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As Massachusetts lawmakers gathered to hear testimony on climate policy this summer, they and their constituents also lived through a litany of severe weather events outside the State House’s marble halls.

Canada’s worst wildfire season in recorded history, and the smoke’s impacts on air quality along the East Coast. Heat waves that hit cities especially hard. Disastrous flooding throughout New England.

This summer, Northampton was inundated. City Councilor Alex Jarrett told lawmakers
at a July hearing

that he’d stood alongside a farmer who watched as her crops and equipment got washed away. With emotion in her voice, state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa recounted what she’d seen in her district.

“I’m going to talk about the farmland that I walked through yesterday, the 80 acres that are completely destroyed. Farmers who I don’t know how they’re going to make it. People who had to be rescued from their homes with ropes,” Sabadosa said. “It’s devastating. What has happened to my district is devastating, and while passing this legislation is not going to fix everything that happened, it is a step forward because climate change is real, it is here, and we are in this precise moment suffering from its impacts.”

Jarrett and Sabadosa were both speaking in support of bills involving fossil fuel-free buildings, one of several ideas being pitched as the state considers its next steps on climate policy.

Massachusetts passed a pair of landmark climate laws in the last legislative session. One commits the state to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The other, its supporters said at the time, provides tools to help get there.

Now, with greenhouse-gas reduction targets looming, advocates and some lawmakers are urging more aggressive action for the state to meet its goals and better prepare for the realities of climate change. They’re pushing for change on all fronts, such as decarbonization, energy efficiency, solar power, electric transportation, workforce development and more.

Proposals to boost fossil-fuel free building production are among dozens of bills the Legislature’s energy policy committee has held hearings on this summer.

“The state Legislature takes a long time,” ZeroCarbonMA co-founder and director Lisa Cunningham said. “It moves very slowly, and then it moves very quickly.”

On climate policy, Cunningham said, “we really need to act a lot faster.”

But the joint committee that hears these bills, the Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy Committee, has been stymied by an internal power struggle between its chairs, Rep. Jeff Roy and Sen. Mike Barrett. It’s forcing bill supporters in some cases to deliver the same testimony twice — once before the committee’s House members, and once for its Senate members.

The spat could end up making it harder for the House and Senate to advance and agree on the next round of climate legislation. Even under normal circumstances, the paths to the last few major climate laws were not quick, often stretching
into the final hours

of formal legislative sessions.

“The only way to really reduce our carbon emissions is to stop using fossil fuels immediately,” Cunningham said. “That’s what the UN — the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change —
has said

. That’s what all the experts have said, and we are just creating basically an unlivable world.”

Cunningham, an architect, compares fossil fuels to asbestos or lead pipes, long since banned from new construction because of health concerns. She and other ZeroCarbonMA members say cities and towns should be allowed to require new buildings and major renovations be fossil-fuel free, and that it doesn’t make sense to hook up any new buildings to fossil fuel infrastructure that will eventually need to be ripped out.

The state’s 2022 climate law established a pilot allowing 10 communities to do just that.
The program

prioritized the first municipalities that asked the Legislature’s permission to prohibit fossil fuels in new construction: Arlington, Lexington, Brookline, Acton, Concord, Cambridge, Lincoln, Newton, West Tisbury and Aquinnah.

West Tisbury has since asked to withdraw because it doesn’t meet affordable housing requirements laid out in the law, while
other communities like Boston

want to find their way into the program.

But some lawmakers and advocates are concerned that this pilot program hasn’t been equitable, pointing to the fact that the 10 communities are wealthier and clustered in the eastern part of the state. Northampton’s Rep. Sabadosa and state Sen. Jo Comerford have filed bills that would remove the cap and let other communities adopt similar policies without legislative approval.

The statewide advocacy organization Environment Massachusetts is urging the Legislature to set more detailed, ambitious targets to set the state up for success on its goals.

