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.

RELATED: From the Heart: Tulalip History and Memoir Is a Walk Back in Time

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)
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.

 

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/10/20/seattle-continues-healing-deep-wounds-boarding-school-resolution-162138

Native Lives Matter, Too

Arianna Vairo
Arianna Vairo

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

1Nicole-on-top-of-soon-to-be-bridge-culvert-874x492

 

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.

1st anniversary of Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebrated

Sweetwater Nannauck from the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian tribes of southeast Alaska and Director of Idle No More Washington speaks at the Indigenous People’s Day celebration at Westlake Center. Photo/Kim Kalliber
Sweetwater Nannauck from the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian tribes of southeast Alaska and Director of Idle No More Washington speaks at the Indigenous People’s Day celebration at Westlake Center.
Photo/Kim Kalliber

 

By Micheal Rios, Tulalip News 

Congress made the second Monday of October a federal holiday honoring Christopher Columbus in 1937. To all Indigenous, Native, and Fist Nations people, the commemoration of the man responsible for initiating the European colonization of the Americas, which led to hundreds of years of disease, colonial rule and genocidal extermination following the Italian explorer’s accidental trip to the Americas, is just another reminder of the ‘social silence’ we have had to endure as a culture.

‘Social silence’ is the anthropological term for a phenomenon that occurs in a human society when the subjects that are core to how the society function are exactly the ones that are never mentioned. Because European colonialism of the Americas and the mass genocide of millions of indigenous peoples led to the development of the United States (the beacon of hope, prosperity and freedom of the civilized world), there continues to be ‘social silence’ around the cruel and violent history of the United States, of colonialism, and of one Christopher Columbus.

If we maintain the social silence around colonialism, our past and present will always be bewildering. But if we break the silence, and talk about what truly matters, the confusing swirl of struggle and conflict can suddenly make sense. We become silent no more. We become Idle No More.

Last year, the Seattle City Council unanimously voted to change the federal Columbus Day holiday to Indigenous Peoples’ Day, making it the second major U.S. city after Minneapolis to adopt the change. The holiday’s new designation follows a decades-long push by Native American activists in the Coast Salish area to abolish Columbus Day.

Seattle’s decision garnered national media attention and, since then, major cities along the west coast, including Anchorage, Alaska, Portland, Oregon, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and San Fernando, California, have passed legislation changing Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Days. Only days ago, Alaska Governor Bill Walker signed a momentous proclamation declaring the second Monday of October to be Indigenous Peoples’ Day. While the state of Alaska is the first to rename the federal holiday, credit must be given to South Dakota, the first state to rename the federal holiday as Native American Day in 1990.

So it was with great pleasure and pride that the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center, in partnership with Indigenous Peoples’ Day resolution author Matt Remle, held an all-day celebration in Seattle on the 1st anniversary of Indigenous Peoples’ Day on Monday, October 12.

 

Photo/Kim Kalliber
Photo/Kim Kalliber

 

Photo/Kim Kalliber
Photo/Kim Kalliber
Indigenous Peoples’ Day resolution author Matt RemlePhoto/Kim Kalliber
Indigenous Peoples’ Day resolution author Matt Remle
Photo/Kim Kalliber

 

The celebration was comprised of three main events, to which any and all Native community members and supporters were freely invited to. The first event was a celebratory march from Westlake Park in downtown Seattle. Hundreds of people gathered at Westlake Park, most decked out in their Native regalia, and they beat their drums and sang as loud as they could while marching to their Seattle City Hall destination.

The second event took place in the Bertha Knight Landes room of Seattle City Hall, where Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebrators were greeted by the Seattle Mayor and Seattle City Councilmembers.

 

Crowd gathered at Seattle Cith Hall where Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebrators were greeted by the Seattle Mayor and Seattle City Councilmembers. Photo/Micheal Rios
Crowd gathered at Seattle City Hall where Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebrators were greeted by the Seattle Mayor and Seattle City Councilmembers.
Photo/Micheal Rios

 

“Last year we took a historic step in the city of Seattle, and today it is an honor to be here and be with all of you to celebrate the 1st anniversary of Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” said Seattle Mayor Edward Murray. “It marks a new history in the city of Seattle and continues our dialogue with the tens of thousands of Native Americans who call Seattle home. It goes without saying that the history of this city is intertwined with the history of our Native peoples. We know we face challenges with the institutional discrimination that remains today, in housing, addiction and education. We will continue to work on these issues in Native communities. If anywhere in the nation we can make progress on these very challenging issues, it’s us. We have an incredible heritage of tribal communities who have been groundbreaking and leading this state long before my ancestors were here. Going forward, we have a lot of healing to do, but today we are here to celebrate. Today we are here to honor. Today we are here to say Indigenous Peoples’ Day is more than just a day, it’s every day.”

Lunch, consisting of salmon chowder, frybread, and a healthy fruit salad, was served to all those in attendance.

Following lunch, a very passionate, keynote speech was given by Winona LaDuke. She is a member of the Anishinaabe nation from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota and is renowned for her activism on behalf of indigenous people and the environment. She is also a two-time Green Party vice presidential candidate.

 

Winona LaDuke, keynote speaker at City Hall. Photo/Micheal Rios
Winona LaDuke, keynote speaker at City Hall.
Photo/Micheal Rios

 

“What a great day it is. It is so happy, so liberating,” marveled LaDuke. “On our march here I noticed ‘Columbus Day Sale’ signs in the windows of some stores, and I was thinking does that mean I can walk around those stores and take whatever I want?”

