The proud mother is 23-year-old L86, and this is her second calf. The newborn has been designated L120.
The birth is sorely needed in the Southern Resident Community population, Michael Harris, Executive Director of the PWWA, said in a press release. Their numbers had just dipped to 78, the lowest count in over a decade.
Meanwhile, the Northern Resident Community of British Columbia have steadily increased in numbers, and transient or marine mammal-eating orcas seem to be thriving in the Sound and Straits.
Yet the Southerns continue to struggle to recover, Harris said. Researchers attribute the problem to lack of prey, primarily their preferred diet of wild Chinook salmon.
“We wouldn’t have known about it, but heard from David Elifritt out on the water that L86 had a new calf, and then ran into them,” said Capt. Jim Maya of Maya’s Westside Whale Charters on San Juan Island. “What a thrill to be there at the right time in the right place. Everyone on board was so excited. I’ve never seen a calf born, but it’s always a thrill to be there the day a new calf was discovered.”
“I remember someone saw a shot of L86 breaching back in June and word got out that she had a little ‘baby bump,'” explains Michael Harris, Executive Director of the PWWA. “This is great news. But every time a baby’s born, we’re careful not to pass out the cigars too soon. Infant mortality is really high among wild orcas, especially these Southern Residents. This little whale has a tough road ahead. Every birth is exciting, but we’ll be especially thrilled and relieved to see L120 rolling back into the Sound and Straits next summer.”
EVERETT, Wash. — An alliance of Washington tribes says it will ask the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to step in and come up with new water-quality rules for the state.
The Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission sent Gov. Jay Inslee a letter on Thursday expressing “dissatisfaction” with his proposal for updating the state’s clean water rules that are partly tied to how much fish people eat.
The Herald reports that the tribes say the proposal won’t do enough to protect tribal members. They’re also concerned about another delay.
Inslee’s plan would increase the fish consumption rate to 175 grams a day, but the tribes say that improvement is offset by other less protective changes.
An Inslee spokesman said Saturday that the governor’s office and the Department of Ecology hope to discuss Inslee’s proposal with the group.
WASHINGTON – The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian will open the “Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations” exhibit Sept. 21 during the museum’s 10th anniversary on the National Mall.
The exhibit is the museum’s most ambitious effort yet, presenting the Native nations’ individual treaties side-by-side in their largest historical collection ever presented to an audience. The exhibition focuses on eight treaties representing the approximately 374 ratified between the United States and the Native nations, on loan from the National Archives. Each document details and solidifies the diplomatic agreements between the United States and the neighboring Native nations.
More than 125 objects, including art and artifacts, from the museum’s collection and private lenders will be featured, including the Navajo blanket owned by Gen. William Sherman, a collection of Plains nations pipes and beaded pipe bags, peace medals given to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and the sword and scabbard of Andrew Jackson.
Video installations, archival photographs, wampum belts, textiles, baskets and peace medals highlight each historical moment and help tell the story of the early ancestors of the Native nations and their efforts to live side-by-side at the birth of the United States.
The exhibit will be on display through Sept. 1, 2018. The NMAI’s hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily. It is closed on Dec. 25. Admission is free. The museum is located at 4th St. and Independence Ave. SW.
As more oil trains travel along the Columbia River and Puget Sound, conservation groups worry that cleanup plans could harm sensitive wildlife, like endangered salmon and shorebirds.
That concern is prompting legal action. The Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Columbia Gorge Thursday filed a 60-day notice to sue the U.S. Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agency. The conservation groups say the oil spill response plan needs to be updated to account for endangered species.
Jared Margolis, an attorney for the center, said the response plan hasn’t been updated in 10 years. That means the plan doesn’t include new wildlife habitat and new species on the Endangered Species List, like smelt, also known as eulachon.
“If those spill response plans aren’t up-to-date, they could boom the oil right into critical habitat for endangered species, which can really impact the salmon and sturgeon.” Margolis said.
Margolis said the Gulf Coast’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill taught conservation groups that cleanup efforts, like burning oil and mixing oil with the dispersants, could harm endangered species.
An EPA spokeswoman said she could not comment on pending litigation. She said cleanup plans in the Northwest include monitoring for endangered species.
Courtesy Sen. Jon Tester/Flickr About 100 people gathered for a listening session with Sen. Jon Tester on August 28 to discuss the increased trafficking of mostly young girls and women in Indian country.
As the trafficking of Native women and girls becomes more prevalent in an expanding radius around the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota, politicians and indigenous leaders are seeking to protect these young victims—and help the survivors heal.
