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Vancouver City Council Votes 5-2 To Oppose Northwest’s Largest Oil Terminal

Hundreds turned out for a Vancouver City Council hearing on a resolution opposing the Tesoro-Savage oil terminal, proposed for the Port of Vancouver. | credit: Cassandra Profita

By Cassandra Profita, OPB

Monday night had turned to Tuesday morning by the time the Vancouver City Council voted to pass a non-binding resolution opposing what would be the Northwest’s largest oil-by-rail shipping facility.

The vote was 5-2 with Mayor Tim Leavitt and Councilor Bill Turlay dissenting. It followed six hours of testimony from residents, most of them opposed to the Port of Vancouver’s planned facility that would transfer North Dakota crude oil from trains to ships bound for West Coast refineries.

It was after 1 am when City Councilor Bart Hansen made a motion to pass the resolution, which expresses deep concern about rail safety, oil spills and explosions and urges Washington Gov. Jay Inslee not to approve the Tesoro Savage oil terminal.

The council debated whether or not to take the vote in the wee hours of the morning. Turlay said he wasn’t ready to take action. Leavitt said he wanted to make some changes to resolution before voting.

“I’ve been told nothing good happens after midnight,” Leavitt joked in pushing to delay the vote. “I know there are ways to improve the resolution. I hope we can get to a unanimous vote. Certainly, I’m not supportive of it as it is now.”

But other councilors pushed ahead. Councilor Anne McEnerny-Ogle said two-thirds of the testimony and comments she’s heard are from people opposed to the project.

“When I look at all the different e-mails that have come back, the voice says that for this community, this doesn’t work for us.”

Big Crowd Dwindles

By the time the board voted a crowd that had started out in the hundreds had dwindled to a few dozen.

More than 170 people signed up to testify at the hearing. At 11 p.m., more than four hours after the hearing began, the council voted to extend the meeting even later to take additional testimony. By 1 am, the council had heard from 101 people.

Even before the resolution was formally taken up, a majority of the city council had voiced opposition to the Tesoro-Savage oil terminal.

The hearing addressed two resolutions on the terminal, but most residents came to talk about the one that opposes the project as a whole. That resolution asks the Port of Vancouver to cancel its lease with Tesoro-Savage and urges state agencies and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee not to approve the project. It also supports new laws and regulations to improve crude oil transportation safety.

The council unanimously approved a resolution that calls for the city to play a bigger role in the state’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council review process.The council is in the midst of completing an environmental review of the project and is tasked with making a recommendation to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who has the final say. That resolution supports the city’s intervening in that process by presenting evidence to the state council, making arguments and appealing a decision to approve the oil terminal.

Most who testified Monday night voiced support for both resolutions and opposition to the oil terminal, although there were many who spoke on behalf of project backers Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies.

Emotional Testimony

The resolutions drew some emotional testimony from both sides.

Don Orange, owner of Hoesly Eco-Automotive of Vancouver, told the council that he’s angry about the prospect of “thousands of pounds of filth” coming into his neighborhood and hurting his business.

“You can call this a terminal. To me, it’s a toilet,” he said. “It’s coming in here on a freight train and we’re flushing it off into ships. This small businessman thinks it stinks.”

On the other side, Port Commissioner Jerry Oliver expressed sadness that the council would consider opposing the project he thinks will benefit the country as a whole by distributing more domestically produced oil to U.S. refineries.

“It makes me sad, not so much that you’re turning your back on the Port of Vancouver, but that you have so little faith in our ability as a community to make this happen,” Oliver said.

Safety And Business Concerns Raised

The Tesoro Savage oil terminal would transport up to 380,000 barrels of crude oil a day. The oil would come from North Dakota’s Bakken fields by trains, be transferred to vessels on the Columbia River and then shipped to West Coast refineries. It’s the largest oil terminal project among the several proposed in the Northwest.

While project supporters noted that the city council doesn’t have the authority to stop the project, opponents of the project said it’s important that the city council let the governor know where it stands.

“It’s difficult to imagine the governor supporting this project if the city of Vancouver opposes it,” said Clark County resident Don Steinke after presenting the council with a box of 2,000 signatures in support of the resolutions.

Vancouver resident Carol Rose says she’s worried about safety in her community if the proposed project is built.

“It’s a tremendous amount of oil, and it’s a danger,” she says. “I’ve lived here for 40 years. I don’t want to have to move because of this.”

Many project opponents voiced concern about the risk of oil train derailments and explosions like the one that killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, last year.

Project supporters defended the safety record of Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies. Earlier this year, Tesoro committed to using newer rail cars that meet higher safety standards.

Many who testified in support of the project were employees of Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies. They told the council that they appreciate the jobs and economic development the oil terminal would bring to the area and vouched for the companies’ track records in treating their employees well.

