Time was when the salmon ran so thick you could walk on their backs to cross the river.
That’s how the elders tell it.
Then came the dams. The dams cut off key points in salmon migration, preventing the mighty fish from returning to their birthplace to spawn future generations. It was obvious to the indigenous experts that this was going to affect not only the well being of the fish species but also of the entire forest—and ultimately, of the tribes themselves.
But now, 100 years later, Turtle Island’s Indigenous Peoples are using that same knowledge to restore the habitat. Northwestern tribes have toiled for decades to stop the degradation of salmon habitat and bring back the fish’s numbers.
The video below looks at the efforts of the Yakama Nation and its innovative programs. It was recently posted to the site of the website Washington Tribes, dedicated to disseminating information about the ways in which the state’s 29 tribes contribute to the economy, business, environment and many other areas. The site’s environment page is a treasure trove of examples of how other indigenous nations in the Northwest have toiled in similar, parallel efforts as well.
TULALIP — When it came to healing the rift between local Indian tribes and the white world that once stripped Snohomish County’s original inhabitants of much of their culture, there has been no more important figure than William Shelton.
Early in the 20th century, Shelton worked hard to restore and preserve early tribal traditions that had been banned on the Tulalip Indian Reservation for decades.
At the same time, he offered an olive branch to the non-tribal community, reaching out to speak at club meetings and schools. He attended fairs and gave radio interviews.
He served as an ambassador, a liaison between the two worlds.
A Tulalip tribal member, a historian and a filmmaker recently joined forces in hopes of making a documentary to spotlight Shelton’s effect on local tribal and non-tribal culture alike.
“I really think that people need to know about William Shelton,” said Lita Sheldon, the tribal member spearheading the project.
Her goal, she said, is to make an hour-long documentary to air on the History channel, Biography channel or PBS.
Sheldon, along with Everett-based historian David Dilgard and Bellingham video producer Jeff Boice, started the project in 2012 with a short video overview of Shelton’s life.
The 11-minute video, supplemented with historical photos and footage, features an interview with Dilgard in which he describes how Shelton revived tribal art on the Tulalip reservation by carving his “sklaletut” pole in 1912.
Shelton interviewed tribal elders about their encounters with spirit helpers, including animals, birds and people, and depicted them in carvings on both sides of a 60-foot pole.
Sklaletut is the word for spirit helpers in Lushootseed, the language of Puget Sound-area Indian tribes.
“There is a broken link between my race and the white people,” Shelton wrote in “Indian Totem Legends of the Northwest Coast Country” in 1913, an article originally printed for an Indian school in Oklahoma and later in The Herald.
“So I thought I better look back and talk to the older people that are living and try to explain our history by getting their totems and carve them out on the pole like the way it used to be years ago,” Shelton wrote.
The pole has deteriorated over the years, but part of it still stands in front of Tulalip Elementary School on the reservation.
Shelton carved several other poles, including one that stood for decades at 44th Street SE and Evergreen Way in Everett — for which the Totem restaurant was named.
Herald file, 2011 These two poles carved by William Shelton stood in his original longhouse and now are at the cultural center.
The pole deteriorated and was taken down in the late ’80s or early ’90s. It’s now being preserved in a warehouse on the Tulalip reservation.
About 200 of the 1,000 items in the collection of the recently built Hibulb Cultural Center either were made by Shelton or came from among other items stored on his family’s property, assistant curator Tessa Campbell has said.
Shelton ran the sawmill on the reservation and served as a translator for tribal elders who did not speak English. He supervised timber sales, served for a time as police chief and sold war bonds during World War I.
He spoke at the dedication of Legion Park in Everett shortly before his death from pneumonia in 1938 at age 70, according to the city.
In the 1990s, Lita Sheldon worked with Boice, the filmmaker, on short historical and Lushootseed language videos on the reservation.
Boice, a former videographer, editor and producer at KVOS-TV in Bellingham, did freelance video work for the Tulalips for several years, including recording tribal events.
