Sun, sun and more sun: The Easter weekend forecast is guaranteed to delight many Puget Sounders, with the hint of a 70-degree day on Sunday.
After a few isolated showers Friday, the warmest stretch of the year is expected to kick in, with temperatures building through the weekend.
“Right now, we’re officially forecasting upper 60s, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a few spots hit 70 on Sunday,” said Gary Schneider of the National Weather Service, saying areas east of Lake Washington are likely to be warmer than Seattle
Forecast highs for Seattle-Tacoma International Airport are 60 today, 64 on Saturday and 69 on Sunday. On Monday, the forecast calls for temperatures to ease back into the lower 60s, but no rain is expected until a chance of showers arrives on Wednesday.
The last 70-degree day at the airport was Oct. 8 of last year. The highest temperature so far this year has been 62, on Monday and Tuesday this week.
TED S. WARREN/AP Whidbey Island, Washington, landslide that took down at least one home, wiped out a road and put more than 30 homes in danger.
But for a dead flashlight battery, Bret Holmes would be buried in a pile of dirt at the base of a newly formed cliff.
Staying in the Whidbey Island home of his recently deceased father and stepmother while he readied it for sale, Holmes was awakened at about 4 a.m. on Thursday March 28 by an earthquake-like rumbling sound, he told The Seattle Times. He ventured outside with a flashlight in the pre-dawn hours and had just time to note the absence of about 20 trees, some of them 200 feet tall, before his flashlight battery died. He went inside for a new flashlight and came back to find that “where I had been standing was no longer there,” he told the newspaper. The landslide, 400 to 500 yards wide and descending 600 to 700 yards down toward the water, ate 75 feet of the backyard, which now ends in a sheer drop.
No one was injured or killed when a 1,000-foot-long piece of coastline slid off the island’s west flank in the community of Ledgewood and into Puget Sound. But it brought one home down with it, pushed another one 200 feet offshore and endangered at least 17 others on top of the cliff. It also destroyed 300 or 400 feet of the road that had led to the shoreline, Central Whidbey Island Fire and Rescue Chief Ed Hartin told The Seattle Times. Another 16 homes were evacuated below the cliff by boat, since they are no longer accessible by road, Hartin told the Associated Press.
Now a dozen or more evacuees are uncertain of when they can return, since it could be weeks before the ground stops moving, said Terry Swanson, a lecturer for the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington, to The Seattle Times.
Swanson said that far from being due to climate change or a strong winter, the slide stems from a geological issue dating back 15,000 to 18,000 years, when the Vashon glacier started to advance and retreat. That action left a layer of rock the consistency of ground-up concrete, another of sand and a third of clay. Years of water accumulation eventually made it soft, and today landslides are common along the 35-mile-long, 60,000-population island, he explained.
Whidbey Island—or Tscha-kole-chy, by one American Indian name—was originally the home of the Chehalis, Nisqually, Duwamish, Snoqualmie and Snohomish tribes, among others, according to Historylink.org, a website that focuses on Washington State history.
Family photo Nineteen-month-old Chantel Craig died Oct. 8. She and her sister were found in a car on the Tulalip Reservation. The girls were suffering from malnutrition and severe dehydration.
TULALIP — They were asked to inspect the net.
Maybe somehow it can be woven tighter so another little girl won’t fall through, dying before she learns to twirl on tiptoes or color inside the lines or dream of being a princess or a firefighter.
It seems an insurmountable job — searching for all the potential gaps. How do you predict the unimaginable?
It happened in October down a dirt road on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. Chantel Craig and her sister were left in a broken down car, going without food or water for days. The toddlers’ world was restricted to the car seats they were kept buckled into. Their bodies were covered with sores, feces and maggots.
Chantel wasn’t breathing. She had no pulse. She suffered, for how long no one can really say, and then her body gave out. Her sister, 3, fought to stay alive.
Chantel died from neglect, five months shy of her second birthday. Her mother, Christina Carlson, is charged with murder.
Last month, state social workers faced tough questions about their interaction with the girl’s family as a team of experts reviewed the circumstances surrounding Chantel’s death. The examination was required by state law. Findings were made public Thursday.
After six hours of discussion the team didn’t find what the state calls “critical errors” on the part of Children’s Administration employees.
Instead, the panelists made some findings and recommendations for the future, mainly focused on what child welfare workers do to locate families. There’s a need for experienced social workers to handle the cases governed by the Indian Child Welfare Act and consistent review by supervisors. And the girls’ case demonstrates the need to more clearly define the responsibilities of state and Tulalip tribal social workers when conducting joint investigations.
The six-member fatality review committee included a medical doctor, a Marysville police detective, a Snohomish County human services manager and three other professionals connected to social services. They asked questions of the state social worker and her two supervisors. Panelists agreed they were there because of a horrible tragedy. Their conversation, however, was tempered. They all work with families, often in crisis. They know others will slip through.
“These reviews are so important,” said Cammy Hart-Anderson, the division manager for Snohomish County Human Services Department. “I volunteer as a way to assist, offering my perspective from the alcohol and drug field.
“I also believe it’s a way to honor the child who died. We’re trying to do something so her death won’t be in vain.”
The law required the state Department of Social and Health Services to convene the search mission into Chantel’s death — to look for any gaps in a system that relies on cops, courts and social workers to save other people’s children and to help patch together families, many affected by generational poverty, addiction and violence.
The Children’s Administration, a division of DSHS, is tasked with completing a fatality review within six months after a child under state care or receiving state services dies unexpectedly, or nearly dies. The idea is to closely examine how state workers were involved with the child and family, and whether policies and practices can be changed to tighten the safety net.
“We would all love to have a system in place where we never have a child in these circumstances,” said Ronda Haun, a critical incident review specialist with the Children’s Administration.
The state invited a Herald reporter to observe the typically closed-door discussion. The reporter agreed not to attribute to individual participants any statements made during the process. The Herald also agreed not to report information about the child or her family that hadn’t already appeared in public records. The newspaper also delayed publishing a story until the review was completed and available to the public on the state’s website.
Tribal law prevented anyone from the tribes to formally participate in the review.
The committee was advised at the start that they weren’t being asked to conduct a forensic, criminal or personnel investigation. They also were reminded of the complex legal framework that limits the actions of state social workers.
The courts have called parental rights natural and sacred, said Sheila Huber, an assistant attorney general who represents the Children’s Administration.