Jared Larrabee, general manager for Tesoro, said the resolution opposing the project is premature because the Washington Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council hasn’t completed its environmental review.

“The resolution is making a predetermination without having all of the facts, in our view,” he said. “The resolution contains several inaccuracies and assertions that haven’t been validated by the forthcoming Environmental Impact Statement.”

He and other Tesoro representatives supported the resolution that would support the city intervening in the state’s environmental review process. But they urged the council to delay its vote opposing the project or to reconsider it altogether.

Todd Coleman, director of Port of Vancouver, criticized the city’s resolution and said it would damage the port’s ability to do business.

“You can’t have it both ways,” he told the board. “You can’t have a thriving port and all the things that come with that success and then attempt to choose between cargo. A vote for this resolution is a vote against this community’s ability to attract private sector business.”

Renewable Energy Takes Root In Northwest Indian Country

The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Eastern Oregon is home to the Northwest’s first wind turbine on tribal lands. The turbine will generate 25 percent of the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute's power.Courtney Flatt — The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Eastern Oregon is home to the Northwest’s first wind turbine on tribal lands. The turbine will generate 25 percent of the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute’s power.
Courtney Flatt

By Courtney Flatt, Northwest Public Radio

PENDLETON, Ore. — You can spot one of the Eastern Oregon’s newest renewable energy projects from Interstate 84. It doesn’t look like other wind projects east of the Cascades.

A single wind turbine rises over the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

The turbine blades gain momentum as the wind picks up. The tribes’ executive director, Dave Tovey, said this cultural institute turned out to be the perfect spot for the first turbine erected in Northwest Indian Country. The place where the tribes broke ground for the cultural institute is notoriously windy.

“A lot of our elders would just shake their heads as say, ‘You guys know, the wind always blows up there.’ We always thought, like Indian tribes, and like we do with so many other things here, we turn a seeming disadvantage into an advantage, or even an opportunity,” Tovey said.

Many Northwest tribes have been exploring ways to get more of their electricity from renewable sources that don’t pollute, like coal-fired power plants do, or harm fish — a concern when it comes to hydroelectric dams.

David Mullon is the chief counsel for the National Congress of American Indians, based in Washington, D.C. He said renewable energy is one way tribes can protect natural resources.

“A major portion of the tribal population is located on the reservation homelands. Protecting and conserving the resources on those very small places is an important consideration,” Mullon said.

There are plenty of examples in Northwest Indian Country: Idaho’s Nez Perce Tribe and Washington’s Yakama Nation are looking into generating electricity by burning woody debris in biomass plants. The Colville Tribes in Eastern Washington get energy from biomass and solar panels, too.

In Oregon, the turbine at the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute will generate about 25 percent of the building’s electricity.

Jess Nowland helps manage the building, which serves as a gathering place and museum for the Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla tribes.

Before putting up the wind turbine, the tribes were working on conservation at the center. Nowland said they’ve reduced its energy consumption by about 70 percent, saving more than $700,000.

“The reality is that there are buildings everywhere that you can achieve this kind of savings on,” Nowland said.

This wind turbine is the beginning of renewable energy on the Umatilla reservation. Next up: the tribes plans to install solar panels at the cultural institute.

Student built rain gardens are key to salmon recovery

Hanna Bridgham, Cassidy Forler and Tessa Rurup, students at Eatonville High School, inventory plants in a new raingarden built in a courtyard at their school.

Source: Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

Eatonville will keep its title as the “rain garden capital” because of some work being done by the Nisqually Indian Tribe and the Nisqually River Council. Working with local high school students, the tribe and the council are building six rain gardens in Eatonville this year, continuing several years of stormwater mitigation work in the community.

“If we don’t do something, growth in Eatonville will have a massive detrimental impact on salmon and water quality,” said David Troutt, natural resources director for the Nisqually Indian Tribe. “But, if we can handle the growth the right way, we can have salmon and a healthy community. Rain gardens are an important tool in making that happen.”

Dozens of rain gardens have already been built throughout Eatonville, giving the city the distinction of the highest density of rain gardens of any community in the country.

Rain gardens landscape amenities that are designed to capture and absorb polluted runoff from impervious surfaces, like roofs or parking lots. They reduce runoff by allowing stormwater to soak into the ground instead of flowing into storm drains causing pollution, flooding, and diminished groundwater.

As a part of the project, the council’s Nisqually River Education Project is engaging local high school students in building and caring for the city’s growing collection of rain gardens. The education project is working with four students from Eatonville High School to design each new rain garden. Each student also participated in the tribe’s Stream Stewards training course this summer.

Poor stormwater management leads to high flows in the winter and low flows in the summer. The Mashel River, which runs through Eatonville, already is too low and too warm for fish.

Low flows in the Mashel typically occur just as adult chinook salmon are making their way back to spawn. “Adult salmon need cool, deep pools to rest as they swim upriver,” Troutt said.