Sheldon said she needs to raise about $60,000 to fully fund the documentary. The cost would include travel to locations in the East and Midwest where William Shelton sent some of his poles, she said.
The film project had a “kickstarter” web page last summer but received only a little more than $2,800 in pledges, so the idea was shelved temporarily.
Sheldon hasn’t given up, though. She said she hasn’t asked the Tulalip Tribes for funds.
Niki Cleary, a spokeswoman for the tribes, said the project could be eligible for funding as a tribal endeavor, but Sheldon’s group would have to apply. The group also could gain nonprofit status and apply through the tribes’ annual charitable contribution program, she said.
Photo courtesy of the Everett Public Library The Tulalip Longhouse interior is shown during a “Treaty Day” celebration in January 1914. Posts inside the longhouse were ornamented by William Shelton with clan and family symbols.
Lita Sheldon, 61, works as the librarian at the Hibulb center but stressed that she is doing this project on her own.
She said it’s not just a matter of money but also of gathering more information about the former tribal leader.
Much of the history about Shelton came through his daughter, Harriette Dover, who died in 1991, as well as from other surviving relatives.
Sheldon is hoping more people with knowledge of William Shelton come forward.
“There’s not a definitive tribal history written,” she said. “This is the closest thing to a tribal history.”
The project
Anyone interested in the William Shelton documentary project may contact Lita Sheldon at litasheldon@yahoo.com.
Photo courtesy Howard Garrett / Orca Network, June Members of L pod, one of the Salish Sea’s resident orca pods, heads north up Boundary Pass to Georgia Strait.
Forty years after the passage of the federal Endangered Species Act, the state and Snohomish County remain squarely on the edge of that preservation frontier.
More than 40 animal species in Washington are listed by the federal government as either endangered or threatened under the law, signed by President Richard Nixon on Dec. 28, 1973. Many others are listed as species of concern.
Among creatures found in waters in and around Snohomish and Island counties, seven species of fish or marine mammals are listed under the act.
Of the local fish species and orcas, salmon and bull trout were listed in 1999, the killer whales in 2005 and the other fish species in 2010.
Reasons cited for the decline of the fish are many, including pollution, overfishing and loss of habitat. In the case of killer whales, dwindling supply of their diet staple — chinook salmon — is a major contributing factor, officials say.
Supporters claim many success stories for the Endangered Species Act, with bald eagles and peregrine falcons among the more prominent examples.
Gray whales were taken off the list in 1994 and steller sea lions just this year.
According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife, 99 percent of the hundreds of species listed since the Endangered Species Act became law have been prevented from going extinct.
The law protects species by preventing them from being harmed or captured and by regulating human activity in their habitat areas.
Perhaps the best feature of the Endangered Species Act, some say, is that it keeps the species’ problems in the public spotlight.
“It has pulled people together to talk about what to do,” said Daryl Williams, environmental liaison for the Tulalip Tribes.
Recovery for many species, however, is slow and not guaranteed.
“Listing is a way of sort of planning for recovery, if you will,” said Brent Norberg, a marine mammal biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle.
The southern resident orca population, for example, had 88 whales in 2004, the year before it was listed under the ESA. The population now is down to 80, according to the Orca Network, a Whidbey Island-based group that tracks the whales.
“Because they’re so long-lived and their recruitment is so slow and their numbers are so small, it’s going to be quite a lengthy process,” Norberg said.
William Ruckleshaus, the first director of the Environmental Protection Agency under Nixon in the early 1970s, is 81 and lives in Medina.
The EPA was created and Endangered Species Act was passed after pollution and declines in species had reached alarming levels, Ruckleshaus said. The Cuyahoga River in northeast Ohio, for example, famously caught fire in 1969.
“The public demanded something be done about it and the president responded,” he said.
He said the endangered species law might have overreached.
“We passed laws that promised levels of perfection that probably weren’t possible. It’s hard to do it, to be honest with you,” Ruckleshaus said. The law has been refined over time, he said.
Among those stories is perhaps the most high-profile recovery: the national symbol, the bald eagle.