“We need to strive for more, and given the urgency of the climate crisis that we are facing, the proof is in this summer, too — the weather patterns, the flash flooding,” said Lydia Churchill, the clean energy associate at Environment Massachusetts. “It’s been scary, the wildfires in Canada and Hawaii. It’s all over the place. It’s at our doorstep.”

Environment Massachusetts
supports a bill

that would require the state to get its electricity entirely from clean sources, like wind and solar, by 2035. The bill calls for 100% clean heating and transportation by 2045.

Churchill said a key component of the bill is that it lays out specific steps toward meeting that timeline. It would require new buildings to use only clean energy starting in 2028, mandate the retrofitting of at least 1 million homes and 300 million square feet of commercial space, and direct the MBTA to convert all its commuter rail lines to electric power by 2035.

An earlier version of the 100% Clean Act called for all new cars sold in Massachusetts to be electric by 2035, and legislators included that provision in the 2022 climate law.

The organization has been canvassing door-to-door for clean power legislation. Churchill said people are often curious about what the transition would mean for them and their household. Rather than immediate transformation, she said the bill lays out clear steps and incentives toward its goals.

“There is appetite for it,” Churchill said. “I think people understand now that we cannot keep depending on fossil fuels.”

Did you know?

As of 2021, more than half of Massachusetts households heated their homes with natural gas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. About one in four used fuel oil for heat, and more than one in six heated with electricity.

For more than a decade, legislation has set out to limit carbon emissions. A 2008 state law, the Global Warming Solutions Act, required Massachusetts to reduce its carbon emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. The 2021 climate law called for additional limits along the way, and the Baker administration set emissions-reduction targets of 33% by 2050 and 50% by 2030.

Electrifying buildings and transportation — which together account for roughly two-thirds of emissions statewide — is a major part of the overall strategy.

Gov. Maura Healey, whose first executive order added a climate chief to her Cabinet, has taken steps with those goals in mind, such as launching a
$50 million green bank

to support clean energy projects in affordable housing. Some want to see her go further — the activist group Extinction Rebellion Boston has been holding banners outside the State House
since June

, calling for Healey and legislative leaders to ban new fossil fuel infrastructure.

Sen. Marc Pacheco, a Taunton Democrat and
architect of the Global Warming Solutions Act

, has been making the case that Massachusetts needs to back up its climate policies with more money. He’s proposed a $2 billion Clean Energy and Climate Action Fund that could go toward research, workforce development, energy efficiency, electrification and other efforts to drive down emissions.

“I think a lot of people are in a position right now across all the governments, and other national governments as well, where we think, ‘Well, we’ve got these plans in place, and we have net-zero by 2050, and yes, we’re going to go on a decarbonization pathway,'” Pacheco told GBH News. “But there’s very little action in terms of funding. … And if they don’t fund them adequately, what ends up happening is we’ll be sitting here in 2030 saying, ‘Oh, well, we just missed our targets because we weren’t able to get them done quick enough.'”

Pacheco’s idea is modeled after the 10-year, $1 billion investment Massachusetts made in the life sciences sector under former Gov. Deval Patrick. Other funding proposals are out there, as well — a coalition of more than 170 groups has lined up behind
legislation to set up

a $300 million Zero Carbon Renovation Fund to defray the cost of building upgrades.

David Melly of the Environmental League of Massachusetts, one of the groups in the coalition, says the $300 million fund would “be a critical tool in the toolbox.”

“But we need a lot of tools to do everything that we need to do in this space,” he said.

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center
reported last month

that Massachusetts will need to add more than 38,000 clean energy workers by the end of the decade — growing the current workforce by more than a third — to keep pace with its emissions reduction targets. The state will have to meet the labor demand to carry out renovations such as installing heat pumps, solar panels or electric vehicle charging stations — as well as assembling and connecting wind turbines, maintaining electric vehicles, and overseeing projects across the clean energy spectrum.

The chairs of the energy committee, Barrett and Roy, have both signaled that workforce needs could be one area they’re targeting for action.

