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Teaching the next generation of Lushootseed speakers

By Chris Winters, The Herald

TULALIP — Last Thursday, the children in Sarah Poyner Wallis’ kindergarten class at Quil Ceda Tulalip Elementary School filtered in after the morning assembly.

Maria Martin and Nik-Ko-Te St. Onge, teacher assistants with the Tulalip Tribes’ Lushootseed department, wish the kids good morning.

“haʔɬ dadatut,” they said. The children said it back to them.

The kids sat in a circle for their first lesson: a song, simply called “Hello Friend,” and sung in Lushootseed to the tune of “Frère Jacques.”

Andy Bronson / The HeraldWith the help of flash cards, kindergartners at Quil Ceda Tulalip Elementary School speak the Lushootseed language with instructor Nik-Ko-Te St. Onge. From left: Jaycee Williams, Jesse Lozano,Tyler Hills and Joscelynn Jones-Lloyd. — Andy Bronson / The Herald
With the help of flash cards, kindergartners at Quil Ceda Tulalip Elementary School speak the Lushootseed language with instructor Nik-Ko-Te St. Onge. From left: Jaycee Williams, Jesse Lozano,Tyler Hills and Joscelynn Jones-Lloyd.

For years Tulalip children have received lessons in their ancestral tongue at the Tulalip Montessori School and the Betty J. Taylor Early Learning Academy on the reservation. The written form of the language includes characters found in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

This year Lushootseed, or dxʷləšucid, the language of Coast Salish Indians around Puget Sound, was reintroduced to the Marysville School District for the first time since 2011. That’s when the old Tulalip Elementary in the heart of the reservation was closed.

About 50 kindergartners and first-graders — five total classrooms — are getting daily language lessons from Martin and St. Onge this fall.

The simple explanation for the reintroduction is that the Tulalip Tribes were able to hire more teachers.

“Our problem is we were short-staffed. We’ve never had a full crew,” said Michele Balagot, the tribes’ Lushootseed department manager.

Newly hired teachers start out by teaching pre-school kids, and ideally would remain with the same the class of students as they get older, she said.

That’s not very easy in practice, however.

“Some people we hired found out they didn’t like to teach, or weren’t teacher material, or found out they didn’t like working with little kids,” Balagot said.

Add to that the fact that most of the teachers hired have had to learn Lushootseed at the same time they taught it to the children, one of the aftereffects of the boarding school era in which the language was suppressed almost to the point of extinction.

Maria Martin, who is 25, represents a new generation of speakers. She started learning the language as a child in the Montessori school, but throughout her school years only learned the language in the Tulalip summer language camps.

The Lushootseed program sends new hires to Northwest Indian College in Bellingham for formal instruction before they are put in front of a class.

Martin said she feels reasonably fluent when in front of the class, although still consults with her superiors in the language program when she needs specialized vocabulary.

Still, she’s become fluent enough that she’s often delivered invocations and greetings in Lushootseed at official tribal functions.

In Poyner Wallis’ class, she gave instructions to the kindergartners in Lushootseed first, and only English if the kids didn’t appear to understand them.

In one exercise, she held up a flash card with a picture of a brown bear. “stəbtabəl̕,” the kids chimed together.

She held up a picture of a frog. “waq̓waq̓!”

Then she held up an orca, but the kids are unsure and need reminding. “qal̕qaləx̌ič,” Martin said, and the kids shape out the unfamiliar glottal consonants.

A picture of a salmon also stopped them cold, and Martin prompted then with the answer: “sʔuladxʷ.”

“That’s a hard one because it looks like qal̕qaləx̌ič,” one boy piped up. “I almost said ‘salmon’.”

The student body at Quil Ceda Tulalip is about 60 percent Native American, although the actual figure is likely higher once children of mixed marriages or parents who aren’t enrolled in a tribe are taken into account, said Chelsea Craig, a cultural specialist at the school.

All the schoolchildren have been getting a dose of native culture in the morning assembly, which includes singing and a drum circle. The school is also leading the charge in incorporating native history into its regular curriculum.

Craig said she hopes that by getting the kids into Lushootseed while still young, they will learn their ancestral language and come to associate it with a supportive and healing environment.

“My great-grandmother was beaten for speaking Lushootseed,” she said, referring to the boarding school era, which began in 1860 and didn’t truly end until the 1978 passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act.

When Craig was growing up, some tribal elders could still speak the language, she said.

“The elders spoke it but didn’t share it, because it was too traumatic,” she said. “My great-grandmother didn’t want me to go through what she went through.”

Some Lushootseed words are introduced at the morning assembly, but it’s the lessons in class that are moving toward making the language thrive again.

In Poyner Wallis’ classroom, the kids were split into groups. Nik-Ko-Te St. Onge used the children’s book “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” to help reinforce the vocabulary, and then moved on to flash cars with numbers.

St. Onge held up a card with the number six on it. Jordan Bontempo counted out loud on his fingers.

“č̓uʔ, saliʔ, ɬixʷ, buus, cəlac … yəlaʔc!” he said triumphantly.

Meanwhile, Maria Martin gave the kids pictures of a bear to color that also had a connect-the-dots tracery of the Lushootseed word “stəbtabəl̕.” Two kids colored the bear brown and one black, but others went for green, purple, rainbow stripes and one outside-the-lines expressionist squiggle.

When they were done with the bear, they moved on to a picture of a frog.

Carlee James-Jimicum waved her completed bear at Martin. “I’m ready for my waq̓waq̓,” she said.

Balagot said that there are about 40 people on the Tulalip reservation who can speak Lushootseed with some degree of conversational skill.

“We probably couldn’t hold a full conversation, but we could get the gist of what we’re saying,” she said.

The hope is the 50 kindergartners and first-graders will grow into older kids and teens who can add to that number.

Like Martin, perhaps some of them will return to teaching the next generation.

After finishing up in Poyner Wallis’ class, St. Onge and Martin split up. Martin walked down the hall into Lisa Sablan’s kindergarten class, where the kids were eagerly waiting for their lesson.

When she stepped into the room, they all called out together, welcoming their teacher and friend “haʔɬ dadatut syaʔyaʔ!”

