University Daily Kansan / Monday, September 23, 1991
9
Indians say laws, court decisions restrict religious freedom, rituals
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — American-Indian leaders say laws and Supreme Court decisions that stop them from using the drug peyote or from hunting eagles are a threat to religious freedom.
They are calling on Congress to step in and protect their rights.
"Many of the endangered tribal religions, many of which have suffered from a long history of religious suppression ... are placed in great jeopardy. Walter Echo-Hawk, an attorney for the Native American Rights Fund
Echo-Hawk helped write legislation that would guarantee Indians their right to use peyote, allow them to kill eagles for ceremonial feathers and make it easier to protect their sacred sites from development.
There is no organized opposition to the bill, which is quietly being circulated among tribal leaders before it is introduced by Daniel Inouye, the chairperson of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.
But the Indian community is divided on some of the issues, including peyote use, and the bill is certain to rekindle the feuding in camping in the West and upper Midwest.
- "By the very nature of the legislation, it's controversial," said Sen. Tom Duschle. D-S-D.
The Rev. Doyle Turner, a Chippewa Indian and an Episcopal priest on Minnesota's White Earth Reservation, said: "I have no quarrel with the religious freedom of people, but you doubt the motives at some point of time.
"The real traditional people I know rely on the traditions of their tribe, which is not to take hallucinogens, but prayer and fasting," he said.
Indians say their religions have been subject to systematic suppression since Christopher Columbus arrived 499 years ago and reported his belief that the natives had no religion of their own.
"Most white people and missionaries view Indian religions as pagan superstitious rituals," said Reuben American Religious Freedom Project.
But it was the Supreme Court that was responsible for the growing crisis in Indian religious liberty, Echo-Hawk said.
In 1888, the high court ruled that the First Amendment did not prevent the government from developing land that Indians considered sacred.
Indians and government agencies
have sparred over numerous sites in recent years, such as South Dakota's Black Hills, a holy place to the Sioux, a quarry in Minnesota where Indians obtained stone for pipes; and Mount Hood in Oregon, where Columbia River Indians traditionally went to seek visions.
The use of pyeas as a sacrament dates back at least 10,000 years, according to church leaders who claim the pyeae religion is an effective way to curb alcohol abuse. Church members say they have as much right to ingest pyeas as Christians have to share wine in holy communion.
In 1990, the justices denied constitutional protection to the Native American Church's use of the peyote cactus. Several Oregon church members were fired from their jobs and denied unemployment benefits for using the drug during off-hours.
The church claims to have 250,000 members, with membership highest in urban areas such as Minneapolis and in the Southwest, said Turner.
The Drug Enforcement Agency has an exception for Indian pyrexote use in its list of illegal drugs, and more than 100 drug exemptions protecting the practice.
Compost King transforms useless into utility
The Associated Press
MOUNT VERNON, Maine — He's been described as the Compost King and the Julia Child of garbage. His ability to get rid of organic waste has drawn interest from Soviet agriculturists, the Army and Walt Disney World.
Al Brinton turns such unlikely ingredients as sewage, TNT, chicken carcasses and diseased potatoes into rich compost, custom-tuning mixtures and methods to make sure everything rots just right.
At his small but well-equipped Woods End Research Laboratory on an old farm in this hilly central Maine town, Binton shows what can go wrong if a compost "recipe" is not designed with precision.
He removes the cap from a jar and a rank odor of rotten eggs and sewage pierces the air.
"We can produce some really outrageous, offensive odors," he said.
"We have shocked some customers by showing them what odor potential this product has," said Brinton, who
has been called in to correct smelly composting operations that have come under attack from outraged neighbors.
Like a good garden compost heap, the results of Brinton's work can be used as substitutes for fertilizers. But they are not all that useful and so develop into useful soil fungicides.
Whatever the mixture, Brinton makes sure the necessary time is allowed for a complete chemical transformation.
"You can't hasten nature," he said. "I think of it as wine ripening."
His successes include the work he did for a contractor for the Army, which brought Brinton in to show how to compost some of the hundreds of tons of aging TNT dumped on military bases.
In a pilot project in Oregon, Brinton found the optimum mixture to break down the explosive in waste from a vegetable-processing plant and manure from a nearby buffalo ranch.
Brinton studied soil and plant science in Europe before going into business 15 years ago.
In Maine, he encountered skepticism from environmental officials when he hatched a plan to compost hundreds of tons of rotting chickens that had died in a fire. The carcasses had been buried and threatened to contaminate ground water.
Brinton found that the nitrogen-rich carcasses needed to be mixed with lots of carbon in order to rot fast and odor-free.
His final compost concoction — chickens, sawdust and chicken manure — turned into compost within three days of being mixed, said Jim Brooks of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.
"About the only thing you could tell was part of the chicken was the tip of the beak." Brooks said.
In Florida, Brinton's lab helped devise a project that mixes blue crab scraps with cypress chips to make a compost he says is richer in nutrients than peat moss.
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COMING TO THEATRES EVERYWHERE SEPTEMBER 27
We're Conoco, the Hottest Brand Going. And if you're an Engineering Major, have we got a date for you. On Tuesday, September 24,1991, from 6:30 pm 8:00 pm, we'll be hosting a reception in Room 2022, Learned Hall, and we'd like to meet you. Come find out about the career opportunities at Conoco. And we'll be back on campus to interview on October 15- 16,1991. So, mark these dates, it could be the beginning of a very hot future.
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