2020
July
06
Monday

Monitor Daily Podcast

July 06, 2020
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Clayton Collins
Director of Editorial Innovation

Native American peoples tend to sit out celebrations of one kind of American independence.

Over the holiday weekend, their own stories became more central.

In one case they were pushed aside. But Lakota Sioux protesters, standing on unceded territory, first delayed a major Saturday event at Mount Rushmore in the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota.

In another they were aided. A District of Columbia sports franchise agreed to a “thorough review” of an offensive name. Native American leaders first met with team officials to urge change in 1972. Pressure from corporations like stadium-sponsor FedEx helped make change imminent. 

An insidious false narrative about Native Americans has long persisted: that they sit passively at the receiving end of a dominant culture’s actions. But the weekend’s developments, and other, quieter stories, highlight something else: the power of hope – and of agency, and inclusion. 

There’s their dual fight against COVID-19 and wildfire in the U.S. Northwest. And then there is the very personal.

Sean Sherman is an Oglala Lakota chef in Minneapolis. He sees reconnection to culture, through food, as an antidote to historical oppression. 

He and a partner are launching an “Indigenous food lab.” Its work will run from pre-colonial food prep to ethnobotany. Its mission: a culinary revolution meant to inspire and nourish. To strengthen, and not to exclude. 

“There’s this huge knowledge base that we should be tapping into,” Mr. Sherman told Modern Farmer, “to make a better world for everyone.”


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Paul Sancya/AP
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Califorina, speaks at a campaign rally for former Vice President Joe Biden at Renaissance High School in Detroit, Monday, March 9, 2020. Senator Harris is widely considered a leading candidate to be Mr. Biden's running mate.

The choice of running mate always affects presidential candidates’ prospects. This time the process has even higher stakes. It’s an acid test of America’s commitment to further diversifying the halls of political power.

Thilo Schmuelgen/Reuters
Members of the ordnungsamt close access to the Cherry Blossom Area, a magnet for tourists, as the spread of the coronavirus continued in Bonn, Germany, April 8, 2020. The ordnungsamt illustrate a policing trend across Europe – to hand off some duties to specialized agencies.

America holds no monopoly on the policing debate. The idea that some jobs that police now do should instead be done by specialists with specific social skills is standard operating practice in European countries. We wanted to explore how that works.

Courtesy of David Antonio Perez Beltran
Daniel Castillo Pérez stands in front of the flower stall where he's worked the past 15 years in a bustling, trendy Mexico City neighborhood, on April 8, 2020. Some 60% of Mexicans work in the informal economy, unable to stay home amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

We’ve looked at mutual-aid networks a few times in recent weeks. This next report is from Mexico City. Residents, used to getting little (or late) support from their government, try to support their neighbors in a crisis. COVID-19 is no exception.

Points of Progress

What's going right
Staff

A ban on single-use plastic in Kenya, a delisting of the scales of the highly trafficked pangolin as a medicinal in China, and a telling archaeological discovery in Italy are just three of this week’s global progress points. You can click below to read the full set. Enjoy the uplift.


The Monitor's View

AP
Keith Russell, program manager of urban conservation at Audubon Pennsylvania, conducts a breeding bird census at Wissahickon Valley Park June 5, 2020, in Philadelphia.

As the July Fourth holiday fades into memory, summer starts in earnest. Americans hear the call of the natural world: Leave those four walls behind; seek new vistas. 

“We need the tonic of wildness. ... We can never have enough of nature,” advised perhaps its most famous advocate, Henry David Thoreau. “I am losing precious days,” added John Muir, known as the “Father of the National Parks.” “I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.” 

In recent times movements such Japan’s shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, have touted the therapeutic effects of immersion into the great outdoors. Journeys into the wild are used to help restore the mental and physical health of Iraq War veterans. 

It doesn’t take studies (though they exist) to know that absorbing grand natural vistas or merely sitting in solitude in a quiet green place can be relaxing and restorative. It just feels good.

But not everyone has equal access to nature, or feels equally comfortable going into it – problems reinforced in many cases by poverty and prejudice. In a 2014 report, the National Park Service estimated that 95% of visitors to its parks were white. And a 2011 NPS survey concluded that three times as many Black people as white felt unsafe in these parks.

For Black Americans, even enjoying nature much closer to home can turn into an ordeal. This spring a Black man bird-watching in New York’s Central Park politely asked a white woman to obey the park’s rules and leash her dog. Instead, she called the police, saying an “African American man” was threatening her. (She later apologized for her actions, and faces a misdemeanor charge of falsely reporting an incident in the third degree.)

In the 21st century, the United States is moving toward becoming a “majority minority” nation – nonwhites outnumbering whites. The love and protection of the natural world will be in the hands of an ever-wider spectrum of Americans. Can people be expected to love and guard something they don’t visit?

In 2018, there were 1,177 people who hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, an arduous 2,200-mile trek between Georgia and Maine. That was a record number. So far this year, reports Outside Magazine, only two people have completed it. Both were young white males. With much of the trail closed due to the pandemic, they had to evade local law enforcement and park officials along the way, sometimes talking their way out of confrontations, and then illegally sneaking back onto the trail. One can only wonder if a Black hiker could have done the same.

The national discussion about racial inequality has brought into focus that the trail’s hiking community is overwhelming the domain of educated white men, says Sandi Marra, president and CEO of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, a nonprofit group. She told Outside that she hopes the dialogue will result in new ideas on how to make the outdoor world more inclusive and diverse.

Experiencing nature expresses a kind of freedom. “Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us,” said Thoreau’s old friend, philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Helping a wider spectrum of Americans know nature’s wonders benefits everyone.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

We might feel helpless when we see disturbing news reports of violent confrontation. But we shouldn’t underestimate the impact of heartfelt prayer, based on an understanding of God’s all-power.


A message of love

Phil Noble/Reuters
Gardeners trim back the Virginia creeper on the outside of the Tu Hwnt I'r Bont tearoom as it prepares to reopen as lockdown conditions in Wales ease following the outbreak of COVID-19, in Llanrwst, Britain, July 6, 2020.

A look ahead

Thanks for reading today’s Daily. Our Supreme Court watcher, Henry Gass, is tracking a pretty big week. Watch for his reports.

Also: Abortion-rights activists celebrated last week’s high court ruling, but will the court swing to the right on abortion in the future? Join us tomorrow on Reddit for an AUA (ask us anything) with Henry and multimedia reporter Jessica Mendoza, who led our “Looking past Roe” series. The link to the AUA will be live at the top of the r/politics subreddit starting at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, July 7. You don’t need a Reddit account to read the discussion.

More issues

2020
July
06
Monday

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