“Parents have constitutional rights when it comes to the care, custody and control of their children,” Huber said.
There are restrictions on when the state can interfere with those rights, she added.
State and tribal social workers had been investigating allegations that Chantel and her sister were being neglected after receiving a call from their grandmother in December 2011.
Generally the law requires state social workers to close a Child Protective Services investigation within three months. In this case, the social worker kept the investigation open for 10 months, citing concerns because of the mother’s past and her lack of contact with her own family. By keeping it open, the state could offer voluntary services to the parents. In a terrible coincidence, state social workers closed the case hours before Chantel died because they hadn’t been able to find her or her mother.
The state social worker last saw the girls on Dec. 14, 2011. There was no evidence then that they were in imminent danger, which would have been necessary to remove them. There also were no signs of abuse or neglect. The social workers agreed to continue to try to assist the family.
About two weeks after the first visit, the tribal social worker learned that the parents weren’t seeking help for their alcohol and drug abuse problems, as they claimed they were.
The fatality review committee last month questioned the state social worker about the protocols followed to locate families. The team was concerned that there appeared to be a stretch of time that no attempts were made to find the children.
Social workers are allowed to check state databases, including the rolls for those receiving state benefits. Police generally aren’t asked to get involved unless there is concern that a child is a victim of a crime.
Relatives told social workers that Carlson likely was hiding from authorities. She had lost custody of at least three other children because of her drug use and neglect, court papers said.
It is unclear if the Tulalip authorities continued to search for the family.
The Tulalips declined to participate in last month’s child fatality review.
Tribal authorities sent a letter to the state, explaining that the Tribes’ own laws prevent anyone from the tribes from commenting on their social service investigations. That is done to protect children and avoid stigmatizing families, tribal officials told The Herald last year.
Tribal social workers are allowed to share sensitive information with state social workers to assist protecting children and to provide them and their families with services. However, tribal laws don’t contain provisions about information-sharing once a child has died. That conflict prevented the tribal social workers from participating in the review.
In the letter, the Tribes asked the panel to begin the review with a prayer, seeking guidance and healing. The daylong session opened with a moment of silence.
The committee acknowledged the challenge of fully understanding the history of the case without input from tribal social workers. They knew that they were only receiving part of the story and would be left with unanswered questions.
“They were asked to look at the state’s work. I think that objective was accomplished by the committee,” said Haun, who served as one of facilitators. “We are not in the position to review the work of the Tulalip Tribes. That is their responsibility.”
The Tulalips and DSHS have an agreement sharing responsibility for child welfare investigations and providing services to Tulalip children. The agreement is meant to define the role of the state and create cooperation between the two governments.
The role of tribal and state social workers varies depending on the local agreements with specific tribes. There are additional layers of complexity because of the state and federal Indian Child Welfare Acts. The laws govern how states should respond to cases involving Indian children and spell out the tribes’ jurisdiction over their children. The federal act was passed in 1978 in response to the disproportionate number of Indian children being removed from their homes and placed in non-Indian homes away from their tribes.
The Tulalips began assuming jurisdiction over dependency cases more than a decade ago. Their child welfare services program, beda?chelh, investigates all reports of child abuse and neglect. This includes any allegations that aren’t accepted for further investigation by the state.
Among the main recommendations, the panelists encouraged the state and the Tulalips to revisit their local agreement for handling child welfare cases. They concluded that state social workers need more clarification about their individual responsibilities.
For example, state workers have protocols to locate families, but aren’t allowed to seek out tribal families without permission from the tribes to be on the reservation.
The team also urged the state to provide more consistency and stability in the unit specifically assigned to investigate allegations involving tribal children. Social workers need to be familiar with the Indian Child Welfare Act. They should be seasoned workers. Increased stability in the unit would go a long way in building relationships with tribal social workers, the group said.
The team also recommended that if a supervisor leaves the unit, the cases should be reviewed by both the outgoing and incoming supervisor to make sure complex cases don’t get overlooked. The team pointed out that the Carlson case hadn’t been reviewed by a supervisor for months. They questioned whether that was because there had been a change in supervisors.
The panelists also concluded that DSHS should make it a priority to hire CPS social workers and supervisors.
Hart-Anderson said she also walked away from the review convinced that more needs to be done to offer drug and alcohol treatment resources to families.
The county used to partner with DSHS and stationed drug and alcohol counselors in local CPS offices. They were an immediate resource for parents. That program was cut about five years ago for lack of funding.
“Alcohol and drugs are so prevalent in so many CPS cases,” Hart-Anderson said.
In the Carlson neglect case, she is accused of leaving her girls alone for hours on Oct. 8 while she tried to contact a drug dealer. Witnesses told investigators that the 36-year-old mother smoked heroin in the car while the girls were in the backseat. Tests showed that the surviving child had been exposed to opiates.
It is hard to fathom a parent’s neglect for a child, Hart-Anderson said.
“Addiction is a very powerful disease, so powerful that some people are not capable of parenting, and their number one priority is their addiction,” she said.
Social workers have an overwhelming job, Hart-Anderson said.
“As a society we don’t appreciate that enough,” she added.
Duwamish Chairwoman Cecile Hansen has been fighting for federal recognition for her tribe for 36 years. On March 22, a federal district judge ruled the tribe was wrongfully denied federal recognition under the Bush Administration in 2001 giving them another chance.
ICTMN Vincent Schilling
March 28, 2013
Nearly 36 years ago in 1977, the Duwamish Tribe, the people of Chief Seattle, petitioned the Bureau of Indian Affairs for federal recognition. Originally told their quest to be recognized would probably take only about five years, the Duwamish tribe fell victim to multiple changes in the BIA’s process ultimately ending in denial in 2001. However, the Duwamish now have a second chance at gaining federal recognition.
On Friday March 22, 2013, Seattle federal district court Judge John Coughenour ruled that the Bush Administration’s Bureau of Indian Affairs wrongly denied the Duwamish Tribe of Seattle’s petition for federal recognition in 2001. Citing the denial was “arbitrary and capricious” Judge Coughenour ordered the Bureau of Indian Affairs to re-evaluate the petition.