The eagle’s numbers in the 48 contiguous states declined from roughly 100,000 in the early 19th century to only 487 nesting pairs in 1963, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife website.
Several measures were taken to help the eagle, beginning with the 1940 Bald Eagle Protection Act, which made it illegal to kill an eagle. The pesticide DDT, found to have thinned the eggshells of eagles and other birds, was banned in 1972.
Still, “listing the species as endangered provided the springboard” for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to accelerate recovery through captive breeding, law enforcement and nest-site protection, according to the agency’s website
Bald eagles rebounded and they now number about 10,000. The eagles were taken off the list in 2007.
The Endangered Species Act’s effect on salmon is not so clear, the Tulalips say.
Development that destroys habitat is not restricted enough to offset the losses, Williams said.
“We’re still losing habitat faster than we’re gaining it from restoration,” he said.
The problem is inconsistency in rules among various agencies involved in environmental protection, said Terry Williams, fisheries and natural resources commissioner for the tribes.
Also, because of the ESA, some habitat restoration projects have to jump through the same hoops as other construction, causing delays in measures that could help fish, Daryl Williams said.
“I kind of have mixed feelings about it,” he said.
Those restrictions may be a necessary evil, said Norberg, of the fisheries service.
For example, if creosote-soaked logs are being removed from a waterway, if it’s not done properly, it could result in creosote finding its way back into the water, “so it does as much harm as it does good,” he said.
Restrictions also can affect landowners’ use of their property. This not only angers some property owners but can defeat the intent of the law, said Todd Myers, environmental director for the Washington Policy Center, a right-leaning think tank in Seattle.
Because the law governs use of land where a listed species is found, some landowners take steps to eliminate habitat for a species on their property so it won’t be seen there, Myers said.
“You get a regulatory stick that puts landowners at odds with habitat recovery,” he said.
A better way, he said, is to reimburse landowners for measures taken to preserve or promote habitat, he said.
“That at least takes a step toward making a landowner a partner as opposed to an opponent.”
Despite the ESA’s flaws, “it is working well in terms of bringing all the various parties together to talk and to plan accordingly,” Norberg said.
The decline of the salmon might not be reversed without it, Ruckelshaus said.
“It is an extraordinarily complex problem,” he said. “But for the ESA I doubt we would have paid the attention to it we have, and I think that is absolutely necessary for it to recover.”
Jonathon GreyEyes has one word of advice for Native students interested in pursuing challenging, satisfying and well paid careers: STEM.
Okay, it’s really four words—science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Those are the areas of study students should focus on in order to move ahead in the 21st century global workplace, GreyEyes says.
GreyEyes, a Navajo Nation citizen, is a small business liaison officer for the massive, multinational Boeing Company, the world’s leading aerospace company and the largest manufacturer of commercial jetliners and military aircraft combined. Boeing also designs and manufactures rotorcraft, electronic and defense systems, missiles, satellites, launch vehicles and advanced information and communication systems. In short, the company is involved in everything that flies and/or uses technology, which is to say just about every business and employment opportunity in the global marketplace.
Grey Eyes says STEM is the smart career path for Native scholars. (courtesy Jonathon GreyEyes)
As a small business liaison officer, GreyEyes works to increase small and diverse business participation in support of the Boeing’s company goals and objectives. As a Native American, he tries to engage Indian country as much as possible by seeking out not only small Native-owned businesses for Boeing to partner with, but also Native students who are potential Boeing employees.
“My responsibilities primarily are to maximize opportunities for small businesses of any type to participate [in] Boeing’s activities,” GreyEyes told Indian Country Today Media Network. “Now, being Native American, I’ve tried to seek out Native American companies to participate in the different research, primarily research and development.”
Boeing and other large companies that receive government contracts actively recruit employees in the Native American community, GreyEyes said. “There’s lots of opportunity in just about any field in which somebody would want to work. For most jobs a college degree is going to be required. I think across the board—not just in the Native American community, but in any group that you want to look at. We’re seeing a decline in [students pursuing] the STEM fields…and so I would encourage students (and I’m encouraging my own children) to focus on these areas where they have an aptitude and an interest because there’s a lot of opportunity in [these] fields.”
