A collection of old bedroom doors began to pile up beside our house. To the neighbors and anyone who walked by, it probably looked like a major home renovation was under way inside. In fact, that’s exactly what I told them.
But if anyone had looked a little closer, they would have noticed an odd similarity about each of those doors: They all had big, splintery holes in them toward the bottom, about the size of a man’s foot.
See, it wasn’t a home renovation after all. Inside my house, behind doors and windows that I would rush to close when the shouting started, a relationship was being ripped off its hinges. One by one, those doors had been kicked in during fits of rage by the man I lived with—and loved. He had a problem controlling his temper sometimes. At least that’s what he told me.
The real problem was that just about anything angered him. Inattentive waiters, surly sales clerks, slow drivers. Anyone who got in his way or didn’t give him due respect incurred his wrath. Especially me and my “controlling nature.”
Even though our relationship was splintering like that real and metaphorical pile of rotting wood outside, we continued to fake it and live up to everyone’s expectations of us as the happy little couple. We threw parties at our new home, invited friends over for barbecues and summer swims. No one really knew what was going on behind our slammed, kicked-in doors. By this time, I had been called a “fucking bitch” and “idiot” so many times that they now felt like endearments.
I had become the Great Pretender.
My sisters knew bits and pieces, but I didn’t tell them everything. I was too ashamed for them to see that their strong, feisty sister had been reduced to this shadowy nub of a woman. My oldest sister was not fooled.
“Lynn, he’s crushing your spirit,” she would say.
My neighbors were not fooled either. I would later learn that I didn’t need to frantically shut the windows to soundproof his rage because they could hear him screaming loudly and clearly at me anyway.
There are many reasons why domestic violence victims try to hide the abuse from family, neighbors and friends. For me, it was shame and embarrassment that my “man radar” had been so far off. I was the smart sister, so how could I be so stupid?
Vivian Clecak is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Human Options in Orange County, an emergency shelter for battered women and children. She understands all too well why I covered up my abuse.
“Ours is a culture that makes a big deal out of romance—the fancy wedding, the white dress,” she said. “Women are considered responsible for relationships. So when something goes wrong, like abuse, the woman is ashamed and embarrassed. Not only does she blame herself, but society also blames her. Again and again, society asks: ‘What’s wrong with her?’ ‘What did she do to cause it?’ ‘Why did she stay?’ ”
Clecak said there is another dynamic in play, too, about why women pretend everything is perfect at home when it is far from it.
“The couple’s bond is very strong even when there’s abuse,” she said. “He promises it will get better, and maybe it will for four or five months. She desperately wants to believe him because it’s her home and her family.”
If you suspect a friend is being abused, Clecak said, start a conversation.
“Don’t be afraid to ask if you are worried about someone,” she said. “Don’t be afraid to give them the hotline number. People will talk about it when someone cares enough to ask.”
In my case, I’m not sure that would have helped. I wasn’t ready to give up my fantasy of the white picket fence just yet. We still had children to bring into the world.
Let’s help empower each other by keeping the conversation going about domestic violence. We invite you to share your story of abuse with us on Twitter at #WhyThisNativeStayed and #WhyThisNativeLeft, as part of the campaign started by CNN a few weeks ago, #WhyIStayed and #WhyILeft.
Lynn Armitage is an enrolled member of the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin.
But many Northwest tribes appear to be in no rush to go in the direction of Oregon and Washington voters.
The Department of Justice said it will treat Indian tribes that legalize pot with the same hands-off prosecutorial approach that it’s treated states with legal pot. That means there could be a potentially lucrative marijuana business on reservations even in states like Idaho, where pot remains illegal.
But it’s still up to the tribe.
Charles Sams of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation said drug law enforcement is a matter of public health.
“The tribe will continue to prosecute and cite those folks who are in violation of those laws,” he said.
In Washington, the Yakama Nation wants to ban sales both on its reservation and on millions of acres of surrounding land where it has treaty rights.
The Department of Justice decision came as a surprise to many tribes. The policy adviser for the Coeur d’Alene Tribe in north Idaho said legalizing pot hadn’t even been on the tribe’s radar.
For decades the Army Corps of Engineers used Bradford Island near the Bonneville Dam as a dumping ground. Toxic chemicals leaked into the Columbia River. The island is also a historic fishing site for the Yakama Nation. | credit: Flickr Creative Commons: A. F. Litt
For decades the Army Corps of Engineers used an island near the Bonneville Dam as a dumping ground. Toxic chemicals leaked into the Columbia River. The island is also a historic fishing site for the Yakama Nation.
The tribe is now suing the Corps to recover costs from helping clean up the contamination.
In 2003, the Corps removed electrical equipment and contaminated sediment found at the bottom of the river. In 2007, it dredged the area to remove more contaminated soil.
Tests show toxic materials like PCBs, which were banned in the 1970s, are still found in resident fish – even after the Corps finished cleaning up Bradford Island. The Yakama Nation says the PCB counts in resident fish are higher now than before the cleanup. No one is really sure why, but it’s possibly because of the way the sediment was disturbed.
Rose Longoria, the superfund coordinator with the Yakama Nation, said the tribe was not reimbursed for its efforts to help cleanup the site. The tribe is asking for about $93,000, although that number could change.
“More importantly, we want to make sure that we have a very definitive role in the decision making process so that we can ensure that the cleanup actually is protective not only the resident fish but all the resources in that area,” Longoria said.
The Corps is looking at several options to continue cleaning up the island. A feasibility study is expected to be completed in 2015.
A Corps spokeswoman said she had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment.
A map of PCB fish concentrations in Washington.
Longoria said the Bradford Island cleanup is one of Yakama Nation’s top priorities, simply because of the level of contamination in the fish — and high counts of PCBs of other animals in the area, like osprey that eat small-mouth bass in the contaminated area.
Oregon and Washington have issued a do-not-eat fish consumption advisory for resident fish one mile upstream of Bonneville Dam. Migratory fish like salmon are still okay to eat.
“The PCBs in that resident fish tissue are a magnitude higher than PCBs in fish tissue in other locations,” Longoria said. “It’s rather astonishing how contaminated those fish are.”