“This kind of effort is what we’d like to see across the watershed and across the region,” Troutt said. “When we end up saving salmon and Puget Sound, it will be because we’ve found ways to handle the population growth that is going to come.”

Fresh Columbia River Chinook Salmon! Tribes Open Sale Memorial Day Weekend

Courtesy Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish CommissionFresh-caught fish for sale on the Columbia River — Courtesy Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission
Fresh-caught fish for sale on the Columbia River

Indian Country Today

For Memorial Day weekend, leaders from the Umatilla, Yakama, Warm Springs and Nez Perce tribes opened a two-night commercial gillnet fishery that will bring ample amounts of fresh spring chinook to the salmon-loving public. The latest fishery comes on the heels of an above average spring chinook run which should reach 224,000 returning adults. This spring’s commercial fishery will be the largest in the last four years.

“The tribes are just one the many communities benefiting from this year’s spring chinook run,” said Paul Lumley, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission’s executive director. “For the first time in four years, we are thrilled to share the coveted spring chinook salmon with our loyal customers that appreciate fresh and locally-caught fish.”

A tribal fisher checks his nets along the Columbia River. (Courtesy Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission)

Indian fishers may be found selling fish at a number of locations along the river including Marine Park at Cascade Locks, Lone Pine at The Dalles, and the boat launch near Roosevelt, Washington as well as other locations. Commercial sales will not occur on Corps of Engineers property at Bonneville Dam. Information on where the day’s catch is being sold is available by calling Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission’s salmon marketing program at (888) 289-1855 or visiting the salmon marketing website http://www.critfc.org/harvest. Price is determined at the point of sale and sales are cash only.

The tribal fishery is protected by treaties made with the federal government in 1855, where the right to fish at all usual and accustomed fishing places in the Columbia River basin was reserved. The tribal treaty right extends beyond ceremonial and subsistence fisheries to commercial sales. The Columbia River fisheries are adjusted throughout the season in accordance with management agreements and observed returns.

Courts challenge Native American land rights: Recent cases have undermined tribal sovereignty and economic development, Native Americans say.

US native tribe bids to reclaim territory

By Jake Hess

Aljazeera

Last updated: 28 May 2014 12:15

Narragansett Indian Reservation, United States – On an unmarked country road in New England, a faded sign welcomes visitors to the Narragansett Indian Wetuomuck Community Village. But what lies ahead is more akin to a graveyard. Instead of the community promised by the sign, 12 empty homes sit in a field swallowed up by weeds. The only hint of life is the dull hum of a distant highway.

It was on this patch of land that, in 2009, the US Supreme Court crippled the socio-economic aspirations of the Narragansett Indian tribe – and others across the country. The legal battles started when Rhode Island state authorities objected to the Narragansett tribe’s plan to build a low-income housing complex on 31 acres of land adjacent to its modest reservation.

In response, the tribe moved to place the land into federal trust, which would have freed it from most local regulations and taxes. Rhode Island tied up the application with lawsuits, saying the Narragansetts would eventually build a casino on the land – a claim the tribe denies.

“If you cut off resources to a group, that’s how you conquer them,” Narragansett tribal councilman Cassius Spears Jr told Al Jazeera. “That’s been the state of Rhode Island’s policy for hundreds of years: They want to dissolve the tribe.”

The Narragansetts held off the state until the case reached the Supreme Court. In its 2009 Carcieri v. Salazar ruling, the court decided that the government could only put land into trust for tribes that were “under federal jurisdiction” in 1934 – the year the procedure was established. Since the Narragansett tribe was federally recognised only in 1983, the government’s decision to accept their land trust application was ruled invalid.

The Carcieri ruling denied the Narragansetts and potentially scores of other tribes’ access to one of their most effective tools for development. Five years later, the results are being felt across Indian country.

Millions spent on legal fees

Matthew Thomas packs a wooden pipe, takes a puff, and raises the smoky offering up to the sky. The Narragansett chief’s feathered headdress sways as he repeats the blessing. Beside him, dancers decked in traditional regalia wait for the pow-wow drumming to start.

This is how many outsiders picture an Indian chief’s duties. But during his 16-year tenure as leader of the Narragansetts, Thomas has spent far more time battling for his tribe in courtrooms. By now, he said, the tribe has spent millions of dollars on legal fees.

“If we could utilise the money that we had to take to fight the state and everyone else, we probably could’ve done very well with other forms of economic development,” he told Al Jazeera. “The states and the towns have deeper pockets than us, so it’s easy for them.”

The Narragansetts are not the only ones struggling with litigation. The Carcieri decision has been followedby more than 15 federal lawsuits challenging Indian land rights.