When the report came out, Roy said it presented “an opportunity for strategic state action to create 21st-century clean energy jobs amid real-world labor challenges,” and Barrett said he didn’t see how the state could meet its greenhouse-gas reduction limits without attracting “a slew of workers to fill jobs.”

“We can have all the money in the world, we can have all the best ideas in the world,” Pacheco said. “But if we don’t have a workforce to actually implement those ideas, we will not meet our requirements, either.”

Banana Split Shortcakes

Dish thanks to General Mills, Inc. – made use of with consent

Take strawberry shortcakes to the following degree with tender shortcakes full of gelato as well as covered much like a banana split.

2 mugs Original Bisquick ® mix
1/3 mug granulated sugar
3 tbsps cooking chocolate
3 tbsps butter or margarine, thawed
1/2 mug milk
1 pint (2 mugs) vanilla gelato
1 (10 ounce) bundle icy strawberries in syrup, defrosted
2 tool bananas, cut
1/4 mug delicious chocolate fudge covering, warmed
Whipped covering, if wanted
Maraschino cherries, if wanted

Warm stove to 425 levels F.

Mix Bisquick mix, sugar as well as cacao in tool dish. Mix in butter as well as milk till soft dough types.

Decline dough by 6 does onto ungreased cookie sheet. Cook 10 to 12 mins or till blade placed in facility of shortcake appears tidy. Trendy 5 mins.

Split cozy shortcakes. Loaded with gelato, strawberries, bananas and also fudge covering. Leading with whipped covering, cherries and also, if preferred, extra fudge covering.

Cook 10 to 12 mins or till blade put in facility of shortcake comes out tidy. Split cozy shortcakes. Load with ice lotion, strawberries, bananas as well as fudge covering. Leading with whipped covering, cherries as well as, if preferred, added fudge covering.

“Tonight, at least, the fire has behaved and the weather has behaved normally,” Fernando Clavijo, the regional president for the Canary Islands, told reporters Friday, adding that firefighters had worked intensely to stop the fire’s progress after it moved in an unpredictable manner earlier in the week. Clavijo said he was hopeful that the forecast would improve, but he added that the blaze still was not under control.

At least eight municipalities have been affected by the fire, though local authorities on Friday lifted the lockdown order on La Esperanza, a village northeast of Teide National Park, where 3,820 residents had been ordered earlier in the week to shelter in place. The priority Friday, Clavijo said, was to confine the fire to an area near the village.

For residents closest to the fire, the past few days have been marked by streams of choking smoke and an overcast sky with an orange glow that has been filled with falling ash.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said María Luisa Pacheco, who began receiving alerts Thursday morning to evacuate her home of 60 years in the town of La Orotava, and watched the fire progress with tears in her eyes, according to the Spanish newspaper El País.

“The situation is upsetting,” said Ana Belén Perdigón, 44, another resident who also had to evacuate, told the paper. She and her family have been staying in a local sports center with dozens of others, worried that they will not be able to return home.

Southern Europe has been hit hard by extreme temperatures this summer, helping stoke conditions for hundreds of wildfires in the region. Among the areas to swelter was the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands, a popular tourist destination in the Atlantic Ocean just west of Morocco, where temperatures have soared above 100 degrees in some areas.

Though it is difficult to link individual events to climate change, experts say weather patterns are intensifying the conditions that fuel disastrous wildfires and help them to burn longer and more aggressively.

And more heat is expected in the coming days, with high temperatures forecast for Spain, France, and other parts of Europe, a source of consternation to Spanish firefighters concerned that the heat will make it even more difficult to bring the Tenerife blaze fully under control.

In addition to the high temperatures, the Canary Islands have experienced less rainfall than usual in recent years, local officials said, and experts said the combination of the two has increased the risk of wildfires. Blazes last month burned through the island of La Palma, forcing 4,000 residents to flee and razing an estimated 10,000 acres.

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The Tenerife fire, Clavijo said Thursday, was the “most complex” that the Spanish archipelago had seen in 40 years, making it “difficult” to quell because of the terrain and weather conditions. Wildfires last summer ravaged a record 750,000 acres in Spain, according to data from the European Forest Fire Information System.