They’re rarely seen or heard, but the statistics on the population’s health, education, and happiness speak loud and clear.
15-year-old Rose Gibbs stands before portraits of Chief Seattle and Chief Joseph, among others, painted by Andrew Morrison at the Wilson-Pacific Building. Photo by Joshua Huston
Rose Gibbs is tough. Behind a youthful face and crystal-clear brown eyes resides a person hardened beyond her years. She’s been in foster care for the past five, citing her mother’s alcoholism as the reason she and six of her siblings landed there. At 15, she wears a San Francisco 49ers beanie and a look of unease when talking to a reporter. She says she “had to grow up too fast,” and it’s hard not to agree with her. Rose, who identifies as both Latina and a member of the First Nations Lyackson Tribe, is currently attending Ingraham High School in north Seattle. In the course of her life, including stints in Canada, Rose says she’s gone to “more than 10, maybe 20” schools. She thinks seven of those have been in the Seattle School District, but she’s not sure.
“I guess, I don’t know. I honestly forgot,” she says. “There’s a big blank, between when I was younger and now. I really don’t remember.”
It’s an understated and understandable answer from a girl who seems accustomed to hiding vulnerability with aloof, indifferent distance. But it doesn’t take much to push past Rose’s hardened front.
“It happened in fourth grade,” she says of the moment alcohol and domestic violence collided, altering her life’s trajectory in an instant.
And then tears.
Rose rarely sees her mom these days, she says after a wrenching pause. Since then she’s spent time with five foster families, but hasn’t felt at home with any of them. She’s stubborn, she admits, and looks forward to her last two years “in the system.” She says she misses her siblings, and hopes one day to reunite with them.
Rose started coming to the Urban Native Education Alliance’s Clear Sky Native Youth Council, where I met her, back in April. At this point she’s what UNEA Chair Sarah Sense-Wilson describes as a “regular,” with an “indomitable spirit” —and a good example of exactly the kind of local kid the nonprofit tries to reach. Through Clear Sky, the UNEA offers tutoring, art, a sense of cultural belonging, and—perhaps most anticipated—a solid meal to urban Native American kids who need it. As it turns out, plenty in the Seattle area do.
Rose and I are seated at a round table inside the Seattle School District’s Wilson-Pacific Building. Compared to my previous visit to Clear Sky, where I’d first met Rose three weeks ago, things are considerably more comfortable. There’s heat this time. And bathrooms that work. On my first visit, the urban Native kids who come to Clear Sky gathered in a cafeteria toward the back of the soon-to-be-razed school building. The missing tiles from the ceiling and floor, and the sign on the door reading “RESTROOMS CLOSED/NO WATER” gave the gym an air of abandonment.
But tonight’s different. The meeting has been moved to a new room, and the upgrade is palpable. UNEA Co-Chair Mary Ann Peltier, who is from the Chippewa, Assiniboine and Sioux tribes, spills the details: They struck a deal with the school district, agreeing to pay $18.35 a night for the improved amenities.
A bad building wasn’t keeping Clear Sky from working its magic, however. While jackets were sometimes required, the decrepit, mural-covered cafeteria at the back of the Wilson-Pacific building was enough for Peltier and Sense-Wilson, a straight-shooting member of the Oglala Sioux tribe, to roll up their sleeves and get to work in. The UNEA’s flagship program, Cleark Sky held its first meeting in 2009, and they’ve been at it every week since.
“You donate?” Sense-Wilson drills me, nearly the moment we meet. “I’m just kidding. I know writers don’t make much money. ”
Sense-Wilson smiles as she ribs me. The room is abuzz. Subway sandwiches are on the menu, along with a class called “‘Native Journalism 21st Century.” The Clear Sky mission of promoting “cultural, traditional activities and educational achievement” is alive around us. Though the UNEA also offers a basketball program and various other special events geared toward the urban Native population, the Clear Sky Youth council is the nonprofit’s gem. Sense-Wilson says the program provides academic support for “ensuring the success of Native learners,” and boasts a 100 percent high-school graduation rate.
Outside the walls, however, things get difficult for young urban Natives like Rose, who live off the reservation, a minority among minorities in the city. According to census data, only .8 percent of Seattle identifies as American Indian or Alaska Native alone—a mere blip in a city named after Chief Sealth which was home to Native peoples thousands of years before a white person ever set foot here. It’s a demographic that faces a daunting set of challenges.
“You can turn a corner and see someone you relate to,” Peltier tells this white reporter. “I can turn many corners, and won’t relate to anyone.”
It can be lonely, and worse. And it isn’t getting better. According to information presented in the Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Initiative three-year plan for 2012 to 2014, American Community Surveys over the last 20 years show that the poverty rate for Natives in Seattle has fluctuated, but only slightly. In 1990, 33 percent of Natives lived in poverty; in 2000, it was 29 percent; by 2009, it was back up to 30 percent. That’s higher than the poverty rate for any other ethnic group. Meanwhile, the poverty rate for white Seattleites has stayed steady at just 9 percent.
For urban Native kids, the stats can look even worse. According to the “Community Health Profile” for the Seattle Indian Health Board released in December 2011, in King County 46.6 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native children under age 6 lived below the poverty line between 2005 and 2009, compared to 13.2 percent of children in the general population.
The difficulties only continue from there, and for a population as small, diverse, and historically maligned as this one, even finding a starting point from which to dig out can seem daunting. They include the pronounced education achievement gap between Native students and whites, resulting in historically low graduation rates and high dropout rates for American Indian and Native Alaskan students; numerous health concerns, from asthma to diabetes and obesity; addiction and alcoholism; domestic violence; a disproportionate rate of homelessness; and institutional neglect. And the fact that Natives, 1.5 percent of the overall population, make up 4.4 percent of Washington’s prison population.
There’s also the simple fact that placing an umbrella ethnic classification like “Native American” over a group of city-dwelling people from hundreds of tribes and countless cultural traditions simply doesn’t accurately define it.
As a result, the population often fades into the firmament.
