The North Star is symbolic of awakening, light, and wisdom. It is the guiding light – especially in dark times- and represents our unified direction for goodness. The 7 rays of the star represent the 7 generations we fight to protect.
The Orca whales represent the coming together of many peoples. Orcas are the guardians of the waters, the protectors, and guardians of travelers. They are a symbol of unity and of goodness.
“Our goodness is our strength.”-Sundance Chief Rueben George
(This image of the North Star was inspired by a carving by Master Carver Tom Paul who gave us his blessing and permission to use it. Tom is from the Coast Salish Nuu-Cha-Nulth Nation. The orca whales were inspired when Sundance Chief Rueben George said that the Sacred Bundle Holder to be used at the International Treaty Signing had an image of a star similar to this one surrounded by two Orcas coming together in unity. Tim Paul, Tom’s father, knew Rueben’s Grandfather Dan George. Artist Heather Elder volunteered her time and beautiful talent to bring this Poster and Symbol together for us.)
Around 6 am this morning, Abby Brockway—an activist, mother, and small-business owner—and a few others set up a tripod on northbound train tracks in Everett and have been blocking a BNSF train carrying Tesoro oil ever since.
“The view up here is beautiful,” she said by phone a few minutes ago. “I saw an eagle.” Police officers arrived on the scene about an hour or so after the tripod went up and have been trying to coax her down (she says they’re claiming that if she descends voluntarily, they’ll go easy on the charges and fines*). Firefighters with long ladders have approached to try and yank her down, but Brockway has a “blackbear” lockdown device that she uses to chain herself to the tripod in between phone calls.
“Lots of big truckers are honking in support, because we’re also here in support of labor unions,” Brockway said after I asked her about a caterwauling noise in the background. “BNSF wants to increase profits by decreasing train conductors and reducing inspections—its business is increasing, so I don’t know why they’d want to cut costs, but they do.” (BNSF has been pushing to reduce train crews down to a single person, which is not only bad for labor, but a potential safety problem—especially when we’re talking about fossil fuels moving through populous areas.)
Brockway and the other activists, many of them affiliated with Rising Tide (you might remember that name from the preemptive visits they were paid by FBI agents last summer) say they’re blockading the oil train for three major reasons:
First, they want to highlight the rapid growth of shipping oil by train—growth that also has been putting farmers in a pinch by delaying shipments of apples, grain, and even coal.
Rising Tide
Second, they want to draw attention to how much money Tesoro devotes to campaign contributions (in our state, Democrat Suzan DelBene and Republicans Doc Hastings, Rick Larsen, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers have fed at that trough) and question whether that money has led to dithering about better regulation of fossil-fuel train shipments. “Governor Inslee is just one of those Democrats who knows what to do, but loves to just keep studying,” Brockway said from her perch. “He needs to take a bolder move for our security.”
Third, they want to highlight BNSF’s attempts to cut down on labor costs by reducing the number of workers on any given train.
Delaney Piper, a spokesperson for Rising Tide, said most of the law-enforcement response has been from the Everett police, but that at least one FBI agent has shown up, as well as an officer covered in police gear but who is wearing no identification and refuses to answer questions.
Piper added that police kicked all of the supporting demonstrators—who, she said, have ranged between 20 and 40 over the course of the day—out of the rail yard, claiming that they had all already been arrested and might be arraigned because the police had taken photos of them trespassing. (That’s a new one—I’ve never heard of arrest-via-photograph before.)
Brockway said she has provisions and plans to stay on top of the tripod for “as long as possible.”
“I’m petitioning our government,” she said. “I’ve tried standing in the streets, writing politicians on climate policy, going to hearings, I’ve never missed an election, I go to lots of marches and rallies, I’ve helped form alliances with tribal people in Washington State and also with railroad labor—they want jobs and we’re not against jobs. But I want jobs that are sustainable and that make sense for this region instead of this carbon bubble, which is the most destructive thing. And when it’s gone, those towns will be ghost towns.”
A recent Tweet from Rising Tide:
* A quick reminder to everyone: Police saying they’ll “go easy” on you in a courtroom is not a binding agreement. Moreover, police don’t actually control what happens in a courtroom—lawyers and judges do. If you’d like to read an extended account of FBI agents and Seattle police officers making promises they can’t keep about court proceedings during an interrogation, see this story. But always, always remember that any given law-enforcement official doesn’t actually have control over what a judge or prosecutor will think or do.
