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Tulalip welcomes two new board members

Chairman Mel Sheldon swears in Marie Zackuse and Theresa Sheldon for the Tulalip Board of Directors — Chairman Mel Sheldon swears in Marie Zackuse and Theresa Sheldon to the Tulalip Tribes Board of Directors
Photo: Monica Brown

By Monica Brown, Tulalip News Writer

TULALIP, Wash.- Family and friends arrived early Saturday morning, April 6th, at the Tulalip Administration building to witness the swearing in of Marie M. Zackuse and Theresa Sheldon to the Tulalip Tribes Board of Directors.

Tulalip Board of Directors — Tulalip Tribes Board of Directors, Chuck James, Theresa Sheldon, Glen Gobin, Melvin R. Sheldon Jr, Marlin Fryberg Jr, Marie M. Zackuse, Deborah Parker
Photo: Monica Brown

Marie M. Zackuse thanks the board for welcoming her back as she takes her seat on the Services Committee of the Board
Photo: Monica Brown

As Zackuse was welcomed to take her seat on the Services Committee along side Deborah Parker and Marlin Fryberg Jr, she responded, “I want to thank each and everyone that came today, my family and my elders.”

“I’m very grateful today that the Creator provided this opportunity once again for me and I will do the best that I can with what I know and what I have. I want to thank everybody who helped me”

New board member Theresa Sheldon thanks the board as they welcome her on the Business Committee of the board
Photo: Monica Brown

“There are just so many inspirational elders and people in our community who helped encourage me to get to this point where I am today” said Sheldon as she took her seat along side Glen Gobin and Chuck James on the Business Committee.”It ‘s the beginning of a new journey and I am truly honored to be here and assist with this board of directors.”

“I’m very thankful for this and I’m excited to get work done”

Zackuse and Sheldon were elected March 16th 2013, at the Annual General Council meeting, they will both serve three year terms.

Washington snowpack 112 percent, best in West

April 5, 2013 at 1:47 PM

DOUG ESSER
Associated Press

The mountain snowpack in Washington is 112 percent of normal and the best in the West, where the average for other states is about 75 percent, a water supply specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service said Friday.

Arizona is the lowest at 40 percent and the Southwest is in “tough shape” for its water outlook for the rest of the year, said Scott Pattee who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture service in Mount Vernon.

The service compiled reports from measurements taken April 1 — usually the peak time for the mountain snowpack in the water year, which begins Oct. 1. The percent of normal figures are based on a 30-year average.

“The ‘so what’ on this story is that 70 to 80 percent of surface water in the Pacific Northwest comes from mountain snowmelt,” Pattee said.

The snowpack measurement tells utility managers how much power they can expect hydroelectric dams to generate, tells farmers how much irrigation water they can expect to pour on crops, tells fisheries managers whether migrating salmon will have sufficient stream flows. Snowpack information also is used in avalanche forecasts and by river-rafters planning their season.

In Washington, the snowpack is heaviest on the Olympics at 130 percent and lowest in the southeast corner of the state at 85 percent.

“I don’t think there’s going to be much concern,” Pattee said.

The Northwest received plenty of precipitation, especially in the October-December period.

“It just came in surges this year,” he said.

Other states don’t have as much water in the snow bank.

“Most of the Southwest is in pretty tough shape” with a poor stream flow outlook, Pattee said.

Snow measurements for the survey in Washington are taken by about 30 people with utilities, irrigation districts and agencies like the Bureau of Land Management. Data also comes from 70 automated SNOTEL stations in the state, Pattee said. The information goes through computer models for forecasts.

In Washington the snowpack peaked on March 24 and started slowly melting, he said.

The state snowpack averages, according to Natural Resources Conservation Service figures:

Alaska around 100 percent, Arizona 40, Northern California 61, Colorado 72, Idaho 80, Montana 92, Nevada 64, New Mexico 45, Oregon 84, Utah 66, Washington 112, Wyoming 82.

The service only measures Northern California and the state has its own system for the rest of California, Pattee said.

StrikeForce initiative aims to lift impoverished counties

Some North Dakota counties that are not experiencing the oil boom and growth that have brought the state into the national limelight. These counties are now the target of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s StrikeForce initiative, which aims to stimulate economic growth.

By: Katherine Grandstrand, Forum News Service

Published April 05, 2013, 07:30 AM Grand Forks Herald

DICKINSON, N.D. — The prosperity seen in North Dakota is unmatched anywhere else in the country. As of February, the state’s unemployment rate sat at 3.3 percent.