“Sometimes I don’t think they see us,” Rose says. It’s a common sentiment. Changing people’s fortunes—as Clear Sky aims to do—often begins with confronting this sense of aloneness, pounded into Seattle’s Natives by politics, policy, perceptions, and nearly 200 years of history.
“To not have any representation that reflects who you are, or honors your cultural, your tradition, your history, it’s really a profound psychological, oppressive place to be,” Sense-Wilson says.
Clear Sky is a bright spot. Looking around on this Tuesday night, there is hope to be had. There’s Rose and her improved grades and self-worth. There are the other 40 or so kids who have arrived, each equally important. There are Sense-Wilson, Peltier, and the other adult volunteers, filling a need for their community when no one else did. And there are smiles.
You get the feeling that if the uncertain future of Seattle’s urban Native community is to be bright, it will likely start with exactly the kind of thing happening here.
“When we do see each other, we know,” Peltier says of the Native community in Seattle and what happens at Clear Sky. “We know when we connect.”
Mary Ann Peltier, left, and Sarah Sense-Wilson help run Clear Sky Youth Council meetings every Tuesday and Thursday in the Wilson-Pacific Building.
Call it a starting point.
It’s cold outside when the January 17 gathering of the state House’s Community Development, Housing & Tribal Affairs Committee comes to order—the kind of miserable weather Olympia is known for. On the docket is a work session titled “The Urban Indian Experience.”
With only the very occasional yawn, the seven lawmakers who make up the committee have come together this Friday afternoon to learn about the plight of urban Native Americans. For the elected policy-makers, it’s a chance to learn. For those invited to teach them, it’s a chance to have a voice in the halls of power.
Ralph Forquera, a member of the Juaneño Band of California Mission Indians and the executive director of the Seattle Indian Health Board, is first up. The semicircle of seated decision-makers listens as he gets into specifics, trying his best to describe the 29 federally recognized tribes and six unrecognized ones that meld together, along with countless individual Native transplants from across the continent, to make up our state’s remarkably diverse urban Native population. (Nationally, there are 566 federally recognized tribes and hundreds of unrecognized ones.) It’s no easy task, which is part of the larger problem.
The population is mixed, with varying ties to local, national, Canadian, and Alaska Native tribes, Forquera tells them. Some, like the 4,809 Seattle residents who identified as American Indian or Alaska Native alone in 2010, show up on the census. Many more don’t, for reasons both simple and complex. Who is an American Indian these days, and who marks the box when asked? “It’s a very difficult question to answer,” Mark Trahant, a former editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial page and current Atwood Chair of Journalism at the University of Alaska Anchorage, tells Seattle Weekly. Trahant, a member of the Shoshone-Bannock tribes and the former president of the Native American Journalists Association, has written extensively on the lack of clear data on the Native population.
Some Natives have long hesitated to identify themselves for statistical purposes, Trahant says by phone from his office in Alaska. Others have unclear or mixed ethnic identities. How much of a connection must one have to identify as Native? What’s required by the tribe? Different ones have different standards, Trahant notes. And what about the growing generations of urban Natives off the reservations? How can we accurately account for them? None of these questions have easy answers, he says.
“Census is not very sensitive to tribe, it’s more sensitive to race,” Forquera later adds, saying “We don’t really know” how many people of American Indian heritage live in Seattle. “There aren’t any really accurate representations of the size of the population.”
But some of the numbers are indicative enough, and Forquera confronts the harsh realities every day. Leading the Seattle Indian Health Board and the Urban Indian Health Institute, he knows the “Community Health Profile” delivered in 2011 states that Natives in King County die of “unintentional injuries” (that is, accidents) more than twice as often as anyone else, at a rate of 79.3 per 100,000 deaths (compared to 32.4 per 100,000 among the general population). They suffer from asthma more than twice as often (17.3 percent vs. 8.1 percent), and diabetes too (12.2 percent vs. 5.9 percent). They’re nearly twice as likely to be obese as the general population (36.3 percent vs. 20.1 percent). The list goes on, and Forquera knows all of it well.
While his expertise is in health, this afternoon Forquera is also a history teacher. In his allotted 10 minutes, he does his best to deliver CliffsNotes on the past 160 years, providing a basis for what’s seen on the ground today. Natives inarguably have been a part of Seattle’s identity since the Denny Party’s arrival at Alki in 1851—and, of course, were the area’s identity for thousands of years before white men tied their boats to Puget Sound shores and pushed them to the side.
Addressing the “Myth of the Vanishing Race”—or, that stuff about Indians being savages and naturally giving way to white guys and their civilizations—William Cronon writes in his preface to Coll Thrush’s 2007 book Native Seattle: “Perhaps in part because Indian peoples have long been associated with ‘nature,’ it has been remarkably easy not to notice their presence in places marked as ‘unnatural’ in American understandings of landscape. Chief among these are urban and metropolitan areas, which for more than a century have provided homes for people of American Indian descent to a much greater degree than most people realize.”
In Washington, as of the 2010 census, 74 percent of those identifying as American Indians or Alaska Natives lived in cities, up from 71 percent in 2000. Statewide, the population of urban Natives is growing. According to data provided by Leslie E. Phillips, Ph.D., the scientific director at the Urban Indian Health Institute, from 2000 to 2010 Washington’s American Indian/Alaska Native population increased 30 percent, from 113,625 to 147,371.
Seattle hasn’t always been very accommodating to its Native population. As Thrush, an assistant professor of history at the University of British Columbia, describes in his book, one of the first ordinances passed in the newly incorporated Seattle back in 1865—Seattle Ordinance No. 5, to be exact—declared that “no Indian or Indians shall be permitted to reside” in the city. A complex dynamic even back then, the ordinance also mandated that those who employed Natives “provide lodgments or suitable residences . . . ” It was, from the very start according to Thrush, an “attempt to codify a middle road between segregation and integration.”
