Today marks the 1-year anniversary of the May 5, 2013 General Tribal Council Meeting at which GTC voted in self-defense to prohibit Oneida Seven Generations Corporation from conducting any kind of waste incineration on the Oneida reservation.
It’s been a roller-coaster year since and Oneida Eye is hoping to find out this week what the responses will be in the $397.7 million dollar lawsuit filed against the Oneida Tribe, OSGC & Green Bay ‘Renewable’ Energy.
We will, of course, post copies of those documents when they become available.
We’re also interested in finding an answer to a question that was raised at the May 3, 2014 ‘Saturday Morning With The BC’ but was not addressed by the Business Committee members in attendance, including BC Chair Ed Delgado, Treas. Tina Danforth and Council member Brandon Stevens.
Namely, given that there is a Special BC Meeting scheduled for today at 10 a.m. and the Agenda lists the item, Comprehensive Health Division request for increased compensation for physicians and other health care professionals, from where will money for such increases come given that the Tribe is supposedly still under the emergency cost containment measures and spending restrictions through the end of FY2014 as outlined in BC Resolution 02-12-14-B, and similar measures are anticipated to be necessary in FY2015?
Readers will recall that Oneida Eye recently posed the following question in light of the April 15, 2014 Memorandum by Trust Director Susan White to the BC regarding proposed amendments to the Minors Trust Agreement:
Could the Oneida Trust Committee decide to remove funds from the Minors Trust to cover health care & education costs, including health care provider and education provider salary increases?
Since we’re unable to attend today’s special BC Meeting we ask for readers who might attend to inform us of the nature of the discussion regarding the request for increased compensation. Thanks!
On a possibly related note, we were interested to see the following information in the Kalihwisaks in a campaign ad by BC Chair candidate Gary Jordan which stated that among his top priorities is:
B. Prevent negligence by sitting on [Indian Health Services] Reimbursements and losing out on over $1,000,000, as happened recently!
We’re looking into that and appreciate any help & information from our readers as to how that happened and to what extent that may be connected to the request for increased compensation for Health Center physicians and other health care professionals. We encourage readers who might attend today’s special BC Meeting to ask about it as the Tribe deserves answers if/when negligence costs the Tribe money.
Meanwhile, we’d also like to express gratitude for the support and assistance we’ve received from Tribe members and non-Tribe members over the past year and the encouragement and appreciation expressed to us for the blog.
Oneida Eye knows we’re not everyone’s cup of tea, but we try to provide timely information, documentation and observations in the hopes of helping the supreme governing body of the Oneida Tribe – General Tribal Council – make well-informed decisions.
Thanks to everyone who helps us try to do so and, again…
Happy Anti-Incinerator Anniversary!
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For those who haven’t seen it yet we recommend the award-winning documentary ‘Trashed‘ with producer/narrator Jeremy Irons which is now available via the iTunes store. We’re trying to arrange a screening on the reservation and hope to have details on that event soon.
From an interview with Jeremy Irons in the Guardian:
Q:What do you want people to do once they’ve seen the film? A: I would like them to research whether there is a waste-to-energy plant planned for their area, and, if there is, to oppose it. If there is not, then to discover how their local council deals with their waste. I would like them to lobby their MPs for legislation designed to cut waste and to regulate the production of packaging, particularly plastics containing unreported toxins, and particularly where this packaging is used for foodstuffs and bottled water. I would like them to remove all packaging at the point of purchase, thereby pushing the problem one step back towards the manufacturers.
I would like them to use their ingenuity to discover how they can reduce waste both at home and in their workplace. I would like everybody to give a good shopping bag to at least one person this Christmas. And I would like them to tell their friends to see Trashed.