For some Americans, North Dakota is like Israel was to the Jews in the book of Exodus — a land flowing with milk and honey. Modern-day pilgrims come to North Dakota because it is flowing with oil and manufacturing jobs.

Pitted against this image are some North Dakota counties that are not experiencing the boom and growth that have brought the state into the national limelight. These counties are now the target of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s StrikeForce initiative, which aims to stimulate economic growth.

“We do have areas of consistently high poverty,” said Jasper Schneider, state director of USDA Rural Development for North Dakota. “Official unemployment rates in these counties are upwards of 15 percent. Unofficial unemployment is actually quite a bit higher than that.”

Before last week, six states — Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada — were part of the program. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s announcement expanded StrikeForce to include 10 more — the Dakotas, the Carolinas, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Texas, Utah and Virginia.

In North Dakota the program will target Benson, Rolette and Sioux counties along with the tribal nations of Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Spirit Lake Tribe and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.

“A chain is only as strong as its weakest link,” Schneider said. “With our resources, both on the state level and the federal level, we have an enormous opportunity to pick up all parts of the state — especially our lowest performing parts,” Schneider said.

The StrikeForce promotes existing USDA agencies and programs to encourage economic growth in impoverished counties — 90 percent of all poor counties are considered rural.

“We kind of throw our full weight at these areas of high poverty and see if we can’t move the needle,” Schneider said.

In Nevada, which was part of the second wave of states to use the StrikeForce initiative, USDA representatives first reached out to the tribes, which helped grow trust between them and the agency, said Bill Elder, assistant state conservationist for operations for Nevada Natural Resources Conservation Service and the StrikeForce state coordinator.

“We identified the Native American as the priority underserved community within Nevada,” he said from his Reno, Nev., office. “The leadership of the Rural Development, of FSA — the Farm Service Agency — and NRCS went to each one of these tribes and sat down with them and said, ‘Look, we’re here, and these are the programs and services that we offer.’ ”

Because StrikeForce is an umbrella program for all USDA agencies, it allows them to work together more efficiently to serve those eligible and identify individuals who may qualify for programs through other USDA agencies, Elder said.

“At the end of year one, what this had done for us was open pathways of communication that we otherwise wouldn’t have,” he said. “If we can articulate what it is we have to offer both in terms of programs and technical services so they can make an informed decision about what’s best for them, that’s the home run.”

In its second year, Nevada expanded the program to include outreach to small farmers by having a presence at pertinent events, such as agricultural shows.

“Geographically speaking, it’s fairly easy to do,” Elder said. “We gain visibility, we are able to have one-on-one contact with people, find out what their issues are, make them aware of program opportunities and services, and that’s really the key, is that one-on-one or the small-group contact.”

One of the first StrikeForce efforts in North Dakota will have USDA representatives at the Looking to the Future sustainable agriculture convention from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. today at Sitting Bull College in Fort Yates, said Aaron Krauter, state executive director for the USDA Farm Service Agency.

His agency plans to use the StrikeForce initiative to promote FSA programs and loans that could help farmers and ranchers succeed and grow, Krauter said.

“We also have real estate loans for individuals that are eligible if they want to purchase that pasture land or that quarter of crop ground,” he said.

USDA Rural Development released the Tribal Progress Report on Thursday, which highlights the USDA grants and loans the tribes of North Dakota have taken advantage of since 2009.

Many of those funds were used to improve the tribal colleges, Schneider said.

“I’m a firm believer that one of the best ways to combat persistently high poverty is through education,” Schneider said. “We made it a priority at USDA to partner with the tribal colleges, and they’ve really become first-class campuses and provide the opportunity of a real quality postsecondary education. They’re probably the best example of what’s going right in our tribal communities.”

Dubai: a water world in the desert

In the desert of the Arabian Peninsula, thank desalination plants for such an incongruously abundant water world.

Originally published Friday, April 5, 2013 at 10:01 AM

By Kristin R. Jackson

NW Traveler editor

IN DUBAI, a city playground in the Middle East desert, nothing succeeds like excess.

The glitzy enclave has lavish shopping malls; uber-luxurious hotels and restaurants; neighborhoods built on artificial islands; even an indoor ski slope. And, oh yes, the tallest building in the world, the more-than-160-story Burj Khalifa.