“Human trafficking is a serious issue afflicting our region and much of Indian country. Tribes from Washington State to New York have felt its terrible impact,” said Montana Senator Jon Tester during opening remarks at a listening session he held at Ft. Peck Community College on August 28. “Montana and North Dakota have been especially hard-hit by increases in crime, including human trafficking, due to the explosive influx of people and resources following the oil and gas boom in the Bakken.”
The listening session was aimed at gathering more information from tribal leaders and local law enforcement regarding the spike in sex trafficking of underage girls, as well as other related crimes that have increased since the oil boom began in the Bakken region. Also among the panelists at Thursday’s session was United States Attorney Mike Cotter, who appeared at the event to voice the growing alarm shared by he and his colleagues in Montana, the Dakotas and Wyoming, about the exploding industry of human trafficking involving mostly Native girls aged 12 to 14 who are being sold for sex.
“If you look around the rural regions of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, you would not expect to find 12-14 year old girls sold for sex on the Internet, or lured by an adult for sex or forced into a life of servitude by predators to sell their bodies to strangers,” Cotter told the audience of about 100 tribal leaders, community members and law enforcement. “It is hard to imagine but it is here in our region, and this corruption occurs with too much frequency and is more prevalent than one would imagine.”
Cotter underscored the fact that human trafficking is a global, national and regional problem that has snared millions of men, women and children into being trafficked for labor and commercial sex. Situated on the energy-rich Williston Basin, the Bakken Oil Patch is located in North Dakota. Since the energy boom in that state began, crime rates in the multi-state region have also spiked, including sexual violence, domestic violence, multiple murders and an increase in the use of meth and other drugs.
“We’re dealing with drug cartels, we’re dealing with people who don’t come to the door with a shotgun, they come to the door with a sub-machine gun,” said Tester. “And it’s very different. A lot of law enforcement agencies have seen a real uptick in crime, but haven’t seen an uptick in police officers or staffing or training.”
Typically, traffickers target mostly young girls who average between 12 and 14 years in age and are usually from low-income homes where one or both parents are absent. Additionally, many of the girls are already victims of child abuse and neglect, and many are struggling with drug and alcohol abuse. In South Dakota alone, Tester said, at least half of the sex trafficking victims are Native girls. Many of the girls, he said, are lured during times of vulnerability, when they may be homeless or struggling in other ways.
Tribal leaders across the region have also begun to feel the burden of the crime rates in their own communities, which are often underfunded, understaffed and ill-equipped to take on Mexican cartels, who they say have infiltrated the region and are well-organized and armed with heavy weaponry, including machine guns, which heretofore have been a rarity in the Northern Plains. The Fort Peck Indian Reservation, for example, is located approximately two and a half hours west of the Bakken region. Still, their tribal chairman said, his community is feeling the downside of the boom.
“Because of our proximity to the Bakken oil field, we are already seeing the negative effects of oil and gas development without any financial benefits,” Chairman Rusty Stafne of the Fort Peck Tribes of Montana, told the audience. “Washington has been quick to promote the exploitation of natural resources, but slow to provide the necessary funding for the increased demand on our services and infrastructure.”
“Adding to the problem is the lack of treatment available to survivors,” said Tester. “The survivors are often children or young adults from impoverished homes with broken family ties. Help for them is rarely available in the Native community—or even within a manageable drive.”
The negative impacts of the rise in crime is also being felt among tribes in South Dakota and Wyoming, both of whom have had an increase in the trafficking of their young girls.
“Energy development is bringing tremendous new opportunities to the region, but with the good comes the bad,” said Tester. “Many of the small towns on reservations and surrounding areas are being inundated with new businesses and more jobs, but also with infrastructure challenges and bad actors attracted to the profits and free-wheeling environment.”
Cotter said the Department of Justice launched the Human Trafficking Enhanced Enforcement Initiative in 2011. In 2012, the Montana U.S. Attorney’s office created the Montana Human Trafficking Task Force to confront the “complex, multi-dimensional crime of human trafficking, which includes sex crimes, violent crimes, immigration crimes, labor exploitation, fraud, money laundering and organized crime.
Among the attendees were Three Affiliated Tribes Chairman Tex Hall, Montana State Director of Indian Affairs Jason Smith, Roosevelt County Sheriff Freedom Crawford and Annie Daumiller of the Annie Casey Foundation.