Authorities on Tenerife were also spurred to place restrictions on water use after a canal funneling water to the island’s north ruptured and they encountered difficulties reaching the area to repair it.

More resources arrived Friday to bolster hundreds of firefighters and a fleet of aircraft already working to stamp out the blaze, including a contingent from the nearby island of Fuerteventura and equipment from the Defense Ministry. Government officials have cautioned that people in affected areas should take care and wear masks to protect themselves from smoke inhalation.

“With all the material that is in the air and the wind, air quality and breathing are really difficult in some areas,” Clavijo said Friday.

Inside a jail cell at Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, Albertyn Pino’s only plan was to finish the six-month sentence for public intoxication, along with other charges, and to return to her abusive boyfriend.

That’s when she was offered a lifeline: An invitation to the tribe’s Healing to Wellness Court. She would be released early if she agreed to attend alcohol treatment and counseling sessions, secure a bed at a shelter, get a job, undergo drug testing and regularly check in with a judge.

Pino, now 53, ultimately completed the requirements and, after about a year and a half, the charges were dropped. She looks back at that time, 15 years ago, and is grateful that people envisioned a better future for her when she struggled to see one for herself.

“It helped me start learning more about myself, about what made me tick, because I didn’t know who I was,” said Pino, who is now a case manager and certified peer support worker. “I didn’t know what to do.”

The concept of treating people in the criminal justice system holistically is not new in Indian Country, but there are new programs coming on board as well as expanded approaches. About one-third of the roughly 320 tribal court systems across the country have aspects of this healing and wellness approach, according to the National American Indian Court Judges Association.

Some tribes are incorporating these aspects into more specialized juvenile and family courts, said Kristina Pacheco, Tribal Healing to Wellness Court specialist for the California-based Tribal Law and Policy Institute. The court judges association is also working on pilot projects for holistic defense – which combine legal advocacy and support – with tribes in Alaska, Nevada and Oklahoma, modeled after a successful initiative at the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in Montana.

“The thought and the concept will be different from tribe to tribe,” said Pacheco. “But ultimately, we all want our tribal people … to not hurt, not suffer.”

People in the program typically are facing nonviolent misdemeanors, such as a DUI, public intoxication or burglary, she said. Some courts, like in the case of Pino, drop the charges once participants complete the program.

A program at the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe in Washington state applies restorative principles, and assigns wellness coaches to serve Native Americans and non-Natives in the local county jail, a report released earlier this year by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation outlined. The Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma has a reintegration program that includes financial support and housing services, as well as cultural programming, career development and legal counsel. In Alaska, the Kenaitze Indian Tribe’s wellness court helps adults in tribal and state court who are battling substance abuse and incorporates elements of their tribe’s culture.

“There’s a lot of shame and guilt when you’re arrested,” said Mary Rodriguez, staff attorney for the court judges association. “You don’t reach out to those resources, you feel that you aren’t entitled to those resources, that those are for somebody who isn’t in trouble with the law.”

“The idea of holistic defense is opening that up and reclaiming you are our community member, we understand there are issues,” Rodriguez said. “You are better than the worst thing you’ve done.”

The MacArthur Foundation report outlined a series of inequities, including a complicated jurisdictional maze in Indian Country that can result in multiple courts charging Native Americans for the same offense. The report also listed historical trauma and a lack of access to free, legal counsel within tribes as factors that contribute to disproportionate representation of Native Americans in federal and state prisons.

Advocates of tribal healing to wellness initiatives see the approaches as a way to shift the narrative of someone’s life and address the underlying causes of criminal activity.

There isn’t clear data that shows how holistic alternatives to harsh penalization have influenced incarceration rates. Narrative outcomes might be a better measure of success, including regaining custody of one’s children and maintaining a driver’s license, said Johanna Farmer, an enrolled citizen of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota and a program attorney for the court judges association.

Some tribes have incorporated specific cultural and community elements into healing, such as requiring participants to interview their own family members to establish a sense of rootedness and belonging.