One Dubai hotel, the 1,539-room Atlantis, goes all out with a watery motif. The hotel’s dramatic aquarium is fronted with an almost three-story-tall sheet of glass. For human water play there are massive swimming pools, water slides (including one nine stories tall) and inner-tubing streams. You can snorkel with sharks or feed rays in artificial pools.

In the searing desert of the Arabian Peninsula, where conserving water was a way of life for centuries, thank desalination plants for such an incongruously abundant water world.

And, thanks to the long reach of Emirates Airlines, which has helped turn Dubai into a bustling crossroads of international travel, you can hop on a nonstop Seattle-to-Dubai flight and be in the desert, and the Atlantis water world, in just a little more than 14 hours.

Kristin R. Jackson is The Seattle Times’ NWTraveler editor. Contact her at kjackson@seattletimes.com.

Business interests trump health concerns in fish consumption fight

“Our tribal leadership’s main responsibility is simply to protect our people,” said Marc Gauthier, a representative of the Upper Columbia United Tribes, before leaving the meeting. “It comes down to that basic human desire to protect your family.”

By Robert McClure
March 30, 2013

The Washington State Department of Ecology has known since the 1990s that its water-pollution limits have meant some Washingtonians regularly consume dangerous amounts of toxic chemicals in fish from local waterways.

At least twice, Ecology has been told by its overseers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to fix the problem and better protect people’s health. Ecology was close to finally doing that last year — until Boeing and other business interests launched an intense lobbying campaign aimed not just at Ecology but also at the Washington Legislature and then-Gov. Christine Gregoire. That is the picture that emerges from recent interviews as well as government documents obtained by InvestigateWest under the Washington Public Records Law.

The problem lies in Ecology’s estimate of how much fish people eat. The lower the amount, the more water pollution Ecology can legally allow. So by assuming that people eat the equivalent of just one fish meal per month, Ecology is able to set less stringent pollution limits.

Meanwhile, citing the health benefits of fish, the state Department of Health advises people to eat fish twice a week, eight times as often as the official estimate of actual consumption. The state knows that some members of Indian tribes, immigrants and other fishermen consume locally caught seafood even more often than that and are therefore at greater risk of cancer, neurological damage and other maladies.

The Boeing Co. looms large in this story. In June 2012, Boeing said if Ecology went ahead with plans to make fish safer to eat, it would “cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars and severely hamper its ability to increase production in Renton and make future expansion elsewhere in the state cost prohibitive,” according to a Gregoire aide’s reconstruction of a conversation with a Boeing executive that month.

In July 2012, Ecology announced it would not go forward with a new rule to adjust the fish-eating estimate as planned. Instead the agency launched a “stakeholder process” that would delay any new rules for at least two years. Last week that process plodded on in Spokane, where state and local government officials and others spent more than three hours discussing the many contaminants that for years have prompted official state warnings against eating Washington fish too regularly.

“All we’ve seen is delay,” said Bart Mihailovich of the Spokane Riverkeeper environmental group, one of several that have refused to participate in the new series of meetings. “Why are we going back and doing what was already done?”

At the meeting in Spokane Thursday, a representative of Indian tribes called Ecology’s conduct “a betrayal” and explained that the tribes are boycotting the current process because it is unnecessary.

Ecology had at least one other false start in fixing the rules, back in the mid-1990s, an effort that petered out even before a rule change was proposed, said Melissa Gildersleeve, the Ecology manager overseeing the current stakeholder process. That followed a 1994 study by the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission that documented how the national estimate of one fish meal per month was greatly and regularly exceeded by some members of Indian tribes.

While who eats how much contaminated fish is a slippery and much-debated corner of science, few of the parties involved in the current dispute in Washington contend that the current fish-consumption rate accurately reflects the true amount eaten, especially by some groups such as members of Indian tribes, subsistence fishermen and immigrants. The figure came from a 1973-74 federal study that asked consumers to fill our “food diaries” for three days, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Read full article here

Native filmmakers get students to open up

GWYNETH ROBERTS/Lincoln Journal Star1491s member Bobby Wilson (center) dances for the camera as Native Youth Leadership Symposium Participants (rear) watch during production of a public service announcement video Tuesday, April 2, 2013, at Morrill Hall. — GWYNETH ROBERTS/Lincoln Journal Star
1491s member Bobby Wilson (center) dances for the camera as Native Youth Leadership Symposium Participants (rear) watch during production of a public service announcement video Tuesday, April 2, 2013, at Morrill Hall.

