Post by Okwes on Feb 8, 2006 11:22:35 GMT -5
The honoured eagles
The honoured eagles
CBC News Online | February 2, 2006
Reporter: Duncan McCue
www.cbc.ca/news/background/eagleslaughter/
For as long as can be remembered, many native peoples across North
America have honoured eagles.
They're celebrated - in dances and spiritual ceremonies. Those
ceremonies, once outlawed by officials determined to stamp out native
religions, are back.
Farley EaglespeakerFarley Eaglespeaker is part of that revival.
He has spent his life learning those ceremonies. Sundance, powwow,
sweat lodges. Even his traditional name, Eagle boy, shows respect for
eagles.
"The first creations on the Earth here, before man, were the birds.
The eagle was the king bird of this world….This is the native
teaching from way back: when we make a prayer, the eagle gets our
prayers, and he takes them to the Creator, as close as he can get to
the Creator, and he lets them go."
At home, he has eagle parts: wing feathers, a bone whistle, a tail.
To possess such sacred things, elders say, one must earn them. He got
his as gifts. To have even one is a great honour.
"If you want to be a real traditional person, if you want to follow
the teachings of the elders, not just anybody can have a whole bunch
of eagle feathers," he says.
But not everyone follows traditions.
In February 2005, nearly 50 dead eagles without tails or talons were
found on two Indian reserves in North Vancouver.
"It was kind of disturbing. Just the way they were taken care of,
they weren't taken care of properly; they were just disposed of like
garbage," Eaglespeaker says.
The work, wildlife officers declared, was that of an eagle parts
trafficking ring. The parts, they say, were mostly headed for the
competitive powwow circuit in the United States, where a whole bird
can sell for as much as $5,000.
It adds up to a lot of money. Or a lot of dead eagles, says Lance
Sundquist, head wildlife officer for B.C.'s south coast.
"We're probably seeing something in the vicinity of 500 eagles per
year being harvested to support what we consider to be the illegal
trade of these animals," Sundquist says.
Five hundred dead eagles are not enough to threaten B.C.'s overall
eagle population. But, Sundquist says, "It's significant. It's an
unregulated harvest, something we would consider to be unregulated,
therefore it creates a conservation concern with regards to discrete
populations of eagles, both here in B.C. as well as potentially in
the United States."
According to B.C.'s Wildlife Act, no one can possess a dead eagle or
eagle parts unless authorized by officials. The penalty? Up to a
$50,000 fine or six months in jail.
Those who want eagle parts, legally, must find them, discarded
naturally. Or they can apply to wildlife officials, who distribute
birds dead from natural causes. But that waiting list is long.
There's that black market. But to buy eagle parts is both illegal,
and contrary to native teachings.
"Nowadays, you got people takin' it on their own to get a hold of
their birds," Eaglespeaker says. "Maybe they buy them, maybe they
kill (the birds) themselves, I don't know. But they turn the feathers
into a market. When you talk to elders even today, they say it's not
good, it's not good to do that."
That takes us back to those eagle carcasses. Shortly after they were
found, officials called for a mysterious suspect to come forward. He
never did.
A year later, no one has been charged. Here's what's perplexing about
the delay: many claim they know who's behind those dead eagles. Over
100 tips poured in to the three wildlife officers on this file.
Clearly, though, not the kind of information they need to crack the
case. So, there's been no closure. And that leaves some people
wrestling with what they've seen.
Fabian WilliamsFabian Williams remembers those dead eagles as he
gathers wood for his sweat lodge. When he heard officers had found
them near his lodge on the Tsle-way-tuuth reserve, he went to help
dig them up.
"It was in dark time and we found 14 eagles, and they were mature
eagles," he says.
His first thought? Only a week before, he had visited a man he knew
from ceremonies. What he saw made him sick.
"He showed me all these eagle claws, and I asked him how many you got
in there, and he said, 'I got 14.'
"'I said, 'Well, that's 28 claws that he had,'" Williams recalls.
"And I said, 'Holy cripes, what are you doing with all of those?'