EVERETT, Wash. – About a dozen protesters have blocked railroad tracks at a Burlington Northern Santa Fe yard in Everett.
Railroad spokesman Gus Melonas says some have chained themselves to the tracks. He says the demonstration that started about 6 a.m. Tuesday has blocked freight trains at the yard although the main line remains open.
Everett police spokesman Aaron Snell says officers are standing by. They’ll let BNSF police handle the situation because it’s a trespassing issue.
The demonstration was announced by the group Rising Tide Seattle to protest shipments of oil and coal by train and proposed terminals in the Northwest.
EVERETT, Wash. – People fishing without a license or other minor fishing violations are not being prosecuted in Snohomish County.
The Snohomish County Prosecutor’s Office has told wildlife officers it will no longer prosecute second degree recreational fishing crimes.
That includes violations such as fishing in closed areas, violating limits, illegally hooking, failure to record catches, etc…
Everett Fishing Store owner John Martinis reviewed dozens of cases rejected by the Prosecutor’s Office and said it’s a decision that can lead to serious problems for salmon and crab.
He said the word is out that you don’t need a license to fish in Snohomish County and that will eventually force the end of some fishing seasons.
“We don’t have any fish to waste,” said Martinis, who owns John’s Sporting Goods.
Prosecutors said the decision was made because the State legislature decriminalized minor fishing violations. They said instead of prosecuting misdemeanor crimes, they requested Fish & Wildlife officers write infractions that carry fines but no criminal prosecution.
They also point out their office prosecutes 90 percent of wildlife crimes other than second degree fishing.
State Fish & Wildlife officers report they investigate dozens on second degree fishing crimes during busy fishing days.
Dave Herrera, Skokomish Fish and Wildlife Policy Advisor
Note: Being Frank is the monthly opinion column that was written for many years by the late Billy Frank Jr., NWIFC Chairman. To honor him, the treaty Indian tribes in western Washington will continue to share their perspectives on natural resources management through this column. This month’s writer is Dave Herrera, a Skokomish tribal member who serves as the tribe’s fish and wildlife policy advisor, and who also is an NWIFC commissioner.
By Dave Herrera, Skokomish Fish and Wildlife Policy Advisor
The late NWIFC chairman Billy Frank Jr. left us all many lessons during his time on this earth. One of the most important was also one of the simplest: “Tell the truth.”
But that’s not what the state of Washington is doing when it comes to salmon recovery. You wouldn’t know it from what state government tells us, but the truth is that salmon recovery is failing.
At the center of that truth is the fact that we are losing salmon habitat faster than it can be restored. We cannot recover wild salmon until we stop the bleeding in our watersheds and estuaries.
Another truth is that tribal treaty rights are one of the few things strong enough to stand between all of us and the extinction of wild salmon. We have demonstrated that time and again over the decades.
Most recently, we showed that truth with a victory in the culvert case. We the filed suit in 2001 to force the state to repair hundreds of failing, fish-blocking culverts. These blockages under state roads cut off salmon from hundreds of miles of spawning and rearing habitat. The case was filed as a sub proceeding of the 1974 Boldt decision in U.S. v. Washington that upheld our treaty fishing rights reserved in treaties with the United States.
On March 29, 2013, federal district court Judge Ricardo Martinez confirmed those rights by issuing a permanent injunction. He ordered the state to repair more than 600 of its fish-blocking culverts over the next 17 years. He wanted to “ensure that the State will act expeditiously in correcting the barrier culverts which violate treaty promises.” Martinez noted that funding for the repairs would come from the state’s separate transportation budget, not at the cost of education or other social services.
Judge Martinez clearly ruled that our treaty-reserved right to harvest salmon also includes the right to have those salmon protected so that they are available for harvest. And not only by tribes, but by everyone who lives and fishes in the region.
It’s the same with tribal hatcheries and the 40 million or so salmon they produce every year. Tribal hatchery production makes the pie bigger for all because everyone can harvest those fish.
Without the tribes, the salmon and its habitat would be in far worse shape than it is today. We bring to the table our treaty rights, traditional and scientific knowledge, funding, and a strong cultural commitment to recovering the salmon resource. Everyone benefits from the work we do.
Perhaps most importantly, tribes and our treaty rights bring the rule of federal law to natural resources management. Federal law trumps state law and treaties are protected under the U.S. Constitution as the “supreme law of the land.”