“It is so liberating for me to be here and celebrate with you all in just how awesome it is be Indigenous people. You know, it’s always perplexed me how someone can name something as large as a mountain or sea or an entire day after someone as small as a human. It changes how people view things when everything is named after all these white guys. We are just beginning. There is a lot of work ahead in the renaming and recovering and restoration of our homelands. In doing so we remember our ancestors. In doing this we honor all those before us, all those here, and all those yet to come. And we reaffirm our place here as a people who remember, as a people who do not suffer from historic amnesia. We are a people who live today in a civil society who knows where it is exactly and is willing to be healthy, healthy and beautiful.”

“We are living proof that it is possible to live in a worldview that does not include empire, the destruction of our Mother Earth, and being ran by the morally corrupt oil and pharmaceutical companies,” continued LaDuke to a crown of cheering Native community members and supporters. “As we open our minds here I’m really honored to be with you in Seattle, a place that is in process of deconstructing the colonial renaming of our mountains, rivers, and oceans. I have great admiration and respect to y’all out here for standing up in what you know is true and being here to celebrate this great day.”

There was an evening celebration held at the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center that consisted in Native and Indigenous people from all over the nation performing their cultural songs and dances, not entertainment, but to celebrate each other. Celebration in recognition of a day that not only provides us with a platform to raise awareness, but it also commemorates a history of survival and perseverance.

 

Photo/Micheal Rios
Photo/Micheal Rios

 

 

 

Photo/Micheal Rios
Photo/Micheal Rios

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indigenous women take climate matters into their own hands

Native American drummers demonstrate at the steps of City Hall during a rally to take strong action on the climate change on February 17, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. David McNewGetty Images
Native American drummers demonstrate at the steps of City Hall during a rally to take strong action on the climate change on February 17, 2013 in Los Angeles, California.
David McNewGetty Images

 

By Justine Calma, Global Post

 

NEW YORK — Not far from the negotiations for a new global development agenda that took place between heads of state at the United Nations General Assembly last month, a small group of female leaders gathered out of the limelight to sign another historic agreement.

The delegation chose not to meet at UN headquarters in east Midtown but on a traditional Native American tribal territory in Central Park’s East Meadow.

Seven women representing eight different tribes signed a treaty to unite the indigenous women of the Americas in friendship to protect the land and people from the harms of climate change and environmental degradation.

In what organizers said was the first-ever indigenous women’s treaty, the women pledged to support the rights of indigenous peoples, commit nonviolent acts of civil disobedience to protect the planet, and demand immediate changes to laws that have led to environmental destruction.

“We’re saying this is the line. We’re done. The destruction stops now,” said Pennie Opal Plant, one of the treaty’s lead signers.

The United Nations recognizes that women are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change because they constitute a majority of the world’s poor and are more dependent on natural resources for their livelihood.

“Women’s role as central stakeholders is one of the most important, yet untold stories of climate change. If we are to have a fighting chance at restoring the health of the Earth and our communities, women’s experiences and knowledge must be brought to the forefront,” said Osprey Orielle Lake, the executive director of Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), at an event where the treaty was later presented.

The signed treaty contends that the laws of Mother Earth “have been violated to such an extreme degree that the sacred system of life is now threatened and does not have the capacity for life to continue safely in the way in which it has existed.”

Opal Plant, who is of the Yaqui, Choctaw and Cherokee tribes, was instrumental in shaping the treaty. She grew up in the shadow of Chevron and Shell refineries in the eastern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, where she saw environmental degradation first-hand. She has organized nonviolent prayer walks in her home city led by Native American elders, but after connecting with other women during a gathering of nature rights advocates in Ecuador 2014, Opal Plant saw opportunity to launch a worldwide movement. She joined several other indigenous leaders from the US and Ecuador — Casey Camp-Horinek of the Ponca tribe, Patricia Gualinga Montalvo and Blanca Chancoso of the Kichwa, and Gloria Hilda Ushigua Santi of the Sápara.

“When women unite and commit to something, shifts happen,” said Montalvo, speaking through an interpreter. “I feel strongly that it’s a time to be heard and for actions to take place.”

Montalvo played a large role in successfully fighting the Ecuadorian government in 2012 in a landmark Inter-American Court of Human Rights case, Sarayaku v. Ecuador, in which the Ecuadorian government was found guilty of rights violations after authorizing oil exploration on Sarayaku lands without prior consultation with the indigenous community.

Opal Plant and her treaty co-signers presented their document at an event hosted by WECAN on Sept. 29, a Global Women’s Climate Justice Day of Action.

Women are disproportionately impacted by climate change, and they are central to solutions, said Orielle Lake at the event.

In the coming months, Opal Plant and her co-signers will create a website to expand the treaty beyond the Americas and allow other groups to sign online. In December, they plan to bring the treaty to COP21, the Paris Climate Conference, and hold another ceremony where more indigenous women leaders will join.

Montalvo’s indigenous community in Sarayaku is constructing a canoe that will travel from Ecuador to France. “The canoe is a symbol of Sarayaku, a symbol of our living forest,” said Montalvo. “We will bring it all the way to Paris so it can navigate the River Seine and so we will be heard.”