"He said. 'Oh I'm making staffs,' and he grabbed the bag right away
and he went and put them in the freezer. Right after that, I felt
sick and didn't feel very good, and my stomach was turning, and
things were going wrong."
Jimmy JosephThe man with all those talons is a carver whose work is
displayed in art galleries across B.C. He participates in native
ceremonies in Canada and the U.S. He lives in east Vancouver. His
name is Jimmy Joseph.
Williams told his chief and council about Joseph the day after the
eagles were found.
"They said they would pass it on to conservation officers, and what
happened from there, it seemed that they did not believe me on my
words, and they did nothing about going in to Jimmy Jo's house and
retrieving the rest of the birds," Williams says.
Elder Ernie George of the Tsle-way-tuuth band says the band gave all
the information it had to officers... And has no more authority than
that.
"We've worked with the conservation officers and they've gone as far
as they can," George says. "And I say to them people, 'What's wrong
with your justice system? If we can't do nothing, we got to do it
your way. OK, help us do it your way then. '"
Wildlife officers will only say they've never made contact with the
suspect.
"With regard to the specifics of making contact with persons of
interest, or not, or where we do that within the investigation, again
that's part of our investigation, and I'm not about to tip our hand
at this point in time," Sundquist says.
What officers did was follow every lead, including a tip that
implicated Eaglespeaker and a spiritual group he belongs to, the
Native American Church. He met with officers, to deny that.
"It upset me that somebody said that the NAC was involved in a ring,
because we're not. The person that did these things were on his own,"
Eaglespeaker says.
That person was Joseph. He was once a friend to Eaglespeaker, until
about two years ago, when Joseph invited Eaglespeaker to this North
Vancouver home, where he had spread out 40 dead eagles.
"My reaction was, I (have) never seen so many birds in one place in
my life," Eaglespeaker says. "And I was thinking, wow this is like a
morgue. It was like people in there, to me,because my Indian name is
Eagle Boy, right?"
Joseph handed him a knife, asked for help to cut off their wings and
tails. Eaglespeaker refused.
"I told him, 'Maybe you shouldn't do that.'
"And he said, 'Why?'
"And I said, 'It's not right. It's not good.'"
"He said, 'Well, that's white man way.'
"And I said, 'Well, it's not good in our ways, too. Because you have
to have a ceremony to get lots of eagles and try and distribute them
like that.' I said, 'Us natives, we'll be quiet but'… I said, 'If
this gets out in the open, you'll be in big trouble.'"
It wasn't the only incident that disturbed Eaglespeaker. Another
time, Eaglespeaker found himself at the Vancouver airport with Joseph
and his nephew, heading to Ontario for a ceremony. Joseph asked
Eaglespeaker to carry a bag.
"And I said, 'What's in there?'
"He told me what was in there: feathers, eagle feathers. And I
said, 'No I can't do this. You'll get me in trouble, I'm going away
to a ceremony, I don't want nothing to do with it, I don't want
nothing to do with it.'"
He looked in the bag, and saw an eagle wing and cedar boughs.
Joseph's nephew took it.
"All the way over on the flight, I was really nervous," Eaglespeaker
says. "I was thinking, 'Geez, we're sitting there together, I'm also
a law-abiding person, I'm afraid of the law.' I was thinking about
what would happen if we got caught with those things. I was put in a
place I didn't want to be in, that's why I'm telling you this
information."
Farley says Joseph didn't kill eagles. Nor did he ask what Joseph was
doing with them. All he knew was that they spelled trouble. But it
turns out, it may to be legal to possess lots of eagle parts.
Sundquist says, "I think one of the first questions that would come
to the mind of a conservation officer is, 'What's the purpose of
that? Is this being used for societal uses, ceremonial uses, within
that community? Which if it is, potentially there's an aboriginal
right to be doing that.'"
Aboriginal people in Canada have legal rights to harvest wildlife
they traditionally harvested, or to trade wildlife they historically
traded.
