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Bellingham council votes to recognize Coast Salish Day

Johnny Moses, a member of the Tulalip Tribe, smiles as he speaks before a signing ceremony by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray for a resolution designating the second Monday in October as Indigenous People's Day, Monday, Oct. 13, 2014, in Seattle. Murray invited city council members and tribal leaders to the Monday afternoon signing ceremony for resolution, which the council approved a week earlier, designating it as a day to celebrate the culture and contributions of Native Americans. The second Monday in October is celebrated nationally as Columbus Day, which also has been a day to celebrate people of Italian heritage. ELAINE THOMPSON — AP Photo — Johnny Moses, a member of the Tulalip Tribe, smiles as he speaks before a signing ceremony by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray for a resolution designating the second Monday in October as Indigenous People’s Day, Monday, Oct. 13, 2014, in Seattle. Murray invited city council members and tribal leaders to the Monday afternoon signing ceremony for resolution, which the council approved a week earlier, designating it as a day to celebrate the culture and contributions of Native Americans. The second Monday in October is celebrated nationally as Columbus Day, which also has been a day to celebrate people of Italian heritage. ELAINE THOMPSON — AP Photo

By Samantha Wohlfeil, The Bellingham Herald

BELLINGHAM — By a 6-0 vote, City Council officially recognized Coast Salish Day on the date federally recognized as Columbus Day at its regular Monday night meeting, Oct. 13.

At the Monday afternoon meeting that fell on the federal holiday, all six council members present said they would support an ordinance recognizing Coast Salish Day on the second Monday of October each year, the same date that is nationally set aside for Columbus Day. Council member Jack Weiss, who joined council members Roxanne Murphy and Terry Bornemann in presenting the ordinance, was absent.

At previous meetings, Murphy had announced she would bring the ordinance forward to honor local tribes on the day many still use to honor explorer Christopher Columbus.

Council received an outpouring of community feedback about the proposal, ranging from people who said, “Pick another day,” to young tribal members who said they are still bullied for how they look, to general support from a variety of community members, Murphy said.

“I’m just hoping we can do right by the negativity the Coast Salish have experienced,” Murphy said.

Neither the city nor the state officially recognize Columbus Day as a holiday. For council member Michael Lilliquist, that meant the recognition of Coast Salish Day would not take anything away from the city but serve to celebrate the city’s historical connection with Coast Salish people.

“The names we use for streets and places here are Coast Salish names,” Lilliquist said. “It’s important to recognize that, not just as something of the past, but something that’s still living today. They’re still here. I’m not really happy with focusing on Columbus. I don’t want to get into that fight.”

Bornemann said he was happy to help Murphy bring the ordinance forward.

“We have a shared history with the Coast Salish people here. … Some of it has not been all that good,” Bornemann said.

Bornemann recalled an incident from many years ago when he was downtown and called 911 for someone who needed medical help. He remembered being asked if the person was Native American.

“I said it was none of their … business, they needed to get someone down there,” Bornemann said.

“I think this is one little step of recognizing what valuable contributions (the Coast Salish people) made to this area, and their long, noble history,” Bornemann continued.

Council members Gene Knutson, Pinky Vargas and Cathy Lehman all voiced their support for the ordinance and thanked Murphy for bringing the proposal to council.

In the future, all second Mondays in October could include the raising of tribal flags at City Hall and events featuring speeches from tribal leaders, along with other traditions the Nooksack Indian Tribe and Lummi Nation or other Coast Salish tribes would like to bring forward, according to a proposal accompanying the city ordinance.

“Most fundamentally,” the proposal reads, “the dream is that all future Coast Salish Days will remove any previous negativity from the former holiday and institute a day of celebration, culture, healing and respect.”

Seattle City Council passed a similar ordinance Oct. 6, recognizing Indigenous People’s Day.

Washington is one of several states that do not celebrate Columbus Day as a legal holiday. Banks and federal government offices are typically closed for the federal holiday. Bellingham city offices will not close for Coast Salish Day.

Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2014/10/13/3911107_bellingham-council-poised-to-recognize.html?sp=/99/101/&rh=1#storylink=cpy