“As Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, I am very aware of the economic and social challenges facing the tribes in the region. And it’s understandable that no tribe is prepared to deal with the rapid changes affecting the Bakken,” said Tester. “Tribal police departments lack the resources to investigate and detain human trafficking offenders, most of whom are non-Native. By no fault of their own, departments are often ill-equipped to root out the players in trafficking rings that can span reservation, state, and national boundaries.”
Tester added that even though the passage of the Violence Against Women Act had allowed tribes more authority to prosecute crimes committed on Indian reservations by non-Indians, “there is so much more to do.”
The beaver are paired up in traps before being transported to their new home. Photo/Niki Cleary
By Niki Cleary, Tulalip News
Beaver are known for their industrious landscaping. They regularly use their skills to rearrange the world around them, much like humans, to build safe places to live and grow the plants they feed upon. Unfortunately, for businesses and homeowners, the beaver’s best-known talent is also one of its least charming attributes.
The solution? Move nuisance beaver from urban areas to Forest Service land in the mountains where their construction skills will both build salmon habitat, and mitigate the effects of climate change. A win-win that Tulalip Wildlife Biologist Jason Schilling is excited to share.
“Beavers are marvels of engineering, we’re hoping to tap into their ability to store water,” he explained. “This was a big vision of Terry Williams [Tulalip Natural Resources], he saw it as a way to restore degraded landscape.”
“Benjamin Dittbrenner [of the University of Washingon], is studying how beaver change water quality,” Schilling continued. “ Particularly he’s looking at stream flow before and after beaver relocation and water temperature, those are two very important things for salmon.”
Dittbrenner is a former Snohomish County employee. While at the County he worked with landowners to ensure that property was protected from beaver activity.
“Beavers have a lot of really great ecological benefits,” he explained. “They take water and slow it down so that it can infiltrate into subsurface soils, increase groundwater and recharge aquifers. This creates backwater habitat for specialist species, and there have been studies to show that beavers and Coho are closely linked, Coho use beaver habitat as juveniles. We suspect that part of the reason Coho numbers are dropping is lack of beaver habitat.”
Dittbrenner continued, “The climate shifts that are predicted in the mountains mean that we’re going to have a lot less snow. That snow directly provides water to streams in spring and early summer. If there’s less water that means there is warmer water, and warmer water means less dissolved oxygen and less successful spawning. We’ve been looking at solutions to cope with less and warmer water.”
The project will work, said Dittbrenner.
“We’re modeling the project after other projects, east of the Cascades, where it’s legal to relocate beavers. Ranchers who once were against beavers are seeing that when the beavers come in, the groundwater levels increase and their pastures stay greener much longer. We’re hoping to see the same great benefits that they’re seeing.”
In a nutshell, the beaver’s dam building creates ponds which helps increase the water table. Beavers slow down water during fast flow times and increase water during the dry season. All of which adds up to more, and better quality water, as well as rearing habitat for salmon. Lastly, as climate change causes the snowpack to decrease, beaver ponds are an effective and natural way to store water for the dry season.
Since it’s such a great solution, why isn’t everyone doing it? Because in Western Washington it’s illegal to transport beaver alive from where they are trapped. It’s still perfectly legal to kill them. Tribes, however, are not subject to state law.
“It really has to do with our management of wildlife, as part of our broader treaty rights in off-reservation resource management,” explained Tulalip Attorney Tim Brewer. “We have the right to manage these resources and we’re working with the feds on federal land and therefore state law is pre-empted.”
Tulalip biologists have 24 beaver friendly sites picked out, but only eight of the sites will be populated initially. The unused sites will be used to as a comparison to demonstrate how effective the project has been.
“We may use them as release sites next year,” said Schilling, “but that will give us some good baseline data for beavers we released.”
Molly Alves, Assistant Wildlife Biologist at Tulalip, points out the recently nibbled branches, explaining that they will be placed on site with the beaver. The beaver are more likely to stay because they recognize their scent on the old branches.
Beavers await relocation at the Tulalip Hatchery
Assistant Wildlife Biologist Molly Alves helps take care of beaver while they await relocation. She feeds them, dropping bunches of vine maple and vegetation, into the chum raceways where they are living. The beaver are also offered commercial rat food, but don’t seem to care for it. They sleep in man-made lodges built out of cinder blocks.
“We have to rebuild their lodges every night,” she said. “We weren’t anticipating catching six, and they don’t fit very well in a single lodge. The lodges are built out of plywood and cinder blocks, we have to line the plywood with steel mesh or they will chew through it.”
Alves explained that beaver are highly social and prefer to sleep together. That is one of the reasons they’ll be relocated as a group. Other strategies to ensure the animals don’t leave include scent marking the locations.
