admin, Author at Tulalip News

Western tent caterpillars back en masse this spring

The Western tent caterpillar’s (Malacosoma californicum pluviale) body is dark with spots of white, orange and blue. White and orange-yellow tufts of hair poke out from each segment.

Wiggling masses of white-orange-and-black caterpillars are emerging from their silken nests to munch on tender leaves – signaling a second spring when Western tent caterpillars might be out in big numbers.

“I have seen them out. They’re not as bad as last year. What I’m guessing is we’re getting a resurgence of a population that peaked last year,” said Chris Benedict, agriculture agent at the Washington State University Extension office in Whatcom County.

“Though they’ll be out, they’ll be less of an issue than last year,” he added.

The native caterpillars are considered a nuisance but largely harmless. They are the larvae form of brown, stubby-looking moths that will emerge from cocoons later in June or July to mate and lay eggs.

Population booms are cyclical.

The caterpillars hatch from eggs over-wintering on tree branches. Once they hatch, they start eating.

They prefer the foliage of most deciduous trees and shrubs such as alder, roses and fruit trees.

And while the hungry caterpillars put a visible dent in the surrounding greenery – which people find unsightly, along with the masses of worms – they usually don’t kill the healthy trees they feast on, according to gardening experts.

But small trees might not be able to recover from such defoliation.

The WSU Master Gardener program has been fielding questions from the public.

“We’ve been seeing folks bring in some young tent caterpillars wanting to know what they are and what to do about them,” said Beth Chisholm, master gardener and coordinator of the Community First Garden Project through WSU Extension.

She said people shouldn’t be “too alarmed.”

If people want to get the caterpillars off their fruit trees, Chisholm recommended they cut off the infested branch, put it in a bag, tie it up and put it in the garbage.

CATERPILLAR CONTROL

• Insecticides are discouraged. Unless trees are already weak, tent caterpillar damage isn’t permanent; trees will grow new leaves after the caterpillars have left. Poisons also can kill beneficial insects, including those that attack the caterpillars.

• Since 2012 was a big year for tent caterpillars, they could return in large numbers again this spring. This fall or winter, pick out and destroy the moth’s eggs, which appear in foamy, gray, half-inch cases around twigs and on tree trunks.

• Strip or prune out the tent-like nests found at the end of branches as soon as they appear. Remove the nest in the early morning or evening, when most of the caterpillars will be inside.

• Bring questions and caterpillar-infested plant samples to the WSU Extension’s Master Gardener diagnostic clinic during regular business hours at the extension office, 1000 N. Forest St. in Bellingham, or call 360-676-6736.

• Learn more by going online to whatcom.wsu.edu and typing “tent caterpillars” into the search window.

SOURCE: WSU Extension Reach Kie Relyea at kie.relyea@bellinghamherald.com or call 360-715-2234.

Missing money: Feds halt funding for $361M reservation pipeline

30 April 2013

MATT VOLZ, Associated Press

• The irregularities are among several alleged corruption issues on the Rocky Boy’s reservation in northern Montana, said Kenneth Blatt St. Marks, a former tribal chairman.

BOX ELDER, Mont. (AP) – Federal officials temporarily stopped funding a $361 million water pipeline for a Native American reservation in Montana after learning that millions of project dollars were missing and a Chippewa Cree leader in charge of the project steered federal dollars to a company he owns.

The tribe has since replaced the missing money, but federal funding for the pipeline won’t resume until tribal leaders show they have permanently fixed the problems, Bureau of Reclamation regional director Michael J. Ryan said.

“While we commend the tribe for restoring the funds soon after the shortage and for self-reporting the issue, this reallocation of funds without consultation is a serious non-compliance matter with potentially long-lasting implications,” Ryan said in a March 18 letter obtained by The Associated Press.

Pipeline funding is controlled by the Bureau of Reclamation, which is part of the Interior Department. Bureau spokesman Tyler Johnson confirmed that the agency’s inspector general is conducting an investigation, but Johnson declined to provide details.

The irregularities are among several alleged corruption issues on the Rocky Boy’s reservation in northern Montana, said Kenneth Blatt St. Marks, a former tribal chairman. Marks said he reported the missing pipeline funds to the Bureau of Reclamation and that he is cooperating with the inspector general and with federal prosecutors in an investigation into alleged corruption on the reservation.

“There’s millions and millions and millions of dollars missing here,” claimed St. Marks, whom Ryan also identified as having a potential conflict of interest in the pipeline project. “This reservation is upside down.”

Calls to tribal officials were referred to attorney Dan Belcourt, who said he was not authorized by acting tribal chairman Richard Morsette to comment on the pipeline project or St. Marks’ allegations. Belcourt released a brief statement Saturday on behalf of tribal leaders that said they are “actively working with BOR on the issues raised in that letter.”

“The tribe and BOR share a common goal of seeing the Rocky Boy’s/North Central Montana Regional Water System project through to completion,” the statement said.

Congress approved the project in 2002 to bring reliable drinking water to the poverty-stricken reservation in the shadow of Montana’s Bear Paw mountains. Construction began in 2006, and when it is completed, the pipeline will run about 50 miles from Lake Elwell, serving as many as 30,000 people on and off the reservation.

Congress originally estimated the project’s cost at $228 million. That has since risen to $361 million due to inflation and rising costs.

It was unclear what effect a funding delay would have on constructing the pipeline, which is now 22 percent complete. As of last year, the bureau had allocated $96 million in addition to $10 million allocated by Congress.

