on this edition for sunday, february 23rd. new revelations about how the federal reserve board reacted to the financial crisis of 2008. also, indigenous people living on remote rivers around the world are communicating with each other about cleaning up their waterways and exercising their rights. >> those test of thousands of voices, they have been ignored over the years. they've been disenfranchised. but as they come together, there's been some realizations along the way. and the government's still struggling to care for troops returning home with ptsd. next on "pbs newshour weekend." >> "pbs newshour weekend" made

possible by lewis b. and louise hi arefeld r komen. the wallach family in memory of miriam and ira d. wallach. bernard and irene schwartz. roslyn p. walter. corporate funding provided by mutual of america. designing customized, individual, and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support is provided by -- and by the corporation for public brother casting and contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tish wnet studios from lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. the united states today cautioned russia against intervening in ukraine. now that the pro-moscow regime has surrendered power to those seeking closer ties to the west. national security adviser susan rice said it's in the interests

of both the united states and russia that peace in ukraine be maintained. dozens were killed in clashes there earlier in the week. >> there is not an inherent contradiction, david, between a ukraine that has longstanding historic and cultural ties to russia and a modern ukraine that wants to integrate more closely with europe. >> viktor yanukovych is believed to be in a city near the russian border. eastern ukraine is closely aligned with russia than the western part of the country and some think ukraine could split into two. in one city there were clashes between pro-russian and pro-western demonstrators. rice said she hoped the countries would remain intact. >> it's not in the interests of ukraine or russia or europe or the united states to see the country split. it's in nobody's interest to see violence return and the situation escalate. >> this weekend in kiev, throngs of ukrainians toured yanukovych's luxurious home and went aboard his yacht. the grounds had been off-limits

to the public until yesterday. the ukrainian parliament voted to grant new powers to the speaker of the house until presidential elections are held in late may. lawmakers dismissed top yanukovych aides. the nation's leading powers announced new steps to stimulate the economy pledging to maintain low interest rates and take other measures to spur economic growth. the international monetary fund expects the world economy to grow by 3.7% this year and 3.9% in 2015. growth in the united states is expected to be slower than that. there's been a deadly taliban attack on afghan government troops. authorities say 21 afghan soldiers were killed when hundreds of taliban insurgents attacked an army checkpoint in the east of the country. the vast majority of american and nato forces are expected to leave afghanistan by the end of the year. there's also been a deadly attack against police in neighboring pakistan. authorities say a bomb exploded in a motorized rickshaw, killing

seven people and wounding ten. the blast occurred in an area where -- in pakistan where the taliban is active. new information how severely immigration proceedings have slowed following the government shutdown. ap says more than 37,000 immigration hearings were pushed back, some for months, some into next year. the delays are also attributed to a ballooning caseload and staffing shortages. they affect both those who might get green cards and those who might be deported. taking selfies, pictures of yourself, may be a relatively new trend. but one boston college photography professor has been at it for almost 27 years now. every day since he was 34 years old, karl baden has been taking self-portraits as part of an art project. now 61, baden plans to continue the project as long as he can. and yes, he says he did miss one day, in 1991. he says he just forgot.

in the past few days we've gotten new insights into how the nation's central bankers reacted to the global economic meltdown of 2008. this with the release of the federal reserve board's transcripts from that time. with more about this, john joins us from washington. take us back if we had a machine to 2008, what's the setting where these conversations are taking place? >> it's a moment of crisis and a period where fed officials are constantly playing catch-up, constantly trying to keep up with events that are spiraling out of control. there are moments when they feel like they're ahead of the curve but there are many moments when they're clearly behind the curve. >> so hindsight's 20/20 but let's start looking at different characters here. after the collapse of lehman brothers, what's ben bernanke

thinking? >> right after the collapse of lehman brothers is kind of his last moment of hopefulness that maybe they can escape this thing without a disaster. there's a meeting actually two days after that sunday, that fateful sunday night, when the government decided to let lehman brothers go. bernanke says in this meeting, maybe monetary policy, the level of interest rates, is in the right place. they had kept them at 2%. within a matter of days everything changes. they're in the process of bailing out aig. 36 hours later, ben bernanke and hank paulson go to congress and they say that the government has to step up and bail out the whole banking system. and within a matter of weeks he's moving to slash interest rates. so, you know, bernanke -- that september meeting was really a great example of him playing catch-up and not immediately recognizing the gravity of events that were in front of him. >> okay. how about tim geithner?

