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In the Great Basin, refugees beget refugees. European settlers who physically performed the most destructive jobs were in many cases refugees from war and economic crisis in their homelands. My ancestors, the Irish, endured centuries of British domination and a wave of Irish fled starvation when the Great Famine struck Ireland a few years before the Great Basin was settled. Many Irish were involved in building railroads and in mining in Nevada. Richer European settlers – the mining bosses and ranch owners – possessed too much capital to be thought of as refugees in the traditional sense, but they demonstrated a certain spiritual disease produced by the belief that humans can safely take more from the land than the land freely gives. ...

Jennifer Lahl is founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Lahl couples her 25 years of experience as a pediatric critical care nurse, a hospital administrator, and a senior-level nursing manager with a deep passion to speak for those who have no voice. She is called upon to speak alongside lawmakers and members of the scientific community, even being invited to speak to members of the European Parliament in Brussels to address issues of egg trafficking. She serves on the North American Editorial Board for Ethics and Medicine. She made her writing and directing debut producing the documentary film Eggsploitation, which has been awarded Best Documentary by the California Independent Film Festival and has sold in more than 30 countries. She is also Director, Executive Producer, and Co-Writer of Anonymous Father’s Day, a documentary film exploring the stories of women and men who were created by anonymous sperm donation. Her latest film, Breeders: A Subclass of Women? on surrogacy, was released January 2014, and completes the trilogy of films exploring the ethics of third-party reproduction. ...

It was a typical scene for many on the Tohono O’odham Nation: a Border Patrol agent pulled behind us in a green-striped vehicle after we had stopped to check directions. We were a group of five people in two cars. We had no idea what they wanted. Documentary filmmaker Adam Markle was going to interview tribal member Joshua Garcia at the San Miguel border gate, only a mile away. It was October 12, Columbus Day, a fitting date to be on the land of the Tohono O’odham. ...

This article, from Will Falk of DGR Great Basin (and photographed by Max Wilbert), looks further at the issue Piñon Pine and Juniper forest destruction that is rapidly becoming a campaign focus of DGR members and allies in the region. “Standing in a pinyon-juniper forest on a high slope above Cave Valley not far from Ely, Nevada, I am lost in an ancient vision. It is a vision born under sublime skies stretching above wide, flat valleys bounded by the dramatic mountains of the Great Basin. The vision grows with the rising flames of morning in the east. The night was cold, but clear, and the sun brings a welcome warmth. When the sun crests the mountains, red and orange clouds stream across the sky while shadows pull back from the valley floor to reveal pronghorn antelope dancing through the sage brush. A few ridge lines away, the clatter of talus accompanies the movement of bighorn sheep. The slap and crack of bighorn rams clashing their heads together echoes through the valley.” ...

The Castle Rock Prairie Dogs are Gone: Open Letter from an Exile By Jennifer Murnan, DGR Colorado I wore this shirt, long-sleeved, multi-patterned, funky, well tailored hand-me-down for almost every day I worked on the prairie dog relocation at the “Promenade” site in Castle Rock Colorado. The “Promenade” site was only that in the avaricious life-sucking minds of the capitalist pig developers. The “site” was really a scrap of prairie community, a last survivor already lacerated by monstrous earth movers, surrounded by apartments, highway, box stores, a mall, parking lots—anti-life. ...

At this point, there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that civilization, especially industrial civilization, inherently destroys the land. It’s part of the very nature of this culture. If you need any more convincing, research into the history of mining in the Great Basin will provide you evidence aplenty. Today, we bring you an excerpt from a book called “The Piñon Pine: A Natural and Cultural History” by Ronald M. Lanner from the University of Nevada Press, originally published in 1981. This passage discusses the impact of the mining boom in Nevada in the mid- and late-1800s. We invite you to read this passage, and to reflect that modern mining, far from being less destructive, might even be worse, due to the bigger machines, more toxic chemicals, and abundance of fossil fuels (as well as the fact that such mining, once restricted to small areas, has metastasized around the world and destroyed some of the most beautiful and pristine lands on Earth). ...

Editor’s note: Deep Green Resistance members, working together with Wildlands Defense and local activists, have been working hard to defend prairie dogs in Colorado for the past year. Thus far they have had several victories, protecting hundreds of prairie dogs from extermination. Learn more about their campaigns, click here. Meanwhile, in Utah, a federal judge recently struck down protections for an endangered species of prairie dogs that only live in this state. On top of centuries of poisoning, shooting, trapping, habitat destruction, and worse, these creatures cannot take more abuse. They need defending. Here is the story: ...

Max Wilbert, a long-time activist with Deep Green Resistance, has been working alongside indigenous peoples and other residents of eastern-central Nevada for the past few years as part of an effort to stop the theft of the land’s water. The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) wants to build a giant pipe to take water from these communities to fuel further expansion of the city of Las Vegas into otherwise uninhabitable desert. The project would cause destruction on many fronts, including to natural communities, to the life practices of indigenous inhabitants, to the economic livelihoods of other rural human communities, to the already dreadful air quality of Salt Lake City, and even to the pocketbooks of Las Vegas taxpayers as they subsidize a multi billion dollar giveaway to real estate “developers.” ...

Editors note: this article from Deep Green Resistance member and slam poet world champ Dominique Christina was published recently in the wake of the latest mass shooting in Virginia. In the piece, Dominique reflects on the media treatment of different cases: they make the killing of white people into tragedies (which they are), but don’t do the same to the killings of black women and men. Instead, these killings are fetishized and viewed over and over again without consideration for the family and friends of the victims. This is not a new tradition in America; lynchings were often public events in the South. Bring your kids, bring a picnic. It’s a sensation, and it reflects how white supremacy is still the ruling law of this land, and how people of color are still not viewed as fully human inside this system. We invite you to read Dominique’s piece and reflect on her words. ...

Lierre Keith, Deep Green Resistance co-founder, recently wrote one of the most powerful articles that we have read in a long, long time. Her piece, titled The Girls and the Grasses, is like poetry. We invite you to read it here: Link: http://dgrnewsservice.org/2015/08/25/lierre-keith-the-girls-and-the-grasses/ – Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International writes about the colonial and racist origins of the “conservation” movement. His organization helps push an alternate perspective. ...