According to Chris Stearns, (Navajo) Chairman of the Seattle Human Rights Commission and former Attorney for the Federal House Committee on Natural Resources who has followed the progress of the Duwamish, “After a decade-long battle in the courts to get the Bush Administration’s 2001 decision thrown out, Duwamish Tribal Chairwoman Cecile Hansen has won. She didn’t win federal recognition outright, but she now has a shot at least. The Obama Administration will now get a crack at deciding whether the Duwamish should be a federally recognized tribe in Seattle.”
Throughout the entire 36-year quest to be federally acknowledged, the Duwamish have faced several ups, downs and broken promises in the process.
In 1996, Clinton Administration’s Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, Ada Deer, issued a preliminary ruling against the Duwamish. As the Administration was preparing to leave office in January of 2001, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Kevin Gover reversed a preliminary finding of Ada Deer against another Washington tribe, the Chinook. His Deputy, Michael Anderson took over for Gover and on January 19, 2001, the last day of the Clinton Administration, Anderson reversed Deer’s preliminary finding against the Duwamish and ordered them recognized.
Anderson personally called Duwamish Chairwoman Cecile Hansen to tell her the tribe was recognized. However, Anderson did not sign his approval statement and returned three days after the Bush Administration had taken over. While waiting in a car outside the Interior Department, Anderson retroactively signed the approval statement which was dated January 19, 2001.
Unfortunately for the Duwamish tribe the new Bush Administration put a hold on all new regulations and determinations that had not yet been published in the Federal Register. The Duwamish approval was held, never made it to the Federal Register, and thus never took effect.
On September 25, 2001, the Bush Administration’s Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, Neal McCaleb, reversed the Anderson approval and formally issued a final decision refusing the Duwamish’s bid to be recognized.
Since 2003, Seattle Congressman Jim McDermott has introduced a bill every two years to restore recognition to the Duwamish which has never made it out of the House Committee on Natural Resources.
According to Nedra Darling, Spokeswoman at the Office of the Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs, when asked about their stance on the issue, she stated ‘It is the Department of the Interior’s policy not to discuss matters that are currently under litigation.”
In an interview with Indian Country Today Media Network, Chairwoman Cecile Hansen shared her thoughts of a nearly 36-year battle in seeking recognition for her tribe.
How did the petition for recognition begin?
We were fighting for fishing rights and we naïvely believed that we were going to get recognized and get our fishing rights given back. That was the whole point of us getting into this process.
HELENA — A woman’s shawl, laid across a chair, told a story almost too painful for words.
Patty McGeshick, the chairperson of the Montana Native Women’s Coalition and a member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux tribes, laid the empty shawl over the back of the chair and began a ceremony during Wednesday’s two-day conclave held at the Red Lion Colonial Hotel. The event concludes late this afternoon.
The event is a listening session that focuses on domestic abuse and sexual assault on Native American reservations.
“What this represents is all the women out there who are,” she began and then stopped as though memories would not let her continue. The silence lengthened before she could continue speaking. Her voice was shaky as she said, “living in violence and who need help.
“The ceremony that we’ve done here is to honor them,” she said.
McGeshick asked that those attending the morning session pray for these women. She said she hoped that someday people would live in a violence-free community and in the safety of their own homes.
“We are still living in a time when women and men are still being hurt, still being battered, and it’s really a shameful thing,” she said.
She called upon Native American men to answer the call for help from women in their communities, to answer it on behalf of their mothers, their grandmothers and great-grandmothers.
According to an online account of an October 2011 hearing by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, 1 in 3 Native American women will be raped at least once in their lives and 3 out of 5 will be victims of an assault.
McGeshick cited the statistic on the prevalence of rape before beginning the ceremony and said, “We want people to be accountable if they commit these acts” against Native women.
Gov. Steve Bullock, who delivered opening remarks before Richard Opper, the new director of the state Department of Public Health and Human Services, said, “Whether you are a survivor, an advocate or a policymaker, the work you do every single day does not go unnoticed. Your effort, whether individual or collective, is valued — it is needed, and I hope that you will never stop fighting for what is right.
The rate at which violence occurs in Indian Country is much higher than elsewhere in the state, Bullock said.
“I stand with you and do our part to help the victims who survive, to heal, to support them, to share our strength with them and to let them know that they are not alone. Today, victims no longer have to remain silent and or feel any shame.
“The next generation, and all the generations that follow, must learn that the behaviors that lead to violating others are not something to be proud of. Our prevention efforts must be diligent,” the governor said.
Cathy Cichosz, a member of the Gros Ventre tribe who lives in Hays, which is on the Fort Belknap Reservation, is an Army veteran from some 40 years ago. She was asked to attend the conclave to carry the American flag during the opening ceremony. Native singers with drums provided the backdrop.
Waiting for the conclave to begin, she said that since those days in uniform she worked for seven years to put herself through nursing school in San Francisco then eventually returned home to take care of her ailing mother who would live to be 111.
The conclave, she said, “will make people more aware of what’s going on and hopefully how to prevent it.”
Discussing domestic and sexual violence helps bring it out in the open, she said, instead of having its victims “push it under the rug.”
“It used to be such a shame; they were ashamed to talk about it, go to anybody,” Cichosz said. “It will be more preventable this way.”
The goal of the event is explain what is happening to Native American women and children, said Elaine Topsky, an at-large member of the coalition and a member of the Chippewa Cree tribe who lives on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation.
Topsky is the program director for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in her community, which is a federal block grant program that seeks to help move recipients into work and turn welfare into temporary assistance.
Her program works with about 150 families and affects about 1,000 people, she added.
The isolation of living in small communities on reservations means that violence may go unreported, Topsky said.
A Native woman will endure domestic violence at a higher rate before she is willing to leave the home, said Donny Ferguson, a child advocate with the Rocky Boy’s Children Exposed to Violence Project.
“It’s the way we believe, the way we’ve been conditioned,” Ferguson said. “It’s a normal way of life sometimes.”
Topsky’s efforts on behalf of her agency are to try and keep the family together until the environment becomes abusive.
“As Indian women, our families are who we are,” Topsky said.
“They’re the backbone of the family. It’s their responsibility to keep the family intact.”
Her program offers a variety of services aimed at helping families that are experiencing difficulties to make steps toward improvement. Parenting classes can be one of those steps. Making sure the family’s children are attending school each day can be another one.
Advocates appointed by tribal councils, who are called peacemakers, help to intervene using tribal values to assist families reconcile their troubles.
“That’s one of the best things we’ve ever done,” Topsky added.
McGeshick said the coalition wants to improve local, state and federal relationships so there is better communication on issues of Native women and violence.