“We take these,” she held up the vine maple from the previous day, it’s bark stripped and the wood notched with teeth marks, “we call them chew sticks, and we’ll put them at the release site. They’re more likely to stay there if their scent is already there.”
The family is made up of two adults, three sub-adults and one kit.
“We’ve been setting up camera traps as well, so we know there are two more at the site where we caught this family,” said Alves.
“There’s another kit and a sub-adult. We’ll go back and catch those two and release them [as a pair],” she continued. “We know the sub-adults stick around for a couple of years to take care of the kits, so we know the kit will be fine. They’ll be released as their own family and they’ll probably go to a different spot because by the time we get them, these ones will be established.”
While the cameras are useful, Alves said the biologists knew there were more beaver because the animals can’t stand a leaky dam.
“There were three dams where we caught these guys. We notched the dams, that means we pulled out sticks and mud so there was a trickle of water,” she described, “it drives them crazy. When we went back some of the dams were rebuilt.”
Beaver are nocturnal herbivores, although they don’t hibernate, their planning and construction ensure that they survive winters just fine.
“They eat leaves in the summer and bark year round,” Alves said. “They stay in their lodges all winter and they create caches of food under their lodges. Other animals like muskrats and mice will stay in their lodges too.”
Hatchery visitors can learn about the beaver through series of interpretive signs that describe the relocation project and it’s benefits.
This is the first story in a series exploring the study of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) and the intersection of chronic health and addiction issues among American Indians. The series focuses upon contributing factors of disproportionately high ACE numbers in American Indians to disproportionately high substance abuse and behavioral and physical health issues. The underpinning historic, social, legal, political, and economic realities of American Indian tribes and members are ever present.
The ACE scientific breakthrough unexpectedly originated with an obesity clinic led in 1985 by Dr. Vincent Felitti, chief of Kaiser Permanente’s Department of Preventive Medicine, San Diego. He was mystified that over a five year period, despite their desperate yearning to lose weight, more than half of his obese patients dropped out. Then, in conducting interviews with those patients, he was shocked to discover that the majority had experienced childhood sexual trauma. That led to 25 years of research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Kaiser Permanente’s San Diego program. Their research resulted in a study that revealed adverse childhood experiences are strongly linked to major chronic illness, social problems, and early death.
According to the CDC, “the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study is one of the largest investigations ever conducted to assess associations between childhood maltreatment and later-life health and well-being.” It includes more than 17,000 Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) members who upon “undergoing a comprehensive physical examination chose to provide detailed information about their childhood experience of abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction. To date, more than 50 scientific articles have been published and more than 100 conference and workshop presentations have been made.”
The ACEs study considered three types of abuse–sexual, verbal and physical; five types of family dysfunction (mentally ill or alcoholic parent, mother as victim of domestic violence, an incarcerated family member, and loss of a parent through divorce or abandonment); and added emotional and physical neglect for a total of 10 types of adverse childhood experiences or ACEs. These are the ten categories utilized in today’s screening.
The CDC’s study uses the ACE Score, which is a total count of the number of ACEs reported by respondents. The ACE Score is used to assess the total amount of stress during childhood and has demonstrated that as the number of ACE increase, the risk for the following health problems increases in a strong and graded fashion:
Alcoholism and alcohol abuse
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
Depression
Fetal Death
Health-related quality of life
Illicit drug use
Ischemic heart disease (IHD)
Liver disease
Risk for intimate partner violence
Multiple sexual partners
Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)
Smoking
Suicide attempts
Unintended pregnancies
Early initiation of smoking
Early initiation of sexual activity
Adolescent pregnancy
The CDC said, “It is critical to understand how some of the worst health and social problems in our nation can arise as a consequence of adverse childhood experiences. Realizing these connections is likely to improve efforts towards prevention and recovery.”
The ACEs study and others specifically focused upon the American Indian community provide information and support for those struggling to overcome ACEs by building resilience–competencies and supports that enable individuals, families, and communities to recover from adversity.
A 2009-2010 statewide study of the Prevalence of 6-8 ACEs among Washington adults ages 18-44 found ACEs to be common among Washington adults with 62 percent having at least one ACE category, 26 percent having 3 categories; and 5 percent having 6 categories. Of interest to Tulalip, the study found Snohomish County among the group scoring two lower than the median.
State research shows part of the key to overcoming ACEs is building both individual and community resiliency and some have suggested a move from technical problem solving to adaptive. Some of the discussions around improving coherence of systems will be explored in subsequent stories.