The truth is that tribes aren’t the only beneficiaries of treaty rights. Non-Indians benefit from them as well. Besides sharing the natural resources of the region with the tribes, non-Indians have homes, businesses and schools on lands ceded by the tribes in return for the fishing, hunting and gathering rights tribes reserved in the treaties.
But our treaty rights – and the protection they give to all – are under constant, heavy attack by those who want to close our fisheries, shut down our hatcheries and destroy the salmon’s home. That puts treaty rights at risk for everyone.
We’re all in the same canoe, so let’s tell the truth: salmon recovery is failing. Tribal treaty rights are one of the few things that might keep salmon from disappearing altogether. The tribes will not allow salmon recovery to fail. That is why we must pull together to protect our natural resources and the treaty rights that protect those resources and all of us.
Yellowstone bison were released at the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana in 2013. Native American tribes have created a host of programs to aid unique Western species. Credit Jonathan Proctor/Defenders of Wildlife
By NATE SCHWEBER
FORT BELKNAP AGENCY, Mont. — In the employee directory of the Fort Belknap Reservation, Bronc Speak Thunder’s title is buffalo wrangler.
In 2012, Mr. Speak Thunder drove a livestock trailer in a convoy from Yellowstone National Park that returned genetically pure bison to tribal land in northeastern Montana for the first time in 140 years. Mr. Speak Thunder, 32, is one of a growing number of younger Native Americans who are helping to restore native animals to tribal lands across the Northern Great Plains, in the Dakotas, Montana and parts of Nebraska.
They include people like Robert Goodman, an Oglala Lakota Sioux, who moved away from his reservation in the early 2000s and earned a degree in wildlife management. When he graduated in 2005, he could not find work in that field, so he took a job in construction in Rapid City, S.D.
Then he learned of work that would bring him home. The parks and recreation department of the Pine Ridge Reservation, where he grew up, needed someone to help restore rare native wildlife — including the swift fox, a small, tan wild dog revered for its cleverness. In 2009, Mr. Goodman held a six-pound transplant by its scruff and showed it by firelight to a circle of tribal elders, members of a reconvened warrior society that had disbanded when the foxes disappeared.
A black-footed ferret at Fort Belknap in 2013. Credit Jonathan Proctor/Defenders of Wildlife
“I have never been that traditional,” said Mr. Goodman, 33, who released that fox and others into the wild after the ceremony. “But that was spiritual to me.”
For a native wildlife reintroduction to work, native habitat is needed, biologists say. On the Northern Great Plains, that habitat is the original grass, never sliced by a farmer’s plow.
Unplowed temperate grassland is the least protected large ecosystem on earth, according to the American Prairie Reserve, a nonprofit organization dedicated to grassland preservation. Tribes on America’s Northern Plains, however, have left their grasslands largely intact.
More than 70 percent of tribal land in the Northern Plains is unplowed, compared with around 60 percent of private land, the World Wildlife Fund said. Around 90 million acres of unplowed grasses remain on the Northern Plains. Tribes on 14 reservations here saved about 10 percent of that 90 million — an area bigger than New Jersey and Massachusetts combined.
“Tribes are to be applauded for saving so much habitat,” said Dean E. Biggins, a wildlife biologist for the United States Geological Survey.
Wildlife stewardship on the Northern Plains’ prairies, bluffs and badlands is spread fairly evenly among private, public and tribal lands, conservationists say. But for a few of the rarest native animals, tribal land has been more welcoming.
The swift fox, for example, was once considered for listing as an endangered species after it was killed in droves by agricultural poison and coyotes that proliferated after the elimination of wolves. Now it has been reintroduced in six habitats, four on tribal lands.
“I felt a sense of pride trying to get these little guys to survive,” said Les Bighorn, 54, a tribe member and game warden at Montana’s Fort Peck Reservation who in 2005 led a reintroduction of swift foxes.
Mr. Speak Thunder, who took part in the bison convoy, agreed. “A lot of younger folks are searching, seeking out interesting experiences,” he said. “I have a lot of friends who just want to ride with me some days and help out.”
Over the last four years in Montana, the tribes at Fort Peck and Fort Belknap, along with the tycoon and philanthropist Ted Turner, saved dozens of bison that had migrated from Yellowstone. Once the food staple of Native Americans on the Great Plains, bison were virtually exterminated in the late 19th century; the Yellowstone bison are genetic descendants of the only ones that escaped in the wild.
This spring, by contrast, Yellowstone officials captured about 300 bison and sent them to slaughterhouses. Al Nash, a park spokesman, said they were culled after state and federal agencies “worked together to address bison management issues.” The cattle industry opposes wild bison for fear the animals might compete with domestic cows for grass, damage fences or spread disease.