St. Marks said that, as then-tribal chairman, he discovered at a Dec. 31 meeting with tribal leaders that $3.5 million was missing from Chippewa Cree bank accounts for the water project. Johnson declined to confirm the amount missing, saying it was part of the investigation.

No one could explain where the money went, St. Marks said. The meeting was held at the Chippewa Cree Construction Corp., the company that heads the project.

St. Marks reported the missing funds to the Bureau of Reclamation. In January, the Chippewa Cree Business Committee – the tribe’s governing council – replaced the money with cash from other tribal enterprises, he said.

It still is not clear what happened to the missing money.

Tony Belcourt is CEO of the construction company and head of the pipeline project. Belcourt also co-owns MT Waterworks, a company formed in 2010 that was awarded a $633,000 contract by the tribal construction corporation he heads to supply pipe for the project.

St. Marks said he fired Belcourt as the construction corporation’s CEO after the Bureau of Reclamation learned of that conflict of interest. But the eight other members of the ruling Chippewa Cree Business Committee reinstated Belcourt while St. Marks was on a trip to Washington, D.C.

That reinstatement, and St. Marks’ ownership in another company that was awarded a separate $1.9 million contract for the pipeline, prompted Ryan in his letter to tell the tribe to correct the ethics violations.

“We request that the tribe take immediate corrective action to remedy these apparent conflicts of interest,” Ryan wrote. He did not elaborate on what action the tribe had to take.

Belcourt, a former state legislator, declined to comment Friday and referred questions to his cousin, tribal attorney Dan Belcourt, who said he was not authorized to comment.

St. Marks was the owner of Arrow Enterprises, a private construction company that was awarded the $1.9 million contract before he became the tribe’s chairman. St. Marks said he turned over the company to his wife to end any conflict of interest.

But Johnson, of the Bureau of Reclamation, said the federal agency has not accepted that arrangement and the agency is requesting action to resolve the conflict.

In his letter, Ryan said the Chippewa Cree’s accounting of project funds was not accurate and lacked supporting data such as bank statements, balance sheets and expense statements. Johnson said Friday that the tribe has submitted additional financial information and corrected its accounting.

Still, Ryan gave the tribe until April 29 to resolve the rest of the problems and avoid more funding delays.

St. Marks became tribal chairman in November but was impeached in March by the business committee, which leveled seven charges against him ranging from inappropriate sexual comments to an employee to trading in two tribal vehicles so he could buy a sport-utility vehicle for personal use.

St. Marks denied the charges. He claimed he was impeached for cooperating with the federal investigation and for asking questions about the finances of some of the tribe’s biggest enterprises: its casino, health clinic and an online lender.

Which Fish Get To Recolonize After Elwha’s Dams Are Gone?

May 9, 2013 | KUOW

CONTRIBUTED BY:Ashley Ahearn

This is the second in a two-part series..

From where Mike McHenry stands he can see several gray, torpedo-shaped bodies moving slowly through the brown water of this side channel of the Elwha River, not too far from the site of the largest dam removal project in U.S. history.

“You are looking at several wild winter steelhead. These are the native remnant stock of the Elwha River,” explains McHenry, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s fisheries habitat biologist.

http://soundcloud.com/earthfix/hatchery-vs-wild-fish-in-elwha

These fish are some of the last wild steelhead in the Elwha – biologists estimate that there are between 200 and 300 left, and they’re here to spawn. But despite the fact that tearing down two dams has opened nearly 70 miles of pristine habitat on the upper Elwha River and its tributaries in the Olympic National Park, it’s made life rather difficult for fish in this river right now.

Millions of cubic yards of sediment and debris are flowing down from above the two dams, making this murky lower stretch of the river a bad place to spawn. But nevertheless, these few wild fish represent the prospect of a restored river, populated with thousands of salmon and steelhead – rivaling the numbers of fish that were here before the dams went in 100 years ago.

With that future in mind, McHenry and a team of field biologists and technicians are capturing, tagging and relocating these ready-to-spawn steelhead into a clear tributary of the Elwha, above the former site of the lower dam.

It’s a fascinating scene, filled with silvery flailing and splashing and men carrying fish from the pool up the hill to the waiting tanks to be anesthetized and tagged before the drive to the drop-off point upstream.

Then all that activity is brought to a halt by a slightly sleepy steelhead resting in a tank. It’s captured the attention of John McMillan, a contract biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“This is probably broodstock,” McMillan says.

Broodstock is another term for a fish that has spent time in a hatchery, even though its parents were wild.

This moment of discovery symbolizes a much larger debate playing out as different groups struggle over how best to rebuild the Elwha’s fish runs.

A broodstock fish discovered among wild steelhead. Credit: Ashley Ahearn

The Great Hatchery Debate

The 20th century wasn’t just an era of dam building in the Northwest. It’s also when hatcheries went up along the region’s rivers to supplement wild populations reduced by those dams, among other causes.

Some Native Americans support hatchery use as a way to restore fish runs that provided subsistence for earlier generations before the dams. But there are some who think hatcheries should not be used to speed up the return of wild, native fish.

It’s not just tribes that favor hatcheries on the Elwha as a way to provide a safe haven to keep native-origin steelhead alive in the tumultuous conditions that have accompanied dam removal.

“In this case what is very clear, crystal clear to us, is that the fish are in such bad shape and the conditions in the river are so unprecedented that any risk that the hatchery poses to these fish is more than outweighed by the benefits,” says Rob Jones, chief of production for inland fisheries with the National Marine Fisheries Service – one of the defendants in a lawsuit to stop the use of fish hatcheries on the Elwha.