In New York, WECAN also presented a Women’s Climate Declaration, which includes a demand to bring back atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to below 350 parts per million — which many scientists agree is a level that avoids catastrophic global warming — and an aim to ensure that women’s groups have access to funding to adapt to climate change that is already happening. The declaration already has garnered over 2 million signatures and will be delivered at COP21 later this year.

Women comprise 20 million of the 26 million people estimated to have been displaced by climate change, according to a 2010 report by the Women’s Environmental Network.

“I ask that as temperature rises, that we rise,” said Orielle Lake.

Toxic road runoff kills adult coho salmon in hours, study finds

A three-year-old adult coho makes its way through the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery. (Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times)
A three-year-old adult coho makes its way through the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery. (Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times)

 

By  Sandi Doughton, Seattle Times

 

A new study shows that stormwater runoff from urban roadways is so toxic to coho salmon that it can kill adult fish in as little as 2½ hours.

But the research by Seattle scientists also points to a relatively easy fix: Filtration through a simple, soil-based system.

“It’s basically … letting the Earth do what it does so well, what it has done for eons: cleaning things up,” said Julann Spromberg, a toxicologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and co-author of the report published Thursday in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

Scientists have long suspected that the mixture of oil, heavy metals and grime that washes off highways and roads can be poisonous to coho, but the study is the first to prove it.

The research got its start more than a decade ago, when habitat-restoration projects began coaxing a trickle of coho back to several urban streams in the Puget Sound area. But many of those fish died before they could spawn. And the deaths seemed to coincide with rainstorms that sent runoff surging through drainage pipes and into the waterways.

In some place, like Longfellow Creek in West Seattle’s Delridge area, up to 90 percent of females were killed.

“It was apparent that something coming out of those pipes was causing it,” Spromberg said.

She and her colleagues tried to reproduce the effect in the lab. But the artificial mixture of oil and other chemicals they concocted had no effect on the fish.

So their next step was to try the real thing: Actual runoff, collected at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Centerfrom a downspout that drains a Highway 520 onramp near Montlake.

“When we brought out the real urban runoff: Bang! They were down, they were sick, they were dead,” said co-author Jenifer McIntyre, a researcher at Washington State University’s Puyallup Research and Extension Center.

In experiments at the Suquamish tribal hatchery near Poulsbo, every coho exposed to the runoff died — some within a few hours, all within a day. Before death, the fish became lethargic, rolled around and swam to the surface as if gulping for air, McIntrye said.

The fact that actual runoff proved fatal while the scientists’ concoction did not underscores an unsolved mystery about which chemical or combination of chemicals are so toxic to the fish. It could be any number of compounds that weren’t part of the artificial brew, including byproducts of oil and gasoline combustion, chemicals released by tires or tiny particles from brake linings, Spromberg said.

 “We still need to keep looking at what exact compounds are involved.”

But whatever the chemical culprit, the scientists found it could be removed by passing the runoff through 55-gallon drums packed with layers of gravel, soil and compost. None of the fish exposed to the filtered stormwater died or fell ill.

“It was remarkable,” McIntyre said.

 The finding is a strong endorsement of rain gardens, grassy swales and other “green” alternatives to traditional drains and pipes designed to collect stormwater. The idea is instead to let the runoff percolate through the ground, as it did before so much of the area was paved and developed.

State regulations strongly encourage developments to use such approaches, according to the Washington Department of Ecology. A project called 12,000 Rain Gardens in Puget Sound is also promoting their use.

“We should be seeing more and more of these systems in the future,” McIntyre said.

Coho, which were once abundant throughout the Northwest, may be particularly vulnerable to toxic runoff because they spawn in the fall, prompted by seasonal rains. Habitat destruction, fishing and other factors almost certainly contributed to the species’ precipitous decline, Spromberg said.

Chum salmon, whose habitat and spawning seasons overlap those of coho in many places, don’t appear to be as affected by runoff — something the scientists plan to investigate this fall.

Perhaps the major limitation of the study is the small sample size. Only 60 coho were used in the experiments, 20 in each of two experimental and one control groups. The scientists were lucky to get that many, thanks to the cooperation of the Suquamish Tribe, McIntryre said.

Also, the urban runoff collected near Montlake was undiluted in the experiments and represents about the worst possible case: runoff from a busy highway in a big city, a DOE official who was not involved in the study pointed out.

“It’s great that the treatment gets rid of toxicity from this nasty stuff,” Karen Dinicola of DOE’s stormwater program wrote in an email. But it’s particularly challenging to retrofit urban-collection systems with greener alternatives, she said.

But the results of the research could help guide future development in rural watersheds where coho runs remain, the researchers said. And it can also be used to help inform urban-restoration projects as well, so fish aren’t lured back to appealing habitats, only to be clobbered by toxic runoff.

The researchers are preparing for their next round of studies, which will include tests to zero in on what is actually killing the coho.

The rain that soaked the region Wednesday also filled their runoff-collection barrels, Spromberg said.

“We only have one shot a year, when the fish come back and we can do the experiments and take the samples,” she said. “Hopefully, with this rain we’ll have more fish coming in soon.”

New era of digital learning at Heritage High School

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Article and photo by Micheal Rios

The Marysville School District (MSD) began a new one-to-one initiative that will span the entire month of October and put a Chromebook computer in the hands of more than 5,500 students in grades 6 through 12. As part of the roll-out, Tulalip Heritage High School was the first school chosen to receive the latest and greatest generation of HP Chromebooks. With the lightning fast Chrome OS, 8-second boot-up time, and over eight hours of battery life, the Chromebooks provide the versatility teachers need and the technology students want.