The national move toward reservations goes back even further, to a series Indians Appropriation Acts that started in 1851 and formalized the process of relocating Natives to land set aside for them by the U.S. Government. As Trahant notes in a recent research paper, however, many of the country’s earliest Native American policies have been based on the conquering view that American Indians would one day be extinct. “The assumption had come down from the earliest of times, not always voiced, but implicit, that the native inhabitants of the New World would become extinct. The notion grew stronger as the settlers waxed in numbers and the demand for living room accelerated,” D’Arcy McNickle, a member of the Confederate Salish and Kootenai tribes, wrote in his 1973 book, Native American Tribalism.
The extinction never materialized. Today, according to numbers from the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, approximately 56.2 million acres are held in trust for Indian tribes and individuals, and there are approximately 326 Indian land areas in the U.S. The most recent numbers from the BIA indicates nearly two million enrolled tribal members.
Though local and federal government has done its part to drive Natives from Seattle, it’s also worked to bring them back to the city—for better or worse. A swell created by the federal assimilation policies in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s—like House Concurrent Resolution 108, for example, which officially terminated the federal government’s acknowledgement of tribes from New York to California—pumped Natives into cities. The idea—or the stated one—was to free Native Americans of federal supervision and provide them with the same opportunities as other citizens.
The negative consequences, however, were noticeable. “An awful lot of people just ended up exchanging reservation poverty for urban Indian poverty,” Forquera tells Seattle Weekly of the assimilation movement. “It was a pretty cruel thing, actually.”
Nearly 150 years later, the effects of those early injustices are still felt. According to Chris Stearns—a gregarious state gambling commissioner, attorney and member of the Navajo Nation from Auburn—Natives often don’t trust the government, and things like Seattle’s Ordinance No. 5 have historically given them good reason not to. “You can’t unwind that,” says Stearns, the former chair of Seattle’s Human Rights Commission. “We were literally kicked out. That’s the bedrock of the relationship of Seattle with its Native population.”
The impact is more than psychological. This historical push and pull yields a Seattle urban Indian population that’s difficult to define—a mix of local, regional, national, and international Native people who call the city home. Thanks to small numbers and sheer heterogeneity, they exist without much voice, and often without a tangible connection to their heritages. “It’s a very diverse cultural mix, which makes it difficult to describe who we are and why we have specific needs,” Forquera offers. “As a subset of the total community, we’re very small. There’s very little attention paid to these smaller groups.”
On at least one Friday afternoon in Olympia this session, that wasn’t the case. “Be assured, we’re not just going to let this drop by the side,” Community Development, Housing and Tribal Affairs Chair Sherry Appleton (D-Poulsbo) says for the official record, before closing the meeting.
“It seems like the door was opened a little bit,” Forquera would later say of the work session, “so we’re trying to stick our foot in to keep it open.”
So far during the 2013 and 2014 sessions in Olympia, 40 bills relating to Native issues have been dropped; four have been passed by both chambers and signed by the governor.
As Rose will tell you, the invisibility felt by Natives in the general population shows up in Seattle’s schools. But according to those who’ve been around far longer than she has, this wasn’t always the case.
The District’s Indian Heritage High School, which for years found a home in the very same Wilson-Pacific building where Clear Sky now reserves a room on Tuesday and Thursday nights, was created in 1974. By the mid-’90s, the late Principal Bob Eaglestaff, a Lakota from the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation, was credited for turning the program into a national model for urban Native American education. The innovative school, which provided public education to Native students embracing cultural identity and Native American history, sought—with impressive success—to combat low graduation rates among Native students. District spokesperson Teresa Wippel points to the Seattle Public Schools history books when describing Indian Heritage, noting the 100 percent graduation rate it achieved by 1994.
However, citing low enrollment numbers, the District transitioned the Indian Heritage High School program in 2000, making it one of its then-five middle colleges (or alternative schools) that serve students of all demographics at risk of dropping out. By 2012, the Seattle School District reported that only seven of the school’s 50 students were Native. Preparing for the demolition and replacement of the Wilson-Pacific building in 2015, this year the Indian Heritage middle college program was consolidated with one located at Northgate Mall. As Wippel admits, “The withdrawal of district support and resources resulted in the decline of the program.”
Back at Clear Sky, the Seattle School District’s attempts to serve its Native population directly impact the 15-year-old sitting across from me. And with a few sharp—and obvious—exceptions, the challenges in Rose Gibbs’ life aren’t all that different from those of the children who surround us at the Clear Sky Youth Council, now beginning to line up for dinner.
In school, Rose says she does well in Spanish and history, but struggles in English and science. Sometimes she has trouble getting to school on time, a trip that requires two city buses. She admits to “hanging out with the wrong people” last year, but this year at Ingraham, things have been better, she says. I ask about friends; she tells me she has one. When I ask her whether she thinks the school district cares about her, she says, “Not really.”
The picture painted by the stats for young Native students like Rose isn’t pretty. In the Seattle School District, only about one percent of the roughly 50,000 kids identify as American Indian or Alaska Native. According to the 2013 Seattle Public Schools District Profile, in 2010 and 2011 Native students had the highest drop-out rate and lowest graduation rate of any demographic. While results vary from year to year, the report notes that “The American Indian ethnic group has historically had the highest dropout rates.”
A U.S. Department of Justice Indian Education grant application for the 2013–14 school year provided by the District depicts American Indian students well behind in mathematics, reading, and science. WASL scores in reading and mathematics for American Indian students are also the lowest of any ethnicity. Statewide, a 2008 report from the state Superintendent of Public Instruction’s Office detailed the achievement gap between white students and Native Americans, showing Native fourth-grade boys and girls behind white students in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math and reading scores, among other deficiencies. In King County, the Seattle Indian Health Board “Community Health Profile” released in Dec. 2011 indicates that 18.3 percent of those 25 and older who identified as Native American or Alaska Natives reported not having finished high school or obtained a GED—a rate more than twice that of the general population.
Given these struggles, it’s no surprise that Seattle Schools Superintendent José Banda has made closing the achievement gap between Native and white students a theme of his administration. In his 2013 “State of the District” address, delivered last November, Banda said: “We still have unacceptable achievement gaps between our students of color and our white students, and we’re not making steady progress with our Native American students. We simply must and will do better.”