One of the ways he seeks out both small Native-owned businesses and Native students is through the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, whose mission since 1977 has been to substantially increase American Indian and Alaska Native representation in the STEM fields—as students, professionals, mentors, and leaders, according to its website.
A young visitor to Boeing’s Future of Flight tour.
The AISES national conference is one of the big annual events that Boeing supports every year. The company interviews and hires new employees there. “It’s very important to Boeing to give everybody an opportunity to participate with Boeing either as an employee or as a subcontractor—and, fortunately, that’s why people like me have a job maximizing opportunity!” he said. GreyEyes is a lifetime member of AISES as a Sequoyah Fellow. The program was named in memory of Sequoyah, who perfected the Cherokee alphabet and syllabary in 1821, resulting in the Cherokee Nation becoming literate in less than one year, according to the AISES website. “In this spirit, AISES Sequoyah Fellows are recognized for their commitment to AISES’s mission in STEM and to the American Indian community. They bring honor to AISES by engaging in leadership, mentorship, and other acts of service that support the students and professionals in the AISES family,” the site says.
What GreyEyes does at Boeing, essentially, is match jobs to businesses. He looks at the scope of work that the company intends to subcontract and then provides the program manager with as many opportunities and alternatives in terms of small businesses that can provide the services. “In the area of research and development it’s typically very specialized. I don’t get involved until it’s [a job] over $650,000—that’s a government threshold for requiring a subcontracting plan—so that would be a small contract and some of the large contracts would be in hundreds of millions of dollars.”
GreyEyes said he loves his job and the most exciting thing is the variety of projects the company pursues. “I always tell people I’m living in a Star Trek world. Some of the contracts that we’ve won just stagger the imagination. I’m always amazed at the types of things we research. We have thousands of investigative researchers researching anything you can imagine,” he said.
Boeing is the world’s leading aerospace company and the largest manufacturer of commercial jetliners and military aircraft combined. (Boeing)
One of Boeing’s recent innovations was the development of the Standoff Patient Triage Tool—an instrument Homeland Security dubbed as technology “to boldly go where no medical responder has gone before.” The wireless gizmo can detect a person’s vital signs—including whether a person is alive or dead—remotely from up to 40 feet away. The original intent was for battlefield use, but like other inventions developed for war the tool has numerous civilian applications including at fires, car crashes, mass casualties and other disasters.
Boeing has a number of programs that benefit its employees, including a program that pays employees to get graduate degrees, GreyEyes said.
There is a Native American affinity group to support the sizeable number of Native employees in the company, GreyEyes said. The group is organized regionally and nationally and is involved in all aspects including recruiting and mentoring Native students. “They might be showing them what life is like at a large corporation, helping them understand why education is so important and how it’s going to benefit them when they come to a large corporation like Boeing.
“In addition, through AISES we talk students through all stages of their education from middle school on through graduate school, and we try to get them tied in to particular people at Boeing who might be good contacts for when they’re ready to look for employment and then at events like the AISES national convention where we have several people doing active hiring and interviewing on site—members of the affinity groups are involved in all those stages, and it’s not part of their job it’s just something they do on top of it because it’s important,” GreyEyes said.
Once people are employed at Boeing, the affinity group brings everyone together to talk about what life is like there and whether any issues the affinity group should raise need to be addressed. “It’s just general support for each other,” GreyEyes said.
To view the range of job opportunities at Boeing, log onto its website at Boeing.com and click Careers on the menu bar.
By Scott Wilson on December 26, 2013, Three Sheets Northwest
If you’ve been surprised by the flurry of newspaper articles and Facebook posts about whale sightings in the Salish Sea this fall, it’s no fluke… there really have been an unusual number of unusually close encounters with the massive cetaceans in our waters this year.
The Vancouver Sun has the full story. Both recreational and professional whale watchers have been seeing an unusual amount of humpback and orca whales this season.