Tribal Fishing Rights Cases Hit the 9th Circuit

By June Williams, Courthouse News Service

SEATTLE (CN) – Native American tribes fighting over fishing rights in Washington asked the 9th Circuit to intervene in separate proceedings last week.
The cases stems from a 1974 injunction by U.S. District Judge George Hugo Bolt in U.S. v. Washington that affirmed certain tribal fishing rights the state had been denying.
Among numerous subproceedings, the Tulalip back in 2005 requested a permanent injunction to prevent the Suquamish from fishing in waters outside their usual and accustomed, or U & A, grounds, an area determined by the 9th Circuit in 1990. The Suquamish were accused in that case of fishing on the east side of Puget Sound, in violation of court order.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez last year clarified “the geographic scope” of the Suquamish fishing grounds in Bolt’s decision. He said Bolt “relied heavily” on the reports of anthropologist Dr. Barbara Lane, who testified about various tribes’ traditional fishing areas in the 1974 case.
Martinez said it was “nearly certain” Bolt intended to include Possession Sound and waters at the mouth of the Snohomish River in the Suquamish U & A.
“On the other hand, there is an absence of evidence in her [Lane’s] report regarding Suquamish fishing in the waters on the eastern side of Whidbey Island such as Skagit Bay, Saratoga Passage and its connecting bays Penn Cove and Holmes Harbor, and Port Susan,” the July 29, 2013, ruling says. “Therefore the court finds that Judge Boldt did not intend to include these areas in the Suquamish U&A.”
The Tulalip appealed the decision to the 9th Circuit. After a three-judge panel’s Aug. 8 hearing in the Tulalip dispute, it heard the appeal by the Quileute and Quinault tribes of a similar decision by favoring the Makah tribe.
The Makah filed their Bolt subproceeding in 2009 to determine the boundaries of U & A fishing areas for the Quileute and Quinault tribes. The Ho tribe opposed the Makah’s motion as an interested party. In the complaint, the Makah argued the tribes intend to harvest Pacific whiting outside their traditional fishing grounds, which would affect the Makah’s catch. Pacific whiting travel from south to north, so the Quileute and Quinault would harvest the fish before the Makah.
Martinez let the case to proceed to trial by granting the Makah partial summary judgment last year. The Quileute and Quinault objected, arguing they waived sovereign immunity in the 1974 case only for determining their fishing rights in Washington. They claimed the court did not have authority over waters outside the 3-mile limit from the shore.
Martinez found that “incorrect” on July 8, 2013, saying the court’s jurisdiction extends to all treaty-based fishing and not limited to Washington waters.
The Quinault and Quileute’s claims of sovereign immunity also failed.
“The tribes came to Court in 1970 asking the court to determine and enforce their treaty rights, and they subjected themselves to the court’s jurisdiction for all purposes relating to the exercise of their treaty rights,” he wrote. “The Quinault and Quileute objections to the Makah motion for partial summary judgment on jurisdiction are thus without merit.”
Ho intervened in the appeals by both tribes.
With the 9th Circuit hearing the Tulalip case first Wednesday, Mason Morisset, representing the Tulalip, said Judge Bolt never “called out the specific waters we’re dealing with here.”
The lower court erred in finding the Suquamish regularly fished the east side of Whidbey Island in the past, he added.
Although the Suquamish fishing grounds extended north to Canad’s Fraser River, the tribe “would have to go out of their way” to fish on eastern Whidbey Island, Morisset said.
“In this case, there’s no evidence that the Suquamish went out of their way,” he said.
Judge Consuelo Callahan asked Morisset about the findings by an anthropologist that the Suquamish “traveled widely in the Puget Sound area.”
Morisett said this was true of “all the tribes,” and “it’s not evidence to make a general statement.”
The Suquamish may have traveled to the eastern parts of Whidbey Island and done some fishing, “but that doesn’t rise to the level of a usual and accustomed fishing place,” the attorney added.
Though Morisset called it “very telling” that the Suquamish did not contest Judge Bolt’s definition of their territory for 30 years, Callahan said “that doesn’t negate that they may have a right to do it.”
Howard Arnett, representing the Suquamish, said the tribe regularly fished in East Puget Sound based on historical reports.
“The testimony is clear,” he said. “They went there often. They went there frequently and they fished along the way – enough to establish that the entire area is a U & A.”
The Quileute, Quinault and Ho tribes dispute the finding they waived sovereign immunity, their attorney, Lauren King, said. The tribes agreed to court determination of fishing rights only in Washington State waters, she added.
With Callahan asking why the court shouldn’t “rule here that if you’re in for a penny then you’re in for a pound,” King said it would contravene Supreme Court precedent. “The Supreme Court said if you’re in for a penny, you’re in for a penny,” King said.
Callahan countered that “every single one” of the fishing rights cases involved interpretation of the same treaty.
King did not get far with her explanation that the tribes waived sovereign immunity only for one part of the treaty involving Washington fishing rights.
“If it involved all things in the treaty, we’d be here talking about hunting, about making war on other tribes,” King said.
But Callahan said the tribes’ approach seems to be “we waive sovereign immunity piece by piece until we don’t like what a court does.”
The Makah, represented by Marc Slonim, repeated their position that sovereign immunity was not an issue.
“Sovereign immunity is not a defense as to how an issue will get decided,” Slonim said.
He argued that the determination of the Quileute and Quinault traditional fishing grounds is “no different” from all of the other tribal determinations under the original U.S. v Washington case.
Callahan asked if the subject matter of this case was “inextricably linked” with U.S. v Washington.
“Absolutely,” Slonim replied.
The heart of the original case was the determination of usual and accustomed fishing grounds, the attorney added.
“You have to know where usual and accustomed fishing grounds are to adjudicate the treaty rights,” Slonim said. “The United States has said explicitly that the place these issues should be resolved is in U.S. v. Washington.”
Washington Assistant Attorney General Joseph Panesko also weighed in on the tribes
claim of sovereign immunity, saying it was “patently false” to claim the state has no regulatory authority over the waters in dispute.
He called the tribes “disingenuous” for claiming they never waived immunity over the waters. He said if they succeed in arguing Judge Bolt’s decision doesn’t affect the ocean waters, the state wouldn’t be bound by an injunction in the case.
“The state would be cleared to start regulating all tribal harvests of crab and a few other resources that the state does manage beyond the three mile line,” Panesko said. “The state could require regulatory permits, impose excise taxes on fish that tribal members bring in from beyond that 3-mile line – ”
Laughter broke out in the courtroom as Callahan translated.
“You’re saying be careful what you ask for,” she said.
Judges Jay Bybee and Richard Paez joined on the panel.