Jones says wild steelhead numbers are dangerously low in the Elwha so the hatchery is necessary to steelhead survival. “The job is to help them hang on until these conditions improve enough and then, the strategy is, as we see that improvement that we start to phase out the hatchery.”

Jones says the hatcheries will be phased out when salmon and steelhead numbers increase, but the Elwha River Fish Restoration Plan does not give a set timeframe or hard date when the hatcheries will be removed.

Small-Brained Fish Or The JV Team?

Research has shown that when some types of salmon and steelhead are raised in hatcheries they can become domesticated. Other research suggests hatchery fish’s brains don’t grow as big and steelhead hatchery fish don’t produce as many offspring once they’re released. They’re also less likely to survive to adulthood than wild fish. But as the two hatcheries on the Elwha have demonstrated for years now, they’re a way to ensure that fish return to the river when conditions are hostile for wild, native fish.

The lawsuit over hatcheries in the Elwha recovery plan is a measure of how staunchly some groups oppose them.

“We believe that wild fish in the Elwha would recover better in the absence of hatchery influence,” says Jamie Glasgow, director of science and research for the Wild Fish Conservancy. “You cannot raise a fish in a hatchery without having a negative impact on it’s genetics and its behavior.”

The Wild Fish Conservancy is one of the non-profits that filed the lawsuit against the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the National Marine Fisheries Service and several governmental agencies responsible for the Elwha restoration project.

The group says that hatcheries aren’t necessary for fish recovery in the Elwha, but if hatcheries are going to beallowed, it should only be for a limited time.

“From our perspective the plan lacks teeth,” says Glasgow. “It does not give us assurance and a real commitment to when hatchery production will be stopped.”

But keep in mind, the recovery process, underway on the Elwha right now, is unlike anything scientists have ever encountered. It is truly a grand experiment. No government or tribe has ever tried anything like this before – and no one knows exactly how it will play out.

Here’s the central question: with so few wild salmon and steelhead in the Elwha, should hatchery fish like be used as sort of junior varsity subs to boost the overall numbers of fish in this river as it recovers post-dam removal?

The science isn’t settled on how hatcheries impact wild fish, though there’s been a debate among fisheries managers on that for years.

Right now the Elwha is a difficult place to live if you’re a salmon or steelhead but it’s not impossible. Last year 500 wild Chinook made the journey above the lower dam to spawn on their own.

‘We Need To Make A Decision’

The debate over hatchery use in the Elwha recovery is playing out in real time as Mike McHenry stands over the tank and looks down at the fish with the nibbled dorsal fin that John McMillan has singled out as possibly coming from the nearby hatchery.

“Here’s where we need to make a decision,” he says, looking at McMillan.

Do the biologists bring these hatchery fish up into the pristine habitat above the dam? Or do they leave them here?

The team decides to bring two hatchery-raised fish upstream, along with six wild steelhead, to be released into the newly-available habitat above the former site of the lower dam.

McHenry leans down into the cold clear waters of this side creek and unzips a black bag. Two large steelhead slip slowly into the shadows along the bank nearby.

The biologists have DNA samples from all of the fish they’re releasing today – hatchery and wild. Mike McHenry and John McMillan say that will allow them to see who spawned with whom and which pairings led to more successful offspring.

“It’s a mixture, and that’s what we have,” McHenry says. McMillan nods his head in agreement.

“Yeah. It’s all we have to work with and you figure nature will sort it out ultimately. Nature sorts out who wins and who loses — and it will.”

For now anyway, nature is getting a little bit of help in the natural selection process.

Wednesday: Elwha River Recovery Proceeds Despite Sediment Setbacks.

Weed warriors vanquishing Scotch broom on local prairie

Capable of throwing its seed as far as 20 feet with a single pop, Scotch broom is a tough invader.

By Lynda V. Mapes

Seattle Times staff reporter

Steve Ringman / The Seattle TimesBarry Bidwell walks through a patch of Scotch broom, which can grow between 6 and 12 feet tall, at the Glacial Heritage Preserve. Bidwell has battled broom for two decades. — Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times
Barry Bidwell walks through a patch of Scotch broom, which can grow between 6 and 12 feet tall, at the Glacial Heritage Preserve. Bidwell has battled broom for two decades.

Scotch broom, also called Scot’s broom, blossoms in full color at Thurston County’s Glacial Heritage Preserve. A member of the legume family, its seeds are produced in pods. The pods dry in the summer sun and open with a pop, shooting seeds as far as 20 feet.

Who would think this soft landscape, with its undulating blue waves of wildflowers, flitting butterflies and calls of meadowlark, could be the scene of such battle.

But war it was, to win back, acre by acre, more than 700 acres of native prairie at Thurston County’s Glacial Heritage Preserve south of Olympia, from an invasion of Scotch broom.

The sunny flowers of Scotch broom are just now coming into full bloom, painting roadsides, highway ramps, clear cuts and any other open ground yellow all over Puget Sound country and beyond. But its pretty face conceals a commando’s swagger.

Since it was brought here, probably as an ornamental during white settlement in the 1860s, Cytisus scoparius has turned into one piggy guest. A native of western Europe, Scotch broom, also called Scot’s broom, has so worn out its welcome it’s classified as a noxious weed and been quarantined by the state Department of Agriculture. That means it is not to be sold, and is discouraged from planting by anyone for any purpose. Yet it continues to devour more acres of native habitat every year.