“You have the narratives, the stories, the qualitative data showing that healing to wellness court, the holistic defense practices are more in line with a lot of traditional tribal community practices,” Farmer said. “And when your justice systems align with your traditional values or the values you have in your community, the more likely you’re going to see better results.”

While not all of these tribal healing to wellness programs have received federal funding, some have.

Between 2020 and 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice distributed more than a dozen awards that totaled about $9.4 million for tribal healing to wellness courts.

This year, the Quapaw Nation in Oklahoma started working on a holistic defense program after seeing a sharp increase in cases following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said a large area of eastern Oklahoma remains a Native American reservation.

So far this year, about 70 cases have been filed, up from nearly a dozen in all of 2020, said Corissa Millard, tribal court administrator.

“When we look at holistic approaches, we think, what’s going to better help the community in long term?” she said. “Is sending someone away for a three-year punishment going to be it? Will they reoffend once they get out? Or do you want to try to fix the problem before it escalates?”

For Pino, the journey through Laguna Pueblo’s wellness court wasn’t smooth. She struggled through relapses and a brief stint on the run before she found a job and an apartment to live in with her son nearby in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her daughters live close by.

She largely credits the wellness court staff for her ability to turnaround her life, she said.

“They were the ones that stood by me, regardless of what I was choosing to do; that was the part that brought me a lot of hope,” she said. “And now where I’m at, just to see them happy, it gets emotional, because they never let go. They never gave up on me.” ___

Associated Press writer Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Arizona, contributed.

Copyright © 2023 The Washington Times, LLC.

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Olena Kolesnyk said she sees Larissa Pacheco more than some of her close relatives at the PFL 2023 Play-Offs media scrum on Wednesday in New York City. She was making light of the fact that this is the third time the two will face off in the PFL. The format, by design, makes that happen. 

However, even though she has been on the losing side of their previous matchups, Kolesnykbelieves that, as Pacheco and Kayla Harrison’s history has shown, groundwork is being laid to solve the puzzle that is 2022 Champion Larissa Pacheco.

“We became closer and closer with each fight, and every fight shows me the opportunity on how with the next fight, I can win [beat] her.”

She said she even watched Pacheco’s other fights as the season went on, knowing that she can gather enough data to win against her should they meet again. While she sees the similarities between Pacheco and Harrison, she does not put any stock in luck or fate making this third match go her way on Friday. She only believes in herself, and the preparation with her team.

When asked if the Pacheco/Harrison similarity inspires her to win, she said that is not the case. “I take inspiration from the people that helped me for the fight, from my team, from my country. This is where I take my inspiration from.” 

Being from Ukraine, she had more to say on what is transpiring in her homeland and you can see what she had to say in the full media scrum above.

Kolesnyk added, “Of course, Larissa’s a tough fighter, I have huge respect for her. So, I’m ready for this fight, let’s do it.”

Unfortunately, during morning weigh-ins Kolesnyk missed weight, the fight is still on but she forfeits 20% of her purse.

The winner moves on to the championship finals and the trilogy between them is part of the PFL 2023 Play-offs. MyMMANews is on-site for the event in Madison Square Garden, this Friday airing on ESPN & ESPN+. Keep it locked here for news and updates.

This month, Boundless’ weekly immigration newsletter “BIT” celebrated its 100th edition.

Since its start in 2021, BIT has brought 17,800 subscribers breaking immigration news, tips for navigating one’s immigration journey, and more. The newsletter has tracked immigration reform in Congress, ever-changing policies at the U.S.-Mexico border, and how the latest economic challenges have impacted immigrant workers, to name just a few of BIT’s biggest stories.

To celebrate 100 editions of BIT, here are some of our favorite feel-good immigration stories from the past year:

BANNING TOGETHER

A coalition of religious communities in Sacramento pulled together to welcome migrants from Latin America into their city. “Help looked like making sure every person had a safe place to stay, making sure they had food to eat and clean clothing,” said one group leader about the collaborative efforts.