Northwest tribal leaders fight for government to uphold treaties

Tulalip Tribes Chairman Mel Sheldon speaks at the rally. Photo courtesy Theresa Sheldon, Tulalip Tribes Board of Director.

Lummi Nation Chairman Tim Ballew II and other leaders rally in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2015, to oppose the Gateway Pacific Terminal, which would export primarily coal and expand railways. Ballew says that the project would disregard treaty rights and harm the environment. Grace Toohey McClatchy

BY GRACE TOOHEY, Bellingham Herald

WASHINGTON – A proposed coal terminal and affiliated railway for Cherry Point, Wash., has sparked concern about treaty violations and environmental degradation for many Pacific Northwest tribal leaders, 10 of whom rallied together in Washington, D.C., on Thursday morning against what they said is government disregard for their treaties.

About a block from the White House, three Lummi Nation sisters crooned a song referencing the 1855 U.S. treaty with Pacific Northwest Native American tribes, reserving certain rights for their fishing, hunting and sacred grounds. “What about those promises? Fills my heart with sadness, I can’t do this on my own, we’ve got to come together and be strong,” the women sang.

But Tim Ballew II, chairman of the Lummi Nation, said those rights are in jeopardy.

“All the tribes are standing here today in solidarity to protect not just our reservation community but everybody’s community from the impacts that cannot be mitigated,” Ballew said, standing in front of leaders from the Tulalip, Swinomish, Quinault, Lower Elwha Klallam, Yakama, Hoopa Valley, Nooksack and Spokane nations and the president of United South and Eastern Tribes.

The proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal, a subsidy of SSA Marine, would act as a trading hub between landlocked domestic companies and markets in Asia, said Joe Ritzman, vice president of business development for SSA Marine. The deepwater terminal would handle up to 60 million tons of commodities, primarily coal, and the project would coincide with a railway expansion.

OUR CURRENT FOCUS IS THE IMPACT ON TREATY FISHING RIGHTS, AND IT’S THE GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSIBILITY TO UPHOLD THE TREATY. Tim Balew II, chairman of the Lummi Nation

But the project’s designated land includes burial sites for Lummi ancestors and artifacts, Ballew said, and the coastal development would harm age-old fishing traditions within the tribe.

“The location of the pier will take away fishing grounds and the increase in vessel traffic would impede access of our fishermen to fishing grounds throughout our usual and accustomed areas,” Ballew said.

Washington state, Whatcom County and the federal government are reviewing the environmental impacts of the proposed export terminal and associated rail expansion, expecting to release state-local and federal environmental impact statements in 2017. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is the federal review agency, is also inspecting Native American treaty rights at play.

“Our current focus is the impact on treaty fishing rights, and it’s the government’s responsibility to uphold the treaty,” Ballew said.

The Lummi Tribe, whose reservation is minutes from Cherry Point, entered the Treaty of Point Elliot more than 150 years ago, which ensured the sovereign nation right to “fish at usual and accustomed grounds and stations is further secured to said Indians in common with all citizens of the Territory.”

JoDe Goudy, chairman of the Yakama Nation, said his tribe has faced similar treaty battles in Oregon, most recently when the governor halted a proposed coal export plant near their sacred ground and Columbia River fisheries. But now that decision is under appeal, putting their treaty rights at stake again, Goudy said.

“The recognition from us collectively (is) that those reserved rights go hand in hand with our sustained existence as peoples,” Goudy said. “A direct attack on such things, in our hearts and minds, is a direct attack on our sustained existence.”

Not only would the Gateway Pacific Terminal affect the Lummi Nation, Goudy explained, but the proposed railways would transport coal by the Yakama Nation’s portion of the Columbia River.

“This issue affects all of us, we’re connected in ways that the U.S cannot even imagine,” said Tyson Johnson, council member of Nooksack Indian Tribe.

SSA Marine will wait until the state, county and federal environmental reports come out, Ritzman said. But with plans for mitigation strategies and a 75 percent natural buffer of the 1,500 acres for the project, Ritzman said he expects his company’s proposal to meet all state and federal environmental requirements and not impact the fisheries.

President Barack Obama and his administration met with the tribal leaders and many more Thursday afternoon as a part of the White House Tribal Nations Conference.

“I credit the current administration for every year building on our efforts to help us rebuild our nations and I encourage them to continue that,” Ballew said. “We really want them to give this issue its due respect. It’s a human rights issue, it’s a treaty rights issue, and we need our sacred sites protected.”

Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article43286049.html#storylink=cpy

Eight Tribes to Protest Coal Terminals During D.C. Conference

Courtesy Gateway Pacific TerminalMap of the proposed project at Cherry Point in Washington, close to Lummi Nation sacred sites. — Courtesy Gateway Pacific Terminal
Map of the proposed project at Cherry Point in Washington, close to Lummi Nation sacred sites.

Indian Country Today, 11/3/15

Leaders and members of the Lummi Nation and other Washington State tribes opposed to coal terminals in the Pacific Northwest are bringing their concerns to the other Washington, the U.S. capital, on Thursday November 5.

Eight tribes in total will call on Congress to honor treaties that safeguard both the environment and tribal members’ ability to fish and conduct other cultural and sustenance activities that would be compromised by proposed industrial development. They plan to speak on the issue at the Ronald Reagan Building courtyard during the White House Tribal Nations Summit, to be held

“Tribal treaty rights are being threatened by corporate interests and congressional interference,” said the tribes in a media release announcing the event. “As Lummi Nation fights to protect its fishing areas from North America’s largest coal terminal, other tribes have faced their own development pressures and stand united with Lummi against the terminal and the erosion of treaty rights.”

The Lummi have vociferously opposed the projects and have asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to review and reject the proposal for a coal rail terminal at Cherry Point, the ancestral village site of Xwe’chi’eXen.

The statement is signed by Lummi Nation Chair Tim Ballew II; Swinomish Indian Tribal Community Chair Brian Cladoosby (also president of the National Congress of American Indians, a post to which he was recently reelected); Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe Chair Frances Charles; Tulalip Nation Chair Melvin Sheldon Jr.; Yakima Nation Chair JoDe Goudy; Hoopa Valley Tribe Chair Ryan Jackson; Spokane Tribe Chair David Brown Eagle, and Quinault Tribe Vice President Tyson Johnston.

“Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) has led efforts in Congress to prevent the U.S. Army Corps from reviewing the impact of the terminal on the Lummi Nation’s treaty fishing rights—a central tenet of its trust responsibility,” the leaders said in the statement. “If successful, it could set a dangerous precedent for other projects in Indian country.”

Mayor and County Executive Declare a Homelessness State of Emergency

The number of people sleeping on the street in King County increased by 21 percent between 2014 and 2015. KELLY O

By Heidi Groover, The Stranger

Seattle has become the third major West Coast city to declare that homelessness has reached a state of emergency.

Mayor Ed Murray today declared a state of emergency due to homelessness in Seattle—following similar moves in Los Angeles and Portland—and King County Executive Dow Constantine did the same in the county.

To address the emergency, Murray announced $5.3 million in new one-time money that will go toward homelessness services over the next few months. Constantine also pledged $2 million total toward services like law enforcement diversion, housing vouchers, and shelter beds, though some of that is already included in his budget.

Government officials often declare states of emergency about natural disasters in order to “highlight the gravity of the challenge and make formal requests for assistance from the state and federal governments,” Constantine said at today’s announcement at the downtown YWCA. “Homelessness is not a natural disaster. It is a human-made disaster.”

The crisis is undeniable: During this year’s one-night count, 3,772 people were sleeping outside in King County and 2,813 of them were in Seattle. That was a 21 percent increase in the county and 22 percent increase in the city over last year. According to the mayor’s office, 66 homeless people have died in the county so far in 2015, 47 of whom lived on the streets or in homeless encampments, and 3,000 Seattle Public Schools students are homeless.

Constantine said 35,000 people in King County become “newly homeless” every year.

“Thirty-five thousand,” Constantine repeated. “That is the population of a city the size of Issaquah.”

YWCA CEO Sue Sherbrooke, who spoke in support of the declaration of emergency, said her organization provided case management or shelter for 7,500 people last year. She said homelessness falls “disproportionately [on] women, men, and families of color.”

Murray said he wouldn’t consider an end to the state of emergency until the region sees a “significant reduction in the number of people dying on our streets—and I mean significant—and a significant reduction in school-age homelessness.”

So, what exactly does it mean for the city to declare a state of emergency?

Declaring an emergency—a move usually reserved for “civil unrest, a natural disaster, or a terrorist attack,” the mayor said—allows the city to move more quickly to fund homelessness services and is basically a cry for state and federal help in addressing the problem. Service providers and local government officials have criticized the federal government for reducing the amount of money it spends on housing and homelessness services, leaving local government to shoulder those costs. As part of the emergency declaration, the mayor said he would also ask the federal government to make FEMA assistance available for homelessness.

“We must get this issue back on national agenda,” Murray said. “It’s foolish to believe cities alone in isolation can solve [homelessness].”

Both Constantine and Murray cited federal disinvestment along with increasing income inequality, a lack of services for mental illness, and a national heroin epidemic for worsening homelessness.

The new $5.3 million, which is a separate pot of money from the ongoing discussions about the mayor’s budget, will come from the sale of excess city-owned property on Myers Way South, according to the mayor’s office. It will be spent on a slate of servicesmostly focused on case management, outreach to people living on the street or in encampments (including illegal makeshift encampments), and 100 new shelter beds with limited hours for one year. The money will also fund some sanitation needs like Honey Buckets and trash removal, but where those will go remains unclear.

Technically, the property on Myers Way hasn’t yet been sold yet, according to the mayor’s office, so the city’s profit is estimated. That means the city is essentially lending itself the money for these homeless services and plans to repay itself after the sale of the property.

Murray called the declaration “risky” because “the orders you can issue under state of emergency are extensive,” including closing businesses or issuing curfews. He isn’t using those powers here, but did promise to consider bypassing zoning restrictions or speeding up permitting processes to create new shelter space for children.

The state of emergency declaration also allows the city to spend money more quickly by simply directing it toward service providers instead of going through the standard contracting process.

That puts most of the responsibility for figuring out the specifics—like where the Honey Buckets and new shelter beds will go or who will be hired for case management—on the city’s Department of Human Services. HSD Director Catherine Lester said after the mayor’s announcement that the shelter beds will be focused on a population that is currently unable to access already existing shelter, like couples, people with pets, or people with certain criminal histories. (Which population is yet to be decided.)

“We really want to make a dent on those things that are keeping people on the streets,” Lester said.

The city council will have to approve legislation authorizing how the $5.3 million is spent, which Council President Tim Burgess pledged to do quickly. Six council members, including Burgess, stood with the mayor at his announcement today. Council Member Mike O’Brien called homelessness a “tragedy in a city that can create so much wealth.”

The list of funding is largely focused on immediate needs—not that surprising for a state of emergency—rather than long-term preventative services, although both Murray and Constantine emphasized the need to address root causes of homelessness.

Constantine said he and Murray spoke directly with President Barack Obama about the issue when Obama visiting Seattle recently.

“He was very aware and concerned not just with increase of homelessness nationally…but also with the particular increase in homelessness in West coast cities,” Constantine said. “We are joining with other West Coast cities to say this time is different. Something different is going on here.”

Hibulb Cultural Center presents Matika Wilbur’s Natural Wanderment

By Micheal Rios, Tulalip News

During the evening of Friday, October 23, the Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve held a small, intimate gathering to unveil its latest exhibit, Natural Wanderment: Stewardship. Sovereignty. Sacredness. An exhibition of Native American portraits and stories that honors and seeks to protect ancestral ways of life and lands in North America.

Matika Wilbur, of the Tulalip and Swinomish tribes, presented an extraordinary exhibition of Project 562 portraits of Native Americans devoted to the protection of the sacred and the natural. Project 562 aims to build cultural bridges, abandon stereotypes and renew and inspire our national legacy by documenting people from 562+ Tribal Nations in the United States.