he later goes on to be treasury secretary. what were his positions at the time? >> tim geithner's a very interesting character here. he spends a lot of time in these meetings sparring and jousting with the fed's policy hawks. officials from regional federal reserve banks who are more worried about inflation than with the financial system stability. and geithner spends a lot of time jousting with them. frankly, you know, there's some moments here where he looks like he's behind the curve. there's a january 2008 meeting where geithner gives his assessment of the financial system, and he says it looks like the process of healing has already started. he couldn't have been more wrong in that case. >> let's talk also about janet yellen, fed chairman now. what was her behavior then, what can we glean from that? >> one of the things that got yellen this job was a sense she had very good judgment, that in 2007 when we looked at earlier

transcripts she was one of the first people to say, hey, we have real problems in this housing market. we know from their decision since 2008 she's pushed very hard to keep interest rates low. and hasn't been too worried about inflation. these 2008 transcripts i think confirm this sense that the lady has pretty good judgment. she was usually one of the people in the room saying that she was concerned that the financial system was in grave danger. >> all right, john hillsenrath from "the wall street journal," thanks so much. >> thanks a lot. now to our signature segment. an extraordinary effort is under way to connect and empower some of the world's least-powerful people. members of indigenous tribes living in remote corners of the

globe. the goal is to help them exchange ideas about how to restore their once-pristine rivers and preserve their threatened heritages and to help them understand their legal rights. newshour" special correspondent john larson traveled to alaska recently and reports. >> reporter: you're aboard a motorized canoe traveling the headwaters of the amazon in peru. now you travel the giraffe river, a tributary of the white nile, in south sudan. and now you're navigating the steward river in canada, a tributary of the longest free-flowing river on earth, the yukon of north america. all of these are among the most remote rivers in the world. and the indigenous people who live along them are being connected, at least in part, by one man.

>> had a couple of canoes, we were going to go down the river and talk to people in every village along the way. >> reporter: back in 2007, john waterhouse, a tribal leader and environmentalist who has spent the last 20 years in alaska, was asked to write a report about the yukon river. the plan was to take a canoe trip and interview villagers who depend on the river for their survival. >> three weeks before we left i sat down with everybody and i said, this isn't going to work. they said what do you mean? and i said, nobody on the whole planet is going to care. it's just too kumbaya, people are going to think it's a bunch of hippies going down the river. we've got to add in modern science. >> reporter: what happened next would play an important role helping define tribal rights along the yukon and connecting river people around the world. the group brought sophisticated water quality testing instruments, tagging precise locations in the river. you were dragging a probe out the back of cat 92, just like

your great ancestors had done. and that probe was testing for what? >> 13 different parameters. ♪ >> reporter: waterhouse's river trips became yearly events dubbed "healing journeys." supported by the yukon river intertribal watershed council, the largest international organization of indigenous people in the world. the yukon watershed is immense, stretching 2,000 miles fr s fro canada to alaska, an area almost twice the size of california and rich in natural resources. and while it's pristine by much of the world's standards, the river is not nearly as clean as you might think. mining operations have polluted the river for decades. villages are littered with hazardous waste. the u.s. military discarded hundreds of thousands of fuel drums on the banks of the river. and all the while, the yukon salmon run, which had anybodied tribal people here for thousands

of years, began collapsing. >> what a lot of our measurements have been is just to get an idea of what is normal for the yukon river. >> reporter: waterhouse's team helped train yukon river villagers to conduct sophisticated water sampling. and each year these premote villagers sent their growing database off to federal scientists. ryan tuohy is an environment algae on the for u.s. geological survey. >> on the whole it was really impressive how good the data was. and these are folks that literally live, you know, days from the nearest road system that are doing this. >> it's everything to us. >> reporter: tribal leaders from around the world began coming to the yukon for tribal meetings and inviting john waterhouse to travel to their own remote rivers. first he visited the lena river in siberia. and then to the urabomba river in peru. the people there were facing