Emily Boyd-Valandra, 29, a wildlife biologist at the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, is emblematic of new tribal wildlife managers working around the Northern Plains. She went to college and studied ecology. (Nationwide, the rate of indigenous people in America attending college has doubled since 1970, according to the American Indian College Fund.)
Diploma in hand, Ms. Boyd-Valandra moved home, took a job with her tribe’s department of game, fish and parks, and found a place for what she called “education to bridge the gap between traditional culture and science.”
Blending her college lessons with the reverence for native animals she absorbed from her elders, she helped safeguard black-footed ferrets on her reservation from threats like disease and habitat fragmentation. The animal was twice declared extinct after its primary prey, the prairie dog, was wiped out across 97 percent of its historic range; since 2000, ferrets have been reintroduced in 13 American habitats, five of them on tribal land.
“Now that we’re getting our own people back here,” Ms. Boyd-Valandra said, “you get the work and also the passion and the connection.” One of her mentors is Shaun Grassel, 42, a biologist for the Lower Brule Indian Reservation in South Dakota. “What’s happening gives me a lot of hope,” he said.
Though each reservation is sovereign, wildlife restoration has been guided to a degree by grants from the federal government. Since 2002, the Fish and Wildlife Service has given $60 million to 170 tribes for 300 projects that aided unique Western species, including gray wolves, bighorn sheep, Lahontan cutthroat trout and bison.
“Tribal land in the U.S. is about equal to all our national wildlife refuges,” said D. J. Monette of the wildlife agency. “So tribes really have an equal opportunity to protect critters.”
Nonprofit conservation organizations have also helped. But tribe leaders say that what drives their efforts is a cultural memory that was passed down from ancestors who knew the land before European settlement — when it teemed with wildlife.
“Part of our connection with the land is to put animals back,” said Mark Azure, 54, the president of the Fort Belknap tribe. “And as Indian people, we can use Indian country.”
In late 2013, during the painful federal sequestration that forced layoffs on reservations, Mr. Azure authorized the reintroduction of 32 bison from Yellowstone and 32 black-footed ferrets. That helped secure several thousand dollars from the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife and kept some tribe members at work on the reintroduction projects, providing employment through an economic dip and advancing the tribe’s long-term vision of native ecosystem restoration. The next project is an aviary for eagles.
One night last fall, Kristy Bly, 42, a biologist from the World Wildlife Fund, visited the reservation to check on the transplanted black-footed ferrets. Mena Limpy-Goings, 39, a tribe member, asked to ride along because she had never seen one.
They drove around a bison pasture under the Northern Lights for hours, until the spotlight mounted on Ms. Bly’s pickup reflected off the eyes of a ferret dancing atop a prairie dog burrow.
“Yee-hoo!” Ms. Bly cheered. “You’re looking at one of only 500 alive in the wild.”
Ms. Limpy-Goings hugged herself.
“It is,” she said, “more beautiful than I ever imagined.”
Scott Terrell photo Tribal fisherman Randy Fornsby hoists a chinook salmon on the bank of the Skagit River west of Mount Vernon, Wash., Sept. 2, 1987. The Swinomish and Upper Skagit tribes shared a fishing area just upriver from where the Skagit breaks into its north and south forks.
LA CONNER, Wash. – With 95 percent of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community’s reservation borders on the water, the tribe is concerned about the rise in sea level and storm surges expected as the planet warms.
As sea level rise pushes high tides and winter storm surges farther inland, coastal tribes in the Northwest worry that their archaeological sites will be wiped out, Swinomish Tribal historic preservation officer Larry Campbell said. They also worry that traditional food sources like salmon and oysters may be affected.
Campbell said food and medicine resources used by tribes around the country have moved or disappeared altogether in some places from where they were traditionally gathered, which is believed to be a result of the changing climate and shifting weather patterns. Those changes affect not only physical access to the natural resources, but the cultural well-being of the tribes.
“It’s important when you look at overall health to look at not just the foods and the resources, but the gathering,” Campbell said. “There’s a process of gathering these things that’s traditional in nature.”
Traditions are passed down through generations as elders share family gathering secrets with their next of kin, he said.
The Swinomish tribe has gained national recognition for its commitment to protecting the culture and natural resources of the Skagit Valley in the face of climate change and is gearing up to begin a new research project. Building off past studies, the tribe will evaluate both the physical and social impacts climate change may have on local near-shore environments.