“Project 562 is my offering to you. It is for the people. For each of us. It is with deep respect that I welcome you to my newest collection: Natural Wanderment: Stewardship, Sovereignty, Sacredness,” said Matika in a welcome pamphlet to all those who attended the opening night’s unveil. “This collection of images is meant to help us understand our relationship with the mother earth.”

Matika, one of the Pacific Northwest’s leading photographers, has exhibited extensively in regional, national, and international venues such as the Seattle Art Museum, the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, The Tacoma Art Museum, the Royal British Columbia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Nantes Museum of Fine Arts in France. Her photographs have been acquired for the permanent collections of the Tacoma Art Museum and the Seattle Art Museum.

“Most of the portraits are accompanied with excerpts from our interviews recorded on the road,” stated Matika. “The responses of the featured people provide a special opportunity to bring you closer what we have experienced and come to understand from so many Native Americans in their own lands. These speakers’ words allow imagination of identities and realities, history and places that are otherwise difficult if not impossible to experience. It is so important to us that people be able to tell their own stories from their own places.”

Matika studied photography at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography in Montana and received a bachelor’s degree from Brooks Institute of Photography in California. Her work led her to becoming a certified teacher at Tulalip Heritage High School, providing inspiration for the youth of her own indigenous community. She is unique as an artist and social documentarian in Indian Country. The insight, depth, and passion with which she explores the contemporary Native identity and experience are communicated through the impeccable artistry of each of her heartwarming photographs.

“This is just the beginning,” Matika concluded. “There are many miles of the journey left to travel, and many, many more stories to share. I offer deepest thanks to my family, the Tulalip Tribes’ Hibulb Cultural Center, the Project 562 Team…and other supporters for believing in and helping us continue our work. I am so grateful that you are here; my hands are raised to you!”

Project 562, with intense and widespread attention, will when completed produce a fine arts book series, curricula, documentary, project-derived fashion, and other cutting edge Native American aesthetic material distinct in creativity and quality, origin and insight. To learn more please visit project562.com.

The exhibit unveiling included a gathering at Hibulb’s longhouse, opening prayer by Tulalip Board of Director Marie Zackuse, welcoming songs by the Tulalip Canoe Family, and song and dance by Tlingit dance group, the Náakw Dancers,

Following the exhibit preview, Matika took to Facebook to express her overwhelming gratitude for all those who made her evening a special one.

“A great big thank you to the Tulalip Hibulb Cultural Center for hosting a beautiful opening for Project 562 last night! My heart is so full of love and gratitude… A million thanks to our Tulalip leaders, community members, singers and dancers that blessed us with your beautiful words and songs, I could hear your drum beat in my dreams last night! Thank you to my incredible family and friends for your unwavering support and uplifting encouragement– it was so good to see so many relatives! I’m overwhelmed with gratitude this morning- thank you for believing in this great big idea to ‘change the way we see Native America’. It took so many people to bring it all together, thank you for being a part of it. You make it possible.”

The 42-piece photographic exhibit, Natural Wanderment: Stewardship. Sovereignty. Sacredness, will be on display through June 11, 2016 at the Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve.

Waves of Tragedy: One Year Since the MPHS Shooting

Beginning this past spring, as part of the Tulalip Tribes trauma-informed care services, children at Quil Ceda Tulalip Elementary have been learning Rainbowdance. Rainbowdance gathers children, teachers, and sometimes parents around a big parachute for one hour and helps them enhance social empathy, self-confidence, and self-regulation. The facilitator, in this case Christy Anana, Quil Ceda Tulalip Elementary school counselor, blends storytelling, object lessons, and repetitious movements set to music. Consistency over many weeks and months lead to the mastery of movement, which promotes self-confidence, helping them to develop coping mechanisms for daily challenges and stressors.

By Niki Cleary, Tulalip News

Have you ever been rolled by a wave? First, it hits you. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it’s just a shock, but then you’re tumbling. Completely disoriented, you have no idea which way is up, or how to get out. You can’t stay where you are, you know that. Your lungs start burning. You can hear your heart pounding in your ears. Then there’s that magic moment when you find your equilibrium. You find the surface, and take that first sweet breath of air.

Last October the MPHS school shooting was a wave that rolled us all. The problem with waves is they never come alone. Over the course of the year, waves have broken over us repeatedly. Some were small, like the time some guy cut in front of you in the line at the coffee shop. Some are very personal, the time a loved one lied to you or told you they hated you. Some are huge and might include domestic violence, or a death in the family. Some happened within our families and some, like the automobile accident that killed four young people in August, happened to our entire community.

Every wave has hit each of us differently. Some of us were carried closer to shore and we’re almost walking on the beach normally again. Some of us were brought a step closer to drowning every time. Some of us found a life raft in the arms of our families, and some found it in addiction or dysfunction. A few of us have kept ourselves afloat by climbing onto someone else, and now we’re panicking as we watch them slip below the surface.

These are just the latest series of waves to wash over our community. One of Tulalip’s original tidal waves of trauma, the boarding school, scarred our community. It left a type of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome that was passed from generation to generation. That legacy made it more difficult for our people to cope with stressors, and when our community was rocked by the shooting, many of us were already at our limits.

What does trauma look like?

“Our people are hurting so bad,” said Sherry Guzman, Tulalip’s Senior Manager of Behavioral Health. “So many of our people have had so much trauma and it’s still going on. A lot of people don’t think of it as trauma. Maybe their father left or didn’t protect them, or mom or dad drank too much or mom had many boyfriends.

“Then they get older and fall in love with this person that said they loved them. Then there’s a baby and that person leaves. Then because they’ve never been taught to take care of a child, that child, who they do love, is taken. That is trauma, upon trauma, upon trauma. Trauma can be a boyfriend slapping you or making fun of you. One of the greatest traumas in our community is lateral violence, wanting to hurt someone else because it makes you feel bigger or better.”

Gina Skinner from the Tulalip’s Chemical Dependency Clinical Administrator pointed out a history of trauma in the clients that seek healing from addiction. The last year, she explained, has been particularly difficult.