It is generally understood that ACE scores between 4 and 10 can explain why we have chronic disease or identify those at risk for developing chronic diseases. It’s been said that knowing our ACEs score is as important as knowing our cholesterol scores. Knowing can help us take steps to change or prevent behavior likely to result in disease and it can help us to prevent it in our children as well to ensure their healthy development. It can help communities to address often-taboo issues to begin healing from trauma as well as to build resilient communities.
An Indian Health Service (IHS) report, “Trends in Indian Health,” finds American Indians are 638% more likely to suffer from alcoholism compared to the rest of the U.S. population.It is no secret that alcohol and substance abuse is a prevalent tragic reality destroying loved ones and communities in Indian Country. Every one has been touched by its pain. Yet, despite herculean efforts to address it through a wide variety of treatment options, American Indian communities feel at a loss when traditional treatment too often fails.
According to the National Indian Health Board (NIHB), “behavioral health” is an “integrated, interdisciplinary system of care related to mental health and substance use disorders that approaches individuals, families, and communities as a whole and addresses the interactions between psychological, biological, socio-cultural, and environmental factors.”
In recent years, there has been a general shift toward more holistic treatment of health issues; but, particularly in Indian Country with a prevalence of multigenerational trauma issues, practitioners find it more effective. American Indians struggling with addiction and/or mental health issues generally find the infusion of traditional cultural and spiritual practice makes treatment more accessible for them. Perhaps a basis for this is found in the relatively new science of epigenetics. Could it be that traditional treatment methods are especially insufficient for American Indians?
In the report, “A Framework to Examine the Role of Epigenetics in Health Disparities among Native Americans,” the authors affirm, “Native Americans disproportionately experience ACEs and health disparities, significantly impacting long-term physical and psychological health.” In addition to these experiences, the persistence of stress associated with discrimination and historical trauma converges to add immeasurably to these challenges.” [Teresa N. Brockie, Morgan Heinzelmann, and Jessica Gill, “A Framework to Examine the Role of Epigenetics in Health Disparities among Native Americans,” Nursing Research and Practice, vol. 2013, Article ID 410395, 9 pages, 2013. doi:10.1155/2013/410395]
Harvard researchers, neurobiologist Martin Teicher and pediatrician Jack Shonkoff, and neuroscientist Bruce McEwen at Rockefeller University, report, “Childhood trauma causes adult onset of chronic disease.” They determined that “the toxic stress of chronic and severe trauma damages a child’s developing brain. It essentially stunts the growth of some parts of the brain, and fries the circuits with overdoses of stress hormones in others.”
Washington has been a leader in research and education on ACEs on state government and foundation levels. Laura Porter, formerly served as director of ACE Partnerships for the Washington Department of Social and Health Services, but now directs the ACEs Learning Institute for the Foundation for Healthy Generations (FHG), founded in 1974. FHG, formerly Comprehensive Health Education Foundation, has a 40-year history of providing social and emotional learning tools in schools to prevent youth substance abuse, support self-esteem, anti-bullying and other kinds of related social-emotional tools for teachers. This past year, the board decided to include ACEs in its strategic plan and hired Porter to direct the program.
Porter oversees analysis of ACEs & resilience data and works with local and state leaders to “imbed developmental neuroscience and resilience findings into policy, practice, and community norms.” It would be exciting to see some coordination with tribes whose members are disproportionately affected.
This past year, Porter conducted a webinar on the “Science of ACEs and the Potential Role of Public Health in Addressing Them.” She found that only about one-third of her audience had an ACE-informed public health initiative. She hopes to help local jurisdictions to learn how to apply the science in their work.
In her presentation, Porter explained, “Health equity occurs when the distribution of determinants of health are fairly spread across the population,” and added, “When the determinants of health are unevenly spread in ways that we could have prevented, then we have health inequity.” She argues that “ACEs are one of the most powerful drivers of health inequity of our times and maybe of all times. And for that reason, taking a public health approach is critical to solving this problem and bringing about the conditions for enduring health equity for our nation and throughout the world.”
Porter noted that the neuroscientists “working on impacts of toxic stress on development tell us that people who grew up in very dangerous periods of time have increased levels of stress hormones and neurotransmitters in their blood stream at sensitive developmental times.” Accordingly, that effects both their brain development and the expression of their genetics. That is affirmed in a new field called epigenetics. [Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression caused by certain base pairs in DNA, or RNA, being “turned off” or “turned on” again, through chemical reactions].