HIGHER EDUCATION

A new state law in Massachusetts will allow all students, regardless of immigration status, to qualify for in-state tuition rates at public colleges or universities. The bill comes after years of lobbying by advocacy groups for tuition equity and better access to higher education for all Massachusetts residents.

FREE LEGAL WORKSHOPS

A legal services clinic at the University of Wyoming hosts free workshops to help the local community with all things immigration. The workshops aim to make legal immigration services more accessible, with a focus on topics such as naturalization, family-based visas, and more.

WALK FOR CHANGE

In California, hundreds of immigrants and advocates set out on a 40-mile march to protest decades of government inaction on immigration reform. Organizers are calling on Congress to pass the “Registry Bill,” which would provide 8 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. a pathway to legal permanent residency.

Want to sign up for our weekly newsletter covering all things immigration?

Enter your email below.

Thank you for your interest in our newsletter!

We’ll be in touch.

Thien Pham’s Family Style is a memoir of his family’s harrowing immigration journey, and how food and communal gathering can always bring you back to your roots. Read more about Pham’s latest graphic novel and approach to visual storytelling here!

DISNEY DREAMS

A youth program is selling handmade art and clothing to send a group of migrant teens on a trip to Disneyland. The Disneyland fundraiser has a $5,000 goal to make the trip a reality for more than two dozen migrant teens in the San Francisco area.

CLASSIC WITH A TWIST

An exciting new retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice takes readers on a journey through New York City’s Chinatown in the early 2000s. Listen to author C.K. Chau chat about her new book Good Fortune here.

Inspired by her own journey as a DACA recipient, author Margarita Quiñones-Peña published a new children’s book that humanizes the lives of undocumented children in the U.S. All of Homecoming’s proceeds will be donated to help asylum seekers in the Chicago area.

GROUNDBREAKING CASE

A gay couple won a groundbreaking court case to obtain U.S. citizenship for their son born via surrogate. Read more about the couple’s inspiring fight to keep their family together and how their case will protect future LGBTQ+ parents here.

A new documentary is shining a light on the crucial role bilingual teenagers play as translators for their immigrant family members. “Translators” has received an outpouring of support from viewers around the country who have shared similar experiences in their own families.

CLIMATE ART

Argentinian-born artist Luciana Abait creates multimedia works that explore the intersection between climate change and migration. Abait presents her socially conscious exhibits in public spaces, ensuring a wider audience is able to experience them.

NEW QUARTER

The U.S. Mint released new designs for 2024 quarters that will feature prolific American women. Among the women selected is “Queen of Salsa” Celia Cruz, who will be the first Afro-Latina to be featured on the quarter.

NPR TINY DESK

Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Kany García recently performed on NPR’s beloved Tiny Desk concert series. During her performance, García dedicated one of her tracks to immigrants around the world. Listen here!

A new quirky film starring Tilda Swinton follows an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador who moves to New York to live out his “American Dream.” Look out for “Problemista” in theaters in early August.

CLIMATE JUSTICE

A new social justice initiative is bringing migration to the forefront of climate change discussion. The Climate Justice Fellowship, a new program based in Maryland, lobbies for more inclusive immigration and climate policies across the U.S.

LEGAL HELP FOR FARMWORKERS

Undocumented farmworkers in California who speak out against unsafe working conditions will now have access to free legal help. “Farmworkers are the backbone of our economy, and we won’t stand by as bad actors use the threat of deportation as a form of exploitation,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a press release.

MURAL ACTIVISM

An immigrant rights organization uses murals to shine a light on the resilience and strength of undocumented communities in the U.S. 67 Sueños has painted 16 murals across California’s Bay Area since 2011.

Get ready for some serious cuteness! This year’s Gerber Baby is smiley and adventurous Madison Mendoza, the 10-month-old daughter of a first generation Filipino family.