“There is a lot of emotion in every session,” Gina described. “There was a core group of kids checking in. Nobody quite knows what to do with these wounded children. We get referrals from the school or summer youth program. But once they get a UA (urinalysis test), they were like, ‘Oh well, I don’t want the job,’ or, ‘I don’t want to go back to school.’ From my perspective we need to figure out how to get them engaged into services gently with us or child services.

“It’s almost easier to get them into my department [chemical dependency] because someone would rather be an addict than have mental health issues. Addiction is something you can recover from and mental health has this permanency stigma.”

Gina urged both children and adults to reach out, “Every feeling is valuable, no matter if you think it’s too little. If you don’t feel right or need to talk, if you don’t feel safe, tell someone. There is help here, come in, this is a safe place for you.”

The unthinkable

Like 9/11, or those who lived through Pearl Harbor, the people affected can instantly recall where they were and what they went through when they heard about the shooting.

“I felt like I couldn’t breathe,” reminisced Tulalip’s Child Advocacy Coordinator Leila Goldsmith. “I know that’s an anxiety attack.”

Now, like many community members, Leila doesn’t quite feel like she’s entitled to feel traumatized.

“No matter how bad it feels to me, it’s hard to give voice to it, because I didn’t have the worst thing happen. None of us feel like we’re allowed to feel, because someone had something worse happen, someone else lost a child. I know we need to acknowledge that even if you were on the periphery, it was devastating. What happened was unthinkable, and then it happened. Even if you are on the edges of it, it changes your world.

“For a while it was quieter. Things kind of came to a standstill. We didn’t have as much activity, I think, because everybody was just consumed with living.”

Leila runs the Child Advocacy Center, a program dedicated to helping heal victims of child abuse.

“Initially I was asked to help find resources to guide us through those first months,” Leila explained. At that time she reached out to colleagues on a national level to find professionals able to both provide the level of service needed in the aftermath, and provide it in a way that supports Tulalip culture, rather than trying to work around it.

“Lots of people want to come help you, but there aren’t very many people you want to have around,” Leila explained. “The phrase that rang in my mind is, this is the guy you want around after everyone else leaves.”

The ‘guy,’ was actually a team: the International Trauma Center, led by Dr. Robert Macy.

“He was incredible compassionate and gentle. I felt, if he came, he’d be here to help and not further his own interests. He agreed to a trip to meet and talk with us to see if we were the right fit. When Dr. Macy first came, that was the first time someone sat down with us and said there is a predictable set of stages that the community will go through. It was so comforting for someone to say, ‘I’ve seen this over and over and this is what you can expect.’ Because when you’re experiencing it, it feels like your brain is exploding, you can’t even think in a straight line. ”

Leila explained that, while it’s been a year, that guidance is still needed.

“We have some of the highest numbers we’ve ever had,” she said. “We know stressors in families mean more child abuse and less resilience. This has taken a toll on every single person, our reserves and our ability to cope.”

Her hope is that the community will continue to focus on healing and children.

“There is a safety net of professionals here who have a multitude of resources and are genuinely doing their work with heart. Sometimes, I feel like people give up on the truth, that healing is possible. Healing doesn’t come through the criminal justice system, it comes other ways. We’re working to offer more so that people can have that opportunity to walk towards healing. We have a long ways to go.

“If I could change one thing to make us healthier,” she continued. “I’d say choose children over adults, every day. Protect children before you protect adults. If people did that alone, everything would change.”

Healing takes a village

The International Trauma Center describes traumatic experiences as “dehumanizing, shocking or terrifying, singular or multiple compounding events over time and often include betrayal of a trusted person or institution and a loss of safety. Trauma can result from experiences of violence. Trauma includes physical, sexual and institutional abuse, neglect, intergenerational trauma, and disasters that induce powerlessness, fear, recurrent hopelessness, and a constant state of alert. Trauma impacts one’s spirituality and relationships with self, others, communities and environment, often resulting in recurring feelings of shame, guilt, rage, isolation and disconnection.”

The bright light in all this is that people can heal from trauma. A trauma or even multiple traumas doesn’t doom a person to a life of addiction, health issues and intergenerational violence. Which is why Tulalip has instituted a Trauma Informed Care model of services.

Tulalip Recovery Manager, Rochelle Lubbers described the model, “Trauma Informed Care (TIC) is a powerful way to help our tribal members manage and sustain important relationships in our personal and work lives by engaging in compassion, vision, social justice while at the same time decreasing the use of violence and aggression to negotiate those relationships.

“There are many ways Trauma Informed Care will be implemented throughout our community,” she continued. “One piece will be to educate the community and workforce about the impact of psychological trauma. Through the identification, assessment and treatment of trauma in individuals, families and community members we can significantly decrease the long term negative effects of violence exposure among our tribal members.”

The goal, she explained, is to create resiliency to all trauma, not just cope with the aftermath of the MPHS shooting. “We know we will continue to experience trauma in years to come and the Trauma Informed Approach gives us long-term effective tools to reduce violence in our community and to engage in consistent resilient behaviors for our children, partners and elders.”

Tulalip is not alone in this effort, Rochelle pointed out.

“’Unity’ was not only a message developed after Tulalip and Marysville experienced community violence, but it was an effort between all respective parties to communicate and heal together. Last November a recovery committee was formed and was very inclusive to the greater community; it includes the Tribe, City of Marysville and the School District as well as partnering agencies such as Victim Support Services and Volunteers of America Crisis Care in addition to many faith based communities and non-profit agencies.

“This group has produced many tangible community resources and events such as an inter-faith service, a multi-disciplinary trauma response team, a series of evidence based suicide prevention programs, an integrated community based resource website, multiple trauma informed care trainings and credentialing seminars, and, at the one year marker, a ‘Walk of Strength’.”

As we experience new waves of tragedy and the ripple effects of trauma, we don’t have to be at the mercy of the waves. The resources are available to teach us to swim through them.

“There can be long and short term effects to not dealing with trauma,” said Rochelle, “and the impact is different from person to person. The important thing is to be aware of change in behavior of your loved ones and seek help when you are worried. Watch for signs of isolation, anxiety/worry, increased risky behavior, and changes in sleep, amongst others. The Volunteers of America crisis line is a great resource for anonymous emotional support and can be accessed by phone or online chatting: 1-800-584-3578.