But how? That depends on who’s answering. Many in the Native community call for more Native-specific curricula, more cultural inclusion, Native language courses, and—primarily—a return of the District’s Indian Heritage High School. This last would be a decision for the School Board, Wippel says.
“Our biggest challenge and our highest priority at Seattle Public Schools is closing the achievement and opportunity gap,” says Wippel, “while at the same time raising expectations for students meeting or exceeding standards. While we truly believe it is possible to eliminate the gap, it will not happen without a focused, well-articulated plan for providing a challenging and rigorous curriculum for each and every student.”
For Native students, according to Shauna Heath, the executive director for curriculum and instruction for Seattle Public Schools, this plan includes targeting resources; utilizing federal grant funding; working to place a liaison for Native students in every school; implementing a Washington Tribal Sovereignty curriculum (which has already started in West Seattle and will continue in 2014–15); and connecting students with Native professionals and role models.
The District also hired Gail Morris as its new Native American Services Manager in October. From the Ahousaht First Nation, and locally having adopted the Muckleshoot tribe, Morris’ job, among other things, is to help ensure that as many Native students as possible qualify for Title III and Title VII federal education funding. Historically, this has been an area of struggle for the District, with funding having been lost in the past and auditors on four occasions finding that Seattle Schools overrepresented the number of Native students who meet these requirements.
District-wide, another area of concern has been Seattle’s special-education program, which hits Native students particularly hard. A December 4, 2013 “Native American Education Board Update” from the district indicates that 29.9 percent of Native students are identified as qualifying for special education—the highest percentage of any demographic in the district. Many of these Native families have voiced complaints.
Especially troubling, says Deborah Sioux Cano-Lee, board president of the nonprofit Washington Indian Civil Rights Commission, are reports from Native families that their special-education students aren’t receiving the support that their student learning plans require under federal law. Sioux Cano-Lee says her agency has received at least 16 such complaints, and they’re being investigated. Unfortunately, this is hardly the first time the Seattle Public Schools’ Special Education department has faced such scrutiny. The state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction has chastised the program, even threatening to withhold federal funding, ordering problems (the failure to update and administer student learning plans and provide consistent special-education services from school to school) to be fixed.
“In all fairness, I’m going to have to say that [Superintendent] Banda inherited a huge mess,” offers Sioux Cano-Lee. “This didn’t start under his administration. This was an ongoing issue.”
Wippel says the District is aware of complaints from Native special-education families and others. She says these concerns go “beyond any one ethnic group,” while also noting that, when it comes to the District’s Native families, Morris frequently sits in on individual education plan meetings “in an effort to ensure that those families’ concerns are being addressed.”
“Our new Executive Director of Special Education, Zakiyyah McWilliams, has gone on record as saying that the Special Education department has experienced a high degree of staff turnover during the years and that instability has contributed to these types of concerns,” Wippel continues. “She has made it her highest priority to address these issues.”
As for the achievement gap, Wippel is blunt in expressing the District’s belief that closing it isn’t something it can do alone. In her words, it will require “intentional and strategic partnerships with our diverse families and community partners.”
Asked to describe Clear Sky’s relationship with the Seattle School District, however, Sense-Wilson offers a vague but telling assessment: “It’s complicated.”
“I’m from Seattle. I grew up here,” she explains. “I went to Seattle public schools, so I know that experience of going to school day in and day out and not being able to relate in the same way, and that constant pressure of conforming and not having your identity honored or recognized.” Rose breaks it down in far simpler terms. “Since we have the lowest scores, no one really cares,” she says, making it apparent that despite the district’s recent efforts, work remains.
“There’s not much to say, not much to tell,” Rose surmises.
If only that were true.
There are places to turn for young Natives in Seattle.
In addition to organizations like the Urban Native Education Alliance, the Clear Sky Youth Council, the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center and the Red Eagle Soaring Native youth theater group, nonprofits like Longhouse Media exist—at least in part—to help create a Native community within the city. Created in 2005 and currently run from a small office in the back of the Northwest Film Forum building on Capitol Hill, Longhouse was developed to “nurture the expression and development of Native artists,” according to Executive Director Tracy Rector.
A 42-year-old who identifies as Choctaw, Seminole, African-American, French, Irish, Scottish, and Hungarian, Rector grew up in Seattle and says many of the stories her 9-year-old Native-run nonprofit helps to tell “specialize in the urban native experience.” Since 2005, Rector says, Longhouse Media has helped make more than 360 short films and worked with 2,200 students—all of them young, all of them Native. She says over 80 percent live at or below the poverty line.
“In my own experience as someone who’s mixed-race and someone who didn’t grow up on a reservation, there are unique challenges in terms of our cultural intelligence and being accepted,” Rector says. “Our self-awareness as a Native person is very unique, because we also have all these other facets of who we are, and challenges and realities. [We’re] living in a big city, and negotiating what that means.”
In some ways, the role reservations have often played for rural natives in creating community and finding a voice is a void filled for urban Natives by local organizations like Longhouse. “Our people need to tell our own stories,” she offers, “and that’s what we’re committed to.”
“Many of our students haven’t been to their reservations before,” Rector says. “Their connection to their people is based on their connection as being identified as urban Native.”
Even with the work of her organization and many others, Rector worries about what the future holds for the small but important slice of Seattle’s population. Much like the ordinance that pushed Native people out of the city shortly after Seattle’s incorporation, she says gentrification and the disappearance of housing for low-wage or working-class Native families is doing the same, forcing them to “Federal Way and beyond.”
It’s a source of growing frustration, and it angers Rector. “Everybody deserves to be impacted by the beauty of Native culture in this city,” she says. “Native history is Seattle’s history.”
If Seattle’s history is Native history, then the city’s future is tied to the struggling urban Natives who call it home. As long as the city’s first peoples suffer, we suffer as a city. And for every kid at the Clear Sky Youth Council on this Tuesday night, the future is of direct consequence.
For Rose Gibbs, plotting a successful course into that future isn’t about census numbers, statistics, or trends. It’s about finding a way to pass English and science and finish the 10th grade at Ingraham. It’s about graduating from high school and, she hopes, making it to college—something Rose wants, but isn’t sure will be possible. Talking about the future elicits an equal mix of defiant self-confidence and uncertainty. She’ll be fine, she promises. She’s just not sure how.