Those rights - when it comes to eagles - have never been asserted in
court. But, if anyone is charged, wildlife officers believe it could
be a test case - for an aboriginal eagle harvest.
"There has been some suggestion by some aboriginal groups that there
was harvest of eagles prior to European contact," Sundquist says.
Still, to Fabian Williams, this is more than a legal issue. It's a
spiritual one. He says dead eagles must be honoured.
"I wait a long time for conservation officers to get an eagle from
those people, and when I get that eagle, I give it a ceremony, I give
it a Inipi ceremony and put it up on my sweat lodge. I hold it for
four days, hold it like a baby, like it's going into the other side."
Those carcasses, he says, weren't honoured.
"Everybody knows who did it. Not just Jimmy. There were people that
took the birds apart, and people who helped Jimmy with all the birds,
taking them apart," Williams says.
"Something's gotta be done, even if it's through the elders in our
old ways, or through court or something, because this is a crime
that's been committed to the Nation of Eagles."
As for any crime under B.C.'s Wildlife Act, investigators say they'll
take all the time they need.
"If people are aware of illegal activities, they need to bring that
forward," Sundquist says.
Joseph didn't respond to our interview requests. So, we took the
allegations to him.
"People are saying a lot of things. People are jealous, that's what's
going on right now," Joseph says.
But he wouldn't give specifics.
"Is that the case, that you had 40 dead eagles in North Van?"
reporter Duncan McCue asked.
"I can't talk right now, I'm heading to the ferry, airport. I'll
phone you when I get back," Joseph replied.
He never phoned back.
Eaglespeaker, meanwhile, grapples with what he knows, skeptical that
wildlife officers and the white man's courts offer any spiritual
healing. And he avoids any involvement with Joseph.
"Actually I don't want anything to do with him right now or any of
the people involved with that. Is there more that you haven't told
us, too? If it comes to that, I'll have to say what I have to say. If
it comes to that. If I'm involved, if I'm accused of something, then
I'll have to. I'm not being a rat. I'm being honest."
Which leaves wildlife officers struggling to build their case, First
Nations, powerless to enforce their traditional laws and the eagles
without protection.
The honoured eagles
CBC News Online | February 2, 2006
Reporter: Duncan McCue
www.cbc.ca/news/background/eagleslaughter/
For as long as can be remembered, many native peoples across North
America have honoured eagles.
They're celebrated - in dances and spiritual ceremonies. Those
ceremonies, once outlawed by officials determined to stamp out native
religions, are back.
Farley EaglespeakerFarley Eaglespeaker is part of that revival.
He has spent his life learning those ceremonies. Sundance, powwow,
sweat lodges. Even his traditional name, Eagle boy, shows respect for
eagles.
"The first creations on the Earth here, before man, were the birds.
The eagle was the king bird of this world….This is the native
teaching from way back: when we make a prayer, the eagle gets our
prayers, and he takes them to the Creator, as close as he can get to
the Creator, and he lets them go."
At home, he has eagle parts: wing feathers, a bone whistle, a tail.
To possess such sacred things, elders say, one must earn them. He got
his as gifts. To have even one is a great honour.
"If you want to be a real traditional person, if you want to follow
the teachings of the elders, not just anybody can have a whole bunch
of eagle feathers," he says.
But not everyone follows traditions.
In February 2005, nearly 50 dead eagles without tails or talons were
found on two Indian reserves in North Vancouver.
"It was kind of disturbing. Just the way they were taken care of,
they weren't taken care of properly; they were just disposed of like
garbage," Eaglespeaker says.
The work, wildlife officers declared, was that of an eagle parts
trafficking ring. The parts, they say, were mostly headed for the
competitive powwow circuit in the United States, where a whole bird
can sell for as much as $5,000.
It adds up to a lot of money. Or a lot of dead eagles, says Lance
Sundquist, head wildlife officer for B.C.'s south coast.
"We're probably seeing something in the vicinity of 500 eagles per
year being harvested to support what we consider to be the illegal
trade of these animals," Sundquist says.