some of the same problems that the tribes along the yukon had faced. >> they know that something's wrong with the fish in the main stem of the river. they would like to understand what the cause of that is. >> reporter: like the yukon, the urabomba is also threatened. the area is rich in oil, gas, natural resources and has suffered pipeline breaks and toxic spills from gold mines. last year, waterhouse brought his testing equipment. his team is now teaching the people to gather information on the river. >> translator: comes have been coming in and polluting. they say they don't, but they are. >> reporter: tribal leaders hope with waterhouse's help they can gather scientific evidence that might help them keep their river clean. >> translator: they can show us how to face these companies and the timber industries that have invaded our lands and resources. >> reporter: back on the yukon in north america, tribal leaders

last year did just that. they used their years of water quality testing to create a detailed yukon watershed plan. the plan included a disarmingly simple vision -- to be able to drink water directly from the yukon river. something that's no longer possible in many places. >> our responsibility now is to capture those water rights. we have talked to the federal government and put them on notice, this is at the direction of our leadership, we expect gocht confrontation. >> reporter: the plan put canadian and u.s. governments, city landfill, sewage, power authorities, as well as oil, gas and mining companies on notice. >> one of my first phone calls was just, what the hell do you folks think you're doing? i said, we're asserting our rights. if i'm a gold miner that sounds like a threat. you can do whatever you want as long as you're not infringing upon the rights to clean water.

>> reporter: the united nations, the u.s. and canadian governments, have all stated that tribal people do have legal rights involving clean water. rights which will likely be tested in courtrooms in coming years. to what extent is this a david and goliath story? of all these thousands, tens of thousands of davids starting to talk to each other? >> well, when you put it that way, tens of thousands of davids, that's a pretty strong voice. those tens of thousands of voices, they have been ignored over the years. they've been disenfranchised. but as they come together, there's been some realizations along the way. there's a realization that actually is their legal right to have clean water. >> and of course we get requests from up and down the river. >> reporter: i met waterhouse and his wife photographer mary marshall in alaska this winter they had received a second grant from the national science foundation for what they call the network of indigenous

knowledge. the network will connect river people in alaska and canada with tribes in siberia, peru, and soon, south sudan and botswana. allowing them to share scientific information and cultural histories. >> there are so many voices, so many unheard voices in this world. there are indigenous people who live very far away from any city or place that we're familiar with. and for them to be found and recognized and handed a microphone is just huge. >> then when it's time to record, you push the red button like this -- >> reporter: chris ranier, a "national geographic" explorer, has made a living documenting the lives of the world's most remote people. as part of the network he's now helping teach them how to gather and upload their stories. >> so we've brought in computers, cameras, video cameras, to give them an opportunity to share the stories

of their forests, of the river, fishing, kind of create a connection to alaska, to many of the indigenous cultures around the world. >> reporter: the stories include this valley of death where they believe the devil came to earth. and this, a six square mile preserve with more species of life than any other similar-sized place on earth. they believe this is the birthplace of all life. and the gateway to the next world. and this is where an important additional element of the network of indigenous knowledge comes in. scientists are becoming increasingly receptive to what's recognized as traditional knowledge. the extensive collection of environmental observations and wisdom passed down among indigenous people. people who have lived in one

environment, in many cases for thoums of years. >> there's just a wealth of information in that indigenous knowledge that can really help western scientists focus their research questions even more. >> reporter: especially as the world's scientists now attempt to understand the effects of climate change. for example, yukon tribes are now helping u.s. scientists measure melting permafrost, the layer of underground ice that we used to believe was permanently frozen. but not anymore. >> in order to assess the changes that the climate are having on the environment, we have to have long-term data. >> reporter: and it's that idea of the long term, how the modern study of global change, could benefit from ancient knowledge. this year, waterhouse will return to siberia and peru for the results of water quality tests and collect some of the gathered stories, helping some of the most remote people on earth talk with each other about

the health of the world's rivers. learn how melting ice threatens the life styes of native alaskans. visit newshour.pbs.org. it's estimated that nearly 1,000 additional iraq and afghanistan veterans are being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder every week. a report out thursday by the institutes of medicine said despite dozens of the programs the military has to help treat the mental illnesses veterans suffer few are proving effective. for more, we're joined by greg of "usa today" who's covering this story. the department of defense asked for this review. >> it really was a review that -- the request was really built on something that happened last year. the institute of medicine had completed a four-year review of just how prevalent the problem was. and they found that the numbers of folks who were ill were really kind of getting so large