No wonder:

A member of the legume family, its seeds are produced in pods, which, as they dry in the summer sun, literally go ballistic, splitting and twisting open with a pop, ejecting seeds as far as 20 feet.

As if that wasn’t enough, the plant can even enlist an army of soldiers to help it conquer ever more ground. Ants eagerly pick up its seeds, dispersing them far and wide as they take the seeds back to the nest to feed fatty deposits on the seed surface to their young. The ants then deposit the seeds in their waste pile — where the seeds vigorously sprout in a compost of ant poo.

Left alone, Scotch broom can grow in stands so dense it alters the very chemistry of the soil in which it grows, as it sets nitrogen in nodules on its roots, making the ground less suitable for the native plants it replaces.

That same ability to fix nitrogen in the soil also enables Scotch broom to thrive just about anywhere, even in the nutrient-poor soils of native grasslands and prairies, where it quickly grows 6 to 12 feet tall.

Its green stems enable it to photosynthesize even in winter, when rains stoke its lush growth, notes Sarah Reichard, director of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens. She and one of her students, Dean Dougherty, published an article in 2004 that noted a single plant could be covered with more than 800 seed pods, producing more than 9,650 viable seeds per year that can last decades — 50 years is not unheard of. And every time soil is disturbed where Scotch broom grows — say to pull it — more seed is churned up, to sprout a new generation.

Steve Ringman / The Seattle TimesBarry Bidwell, of Graham, pulls up Scotch broom after first loosening it with a Weed Wrench, a tool developed specifically for removing the noxious weed. Thanks to volunteers like Bidwell, where Scotch broom once reigned blue camas flowers now bloom in the Glacial Heritage Preserve. — Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times
Barry Bidwell, of Graham, pulls up Scotch broom after first loosening it with a Weed Wrench, a tool developed specifically for removing the noxious weed. Thanks to volunteers like Bidwell, where Scotch broom once reigned blue camas flowers now bloom in the Glacial Heritage Preserve.

But persistence has its rewards. At the Glacial Heritage reserve, volunteers cut, pulled, poisoned and burned back broom. They have sawed it down and attacked it with WeedWackers fitted with metal blades. Mowed it with brush hogs, pulled it out with chains tied on the bumper of their cars and poisoned it with herbicide.

Scotch broom may be the only weed with a tool created just for it: a Weed Wrench. A demolition demon standing chest high, it’s used to clamp onto the trunk of the most mammoth specimen of Scotch broom, and lever it out of the ground with a satisfying crunch.

When volunteer Michelle Blanchard, of Olympia, first started clearing Scotch broom at the reserve, it grew so tall that as she rode her horse into its thickets, she disappeared from view.

“It’s raining out, and it’s cold, and snowing, and we are looking around thinking, ‘This is crazy, there is still another 1,000 acres of Scotch broom,’ ” she said of the early days of the battle of the broom.

Two things helped turn the tide: fire, deployed repeatedly in controlled burns, and judicious doses of herbicide. Followed with diligent hand pulling, volunteers working first with The Nature Conservancy, and then the Center for Natural Lands Management, which stewards the property today, started making headway. With continued work ever since, the results today are dramatic.

As Blanchard walked the prairie this week, a meadowlark called across the open, rolling terrain. Checkerspot, a rare native butterfly, sipped nectar from blue pools of camas flowers. Golden paintbrush, one of the rarest native plants in Washington, glowed as if lit from within.

To Barry Bidwell, a volunteer slugging it out with broom at this site for nearly 20 years, seeing the native plants here swell into full bloom this week was a pleasure dearly felt. A former Boeing engineer, with the license plate ECOVOL (short for ecology volunteer), he first started working at the prairie to give shape and purpose to his retirement.

Over the years, Bidwell said, he has come to believe restoration work is good for more than just the land.

“It gives people the insight that something can actually be made better.”

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com

Iron Man 3 Blasts Sand Creek

Dr. Leo Killsback

On May 08, 2013 at ICTMN.COM

The majority of mainstream Americans know little to nothing of the violent and unjust history of the colonization of Native America. Anytime such truth is revealed to the public on the big screens, it should be done fairly since these are rare opportunities to reach the masses. The brutality of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 is one of the most horrific events in American history, but it is so shameful and remains out of sight, ignored, and therefore out of the minds of the majority of Americans. Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 includes the story of Sand Creek in the first real acknowledgement of the massacre in the modern mainstream film industry, but Black miserably fails to take advantage to shed some light on the dark and shameful history of the U.S.

In the movie the villain called the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) justifies his violence in a series of propaganda videos. One video showed historic pictures of Cheyennes, even children at Carlisle boarding school, with his voice-over telling how the U.S. waited for warriors to depart on a hunt before soldiers attacked the peaceful camp. The Mandarin then asserts that this same tactic inspired his terrorist group to attack a church in Kuwait filled with the families of American soldiers. Initially, I was generally impressed that Sand Creek was actually mentioned in the blockbuster film. I was even fascinated that the fictionalized villain correlated the Sand Creek Massacre to conflicts in the Middle East. Unfortunately, by midway through the film, I was completely disappointed and deeply upset that the massacre was even mentioned.

The purpose for using Sand Creek wasn’t too clear, but results in too many wrong assumptions. Are Americans supposed to hold resentment towards their terrorists as Cheyenne survivors held resentment towards the U.S. after Sand Creek? Does the correlation promote sympathy for unjust acts of genocide committed by the U.S. in 1864, or condemn terrorists as unjust and irrational as the U.S. soldiers? Whatever the case, the use of Sand Creek further confuses the populace of crimes of the past.