Actress Misty Upham from ‘August: Osage County’ is missing

November 8, 2013. Cast member Misty Upham attends a screening of the film "August: Osage County" during AFI Fest 2013 in Los Angeles. (Reuters) — November 8, 2013. Cast member Misty Upham attends a screening of the film “August: Osage County” during AFI Fest 2013 in Los Angeles. (Reuters)

By Foxnews.com

Actress Misty Upham has officially been declared a missing person reports Us weekly. Indian Country Today reports that the 32-year-old actress was last spotted leaving her sister’s apartment in Muckleshoot, Washington on October 5.

She is best known for her role as housekeeper Johnna Monevata in the film “August: Osage County” which starred Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep. Other film roles include 2008’s “Frozen River” and 2013’s “Jimmy P.” She had also filmed a part in the upcoming movie “Cake” alongside Jennifer Aniston.

Upham’s father, Charles Upham who first raised the alarm released a statement saying, “”Misty is considered an endangered missing person due to a medical condition. She has not been in contact with her family or friends since her disappearance.”

Charles Upham says the last time he saw his daughter she sounded suicidal.

“She told me and her mom that we didn’t have to worry about her anymore … I thought it sounded suicidal myself, so I called the police,” Charles Upham told The Hollywood Reporter.

“She’s always been a suicidal person,” he said, “She used to make (suicide) threats sometimes, but she never went through with it.”

Those with information on Upham are asked to call the Auburn police department (253) 288-2121, case no. 14-13189.

Largest Settlement a Turning Point in US-Navajo Nation Relations

Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly (L) puts a blanket on the shoulders of U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell after a ceremonial signing of a record multi-million-dollar settlement, in Window Rock, Arizona, at the Navajo Nation, Sept. 26, 2014.

By Isabela Cocoli, Voice of America News

WASHINGTON—A record multi-million-dollar settlement between the United States government and the Navajo Nation has been seen as a turning point in relations between the Federal government and the entire Indian nation. It is the largest sum ever paid by the U.S. government to a single Indian tribe.Within the territory of the United States are 562 nations — ethnically-, culturally- and linguistically-diverse Native American tribes recognized by the United States as sovereign governments. The largest is the Navajo Nation, whose territory stretches more than 70,000 square kilometers across three western states.While the tribal governments enforce laws on their territory and license and regulate activities, the federal government holds the vast majority of Indian lands, money and resources in trust for the tribes, and is required to manage them in a way that benefits the tribes and individual Native Americans.

The Navajo Nation sued the federal government in 2006 and sought $900 million in damages for mismanagement of resources and trust accounts since at least 1946.

Significant investment needed

The claims in the case involved essentially three things: one, the Federal government as trustee was responsible for negotiating a contract for the extraction of natural resources for the Navajo Nation’s property; two, the government was responsible for monitoring the performance under the contract to make sure that the Navajo Nation was paid the royalties due; and three, as trustee the United States was obligated to invest the proceeds in a commercially appropriate way.

Andrew Sandler, who represented the Navajo Nation in the suit, said the settlement for $554 million is an equitable deal for both parties. It comes at a time when the Navajo Nation needs significant investment in several areas — from education to housing — and he said it will go a long way toward addressing those needs.

“The Navajo Nation is plagued by an unemployment rate as high as 50 percent. It is in desperate need for educational resources, for infrastructure resources, for roads, for water, and many other things,” said Sandler. “This $500-plus million will go a long, long way to improving the quality of life for the Navajo people.”

The signing ceremony took place late last month in Window Rock, Arizona, which serves as the capital of the Navajo Nation. Navajo official Rick Abasta told VOA that there were compromises on both sides.

“There was a little bit of compromise on the Nation’s part in accepting this $554 million settlement. But I think the bigger picture was to end the litigation against the federal government, because of course that has a cost as well, and move forward with improving the Nation and utilizing these funds,” he said.