She said that she doesn’t see Native women as being more vulnerable to violence as there are other dynamics involved in reservation life where communities are smaller. Others said that help for those involved in violence can take a while to arrive and locating other housing to get a woman out of a home where an abusive situation exists can be difficult as there is a housing shortage in some reservation communities.
All women should be treated with respect, McGeshick said, and those living in these communities should have access to the same services such as domestic abuse shelters that are available to women in more urban communities.
“I want to have all the rights for the Native women as all other women in Montana,” McGeshick said. “We want to have the same rights.”
“I don’t want to draw a line between Native and non-Native women. We’re all women,” she said.
Life on a reservation is rich in culture, rich in beliefs. People are truly tied to the land where generations of their families have lived before them, McGeshick said.
“We have to focus more on our successes rather than out problems,” she said.
By Carol Berry, Indian Country Today Media Network
Photo by Carol Berry. Edward Nichols, president and CEO of History Colorado, spoke with Terry Knight, a cultural leader of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, at a meeting March 22 of the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs. The commission has been asked to help foster negotiations between the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes and History Colorado in a conflict over consultation for the Sand Creek Massacre exhibit at the History Colorado Center.
When tribes, whose ancestors are the subject of a museum exhibit, are against that exhibit and ask for it to be closed pending further consultation, it’s obvious something is amiss.
Although reluctant in the past to close the exhibit, officials of a Denver museum are now considering it to repair a damaged partnership with the affected tribes.
The controversy focuses on History Colorado Center’s exhibit on the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, when more than 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho people, mostly children, women and elders, were killed by U.S. Army volunteers in a southeast Colorado camp where they had been promised safety.
Past meetings with tribal representatives have led museum officials to correct some editorial errors in the exhibit, but that didn’t solve the deeper problem that the officials didn’t consult with tribes as much as they should have.
The Sand Creek Massacre exhibit is a cluster of small chambers with curved walls alight with shifting messages and images that characterize 19th century beliefs about Natives and non-Natives. Throughout the exhibit a recording of the late LaForce Lone Bear singing his ancestor Chief White Antelope’s death song plays. The music is interspersed with muted gunshots and cries. One message in colors shifting from blue to violet on a wall says, “Ve’ho’e is the Cheyenne term for spider as well as for white man. It represents an intelligent mischief-maker or villain.”
The mass killing at Sand Creek is neutrally attributed in the exhibit to a “collision” of cultures, but it was “one of the most heinous crimes committed on the planet,” said David Halaas, former chief historian of the Colorado Historical Society, which preceded History Colorado.
The tribes involved have repeatedly asked—and continue to ask—that the exhibit be closed until they are consulted fully about its content. Although History Colorado officials said recently that a meeting with tribes will be held before the end of March, the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs said it’s waiting to hear from the tribes. The commission has been asked to help negotiate among the government-designated partners overseeing the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site—the National Park Service, the state through History Colorado, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and the Northern Arapaho Tribe.
Although partnered management of the massacre site may not technically extend to the museum exhibit, History Colorado stresses that “partnership with the tribes is what we want to achieve and have enjoyed in the past.”
“They [History Colorado] present quotes that try to tell the story in all its fullness—but this was a massacre,” stressed Halaas, a long-time tribal friend. “They use quotes which seem to explain why the soldiers did what they did—those quotations are unacceptable.” Meetings between the museum and tribes in 2011 and 2012 concerning the exhibit were unsuccessful, he said, and tribal representatives boycotted the center’s opening last April.
Now, closing the exhibit pending tribal consultation and approval is “under consideration,” said Edward Nichols, president and CEO of History Colorado. “We’re as interested in getting to a resolution of their concerns as they are.” He believes not getting the tribes involved sooner is at the heart of the dispute and is anxious for a conversation with them.
There are further complexities to this consultation process. Gordon Yellowman, a principal Cheyenne tribal chief and a Peace Chief on the Cheyenne Council of Forty-Four, said the tribe is governed by a dual traditional/Western-style system. A required federal government-to-government consultation process was established between the National Park Service and elected tribal officials who are, in turn, supposed to bring decisions back to the traditional leaders and headmen to whom they customarily defer, but the process hasn’t run smoothly, he said.
The museum conducts audience surveys to see how the exhibit was received by patrons. But Halaas feels, “they should be more concerned about the reaction of the tribes” both in terms of whether it’s an accurate, non-eurocentric historical account and how well it describes the event’s illegality and its past and present impacts on the tribes.
The most graphic material presented in the exhibit may be in a letter from Capt. Silas Soule, who refused to follow the orders of his commander, Army Col. John Chivington, to fire on the unarmed Indians and who later testified against Chivington for atrocities committed that day. Chivington later resigned his post in disgrace. Soule wrote in a letter to Gen. George Wynkoop, only one copy of which was available to the public at the installation:
“I tell you Ned it was hard to see little children on their knees have their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized… One squaw with her two children, were on their knees, begging for their lives of a dozen soldiers, within ten feet of them all firing—when one succeeded in hitting the squaw in the thigh, when she took a knife and cut the throats of both children and then killed herself.”
“This is an open wound—this is not healed,” Halaas said. “Let’s sit down together, and while we’re doing that, close this thing and reopen it after full consultation—that’s what the tribes want.”
“After all,” he concluded, “it isn’t their [museum officials’] history—but it’s affected every tribal family.”
By Richard Walker, Indian Country Today Media Network
Many of them were 18 or 19 when they enlisted or were drafted. They were trained to fight in a far-off land, to stop communism from spreading into Southeast Asia.
Meanwhile, all that is ugly about war – in this case, the Vietnam War – was broadcast into American living rooms for the first time. As the human and financial costs of the war grew, opinions collided – sometimes violently, in the U.S. capital, on college campuses and on city streets.
When U.S. military personnel came home, many with injuries and memories that would still haunt them decades later, there was no welcome.
“They were not treated like heroes as those who returned from Korea and World War II,” said Washington State Rep. Norm Johnson (R-Toppenish). “Instead, they were portrayed as baby killers, warmongers and other things.… That had a traumatic effect on these soldiers that is still painful to these days as many of them refuse to talk about their experiences.”
Now, thirty eight years after the fall of Saigon and the end of the war, Washington state’s Vietnam War veterans will finally be welcomed home.