If the movie had made a parallel between the U.S. atrocities committed at both Sand Creek and in modern Middle East conflicts, like the revisionist films of the 1970s, then it would actually promote sympathy for the insurgents, since they defend their families and homelands against the same imperial aggression. The Mandarin’s comparison had potential to be an intelligent reflection of the George Santayana’s celebrated quote: “those who ignore history are bound to repeat it.” But this was not the case and such parallels are likely to never happen in Hollywood. Besides this isn’t my primary concern.

What upset me the most is that when the Mandarin was captured and exposed as a fraud, and as he lost all credibility, he took the true story of Sand Creek with him. By virtue of association, the true story of the massacre was falsified, devalued, and in all likelihood, branded in the minds of viewers as nothing short of propaganda from a fictional terrorist played by a drug-addicted actor, played by Ben Kingsley. I would rather have the events of Sand Creek completely ignored than be subjugated to so many levels of fictionalization.

Those who teach American Indian history already face major challenges because we are often doubted for teaching unpopular content. We are also not easily respected as experts, nor are we privileged with credibility when teaching of America’s history of deception and violence against Indians. We must learn an art of teaching that encourages students to intellectually engage and evaluate unpleasant and threatening truths, while ensuring that they are welcomed and respected, as they are encouraged to welcome and respect Indian perspectives. We also must substantiate and cite facts in access to avert the appearance of bias. This is not an easy art that one can learn over night, but must be done as we sincerely and honestly impart valuable knowledge and wisdom. Both the Mandarin and Iron Man represent a source of such challenges.

I understand that the Mandarin had to develop as a worthy villain and at the end of the day it was just a movie. But when actual events, especially well-documented heinous acts of genocide, are included in make-believe stories the truth in history can also become make-believe, especially to those with no prior knowledge. Viewers may come to pompously devalue or fiercely contest any future exposures to American Indian history, especially when learning of events where innocent Indian people fell victim to the violence perpetrated and condoned by the U.S.

Most who have never learned of American Indians typically rely on Hollywood for education, whether they know it or not. Hollywood has refined their art of deception.

Iron Man 3 represents that deception, enabling ignorance to thrive while disgracing the nearly 200 innocent Cheyenne men, women, and children who were murdered that cold day on November 29, 1864. Any massacre should never be fictionalized.

Dr. Leo Killsback is a citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation of Montana and culturally and spiritual identifies as a Cheyenne person. He is an qssistant professor in American Indian Studies at Arizona State University.

A Group’s Quest to Find and Save Indian Trail Trees

indian_trail_trees_1 — James Stewart
One of the Indian trail trees, the location of which are kept secret.

By Lynn Armitage

On May 03, 2013 in ICTMN.COM

In 2002, a group of retired men began hiking together once a week in the Southern Appalachian Mountains and started finding old, scenic trails they claimed nobody knew about. They decided to revive these trails and make them available to the public, first forming a nonprofit group called Mountain Stewards, headed by president Don Wells.

Operating initially under an agreement with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the Mountain Stewards began work on their first trails in 2005. With the help of grants and private donations, the group has refurbished and interconnected more than 70 miles of hiking and water trails in Georgia, and constructed a number of bridges and canoe launch sites, providing safe outdoor recreation to the public and preserving the region’s cultural and historic beauty.

“It’s refreshing; you get out in nature. It’s like our own personal health-care program,” the 73-year-old Wells says by way of explaining what motivated this “trail crew of nine old men” to work two days a week, 46 weeks a year for about five hours a day.

During some of their hikes, the Mountain Stewards discovered something unexpected. “We started finding Indian trails that we could document from historical maps… and we were locating oddly shaped trees on these trails that had been bent by Indians,” Wells said, adding that Native Americans used these trees like ancient global positioning systems, to help them find their way to and from a particular destination.

Realizing they had stumbled upon living Native relics, the Mountain Stewards, in collaboration with Wild South, and people from five other states, started the Indian Trail Tree Project and Indian Trails Mapping Program that aimed to map Indian trails and document these amazing trail trees not only in Georgia, but all across the country, in the highly confidential National Trail Trees database that now includes 2,034 trees in 40 states.

Now known as the Indian Cultural Heritage Program, these trail-saving efforts have evolved into a book written by Wells and his wife, Diane. Mystery of the Trees, published in December 2011, caught the attention of Sam Proctor, an elder and culture consultant with the Muskogee (Creek) Nation in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, who had a dream about a particular bent tree more than a decade ago. “When I was visiting down in south Georgia, I dreamed that my ancestors showed me a trail they used back and forth from the village to the watering hole. They also showed me this oddly shaped tree and I never even thought anything about it until I saw Don Wells’s book,” Proctor said.

Wells knew the exact spot Proctor had seen in his dream, and on a visit hosted by the author and his wife, they found the bent tree and watering hole once used by the Muskogee (Creek) Indians. “It was a very spiritual experience,” Proctor recalled.

Since then, Wells has confirmed seven other Muskogee (Creek) trail sites in Georgia and Alabama, and is making plans with Proctor for future visits. Wells has also helped elders from a number of other tribes find their ancestral roots—literally.

ICTMN talked with Wells about the Indian trail trees. A documentary about them is also in the works.