Aiding tribal communities

In various public statements, U.S. officials had acknowledged that the Federal government had failed in its obligation as trustee. However, the deal reflects Washington’s commitment to upholding its trust responsibility to Indian Country and to building strong, prosperous and resilient tribal communities.

Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly said the agreement was symbolic of the evolving relationship between the Navajo Nation and the U.S. government.

“The $554 million represented in this settlement is more than just the end of a legal battle. It is not just fulfilling the trust responsibility of our trustee, nor is it full compensation for the loss of revenue and the harm caused by the federal government’s actions over decades,” he said. “This settlement marks a turning point in our relationship with the federal government, and I’m hoping to see that before Obama leaves.”

U.S. tribes have filed more than 100 lawsuits against the federal government. Since early 2012, the government has resolved about 80 of them, amounting to $2.5 billion.

The ‘Sioux Chef’ Is Putting Pre-Colonization Food Back On The Menu

By: NPR

Like most chefs, Sean Sherman practically lives in the kitchen. But in his spare time, this member of the Oglala Lakota tribe has been on a quest to identify the foods his ancestors ate on the Great Plains before European settlers appeared on the scene. After years of researching and experimenting with “pre-colonization” foods, he’s preparing to open a restaurant in the Twin Cities this winter that showcases those foods, reborn for contemporary palates.

Sherman, who calls himself the Sioux Chef, grew up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. It’s where he first started to learn about the traditional foods of the Plains, whether it was hunting animals like pronghorn antelope and grouse,or picking chokecherries for wojapi, a berry soup.

“We were close to the Badlands and its sand hills, which is not the best growing area by far,” says Sherman, who’s now 40. “But we would also spend weeks in the Black Hills, crawling around and learning stuff.”

Sherman’s grandfather was among the first Native American children to go to mission schools on the reservation, and he was one of Sherman’s first teachers. Forced assimilation during the 19th and early 20th century wiped out much of Native American food culture across the country. When his grandfather died when Sherman was 18, he was left with many unanswered questions.

In the meantime, Sherman worked his way up in the restaurant world, eventually becoming an executive chef at Minneapolis’ La Bodega in 2000. Around the same time, he had the idea to write a Lakota cookbook. Although there were some Native American cookbooks already on the market, he says he found that most of them focused on the Southwest or made too many generalizations about food across regions and tribes.

When he tried to learn more about the wild game — and especially the plants — native to the Great Plains, he came up short. He says many Americans don’t have a sense of the Lakota diet beyond bison or frybread. (Frybread is actually a fairly recent addition and has a complicated history.)

“There wasn’t a lot of information out there, so I devised my own [research] plan,” he says. “I spent years studying wild edibles and ethnobotany.”

He learned more from oral histories and also started reading historical first-contact accounts written by Europeans, although they weren’t always helpful.

“A lot of those first-contact reports focused on what the men were doing [hunting], not on what the women were doing — processing all of the food,” he says.

One of his breakthroughs came when he lived in Mexico for a while. He discovered that the traditional methods of drying and grinding food in that region were similar to those his tribe had once used, and indigenous people all across North America were working with ingredients like corn, beans and squash.

Back in Minnesota, he continued to try and piece together a picture of the traditional diet of the local Dakota and Ojibwe tribes. He also spent a lot of time traveling across the state, adding more staples to his growing list, including bison, venison, rabbit, river and lake fish, trout, duck, quail, maple sugar, sage, sumac, plums, timpsula or wild turnip, wild rice, purslane, amaranth, maize, and various wildflowers.

Identifying the ingredients has only been half of the challenge, however. He’s also had to figure out how to preserve everything. He’s relied mostly on a food dehydrator (for efficiency), but he’s also experimented with drying by sun and wood fire.

“I want to figure out how I can use wild flavors in season, because they might be gone in a two-week period,” he says. “The biggest part of the Native American cuisine is just that method of preserving foods. That’s what people were doing during the whole summer season — preparing for the next long winter.”

Sherman started Sioux Chef as a catering business in Minneapolis and hopes to open his restaurant sometime this winter in the Twin Cities. He says the area’s diverse population and vibrant food scene offer the “best platform to showcase what we can do with these foods.”

Some chefs have tried similar concepts in other regions. Nephi Craig brings Apache and Navajo influences to the food he prepares at the Sunrise Park Resort Hotel in Arizona. The Misitam Cafe in the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., has won national acclaim.

Sherman says his restaurant will feature a seasonal menu with family-style dishes, like wild rice flatbread, cedar-braised bison, smoked turkey wasna, seared walleye with sumac and maple sugar and balsam fir iced tea. Most of his ingredients will be sourced from local farms. Some farms, like Wozupi, work with local tribes to grow indigenous plants and preserve heirloom seeds.

Sherman says his goal is to bring a sophisticated touch to traditional ingredients, and he hopes it will be a way to share old traditions with new diners. “We need this kind of restaurant all over the place,” he says.