“In addition, Tulalip’s mental wellness teams have been receiving additional training in trauma processing and are always here to offer our community support. You can reach the adult program at 360-716-4400 and the children’s program at 360-716-3284. Please know that most of us cannot process this tragedy on our own and it is okay to get the help you need from a professional.”

Additional Resources

MTUnited.org
Chemical Dependency Crisis 24 hour Line 425-754-2535
Care Crisis Line 24 hours 800-584-3578
National Suicide Prevention Line: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org
Crisis TEXT Line: Text “Listen” to 741-741
24 Hour Crisis Line: 1-866-427-4747
TEENLINK: 1-866-833-6546
866teenlink.org

Contact Niki Cleary, ncleary@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov

Yakama Nation to have full authority over civil, criminal proceedings on tribal land

By KIMATV.com Staff

YAKIMA, Wash. — Federal officials have accepted a petition that will give Yakama Nation authorities exclusive jurisdiction for certain cases on tribal land, and will have the State of Washington withdraw from any authority.

The United States Department of the Interior said in a news release Monday that ‘retrocession’ has been granted, and tribal police and courts will have full authority over civil and criminal cases involving members of the nation.

The federal government will retain their authority over the Nation, and Yakama Nation authority will remain the same. The removal of state authority over tribal persons is the only change to come from this decision.

The state will keep jurisdiction over those involving non-tribal defendants, plaintiffs or victims.

As part of the agreement the federal Office of Justice Services (OJS) assessed the Yakama Nation’s court system and offered recommendations for improvements to their tribal court operations, as well as helped develop a 3-5 year plan.

The Yakama Nation also created ten new police officer positions, in preparation of having more cases to handle.

OJS also donated $149,000 to the help bolster the tribal court system by improving the court’s infrastructure, increase pay for law-trained judges, hire a legal assistant and court administrator, and provide training to tribal judges, prosecutors, and defenders on issues like domestic violence, child abuse, and neglect.

Washington lawmakers established a process for tribes to ask for exclusive jurisdiction in 2012. Washington has become the sixteenth state to rescind its authority over tribal court proceedings involving only tribal members.

Governor Jay Inslee agreed to the Yakama Nation’s petition last year. The change will officially take effect in April.

View here to see the full release from the United States Department of the Interior.

Seattle Continues Healing ‘Deep Wounds’ With Boarding School Resolution

Museum of History & Industry, Seattle; All Rights ReservedStarting in the middle of the 19th century, church groups and the U.S. government set up boarding schools for Natives. Here, children from many tribes were taught how to speak English and how to make a living. They were separated from their elders, and were discouraged from learning tribal traditions and language. This photo by U.P. Hadley shows the buildings and students at the Industrial Boarding School on the Puyallup Reservation between 1880 and 1889. The school opened in 1860. During the 1880s, a number of new buildings were added, and the school grew from 125 to about 200 students. — Museum of History & Industry, Seattle; All Rights Reserved
Starting in the middle of the 19th century, church groups and the U.S. government set up boarding schools for Natives. Here, children from many tribes were taught how to speak English and how to make a living. They were separated from their elders, and were discouraged from learning tribal traditions and language. This photo by U.P. Hadley shows the buildings and students at the Industrial Boarding School on the Puyallup Reservation between 1880 and 1889. The school opened in 1860. During the 1880s, a number of new buildings were added, and the school grew from 125 to about 200 students.

By Richard Walker, Indian Country Today, 10/20/15

“If it be admitted that education affords the true solution to the Indian problem, then it must be admitted that the boarding school is the very key to the situation,” Indian School Superintendent John B. Riley wrote in an 1886 reportto the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

“Only by complete isolation of the Indian child from his savage antecedents can he be satisfactorily educated.”

Such was the prevailing attitude of Indian Affairs agents during the federal boarding-school era: That America’s First Peoples were a problem to be dealt with, that America’s Manifest Destiny required Indigenous Peoples to be remolded and assimilated into the mainstream—even if it meant forcibly removing children from their families.

It wasn’t until 1978—118 years after the establishment of the first American Indian boarding school—that Native American parents gained the legal right, with the passing of the Indian Child Welfare Act, to deny their children’s placement in off-reservation schools.

“Some Native American parents saw boarding school education for what it was intended to be—the total destruction of Indian culture,” the American Indian Relief Council reported on its website. “Resentment of the boarding schools was most severe because the schools broke the most sacred and fundamental of all human ties, the parent-child bond.”

On October 12, council members in one of the largest cities in the U.S. took a step toward helping to heal the wounds from the boarding school era.

The City Council of Seattle, Washington, approved a resolution“acknowledging the various harms and ongoing historical and inter-generational traumas impacting American Indian, First Nations, and Alaskan Natives for the forcible removal of Indian children and subsequent abuse and neglect resulting from the United States’ American Indian Boarding School Policy during the 19th and 20th Centuries …”

The resolution calls on the United States to examine its human rights record and to work with American Indian and Alaskan Native peoples “in efforts of reconciliation in addressing the impacts of historical trauma, language and cultural loss, and alleged genocide.”

“The supposed goal [of the boarding schools] was to ‘Kill the Indian, save the man,’ which is tantamount to cultural genocide,” Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant told LastRealIndians.com. “The resolution will give city officials the opportunity to acknowledge and help heal the deep wounds opened up by the boarding school policy. It is also another step toward getting the city to take real action to address the poverty, oppression, and marginalization that the community faces to this day.”

The resolution was drafted by Matt Remle, Lakota, with support from Seattle lawyer Gabe Galanda, Round Valley Indian Tribes; Seattle Arts Commissioner Tracy Rector, Seminole; the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition; the Native American Rights Fund, and other members of Seattle’s Native community. The resolution was sponsored legislatively by Sawant.

The resolution vote took place on Seattle’s second annual Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The day included a rally and march to Seattle City Hall, drumming and songs, a keynote address by Winona LaDuke, Ojibwe, and a celebration at Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center.