According to Porter, people who grow up in adversity and a lot of danger in sensitive developmental years can generate typical kinds of characteristics. She said, “They can be more hyper-vigilant, more hyper-responsive, quick to anger, and slow to soothe. They can be very mission-focused and have a hard time taking advantage of the array of opportunities that might pop up around them. They can have a very small amount of stress and end up feeling like a major crisis in their lives. So, they’re actually responding differently to the moment by moment reality based on the adaptation they had during childhood.”
Conversely, she noted that people who grow up in very safe environments also develop typical characteristics. They might be more relationship-oriented, more likely to talk things through even when action may be more appropriate.
The important teaching from neuroscience is that both tracks are adaptations. “In both cases, people are adapting to danger or they’re adapting to a safe childhood, either way they’re helping a species to survive,” said Porter. She added, “Society has developed great accommodations for helping people who grew up in very safe environments navigate more dangerous times. We have stranger danger, we have martial arts, we have lots of public education campaigns, etc.”
Importantly, and most applicable to Indian Country, Porter goes on to emphasize that we have not yet “created the kinds of programming that can help to accommodate people who grew up in very dangerous times so they can navigate a more peaceful adulthood well. And that’s really one of the big challenges of our times, to develop those accommodations at every level of public health.”
Because American Indians are disproportionately affected by violence and the ten factors identified in ACEs, it makes sense that the community is disproportionately impacted by the related disorders.
Porter stressed the importance of looking at the determinants of health and how science is applied as well as paying attention to ACEs in terms of the life course. She emphasized the “Role of Time and the “life course approach that recognizes the role of time in shaping health outcomes.” Different kinds of supports are more meaningful in different times of life.
Sherry Guzman, Mental Health Manager, Tulalip Family Services Photo/Julie Corley
Asked if Tulalip Tribes had conducted any research on ACEs, Sherry Guzman, Mental Health Manager in the Family Services Department, said Tulalip Tribes was one of a handful of tribes that agreed to participate in a statewide network a few years ago. She said, “Most tribes were very leery at first, but I went forward with it because I saw the value of it. It enabled me to see the difference in average of WA State versus Tulalip Tribes. I like the ACEs model because it gives a base to compare something to.”
Guzman noted that Tulalip conducted a sampling test, but the findings are clinical information, so she was unable to discuss it. However, she noted that she “was really amazed at the results,” which is not unlike responses in non-Indian communities as well.
The Behavioral Health Department is continuing its work and has scheduled an all-staff information and training session at the administration building on September 17 at 9:00 am. Asked if her department has planned any community educational sessions, Guzman said it would come later after the staff becomes better educated.
Guzman, a Tulalip tribal member, earned an MSW, and she has worked for the Tulalip Tribes for nearly twenty years, beginning on October 20, 1995. She has 8 children, 35 grandchildren, and 16 great-grandchildren. “I am very blessed,” said Guzman. Guzman added that the Tulalip Tribes are “state licensed for our chemical dependency, gambling, and mental health programs.” She noted that the department has a brochure and website that are nearly ready to be published.
As mentioned, several studies have documented the validity of ACEs testing and its value to healing in American Indian communities. Of course, privacy and anonymity must be assured.
Subsequent stories will also consider federal government obligation to American Indian health; personal interviews, treatment experts; and finally, the series will explore the potential of ACEs science and education in prevention and for building individual and community resiliency for American Indian people and tribes.
Kyle Taylor Lucas is a freelance journalist and speaker. She is a member of The Tulalip Tribes and can be reached at KyleTaylorLucas@msn.com / Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kyletaylorlucas / 360.259.0535 cell
SEATTLE — On Tuesday the Seattle City Council decided to postpone its vote to rename Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day until October 13 so that the mayor and other elected officials can hold a signing ceremony.
Several dozen American Indian supporters gathered at Seattle City Hall’s steps in support of the name change with drumming and speeches.
The effort to do away with Columbus Day was led by Matt Remie, Ethel Branch and others in Seattle’s Native community. This group influenced the Seattle Human Rights Commission to push through a resolution on July 24, 2014.
“This is simply nothing more than respect and honor for the First People of this land. As this moves forward, I have no doubt whatsoever that the Council and Mayor will be amazed by the strength and power that comes from the original People of this land. Let’s hope this is the beginning of a new chapter and a new partnership,” commented Chris Stearns (Navajo), attorney and past Chairman of the Seattle Human Rights Commission to Native News Online late Tuesday.
The resolution that made its way to the City Council was led by Council Members Bruce Harrell and Kshama Sawant. Mayor Ed Murray is in full support of the renaming.