DOCTOR TO THE STARS

The film “Sight” tells the story of a poor Chinese immigrant who defies all odds to become an Ivy League graduate and accomplished ophthalmologist. Dr. Ming Wang, whose life inspired the film, treats celebrity patients like Dolly Parton and Kenny Chesney.

NEW CITIZEN

After a 30-year long journey, immigrant rights activist Gaby Pacheco became a U.S. citizen. Pacheco, who came to the U.S. from Ecuador as a child, was instrumental in the creation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Inside a jail cell at Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, Albertyn Pino’s only plan was to finish the six-month sentence for public intoxication, along with other charges, and to return to her abusive boyfriend.

That’s when she was offered a lifeline: An invitation to the tribe’s Healing to Wellness Court. She would be released early if she agreed to attend alcohol treatment and counseling sessions, secure a bed at a shelter, get a job, undergo drug testing and regularly check in with a judge.

Pino, now 53, ultimately completed the requirements and, after about a year and a half, the charges were dropped. She looks back at that time, 15 years ago, and is grateful that people envisioned a better future for her when she struggled to see one for herself.

“It helped me start learning more about myself, about what made me tick, because I didn’t know who I was,” said Pino, who is now a case manager and certified peer support worker. “I didn’t know what to do.”

The concept of treating people in the criminal justice system holistically is not new in Indian Country, but there are new programs coming on board as well as expanded approaches. About one-third of the roughly 320 tribal court systems across the country have aspects of this healing and wellness approach, according to the National American Indian Court Judges Association.

Combining legal advocacy and support

Some tribes are incorporating these aspects into more specialized juvenile and family courts, said Kristina Pacheco, Tribal Healing to Wellness Court specialist for the California-based Tribal Law and Policy Institute. The court judges association is also working on pilot projects for holistic defense — which combine legal advocacy and support — with tribes in Alaska, Nevada and Oklahoma, modeled after a successful initiative at the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in Montana.

“The thought and the concept will be different from tribe to tribe,” said Pacheco. “But ultimately, we all want our tribal people … to not hurt, not suffer.”

People in the program typically are facing nonviolent misdemeanors, such as a DUI, public intoxication or burglary, she said. Some courts, like in the case of Pino, drop the charges once participants complete the program.

A program at the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe in Washington state applies restorative principles and assigns wellness coaches to serve Native Americans and non-Natives in the local county jail, a report released earlier this year by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation outlined. The Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma has a reintegration program that includes financial support and housing services, as well as cultural programming, career development and legal counsel. In Alaska, the Kenaitze Indian Tribe’s wellness court helps adults in tribal and state court who are battling substance abuse and incorporates elements of their tribe’s culture.

“There’s a lot of shame and guilt when you’re arrested,” said Mary Rodriguez, staff attorney for the court judges association. “You don’t reach out to those resources, you feel that you aren’t entitled to those resources, that those are for somebody who isn’t in trouble with the law.”

‘You are better than the worst thing you’ve done’

“The idea of holistic defense is opening that up and reclaiming you are our community member, we understand there are issues,” Rodriguez said. “You are better than the worst thing you’ve done.”

The MacArthur Foundation report outlined a series of inequities, including a complicated jurisdictional maze in Indian Country that can result in multiple courts charging Native Americans for the same offense. The report also listed historical trauma and a lack of access to free, legal counsel within tribes as factors that contribute to disproportionate representation of Native Americans in federal and state prisons.

Advocates of tribal healing to wellness initiatives see the approaches as a way to shift the narrative of someone’s life and address the underlying causes of criminal activity.

There isn’t clear data that shows how holistic alternatives to harsh penalization have influenced incarceration rates. Narrative outcomes might be a better measure of success, including regaining custody of one’s children and maintaining a driver’s license, said Johanna Farmer, an enrolled citizen of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota and a program attorney for the court judges association.

Some tribes have incorporated specific cultural and community elements into healing, such as requiring participants to interview their own family members to establish a sense of rootedness and belonging.

“You have the narratives, the stories, the qualitative data showing that healing to wellness court, the holistic defense practices are more in line with a lot of traditional tribal community practices,” Farmer said. “And when your justice systems align with your traditional values or the values you have in your community, the more likely you’re going to see better results.”

