Murkowski pressured by Natives to vote 'no' on Kavanaugh

Maddow reported on this tonight.




September 9, 2018

Suzanne Downing

8 Comments
Murkowski pressured by Natives to vote ‘no’ on Kavanaugh


http://mustreadalaska.com/murkowski-being-pressured-by-natives-note-no-kavanaugh/



JOHN STURGEON CASE IS KEY TO THEIR ARGUMENT

Native Alaskans are emerging as a pressure point on Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who may hold one of the key votes for the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hawkins

Native activists have been seen filing into her Washington D.C. office the past two weeks. They told Huffington Post that climate change has already damaged the lives of Natives in Alaska and they’re concerned about Kavanaugh’s environmental record.

Specifically, one Alaska Native group has raised concerns about a major case pending before the Supreme Court: Sturgeon vs. Frost (National Park Service).

The court will take up the case of the non-Native moose hunter on Nov. 5, and Natives say that ruling in favor of public access to federal land would devastate their subsistence fishing.

In 2007, John Sturgeon was on his annual hunt on the Nations River in the Yukon-Charley National Preserve and was using a hovercraft to navigate the seasonally shallow waters when Park Service officials stopped him.

The Park Service maintains it has authority over the waterways that run through national parks, while outdoor advocates and the State of Alaska maintain that navigable waters are regulated by the State. Waterways in Alaska are considered transportation corridors all year long — by boat in summer and by snow machine in winter. Without access to waterways, most of Alaska would be inaccessible.

[Read: John Sturgeon case heading back to Supreme Court]

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Kendall-Miller, who is with the Native Americans Rights Fund, also wrote that Kavanaugh would show no favor toward minority voters. In an op-ed in the Anchorage Daily News she wrote “American Indian and Alaska Native voters continue to encounter language barriers, enormous distances to polling places, purged voter rolls, and arbitrary changes in voter identification laws. Judge Kavanaugh’s track record shows little regard for minority voters.”



Alaska Natives were a key to Murkowski’s re-election, when she ran a successful write-in campaign against Joe Miller. There is little evidence that they encountered problems voting when they helped Murkowski become the first U.S. senator in more than 50 years to win an election with a write-in campaign. In fact, with Alaska’s absentee ballots, Permanent Fund automatic registration, and early voting locations, Alaska is a “no excuse” voting state.

Tlingit-Haida Central Council President Richard Peterson wrote to Murkowski and said that the 30,000 tribal members his organization represents would be endangered by Kavanaugh’s confirmation, “because of his erroneous views on indigenous rights and tribal sovereignty.

“We are concerned moving his nomination forward due to his unsound views and the potential injury that his misperceptions would wreak upon your Native Alaskan constituents, our Native Hawaiian friends and fellow indigenous peoples. I write to you, asking you to vote no, and oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination,” Peterson’s letter stated.

“We also write in support of Senator Tom Udall’s request for Judge Kavanaugh records on any Native American matters during his tenure at the White House. We hope, no beyond that, we implore that the Committee on the Judiciary will make available the entire record, so that the Senate can make an informed decision,” Peterson wrote..........................................





POLITICS 09/08/2018 07:00 am ET Updated 2 days ago
Lisa Murkowski’s Biggest Reason To Oppose Brett Kavanaugh May Not Be Abortion Rights

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lisa-murkowski-brett-kavanaugh-native-alaska_us_5b92bed6e4b0511db3e20921



Alaska Natives are urging the senator to vote no. She owes her re-election to them.

By Jennifer Bendery
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), always keeps us guessing where she'll come down on major Senate votes

WASHINGTON ― For all the speculation about Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and whether she’ll vote for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, there is an issue beyond abortion rights perhaps weighing more heavily on her as she makes her decision: protections for Alaska Natives.

Advocates for Alaska Natives, who were crucial to Murkowski’s re-election in 2010, tell HuffPost they’ve been flooding her office all week and urging her to oppose Kavanaugh.

They’re raising concerns about his record on climate change, which is already causing real damage in Alaska. As a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Kavanaugh in 2017 held that the Environmental Protection Agency lacks the authority to regulate hydrofluorocarbons, chemicals linked to global warming. They’re also unhappy with his record on voting rights. Kavanaugh voted in 2012 to uphold a South Carolina voter ID law that disenfranchised more than 80,000 minority registered voters.

The most pressing matter, however, is a case the Supreme Court is reviewing on Nov. 5 that could devastate Alaska Natives’ subsistence fishing rights. The case, Sturgeon v. Frost, raises questions about who has the authority to regulate water in national parks in the state ― the federal government or the state of Alaska. The case arose after Alaska resident John Sturgeon, who was on an annual moose-hunting trip, was riding a hovercraft on a river running through a national park when Park Service officials threatened to give him a citation. Sturgeon is arguing that his ability to use his hovercraft in this scenario is about states’ rights and that federal authority should be eliminated.

Kavanaugh has previously ruled to limit federal power in cases before him. If he gets confirmed and votes with the other four right-leaning justices in favor of Sturgeon’s argument, it will destroy the way of life for tribal communities who rely on subsistence fishing in protected federal waters, some Alaska Native rights groups say.

“This would be a death knell to us in Alaska, absolutely,” said Heather Kendall-Miller, an Alaska Native and an attorney with the Native American Rights Fund. “If this goes down, Alaska will be in a state of chaos when the fishing season begins. There will be lots of civil disobedience. It will be explosive.”.......................................