Some Canadian whale-watching businesses have been holding off from performing annual maintenance haul-outs because business has been so good in this traditional “off” season. Orcas, both transients and members of the Southern Resident pods, have been sighted almost daily off of Victoria.
At the same time, other orca pods have been ranging south through Puget Sound, escorting a ferry carrying artifacts from an archeological site of the Suquamish tribe, bouncing around between Admiralty Inlet and President Point, and generally making their presence known to mariners and waterfront communities through the north Sound. Humpbacks have popped up all up and down the coast, rubbing against whale watching boats here, and even nosing around a sensitive oil removal operation from a sunken hulk in Grenville Channel on the central BC coast.
Although this winter is seeing an unusual surge in whale encounters, the overall trend in the local orca population has been relatively stagnant. From an estimated level of around 200 individuals in the late 1800s, the local resident pod numbers dipped into the upper 60s by the late 1960s, and have slowly climbed to around 90 whales and stayed there for the past decade.
And increased orca sightings may not be a positive indicator overall; the surge in whale activity has coincide with a spike in local harbor seal populations. More food here may be drawing transients in from places where fewer prey than normal are available.
Humpback sightings, on the other hand, are a more unalloyed good sign. The huge mammals have not been widely hunted locally since 1966. The fact that they have returned to local waters in such numbers, says the Pacific Whale Watch Association, may indicate that some of the natural apprehension of human encounters has begun to fade. Several of the huge mammals have approached whale watching craft closely enough that the boats have been forced to shut down their engines and just drift until the whales have lost interest and moved on… anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours. One whale spent the time rubbing its face along the hull of an inflatable.
Whatever the reasons for the visits, it’s been a happy holiday season for the normally slow whale-watching trades.
LINDSEY WASSON / The Seattle Times Enri Mendoza, left, and Daniel Sandoval, sort geoduck at Taylor Shellfish Farms in Shelton last week. China, the biggest market for West Coast geoduck, suspended shellfish imports from Northern California to Alaska on Dec. 3 after toxins were detected in two shipments.
China’s suspension of geoduck imports from the West Coast has hit Washington harvesters hard. Tribes, private companies and the state itself are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
On a typical morning, Lief Cofield and his three crew members pile into a 30-foot aluminum boat to harvest hundreds of pounds of geoduck clams.
But for more than two weeks, his boat, the Eagle Scout, has been tied to the dock at Fair Harbor Marina in North Bay, near Shelton — the dive suits stored, the equipment stashed and the crew stuck on land.
“We are supposed to be harvesting 1,500 pounds a day this week,” said Cofield, 26, who is a dive supervisor at Taylor Shellfish Farms in Shelton. “My guys make $15 an hour plus a 10- to 15-cent per-pound bonus on what they personally harvest; and that can really add up.”
His crew is not alone. Since Dec. 3, when seafood inspectors in China suspended imports of West Coast geoduck and other bivalve shellfish such as oysters after reporting high levels of algae toxin or arsenic, harvesters along tribal, state and private shorelines have all been hit.
Altogether, the state produces more than 6 million pounds of geoduck clams annually, and last year almost 90 percent was sold to China.
But now, tribal harvesting companies have laid off divers. Geoduck farms have reduced hours for many workers, and wild-geoduck divers all around Puget Sound are out of work.
LINDSEY WASSON / The Seattle Times Geoduck are seen in a crate awaiting shipment. Since China’s import cutoff, quotas have fallen drastically.
Meanwhile, the state is missing out on well over $1 million in revenue from the wild harvest. Washington auctions off rights to harvest geoduck on state aquatic lands; this year those rights were worth about $12 a pound.
“We only fished two days last week,” said Cendtary Xeno, a geoduck diver for Global Pacific Seafood. “Everyone has bills to pay and families, and lack of work at the holiday time is pretty bad.”
Currently, state and federal agencies are waiting to get more information from Chinese officials, and the Department of Health is preparing to start testing arsenic levels on Thursday.
While the investigation is ongoing, geoduck harvesting in Washington is essentially at a standstill.