“We are thrilled about the limitless learning possibilities using Chromebook,” said MSD Superintendent Becky Berg. “With support of our Marysville and Tulalip communities, we are investing in the technological tools of today that will help our students become tomorrow’s leaders. Technology continues to change rapidly. We are equipping our student to be active, contributing citizens in a digital world.”

According to an MSD press release, the devices are fully funded by a technology levy approved by district voters in 2014. Preparations for the Chromebook initiative began with last year’s upgrade of the district’s wireless Internet infrastructure. Since then, MSD partnered with a local Marysville company, Advanced Classroom Technologies, to install more than 60 miles of network cabling. The system went live in March 2015, and now all district facilities have Wi-Fi available to the students and community during non-school hours.

So whether you are at school campus to watch a sporting event, attending an afterhours activity, or just sticking around to do homework or research, you can now connect to a free, public Wi-Fi that becomes available at the end of the school day. This is a huge benefit for students and their fellow community members who don’t have an available internet connection at home.

Students will be allowed to take and use the Chromebook devices at home following the school day and use them on home or public Internet connections. Even if they’re used outside of the district, the devices have built-in content filtering as required by law.

The Chromebooks initiative will change the instructional learning environment for the students at Heritage, while keeping information and their resources constantly up-to-date. Think of how people generally learn new methods and strategies in today’s digital era. We will search Google, Wikipedia or YouTube to learn something in the moment. Moving away from the traditional model of teachers as ‘the fountains of knowledge’, MSD wants the students to be more independent and active in their knowledge development. Students will no longer have to rely necessary on their teacher or an outdated textbook to deliver content anymore. Instead, teachers will be facilitating use of the ever-expanding wealth of knowledge available via Chromebooks.

Scott Beebe, MSD Technology Directory, says 140 teachers received professional development training (e.g. productive internet searching, learning Google Apps, basic troubleshooting) in August on how to use the Chromebooks in the classroom, and about 150 more will be trained throughout the month of October.

The professional development will focus on learning to design lessons that not only empower and engage students in compelling work, but also leverage the power of technology to connect people and ideas.

Heritage students and teachers alike agree the one-to-one Chromebooks initiative benefits everyone. Students are able to do their work more efficiently and have no difficulty submitting assignments with the Google Docs app, while teachers no longer have to try to decipher student handwriting and can edit assignments and provide immediate feedback to students individually.

“The Chromebooks make it easier for us [students] to stay organized and turn our work in on-time,” says Heritage senior Samantha Marteney. “We each have our own computer so it’s easier for us to gather information. For me, it’s way easier to turn in assignment even on days I’m not at school, I can just email them to my teachers.”

“I think the Chomebooks make it a lot easier to take notes in class and complete assignments,” added fellow Heritage senior Mikaylee Pablo. “With the Google Drive app, it saves all our work for us as we type, so we don’t have to worry about losing papers or journals. Plus, I can now do research and type at the same time, instead of doing research on a desktop then writing in a notebook.”

Heritage High School has never had a library or computer lab that is accessible to students furthering their learning like other high schools in the district. The Chromebooks bring a world wide web of books and other resources to their hands now.

“The Chromebooks are a wonderful resource for our students. It’s amazing to see every one of our students with their own computer and now provides them with the opportunity to open doors to learning and enrichment that we’ve never had access to in the past,” explains Heritage humanities teacher Marina Benally. “The Chromebooks bring more of the world into our classes. The access to information makes this a thriving learning community and as such we further and grow each other’s thinking through technology. I’m more and more facilitating rather than being the sage on the stage. It makes education really exciting for our students.”

With such rapid investment in communication devices, wide-scale wireless network, and professional development, student learning is clearly on center stage. The Chromebooks initiative will help students achieve more academically, perform better on tests and be in a better position when it comes to computing in the collaborative online environments of today’s digital era.

Indian time and indigenous knowledge are key to evolving with climate change

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by Niki Cleary, Tulalip News 

Everyone has heard the jokes or seen the memes about ‘Indian time,’ the ones that explain why Natives are consistently late to dates, appointments, even their own get-togethers. Despite the jokes, the description of Indian time that resonates with me came from Tulalip elder tiatmus Raymond Moses. He told me that Indian time is about paying attention to the world around you. It’s about seeing the signs of the world and being ready when it is time to do what you need to do. That may be gathering or harvesting, or it may be spiritual work, but no matter what you are doing, when you are engaged in something, you have a duty to give it your full attention.

I’ve found that to be true on so many levels. Natives may be late to an appointment, but it’s usually because they devoted all of their attention to the last thing they were doing. And, while we may be late to appointments or social commitments, we’re in the woods when the berries or cedar are ready and we’re on the water when the salmon are ready.

Phenology, in my opinion, is a fancy western term for tiatmus’ version of ‘Indian time’. In late September, Northwest Indian College sponsored a Phenology workshop to educate about the causes of climate change and the impacts on native plants and tribal cultures.

I know what you’re thinking, this is interesting and all, but why should I care? You should care because those cultural timekeepers that we’ve lived by since time immemorium are out of sync due to climate change. The species that we rely on for physical, spiritual and cultural sustenance may move out of our legally defined territories as they search for climates that match their biology.

Our world is changing and we have the knowledge and political clout to make sure that our culture and the species that are integral to our culture, don’t disappear with it. We have the power to evolve with climate change, instead of being decimated by it.