What are Indian trail trees?
Back in the 1600s and 1700s, when Indians were traveling from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from Canada to Mexico, there were trails all over the United States. They didn’t have GPS or a map, so to find their way from A to B and back home again, they had marker trees, or trail trees, or a signal tree or a yoke tree—they had all kinds of different names for them. These trees would be bent as saplings, when they were about ¾-inch in size, and tied down. They would be left that way for a year and lock into that position. They used them to mark trails, crossing points on streams, springs to find water and medicinal sites where they would get plants.

Are these trees sacred?
The Indians believe the trees are sacred, and one reason it was hard to find a lot of information about them is because Indians didn’t want the white folks to know about them. Because, like everything else we’ve touched, we destroyed. When Indians are standing near these trees, they believe their ancestors are there or nearby. Particularly the Ute Indians, who call their trees prayer trees. They think these trees are very sacred, so we treat them that way.

Does your book tell people where these trees are?
No, it does not. These trees are not protected by national preservation laws, so people can cut them down, damage them or do bad things to them. You can go to our website…and get a bigger picture, but all you know is that tree is somewhere within 1,000 square miles in a certain state. You will never be able to find it from the information that we show. People call us all the time and say, “Please tell us where this tree is, we want to go see it.” And I say, “No, I’m not going to tell you because I don’t want you to go destroy them.”

How do you find these trees?
Not easily. With urban development and agriculture, we have lost hundreds, if not thousands of them. So where you can find them is in national forests and areas that have not been greatly disturbed, mountain community areas. We also rely on the public to tell us, if someone comes across one.

How does someone report a tree to you?
Go to our website MountainStewards.org, and under Trail Tree Project, click on Submit a Tree. Then we dialogue with you. We have some researchers scattered around the country, and if one is near that tree, we’ll ask them to go look at it and collect data.

How do you confirm that the tree is an authentic Indian trail tree?
The ideal way is to core the tree—find out the age of the tree to determine if it would have been there around the time of the Indians. But we can’t go all over the country coring trees. Second way is to look for artifacts around the area. We collect as much information as we can, then make the best judgment call.

What is the most spectacular trail tree you have seen?
Probably the one that is on the front cover of our book—it is in northeast Georgia. That tree is roughly three feet in diameter, bent fairly close to the ground, and stretched out about 20 feet before it goes up vertically. You look at that and say, “No way in heck could that have ever been done by mother nature.”

What do these trees tell you about Native Americans from many years ago?
That they were very smart and very close to the Earth. They could name every plant and know what they could use it for. They knew the trees and could use them to their benefit. That’s why pioneers hired Indians as guides—that’s the only way they could get around. These people knew a lot and they were very smart and very knowledgeable. Unfortunately, a lot of knowledge is gone now because we lost the elders.

Tell us about the documentary.
About the same time we were publishing the book, a friend named Robert Wells (no kin to me), who is a filmmaker, said we needed to make a documentary about the trees. So in 2007, we started traveling across the Southeast and out West to interview Native American elders from numerous tribes who have confirmed that their ancestors bent the trees. We have 80 hours of film in the can, and about half is edited. We are in the script writing stages right now, and we have narrators and a music guy lined up. Hopefully by this summer, we will have the first hour of a three-hour series that will be in a DVD format, to go with the book. We also want to produce a 21-minute version that will go into a half-hour TV program, and a 42-minute version for a one-hour show. Then we’ll take it to PBS or some public TV group and get them to air it.

So far, you have identified 2,034 trees in 40 states. How many more do you think are still undiscovered?
Every year, I say, “This must be the end of it. We don’t have any more.” Then we find another hundred or so. I don’t know if we will ever find the end of it. They haven’t dried up. There are another 12 states that we haven’t looked in yet. We’re also finding them in Canada.

When the Last American Indian Dies

When did blood purity replace cultural purity?

By Julianne Jennings

Posted May 08, 2013 in Indian Country Today

Anthropology has from the beginning been influenced and dominated by European males. They set the criteria of hierarchically ordered level descriptions, giving themselves the power to dictate the boundaries of group membership by defining race in terms of biology. As a consequence, the last Indian dies not by blunt force, expulsion or disease, but by the social construction of race imposed upon us— terminating our existence by blood.

Recently, my son Brian and his new wife, Emily, came to visit me in beautiful Montefalco, Italy. It gave me an opportunity to spend time with her and attempt cordial conversations about her background. Emily was born in the Dominican Republic (historically inhabited by the Taino), a nation on the island of Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. It is also the site were Columbus landed in 1492, becoming the first permanent European settlement in the Americas. Emily, who has a master’s degree in communications, will tell you she is descended from the island’s first people, “Many people will say our society was made extinct by Columbus; or blood mixing.” She continues, “America has no special technique for handling mixed races, perceptions of self and by others is less than human.” The rest of history she says, “Is swept under the rug, and does not allow for discourse by those who believe Tiano blood still courses through our veins.”

As the history of the world proves, false constructs give life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, a reason to define the power between individuals and groups of people, instead of intellectual understanding. During the Age of Enlightenment, European philosophers sought to reform society by using reason, faith and the science available during that time, drawing lines and boundaries to discriminate against people who appeared and acted different then themselves (left-over from theories of the earlier Catholic interpretation of Biblical continental positions and the knowledge that then existed of the peoples of their known world).

Their conclusions however, are still with us hundreds of years later.