But other groups on reservations are interested in reviving pre-colonization foods to reincorporate them into local diets. The Traditional Western Apache Diet Project and the Crow Creek Fresh Food Initiative are offshoots of a food sovereignty movement that is picking up steam on several reservations around the country. A recent study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture also found that several indigenous foods that aren’t widely consumed anymore are highly nutritious.

If his restaurant is successful, Sherman hopes he can expand the concept and create similar ones across the country, training young Native American chefs in keeping their tribes’ best culinary traditions alive.

Wyoming Offers Northwest Tribal Leaders A Free Trip To Coal Country

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead has invited Northwest tribal leaders on an all-expenses-paid trip to see the coal operations in his state. | credit: Michael Werner

By: Ashley Ahearn, Tony Schick, and Cassandra Profita, OPB

Treaty fishing rights give Northwest tribes extra clout when it comes to the future of proposed coal terminals on the Columbia River and Puget Sound.

That’s not lost on the governor of Wyoming, a big proponent of coal exports.

Gov. Matt Mead is inviting Northwest tribal leaders on an all-expenses-paid trip to coal country in Northeastern Wyoming, according to an email obtained by EarthFix.

The governor’s invitation went out to tribes in Oregon and Washington, including the Umatilla, Yakama, Swinomish and the Lummi.

The governor’s office did not answer specific questions about the invitations, but released a statement saying the trip would “showcase Wyoming’s coal and rail industries, the benefits of low sulfur coal, world class reclamation and the economic benefits coal provides to the local community.”

The statement, sent by email from Michelle Panos, the governor’s interim communications director, says that Wyoming has been hosting policy makers from the Pacific Northwest for the last few years, and “Wyoming recognizes tribal leaders as key policy makers.”

Courting Coal’s Critics?

Tribes have been vocal critics of coal exports in the Northwest, and their treaty fishing rights give them unique power to stop terminal developments. It’s unclear whether the free trip to Wyoming is intended to change their stance.

The two-day tour would visit one of the largest coal mines in the world, a power plant and rail operations, according to a Sept. 25 email sent by Loyd Drain, executive director of the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority. And the state of Wyoming would pick up the tab.

Yakama fishers protest coal exports. Credit: Courtney Flatt.

“The Wyoming Infrastructure Authority, an instrumentality of the state of Wyoming, would be pleased to provide for the cost of airfare; lodging; transportation in Wyoming; and meals,” Drain wrote in one of the emails.

The invitation calls the tour “an opportunity with an up-close look at the operations being conducted in an environmentally friendly manner.”

Drain did not respond to requests for comment.

Chuck Sams, spokesman for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, said the chairman of his tribal council, Gary Burke, received an invitation last week but hasn’t decided whether he will accept.

“We received an email from the governor of Wyoming inviting us out,” Sams said. “We haven’t made any decisions regarding the invitation.”

Earlier this year, the Umatilla and several other tribes argued successfully that a proposed coal export project on the Columbia River would interfere with their tribal fishing rights.

The state of Oregon denied a permit needed to build a dock for the Morrow Pacific project in part because tribal members say they fish at the proposed dock site.

Mead Sees Exports In Coal’s Future

Gov. Matt Mead visits Longview. Credit Cassandra Profita

Mead visited another proposed coal export terminal site in Longview, Washington, earlier this year to show his support for the project and tour the facility. The Millennium Bulk Terminals project would export up to 44 million tons of coal a year from Wyoming and Montana to Asia.

“That’s a lot of coal, but relative to the amount of coal we produce it’s 10 percent,” Mead said during his visit. “So this port and other ports are important to Wyoming in terms of the coal industry.”

Wyoming produces around 400 million tons of coal a year. With the U.S. tightening regulations for coal-fired power plants, Mead said he sees exports as a key part of the coal industry’s future.

Not All Tribes Agree

The Powder River Basin coal reserves of Wyoming and Montana are partly located on tribal land. The Crow Nation signed a deal with Cloud Peak Energy, giving that company the option to mine up to 1.4 billion tons of Crow coal. Some of the coal mined there would be exported through terminals proposed to be built in Washington. The move pits the Crow against tribes in the Northwest, which oppose coal exports.

“The economic viability of the Crow Nation is closely tied to our ability ship natural resources, especially coal, out of Montana,” said Crow Tribal Chairman Darrin Old Coyote. “Energy exports are a key piece of our future well-being and we are encouraged by this proposed rail and port infrastructure in the Northwest that will help grow interstate commerce.”

Lummi fisherman catching crab. Credit: Ashley Ahearn.

As for the all-expenses-paid trip to Wyoming coal country, Timothy Ballew, tribal chairman of the Lummi Nation, whose lands are adjacent to the site of the proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal, said he will not be attending.

Chairman Ballew and the Lummi council sent a letter in response to the Wyoming governor’s offer. In it, Ballew said, “there is no purpose to be served by accepting your offer. We are well aware of the nature of the coal mining industry and its impacts on the environment.”