 

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Cultural timekeepers

Wikipedia defines phenology as: the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate, as well as habitat factors (such as elevation). In Salmon Ceremony we learn about a messenger, a black and yellow butterfly who tells us when the kings are coming in. This is what phenology is for indigenous people. Our oral histories tell us how our timekeepers were given certain gifts and entrusted with certain duties, how both human beings and plants and animals all have mutual obligations. As indigenous people, our timekeepers aren’t just dry indicators of biological systems, they’re intimately tied to our values and identity, we consider them our relatives.

“When settlers came to our land, it was forested,” described Tulalip Rediscovery Program Coordinator Inez Bill. “When they seen out and looked at the land, it looked like it was not inhabited, so they didn’t think that anyone was here.

“When you think about our ancestors, they were bonded with our land, it was a spiritual bond. This environment provided for all of our needs, we didn’t need anything. There was an abundance of resources and the teachings and values our people lived by every day, that was our way of life.

“How to gather, how to hunt, how to make a canoe, everything was respected and it was a gift. It was a spiritual gift and if you didn’t take care of these gifts, you lose it. That’s specifically true of plant knowledge.”

Inez described herself as a conduit, not a bank of knowledge. To this day, the mutual responsibility between Indigenous communities and our environment, weighs heavy on her mind.

“I’m nobody, I’m nothing,” she quietly declared. “I’ve had the opportunity to have a number of people in my life that shared their knowledge with me and it made me a stronger person and they are now my roots. A lot of friends and family have guided my life and my spiritual people have helped with my spiritual walk. These are the things that are important when I talk about plants.

“My work with plants began with our summer youth. The kids loved being outside, they’d be in the woods and they didn’t want to come back. We’d learn how to make tea together, and teaching them how to do it correctly, they have to be in the right frame of mind, and the teachings and values that go with that.

“From my perspective, these teachings and values are very important when we look at plants and how we use them. We want them to be gifts for us, a lot of these foods nourish our body, but they also nourish the spirit. We need to do the best we can to treat it with respect and care. We have rules we follow when we harvest because we want to honor the plants that we harvest.”

Part of that respect includes sacrifice. Inez explained that this year she harvested very little because many species were struggling due to the drought. Brian Compton of Northwest Indian College followed up on the sentiment, recalling from his four decades of work in indigenous America the strong relationship between native plants and native people.

“It’s the idea that they’re our relatives,” he pointed out. “When your relative is suffering, you don’t damage it. This is another one of the dimensions that may not be recognized in the more dominant society. That deeply felt connection to, not just another life form, but a relative.”

 

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Take notice, take action

Shifting baselines is a concept often applied to the Pacific Northwest and the Salish Sea. It’s the idea that compared to far more degraded areas, what we have here and now is abundant or healthy or normal. Oftentimes people move to the Pacific Northwest and gush about how green and beautiful it is. They see the forests and see them as signs of wilderness and vitality. However, compared to historic norms for this area, what we have is a fraction of a healthy environment.

Ask someone whose family has been here for generations and they’ll tell you that the second and third growth forests that dominate the landscape today support a far different host of animals and plants than an old growth forest. Someone whose grandparents fished in the 1950s knows that a handful of undersized silvers in a single set is not a sign of abundance. Someone who gathers berries and found only small seedy fruits this year, knows that drought is real and dangerous. Someone who passes on the traditional stories about seals and the lack of stories about sea lions, understands that our waters are vastly different now than they were in our ancestor’s times.

What do you do with that knowledge? Record it. Pass it on to your family members. Go into nature and recall the stories of your childhood. Explain to your grandchildren that the bamboo they love playing swords with (Japanese knotwood) is not from here, doesn’t belong here and it’s our responsibility to get rid of it.

If you don’t know, learn. Go outside and record the signs. As they shift from year to year, pay attention to what has changed. Live your treaty rights instead of just talking about them. Co-manage on a small scale. Make room in your manicured lawn for trailing blackberries, get to know and help eradicate invasive species.

Most of all, engage. Be a leader in your family. Be a leader in your tribe. Be an ambassador and a champion for our winged and finned and rooted relatives. Be a steward of our environment and help our tribe fulfill our responsibility to our world.

Be sure to keep watching the syəcəb, Tulalipnews.com and Tulalip TV (On and Off the Rez at www.tulaliptv.com) for more opportunities to learn about our environment, how Tulalip is evolving with climate change and how small contributions can lead to big change.

 

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Contact Niki Cleary, ncleary@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov

Father of Marysville shooter convicted of gun charges

Raymond Fryberg, left, the father of the Washington state teenager who fatally shot four classmates and himself at Marysville-Pilchuck High School in October 2014, arrives at the federal courthouse in Seattle, Monday, Sept. 21, 2015. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
Raymond Fryberg, left, the father of the Washington state teenager who fatally shot four classmates and himself at Marysville-Pilchuck High School in October 2014, arrives at the federal courthouse in Seattle, Monday, Sept. 21, 2015. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

 

The father of the Marysville school shooter was found guilty of federal firearms charges in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

 

By  Mike Carter, Seattle Times

 

The father of the teen who killed four classmates at Marysville-Pilchuck High School last fall was convicted Tuesday of illegally possessing a half-dozen firearms, including the one his son used in the shooting.