During the boarding school era, “roughly 100,000 American Indian children ages 5-18 were stripped from their homes and placed in remote boarding schools,” Remle wrote on LastRealIndians.com. “Native languages, spirituality and customs were outlawed, physical and sexual violence was rampant.”

It’s a subject known all too well by the First Peoples of the Seattle area. Seattle, named for the mid-1800s leader of the Duwamish and Suquamish peoples, is the largest city in a state with 29 federally recognized Native nations. The first American Indian boarding school in the United States was established at the Yakama Nation in eastern Washington in 1860; the Tulalip Mission School, operated by the Catholic Church, was established three years earlier and was the first contract school for Native American children.

In her book, Tulalip, From My Heart, Harriette Shelton Dover (1904-1991) wrote of harsh discipline, poor diet and inadequate care, of tuberculosis and pneumonia and childhood deaths.

Helma Ward, Makah, told Carolyn J. Marr, an anthropologist and photographs librarian at the Museum of History and Industryin Seattle, “Two of our girls ran away … but they got caught. They tied their legs up, tied their hands behind their backs, put them in the middle of the hallway so that if they fell, fell asleep or something, the matron would hear them and she’d get out there and whip them and make them stand up again.”

“They were not allowed to speak their language there,” Inez Bill, Tulalip, told KING 5 News, Seattle, of her grandparents’ boarding school experience. “When you lose your language, you lose your culture. It left our people scarred.”

Fast forward to today: The children and grandchildren of those who were forced to attend boarding schools and were banned from speaking their languages have taken control of their own children’s education, are showing that their culture has an important role in education and that it can build bridges of understanding in communities.

Almost 65,000 students in Washington identify as Native American or Alaskan Native, according to the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. OSPI’s Office of Native Education was created in the mid-1960s to help Native students achieve their education goals and meet state standards. The office provides resources and training to help educators and families meet the needs of Native students, builds curriculum in Native languages and about Native culture and history, and works to increase the number of Native educators.

Eight Native nations operate their own schools in Washington, according to the state Superintendent of Public Instruction. School districts near reservations have liaisons to the Native American community and/or partnerships with a local Native nation’s education department. Earlier this year, the state legislature mandated the inclusion of Native American history, culture and governance in the curriculum of local public schools.

During its heyday, the American Indian Heritage Early College High School in Seattle had a 100 percent graduation rate, and all graduates went on to college. The Urban Native Education Alliance is lobbying to have the school reestablished in the new Robert Eagle Staff Middle School, named for the late principal of Indian Heritage and under construction at the site of the former school.

The Suquamish Tribe operates and funds Chief Kitsap Academy, a high-tech, culturally based high school that is part of the Early College High School network. According to the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, only four of 10 of North Kitsap School District schools and programs met Adequate Yearly Progress goals in reading and math proficiency in 2014—one of those was Chief Kitsap Academy. Students use the latest technology, but are also exposed to cultural teachings and study the Lushootseed language. The school is open to Native and non-Native students.

Northwest Indian Collegehas grown from a school of aquaculture to a four-year college with six satellite campuses in two states. It offers four undergraduate degrees, nine associate’s degrees, three certificate programs, and five other study programs. The University of Washingtonand The Evergreen State Collegehave longhouses that serve as places of gathering and sharing as well as teaching.

A totem at Northwest Indian College in Bellingham, Washington. (Google Plus/NWIC)

Eaonhawinon Patricia Allen, a University of Washington graduate and community organizer in Seattle, spoke at Seattle City Hall before the City Council’s vote. She later wrote on LastRealIndians.comthat the boarding school era “was one of the last actions made to complete colonization and … to wash the Native identity out of Natives. But I am here to tell you this, and so will my future children: We still survived and are starting the process of healing.”

Canada established a Truth and Reconciliation Commissionto prepare a complete historical record on the policies and operations of residential schools; complete a public report, including recommendations to the parties of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement; and establish a national research center that will be a lasting resource about the Indian Residential Schools legacy in Canada. The commission is reaching out to the public in national and community events, and honoring residential schools survivors in a lasting manner. It is also examining the number and cause of deaths, illnesses, and disappearances of children, and documenting the location of burial sites.

Native Lives Matter, Too

By Lydia Millet, NY Times, Opinion Pages

IN August 2010 John T. Williams, a homeless woodcarver of the Nuu-chah-nulth tribe who made his living selling his work near the Pike Place market in Seattle, was shot four times by a police officer within seconds of failing to drop the knife and piece of cedar he was carrying (Mr. Williams had mental health problems and was deaf in one ear). He died; the folding knife was found closed on the ground. The young police officer who shot Mr. Williams resigned, but he never faced criminal charges, even though the Seattle Police Department’s Firearms Review Board called the shooting unjustified.

In South Dakota in 2013, a police officer used his Taser to shock an 8-year-old, 70-pound Rosebud Sioux girl holding a knife; the force of the shock hurled her against a wall. After an investigation, the officer’s actions were deemed appropriate.

That same year 18-year-old Mah-hi-vist (Red Bird) Goodblanket of the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribes was killed by the police in his parents’ home in Oklahoma just before Christmas. They’d called 911 because their son was having a violent episode after a misunderstanding with his girlfriend. Before the police entered their home Red Bird’s father begged them, “Please, don’t shoot my son.” A few minutes later, the parents would count seven bullet holes in their son’s body — one in the back of his head. The exact narrative of the incident, which fittingly took place in Custer County, is in dispute.

In November 2014, also in Oklahoma, Christina Tahhahwah of the Comanche tribe died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. Fellow inmates claim that jail guards shocked her with a Taser for refusing to stop singing Comanche hymns.

In December 2014, one day after attending a #NativeLivesMatter rally against police violence, Allen Locke, a 30-year-old Lakota man, was shot dead by the police in South Dakota. Mr. Locke had been holding a steak knife at the time he was hit by up to five bullets; the shooting was deemed justified a month later.

Most recently, in July, a 24-year-old Lakota mother of two named Sarah Lee Circle Bear died in a South Dakota jail of a methamphetamine overdose. Her death, which involved a two-hour time lapse between the first signs of physical distress and her transport to a hospital, got almost no national media attention.