According to the Washington Department of Natural Resources, an average of 50,000 pounds of wild geoduck are harvested weekly by divers such as Xeno, with Global Pacific.
With almost 1.1 million pounds of state-regulated wild geoduck left to harvest before March 31, the department estimates the current ban represents not only lost income for fishermen, but also $600,000 per week in lost revenue for the state.
Some tribes and companies have already completed their harvests for the year. But those who have not are missing out on millions of dollars’ worth of product that would have been shipped to China.
Suquamish Seafoods, run by that tribe, exports almost all of its geoduck to China, and has laid off all 24 of its divers.
The tribe still had 140,000 pounds of geoduck to harvest before the end of the season in March. If the ban is not lifted soon, divers may not be able to finish harvesting, said Tony Forsman, the company’s general manager.
The tribe was selling geoduck for $11.50 a pound before the ban took effect, so the Suquamish Tribe could potentially lose out on more than $1.6 million worth of clams.
Divers receive 40 percent of the take for the geoduck they harvest, meaning each diver is at a risk of losing $67,000 — a large portion of their annual income — right before the holiday season, said George Hill, the harvest coordinator and a diver for Suquamish Seafoods.
“You can’t think about Christmas when you have to think of next month’s bills,” Hill said. “We have bills to pay, and not knowing when we are going to go back to work is very hard on us.”
To make up for the lost income, the 47-year-old Hill, who has five children, may look for a diving job harvesting sea cucumber. He hopes the ban can be lifted in time for the tribe to finish harvesting this year’s quota.
Seattle Shellfish, a company that farms only geoduck and ships exclusively to China, has shifted its 18 divers to other duties, such as geoduck farm maintenance, since they are not currently harvesting the giant clam.
Taylor Shellfish Farms, one of the largest geoduck providers in the state, ships only half of its harvested geoduck to China, which means there is still some work to be done. However, many employees have been moved to half-time and have been given other tasks, company spokesman Bill Dewey said.
Both farms say they will have to consider layoffs if the ban continues much longer.
At the Taylor plant in Shelton, holding tanks are usually packed full of thousands of pounds of live, freshly harvested geoduck. Starting at 11 a.m. each day, the four-man geoduck team, led by Gustavo Hernandez, has to work quickly to sort and pack all the clams before the first truck leaves for the airport at 4 p.m.
Last Thursday, the men raised the lid on the holding tank and stared down at the measly 1,000 pounds of geoduck, stacked in orange crates, that had been beach-harvested the night before. They didn’t start packing and sorting until 2 p.m. and were in no hurry.
“This is usually the busiest time of year,” said Hernandez, 35. “But without exporting to China, we just don’t have a lot to do.”
Geoducks first caught on as a banquet delicacy in Hong Kong, and the clams’ appeal has spread to other parts of China.
Geoduck harvesters, the state Department of Health, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) all have been scrambling to understand the suspension.
Fish inspectors in China identified high levels of arsenic and a toxin that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning, or PSP, in two shipments of geoduck — one from Washington and one from Alaska.
Friday, state and tribal officials closed the 135-acre geoduck harvesting area outside Federal Way where the Washington geoduck shipment originated.
The 385-pound shipment was harvested by the Puyallup Tribe in Poverty Bay, on what the Department of Natural Resources calls the Redondo Tract.
PSP is a biotoxin produced by algae that shellfish eat. In humans, high levels of either PSP or arsenic can lead to severe illness or even death.
However, testing in October by the Department of Health found PSP levels in the Redondo Tract well below internationally accepted limits.
Because there is no federal safety standard in place for arsenic, the last arsenic testing done in the area was in 2007. Levels found at that time were not of concern for human health, according to an agency spokesman.
The Department of Health originally had focused on investigating PSP levels, but last week the agency learned the Washington shipment was blocked because of arsenic, while PSP was the issue with the shipment from Alaska.
“The last thing I would want to have happen is for someone to get sick,” said Cofield, from Taylor Shellfish. “But closing down the whole West Coast because of two shipments seems a little heavy-handed.”