Raymond Lee Fryberg Jr. was convicted of six counts of unlawful possession of a firearm. One of the firearms, a .40-caliber Beretta pistol, was used by 15-year-old Jaylen Fryberg to kill four classmates and wound a fifth. Jaylen then killed himself with the same handgun.

The federal jury deliberated for about a day after a three-day trial before U.S. District Judge James Robart.

The senior Fryberg appeared stunned by the verdict. He had tears on his cheeks as he huddled with his attorneys and family after the verdict was read.

Fryberg will remain free until sentencing, which is scheduled for Jan. 11. He faces up to 10 years in prison for each count.

Family members of some of the shooting victims sat behind the prosecutors when the verdict was read. They declined to comment as they walked in silence into an elevator on the 14th floor of the U.S. District Courthouse. After the doors slid shut, however, ebullient yells and whoops could be heard.

Fryberg’s Seattle attorney, John Henry Browne, said the criminal charges were retaliation for the school killings and had been “pushed by the families” of the victims.

While the school shooting was never mentioned during the trial, Browne said it hung over the proceedings like a pall.

“It was difficult to stay on task,” he said outside the federal courthouse.

While the sole issue was whether Fryberg knew he was barred from owning firearms, Browne said, prosecutors began their closing arguments Monday with a slideshow of the six firearms Fryberg had purchased, including the handgun used by his son.

A grand jury had alleged the senior Fryberg, a member of the Tulalip Tribes, purchased a number of firearms despite being the subject of a tribal domestic-violence protective order that had been issued in 2002. Fryberg, 42, pleaded no contest in tribal court to violating the order in 2012, according to federal prosecutors.

The government says that should have prevented him from purchasing firearms, but that flaws in the instant-background-check system allowed him to “slip under the screen” of several law-enforcement databases.

Prosecutors claimed Fryberg lied when he filled out firearms-purchase forms on which he declared, under penalty of perjury, that he had not been convicted of a domestic-violence crime.

During the trial’s closing arguments, Browne accused the government of appealing to the jury’s emotions by showing photographs of each of the six firearms — including the handgun used in the school shootings and two assault-style semi-automatic rifles — that Fryberg had purchased at the Cabela’s store in Tulalip after 2012.

Fryberg, Browne said, assumed the purchases were legal and pointed out that he was even able to obtain a concealed-carry permit for a handgun, which requires a more stringent background check than purchasing a firearm. Browne said Fryberg was never properly served with the protection order, and that there were questions about whether the order was ever filed with the court.

 Fryberg claimed he was never given a copy of the order and did not know it existed, despite his no-contest plea in 2012.

“He is not on trial for anything else,” Browne said. “Not for how many guns he owns,” or what they may have been used for. The government, he claimed, “is trying to turn this case into something it is not.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ye-Ting Woo said the issue was not whether Fryberg was able to purchase the guns because of “gaps in the system,” including the fact that tribal-court domestic-violence protective orders and convictions often are not entered into national databases.

“The system relies on the purchasers to tell the truth,” she said.

The investigation into Fryberg’s gun ownership began in October 2014, when the FBI was trying to determine ownership of the gun that was used in the school shootings. The senior Fryberg had purchased that gun from Cabela’s in January 2013, a year after a permanent protective order against him had been filed in Tulalip Tribal Court, prosecutors said.

A 1,400-page report detailing the investigation into the school shooting said Jaylen Fryberg apparently brought the handgun to school in a backpack. He texted several friends to meet him in the lunchroom that day, Oct. 24, and also sent a text to his father and other family members detailing his funeral plans.

Minutes later in the cafeteria, Jaylen Fryberg pulled out the Beretta handgun from the backpack and shot five classmates, killing Zoe Galasso, Gia Soriano and Shaylee Chuckulnaskit, all 14, and Andrew Fryberg, 15. All were shot in the head.

Nate Hatch, 15, was shot in the jaw and spent about two weeks in Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center.

The report indicates that Fryberg was angry over a breakup with a girlfriend, as well as a fight he had with a fellow student in the days before the shooting.

However, the team of investigators said it could not determine a definitive reason for the shooting.

Sacred Lands vs. King Coal

BY STEPHEN QUIRKE, Earth Island Journal

 

Indigenous struggles against resource extraction are gathering strength in the Pacific Northwest

 

Under the breaking waves of Lummi Bay in northwest Washington, salmon, clams, geoducks and oysters are washed in rhythmic cascades from the Pacific Ocean. Just north of here is Cherry Point, home for three intimately related threatened and endangered species: herring, Chinook salmon, and orcas. It is also the home of the Lummi Nation, who call themselves the Lhaq’temish (LOCK-tuh-mish), or the People of the Sea. The Lummi have gone to incredible lengths to protect the health of this marine life, and to uphold the fishing traditions that make their livelihood inseparable from the life of the sea — continuing a bond that has connected them to the salmon for more than 175 generations.

 

cheery point beach

Photo by Nicholas Quinlan/Photographers for Social ChangeThe Lummi Nation is currently fighting a proposal to build the largest coal export terminal on the continent at Cherry Point.

 

 

The Lummi Nation is currently fighting the largest proposed coal export terminal on the continent (read “Feeding the Tiger,” EIJ Winter 2013). If completed, the Gateway Pacific Terminal would move up to 54 million tons of coal from Cherry Point to Asian markets every year. The transport company BNSF Railway plans to enable the terminal by adding adjacent rail infrastructure, installing a second track along the six-mile Custer Spur to make room for coal trains.