While not all of these tribal healing to wellness programs have received federal funding, some have.

Between 2020 and 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice distributed more than a dozen awards that totaled about $9.4 million for tribal healing to wellness courts.

This year, the Quapaw Nation in Oklahoma started working on a holistic defense program after seeing a sharp increase in cases following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said a large area of eastern Oklahoma remains a Native American reservation.

So far this year, about 70 cases have been filed, up from nearly a dozen in all of 2020, said Corissa Millard, tribal court administrator.

“When we look at holistic approaches, we think, ‘What’s going to better help the community in long term?'” she said. “Is sending someone away for a three-year punishment going to be it? Will they reoffend once they get out? Or do you want to try to fix the problem before it escalates?”

For Pino, the journey through Laguna Pueblo’s wellness court wasn’t smooth. She struggled through relapses and a brief stint on the run before she found a job and an apartment to live in with her son nearby in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her daughters live close by.

She largely credits the wellness court staff for her ability to turnaround her life, she said.

“They were the ones that stood by me, regardless of what I was choosing to do; that was the part that brought me a lot of hope,” she said. “And now where I’m at, just to see them happy, it gets emotional, because they never let go. They never gave up on me.”

.
Review at Indians (Native Americans, Amerindians).

Indigenous Americans are usually cast in the duty of targets of White aggressiveness and also unchecked avarice-driven or unjustified physical violence, particularly in the areas recognized jointly today as the United States. The very first carnage was committed by Indians in the British nest Jamestown, in Virginia in 1622. They butchered 347 white males, ladies as well as youngsters then.

Europeans are likewise charged of importing microorganisms, illness creating representatives, such as smallpox as well as measles, jungle fever and also yellow high temperature. Native individuals had no immunological resistance to these ailments as they were never ever subjected to them.

Current searchings for by a group of paleopathologists, financial experts as well as anthropologists that have actually finished a large research study of the health and wellness of individuals living in the Western Hemisphere in the last 7,000 years – recommend that Native American’s wellness was badly run down long prior to the Europeans supplied the stroke of genius de elegance.

The scientists evaluated greater than 12,500 skeletal systems – fifty percent of them pre-Columbian – from 65 websites in North and also South America for proof of infections, lack of nutrition and also various other illness.

The research study – “The Backbone of History: Health and also Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere”, modified by Dr. Richard H. Steckel and also Dr. Jerome C. Rose – found that the haleness of Native-Americans decreased significantly in the 1000 years prior to Columbus “found” them.

The huge bulk of the skeletal systems revealed dead giveaways of sophisticated degenerative joint condition, wearing away oral wellness, stature, anemia, jailed cells advancement, infections and also injury from injuries. These were connected by the individuals to minimal diet regimens and also metropolitan blockage. Individuals ended up being much shorter and also passed away earlier – generally at age 35 – as the centuries passed.

” Pre-Columbian populaces were amongst the healthiest and also the least healthy and balanced in our example,” Dr. Steckel as well as Dr. Rose stated. “While pre-Columbian citizens might have stayed in an illness setting considerably various from that in various other components of the world, the initial occupants likewise brought with them, or developed with, sufficient virus to develop persistent problems of illness under problems of methodical farming and also metropolitan living.”.

There are indicators that conditions hitherto assumed to have actually been presented by the white travelers were really indigenous.1,000-year-old Peruvian mommies, for circumstances, were located to have actually been contaminated with consumption in their lungs.

Indigenous Americans are commonly cast in the function of sufferers of White hostility and also unchecked avarice-driven or unjustified physical violence, particularly in the regions recognized jointly today as the United States. The initial carnage was carried out by Indians in the British nest Jamestown, in Virginia in 1622. The substantial bulk of the skeletal systems revealed warning indicators of innovative degenerative joint illness, wearing away oral wellness, stature, anemia, jailed cells advancement, infections as well as injury from injuries.