Five hundred dead eagles are not enough to threaten B.C.'s overall
eagle population. But, Sundquist says, "It's significant. It's an
unregulated harvest, something we would consider to be unregulated,
therefore it creates a conservation concern with regards to discrete
populations of eagles, both here in B.C. as well as potentially in
the United States."
According to B.C.'s Wildlife Act, no one can possess a dead eagle or
eagle parts unless authorized by officials. The penalty? Up to a
$50,000 fine or six months in jail.
Those who want eagle parts, legally, must find them, discarded
naturally. Or they can apply to wildlife officials, who distribute
birds dead from natural causes. But that waiting list is long.
There's that black market. But to buy eagle parts is both illegal,
and contrary to native teachings.
"Nowadays, you got people takin' it on their own to get a hold of
their birds," Eaglespeaker says. "Maybe they buy them, maybe they
kill (the birds) themselves, I don't know. But they turn the feathers
into a market. When you talk to elders even today, they say it's not
good, it's not good to do that."
That takes us back to those eagle carcasses. Shortly after they were
found, officials called for a mysterious suspect to come forward. He
never did.
A year later, no one has been charged. Here's what's perplexing about
the delay: many claim they know who's behind those dead eagles. Over
100 tips poured in to the three wildlife officers on this file.
Clearly, though, not the kind of information they need to crack the
case. So, there's been no closure. And that leaves some people
wrestling with what they've seen.
Fabian WilliamsFabian Williams remembers those dead eagles as he
gathers wood for his sweat lodge. When he heard officers had found
them near his lodge on the Tsle-way-tuuth reserve, he went to help
dig them up.
"It was in dark time and we found 14 eagles, and they were mature
eagles," he says.
His first thought? Only a week before, he had visited a man he knew
from ceremonies. What he saw made him sick.
"He showed me all these eagle claws, and I asked him how many you got
in there, and he said, 'I got 14.'
"'I said, 'Well, that's 28 claws that he had,'" Williams recalls.
"And I said, 'Holy cripes, what are you doing with all of those?'
"He said. 'Oh I'm making staffs,' and he grabbed the bag right away
and he went and put them in the freezer. Right after that, I felt
sick and didn't feel very good, and my stomach was turning, and
things were going wrong."
Jimmy JosephThe man with all those talons is a carver whose work is
displayed in art galleries across B.C. He participates in native
ceremonies in Canada and the U.S. He lives in east Vancouver. His
name is Jimmy Joseph.
Williams told his chief and council about Joseph the day after the
eagles were found.
"They said they would pass it on to conservation officers, and what
happened from there, it seemed that they did not believe me on my
words, and they did nothing about going in to Jimmy Jo's house and
retrieving the rest of the birds," Williams says.
Elder Ernie George of the Tsle-way-tuuth band says the band gave all
the information it had to officers... And has no more authority than
that.
"We've worked with the conservation officers and they've gone as far
as they can," George says. "And I say to them people, 'What's wrong
with your justice system? If we can't do nothing, we got to do it
your way. OK, help us do it your way then. '"
Wildlife officers will only say they've never made contact with the
suspect.
"With regard to the specifics of making contact with persons of
interest, or not, or where we do that within the investigation, again
that's part of our investigation, and I'm not about to tip our hand
at this point in time," Sundquist says.
What officers did was follow every lead, including a tip that
implicated Eaglespeaker and a spiritual group he belongs to, the
Native American Church. He met with officers, to deny that.
"It upset me that somebody said that the NAC was involved in a ring,
because we're not. The person that did these things were on his own,"
Eaglespeaker says.
That person was Joseph. He was once a friend to Eaglespeaker, until
about two years ago, when Joseph invited Eaglespeaker to this North
Vancouver home, where he had spread out 40 dead eagles.
"My reaction was, I (have) never seen so many birds in one place in
my life," Eaglespeaker says. "And I was thinking, wow this is like a
morgue. It was like people in there, to me,because my Indian name is
Eagle Boy, right?"
Joseph handed him a knife, asked for help to cut off their wings and
tails. Eaglespeaker refused.