April 03, 2013 6:00 am

By KEVIN ABOUREZK / Lincoln Journal Star

It’s 10 in the morning, and eight high school students won’t speak.

Dallas Goldtooth threatens them: “Someone start talking or I’m going to start calling on you.”

A boy fidgets. Two girls giggle and whisper.

Goldtooth asks again: What do you want to say in your video about alcoholism?

A boy in a black Nike sweatshirt clears his throat.

“It tears families apart,” he says. “Some people forget their heritage when they drink.”

And so begins another video from the 1491s.

The guerrilla Native filmmakers and comedy troupe came to Lincoln on Tuesday to help participants of the Sovereign Native Youth Leadership program shoot a video. The Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs hosted the 1491s’ visit and sponsors the youth program — high school students from Nebraska’s four tribes learning to be leaders.

Last week, to prepare for the 1491s’ visit, the students brainstormed ideas. But on Tuesday, the five members of the 1491s struggle to get students to share them.

Goldtooth, one of the group’s founders, tells students the filmmakers are there to help them find their voice.

“You dictate the direction,” he says.

Ryan Red Corn, an Osage member of the 1491s, shares the story of a young woman they met at a Native boarding school who told them about briefly escaping the school to retrieve berries from a nearby tree. The 1491s made a video about it.

The 1491s have lampooned everything from the movie “The Last of the Mohicans” to powwow emcees, and they’ve gotten hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube.

Despite their popularity, at least two Native students haven’t seen their work.

As the morning wears on, the students begin opening up, a little at a time.

Two brothers from Winnebago speak about their dad, who once struggled with alcoholism but quit after his children were born. They talk about losing their uncle to cirrhosis, a liver disease prevalent in alcoholics.

“Top that,” student Skyler Walker says, daring the others to beat his story and eliciting laughter.

So how does a mixed bag of comedians and filmmakers get shy Native students to open up? Red Corn says it’s important to make them laugh and see themselves as important.

The 1491s spend much of Tuesday making each other laugh, poking fun at Red Corn for being half white and Goldtooth for enjoying food too much.

Eventually, they begin teasing the students, including Skyler and his brother Max, who are half Ho-Chunk and half white. The boys call themselves “half chunks.”

“Half chunk 1 and half chunk 2,” the 1491s call them.

Then they turn on each other: “Osage sounds like a drunk person speaking Dakota,” Goldtooth says to Red Corn.

But then, just a little, the tone of their conversation shifts.

As he talks about his love of gourd dancing in the Omaha tribal tradition, student Marco Ramos cuts short a conversation between Red Corn and comedian Bobby Wilson.

“Quit holding hands and pay attention,” he says, as the room erupts in applause and laughter.

Later at lunch, Scott Shafer of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs describes how difficult it has been getting the students to open up to the presenters they have heard since the program began its second year this past fall. So often, students have struggled to connect to policymakers and professionals, he says.

That wasn’t the case Tuesday as the students and the 1491s developed ideas for their video on alcoholism.

One student describes adults who tell her not to drink but who then drink themselves.

Somewhere in the room, an idea flickers.

Filmmaker Sterlin Harjo, who has directed several movies and documentaries, offers an idea that involves the students making the video’s viewers believe they were talking about using drugs and alcohol.

“It helps me forget my worries,” Cheyenne Gottula, an Oglala who attends Lincoln High School, says before the camera. “My mom’s the one who got me into it.”

Then, the reveal.

“I like playing volleyball.”

Reach Kevin Abourezk at 402-473-7225 or kabourezk@journalstar.com.

Hopis Try to Stop Paris Sale of Artifacts

By Monica Brown, Tulalip News Writer

70 sacred Hopi masks that are set to be auctioned in France are estimated to be worth $1 million. The New York Times reports, the auction is set for April 12^th at Néret-Minet auction house. Néret-Minet states that the items were legally obtained over 30 years ago and that this auction should be considered a homage to the Hopi Indians and they should be happy so many people want to understand and analyze their civilization.

Mr. Kuwanwisiwma, director of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office has responded with,

“The Hopi Tribe is just disgusted with the continued offensive marketing of Hopi culture.” The Hopi Tribe has attempted to contact the auction house with no luck and has sought legal council on possible ways to bring the masks back to their rightful owners, The Hopi Tribe.