Seattle Native community
Columbus Day dates back to 1892 when President Harrison made a proclamation observing a day set aside to celebrate Christopher Columbus. It has been a federal holiday since 1937.
The International Indian Treaty Council turned 40 this year and its annual conference will celebrate the past, share experiences and cultures of the present, and develop plans and strategies to meet the ongoing struggles of Indigenous Peoples worldwide.
When the First International Treaty Council of the Western Hemisphere held its first conference on the land of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe on June 8-16, 1974, around 5,000 representatives from 97 indigenous nations from across North and South America attended. The conference established the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), a non-profit organization that works for Indigenous Peoples’ human rights, sovereignty, self-determination, and the recognition and protection of treaties, traditional cultures and sacred lands. The organization 40th Annual International Indian Treaty Council Conference (IITC) – a huge and historic event – will take place on the family land of Phillip Deere, a Muscogee (Creek) Nation citizen and one of IITC’s original co-founders, in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, September 10-12. The theme of the conference is “Commemorating 40 years Defending the Rights and Recognition of Indigenous Peoples.”
A Conversation with Phillip Deere, Muskogee-Creek Elder
The first words of the Declaration of Continuing Independence set its tone. “The United States of America has continually violated the independent Native Peoples of this continent by Executive action, Legislative fiat and Judicial decision. By its actions, the U.S. has denied all Native people their International treaty rights, treaty lands and basic human rights of freedom and sovereignty. This same U.S. Government, which fought to throw off the yoke of oppression and gain its own independence, has now reversed its role and become the oppressor of sovereign Native people.”
Bill Means, Oglala Lakota, and an IITC board member, will be one of the many notable speakers at the conference. “It’s a milestone in the history not only of treaty rights in this country but also of the coming together and advocating for Indigenous Peoples’ human rights throughout the world,” Means told ICTMN. “This is a very important conference to mark and record some of that history since 1974.”
Means, along with his brother the late Russell Means, was a leader and participant in the 1973 occupation and resistance action at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation – events that led directly to the first Treaty Council conference. He will talk about the early days of the American Indian Movement (AIM), but, he said, “We didn’t do this by ourselves. We [AIM] did the organizing, but we had the wisdom and the support of the chiefs and headmen as well as the strong women of the Lakota people at the [first] treaty conference. It was a culmination of many different forces coming together at Wounded Knee in 1973.”
The inspiring message from the chiefs and headmen continues to this day, Means said. “They talked about treaty rights as the foundation of our people as a nation – not necessarily as a tribe. Long before reservation days we were a nation of the Lakota People and that’s how we signed the treaties so it’s important for the recognition of our people as nations in the international community,” Means said. “I think that with the advent of reservations in the United States people forget that we come from very powerful Indian nations and under international law we meet all the criteria for nationhood. So part of our work has always been nation-building and the unity of our peoples throughout the world.”
Chief Wilton Littlechild, a citizen of Ermineskin Cree Nation, an attorney and former Member of Parliament in Canada, agreed that treaties are unparalleled in importance. “It was treaties that first gave Indigenous Peoples their voice at the U.N. and in the international arena,” he told ICTMN. “The 1974 Declaration of Continuing Independence from IITC’s first conference laid the groundwork for what would become the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and its international recognition of treaties.”
Littlechild is International Chief for Treaties 6, 7 and 8 in Canada – three of a series of 11 treaties signed between the aboriginal peoples in Canada and the reigning British monarchs from 1871 to 1921. He is currently a member of the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and also served for six years as the Indigenous expert from North America on the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Littlechild will speak at the conference about the 40 years of work for the international recognition of treaty rights on a panel with Means, IITC Board President Francisco Cali, Maya Kaqchikel, and IITC Executive Director Andrea Carmen, Yaqui.
Carmen became involved in the IITC in the mid 1970s. She became a full time IITC staff member in 1983 and has been its executive director since 1992. She reflected on IITC’s work over the past four decades and her involvement with the organization in anticipation of the upcoming conference.
“Working for the IITC for most of my adult life, I have been able to be part of many historic changes for the recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ rights internationally, with real impacts ‘on the ground’ – where it counts,” Carmen told ICTMN.
The 30 years of work on the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples from 1977 when the first delegation of Indigenous Peoples – many of whom had attended the first Treaty Council conference three years earlier – went to the U.N. in Geneva to demand their treaty and other rights until 2007 when the Declaration was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, transformed global discussions and understandings about Indigenous Peoples, Carmen said.