The project is one of many coal export facilities proposed across the US by the coal extraction and transportation industry. In the face of falling domestic demand for the highly polluting fossil fuel, the industry is pinning its survival on exporting coal to power hungry Asia, especially China.

The Gateway proposal has sparked massive opposition from the Lummi, who say it will interfere with their fishing fleet, harm marine life, and trample on an ancient village site that has been occupied by the Lummi for 3,500 years. The village, Xwe’chieXen (pronounced Coo-chee-ah-chin) is the resting place of Lummi ancestors, and contains numerous sacred sites that the Lummi assert a sacred obligation to protect. The Lummi’s connection to their first foods, and to the village site that holds their ancestors’ remains, goes the very heart of who they are as a people, and the Nation has pledged to protect both “by any means necessary”.

The Lummi are no strangers to stopping harmful development. In the mid-1990s they managed to stop a fish farm in the bay; in 1967 they fought back a magnesium-oxide plant on Lummi Bay that would have turned the bay lifeless with industrial waste.

This article is part of our series examining the Indigenous movement of resistance and restoration.

The new threat to the Lummi Nation is being proposed by the global shipping giant SSA Marine. The coal would be supplied by Peabody Energy and Cloud Peak Energy — companies that mine in Montana and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. It was also backed by Goldman Sachs until January 2014, when the company pulled its substantial investment from the project.

Jay Julius, a fisherman and Lummi Nation council member had attended the firm’s annual shareholders meeting back in 2013 and urged it to “take a look at the risk” of their investment.

Another coal export proposal of similar scale has been proposed in Longview, Washington about 235 miles south from Cherry Point. This has been opposed by the Cowlitz Tribe, who object to the impacts that coal would bring to the air and water quality along the Columbia River. This terminal would also create serious harm to another Native tribe at the point of extraction, 1,200 miles away in the Powder River Basin.

The Millennium Bulk Terminal in Longview is a joint proposal from the Australia-based Ambre Energy and Arch Coal, the US’ second largest coal producer after Peabody.

The terminal, which would export up to 48.5 million tons of coal annually, would be supported by Arch Coal’s proposed Otter Creek Mine in southeastern Montana (bordering Wyoming). If built, the mine could produce an estimated 1.3 billion tons of coal, and would span 7,639 acres along the eastern border of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. This would be the largest mine ever in the United States.

 

loaded coal trains

Photo by Mike Danneman Coal trains operated by BNSF would haul coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana to a series of proposed export terminals along the Pacific Northwest coast.

 

To connect the proposed mine to West Coast ports, Arch Coal and BNSF Railway want to build a new 42-mile railroad — called the Tongue River Railroad — through the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. Members of the Northern Cheyenne Nation and their allies have pledged fierce resistance if regulators approve the mine and the railroad, which they say, would have significant impacts on public health and the environment. According to BNSF, anywhere from 500 pounds to 1 ton of coal can escape from a single loaded rail car – on trains pulling 125 cars.

At a June hearing on the railroad organized by the US Surface Transportation Board, federal regulators heard nothing but fierce opposition to the proposed mine and its enabling railroad. A significant proportion of the Lame Deer community from the Northern Cheyenne Reservation turned out to the hearing. Their opposition to the project was echoed by local ranchers.

One rancher told the officials that they needed to understand the importance of history when they propose such unprecedented projects. “Northern Cheyenne history is very sad –  it’s tragic – and they have fought with blood to be where they are tonight.”

“My ancestors have only been buried here for about four or five generations,” he said, but “we know of lithic scatters, we know of buffalo jumps, we know of stone circles, camp sites, vision quest sites… and it is my obligation as a land owner, even though I am not a member of this Nation, that we protect what is there.”

One tribal member, Sonny Braided Hair, was more explicit in his history lesson. “Let us heal,” he said, “or we’ll show you the true meaning of staking ourselves to this land.” He was referring to the Cheyenne warrior society known as the Dog Soldiers, who became legendary in the mid-1800s for holding their ground in battle by staking themselves to the earth with a rope tied at the waist.

Such concerns about sacred sites are too often validated. In July of 2011, before applying for any permits, SSA Marine began construction at a designated archeological site in the ancient Lummi village at Cherry Point, where the Lummi have warned of numerous sacred sites, and where 3,000 year-old human remains have been found.

Pacific International Terminals had earlier promised the Army Corps of Engineers that this site would not be disturbed, and that the Lummi Nation would be consulted before any construction began nearby. They also acknowledged their legal obligation to have an archaeologist on staff when working within 200 feet of the site, along with a pre-made “inadvertent discovery” plan if any protected items were disturbed. Despite all of these assurances, the company illegally sent in survey crews to make way for their terminal, where they drilled about 70 boreholes, built 4 miles of roads, cleared 9 acres of forest, and drained about 3 acres of wetlands.

In August, Whatcom County, Washington, (where Cherry Point is located) issued a Notice of Violation to Pacific International Terminals, and the Department of Natural Resources documented numerous violations of the state Forest Practices Act. The total fines and penalties, however, added up to only about $5,000.

That’s a small price to pay for early geotechnical information, says Philip S. Lanterman, a leading expert on construction management for such projects. According to Lanterman, the information provided by those illegal boreholes was probably a huge economic benefit to the planned project. Needless to say, the meager fines don’t come close to discouraging the behavior. For opponents this incident is just a taste of things to come, and one resounding reason to never trust King Coal.