Federal court holds Interior Secretary retains authority to make trust land acquisitions for Alaska Natives

This decision is a victory for all Alaska Tribes.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

On March 31, 2013, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an important ruling in Akiachak Native Community, et al. v. Salazar that affirms the ability of the U.S. Secretary of Interior to take land into trust on behalf of Alaska Tribes and also acknowledges the rights of Alaska Tribes to be treated the same as all other federally recognized Tribes.

In 2006, four Tribes and one Native individual—the Akiachak Native Community, Chalkyitsik Village, Chilkoot Indian Association, Tuluksak Native Community (IRA), and Alice Kavairlook—brought suit to challenge the Secretary of the Interior’s decision to leave in place a regulation that treats Alaska Natives differently from other Native peoples. On behalf of our clients, NARF and co-counsel Alaska Legal Services Corporation sought judicial review of 25 C.F.R. § 151 as it pertains to federally recognized Tribes in Alaska. This federal regulation governs the procedures used by Indian Tribes and individuals when requesting the Secretary of the Interior to acquire title to land in trust on their behalf. The regulation bars the acquisition of land in trust in Alaska other than for the Metlakatla Indian Community or its members. Plaintiffs argued that this exclusion of Alaska Natives—and only Alaska Natives—from the land into trust application process is void under 25 U.S.C. § 476(g), which nullifies regulations that discriminate among Indian Tribes. The State of Alaska intervened to argue that the differential treatment is required by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA).

This decision is a victory for all Alaska Tribes. The ruling will allow Alaska Tribes to petition the Secretary to have non-ANCSA lands placed into trust and the opportunity to enhance their ability to regulate alcohol, respond to domestic violence, and generally protect the health, safety, and welfare of tribal members. To read the court’s opinion, click here.

French plan to auction Hopi masks stirs furor

“Plans to auction the dramatic facial representations on April 12 spawned a protest from the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office and calls for the French government to intercede.”

A French auction house will auction off this Hopi kachina face depicting Crow Mother. Neret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou — A French auction house will auction off this Hopi kachina face depicting Crow Mother.
Neret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou

By Dennis Wagner

The Republic | azcentral.com

Tue Apr 2, 2013 11:36 PM

The Heard Museum and the Museum of Northern Arizona have joined Hopi cultural officials in urging a French auction house to cancel the planned sale this month of about 70 ceremonial kachina faces, known to tribal members as “friends.”

In Hopi theology, kachinas are supernatural messengers depicted in fantastical costumes worn during religious ceremonies. There are several hundred spirit characters in the pantheon representing wildlife, plants, human qualities, weather and other facets of nature or society.

Also known as katsinas, these characters are more commonly depicted in smaller form as carved doll-like figures.

Plans to auction the dramatic facial representations on April 12 spawned a protest from the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office and calls for the French government to intercede.

The Museum of Northern Arizona’s director, Robert Breunig, posted a letter Friday to the Paris auction house on Facebook, urging that the iconic, masklike visages be returned to Hopis of Arizona and the related New Mexico pueblos of Acoma, Zuni and Jemez.

“I can tell you from personal knowledge that the proposed sale of these katsina friends, and the international exposure of them, is causing outrage, sadness and stress among members of the affected tribes,” Breunig wrote. “For them, katsina friends are living beings. … To be displayed disembodied in your catalog, and on the Internet, is sacrilegious and offensive.”

The Heard Museum also posted a message on Facebook, which was e-mailed to the auctioneers in Paris: “This sale of items of significant religious and cultural importance to the Hopi Tribe is of extreme concern to our American Indian employees, particularly our Hopi employees.”

The Paris auction house, Neret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou, advertised plans to put the spiritual figureheads up for sale. Online promotions list combined estimated values exceeding $775,000.

One of the “Hopi masques” has a listed value of up to $64,000. Officials at the firm did not respond to e-mail or phone messages.

Last month, Hopi Cultural Preservation Office Director Leigh Kuwanwisiwma released a statement opposing the auction and asking Neret-Minet to “begin respectful discussions to return them back to the tribe.”

Kuwanwisiwma did not respond to an interview request, but a tribal representative said he received no response from Neret-Minet.

Sam Tenakhongva, Katsina Clan leader for the Hopi village of First Mesa, declined to be quoted unless The Arizona Republic agreed to prior censorship of stories about the controversy.

Micah Loma’omvaya, chief of staff to Hopi Chairman LeRoy Shingoitewa, said his boss and the Tribal Council have yet to address the matter.