The Alaska shipment of geoduck originated from outside Ketchikan, and that state has also provided federal agencies with detailed reports, said Jerry Borchert, the marine biotoxin coordinator with the Washington Department of Health shellfish program.
Borchert said China uses a different unit of measure when reporting PSPs, and officials here don’t know how Chinese inspectors tested the arsenic levels. “So we don’t know how they came up with the level they have reported,” Borchert said.
“We are full of questions and are looking for some answers,” he said. “We are waiting for more details.”
NOAA, the federal agency working directly with the Chinese, sent a report with the health department’s PSP findings to Chinese officials, along with questions about how the toxicity levels were measured. Federal officials also are awaiting more information from China, and it is still unknown when the ban might be lifted.
Information from The Seattle Times archive was used in this report.
Coral Garnick: 206-464-2422 or cgarnick@seattletimes.com. On Twitter @coralgarnick
On Thursday, Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) signed a controversial “mascot” bill making it harder to force public schools to drop tribal, Native nicknames.
The law requires at least 10 percent of a school district board members to sign a complaint which would be reviewed by the Department of Public Instruction, with hearings in front of an administrative law judge. The new law also places the burden on those who file a complaint to prove that a race-based mascot or team name promotes discrimination, pupil harassment or stereotyping. Under the old law, the burden of proof was on the school district.
Many Native groups are outraged.
“[The bill] is an example of institutionalized racism in content and process,” Barbara Munson, an Oneida Indian who chairs the Wisconsin Indian Education Association’s mascots and logos task force. She also told the Associated Press, “It’s a poke in the eye with a sharp stick to all Wisconsin tribes, and it is an act of discrimination leveled directly at our children.”
Brian Cladoosby, president of the National Congress of American Indians said in a press release that these mascots do not honor Native people. “I was deeply saddened to hear that Wisconsin Governor Walker signed a misguided bill that protects racist stereotypes reinforced by using Native American names and images as school mascots,” Cladoosby said. “Wisconsin just took a big step backward in the journey toward a more inclusive and respectful society.”
The bill, which was proposed by state Republicans, passed the Wisconsin legislature in November, but sat on Walker’s desk for several weeks. It officially became law yesterday despite challenges from state Democrats and many other groups that the law was “racist.”
In a statement, Walker said that he signed the law because he didn’t want to stifle speech by preventing schools from choosing their mascots. He also said that a person’s right to speak doesn’t end just because what they say is offensive. “Instead of trying to legislate free speech, a better alternative is to educate people about how certain phrases and symbols that are used as nicknames and mascots are offensive to many of our fellow citizens.”
The new law repeals a measure passed by a majority-Democrat legislature in 2010. That law was signed into law by former Democratic Governor Jim Doyle.
The 2010 law was the first of its kind in the United States to set up a process that allowed a single school district resident opposed to a race-based mascot, nickname, logo or team name to file a complaint with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, which would decide whether to take action against the district.
CARNATION, WA. – Inside the Snoqualmie Tribe Food Bank in Carnation, volunteer Fred Vosk said it is an all you can eat place where all are welcome.
Becky Fredrickson volunteers at the food bank too, and added that they do not ask a lot of questions.
“We don’t say show us what you make. They are here. They need food. We have food. We help them,” said Fredrickson.
But in a matter of days they will shut the doors.
“It breaks my heart because there’s many people who need extra food. I see a lot of children in here,” said Fredrickson. “It hurts.”
“We are open Christmas Eve and then that’s it,” said Vosk.
The Snoqualmie Tribe, which sponsors the food bank, decided it was time to close.
Jaime Martin, the Communications and Public Relations Officer for the Snoqualmie Tribe, emailed the following statement:
“The Snoqualmie Tribe is always looking to become more efficient and because of that the Snoqualmie Tribal Council has made their decision to close the Snoqualmie Tribe Food Bank. The tribe was going to close the Food Bank in September but they decided to keep it open through the holidays. The Tribe has donated more than $3.5 million to Puget Sound nonprofits, including multiple food banks, and will continue to do so.”
