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

May 9, 2013 | KUOW

CONTRIBUTED BY:Ashley Ahearn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“This is probably broodstock,” McMillan says.

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

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

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

The Great Hatchery Debate

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

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

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

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

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

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

Small-Brained Fish Or The JV Team?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘We Need To Make A Decision’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday: Elwha River Recovery Proceeds Despite Sediment Setbacks.

Weed warriors vanquishing Scotch broom on local prairie

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

By Lynda V. Mapes

Seattle Times staff reporter

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

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

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

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

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

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

No wonder:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iron Man 3 Blasts Sand Creek

Dr. Leo Killsback

On May 08, 2013 at ICTMN.COM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Lynn Armitage

On May 03, 2013 in ICTMN.COM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Native Gymnast From Flathead Rez Qualifies for National Championships

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

Kiyana Price, Lakota/Wampanoag, of Dixon, Montana has qualified for the 2013 Junior Olympic National Gymnastic Championships in Minneapolis. The championships begin tomorrow, May 9, and run through May 12.

Price, 16, is one of the top-ranked gymnasts in the state of Montana. She was the all-around state champion at Level 10 for the state of Montana in March, then competed at regionals in Seattle in April, qualifying for the national championships in Minneapolis.

This is the first time in nearly 20 years that Missoula, Montana has sent a female gymnasts to nationals. Price has been competing in gymnastics since she was 7 years old at Mismo Gymnastics in Missoula. She has been Montana state AA champion for levels 5, 6, 8 and 10 (twice). A sophomore at Hellgate High School, Price is aiming for a college scholarship for her sport. Price lives with her grandparents, George and Barbara Price, on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana. After 9 years of hard work (she works out about 20-25 hours a week, year-round) this is her first time qualifying for nationals.

“Gymnastics has been my passion almost my entire life. It’s not a casual sport, it requires daily dedication and drive all year-round,” says Kiyana. “I’ve put so much into gymnastics for so long so that, for me, going to nationals is finally having something to show for what I’ve put into this sport. I see it as my chance to prove to myself and everyone else that I’m capable of being great and I deserve to be there.”

To learn more about Price, including the family’s efforts to fund-raise for their trip to Minneapolis, click here.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell made her first appearance before Congress on Tuesday

Source: Indianz.com

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell made her first appearance before Congress on Tuesday.

Jewell told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the Interior Department suffered an $881 million cut due the sequester of the federal budget. Employees are being furloughed and services are being reduced as a result.

“It’s just very, very difficult for us to carry out the mission in the way it’s expected,” Jewell testified.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is taking a hit, Jewell acknowledged. She said officials are trying to prioritize education, law enforcement and self-determination needs.

“There’s no question in Indian Country, we’ve got needs that far exceed the ability to meet them,” Jewell said.

“I know there’s not enough money to go around but we’re certainly working with tribes to do the best that we can,” she added.

Jewell took over the Interior Department on April 12. Her first appearance on Capitol Hill was expected to be before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee but the

When the Last American Indian Dies

When did blood purity replace cultural purity?

By Julianne Jennings

Posted May 08, 2013 in Indian Country Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Julianne Jennings (Nottoway) is an anthropologist.

Housing Hope raising funds to raise some roofs

By Holly Glen Gearhart

Snohomish County’s Housing Hope organization is holding a dinner on May 16 at the Tulalip Resort to raise fund to continue with their mission to “…promote and provide a continuum of safe, decent, affordable housing and necessary related services for very low and low income residents of Snohomish County and Camano Island.”

Begun in 1987, Housing Hope has had a hand in fifty-three housing developments countywide, and currently manages 354 units in 18 housing developments. They have served 238 families who have built and achieved homeownership through the sweat equity program.

Sweat equity is a term coined to express the large participation clients perform to offset the money down to own a home. Simply put, sweat equity comes from a participant literally joining in on the building of the home; a number of hours on the job equals the equity needed to buy the home.

Many of those residents live in the Sky Valley, where Housing Hope is especially active. There are 34 affordable housing units in Monroe alone, with 47 more in the planning stages. That will bring the number of units of affordable housing in the east county to 155, of which 68 are owned homes built through the self-help housing program.

And that is projected to bring $20 million in economic activity to the area.

In addition to housing, Housing Hope provides many of the families and individuals they serve with intensive case management, providing education enhancement, preparation for employment and other life skills through their College of Hope program.

They provide emergency shelter at Windermere Crossroads Shelter in Everett and at Lervick Family Village in Stanwood that can house entire families for up to 90 days. After their time in emergency shelter the family typically moves onto transitional housing.

These programs work to ensure that residents will achieve and become self-sufficient for life once they move off of assistance. Housing Hope helps attend to the causes that forced families and individuals into homeless. Housing Hope works to end the entrapment of the “circle-of-poverty” which often leads to a toxic outcome.

Children receive special needs assessments through the Tomorrow’s Hope Childcare Center at Housing Hope; in turn the child gains assistance from the school liaison program. The program is designed to help the child succeed in class. Each child has individualized attention by a child specialist that serves to ready them for a good outcome in their school years, giving them skills that will be with them for a lifetime.

The fundraising event, known as Stone Soup, will begin with a social hour at 5:30 p.m., followed by dinner and a program at 6:30 p.m.

Reservations are requested in advance; phone Kelsey Dosen at (425) 347-6556 (ext 279) or email kelseydosen@housinghope.org. The Tulalip Resort is located at 10200 Quil Ceda Blvd. in Marysville.

Proceeds directly support the community efforts of Housing Hope. For more information please visit www.housinghope.org.

New law targets how schools perform

Gov. Jay Inslee speaks to reporters during his first news conference as governor on Thursday, Jan. 17, 2013 in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Rachel La Corte)

By Jerry Cornfield, The Herald

OLYMPIA — One of the first Republican-sponsored education reform bills became law Tuesday and will give the state more power to intercede in schools where student performance on basic skills tests is persistently poor.

Under the legislation signed by Gov. Jay Inslee, the superintendent of public instruction will provide technical assistance to schools where student scores on reading and math assessments are consistently poor for a period of years.

If the extra attention doesn’t improve student performance, the superintendent can impose a multi-year action plan on the school that prescribes such things as teaching methods and curriculum as well as how federal and state funds are spent on campus.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn said it is a “solid bill” which will enable the state to partner with targeted schools and shift to a leading role down the line if needed.

The prime sponsor of Senate Bill 5329 did not attend Tuesday’s signing but issued a statement calling it “a great step toward ensuring that all children are successful.”

“This was one of the important ways we can go about making sure our public-education system is serving all children and preparing them for the demands of an increasingly competitive job market and global economy,” said Sen. Steve Litzow, R-Mercer Island, who is chairman of the Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee.

What Inslee signed is a far cry from the bill introduced by Litzow. That version required Dorn’s office to take over and manage poor performing schools starting in January 2014.

Pressure from House Democrats and the education establishment led to much revised language, which focuses on letting each school try to turn itself around before the state intervenes.

“We just don’t believe takeovers are a long-term solution to enacting real improvement in student achievement,” said Ben Rarick, executive director of the state Board of Education.

The final version sailed through the Senate on a 45-3 vote and passed the House on a comfortable 68-29 margin. The law takes effect in July.

In the House, opposition came from liberal Democrats, who thought it gave the state much power to intervene in local schools, and conservative Republicans who thought it did not go far enough.

Rep. John McCoy, D-Tulalip, voted to advance the bill out of the House Education Committee on which he serves then voted against it in the end.

He said it was being revised and improved from his perspective as it made its way through the House but did not reach the point where he could support it.

“We have overloaded schools with so many requirements, all in the name of accountability,” he said. “I am of the mindset that we need to give schools more leeway to get the job done. We have to give them the ability to teach.”

Meanwhile, Litzow and Senate Republicans are still pushing for action on a number of other education reform bills in special session.

One of those would evaluate the performance of every school using letter grades of A-F like on a report card. Student achievement is one of the measures that would be used in determining the grade.

Sen. Steve Hobbs, D-Lake Stevens, said the law signed Tuesday lays the foundation for such a system. “I think they complement one another,” he said. “In order to have a grading system that is meaningful you have to have clearly spelled out accountability standards.”

Inslee said the door is open for dialogue.

“I don’t think that this bill obviates the wisdom of continuing to look at some better ways to evaluate our schools,” he said. “I don’t think it’s the last of the discussion in that regard.”

North Dakota Visitor Center Honoring Sitting Bull Set to Open

Sitting Bull College/Standing Rock Sioux TribeSitting Bull Visitor Center in North Dakota — Sitting Bull College/Standing Rock Sioux Tribe
Sitting Bull Visitor Center in North Dakota

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association (AIANTA) Member Standing Rock Sioux Tribe will partner with Sitting Bull College for the ribbon cutting and open house of the highly anticipated Sitting Bull Visitor Center on May 15 from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m./MST at the Sitting Bull College Campus in Fort Yates, North Dakota.

Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Charles Murphy and Sitting Bull College President Dr. Laurel Vermillion will conduct the ribbon cutting ceremony at the Visitor Center’s Medicine Wheel Park, with a musical performance by flutist Kevin Locke, a National Endowment for the Arts Master Traditional Artist.

“This was a joint project of the Standing Rock Native American National Scenic Byway, Sitting Bull College and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe,” said LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, AIANTA Board Member at Large and Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s Director of Tourism. “The new Sitting Bull Visitor Center and Medicine Wheel Park is a dream come true for us.”

The Sitting Bull Visitor Information Center, operated by Sitting Bull College, will offer travelers information regarding local and special events, places to visit, a gift shop that will sell a variety of authentic Native American arts and crafts, and more. The Visitor Center is also the new home to the Standing Rock Tribal Tourism Office operated by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The Tourism Office provides Tatanka Okitika Historic Tours offering individualized tours on a first come first serve basis and reservations are recommended. Narrated tours are given along the Scenic Byway in both North Dakota and South Dakota. Stops include the Sitting Bull Burial Site, Standing Rock Monument, Standing Rock Tribal Administration Building, Sitting Bull Visitor Center and other points of interest.

Allard added, “We look to Native tourism to help our nation become sustainable for the future of our culture and people. We honor our great leader Sitting Bull with a center that will bring healing to our nation.”

“AIANTA is excited for our member the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and AIANTA Board Member LaDonna Brave Bull Allard,” said AIANTA Executive Director Camille Ferguson. “This is an example of how tribes are helping define, introduce, grow and sustain American Indian and Alaska Native Tourism.”

For more information about the Open House or to schedule a tour please contact LaDonna Brave Bull Allard at 701-854-3698 or lallard@standingrock.org.

AIANTA is a 501(c)(3) national nonprofit association of Native American tribes and tribal businesses that was incorporated in 2002 to advance Indian Country tourism. The association is made up of member tribes from six regions: Alaska, Eastern, Midwest, Pacific, Plains and the Southwest. AIANTA’s mission is to define, introduce, grow and sustain American Indian and Alaska Native tourism that honors and preserves tribal traditions and values.

The purpose of AIANTA is to provide our constituents with the voice and tools needed to advance tourism while helping tribes, tribal organizations and tribal members create infrastructure and capacity through technical assistance, training and educational resources. AIANTA serves as the liaison between Indian Country, governmental and private entities for the development, growth, and sustenance of Indian Country tourism. By developing and implementing programs and providing economic development opportunities, AIANTA helps tribes build for their future while sustaining and strengthening their cultural legacy.