“The world community had to realize that we still exist, we have inherent and treaty rights that can’t be ignored and that we also have essential contributions to make in global dialogues on human rights, racial justice, bio-diversity, sustainable development, climate change, food sovereignty and many other issues,” she said. “Many challenges still remain, and our work is far from over. But if we stand together, the international Indigenous movement will continue to prevail in defending Indigenous Peoples’ rights and ways of life. IITC will continue to be an active part of that movement.”
The conference will be held at the Phillip Deere Roundhouse on Muscogee (Creek) Nation land. Deere was a traditional healer, spiritual leader, civil and human rights activist, oral historian and storyteller. He served as a spiritual guide for the American Indian Movement (AIM), spokesman for IITC and participated in the United Nations International Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Deere passed into the spirit world in 1985. The re-building of the Roundhouse has been a dream of Deere’s family. The Muscogee Nation provided financial support for the project and the 40th Annual International Treaty Council Conference will be the first event to be held in the new space.
The two-and-a-half day conference is packed full of presentations, discussions and cultural events beginning with a sacred fire lighting ceremony at 6 a.m. on September 10. An agenda and more information are available on IITC’s website.
Around 6 am this morning, Abby Brockway—an activist, mother, and small-business owner—and a few others set up a tripod on northbound train tracks in Everett and have been blocking a BNSF train carrying Tesoro oil ever since.
“The view up here is beautiful,” she said by phone a few minutes ago. “I saw an eagle.” Police officers arrived on the scene about an hour or so after the tripod went up and have been trying to coax her down (she says they’re claiming that if she descends voluntarily, they’ll go easy on the charges and fines*). Firefighters with long ladders have approached to try and yank her down, but Brockway has a “blackbear” lockdown device that she uses to chain herself to the tripod in between phone calls.
“Lots of big truckers are honking in support, because we’re also here in support of labor unions,” Brockway said after I asked her about a caterwauling noise in the background. “BNSF wants to increase profits by decreasing train conductors and reducing inspections—its business is increasing, so I don’t know why they’d want to cut costs, but they do.” (BNSF has been pushing to reduce train crews down to a single person, which is not only bad for labor, but a potential safety problem—especially when we’re talking about fossil fuels moving through populous areas.)
Brockway and the other activists, many of them affiliated with Rising Tide (you might remember that name from the preemptive visits they were paid by FBI agents last summer) say they’re blockading the oil train for three major reasons:
First, they want to highlight the rapid growth of shipping oil by train—growth that also has been putting farmers in a pinch by delaying shipments of apples, grain, and even coal.
Rising Tide
Second, they want to draw attention to how much money Tesoro devotes to campaign contributions (in our state, Democrat Suzan DelBene and Republicans Doc Hastings, Rick Larsen, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers have fed at that trough) and question whether that money has led to dithering about better regulation of fossil-fuel train shipments. “Governor Inslee is just one of those Democrats who knows what to do, but loves to just keep studying,” Brockway said from her perch. “He needs to take a bolder move for our security.”
Third, they want to highlight BNSF’s attempts to cut down on labor costs by reducing the number of workers on any given train.
Delaney Piper, a spokesperson for Rising Tide, said most of the law-enforcement response has been from the Everett police, but that at least one FBI agent has shown up, as well as an officer covered in police gear but who is wearing no identification and refuses to answer questions.
Piper added that police kicked all of the supporting demonstrators—who, she said, have ranged between 20 and 40 over the course of the day—out of the rail yard, claiming that they had all already been arrested and might be arraigned because the police had taken photos of them trespassing. (That’s a new one—I’ve never heard of arrest-via-photograph before.)
Brockway said she has provisions and plans to stay on top of the tripod for “as long as possible.”
“I’m petitioning our government,” she said. “I’ve tried standing in the streets, writing politicians on climate policy, going to hearings, I’ve never missed an election, I go to lots of marches and rallies, I’ve helped form alliances with tribal people in Washington State and also with railroad labor—they want jobs and we’re not against jobs. But I want jobs that are sustainable and that make sense for this region instead of this carbon bubble, which is the most destructive thing. And when it’s gone, those towns will be ghost towns.”
A recent Tweet from Rising Tide:
* A quick reminder to everyone: Police saying they’ll “go easy” on you in a courtroom is not a binding agreement. Moreover, police don’t actually control what happens in a courtroom—lawyers and judges do. If you’d like to read an extended account of FBI agents and Seattle police officers making promises they can’t keep about court proceedings during an interrogation, see this story. But always, always remember that any given law-enforcement official doesn’t actually have control over what a judge or prosecutor will think or do.
