BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

Fair trade coffee that economically assists Native Americans.

"The mission of the White Earth Land Recovery Project is to facilitate recovery of the original land base of the White Earth Indian Reservation, while preserving and restoring traditional practices of sound land stewardship, language fluency, community development, and strengthening our spiritual and cultural heritage." -- From Native Harvest

Here are just a few of the projects your purchase helps support on the Ojibwe homeland in Northern Minnesota:

Alternative Energy

Mino-Miijim (Good Food) Program

Sustainable Communities

Forest Stewardship

Sturgeon

Wild Rice Campaign

Education

Language

Mishtadim Horse Academy

And you'll know that you are doing a good deed every morning when you savor the two 8 oz. packs of ground coffee:

8 oz. Yergacheffe Ground

"This rich coffee with excite your senses with its floral and tangerine subtleties!"

Makade-mashkikiwaaboo (Coffee) 8 oz. Med. Ground

"A rich chocolate body with abundant fruit overtones, make to enliven the senses. Makade-mashkikiwaaboo"

Below is an excerpted description of just one project your purchase will help support:

Alternative Energy/Wind Power (Gaa-Noodin-oke)

The Great Wind is a constant in our lives as Anishinaabeg people. Indeed, Ningaabii’anong Noodin, the West Wind, is a part of our oldest history.

We are fully aware of the impact of coal-fired power plants on our lakes. Almost every lake on our reservation already has a fish consumption advisory on it, largely from mercury and heavy metals. The largest point of origin being coal fired power plants and incinerators. Similarly we are aware of the environmental injustices of both nuclear power and huge dam projects. Our relatives both to the south and north are already devastated by these bad energy choices. On the other side are the alternatives: wind and solar.

Our reservation’s western region has a class four wind potential. As well, we sit on the cusp of the Great Plains, considered to be the Saudi Arabia of Wind Power by most energy analysts. Indeed some 28 tribes are working specifically on the issues of alternative energy generation, distribution, and energy justice within this region.

Our organization has done the same. In 2002, we erected our first wind generator, a Jacobs’s 20kw wind turbine, which is the first we hope, of many small wind generators, and of perhaps a larger initiative in the western portion of the reservation.

Based on the idea that local people can make a differene, the White Earth Land Recovery Project, local farmers and the White Earth Tribal Council are looking at the environmental, cultural and economic options posed in energy choices.

Most of the energy supplied to the White Earth Reservation comes from coal. In northern Minnesota we see the rail cars carrying thousands of tons of coal through the area daily and each car on those trains represents air pollution, thousands of gallons of polluted water and a deep hole in the earth where the coal was extracted from. Once the coal is burned, its toxins end up in our lakes and rivers with a majority of the lakes in Minnesota and specifically on the White Earth Reservation presently haing fish consumption advisories on them for heavy metals and mercury. The two largest sources of these pollutants are coal-fired power plants and incinerators. Coal also causes global warming and climate change. Carbon dioxide is the major cause of global climate change. In the past two-hundred years, the amount of carbon dioxide gases in our atmosphere has grown by almost one-third. That is more than in the past twenty million years. As well, the earth's snow cover has diminished by 10 percent since the late 1960's and since the 1990's the thickness of the Arctic sea ice from late summer to early autumn has diminished by 40 percent. As a result of these ice melts, the sea level is on the rise and waterborne and airborne diseases are exploding, as evidenced by the West Nile virus that continues to spread east.

-- and remember, your Fair Trade coffee buying also supports the ongoing work and expansion of the BuzzFlash Internet News Network.

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS