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New Law in Seattle Could Help Natives Disproportionate Statistics

Indian Country Today Media Network

American Indians in the state of Washington are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system according to Chris Stearns, which has made it difficult to find a job upon release – not anymore. On June 10, the Seattle City Council unanimously (9-0) passed a new law that will allow people with criminal records to have a fair shot at getting jobs.

Stearns, chairman of the Seattle Human Rights Commission praised the passage that will prevent employers in Seattle from simply rejecting them outright or denying them work solely on the basis of a conviction (not an arrest) unless the employer believes there is a direct connection between the crime and the work sought.

“We are grateful to Council Member Bruce Harrell who took a chance on this bill way back when it was not popular at all but who saw the need for justice nonetheless. We are grateful to the women of Sojourner Place who came to the Commission over three years ago asking for help in changing the laws so they could be reunited with their children and start off a new life with dignity and hope. And that is what this new law is all about. It’s about hope, dignity, and redemption,” Stearns said.

“The legislation is important in making our local economy work for everyone, removing barriers to accessing jobs and creating a pathway for re-entry and success,” Harrell said in a Seattle Council release following the passage.

With the bill’s passage comes the banning of any ads by employers stating that people with criminal records need not apply.

“This bill helps create the opportunity for a real second chance by giving people with criminal records an opportunity to get their foot in the door, to meet a potential employer and to make their case for why they should get the job. It creates this opportunity while still allowing employers to use criminal history in hiring decisions,” Councilmember Mike O’Brien said in the Council release.

“The Commission believes that this bill is especially important for Native Americans because they are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system,” Sterns (Navajo) said. “For instance, Native Americans comprise only 1.5 percent of the total state population, yet they account for 4.3 percent of those in Washington prisons. While African Americans make up only 3.6 percent of Washington’s population, they account for nearly 19 percent of the state’s prison population. In Washington State 80 percent – 90 percent of all felony defendants are in extreme poverty at the time of charging. Native Americans have the highest rates of poverty nationwide (27 percent) and in Seattle (33 percent).”

The statistics are staggering and are not just connected to Seattle. According to a 2011 article at Crosscut.com, “an arrested Native American had a 4.1 times greater chance of getting prison time than a similar white arrestee. That chance was 7.2 times as much in King County (Seattle). Other ratios were 4.7 in Pierce County (Tacoma), 3.6 in Thurston County, 3.5 in Kitsap County, 2.7 in Snohomish County and 27.3 in Chelan County.”

“The new law gives all people looking for work, including those who have made mistakes, the chance to be considered on the basis of their strengths not their weaknesses. We are so proud of this law and what it says about Seattle’s heart,” Stearns said.

Deborah Parker, Tulalip Tribes, at FieldSTEM breakfast

Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

Deborah Parker, vice chair of the Tulalip Tribes, spoke at the Pacific Education Institute‘s FieldSTEM breakfast last week. She spoke about her own upbringing and education, and why learning about nature resources in nature is important.

Marysville celebrates Strawberry Festival

Courtesy PhotoThe Marysville Strawberry Festival Royalty and float appeared in the Wenatchee Apple Blossom Festival in May. — Courtesy Photo
The Marysville Strawberry Festival Royalty and float appeared in the Wenatchee Apple Blossom Festival in May.

Kirk Boxleitner, Marysville Globe

MARYSVILLE — Before the Marysville Strawberry Festival’s Royalty and float put in appearances at the Saturday night Grand Parade on June 15, they’ll have already put in at least two months of travel time throughout the state of Washington, as well as a trip up north to Canada.

Darren Doty, co-vice president elect of the Maryfest Board of Directors, also serves as one of the parade float’s two main drivers, along with a supplementary third driver, and he estimated that the float crew will have logged approximately 1,000 miles on the road prior to cruising down State Avenue for the Strawberry Festival Grand Parade.

“We started on April 13 with the Daffodil Festival Parade,” Doty said. “What was unique about that day was that we had to participate in four different parades in one day — in Tacoma, Puyallup, Sumner and Orting — so rather than transporting our float in the trailer, like we do even when we do the West Seattle and Olympia parades on the same day in July, we were escorted as we drove the float down the highway between towns.”

Tacoma is actually the nearest of the festivals that the Royalty and float crew have attended so far this year, with locations such as Sequim, Wenatchee and New Westminster in Canada representing some of the furthest distances they’ve gone afield.

“Of course, we’ll be hitting Arlington and Tulalip later on,” said Doty, who’s learned to negotiate the challenges of navigating a large truck and trailer, and an even larger float once it’s unloaded and assembled, through some towns with some relatively narrow streets. “Even when I find a parking spot for the truck, I have to make sure I’ve got at least 50 feet behind me to get the float out, and even when I’m driving the float down the street for parades, I could still be sharing the road with other moving or parked cars.”

Without a speedometer, or any feasible side- or rear-view mirrors, Doty relies on spotters who walk alongside the float to guide his path, especially when his clearance on either side of the float has been as little as a few inches. An equally taxing aspect of participating in months of parades, that both Doty and Maryfest Board member Carol Kapua deal with, is the amount of prep time required for each of the Saturdays’ festivals.

“Let’s say a parade starts at the typical time of 11 a.m.,” Doty said. “That means we need to get ready at 4:30 a.m. to leave around 6 a.m., so that we can get to our destination in time for the judging between 8:30-9 a.m. From there, it’s a couple of hours of waiting around. We joke that our schedule is ‘Hurry up and wait,’” he laughed. “Even if the parade starts at 11 a.m., though, that still means we probably won’t start until 11:30 a.m., or possibly even noon if we’re slated to go later in the parade. And yet, it’s always fun.”

The Strawberry Festival Royalty take the time prior to the parades to meet with the Royalty from the organizations hosting them as part of those festivals. Depending on how far away they are from Marysville, they could be accompanied by a skeleton crew of a chaperone, a float driver and a couple of crew members to unpack and repack the float at the more distant festivities, or as many as a couple of dozen folks for parades as near as West Seattle, where the Strawberry Festival crew prepares barbecue meals for their cohorts.

“We keep traveling until the first week in October, when we hit Issaquah,” Kapua said. “Of course, our last parade of the year is Merrysville for the Holidays, after which we’ll tear down this year’s float, but by that point, we’ll already have paperwork started for next year’s Strawberry Festival. It really is a year-round process.”

In spite of her own demanding collateral duty of making sure that everyone has meals packed for parade days to suit their dietary requirements, Kapua still expresses enthusiasm for taking part in nearly a full year of festivities.

“For me, it’s being able to look at the little kids’ faces, as they point to the float and dance along with the music,” Kapua said. “They don’t have any inhibitions in how they react.”

Although the Strawberry Festival’s Talent Show already took place on Tuesday, June 11, its Talent Show kicks off at 6:30 p.m. in the Marysville-Pilchuck High School auditorium on Thursday, June 13. Saturday, June 15, sees the Berry Run at Smokey Point Plant Farm at 8:30 a.m., the Rose-Planting Ceremony at Totem Middle School at 10 a.m., the Kiddies Parade on State Avenue at 6 p.m., the Grand Parade on State Avenue at 7:45 p.m. and the fireworks show at Public Works at 10 p.m.

For a complete listing of activities, go to www.maryfest.org.

Heroin use, deaths up increase in state

Donna Gordon Blankenship, Associated Press

SEATTLE — Heroin use and related deaths have increased significantly across Washington over the past decade, especially among people younger than 30, according to a new study released Wednesday.

Young people are finding it cheaper and easier to get heroin than prescription opiates these days. Both kinds of drugs offer a similar high, and a similar addiction danger, said Caleb Banta-Green, author of the report and a researcher at the University of Washington’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute.

The data from Washington mirrors a national trend, but the most up-to-date national research is a few years behind Washington, according to Tom McLellan, CEO of the nonprofit Treatment Research Institute and President Barack Obama’s former deputy drug czar.

A National Institutes of Health study cites national numbers from 2009 that show a national rise in opiate addiction and overdoses. The authors of that study, which was published in February 2013 in the Public Library of Science journal, predicted heroin use would likely increase as a result.

“The state of Washington has by far the best and the most comprehensive and the most up-to-date statistics, way better than the national government,” McLellan said.

Banta-Green found the largest increases in heroin use and abuse in Washington state were outside of metropolitan areas, where drug treatment and awareness are lowest.

Overdose deaths from heroin or related prescription drugs more than doubled in Cowlitz, Snohomish, Grays Harbor, Chelan, Lewis, Mason, Thurston, Benton and Kitsap counties between 2000 and 2011.

“It’s a big change,” Banta-Green said, adding, however, that he’s not surprised by the data.

He attributed part of the increase to new state rules that make it harder to get pharmaceutical opiates because of better prescription tracking.

Washington is ahead of the nation in that trend, Banta-Green said. He expects other states also may see an increase in heroin use after they tighten their prescription rules.

“This is a state manifestation of the broader national picture,” McLellan agreed.

Since 1997, doctors and pharmacists have done a better job nationally of treating pain, but the unfortunate side effect of that medical improvement was the more prescription pain medication was getting in the wrong hands because of theft or resale, he explained.

The diversion of drugs has led to an increase in overdoses, especially among young people, and has also led to more interest in heroin, McLellan said.

Washington is also setting an example for the nation with new pharmacy rules that allow pharmacists to distribute overdose response kits, including a medical antidote to heroin, naloxone, without a prescription from a doctor. So far, only one pharmacy in Washington is participating in the program, but Banta-Green expects that will change.

“What we are seeing and the pharmacy work is leading the country, for good and bad,” he said.

Banta-Green used three sources of data for his study: police drug evidence testing, treatment statistics and county death certificates. Here’s what he found:

— The number of pieces of police evidence that tested positive for heroin totaled 842 in 2007 and increased statewide to 2,251 in 2012.

— Drug treatment admissions for heroin increased statewide from 2,647 in 2002 to 7,500 in 2012. The majority of 18- to-29-year-olds seeking drug treatment for the first time in 2012 were being treated for heroin use.

— The number of accidental deaths statewide involving heroin and prescribed opiates doubled from an average of 310 a year between 2000 and 2002 and 607 a year from 2009 to 2011. In King County, almost three-quarters of drug-caused deaths involved heroin or a prescription opiate between 1997 and 2012.

Banta-Green believes the pharmacy program and a relatively new 911 overdose Good Samaritan law, along with increased awareness, could turn at least the overdose statistics around.

Washington passed the Samaritan law three years ago to encourage people to seek professional help when someone is overdosing. The law gives the person calling for medical help immunity from prosecution for drug possession charges.

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Online:

Report on opiates: http://bit.ly/1a4rr0w

Stop Overdose: http://www.stopoverdose.org

Retiring Marysville superintendent got schools back on track

Nick Adams / The HeraldMarysville School District Superintendent Larry Nyland and Assistant Superintendent Gail Miller listen to songs by the Tulalip Tribes during a retirement party at the Hibulb Cultural Center on May 30. Both school officials are retiring. — Nick Adams / The Herald
Marysville School District Superintendent Larry Nyland and Assistant Superintendent Gail Miller listen to songs by the Tulalip Tribes during a retirement party at the Hibulb Cultural Center on May 30. Both school officials are retiring.

By Gale Fiege, The Herald

MARYSVILLE — No matter what side they were on in the fall of 2003, most people agree that the divisive 49-day teachers strike in the Marysville School District took a toll on the community.

When he started in the summer of 2004, then-new Superintendent Larry Nyland set out to meet individually with more than 700 people. His first goal, he said, was to “restore relationships.”

Many of those in attendance at Nyland’s retirement reception May 30 at the Hibulb Cultural Center talked at length about Nyland’s work to heal the district and to get results from the school board, the administration, the teachers, the district’s 11,000 students and the people of Marysville and Tulalip.

State Rep. John McCoy, D-Tulalip, said he always appreciated Nyland.

“When Larry got here, it was the right time,” McCoy said. “He was successful at calming things down and getting the district back on an even keel.”

Nick Adams/ The HeraldMarysville School District Superintendent Dr. Larry Nyland and Assistant Superintendent Gail Miller listen to songs by the Tulalip Tribes during a retirement party at the Hibulb Cultural Center on May 30. Both school officials are retiring. — Nick Adams/ The Herald
Marysville School District Superintendent Dr. Larry Nyland and Assistant Superintendent Gail Miller listen to songs by the Tulalip Tribes during a retirement party at the Hibulb Cultural Center on May 30. Both school officials are retiring.

In his role in the state Legislature, McCoy said he heard frequently from Nyland regarding school funding and other issues.

“Larry had no problem telling me what was on his mind, and I like that,” McCoy said. “I hope our new superintendent is outspoken, too. She can call me anytime.”

Becky Cooke Berg is scheduled to start her new job as superintendent of Marysville schools on July 1. Berg, who has a doctorate in education, is moving here from her job as the superintendent of the Deer Park School District near Spokane. A meeting to give the public a chance to meet Berg is set for 4 to 6 p.m. Monday at the school administration office before the regular school board meeting.

Nyland, who served nine years in Marysville, said his last days with the school district this month are “bittersweet.”

“It’s time to hand the job off,” Nyland said. “It’s been a good nine years.”

Most of the Marysville high school graduations are over for the year. Nyland said he is proud that the graduation rate in the district rose 20 percentage points during his tenure.

“My passion is student learning and I think we’ve had notable achievements in the past nine years,” he said. “It’s not just about better test scores. It’s about the skills students take away when they graduate.”

Nyland began teaching in 1971 in Gig Harbor and served as a superintendent in Alaska and elswhere in Washington before taking the job at Marysville.

Under Nyland, voters began passing school levies again, and in 2006 they approved a $120 million bond package in 2006 that helped build Grove Elementary School and Marysville Getchell High School. In 2007, Nyland was named the state’s superintendent of the year.

Assistant Marysville Superintendent Gail Miller also is retiring at the end of this month after nine years with the district.

“There was no better superintendent to work with and no better place to end my career than with Larry in Marysville,” Miller said. The Tulalip Tribes hosted the reception for Nyland and Miller, and Tribal Chairman Mel Sheldon served as the master of ceremonies.

“Gail and Larry brought to the table compassion and an understanding of the tribes,” Sheldon said. “They were team players, and we are eternally grateful for the relationships that were made.”

Arden Watson, who has served as head of the teachers union in Marysville, said that from the start Nyland had a clear desire to work with teachers and all staff of the district.

“We haven’t always agreed on everything, but we worked collaboratively,” Watson said.

School Board President Chris Nation said Nyland stood by the board and made Marysville a better district.

“At a time of turmoil and mistrust, Dr. Nyland got us back on track,” Nation said. “We aspire to be like Larry.”

Marysville Mayor Jon Nehring said the partnerships between the school district, the tribes, the business owners and the city to benefit students were encouraged by Nyland.

“Because there is no bigger priority than our children,” Nehring said.

Review panel unanimously agrees that totem pole should not be removed from city’s arts collection

Richards Studio Collection : On March 11, 1958, Miss Tacoma Home Show of 1958, Marilyn Ganes, was photographed leaning out of the front door of a BMW Isetta 300 parked near the Tacoma Totem Pole.

Lewis Kamb, The News Tribune

TACOMA, Wash – They mulled over its decrepit condition, speculated about who carved it and discussed its historical and cultural significance – both as a potential sacred artifact and a beloved object of commercial kitsch.

But in the end, all voting members of a specially convened review panel agreed Tuesday: Tacoma’s totem pole should remain part of the city’s art collection.

“I think it’s important to keep it,” said Jack Curtright, a longtime Tacoma dealer of Native American art. “It’s been here, I grew up with it. It’s been an icon of this community.”

Tacoma’s Arts Commission took the unusual step of convening the so-called deaccession review panel to determine whether the aging totem pole, which has become a falling hazard in downtown Fireman’s Park, should be removed from Tacoma’s collected public artworks.

On May 26, 1924, the Los Angeles Newsboys’ Quartette posed in front of the Tacoma Hotel and totem pole. Source: Marvin D. Boland Collection, Tacoma Public Library

Commissioned by civic boosters in 1903, the more than 80-foot long cedar log carved in what’s purported to be Native iconography aimed to help put Tacoma on the map.

But age, rot and insect infestation have structurally weakened the pole, forcing public works officials to fence it off and temporarily brace it with steel rods. City officials are now grappling with what to do with a historic object that’s become a public safety threat.

“If it falls to the south, it will fall on a freeway ramp,” said Frank Terrill, the city’s senior plans examiner, who’s been monitoring the pole since the 1990s. “…I think we’ve reached the limits of the ability for it to stand (on its own) before it’s toppled by high winds.”

As both a designated city landmark and a public art piece, the pole falls under the dual authority of Tacoma’s Landmarks Preservation Commission and Arts Commission.

Last month, a landmarks subcommittee unofficially recommended it be taken down and publicly left to rot – once considered a customary Alaskan Native practice for poles at the end of their lifespan. The arts board then sought to separately consider the pole’s significance as a public artwork and called to convene Tuesday’s review panel.

Made up of arts and landmarks commissioners, a city planner, an art dealer, museum curators and a Native carver, the review panel held a ranging discussion about the pole’s cultural and historical importance, its artistic merit and its condition.

Then, members were tasked with deciding whether — based on a list of critieria in the city’s deaccession policy, including public safety and damage considerations – the pole should be removed from Tacoma’s arts collection.

Robin Wright, curator of Native American art for the University of Washington’s Burke Museum, noted the checkered history of the pole’s creation may never be resolved.

“The 64,000 dollar question is: Who carved it,” Wright said. “And I can’t tell just by looking at. It’s sort of been mysteriously hidden, and over time the story has changed.”

Records variably describe civic boosters hiring Alaskan or British Columbian Natives to carve the pole, partly to best a 60-foot tall totem pole erected in Seattle. As the story goes, for $3,000, the commissioned tribal members secretly carved a log donated by the St. Paul & Tacoma Lumber Company, until its public unveiling in 1903 – a day before President Theodore Roosevelt visited town.

But Native art authorities among the panel agreed the iconography appears inauthentic and the carving less than expert.

“It’s entirely possible that it was even a non-Native person” who carved Tacoma’s pole, Wright conjectured, “and they kept them secret because he was not Native.”

But while its cultural value remains dubious, panel members agreed its historical value as a city icon is undeniable.

JD Elquist, a member of the arts and landmarks commissions, said he reconsidered his previous recommendation — that the pole be removed, laid down and left to decay — as some tribes traditionally have done. Some experts noted — and Elquist acknowledged — that decaying poles are also commonly preserved.

Curtwright added that because “it doesn’t look like it’s a sacred artifact,” it’s probably not culturally appropriate to let it decay.

Elquist said his change of heart largely came from the panel’s recognition the pole is more important as a city artifact than a Native one.

“Due to the history of what it means to the people of Tacoma,” Elquist said, “it’s important that it stay around as long as possible.”

Elquist ultimately made the motion that the pole not be “deaccessed” from the municipal art collection; all other voting members agreed.

But the panel could not come up with a clear recommendation as to what the city should do next – whether to brace the pole in place, take it down, find a place to house it indoors or erect a new pole.

“Money, of course, does come to play,” city arts administrator Amy McBride said. “But there are funds to stabilize it and there are funds to remove it. Whether there are funds to do anything after that remains to be seen.”

Estimates to secure the pole in place run as high as $44,000, with a thorough restoration running as much as $45,000, and cleaning and ridding it of pests about $20,000, she said.

City engineer Darius Thompson noted the city can store the pole in the Sea Scouts building on Dock Street “for a number of months until we figure out what we can do with it.”

For now, all such options remain on the table for the landmarks commission to consider, said Reuben McKnight, the city’s historic preservation officer. A staff report, including cost analyses for various options and a summary of the review panel’s discussion, will be presented to the landmarks board on June 12, he added.

Read more here: http://blog.thenewstribune.com/politics/2013/06/04/tacoma-review-panel-unanimously-agrees-that-totem-pole-should-not-be-removed-from-citys-arts-collection/#storylink=cpy

Foundation proposes Salish Sea trail on inland waters

By Gale Fiege, The Herald

A new nonprofit group is making strides to establish a coastal trail along the inland marine waters of Washington and British Columbia.

The Bellingham-based Salish Sea Foundation also wants those waters designated as an international marine sanctuary.

Doug Tolchin, an organizer of the foundation, said the effort is in its early stages, but the goal is firm.

“We recognize the Salish Sea as an international treasure of exceptional importance, where mountains, rivers, creeks, estuaries and islands come together in an explosion of amazing landscapes,” Tolchin said. “Its wildlife populations deserve all the protection and restoration they can get.”

Four years ago, a Western Washington University professor convinced the U.S. and Canadian governments to ascribe the name Salish Sea to the regional name for the complex 5,500-square-mile body of water that includes the Georgia Strait, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound.

In Snohomish County, those bodies of water include Port Susan, Possession Sound, Tulalip Bay and Port Gardner. Salish Sea hasn’t replaced the names of the many canals, straits, bays, ports, sounds and inlets that make up the inland waters, but the term has helped naturalists and scientists describe a unified ecosystem.

The term “sea” is a good one because it’s a large body of salt water partly enclosed by land and protected from the open ocean, said Bert Webber, the retired marine biology professor who championed the Salish Sea name. The name Salish recognizes the indigenous people of the same region who are connected by various Coast Salish languages, he said.

Officials with the Tulalip Tribes and other regional American Indian tribes and First Nations in Canada supported naming the region the Salish Sea and to the effort to restore and improve its ecosystem.

Hundreds of years after the first European exploration in the region, about 8 million people now live on or near the shores of the inland sea. Their accompanying activity has taken a toll on the Salish Sea, Tolchin said.

“The biggest source of pollution here is us,” he said. “We have to get people to stop their use of detergents and chemicals that pollute the waterways, to keep pet waste out of the storm water runoff and other simple changes.”

Tolchin said there is another way people can get involved.

“We would like to see people study our Salish Sea marine sanctuary vision map, so that they can clearly understand where and what is the Salish Sea,” Tolchin said. “People also can take a look at their own watershed areas and see what they can do to keep those clean.”

The foundation’s trail map is not set in stone, but generally gives the viewer an idea about how existing trails might be linked together along the water, he said.

Salish Sea Foundation also is in the process of assembling the group’s board of directors and advisers. Suggestions are welcome at www.salishsea.org, Tolchin said.

“Our big effort will be to get the marine sanctuary designation on the ballots in Washington and British Columbia in 2014,” Tolchin said. “We want people to feel ownership in this project.”

In a statement from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation in British Columbia, tribal leader Rueben George said protection of the Salish Sea as a marine sanctuary will benefit all people.

“There is no price for the sacred, whether it is the mineral, plant, animal or human. This is not just an environmental challenge; it is an issue that pertains to all of us, including our future generations and all life on Mother Earth. …,” George said. “The creation of the Salish Sea Marine Sanctuary (will be) a beautiful example of protecting and restoring the sacred.”

Putting the culture back in agriculture: Reviving native food and farming traditions

A family on the Navajo Nation in the Four Corners area of the Southwest makes kneel down bread, a traditional food made with blue corn. Photo: Brett Ramney.

By Tory Field and Beverly Bell, Toward Freedom

“At one point ‘agriculture’ was about the culture of food. Losing that culture, in favor of an American cultural monocrop, joined with an agricultural monocrop, puts us in a perilous state…” says food and Native activist Winona LaDuke. [i]

Her lament is an agribusiness executive’s dream. The CEO of the H.J. Heinz Company said, “Once television is there, people, whatever shade, culture, or origin, want roughly the same things.”[ii] The same things are based on the same technology, same media sources, same global economy, and same food.

Together with the loss of cultural diversity, the growth of industrial agriculture has led to an enormous depletion in biodiversity. Throughout history, humans have cultivated about7,000 species of plants. In the last century, three-quarters of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops have been lost. Thirty crops now provide 95% of our food needs, with rice, wheat, maize, and potato alone providing 60%. Eighty-five percent of the apple varieties that once existed in the US have been lost. Vast fields of genetically identical crops are much more susceptible to pests, necessitating increased pesticide use. The lack of diversity also endangers the food supply, as an influx of pests or disease can wipe out enormous quantities of crops in one fell swoop.

Native peoples’ efforts to protect their crop varieties and agricultural heritage in the US go back 500 years to when the Spanish conquistadors arrived. Today, Native communities throughout the US are reclaiming and reviving land, water, seeds, and traditional food and farming practices, thereby putting the culture back in agriculture and agriculture back in local hands.

One such initiative is the White Earth Land Recovery Project in Minnesota, which is recovering healthy stewardship of local tribes’ original land base. They are harvesting and selling traditional foods such as wild rice, planting gardens and raising greenhouses, and growing food for farm-to-school and feeding-our-elders programs. They are reintroducing native sturgeon to local waters as well as working to stop pesticide spraying at nearby industrial farms. They are also strengthening relationships with food sovereignty projects around the country. Winona LaDuke, the founding director of the project, told us, “My father used to say, ‘I don’t want to hear your philosophy if you can’t grow corn’… I now grow corn.”

Another revival effort involves buffalo herds. In the 1800s, European-American settlers drove wild buffalo close to extinction, decimating a source of survival for many Native communities. Just one example of the resurgence is theLakota Buffalo Caretakers Cooperative, a cooperative of small-family buffalo caretakers, on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The cooperative sees its work as threefold, to “restore the buffalo, restore the native ecology on Pine Ridge, and help renew the sacred connection between the Lakota people and the buffalo nation.” At the national level, the Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative is a network of 56 tribal bison programs from around the country with a collective herd of over 15,000.

In New Mexico, Native communities are organizing a wealth of initiatives. Around the state, they have started educational and production farms, youth-elder farming exchanges, buffalo revitalization programs, seed-saving initiatives, herb-based diabetes treatment programs, a credit union that invests in green and sustainable projects, and more. Schools like the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and the Santa Fe Indian School – along with grammar schools, high schools, and non-profit programs – have developed agricultural education programs. The Traditional Native American Farmers’ Association helps farmers get back onto the land, hosts workshops on seed saving and agricultural techniques, and has a youth program.

The annual Sustainable Food and Seed Sovereignty Symposium at the Tesuque [Indian] Pueblo in northern New Mexico brings together farmers, herbalists, natural dyers, healers, cooks, seed savers, educators, water protectors, and community organizers. From the 2006 symposium came the Declaration of Seed Sovereignty, which denounced genetically engineered seeds and corporate ownership of Native seeds and crops as “a continuation of genocide upon indigenous people and as malicious and sacrilegious acts toward our ancestry, culture, and future generations.”

In addition to the symposium, the Tesuque Pueblo also hosts Tesuque Natural Farms, which grows vegetables, herbs, grains, fruit trees, and cover crops, including varieties long lost to the region. The project is building a Native seed library. The overarching goal is to make the Pueblo autonomous in both food and seeds. Emigdio Ballon, Quechua farmer and geneticist at Tesuque Natural Farm, said, “The only way we can get our autonomy is when we have the resources in our own hands, when we don’t have to buy from seed companies.”

The farm provides fresh foods to the senior center, sells at the farmers’ markets, and trains residents to begin farming themselves. The farm also grows medicinal herbs to treat HIV, diabetes, and cancer, and makes biofertilizer from plants. The preschoolers at the Head Start program garden; grammar school students are beginning to, as well.

People from across the nation come to Tesuque Natural Farms to study agricultural production and to take workshops on pruning, beekeeping, poultry, soil fertility, composting, and other topics. Soon the farm hopes to create a research and education center, where people can come for three to six months.

Nayeli Guzman, a Mexica woman who worked at the farm, said, “What we’re doing is very simple. These ideas are not an alternative for us, they’re just a way of life… We need to all work together as land-based people.

“Creator is not exclusive, so there’s no reason we should be,” she said. “They tell us, ‘The more biodiversity you have, the richer your soil is going to be.’ It’s like that with people. The more different kinds of people you have, the more able we’re going to be to survive. We can’t compartmentalize ourselves. That’s what industrial agriculture does.”

Notes

[i] Winona LaDuke in “One Thing to Do About Food: A Forum,” Alice Waters, ed., The Nation, September 11, 2006, 18.

[ii] Sharon Beder, Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism (Devon: Green Books, 2002), 184.

Salmon using restored tidal channels in Skokomish Tidelands

Skokomish steelhead biologist Matt Kowalski and natural resources technician Aaron Johnson slowly drag a seine net through one of the small channels in the Skokomish Tidelands to gather a sample of marine life.

Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

The Skokomish Tribe has solid data showing how salmon are using the Skokomish Tidelands after a year of monitoring the 400-acre restored estuary.

While the tribe monitors the estuary year round, the first full year of sampling (December 2011 to November 2012) showed 20 fish species, including chinook, chum and coho salmon, using both the large and small tidal channels in the restored areas of the estuary.

Prior to 2006, the estuaries had been filled with fish-blocking culverts, dikes and roads for 70 years, preventing development of good fish habitat. Restoration started in 2007, which included removing man-made structures and opening historic tidal channels that allow juvenile fish to find places to feed and hide while heading out to the ocean.

“Chinook were found in 90 percent of the channels and chum were found in 100 percent of them,” said Matt Kowalski, the tribe’s steelhead biologist. “This proves that salmon have access to and are utilizing the restoration sites.”

All 20 different species were captured in large channels, while only nine different species were captured in small channels and were mostly salmon, stickleback and sculpins, he said.

“Some of the small channels are old drainage ditches that had limited fish access and others are completely newly formed channels from the restoration,” Kowalski said. “Over time, a more complex system of small channels will form and provide more and higher quality habitat for fish.”

In addition to fish monitoring, restoration work will continue this summer with more dike and culvert removal, connecting the restored 400-acre estuary to 600 acres of forested wetlands.

Lummi Food Sovereignty gets a big boost

The Northwest Indian College project was awarded a $65,000 grant by The ConAgra Foods Foundation

– Northwest Indian College

Food sovereignty is a topic that is discussed more and more in Indian Country these days. Tribal leaders and members are realizing that they can’t be completely sovereign if they rely on outside sources for their food. That idea has prompted Northwest Indian College’s (NWIC) Cooperative Extension Department to implement food sovereignty programs at two of its reservation sites: Muckleshoot and Lummi.

The Muckleshoot project was the first of the two to launch about four years ago. From the get go, the program was popular in the Muckleshoot community and received national attention from other tribes, donor organizations and the media.

Last year, motivated by the success of the Muckleshoot project and requests from the Lummi community, NWIC launched the Lummi Food Sovereignty Project. Now this younger project is beginning to see its share of support.

Most recently, that support came in the form of a generous $65,000 grant from The ConAgra Foods Foundation.

NWIC is one of 12 nonprofit organizations in eight states across the nation selected to receive a 2013 Community Impact Grant from The ConAgra Foods Foundation. Grantees are selected from areas with the greatest number of children at risk of experiencing hunger as determined by Feeding America’s study “Map the Meal Gap: Child Food Insecurity Estimates,” and/or where 100 or more ConAgra Foods employees reside.

“A grant of this size allows us to move forward with this project,” said Susan Given-Seymour, director of NWIC’s Cooperative Extension Department. “With The ConAgra Foods Foundation’s support, we will expand the project to meet the Lummi community demand for a project that serves the entire community, including youth, elders, schools, healthcare programs, and more.”

The ConAgra Foods Foundation funds allow NWIC to pool resources of people, facilities, and curricula with the resources of the Lummi Commodity Foods Program and the Lummi Nation Service Organization to form a Lummi Food Sovereignty working team.

“We can use all of these resources to support the desire of the Lummi people to get back the health and healthy lifestyle they enjoyed before European contact,” Given-Seymour said.

The Lummi Food Sovereignty Project evolved out of a four-year research project, the Lummi Traditional Food Project, which tested a culturally-based approach to wellness that emphasized lifestyle changes based on increased consumption of traditional and healthy foods and related educational programming. Vanessa Cooper, Traditional Plants program coordinator at NWIC, has headed the project since it kicked off. She said the program’s success, just like its roots, is community driven.

“I love to watch the ripple effect of the work that we do,” Cooper said. “When one person is impacted, they tell others, their friends and family members. Word of mouth is powerful and our program has grown based on the experiences that families are sharing with others. It paints a very clear picture of the need for this kind of programming and the hunger that people have for it.”

The ConAgra Foods Foundation grant will support activities that promote healthy, traditionally-based food behaviors that produce the following outcomes and activities:

Teaching and supporting cooks in commercial kitchens (schools, elder centers, etc.) to prepare healthier meals
More community educators will work in a variety of venues
Giving the entire community increased information about the availability and use of traditional foods in healthy meal preparation
Commercial kitchens will implement policies promoting healthier foods
The community will ultimately experience improved health and wellness

“We are very grateful to The ConAgra Foods Foundation for giving us this support and we look forward to getting to know some of the ConAgra Foods employees through their on-site volunteerism,” Given-Seymour said.

Now in its fourth year, The ConAgra Foods Foundation has invested more than $2 million in Community Impact Grants programming – including enrollment in government-assistance programs, nutrition education, advocacy and direct access to food. The program aims to provide more than seven million meals to children across the country.

“Without access to healthy food – even temporarily – children can face life-long wellness consequences,” said Kori Reed, vice president, ConAgra Foods Foundation and Cause. “That’s why programs like Northwest Indian College’s are so important. Being on the frontlines every day, Northwest Indian College is nourishing these children so they can unlock their highest potential, and we want to empower that success.”

Northwest Indian College is an accredited, tribally chartered institution headquartered on the Lummi Reservation at 2522 Kwina Road in Bellingham Wash., 98226, and can be reached by phone at (866) 676-2772 or by email at info@nwic.edu.