The letter goes on to say that the operation of the Gateway Pacific Terminal represents “an unacceptable and unavoidable interference with our treaty fishing rights … and will result in the desecration of an area of great cultural and spiritual significance to our past, our people, and our ancestors.”

Seattle to Celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day

By PHUONG LE Associated Press

The Seattle City Council has voted to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day on the same day as the federally recognized holiday, Columbus Day.

The resolution that passed unanimously Monday honors the contributions and culture of Native Americans and the indigenous community in Seattle. Indigenous Peoples’ Day will be celebrated on the second Monday in October.

Tribal members and other supporters say the move recognizes the rich history of people who have inhabited the area for centuries.

“This action will allow us to bring into current present day our valuable and rich history, and it’s there for future generations to learn,” said Fawn Sharp, president of the Quinault Indian Nation on the Olympic Peninsula. She is also president of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians.

“Nobody discovered Seattle, Washington,” she said to a round of applause.

Several Italian-Americans and others objected to the move, saying Indigenous Peoples’ Day honors one group while disregarding the Italian heritage of others.

Columbus Day is a federal holiday that commemorates the arrival of Christopher Columbus, who was Italian, in the Americas on Oct. 12, 1492. It’s not a legal state holiday in Washington.

“We don’t argue with the idea of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. We do have a big problem of it coming at the expense of what essentially is Italian Heritage Day,” said Ralph Fascitelli, an Italian-American who lives in Seattle, speaking outside the meeting.

“This is a big insult to those of us of Italian heritage. We feel disrespected,” Fascitelli said. He added, “America wouldn’t be America without Christopher Columbus.”

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray is expected to sign the resolution Oct. 13, his spokesman Jason Kelly said.

The Bellingham City Council also is concerned that Columbus Day offends some Native Americans. It will consider an ordinance Oct. 13 to recognize the second Monday in October as Coast Salish Day.

The Seattle School Board decided last week to have its schools observe Indigenous Peoples’ Day on the same day as Columbus Day. Earlier this year, Minneapolis also decided to designate that day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. South Dakota, meanwhile, celebrates Native American Day.

Seattle councilmember Bruce Harrell said he understood the concerns from people in the Italian-American community, but he said, “I make no excuses for this legislation.” He said he co-sponsored the resolution because he believes the city won’t be successful in its social programs and outreach until “we fully recognize the evils of our past.”

Councilmember Nick Licata, who is Italian-American, said he didn’t see the legislation as taking something away, but rather allowing everyone to celebrate a new day where everyone’s strength is recognized.

David Bean, a member of the Puyallup Tribal Council, told councilmembers the resolution demonstrates that the city values tribal members’ history, culture, welfare and contributions to the community.

Sophisticated 600-year-old canoe discovered in New Zealand

This turtle was carved on the hull of a 600-year-old canoe found in New Zealand. Turtles are rare in pre-European Maori art. The engraving might be a nod to the Maori's Polynesian ancestors, who revered the seafaring reptiles. (Tim Mackrell, Conservation Laboratory, The University of Auckland) — This turtle was carved on the hull of a 600-year-old canoe found in New Zealand. Turtles are rare in pre-European Maori art. The engraving might be a nod to the Maori’s Polynesian ancestors, who revered the seafaring reptiles. (Tim Mackrell, Conservation Laboratory, The University of Auckland)

By Megan Gannon, FoxNews.com

Sophisticated oceangoing canoes and favorable winds may have helped early human settlers colonize New Zealand, a pair of new studies shows.

The remote archipelagos of East Polynesia were among the last habitable places on Earth that humans were able to colonize. In New Zealand, human history only began around 1200-1300, when intrepid voyagers arrived by boat through several journeys over some generations.

A piece of that early heritage was recently revealed on a beach in New Zealand, when a 600-year-old canoe with a turtle carved on its hull emerged from a sand dune after a harsh storm. The researchers who examined the shipwreck say the vessel is more impressive than any other canoe previously linked to this period in New Zealand. [The 9 Craziest Ocean Voyages]

Separately, another group of scientists discovered a climate anomaly in the South Pacific during this era that would have eased sailing from central East Polynesia southwest to New Zealand. Both findings were detailed Sept. 29 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Canoe on the coast

The canoe was revealed near the sheltered Anaweka estuary, on the northwestern end of New Zealand’s South Island.

“It kind of took my breath away, really, because it was so carefully constructed and so big,” said Dilys Johns, a senior research fellow at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

The hull measured about 20 feet long and it was made from matai, or black pine, found in New Zealand. The boat had carved interior ribs and clear evidence of repair and reuse. Carbon dating tests showed that the vessel was last caulked with wads of bark in 1400.

