekkeeper
http://www.triplepundit.com/2016/08/cities-investing-walkable-neighborhoods/
http://ensia.com/features/zip-code-shouldnt-lead-early-death/