In the face of such blatant violations of their treaty rights, several Native tribes in North America — from the Powder River Basin, through the Columbia River to the Salish Sea —have banded together and declared that it is their sacred duty to protect their ancestral territories, sacred sites, and natural resources.

In May 2013, the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI) unanimously adopted a resolutionopposing fossil fuel extraction and export projects in the Pacific NorthwestIn the resolution, the 57 ATNI Tribes of Oregon, Idaho, Washington, southeast Alaska, Northern California, Nevada and Western Montana voiced, “unified opposition” to investors and transporters and exporters of fossil fuel energy, “who are proposing projects in the ancestral territories of ATNI Tribes.” The resolution specifically calls for protection of the Lummi Nation’s treaty-protected fishing rights, and the sacred places that would be affected by the Cherry Point project.

Indigenous resistance to these projects has been bolstered by allies in the environmental movement who have been fighting the export of US coal to foreign markets in the East. Of 15 recent proposals to build major new coal export facilities across the US, all but four (including Gateway and Millennium) have been defeated or canceled within the past two years.

In January this year, the Lummi Nation asked the Army Corps to immediately abandon the environmental review for Gateway Pacific and the Custer Spur rail expansion, stating that the project violates their reserved and treaty-protected fishing rights. If the environmental review is abandoned, the Army Corps would have effectively cancelled the project. In response to this letter the Army Corps gave SSA Marine until May 10 to respond, but later extended the deadline by another 90 days. Environmental reviews of the terminal and BNSF’s Custer Spur rail expansion are due in mid-2016, but it appears likely that the Army Corps will have rejected the Gateway Pacific terminal by then, rendering any rail expansion redundant.

 

people gathered around a totem pole

Photo courtesy of Sierra ClubIn 2013, James launched a totem pole journey to build solidarity for Indigenous-led struggles against fossil fuels, including the struggle to protect Xwe’chieXen. Pictured here, ranchers, environmentalists, and members of the Northern Cheyenne totem pole blessing ceremony in Billings, Montana.

 

In order to keep the pressure on, leaders from nine Native American tribes gathered in Seattle on May 14 to urge the Army Corps to deny permits for SSA Marine. “The Lummi Nation is proud to stand with other tribes who are drawing a line in the sand to say no to development that interferes with our treaty rights and desecrates sacred sites,” said Tim Ballew II, Chair of the Lummi Indian Business Council. “The Corps has a responsibility to deny the permit request and uphold our treaty.”

The Lummi have clearly had important successes in stopping harmful development in the past. But with so much on the line for coal companies, can they really use treaty rights to stop a coal terminal of this size? “Without question,” says Gabe S. Galanda, a practicing attorney specializing in tribal law in Washington State. “Indian Treaties are the supreme law of the land under the United States Constitution, and Lummi’s Treaty-guaranteed rights to fish are paramount at Cherry Point.” If the Army Corps decides to deny their permit, Galanda says that coal developers would find it “very difficult if not impossible” to successfully challenge them. By contrast, he says, “the Lummi Nation would have very strong grounds to attack and invalidate” any approval that the Army Corps might grant to the coal exporters.

In a similar case last year, Oregon’s Department of State Lands denied a key building permit for Ambre Energy’s coal export terminal project in Boardman, Oregon. The terminal was planned directly on top of a traditional fishing site of the Yakama Nation. In both Boardman and Cherry Point, the coal companies have implied that the protected Indigenous sites that would be harmed by their projects either do not exist, or that the tribes using them are too incompetent to know their true location.

Just two years after filing paperwork with Whatcom County admitting that they had “disturbed items of Native American archeological significance”, Bob Watters of SSA marine wrote “Claims that our project will disturb sacred burial sites are absolutely incorrect and fabricated by project opponents.”

One of the Cherry Point Terminal’s most fierce opponents is the diplomat, land defender and master carver Jewell Praying Wolf James. James is the head of the Lummi House of Tears Carvers, and has created a tradition out of carving and delivering totem poles to places that are in need of hope and healing.

In 2013, James launched a totem pole journey to build solidarity for Indigenous-led struggles against fossil fuels, including the struggle to protect Xwe’chieXen. James traveled 1,200 miles with his totem pole in 2013 — from the Powder River Basin to the Tsleil Waututh Nation across the Canadian border. In 2014, he launched another 6,000-mile totem pole journey in honor of revered tribal leader Billy Frank Jr, a Nisqually tribal member and hero of the fishing rights struggle. Frank passed away on May 5, 2014 — the same day he published his final piece condemning coal and oil trains.

These totem pole journeys have gained international attention as pilgrimages of hope, healing, decolonization, and Native resistance to the extractive industries.

At the end of August, James concluded his third regional totem pole journey against fossil fuels, carrying the banner of resistance to many tribes who are standing up as fossil fuel projects get knocked down. He held blessing ceremonies in Boardman and Portland where coal and propane projects were recently shot down, passed through the Lummi Nation and Longview where coal has yet to be defeated, and ended in the Northern Cheyenne Nation at Lame Deer, where the community has rallied in opposition to a mine whose devastation would reverberate from Montana, down the Columbia River, and up to Cherry Point.

“There are many of us who are joining, from the Lakota all the way to the West Coast, to the Lummi, south to the Apache, up to the Canadian tribes,” said Northern Cheyenne organizer Vanessa Braided Hair at a recent Tongue River Railroad hearing. “We’re gonna fight, and we’re not gonna stop.”