Johns and colleagues say it’s likely that the hull once had a twin, and together, these vessels formed a double canoe (though the researchers haven’t ruled out the possibility that the find could have been a single canoe with an outrigger). If the ship was a double canoe, it probably had a deck, a shelter and a sail that was pitched forward, much like the historic canoes of the Society Islands (a group that includes Bora Bora and Tahiti) and the Southern Cook Islands. These island chains have been identified as likely Polynesian homelands of the Maori, the group of indigenous people who settled New Zealand.

The boat was surprisingly more sophisticated than the canoes described centuries later by the first Europeans to arrive in New Zealand, Johns told Live Science. At the time of European contact, the Maori were using dugout canoes, which were hollowed out from single, big trees with no internal frames. In the smaller islands of Polynesia, boat builders didn’t have access to trees that were big enough to make an entire canoe; to build a vessel, therefore, they had to create an elaborate arrangement of smaller wooden planks.

The newly described canoe seems to represent a mix of that ancestral plank technology and an adaptation to the new resources on New Zealand, since the boat has some big, hollowed-out portions but also sophisticated internal ribs, Johns and colleagues wrote.

The turtle carving on the boat also seems to link back to the settlers’ homeland. Turtle designs are rare in pre-European carvings in New Zealand, but widespread in Polynesia, where turtles were important in mythology and could represent humans or even gods in artwork. In many traditional Polynesian societies, only the elite were allowed to eat turtles, the study’s authors noted.

Shifty winds

A separate recent study examined the climate conditions that may have made possible the long journeys between the central East Polynesian islands and New Zealand. Scientists looked at the region’s ice cores and tree rings, which can act like prehistoric weather stations, recording everything from precipitation to wind patterns to atmospheric pressure and circulation strength. [10 Surprising Ways Weather Changed History]

Because of today’s wind patterns, scholars had assumed that early settlers of New Zealand would have had to sail thousands of miles from East Polynesia against the wind. But when the researchers reconstructed climate patterns in the South Pacific from the year 800 to 1600, they found several windows during the so-called Medieval Climate Anomaly when trade winds toward New Zealand were strengthened.(That anomaly occurred between the years 800 and 1300.)

“There are these persistent 20-year periods where there are extreme shifts in climate system,” the study’s head author, Ian Goodwin, a marine climatologist and marine geologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, told Live Science. “We show that the sailing canoe in its basic form would have been able to make these voyages purely through downwind sailing.”

Goodwin added that a downwind journey from an island in central East Polynesia might take about two weeks in a sailing canoe. But the trip would take four times that if the voyagers had to travel upwind.

Native Alaska Village of Point Lay Hailed for Stewardship of 35,000 Walruses

Corey Accardo, NOAA/NMFS/AFSC/NMMLThis is what 35,000 walruses look like when they do not have sea ice to rest on in the open water. — Corey Accardo, NOAA/NMFS/AFSC/NMML
This is what 35,000 walruses look like when they do not have sea ice to rest on in the open water.

Indian Country Today

With 35,000 walruses camped out on the edge of town, the 250-population Native village of Point Lay, Alaska has been thrust onto the world stage.

And, true to their custom, the residents have stepped up—not to bask in their potential 15 minutes of fame, but to embrace their traditional role as environmental stewards.

“These locals, these people, without a lot of funding or anything, have taken on this stewardship and protection of the haulout,” said Joel Garlich-Miller, a walrus specialist for the Marine Mammals Management department of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in a telephone interview with Indian Country Today Media Network. “They’re front-line conservationists.”

The walruses began arriving in mid-September, as they had been for the past few years. You can hear them from the village, residents said in a 2012 community workshop held with Garlich-Miller, community elders and an array of scientists. It is common for walruses to “haul out,” as it’s called, and take a break from feeding in the open sea, usually by pulling themselves onto ice floes. But with the summer ice extent dwindling drastically in the Arctic, a growing number have had to settle for land.

This has been happening off and on for years, but of late it has become much more pronounced. On September 30, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration conducted their annual flyover to observe Alaska’s marine wildlife from the air. Catching sight of the mass of walruses clustered onto a sliver of northwestern Alaska coast, they snapped some spectacular photos and posted them on the web, noting that a lack of sea ice had forced walruses onto land.

With all the attention being paid to climate change over the past couple of weeks, between the People’s Climate March of September 21 and the United Nations Climate Summit two days later, the world’s attention was riveted. The sea ice had reached its lowest extent for the year a couple of weeks earlier, on September 17, the sixth-lowest minimum on record, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

“The massive concentration of walruses onshore—when they should be scattered broadly in ice-covered waters—is just one example of the impacts of climate change on the distribution of marine species in the Arctic,” said Margaret Williams, managing director of the WWF’s Arctic program, in a statement on September 18. “The sharp decline of Arctic sea ice over the last decade means major changes for wildlife and communities alike. Today’s news about the sea ice minimum is yet another reminder of the urgent need to ratchet down global greenhouse gas emissions—the main human factor driving massive climate change.”