The Hopi religion is so secretive, and the kachina spirit figures’ roles so crucial, that tribal officials oppose publication of photographs. They also object to the word “mask” as a description of the supernatural caricatures worn by Hopi men during ceremonies.

That cultural sensitivity may be confusing, however, because Hopi artisans commercially produce and sell thousands of wooden effigies depicting the same spiritual entities. In fact, a Katsina Doll Marketplace scheduled April 13 at the Heard Museum in Phoenix boasts 100 artisans and is touted as “the nation’s largest gathering of Hopi katsina doll carvers.”

According to a Neret-Minet catalog, the collection in Paris was assembled by “a connoisseur with peerless tastes” who lived in the United States for three decades and spent time with the tribe.

“By his own admission, you have to see the masks in dances to fully appreciate them,” the text says. “The art and history of the Hopi are intimately linked.”

Objects that date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are made from leather, fur, plants, feathers and other natural materials. They depict benevolent characters such as Crow Mother (Angwusnasomtaqa), the matron of all kachinas, and Mud Head Clown (Kooyemsi), who is “both the supreme mediator between good and evil and an insolent buffoon prone to scatological pranks.”

Jose Villarreal, editor and publisher at artdaily.org, which announced the auction, said he has been bombarded with e-mail complaints from Hopis who are “very mad.” Villarreal said he contacted the Neret-Minet and was informed that the sale will go as planned because the kachina art was legally obtained.

Marketing materials do not explain when or how the religious artworks were acquired. In past U.S. cases, some works have been secretly sold to collectors for a profit by tribal members.

The Hopi Cultural Preservation Office statement says, “It is our position that these sacred objects should never have left the jurisdiction of the Hopi Tribe. … No one, other than a Hopi tribal member, has a right to possess these ceremonial objects.”

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 established a process for Indian tribes to reclaim funerary and sacred items within the U.S., but it carries no international authority.

The Heard Museum statement says France adopted provisions of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and therefore should “take steps to return these ceremonial objects.”

In his letter to the auction house, Breunig noted that kachinas represent “a connection between the human world and the spirits of all living things and the ancestors” for tribal members. “I appeal to your sense of decency and humanity and request that you terminate the auction,” he added.

Numerous Hopis joined discussions of the controversy on museum Facebook pages, expressing outrage at the planned auction and at those who may have betrayed the tribe in the past by selling religious artifacts.

Reach the reporter at dennis.wagner@arizona republic.com or 602-444- 8874

Muckleshoot Food Sovereignty Project awarded $37,500 grant

NAFSI grant will aid Muckleshoot in their efforts to access more traditional foods

By Monica Brown Tulalip News writer

The Muckleshoot Food Sovereignty Project has been awarded a $37,500 grant from the First Nations Development Institute. The grant will help fund the project s explorations of the Muckleshoot Tribe’s food assets and increase access to local, healthy and traditional foods. Through explorations, participants will gain an understanding of Native foods and build food security throughout the community.

Project participants enjoy community engagement through workshops, harvesting and feasts. Hands-on workshops are designed to teach traditional food principles and how to approach preparing them in a more modern way. Project coordinator, Valerie Segrest states

“The Muckleshoot Food Sovereignty Project is community driven and aims to increase access and revitalize a traditional and local healthy food system.”

Tribal cooks and established community groups are coming together to develop a new policy about food which will focus on a more traditional and nourishing food program. The new policy development is facilitated by professional chefs who are invited to meet with tribal cooks and the community groups during cook retreats. The project participants are working to join tribal kitchens and create a menu program. By creating a reliable menu that can be used throughout tribal kitchens they will be able to assess the food quantities needed for when they are ready to produce their own food. The menu program will also inform the five-year food sovereignty/action plan that is currently being organized.

The project comes from a community based participatory research project which was conducted in partnership with Northwest Indian College and the Burke Museum in 2007. The project operates year round and is open to all community members.

The First Nations Development Institute’s Native American Food System Initiative (NAFSI) grant is intended to help tribes and Native communities build sustainable food systems such as community gardens, food banks, food pantries and/or other agricultural projects related to Native food-systems control. The 31 grants were made possible by the generous support of the AARP Foundation, The Christensen Fund, CHS Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Advocacy and Outreach, U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development, Walmart Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

To read more about the Muckleshoot Food Sovereignty Project please visit their website at

Muckleshoot Food Sovereignty Project