that both the pentagon and va were having trouble staying ahead of it. the pentagon asked for this report. we've got prevention programs out there, why aren't they working? essentially what this panel at institute of medicine found was that while some of these ideas in theory made a lot of sense, when they were introduced earlier in the war, that there really hadn't been a strong effort by the pentagon and some of the branches to try to understand whether to do some real strong scientific research, whether the programs worked. they found that in fact they hadn't. >> which ideas were they focusing on in their report? >> they looked at kind of -- they built on a rand study that identified about 94 of these programs out there, and they -- from that they kind of focused on some of the key ones. and i think at the top of the list was really kind of the granddaddy of all the programs. that's an army one called comprehensive soldier fitness. it's now called comprehensive

soldier and family fitness. it costs quite a lot of money. it reaches hundreds of thousands of soldiers. and they found that they didn't think it really worked. >> and so what's the army's response to this when they say that this isn't working? if it's been used on a million different soldiers now? >> well, they're very defensive about it. they in fact think that it does work. they say their internal scoring shows that it improves positive thinking, it kind of helps soldiers learn to thrive, helps them deal with adversity. they do admit, the army does, when they created the program in 2009, as the numbers of ptsd and suicide were beginning to rise, they were trying to deal with prevention at that point. and they modified the program since then. it really isn't so much a prevention program, they say, now they say it's more to improve the quality of soldiers' lives, help them deal with adversity. >> so what is working? have suicides gone down? >> no.

well, actually in this last year there was a reduction for the first time among active-duty troops. those who are not guard, reserve, on inactive status. they found the numbers had dropped for the first time in almost ten years. by about 20% wind the army. and that was something they were very happy about. but it was a modest decline. it isn't clear whether they've actually turned the corner. the army will say that themselves. they still have large numbers as you quoted of folks who are developing ptsd. some of the programs they say show promise. there was one small program the army has called battle mind which is designed to help soldiers deal with re-inter grace, helping them understand what they go through in combat are feelings that others do, try to normalize those feelings. and that has been shown to have some modest benefits through peer-reviewed research. >> all right, greg, "usa today," thanks so much for joining us. >> my pleasure.

this is "pbs newshour weekend sunday." finally tonight, the winter olympics in sochi are ending but the paralympics are set to begin. one of the featured sports? sled hockey. jay chefski in chicago explains what it is and introduces you to a one-time olympian in the sport. >> reporter: the gear that a sled hockey player puts on to for a game is pretty much the same as for an able-bodied player. with one key difference. instead of skates, there is this sled with blades on the bottom. sled hockey is played by people with lower-limb disabilities like spinal cord injuries and amputations. how this is different from regular hockey? >> regular hockey uses legs, we're using our arms. >> reporter: one other difference, each player has two hockey sticks. patrick burn has been playing for about 15 years.

he's not only a player, he's one of the coaches. >> lost a leg in a construction accident in '92. just really changed my -- changed my life. >> reporter: and at first, he says he was suicidal. >> before i'd lost my leg, i looked across the street and i seen a person in a wheelchair. and i seen how she was struggling. and i said to myself, if i was ever in that situation i would think i'd rather be dead. >> reporter: patrick says that before his accident, he was never much into sports. but he says sled hockey and other sports have changed his life. patrick burn played on the 2002 u.s. sled hockey team at the paralympics. the team was a long shot. but they came back with gold. >> words can't describe it. tears started rolling. it's just like, did we just win the gold? the great thing about sports that i love, and a lot of the guys here love, it makes you

feel like you're not disabled. >> join us online and on-air tomorrow on the "newshour." the supreme court hears arguments in a case testing the epa's power to regulate greenhouse gases. plus what is the tpp? we explain the major trade pact with asia in the works. that's it for this edition of "pbs newshour weekend." i'm hari sreenivasan. thanks for watching.

>> "pbs newshour weekend" is made possible by lewis b. and louise hi arefeld komen. judy and josh westin. joyce vaction vale. the wallach family in memory of miriam and ira dean wallach. the millstein family. bernard and irene schwartz. roslyn p. walter. corporate funding provided by mutual of america, designing customized, individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support is provided by -- and by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. when you read "catcher in the rye,"

you're just like, "oh, my god, somebody gets it." there had not been a voice like that. "salinger," in select theaters september 6. and "james baldwin: the price of the ticket" has been provided by the corporation for public broadcasting. original funding for this program is provided by... and by the following... support for "american masters" provided by... and by contributions to your pbs station