"I told him, 'Maybe you shouldn't do that.'
"And he said, 'Why?'
"And I said, 'It's not right. It's not good.'"
"He said, 'Well, that's white man way.'
"And I said, 'Well, it's not good in our ways, too. Because you have
to have a ceremony to get lots of eagles and try and distribute them
like that.' I said, 'Us natives, we'll be quiet but'… I said, 'If
this gets out in the open, you'll be in big trouble.'"
It wasn't the only incident that disturbed Eaglespeaker. Another
time, Eaglespeaker found himself at the Vancouver airport with Joseph
and his nephew, heading to Ontario for a ceremony. Joseph asked
Eaglespeaker to carry a bag.
"And I said, 'What's in there?'
"He told me what was in there: feathers, eagle feathers. And I
said, 'No I can't do this. You'll get me in trouble, I'm going away
to a ceremony, I don't want nothing to do with it, I don't want
nothing to do with it.'"
He looked in the bag, and saw an eagle wing and cedar boughs.
Joseph's nephew took it.
"All the way over on the flight, I was really nervous," Eaglespeaker
says. "I was thinking, 'Geez, we're sitting there together, I'm also
a law-abiding person, I'm afraid of the law.' I was thinking about
what would happen if we got caught with those things. I was put in a
place I didn't want to be in, that's why I'm telling you this
information."
Farley says Joseph didn't kill eagles. Nor did he ask what Joseph was
doing with them. All he knew was that they spelled trouble. But it
turns out, it may to be legal to possess lots of eagle parts.
Sundquist says, "I think one of the first questions that would come
to the mind of a conservation officer is, 'What's the purpose of
that? Is this being used for societal uses, ceremonial uses, within
that community? Which if it is, potentially there's an aboriginal
right to be doing that.'"
Aboriginal people in Canada have legal rights to harvest wildlife
they traditionally harvested, or to trade wildlife they historically
traded.
Those rights - when it comes to eagles - have never been asserted in
court. But, if anyone is charged, wildlife officers believe it could
be a test case - for an aboriginal eagle harvest.
"There has been some suggestion by some aboriginal groups that there
was harvest of eagles prior to European contact," Sundquist says.
Still, to Fabian Williams, this is more than a legal issue. It's a
spiritual one. He says dead eagles must be honoured.
"I wait a long time for conservation officers to get an eagle from
those people, and when I get that eagle, I give it a ceremony, I give
it a Inipi ceremony and put it up on my sweat lodge. I hold it for
four days, hold it like a baby, like it's going into the other side."
Those carcasses, he says, weren't honoured.
"Everybody knows who did it. Not just Jimmy. There were people that
took the birds apart, and people who helped Jimmy with all the birds,
taking them apart," Williams says.
"Something's gotta be done, even if it's through the elders in our
old ways, or through court or something, because this is a crime
that's been committed to the Nation of Eagles."
As for any crime under B.C.'s Wildlife Act, investigators say they'll
take all the time they need.
"If people are aware of illegal activities, they need to bring that
forward," Sundquist says.
Joseph didn't respond to our interview requests. So, we took the
allegations to him.
"People are saying a lot of things. People are jealous, that's what's
going on right now," Joseph says.
But he wouldn't give specifics.
"Is that the case, that you had 40 dead eagles in North Van?"
reporter Duncan McCue asked.
"I can't talk right now, I'm heading to the ferry, airport. I'll
phone you when I get back," Joseph replied.
He never phoned back.
Eaglespeaker, meanwhile, grapples with what he knows, skeptical that
wildlife officers and the white man's courts offer any spiritual
healing. And he avoids any involvement with Joseph.
"Actually I don't want anything to do with him right now or any of
the people involved with that. Is there more that you haven't told
us, too? If it comes to that, I'll have to say what I have to say. If
it comes to that. If I'm involved, if I'm accused of something, then
I'll have to. I'm not being a rat. I'm being honest."
Which leaves wildlife officers struggling to build their case, First
Nations, powerless to enforce their traditional laws and the eagles
without protection.