Swinomish environmental health analyst Jamie Donatuto said the study will build upon earlier research by looking at indigenous health indicators, which take into account cultural, familial and emotional aspects of the impacts climate change may have on the natural resources the tribe values.
Over the course of the three-year study, Swinomish environmental specialist Sarah Grossman will lead efforts to monitor waves and winds on the shorelines during the winter, when storm surges roll in. She will also lead beach surveys to document characteristics like sediment, wood debris and eelgrass cover.
Donatuto will lead the social science side, organizing a series of spring workshops to invite the community to review and discuss the scientific data collected.
“You can’t assess health without actual conversations with community members,” she said.
A $756,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Science to Achieve Results program grant was awarded in June to support the multiyear project.
Swinomish intergovernmental affairs liaison Debra Lekanof said the Swinomish have invested $17 million in collaborative work on the nation’s natural resources over the past 10 years.
“We’re protecting the universal resource rather than the tribal resource. We’re doing a lot more for the state and the county, and then in the end the tribe benefits by taking care of the whole,” Campbell said. “We’re a very aggressive tribe when it comes to our environment.”
The tribe has also been chosen as a finalist for the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development’s Honoring Nations Program. The program, run by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, “identifies, celebrates and shares excellence in American Indian tribal governance.” This year, the tribe gained its place among 18 finalists in the running for the single “High Honor” because of its climate change initiative. The winner will be announced in October.
The Swinomish Indian Senate passed a proclamation on its climate change initiative Oct. 2, 2007, that marked the start of the tribe’s commitment to addressing the potential effects of climate change. The tribe developed an Impact Assessment Technical Report in 2009 and a Climate Adaptation Plan in 2010 that have provided a framework for other tribes to follow, and has continued to conduct related research, Donatuto said.
Associated Press photo A tribal canoe, in view of the Space Needle, arrives July 20, 2011, at Seattle’s Alki Beach. The landing of about a dozen canoes marked one leg of an annual journey of tribal canoes from the Salish Sea, heading to Swinomish, Wash.
Unusually warm water off the Washington coast is sending the vast majority of the sockeye-salmon run to Canadian waters, leaving Puget Sound fishermen with nearly empty nets.
By: Associated Press
BELLINGHAM — Unusually warm water off the Washington coast is sending the vast majority of the sockeye-salmon run to Canadian waters, leaving Puget Sound fishermen with nearly empty nets.
According to data from the Pacific Salmon Commission, nearly 2.9 million sockeye have been caught in Canadian waters, while only about 98,000 have been netted in Washington through Aug. 19.
That means 99 percent of sockeye have gone through the Johnstone Strait around the northern part of Vancouver Island into Canadian waters.
During a typical sockeye-salmon run, about 50 percent of the run goes around the south end of Vancouver Island through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, putting them in U.S. waters, The Bellingham Herald reported.
This year’s diversion rate is unusual. If it stays around this level, it would be the highest diversion rate on record, dating from 1953, said Mike Lapointe, chief biologist for the Pacific Salmon Commission.
The sockeye run is expected to continue for several more weeks, so U.S. fishermen like Pete Granger hope to salvage what they can. Granger is a reefnet fisherman who is operating his boat near Lummi Island. He has been catching fish for the Lummi Island Wild Co-op for the past eight years.
“It could be one of the worst seasons we’ve had in a long time,” Granger said. The fishing numbers in U.S. waters started to improve at the end of last week, with several weeks left in the season.
Several factors could be behind why sockeye decided to head for the Johnstone Strait this summer, but researchers are looking closely at an area of ocean water off the coast that is about 3 degrees Celsius warmer than normal. Nick Bond, a research scientist for the University of Washington, refers to this area as a “warm blob” that developed last winter as the Pacific Northwest went through a period of unusually quiet weather. Last winter, the area had stretches of cool, windless and foggy days.
The calm weather meant the ocean didn’t do its usual churning of deeper, colder water up to the surface. With this pattern continuing into summer, the warm area has persisted. Sockeye prefer cooler water, which may be why most of the run went north around Vancouver Island.
Bond believes the development of the warm blob is not a direct result of global warming but more of a fluke. Looking back at past data, there has been the occasional season when a cold area has developed off the coast, sending the sockeye south of Vancouver Island into U.S. waters.
This season’s event is giving scientists a chance to learn what impact a warmer ocean would have on this area’s ecosystem, giving them more information to make better predictions.