Starting with the predominant colonial theory of race, The Great Chain of Being was the idea that human races could be lined up from most superior to most inferior. The Chain originates with God at the pinnacle, and progresses downward through angels, demons, stars, moon, kings (the summit of humanity’s social order), princes, nobles, men, animals, trees, other plants, precious stones, metals, minerals, and then an arrangement of non-white people, with blacks at the bottom. There is no mention of Indians in the Chain because New World explorers had not yet encountered them; but upon meeting, Europeans considered them proto-human and not descendant from the original Biblical pair (Adam and Eve).

Swedish Botanist Carolus Linnaeus, “The Father of Taxonomy,” in 1735 published Systemae Naturae, which formalized the distinctions among human populations based on race. Within Homo sapiens, Linnaeus proposed five taxa or categories first based on place of origin and later skin color. Linnaeus believed each race had certain endemic characteristics. His work is the first to mention Native Americans as choleric, or red, straightforward, eager, and combative as opposed to Europeans depicted as sanguine, pale, muscular, swift, clever and inventive. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, (1752-1840), a German anatomist, also classified humans into five categories or races, but added Malaysian/brown racial type to Linnaeus’ original taxa.

Samuel George Morton, provided “scientific evidence” of Indian inferiority. In his 1839 study, Crania Americana, and concluded from collected statistical data that the brain size of Europeans was far greater than that of Native people and thus reflected a correspondingly greater intellectual capacity. Even anti-racist Franz Boaz, is now believed by many as having promoted Jewish interests. According to Herbert S. Lewis’ The Passion of Franz Boas, published in “American Anthropologist” journal Volume 103, Issue 2, pages 447–467, June 2001, “Boas did great service at the start of this progression. His hand-waving and smoke-blowing was, as usual for Jews, used to obscure the Who/Whom – who was served by whom and at whose expense – behind a pretense that everyone benefited.”

The article continues, “Anthropology, though a cryptically Eurocentric culture of critique, has pathologized and demonized and prevailed (at least in intellectual/academic circles) not only over “racist” Nordic champions such as Madison Grant, who was responsible for one of the most famous works of scientific racism (a.k.a. eugenics) and played an active role in crafting strict immigration and anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, but of “Whites in general.” Further, “ These men, along with others, shifted the understanding of race from real, to insignificant, to imaginary, to the self-contradictory anti-White/anti-”racism” of today. Race is a construct of the evil White race, who used (and still uses) it to exploit and oppress all the other, innocent ‘people of color.’”

“Mixed-raced” Indian populations, in particular, suffered the greatest racial assaults because there are no “full bloods” among them; providing the notion there are no more “real” Indians, especially groups living along the east coast, the Narragansett, Wampanoag, Pequot and others. They have all paid in blood; and were the first to suffer the brunt of European invasions so other Indian nations could stand. When did blood purity replace cultural purity?

Peter Burke, author of History and Social Theory, states, “Historians, like sociologists and anthropologists, used to assume that they dealt in facts, and that their texts reflected historical reality. However, this assumption has crumbled under the assaults of modern-day philosophers, whether or not they may be said to ‘mirror’ a broader, deeper change in mentality.” Burke continues with, “Hence, it is necessary to consider the claim that historians and ethnographers are as much in the business of fiction as are novelists and poets; in other words, they too are producers of ‘literary artifacts’ according to rules of genre and style, whether they are conscious of the rules or not.” Specifically, the ways in which, imperialism is embedded in the disciplines of knowledge and tradition as governments of truth.

In his work on The Location of Culture, Homi K. Bhabha provides an alternative view, “What is theoretically innovative, and politically crucial, is the need to think beyond the narratives of originary and initial subjectivities to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences. These ‘in-between’ spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood – singular or communal – that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sights of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself.”

As people and places change so radically, and before any more vestiges of the past are gone, re-examination of archival materials, oral traditions, and ethnohistoric sources prove promising when looking at our subject from an “in-between” reality. History and social theory now converge, reappraising the relationship between the two and expanding discussions of topics in new directions. By no means should the voices of the people be silenced any longer; they demand a history written in their image. The combination of these sources, I believe, allows the best understanding of the nuances and complexities of Native life among mixed-raced Indians, and gives indigenous voice its greatest power, and best informs theoretical debates about cultural construction, maintenance and change.

Jalil Sued Badillo, an ethnohistorian at the University of Puerto Rico asserts, “The official Spanish historical record speak of the disappearance of the Taínos. Certainly there are no full-blood Taíno people alive today, but survivors had descendants and intermarried with other ethnic groups. Recent research notes a high percentage of mestizo ancestry among people in Puerto Rico and Dominica.”

Frank Moya Pons, a Dominican historian, documented that Spanish colonists intermarried with Taíno women. Over time, some of their mestizo descendants intermarried with Africans, creating a tri-racial Creole culture. 1514 census records reveal that 40% of Spanish men in the Dominican Republic had Taíno wives. Ethnohistorian Lynne Guitar writes that Taíno were declared extinct in Spanish documents as early as the 16th century; however, individual Taíno Indians kept appearing in wills and legal records in the ensuing years (wikipedia.org).

Anthropologist and archaeologist Dr. Pedro J. Ferbel Azacarate writes that Taíno and Africans lived in isolated Maroon communities, evolving into a rural population with predominantly Taíno cultural influences, as they had the advantage of knowing the native habitat. Ferbel documents that even contemporary rural Dominicans retain Taíno linguistic features, agricultural practices, foodways, medicine, fishing practices, technology, architecture, oral history, and religious views. However, these cultural traits are often looked down upon by urbanites as being backwards. “It’s surprising just how many Taino traditions, customs, and practices have been continued,” says David Cintron, who wrote his graduate thesis on the Taíno revitalization movement. “We simply take for granted that these are Puerto Rican or Cuban practices and never realize that they are Taino” (Ferbel, Dr. P. J. “Not Everyone Who Speaks Spanish is from Spain: Taíno Survival in the 21st Century Dominican Republic.” Kacike: Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology. Retrieved on September 24, 2009.