State House Bill 1319 establishes March 30 of every year as “Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day” in Washington state. The bill, introduced by Johnson and co-sponsored by 38 state House members, was unanimously approved by the House on February 20. On March 25, the state Senate also unanimously passed the measure, sending it to Governor Jay Inslee for his signature.
March 30 would not be a public holiday, but rather a day of public remembrance. However, all public buildings and schools would be required to fly the POW/MIA flag; that flag is also flown on Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day, National POW/MIA Recognition Day and Veterans Day.
The observance was proposed to Johnson by Gil Calac of the Yakama Warriors Association, a Native veterans organization with about 190 members who make sure that veterans are not forgotten. Calac, an Army veteran who served in Vietnam from 1969-70, spoke for the bill February 6 and March 14. His compelling testimony moved the Washington legislators to act quickly and affirmatively on this bill.
At the March 14 hearing before the Senate Committee on Governmental Operations, Calac said Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day would help veterans “put away our guilt, the shame, the grief and despair,” and heal from the animosity veterans faced when they returned home.
Calac told of one veteran who returned home from Vietnam and was discharged in Oakland, California. He was spit upon while wearing his uniform. Upset, he went into a bar, where he was spit upon again. Linda McNeely, who joined Calac at the hearing, told the committee a similar story of how her husband was spit upon at the airport when he returned home from the war.
“The scars will always be there forever,” Calac said. “I know we can’t change the past, but we can help our Vietnam War veterans by opening the door and saying, ‘Welcome home.’”
Gil Calac, Yakama Nation, a member of the Yakama Warriors
Calac served in the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry, 165th Signal Company from 1969-70. He served 15 months in Vietnam. He received the Bronze Star, the fifth-highest combat decoration, but won’t speak about the circumstances that led to his receiving the medal.
“Two years ago was the first time I ever talked about getting the Bronze Star,” he said. “I still haven’t taken it out of the case.”
After returning home from Vietnam, he coped with alcohol and drug dependence. His first marriage ended in divorce; he said he almost lost his second marriage and his children as well. He’s now been sober for 28 years, which he credits to his Native religion, Washat, and traditional foods.
Had Vietnam War veterans been welcomed home at the start, closure and healing could have taken place earlier, he said.
“A classmate told me he just started getting treated for PTSD two years ago,” Calac said. “[The trauma] is ingrained in you. You hide it, but it sneaks up on you. It comes out.”
State Rep. John McCoy (D-Tulalip) was a communications operator in the U.S. Air Force, stationed at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines during the Tet Offensive. He remembers the stack of coffins at the morgue across the street from his work station. His wife, Jeannie, worked as a civilian in the records section of the base hospital, and remembers the injured soldiers on stretchers in the hospital hallways.
“It was pretty hard on her,” McCoy said. “From the time we left the Philippines until 1994, she wouldn’t step into a hospital.”
McCoy was the first co-sponsor of HB 1319. “It’s time,” McCoy said. “A lot of those Vietnam vets are still suffering. That piece of legislation is going to help them heal.”
According to the National Archives, 58,220 Americans–1,047 from Washington state – are known to have died in the Vietnam War. The Library of Congress POW/MIA Databases & Documents website reports that as of November 2001, 1,948 Americans remain unaccounted for in Vietnam.
“In the little town of Toppenish where I grew up and served on the city council and as mayor, 13 men from that community paid the ultimate sacrifice in the Vietnam War,” Rep. Johnson told the state Senate committee. “That’s a per capita death rate eight times that of the nation’s and 12 times that of the state. I also have a cousin who lies in the cemetery at Zillah who came home in a box from Vietnam.”
In a speech he gave at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall on Memorial Day 1993, Lt. Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey said the average infantryman in the Vietnam War saw about 240 days of combat in one year – 200 more days than an infantryman in the South Pacific during World War II – thanks to the mobility of the helicopter. One out of every 10 Americans who served in the Vietnam War was a casualty; an estimated 304,000 were wounded and, at the time of McCaffrey’s speech, 75,000 Vietnam War veterans were living with war-related disabilities.
Heidi Audette, communications director for the Washington State Department of Veterans Affairs, told the committee Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day would help future generations understand the service and sacrifice Vietnam War veterans made on behalf of their state and country.
“We’re also really hopeful that this will continue to encourage Vietnam and other veterans to come forward and seek out the benefits they so richly deserve from their service to our country,” Audette said. “There are so many Vietnam veterans that have yet to connect with the benefits that they earned because of their service, so we’re hopeful this will help in that way as well.”
Calac said several attempts in the U.S. Congress to pass a national Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day have failed; Calac and others are now lobbying to have the observance adopted state by state. (In 2011 and 2012, President Obama signed an executive order proclaiming March 29 of those years as Vietnam Veterans Day.)
The legislatures in several states, California and Texas among them, have established a Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day. Calac said he and others are going to lobby next in Idaho, Arizona and Nevada.
Rep. Johnson has invited the Yakama Warriors to present the colors March 29 at the State Capitol, the day before the new observance. Calac is inviting other Vietnam War veterans to participate. Following a short ceremony, veterans and family members will gather at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Statehouse grounds. There will be a pow wow drum ceremony and a circle of life will be formed by the religious leaders who are on hand. Calac is hoping to have pins and ribbons for all Vietnam Veterans to wear.
For more information, contact Calac at 509-949-0914 or calacg@embarqmail.com. The Yakama Warriors Association website is YakamaWarriors.com and their Facebook page can be found by clicking here.
The website for the Washington State Department of Veterans Affairs is Dva.wa.gov. If you are a vet or know a vet who needs assistance, contact the Washington State VA at 360-725-2200 or 800-562-0132.
The Swinomish Tribe has lived on the coasts of the Salish Sea for thousands of years. Today, rising seas not only threaten cultural traditions, but also the economic vitality of this small island nation in the shadow of two oil refineries.
After scientists identified sea level rise as a threat to the Lower Skagit River area, the tribe launched a climate change initiative to study the long-term impacts of climate change on their reservation, and to develop an action plan to adapt. Impacts of sea level rise on the island, including coastal erosion, habitat loss, and declining water quality, raised central concerns. The study presented the Swinomish with a difficult question: whether to plan for inches or feet of rise?
Planning must embrace a range of possibilities. Important factors used to calculate global sea level rise, such as melt rates of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, vary widely. In addition, regional estimates must include local factors such as wind patterns and tectonic activity.