Given the current weather models, Bond said, the warm blob could be around for a while, possibly well into 2015. There’s also the potential of El Niño developing later this year, bringing warm water to the area. If that’s the case, it could be disruptive for next year’s pink-salmon run as well.
SACRAMENTO >> Native American legislation seemingly opposed by thousands was significantly altered before it was passed by the California Senate on Wednesday.
AB 52, a bill co-authored by Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, is designed to give Native American tribes more power in the state’s environmental laws, but it galvanized non-federally recognized tribes not included in the bill.
Non-federally recognized tribes pestered lawmakers for months and started an online petition which gathered 8,386 signatures.
In the amended version, both federally and non-federally recognized tribes are included in the definition of a tribe and non-federally recognized tribes were included in the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA.
“Although there are still a few sections where we have some reservations, overall, AB 52 in its final draft reflects the two big changes our coalition requested,” said Angela Mooney D’Arcy, executive director of the Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples.
Alejo spokesman John de los Angeles said the assemblyman passed on concerns some Native Americans had with the bill, especially from his own district, to its main author, Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Los Angeles.
Efforts to reach Gatto were unsuccessful.
The bill passed in the Senate 35-0. It must now go back to the Assembly because of the many amendments in the Senate. After that, it can go to Gov. Jerry Brown.
After the changes were announced, signers of the petition on Changes.com expressed delight.
“Congratulations to all the CA tribes,” wrote Carolyn Kualii. “This is a move in the right direction!”
The bill still faces major opposition from business groups because they fear it will result in more CEQA litigation because of claims of tribal heritage at development sites.
The Sacramento Bee editorial board put AB 52 on its “three bills for the governor to kill” list because of classifications of “sacred places” and “cultural resources.”
“The definition is left so open-ended it would add a new layer of anxiety to what is already a horror movie of an environmental review process,” it wrote.
There are 110 federally recognized tribes in California and 78 tribal communities petitioning for recognition, including three in Monterey County, according to the Judicial Council of California.
Louise Miranda Ramirez, tribal chairwoman of the local Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation, said she was still concerned about some of the language which allows lead agencies in some cases to “consider” mitigation measures (rather than “select,” as it said before.).
Ultimately, she said she was pleased with the changes but questioned why the bill “was so broken in the first place.”
“The Yakama Nation will not rest until the entire regional threat posed by the coal industry to our ancestral lands and waters is eradicated.” ~Yakama Nation Chairman JoDe Goudy.
Yakama Chairman JoDe Goudy asserts his rights under the Treaty of 1855 to fish traditionally on the Columbia River
By: Michael O’Leary
Governor Kitzhaber’s Department of State Lands has issued a landmark denial of Oregon’s only proposed coal export terminal, keeping millions of tons of coal right where it belongs – buried in the ground.
In their findings released on August 18th the Department of State Lands had the final word on the matter:
“The agency record demonstrates that the project would unreasonably interfere with a small but important and and long-standing fishery in the State’s waters at the project site.”
In response to this news Yakama Chairman JoDe Goudy made the following statement:
“This is only the beginning of what I expect will be a long fight. Yakama Nation will not rest until the entire regional threat posed by the coal industry to our ancestral lands and waters is eradicated. We will continue to speak out and fight on behalf of our people, and for those things, which cannot speak for themselves, that have been entrusted to us for cultivation and preservation since time immemorial. Today, however, we thank and stand in solidarity with the State of Oregon, and celebrate its decision to protect the Columbia River from further damage and degradation.”
So what’s next?
The Columbia River could still be impacted by two remaining coal export terminals.
Up in Bellingham, Washington the proposed coal terminal will rumble 9 loaded coal trains down the Columbia River Gorge every day. Up there the fight against has also been taken on by local tribal leaders.
Lummi Nation Chairman, Timothy Ballew II, had this to say about today’s good news from Oregon:
“The State’s action makes a strong policy statement by recognizing Tribal Sovereignty and the Treaty Rights of the Columbia River tribes. Such decisions are few and far between. This is important not just for the Yakama and Umatilla but all Indian fishing tribes. Together we can, and will, protect our way of life.”
And we’ve still got a coal proposal on the Columbia River, just over in Longview, Washington, that will barrel 8 loaded and uncovered coal trains a day through Portland. That one may be the most likely threat left on the radar. Just this week the Longview coal terminal supporters just threw a summer picnic for 300 of their closest supporters – for a terminal that hasn’t even seen a draft EIS yet.