One thing Rose is certain about, however, is that Clear Sky has helped. It speaks to the power of a grassroots movement and the importance of an invested community. It speaks to what people can do, even when it feels as if 98 percent of the population doesn’t see them; to resiliency and hope; to the promise of tomorrow, for Rose and others.
“I feel like I got support here,” Rose says of her time at Clear Sky. “It’s helping me know what it means to be Native.”
With that, she gets up and joins her friends. At this moment, in this warm room with working bathrooms, filled with people who care, Rose is anything but invisible.
The Yakama Nation and neighboring tribes are strongly objecting to a Congressional move to offer public access to the summit of Rattlesnake Mountain, a place tribal members consider sacred.
The mountain lies in the Hanford Reach National Monument near Richland, Washington.
Central Washington’s outgoing Republican Congressman Doc Hastings authored the requirement that the federal government provide some degree of public access. The provision is now tacked on to a must-pass defense spending bill.
Access to the windswept, treeless mountain overlooking the Hanford nuclear site is currently highly restricted. Philip Rigdon supervises the Yakama Nation Department of Natural Resources. He said the summit of Rattlesnake Mountain should remain off-limits to the general public.
“The mountain is a place that is critical to our culture, our religion and the ceremonies that we continue to perform today,” Rigdon said.
But Rigdon’s arguments may be in vain. A Democratic Senate staffer said the defense spending bill now includes so many unrelated member requests, it’s expected to pass by a wide margin this week.
Last week, the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act won U.S. House approval on a bipartisan 300-119 vote. Many public lands provisions that have been bottled up in the divided Congress for years have now been folded into the mammoth bill.
Some of the measures of Northwest interest would expand the Oregon Caves National Monument and Alpine Lakes Wilderness and protect the Hanford B Reactor as part of a new Manhattan Project National Historical Park.
Representative Hastings had long sought to force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the relevant land manager, through legislation to provide greater access to Rattlesnake Mountain. The House unanimously passed such a bill in 2013, but it died without a hearing in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
“The views of Indian tribes are legitimate, and they have a right to be heard and consulted,” Hastings said during an earlier House committee hearing. “But the views of local communities and all citizens also deserve to be heard and listened to — and there is overwhelming local public support for access to the summit of Rattlesnake Mountain.”
“The public should expect that if they can visit the summit of Mt. Rainier, then they certainly should be allowed to the summit of Rattlesnake Mountain,” Hastings said as he described the “unparalled views” of the Columbia Basin from the ridge. A gated, paved road leads to the summit.
The Native American name for Rattlesnake Mountain is “Laliik.” Rigdon said Columbia Plateau tribes such as the Yakama, Umatilla and Nez Perce want to preserve the “spiritual” qualities of a holy place.
“It’s astonishing to me that we continue this total disregard for our religion, our ceremonies and this place that has provided for us,” concluded Rigdon.
“Laliik is our Mount Sinai,” Yakama tribal Chairman JoDe Goudy wrote in a recent letter to U.S. senators. “When our Long House leaders feel that a young adult is ready and worthy, Laliik is where they are sent to fast and to have vision quests. This is not a place for Airstreams and Winnebagos.”
The Rattlesnake Mountain provision is one of several aspects of the defense spending bill that trouble tribes. The Yakama Nation chairman also wrote to oppose the transfer of more than 1,000 acres of surplus land at the urbanized edge of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site for economic development.
Northwest tribes are also joining in solidarity with Native bands in the Southwest who object to the transfer of Tonto National Forest land to a private company that plans to mine for copper.
WSU toxicologist Jen McIntyre checks the condition of an embryo that was exposed to urban stormwater runoff. More pictures from the study can be found by clicking on the photo.
Peering through a microscope at the Suquamish Tribe’s Grovers Creek Hatchery, biologist Tiffany Linbo uses two pairs of tweezers to gently peel the protective layer off an 18-day-old fertilized coho salmon egg.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) biologist needs to do it without piercing the yolk sac so Washington State University (WSU) toxicologist Jen McIntyre can take a closer look at the embryo’s health and development, such as heartbeat, blood flow and eye size.
Linbo and McIntyre are looking at eggs that have been exposed to urban stormwater runoff collected from roadways in Seattle; they want to know if the embryos show signs of developmental toxicity.
In a partnership with the tribe, the project is part of an ongoing study by NOAA, WSU, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Environmental Protection Agency to better understand how untreated urban stormwater is affecting coho salmon during their freshwater life stages in urban Puget Sound watersheds.
While it may be obvious that polluted water may be hazardous to salmon, “some as-yet unidentified chemicals in runoff are prematurely killing adult salmon as they attempt to spawn in urban streams,” said David Baldwin, NOAA research zoologist who helped design the study.
Since 2011, the scientists have been conducting similar exposure tests on adult coho salmon, studying fish behavior and toxicity levels in the organs. They have profiled the baseline chemistry of urban runoff across multiple storms, spanning multiple years.
The scientists are looking at the effects of different dilutions of stormwater on embryos compared to embryos exposed only to the hatchery’s clean well water. The team also is monitoring the development of eggs exposed to full-strength stormwater first filtered through experimental soil columns filled with sand, compost and mulch, mimicking bioswale filtration systems.
As for the eggs, it will take more than one storm to tell the story.
“We expect it will take multiple short exposures before we see effects on the eggs,” McIntyre said. “If the contaminants target the gills, the liver or the heart of the adults, those organs were not yet developed when we did the first exposure to the eggs.”
“In actual urban spawning habitats, salmon embryos develop over a period several weeks, during which they are likely to experience repeated rain events,” added Julann Spromberg, NOAA toxicologist. “We want our study to reflect this reality of multiple exposures.”