Gale Courey Toensing, Indian Country Today Media Network, March 27, 2013
IGRA architect Frank Ducheneaux (left), Macarro (AP)
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, the legislation that dramatically changed the economic landscape for tribal nations with casinos. In recognition of that momentous event, Indian Country Today Media Network decided to take a look at some of the early heroes of Indian gaming—the tribes and individuals who advanced it both before and after the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.
TABLE STAKES
The precursor to IGRA was the 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in California v. Cabazon Band of Indians, which upheld the right of sovereign Indian nations to conduct gaming on Indian lands free of state control when similar gaming is permitted by the state elsewhere. While Cabazon is often cited as the legal foundation for Indian gaming, a Supreme Court ruling more than a decade earlier paved the way for Cabazon: Bryan v. Itasca County. Russell and Helen Bryan, the Chippewa couple who brought the case forward, deserve a top spot on the list of early Indian gaming heroes, even though they had nothing to do with gaming.
In June 1972, the Bryans received a personal property tax bill for $29.85 from Itasca County in Minnesota, an assessment on their trailer home on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation. They took it to the local Legal Aid Society office, and attorneys there brought a lawsuit to challenge the tax bill in state court. The assessment, which kept going up over time, was challenged all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, and in June 1976, the high court ruled that states do not have authority to tax Indians on Indian reservations or to regulate Indian activities on reservations.
“Bryan thus was the bedrock upon which the Indian gaming industry began,” Kevin K. Washburn wrote in a Minnesota Law Review article entitled: “The Legacy of Bryan v. Itasca County: How an Erroneous copy47 Tax Notice Helped Bring Tribes $200 Billion in Indian Gaming Revenue”. Washburn, who was Oneida Nation Visiting Associate Professor of Law at Harvard Law School when his article was published in 2007, is currently the Interior Department’s Assistant Secretary—Indian Affairs. “If economic impact is a useful measure of importance, Bryan may be the most important victory for American Indian tribes in the U.S. Supreme Court in the latter half of the 20th century. Indian gaming is simply the most successful economic venture ever to occur consistently across a wide range of American Indian reservations,” Washburn wrote. If there’s any doubt about the importance of Bryan, he added, “consider that on the basis of the Bryan precedent, the Indian gaming industry was generating between copy00 million and $500 million in annual revenue before Cabazon was decided.”
And, indeed, all across the U.S., Indian country was bustling with gaming activities during the 1970s and 1980s.
THE BIRTH OF RED CAPITALISM
One of Turtle Island’s greatest advocates for Indian sovereignty and self-determination was the late, iconic Mescalero Apache leader Wendell A. Chino. Born in 1923, Chino was elected chairman of the Mescalero Apache’s tribal governing committee at the age of 28 and was reelected every two years until 1965 when he was named the first president of the Mescalero Apache Tribe, serving in that capacity for 16 consecutive terms.
Chino spearheaded the tribe’s shift to controlling its own natural resources, and by the same philosophy of “red capitalism,” in 1975 the Mescalero Apache Nation built the Ski Apache Ski Resort and the Inn of the Mountain Gods resort in the Sierra Blanca Peak, including the first tribal-owned golf course in the United States. At the Mescalero resort property, Chino was also instrumental in establishing one of the earliest Indian casinos (now called the Inn of the Mountain Gods Resort and Casino) by asserting that the state of New Mexico could not outlaw gaming on sovereign tribal land.
Chino led his Nation until his death in 1998 at the age of 74. “In the scheme of the 20th century, it has been said that Wendell Chino was a Martin Luther King or a Malcolm X of Indian country. He was truly a modern warrior,” said Roy Bernal, then chairman of the All Indian Pueblo Council and a member of the Taos Pueblo, in Chino’s obituary in the The New York Times.
From left: Hayward, Tommie and Halbritter (Courtesy Seminole Tribune/Seminole Tribe of Florida [Tommie]; courtesy Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation [Hayward]; Onieda Indian Nation [Halbritter])
Fifteen years ago, the National Indian Gaming Association (NIGA) established the Wendell Chino Humanitarian Award in his name to recognize tribal leaders whose actions have improved the lives of citizens in Indian country. For the first time, in 20 the award was presented to an entire tribe, the Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma, whose altruistic and humanitarian actions helped tornado victims and their devastated community of Joplin, Missouri.
The winner of this year’s award will be honored on March 26 at the Wendell Chino Humanitarian Award Banquet during NIGA’s Indian Gaming 2013 Tradeshow and Convention in Phoenix.
On the East Coast, the Oneida Indian Nation, the Seminole Indians of Florida and the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation were among the earliest to develop Indian gaming.
FROM THE ASHES
Oneida’s gaming enterprise emerged from a tragedy. In June 1976, the aunt and uncle of Ray Halbritter, Oneida Nation Representative and Chief Executive Officer of Nation Enterprises, parent company of Indian Country Today Media Network, burned to death after their trailer caught fire. “The city of Oneida, which is named after us, refused to send the fire department,” Halbritter says. “It was a very tragic time for us. It was horrible.”
Tensions both on and off the reservation were running high because the nation had filed a lawsuit to restore its land rights, which was opposed by many in the surrounding communities. The reservation by that time had been reduced to 32 acres divided into 36 trailer lots, with a mud road down the center and no services. After that tragic fire, the nation’s leaders knew they needed to provide fire protection for the people, but there was no money, Halbritter recalls. They decided to follow the lead of the small fire departments and charities in the surrounding communities that held bingo and “Las Vegas” gambling nights as fund-raisers.
By October of that year, the Oneidas’ bingo operation was up and running. In an effort to develop a better relationship with the city of Oneida, the nation planned a bingo night fund-raiser for the city police department’s benevolent society. The nation informed the state of its plans and invited members of the police department to the event. “A certain number of police came representing the department, but we didn’t anticipate they would use the opportunity to arrest us for operating bingo without a license,” Halbritter recalls.
The nation didn’t have money to wage a legal battle against the state, so their high-stakes bingo operation was shut down. The Oneidas then opened a high-stakes bingo operation in 1985 after the Seminoles in Florida had fought—and won—some of the most important legal battles for Indian gaming. “After they went through all the legal battles, I went down there to visit and they had a flier that told the story of Seminole bingo and they mentioned the Oneida Nation of New York; they talked about the bingo that we had stared years earlier,” Halbritter says.