So, when does the last Indian die? As traditions change over time, so do its people, from one generation to the next. A culture and its people must remain dynamic, honoring the sacred hoop, serving as an archetype in foundation myths, customs, language and culture, but rewriting history in our changing image for self-renewal/affirmation and perseverance, to insure that the last Indian never dies.

Sued-Badillo, in previous interviews and lectures resounds on the ideologically vibrant connection of this past with the present when talking about Tiano people, including its application to all mixed race Indians, “We do this as the Greeks of today and the Romans of today, hark back to the ancestral strengths of the Greeks and Romans of antiquity. … They may be completely different people, but ideological constructions are always built on the past. All peoples do this; it should not surprise us from among our own people” (TainoLegacies.com).

Julianne Jennings (Nottoway) is an anthropologist.

A shameful past: Indian insane asylum

Descendants on path of peace in Canton

Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians: The old building is gone, but a cemetery still is on the grounds of the Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians in Canton, today Hiawatha Golf Course. Hear people talk about needed improvements.

By Steve Young

May 5, 2013

CANTON — It is a long way to travel to mingle with the dead in a graveyard on a golf course at the east edge of Canton.

But Faith O’Neil and Anne Gregory come anyway, from California and Oregon, lured irresistibly by the echoes of their own ancestral past.

Long ago, long before it was transformed into the Hiawatha Golf Club, something much more dark and troubling resided where the fairways and greens lie today. Back then, at the turn of the 1900s and for the next 30 years, it was called the Hiawatha Insane Asylum and was the nation’s only such institution for Native Americans.

O’Neil and Gregory had grandmothers who were sent there. When they return now, the two women come looking for the spirits of those relatives, hoping for some supernatural revelation about what their lives were like in that place, and wanting to discern the often bitter truth about how they died.

The conversations, they say, can bring them to tears.

“Even though I didn’t know her in the physical world, I know her spiritually,” O’Neil said of her grandmother, Elizabeth Fairbault, who gave birth to O’Neil’s mother Sept. 8, 1926, at the asylum. “She’s with me at Hiawatha when I go there; I can sense her. And I’m bound and determined to find out what happened to her.”

A loose-knit group formed in the past seven to eight months shares that curiosity. Called the Hiawatha Indian Insane Asylum Action Committee, their members include Native Americans such as Bill Bird and George Eagleman, who work at the nearby Keystone Treatment Center in Canton; Yankton Sioux artist Jerry Fogg; and Lavanah Judah, who lives in Yankton and can count 15 relatives by blood and marriage who spent time at the asylum.

The committee is composed of white members, too, such as Lisa Alden, Canton’s Chamber of Commerce director, who said a history of abuse and neglect at the asylum brings her to tears. And Donna Dexter of Sioux Falls, whose search for the namesake of her hometown of Floodwood in northern Minnesota eventually led her to Canton and the tragic tale of asylum patient Tom Floodwood.

BIA is late to publish annual list of federally recognized tribes

Monday, May 6, 2013

Indianz.com Staff

The Bureau of Indian Affairs published its annual list of federally recognized tribes in the Federal Register today but once again it was late.

The Federally Recognized Indian Tribe List Act of 1994 requires the BIA to publish the list “annually on or before every January 30.” But the agency has missed the deadline for several years in a row — in 2012, it was published in August and in 2011, it wasn’t published at all.

In 2010, the BIA published the list in October and in 2009, it was published in August. The agency came close to the deadline in 2008 — the list was published in April — and in 2007 — it was published in March.

The BIA didn’t publish the list in 2006. In 2005, it was published in November.

The 2013 list contains 566 federally recognized tribes in the Lower 48 and Alaska.

“The listed entities are acknowledged to have the immunities and privileges available to other federally acknowledged Indian tribes by virtue of their government-to-government relationship with the United States as well as the responsibilities, powers, limitations and obligations of such tribes,” the notice in the Federal Register states.

View PDF here Indian Entities Recognized and Eligible To Receive Services From the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs

Increased congestion at Marysville/Tulalip I-5 interchange May 7-10

May 6, 2013 · 2:34 PM

Arington Times Staff

MARYSVILLE — Drivers who use the Interstate 5 off-ramps to Fourth Street in Marysville and Marine View Drive in Tulalip may experience increased congestion beginning the morning of Tuesday, May 7.

The Tulalip Tribes are working on a water line project on Marine View Drive just west of I-5. The project will reduce Marine View Drive at 31st Avenue NE to one lane in each direction around-the-clock from 9 a.m. on Tuesday, May 7, through 8 p.m. on Friday, May 10.

Drivers should allow extra time or consider using alternate routes between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. on each of those days, when 900 cars per hour travel west on Marine View Drive. Backups could affect the northbound and southbound I-5 off-ramps to Fourth Street.

Washington State Department of Transportation traffic engineers will monitor the ramps throughout the closure, and adjust the interchange signals as needed. The overhead message sign on northbound I-5 near Everett will also be used to alert drivers to congestion at the interchange.

Drivers can use one of WSDOT’s many travel resources, including the Seattle area traffic map, with its Marysville-area cameras, and @WSDOT_traffic on Twitter.