UNITED STATES – NOVEMBER 14: Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., talks with reporters outside a meeting of House Republican Steering Committee meeting in Cannon Building, November 14, 2014. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call) | Tom Williams via Getty Images
By Felicia Fonseca, AP
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar’s reference to American Indians as “wards of the federal government” has struck a harsh chord with tribal members and legal experts in the days following a discussion about a controversial Arizona land deal that would make way for the country’s largest copper mine.
The Arizona Republican was responding to concerns from Phil Stago of the White Mountain Apache Tribe when he made the comment that stunned people at the round-table talk.
Stago said the phrase is antiquated and ignores advances made in tribes managing their own affairs and seeking equal representation when it comes to projects proposed on land they consider sacred.
“He kind of revealed the truth — the true deep feeling of the federal government: ‘Tribes, you can call yourselves sovereign nations, but when it comes down to the final test, you’re not really sovereign because we still have plenary authority over you,'” Stago told The Associated Press.
Gosar spokesman Steven Smith said that wasn’t the intent of the congressman, whose constituents in the 4th Congressional District include Apache tribes. He didn’t respond to requests to elaborate further.
“If that’s what he got out of that, I think it’s misconstrued,” Smith said. “If you look at the work the congressman has done, that’s far from the truth.”
Smith said Gosar has been an advocate for strengthening the relationship between tribes and the federal government. He pointed to legislation he sponsored this year that would do so.
Gosar held the discussion Friday in Flagstaff with Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, who grew up with Stago on Arizona’s Fort Apache Reservation.
Dozens of people attended the meeting to discuss land, mining and forest issues with the representatives.
One topic they addressed was a proposal to swap 2,400 acres of southeastern Arizona’s Tonto National Forest for about 5,300 acres of environmentally sensitive land throughout the state controlled by a subsidiary of global mining giant Rio Tinto. Stago said the proposal was disrespectful to tribal sovereignty.
Gosar said: “You’re still wards of the federal government,” according to the Arizona Daily Sun.
While former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall described tribes’ relationship with the federal government as that of a ward to its guardian in the 1830s, that characterization has long been irrelevant, experts in federal Indian law said.
Tribal members once seen as incompetent in the Supreme Court’s eyes became U.S. citizens in 1924, and the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 pushed the concept of tribal sovereignty and self-determination, said Troy Eid, a Republican and former U.S. attorney in Colorado.
Congress maintains control over Indian affairs.
However, the Interior Department is moving away from archaic paternalism when it comes to relationships with tribes, a spokeswoman said. The Bureau of Indian Affairs’ website notes the federal government is a trustee of Indian property — not the guardian of all American Indians and Alaska Natives.
Eid said the language that defines core concepts of Indian law is old and often ethnically offensive. “Wards of the federal government” is no different, he said.
“That’s just not appropriate,” Eid said. “In the heated context of what this represents, it’s especially inappropriate to be resorting to what amounts to race baiting.”
The trend has been for tribes to take more control over their affairs while holding the federal government to promises generally born out of treaties. In exchange for tribal land, the government promised things like health care, education and social services in perpetuity for members of federally recognized tribes.
Some tribes are taking advantage of federal laws that allow them to prosecute felony crimes and assert jurisdiction over non-Natives in limited cases of domestic violence. They also have the authority to approve trust land leases directly, rather than wait for BIA approval.
Sam Deloria, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe who served for 35 years as director of the American Indian Law Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, said tribes welcome discussion about policy matters.
But when someone makes a comment like Gosar’s, “it doesn’t contribute much to the debate,” he said.
The holidays are a time for celebration as we come together with family and friends for seasonal gatherings or at places of worship. But this time of year should also serve as a time for reflection. We might do well to reflect on whether we will ever achieve “peace on earth” unless, and until, we are willing to extend goodwill and compassion to the non-human inhabitants (i.e. individuals, families, and communities) with whom we share this planet, especially those whose very existence hangs in the balance. Here in British Columbia, that means killer whales.
Two distinct populations of resident killer whales reside in B.C.’s waters. The Northern Residents are commonly found on B.C.’s north coast and the Southern Residents within the Salish Sea.
The Northern and Southern Residents differ in population size, population trends, dialects, and importantly, their status under Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA). The Northern Residents have a larger, more stable population and are designated as “threatened,” whereas the Southern Residents have an extremely small, declining population, and are designated as “endangered.” Their population has been hovering around 80 since 47 whales were captured and taken for the aquarium trade prior to 1974.
Owing to diminished numbers of Chinook salmon (their primary food), vessel disturbance and underwater noise, pollution, and now facing the pending threat of oil spills, Southern Resident Killer Whales confront a very uncertain future.
Recent viability analysis of their fate by Canadian and U.S. scientists gives them a 50 per cent chance of survival over the next 100 years. Sadly, the population projections for the year 2030 have already been realized, as the number of Southern Residents is now below 80 whales.
The recent death of J32, an 18-year-old breeding female, is a stark reminder of the precipice the Southern Residents stand upon.
Because Southern Resident Killer Whales have been lawfully classified as endangered, the federal government is compelled to implement a recovery strategy that ensures their survival. Yet, the government continues to delay implementation of a credible and comprehensive plan. Their current action plan lacks action, ostensibly because gaps in ecological research are deemed a reasonable excuse for inaction. Twice already, the federal government has lost in court for their failure to act in accordance with science and the law to protect these animals.
After more than a decade of waiting, the Southern Residents are no better off now than when they were listed as endangered 15 years ago. Federal fisheries managers appear unwilling to address the availability of Chinook salmon, an essential food for whales, lest they rile interests in the sports and commercial fishing sectors.
If our grandchildren are to grow up with resident killer whales in the Salish Sea, then crucial decisions need to be made now. For example, an analysis by federal scientists shows that curtailing Chinook fisheries in the ocean can improve the survival rates of these whales. Correspondingly, letting more Chinook salmon spawn could rebuild Chinook runs and provide these whales with the food supply they need.
Federal and provincial governments seem intent on turning critical habitat for killer whales into a shipping corridor for Alberta oil, U.S. coal, and B..C LNG. Moreover, harmful pollutants continue to flow from regional industrial, residential, and agricultural sources into their waters and food. If the National Energy Board knew these whales are unlikely to survive increased tanker traffic – when combined with existing food, pollution, and noise issues – would they be legally compelled to reject Kinder Morgan’s tar sands pipeline and oil tanker expansion proposal?