By 1993, the Oneida Nation, under Halbritter’s leadership, transformed its high-stakes bingo operation into the hugely successful Turning Stone Resort Casino, a world-class golf, gaming, entertainment and hotel resort destination.
SOVEREIGNTY IN THE SUNSHINE STATE
The Seminoles, under the leadership of Howard Tommie, had opened a high-stakes bingo hall on their reservation on December 14, 1979. It was the first casino on Indian land in the country and Broward County Sheriff Robert Butterworth threatened to shut it down and arrest the Seminoles for allegedly violating a Florida gaming statute the minute it opened. The tribe sued the county in Seminole v. Butterworth and won in both federal district court and in the appeals court, which upheld the lower court ruling that Indian tribes have sovereignty rights that are protected by the federal government from interference by state government. The ruling affirmed the Seminoles’ sovereign right to conduct high-stakes bingo on its land and established the tribe’s leadership in Class II gaming.
THE CONNECTICUT MIRACLE
Meanwhile, in Connecticut Pequot leader Skip Hayward was engaged in a three-pronged battle: (1) to save the Pequot reservation from a state takeover after his grandmother Elizabeth George died in 1973, leaving the 200-acre reservation without any residents; (2) to re-establish the fragmented Pequot people as a tribal community and (3) to gain federal acknowledgment. Working with attorneys in a Legal Aid office in 1974 and following a model set by the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes in Maine, Hayward initiated a land claim lawsuit based on the 1790 Indian Nonintercourse Act and drafted a settlement agreement. The land claim raised a storm of opposition in the community and throughout the state, and was challenged in federal court. In 1983, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation received from Congress 2,000 acres of land, federal acknowledgement, and $300,000 to invest in tribal economic development. Thus began the path that led to the creation of Foxwoods Resort Casino, the largest gaming facility in the country, and to an authentic and astonishing rags-to-riches story for the Pequot people.
“Clearly, we would not be here today without the remarkable dedication and commitment of our early leadership and that goes back to Skip Hayward,” Mashantucket Pequot Chairman Rodney A. Butler says. “His willingness to stand up and fight for Indian rights in the 1970s and again in the 1980s
Clockwise, top left: Wendell Chino, Jana McKeag, Leonard Prescott, Marge Anderson (Richard Pipes/Albuquerque Journal [Chino]; courtesy Leonard Prescott
on Indian gaming can’t be underscored enough. Clearly we wouldn’t be here without his persistence and efforts.”
Hayward started a very successful high-stakes bingo operation in 1986. After the Cabazon ruling in 1987 and the passage of IGRA in 1988, the nation began its pursuit of a casino. By 1993, the bingo operation had evolved into the full-fledged Foxwoods Resort Casino. Hayward had envisioned Foxwoods as the first world-class, family-oriented destination resort casino. “That was a tremendous credit to him and where he wanted it to grow,” Butler says.
Foxwoods’s spectacular success has stood as an inspirational story for all of Indian country, he adds. “Here’s this small tribe from Connecticut now owning one of the largest casinos in the world—we can all do that, right? Well, we can’t all do that, but just the inspiration and hope that it provided, I think, was a big influence on Indian gaming.”
MYSTIC LAKE
The Shakopee Mdwakanton Sioux (Dakota) Community in Minnesota was treading a similar path to Indian gaming success in the early 1980s. The poverty-stricken tribe opened a high-stakes bingo hall in 1982, which laid the groundwork for the development of Mystic Lake Casino a decade later. Leonard Prescott, a founding member of the National Indian Gaming Association in 1985, became the Shakopee chairman in 1987. “I built Mystic Lake Casino in 1991, 1992,” Prescott says. Under his leadership the Shakopee and other Minnesota tribes negotiated the first tribal state gaming compacts in the country in 1989. “The compacts are perpetual,” he says. “We have no time limits. We have no jackpot limits. We pay copy0,000 per tribal government which means today we pay copy50,000 to the state of Minnesota for a $2.5 billion business.”
The Mystic Lake Casino Hotel is one of the most successful in the country, providing the less than 400 citizens of the nation with more than copy million annually in payments. The nation also has a philanthropic program that has distributed hundreds of millions of dollars to local governments, organizations and people in Indian country. Last year, Shakopee donated $29 million.
Prescott says he is astounded at the tribe’s transformation. “When we first developed our bingo hall, we had a dirt road, we were making tracks to our building that sold welfare products, we had no sewer and water. So coming from there to where we are today is miraculous.”
WEST COAST FAST-TRACK
California developed the largest number of Indian gaming facilities in the shortest amount of time in the 1980s and 1990s, and even now—with 62 gaming tribes—it has the highest number of gaming tribes in the country, according to Casino City’s Indian Gaming Industry Report for 2013. The Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians opened its casino in 1995, the last tribe to do in the state during that early era, said Pechanga Chairman Mark Macarro. Numerous California tribes had successful bingo operations in the 1980s—the San Manuel, Morongo, Cabazon, Barona, and Viejas, Sycuan and Yocha Dehe. “These were the first and therefore the trailblazers,” Macarro says.
Several California tribal gaming facilities were shut down in the 1980s by sheriffs eager to prove tribal gaming was illegal under state laws. Those raids led directly to the watershed ruling in Cabazon, “which then rather quickly was contained and abridged in October of 1988 by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act,” Macarro says.
But state opposition didn’t stop even after Cabazon and IGRA. Then-governor Pete Wilson disliked gaming and refused to negotiate with the tribes, despite IGRA’s mandate that he do so. Wilson complained about tribal gaming to anyone who’d listen—federal and state officials, Congress, U.S, attorneys, law enforcement, Macarro recalls. Finally, in March 1997, U.S. Attorney Nora M. Manella took action. “Each tribal chair (myself included) was issued a summons to appear in Los Angeles Federal District Court. Our machines had been legally seized, i.e. they were arrested—it’s called in rem seizure.”
The tribal leaders didn’t go to jail, and they called for a huge demonstration. Around 5,000 to 7,000 employees and supporters rallied and shut down the streets of downtown Los Angeles, Macarro says. “The point was: Shut us down? Do so and lose a huge economic engine and these thousands of people go unemployed. The high-point of this rally was when all the tribal chairs stood literally in unity on the top step of the courthouse—summons in hand—and spoke to the crowd. It galvanized us as a group and forged a strong bond which became the keystone for the first statewide ballot proposition battle—Prop 5—in 1988. This was the next major evolution for tribal cohesion and became a watershed period.” Macarro says. Prop 5 passed with 62 percent of the vote and established tribal-state compacts that allowed, among other things, slot machines in tribal casinos.