The walrus, Garlich-Miller explained, is “typically considered an ice-dependent species.” They are not suited to an open-water lifestyle and must periodically haul out to rest.

“Traditionally during the summer months, broken sea ice has persisted through the Chukchi Sea during the entire summer, and walruses have typically remained offshore,” he said in a conference call with reporters on October 1.

Photo: Corey Accardo, NOAA/NMFS/AFSC/NMML

But in recent years, Garlich-Muller said, the Chukchi Sea has become entirely ice-free by the end of summer. The number of walruses seen on shore has been growing. Nowadays, he said, tens of thousands of walruses haul out regularly in Russia as well. Numerous researchers have been monitoring this since its exacerbation, but the phenomenon of land haulouts is nothing new. What is new is the extent of their use of land, researchers said.

“Walrus have always hauled out on land, in small numbers in Alaska, and in much larger groups (tens of thousands) in Russia,” said anthropologist and Arctic researcher Henry Huntington to ICTMN in an e-mail. “The large haulout at Point Lay started in 2007, and has occurred most years since then, except when sea ice has persisted in the Chukchi Sea. So this is a relatively new phenomenon, and is almost certainly related to the loss of summer sea ice (meaning the ice is too far from shallow waters where walrus can feed, so they instead move to land in late summer/early fall when the ice is at is smallest extent).”

The concern now, Garlich-Muller said, is the walruses’ safety. A few problems arise when they’re on land that tend not to plague them on the ice. For one thing, there are more predators lurking. For another, the walruses are in much more crowded conditions, which can facilitate the spread of disease. Moreover, disturbing them causes the potential for stampedes, which could injure or kill the animals, especially the calves. Their vulnerability, Garlich-Muller said, is proportional to the size of the herd.

What disturbs them? Gunfire, aircraft, predators such as polar and grizzly bears, and human activity. Minimizing disturbance has become a major focus of the USFWS office in Alaska over the past few years, Garlich-Miller told reporters.

This is where Point Lay comes in.

“Some of the best and most successful conservation efforts that we’ve seen to date have occurred at the local level,” Garlich-Miller told reporters on October 1. “The community of Point Lay in particular has shown a great stewardship ethic at the haulout. They’ve sort of taken it under their wing. They’ve worked with the local flights in and out of their community to reroute aircraft landing and takeoff routes. The community, when walruses are present they work with their tribal members not to motor by the haulout with boats. They’ve changed their hunting patterns—although they are a subsistence-hunting community and legally entitled to hunt walruses, they’ve refrained from hunting at these large haulouts, where disturbance events can lead to lots of unnecessary mortality.”

Point Lay officials fended off reporters’ requests for visits and interviews. They were too busy protecting the herd.

“The Native VIllage of Point Lay IRA Council respectfully declines any interviews at this present time,” the village’s offices said in an e-mail to Indian Country Today Media Network. “We, as a tribe, did not wish for this event to be so widely publicized. Our community is a small, close knit, subsistence only community.”

Regardless, they remain the unsung heroes of the walrus haulout.

Tidal Power Project In Puget Sound Abandoned By Utility

A crew deploying a "sea spider" in 2011 to collect data from the floor of Puget Sound in Admiralty Inlet. After eight years of testing and permitting processes, the Snohomish County PUD has decided to halt the project. | credit: Ashley Ahearn | — A crew deploying a “sea spider” in 2011 to collect data from the floor of Puget Sound in Admiralty Inlet. After eight years of testing and permitting processes, the Snohomish County PUD has decided to halt the project. | credit: Ashley Ahearn |

By Courtney Flatt, Northwest Public Radio

A long-awaited tidal energy project in Puget Sound has come to halt. The project was set to generate electricity and connect it to the grid – the first project of its kind in the world. But it just got too expensive.

The Snohomish County Public Utility District had hoped to install two underwater turbines in Admiralty Inlet near Puget Sound’s Whidbey Island. The pilot turbines would have generated enough power for about 200 homes and stayed in the water up to five years.

The U.S. Department of Energy had said it would pay for half the project, but the department recently said it couldn’t keep paying after eight years of permitting and testing.

Steve Klein, the PUD’s general manager, said new types of renewable energy need support.

“Tidal, wave, and ocean generation are kind of where wind (power) was 10 or 15 years ago. Even wind needed that support, that research, that involvement from a number of different parties,” Klein said.

Watch: video of a crew putting tidal energy test equipment in Admiralty Inlet

Klein said the PUD is still looking for partners to help pay for the construction, but that it probably won’t look into another tidal power project any time soon if it can’t find other financing.

Some had worried the tidal energy project would harm marine life like resident orcas that regularly swim in the waters. A study by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found adult male orcas would likely not suffer significant damage if they came into contact with the turbine blade.

The project received a federal license in March.

The PUD spent about $4 million on the project, with funding from grants and the sale of renewable energy credits from wind projects. The PUD expected to finish construction of the tidal energy project by 2016.