The federal government’s long-awaited Resident Killer Whale Action Plan finally appeared in 2014. Many had anticipated the plan would include measures to mitigate the hazards confronting the Southern Residents. Alas, the plan failed to include substantive action to reverse what is becoming a grave situation.
But this quandary is not simply a numeric one. Highly intelligent, social, and sensitive, with sophisticated communication skills and very strong familial ties, these whales have an intrinsic right to live their lives.
While the debate regarding the fate of the Southern Residents primarily and understandably takes place in the realm of science, management, and policy, it also brings up issues around ethics, morality, and even spirituality. In fact, I would argue that the matter of what we will choose, or will not choose, to do on behalf of this endangered population of killer whales is, for British Columbians and Canadians, one of the quintessential spiritual decisions of our time.
Having been raised a Catholic, I often times recall the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi. Keith Warner and David DeCosse of Santa Clara University have written that, “St. Francis of Assisi is an example of someone who understood himself to live in a world charged with divine life, in a sacramental world. He was named Patron Saint of Ecologists because he celebrated the beauty and diversity of creation through his prayer and preaching. [In] his ‘Canticle of the Creatures’ Francis sang of all creation as brother and sister. This song is an expression of his moral imagination, because it reflects how he understood himself to live a life of essential kinship with all creation… He viewed the entire created world as members of the divine family… He stands out in Western Christianity as one who lived out a bio-centric vision of the moral life.”
Which brings us once again to the question, if we cannot find the charity in our hearts to allow the Southern Residents to truly recover and regain their rightful place in the coastal ecosystem we both share, then what will that ultimately say about us as a species?
A version of this article previously ran in the Victoria Times Colonist.
Cree students at the Anglican-run Lac La Ronge Mission School in Saskatchewan in 1945. (Archives and Library of Canada)
By Michael Bolen, The Huffington Post, Canada
A fresh campaign is underway to push the United Nations to label Canada’s treatment of First Nations people “genocide.”
On Monday, former National Chief Phil Fontaine, elder Fred Kelly, businessman Dr. Michael Dan and human rights activist Bernie Farber sent a letter to James Anaya, UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, arguing that several specific crimes against aboriginal people in Canada qualify as genocide under the post-Second World War Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG)
Article 2 of the Convention states that “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
The letter writers assert that at least three actions on the part of Canadian governments constitute genocide under those rules.
3. The forcible removal of aboriginal children from their homes for the purpose of adoption by white families, a practice known as the “Sixties Scoop.” Estimates put the number of children removed between the 1960s and the mid 1980s at around 20,000.
The genocide argument has been criticized by Sun News pundit Ezra Levant, who wrote this summer that “Canada does not and never has had a policy of exterminating Indians. Genocides don’t normally include billions of dollars a year in government grants to the group in question, affirmative action hiring quotas, land reserves and other privileges.”
Levant accuses Dan of hiring Faber to curry favour with First Nations people so his Gemini Power Corp. can get permission to build power plants on reserves.
Farber told HuffPost Canada in an email that Levant’s characterization is inaccurate.
In a late night addition to the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) bill, Congress slipped in a provision that will hand off 2,400 acres of land sacred to the San Carlos Apache to a foreign mining concern. The ancestral and ceremonial lands, a part of the Tonto National Forest, includes the site, Apache Leap, where Apache warriors jumped to their deaths rather than be captured by US troops.
“Since time immemorial people have gone there. That’s part of our ancestral homeland. We’ve had dancers in that area forever – sunrise dancers – and coming-of-age ceremonies for our young girls that become women. They’ll seal that off. They’ll seal us off from the acorn grounds, and the medicinal plants in the area, and our prayer areas,” said Terry Rambler, Chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe.
The measure which has failed several times in the past but was inserted into the must-pass defense appropriation bill thanks to the efforts of Arizona Republican Senator, John McCain. On passage of the NDAA, the land will be given over to Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of the Rio Tinto, a massive mining concern based in London, England and Melbourne, Australia that has been salivating over the prospect of mining the area for years.
Interior Secretary, Sally Jewell was critical of the way the provision moved forward. Speaking of the numerous land bills being considered, she said,“I’m happy to see public lands bills make progress. The preference on public lands bills is that they go through a typical process of public lands bills and they get debate and discussion.”
Of the way Tonto National Forest land was handled, she said however, “I think that is profoundly disappointing.”
Perhaps ironically, tribe Chairman, Terry Rambler was in Washington DC at the time for the White House Tribal Nations Conference.
Leaders from the 566 federally recognized Native nations engaged with the President, Cabinet Officials, and the White House Council on Native American Affairs on key issues facing tribes including, respecting tribal sovereignty and upholding treaty and trust responsibilities.
Rambler had been concerned that the long sought land deal might be inserted into the NDAA. When the latest version of the bill was read on Tuesday evening, (Dec 2) there was no mention of the Apache land. On Wednesday morning, there it was. He is asking that the Senate not vote on the appropriation until the measure is removed.
“It may seem impossible but our elders have taught us not to lose faith in the power of prayer and of course prayer will be there to help guide us through, but as far as a strategy, we know it’s going to take a grassroots effort and a lot of awareness in the public eye to see our side of the story and that’s what we need to get out there,”
Beyond the symbolic and spiritual importance of the lands involved, Rambler is also concerned about the potential ecological aspects of the mine and how it will affect his people in years to come. The company plans to us a mining technique called block cave mining which digs under the ore and then lets it collapse into the hollow for recovery. Eventually, the land above it will subside as well. Rambler explained,
“What those mountains mean to us is that when the rain and the snow comes, it distributes it to us,” Rambler said. “It replenishes our aquifers to give us life.”
He’s not sure how that will happen once the land starts subsiding. Resolution Copper promises to monitor it.
Overall, the land deals being considered for inclusion with the NDAA are a compromise. There is bipartisan support for the give and take process and there are benefits in most of them, but somewhere, a line must be drawn.