DOUBLING DOWN
This has been only a partial look at the early Indian gaming “heroes”—it would be impossible to acknowledge the contributions of everyone who worked to make Indian gaming a reality. But no list of Indian gaming trailblazers would be complete without mention of two great women of gaming: Marge Anderson, of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota, was the driving force behind the opening of Grand Casino Mille Lacs and Grand Casino Hinckley within four years of the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988; Jana McKeag, of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, was one of the commissioners on the newly created National Indian Gaming Commission in 1991 and began the commission’s first task—writing the regulations that govern Indian gaming.
In the years since the passage of IGRA, Indian gaming has grown to a $27 billion-plus a year industry, giving tribal governments the means to build their nations and provide services for their citizens. It has also infused the U.S. economy with hundreds of billions of dollars and almost 700,000 jobs. While there are potential threats to Indian gaming in the long-term, the industry is likely to continue its success into the mid-term future, says economist Alan Meister, author of Casino City’s Indian Gaming Industry Report for 2013. “The economy will continue to improve over time, bringing back disposable income, consumer confidence and spending on casino gambling.” So, in the words of former Shakopee chairman Leonard Prescott, it is likely the country will be able to enjoy the miraculous phenomenon of Indian gaming for the foreseeable future.
Seven eagles poisoned nearly to death after feeding on carcasses of euthanized horses in Lewis County should be well enough for release from wildlife shelters this week.
By Lynda V. Mapes, The Seattle Times
A volunteer at the West Sound Wildlife Shelter on Bainbridge Island nurses one of the eagles sickened by eating carcasses of euthanized horses. Photo: Dottie Tison
Seven eagles poisoned nearly to death after feeding on euthanized horse carcasses are expected to be released this week.
The eagles are alert, getting feisty and are being moved to outdoor cages, said Mike Pratt, wildlife director at the West Sound Wildlife Shelter on Bainbridge Island, which cared for six of the eagles. The shelter, funded by donations, takes in wild animals of all sorts that have been injured or orphaned.
The shelter started getting calls over the weekend about first one eagle, then a second found nearly dead on private property in Winlock, Lewis County. By the time shelter staffers arrived to pick up the birds on Sunday, four more had become sick, Pratt said. The six birds — five juveniles and an adult — were so ill they were convulsing, vomiting, and could not stand. Two were comatose.
Back at the shelter, volunteers and two veterinarians were waiting. They administered a charcoal purgative around the clock and, by Tuesday morning, even the sickest birds had revived. They may be released by the end of the week, right back where they came from, Pratt said.
A seventh poisoned eagle had been taken to the wildlife shelter at the Audubon Society of Portland on Friday. That eagle, a first-year male, looks excellent and will be released Wednesday, said Lacy Campbell, operations manager at the wildlife center.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating the incident, said spokeswoman Joan Jewett. It is a federal offense to poison an eagle, even accidentally.
It all started with horses, euthanized and left by their owner in a field, said Jewett, who added that the carcasses have since been buried.
Stephanie Estrella, director and wildlife rehabilitator of Raindancer Wild Bird Rescue in Olympia, which cared for the birds before the larger Bainbridge shelter could come collect them, said this was the first time she had encountered raptors poisoned by tainted carcasses.
Most of the raptors she has cared for were victims of car strikes, or torn up in fights with other raptors.
She got the first call from Sharon Thomas, a Winlock resident who saw an eagle acting strangely in a field in front of her house.
“It flopped and flew, and flopped and flew. It crashed several times,” Thomas said. “Then it came right to me, it sat right at my feet as if it had come for help.”
Thomas took the eagle to her house, put it in a kennel, took photos of it, and put them on Facebook asking for help. Ultimately, it was Estrella from Raindancer who came to collect the eagle.
Little did Thomas know she was in for a long weekend of more of the same, as she and her neighbors walked and drove the area, on the alert for more animals in distress. “It was heart-wrenching,” Thomas said. “Seeing a large, majestic bird falling over on its head is very sad. Picking them up, seeing them unresponsive and lethargic. Picking up the two others that seemed dead, their eyes were not open, they were barely breathing.”
Eventually, she and the neighbors walking the field and thickets found two horse carcasses, with eagles feeding on them. “I picked an adult off one of the horses. He was covered in rotten meat and blood and so was I,” Thomas said.
She and other neighbors collected six sick eagles, and drove off others trying to feed on the carcasses. “It was very hard to drive away from the work Monday morning,” Thomas said. “I don’t know what other wildlife may have been affected.”
The Longview Daily News reported Monday that the horses’ owner, Debra Dwelly, said she had no idea she had created a hazard until federal wildlife agents, alerted by the animal-shelter operators to the eagles’ plight, showed up at her home on Sunday, after cruising the area in a small plane and spotting the carcasses.
Dwelly told the Daily News the poisoning was an honest mistake that occurred because a friend’s backhoe had broken down, delaying burial of the horses she had put down earlier last week.
Washington state law requires the owners of animals or owners of land on which animal carcasses are found to bury or incinerate carcasses within 72 hours so they do not become a hazard.
Attempts by The Seattle Times to reach Dwelly were unsuccessful Tuesday.
Meanwhile, all seven eagles were getting stronger by the hour. Thomas said she is eager to seeing them released.
“I look forward to them returning and behaving as an eagle should,” Thomas said. “They should be aggressive. You shouldn’t be holding them in your arms.”
![From left: Hayward, Tommie and Halbritter (Courtesy Seminole Tribune/Seminole Tribe of Florida [Tommie]; courtesy Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation [Hayward]; Onieda Indian Nation [Halbritter])](http://ictmncdn1.tgpstage1.com/sites/default/files/default/files/uploads/screen_shot_2013-03-26_at_4.03.54_pm.png)
![Clockwise, top left: Wendell Chino, Jana McKeag, Leonard Prescott, Marge Anderson (Richard Pipes/Albuquerque Journal [Chino]; courtesy Leonard Prescott](http://ictmncdn1.tgpstage1.com/sites/default/files/default/files/uploads/screen_shot_2013-03-26_at_4.04.07_pm.png)