All the victims were Native Americans, and they’re just a small sample of a systemic problem. American Indians are more likely than any other racial group to be killed by the police, according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, which studied police killings from 1999 to 2011 (the rate was determined as a percentage of total population). But apart from media outlets like Indian Country Today, almost no attention is paid to this pattern of violence against already devastated peoples.

When it comes to American Indians, mainstream America suffers from willful blindness. Of all the episodes of police violence listed above, only the killings of Mr. Williams and Mr. Goodblanket received significant news coverage outside Indian circles, the latter only in an article for CNN.com by the Oglala Lakota journalist and activist Simon Moya-Smith. The Williams shooting, which was the subject of public outcry, was covered by a major local news site, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, as well as by The New York Times.

One reason for Indian invisibility in the media may be low numbers; Native Americans and Alaska Natives in the country now total about three million, or 5.2 million if you include mixed-race individuals, compared with about 45 million African-Americans. Perhaps equally important, their population densities off the reservation tend to be low. They have a small urban presence; New York, with about 112,000, and Los Angeles, with about 54,000, rank first and second among cities with American Indian populations. Phoenix, Oklahoma City and Anchorage come next. About one-fifth of American Indians still live on reservations.

Economic and health statistics, as well as police-violence statistics, shed light on the pressures on American Indian communities and individuals: Indian youths have the highest suicide rate of any United States ethnic group. Adolescent women have suicide rates four times the rate of white women in the same age group. Indians suffer from an infant mortality rate 60 percent higher than that of Caucasians, a 50 percent higher AIDS rate, and a rate of accidental death (including car crashes) more than twice that of the general population.

At the root of much of this is economic inequality: Indians are the poorest people in the United States, with a poverty rate in 2013 that was about twice the national average at 29.2 percent — meaning almost one in three Indians lives in poverty. So it doesn’t come as a complete shock that members of these disadvantaged communities encounter law enforcement more often than, say, middle-class whites. But the rate at which native people die as a result of those encounters is nonetheless deeply disturbing: Though “single-race” Indians make up slightly less than 1 percent of the population, they account for nearly 2 percent of police killings.

There are many complexities surrounding Native American interaction with the dominant culture, whose Declaration of Independence refers to them as “merciless Indian Savages” and whose history of mass killings has taken a staggering social toll. But the fact is that today’s avoidable tragedies of oppressed Indian lives and troubled deaths remain far too often in the shadows.

At this moment, when black Americans are speaking up against systemic police violence, and their message is finally being carried by virtually every major news source, it’s time we also pay attention to a less visible but similarly targeted minority: the people who lived here for many thousands of years before this country was founded, and who also have an unalienable right to respect and justice.

State Again Tries to Deny Tribal Treaty Rights

Source: Northwest Treaty Tribes

Once again denying tribal treaty-reserved fishing rights – and the many federal court rulings that have consistently upheld those rights – the state of Washington is appealing its latest defeat in a case brought by western Washington tribes in 2001 to force repair of hundreds of salmon-blocking culverts under state roads.

Oral arguments for the appeal will be heard tomorrow, October 16 in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle. The appeal stems from a 2013 ruling by Judge Ricardo Martinez, who issued a permanent injunction requiring the state to repair more than 800 state-owned fish-blocking culverts over the next 15 years. Also at issue is a 2007 decision in favor of the tribes in which Martinez ruled the state’s obligation to fix culverts stems from the treaty right to take fish. The tribes, state, and federal government tried for several years to settle the case, but were unable to reach agreement.

“Our treaty-reserved right to harvest salmon includes the right to have those salmon protected so that they are available for harvest, not only by the tribes, but by everyone,” said Lorraine Loomis, chair of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. “Our treaty rights are at risk because we are losing salmon habitat faster than it can be restored. Without habitat, we have no fish. If we have no fish, we have lost our treaty right, and our culture and economies will be destroyed.”

Tribes reserved the right to harvest salmon in treaties with the United States government more than 150 years ago, in exchange for which the tribes ceded the vast majority of their homeland to allow non-Indian settlement. The treaty fishing right was upheld in U.S. v. Washington, the 1974 ruling that recognized the tribal right to half of the harvestable salmon returning to state waters and established the tribes as co-managers of the resource with the state.

In great part due to loss of habitat, salmon populations have rapidly and continually declined for the past several decades. As a result, both Indian and non-Indian fishermen have suffered from greatly reduced harvests. “We all stand to lose if we cannot protect the salmon’s habitat,” said Loomis. “We were disappointed by the state’s choice to appeal the district court’s decision, especially when restoring salmon benefits Indians and non-Indians alike.”

Blocking culverts deny salmon access to over a thousand miles of good habitat in western Washington streams, affecting the fish in all stages of their life cycle and reducing the number of adult salmon returning to the state by hundreds of thousands of fish. State agencies have consistently told the Legislature that fixing problem culverts is a scientifically sound, cost effective method for increasing natural salmon production. Even so, the state’s sluggish rate of culvert repair meant it would have taken more than 100 years to fix known blocking culverts even as salmon populations continued to decline throughout western Washington.

The injunction forces the state to accelerate the pace of repairs to blocking culverts. Over the past two years, the state agencies have been cooperative in working with the tribes, Loomis said. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, State Parks and Department of Natural Resources have made good progress toward correcting the existing fish blocking culverts, which the injunction requires be fixed by next year. The Washington Department of Transportation is responsible for the majority of failing culverts, which the injunction requires be corrected by 2030. WSDOT’s correction rate is still far too slow, but the Tribes are encouraged by the agency’s recent efforts to re-prioritize funding to bolster culvert corrections and the state Legislature’s increased funding to the agency. Repairs will be funded through the state’s separate transportation budget and will not come at the expense of education or other social services.

The 20 treaty Indian tribes in western Washington always prefer to collaborate rather than litigate to restore and protect salmon and their habitat, Loomis said. “But the state’s unwillingness to work together and solve the problems of these salmon-blocking culverts in a timely manner left us with no alternative except the courts. We hope the Ninth Circuit will fully uphold the district court ruling and that we can move beyond litigation to work cooperatively with the State to protect the salmon resource,” she said.