Vosk said the Snoqualmie Tribe has kept the food bank going for 38 years.
“They backed us so nicely,” said Vosk.
Now food bank volunteers hope to work with the city of Carnation. If they can get a new building to operate out of and a truck, they will try to reopen.
SEATTLE — Staff for the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center have started an online fundraising effort to offset around $280,000 in debt. The center, which operates in Seattle’s Discovery Park, has struggled in the wake of grant and other program cuts.
“It is a really urgent situation. We really have to pay attention and get our bills paid for,” said Jeff Smith, board chairman of the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation which operates the facility.
Smith said staff considered closing Daybreak Star in September, when it appeared the situation was a “crisis”.
Since then, explained Smith, staff has been cut and the budget of the non-profit has been balanced. It now has six months to pay back about half of its debt.
“We’re motivated to work really hard to raise money so it doesn’t go out of business,” said Smith.
Daybreak Star opened in 1977, seven years after about 100 Native Americans scaled the fence at what was then Fort Lawson, demanding part of the property which was being decommissioned by the federal government.
The confrontation led to the City of Seattle setting aside land for Daybreak Star in Discovery Park.
Smith does not believe Daybreak Star will close. It runs five programs in the community for Native Americans which he said are in solid shape.
Online fundraising for Daybreak Star is on Indiegogo.com.
Now that we are at the height of the Christmas and holiday season, all of those little Elves and Santa will surely be making their way into your kitchen to sample some of those Christmas snacks and goodies.
Not wanting to disappoint our dear readers, in this light, we are introducing a few luscious holiday treats “Native and Pow Wow Style.”
Enjoy the Native deliciousness!
1. A Gingerbread Longhouse
In the midst of the Squamish Nation (about 40 miles North of Vancouver), Alice Guss took the time to teach Rachel, her daughter, and her daughter’s friend to create an amazing Gingerbread Longhouse (pictured above). The template was created by Alice’s brother Rick.
“We’ve been doing this for a long time. We put candy on the longhouses and blinking lights to make it look like fire,” said Guss. “I just did a workshop for seven-year-olds, and they piled so much candy on the roofs [that] the roofs started to collapse!”
2. Healthy Snack Bites (Healthy? Yes, and Yummy!)
86Lemons.com
Using earthly, fun-food treasures, such as sunflower seeds, agave and cacao powder, you can have an easy and cholesterol-free snack bites to offer Santa.
He’s eaten so many cookies, he’ll probably be appreciative!
INGREDIENTS:
1 cup raw sunflower seeds
1/2 cup each: raisins, coconut and sesame seeds
2 tbsp. each raw agave nectar and cacao powder
1/4 tsp. salt
Steps – Food process Sunflower seeds and raisins until coarse, add agave and cacao powder. Roll into a golfball-sized ball, coat with coconut or sesame seeds and chill.
Wait a minute, do we even need to add a description here? I was a sucker at Pumpkin chocolate! Add the word “cookie” and the show is over. Sign me up!!
The recipe’s from TwoPeasandTheirPod.com. Turns out, there is a healthy, and even healthier version. It’s a win-win, YUM!
In 2011, Laura Hahnefeld of the Phoenix New Times named Chocolate Fry Bread from the Fry Bread House as one of the top 100 Favorite Dishes of 2011.
I don’t know about you, but I think Santa would come running full-speed to come get a taste of this one!
5. Nopalitos (Cactus) Salad
Last but not least, a “guilt reliever” dish.
Not wanting to “over-sweet” your Christmas or holiday season, let’s at least throw in a salad to offset some goodie calories. Not just any old salad, but a cactus salad, that’s a pretty cool indigenous-themed dish!
Nopales are the edible cactus leafs or pads that are cultivated in the mountainous areas near Mexico City. It is also known as prickly pear and, surprisingly, can be found at many specialty grocery stores such as Whole Foods Market.
Check out the full recipe, which includes Nopales, onion, tomato, cilantro, jalapeno, avocado and lime, at WhatsCookingMexico.com.