“The court’s ruling has been at the bottom of much delay in the trust land acquisition process,” Robert Anderson, an Indian law expert at the University of Washington, told Al Jazeera. “Uncertainty and delay is the enemy of economic development.”

No one knows how many tribes could be impacted by the Carcieri decision, as there is no agreement on what it means for a tribe to be “under federal jurisdiction”. Some courts have taken it to be synonymous with being formally recognised as a sovereign tribe by the federal government. If that view persists, dozens of tribes could be excluded from the land trust system. Earlier this year, a federal court effectively preventedthe Big Lagoon Rancheria tribe from building a casino on trust land because the tribe was not federally recognised in 1934.

“Under the constitution, the courts should defer to Congress on its views of Indian affairs and its relationships with Indian tribes,” John Dossett, an attorney with the National Congress of American Indians, told Al Jazeera. “Part of the concern is that the Supreme Court’s becoming a little bit unmoored from that and is kind of making up its own ideas about what it thinks federal Indian policy ought to be.”

‘Tremendous victory’ for Rhode Island

Native Americans once roamed the area that is now called Rhode Island. Today, the Narragansett reservation is limited to a few thousand acres, most of it swampland nestled in thick forest. And under a 1978 agreement with the Rhode Island government, what little land the Narragansetts do have is subject to state jurisdiction.

States covet the potential tax revenues generated on Native American land. When the Carcieri ruling was issued, then-Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch gushed. “[T]his decision is a tremendous victory for the State of Rhode Island … and for the importance of states’ rights across the United States of America,” he said in a statement issued at the time.

Such statements evoke the domineering paternalism that has characterised state-tribe relations. Without the regulatory and tax exemptions the land trust system confers, Native Americans cannot take control of their development, said Spears.

“The main intent is to be able to put land under our sovereignty as a nation so we could be self-contained for the benefit of our people,” he said. “Any kind of economic venture that we’ve put forward has beenchallenged by the state and put in court.”

Native American self-rule makes economic sense. Research by Harvard University and the University of Arizona concluded that tribal sovereignty is “the only policy that has worked to make significant progress in reversing otherwise distressed social, cultural, and economic conditions in Native communities.”

But for the Narragansetts, this is about more than economics. In their view, land means cultural survival.

“Without the ability to put land into trust, we cannot gain land and put it under our jurisdiction that will allow us to have access to traditional life ways,” Spears said. “Our clams and quahogs, going out and getting blue shell crabs, gathering bulrush to make mats for our traditional homes – we now have to fight for public access to try to find those areas. If we don’t have land, our culture is at the point where it cannot be practiced without permission from outside societies.”

‘Out of Control’

Relief from the legal tussles may be coming. The Supreme Court did not offer detailed guidance on how authorities should determine which tribes were “under federal jurisdiction” in 1934 and are therefore eligible to use the land trust system. In response, a Department of the Interior solicitor recently issued an opinion outlining a new research procedure for deciding which tribes qualify and which ones do not.

Under the new system, tribes which had continuous relations with the government, or participated in government-administered programmes as of 1934, will likely be able to use the land trust system even if they were not formally recognised as a sovereign tribe at the time.

Most if not all 566 federally-recognised tribes should be able to satisfy the new criteria, Anderson said. He added that “the best solution” would be anew law unequivocally allowing them all to use the trust system, regardless of what their status was in 1934.

“The solicitor’s opinion simply makes the best of a bad situation,” Anderson said. “Courts could disregard it, and every tribe arguably not ‘under federal jurisdiction’ in 1934 would have to obtain an administrative ruling on their status that could then be litigated in court by any who disagree.”

For now, the fate of the land that sparked the Carcieri case is uncertain. Thomas “likes” the solicitor’s opinion but expects further litigation if a new law is not passed soon.

“I think tribes are going to have to unite,” he said. “Due to the makeup of the Supreme Court and the way they’ve treated the native people of America for years, it’s just getting out of control.”

Supreme Court Says Mich. Can’t Block Indian Casino

WASHINGTON May 27, 2014 (AP)

From ABC News

By SAM HANANEL Associated Press

A divided Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Michigan can’t block the opening of an off-reservation American Indian casino because the state’s legal challenge is barred by tribal sovereign immunity.

In a 5-4 decision, the high court said the state could not shutter the Bay Mills Indian Community’s casino about 90 miles south of its Upper Peninsula reservation.

The ruling was a win for Indian tribes, which have increasingly looked to casinos as a source of revenue and have relied on immunity to shield them from government interference. But it’s a disappointment for Michigan and more than a dozen others states that say the decision will interfere with their ability to crack down on unauthorized tribal casinos.

Michigan argued that the Bay Mills tribe opened the casino in 2010 without permission from the U.S. government and in violation of a state compact. The tribe had purchased land for the casino with earnings from a settlement with the federal government over allegations that it had not been adequately compensated for land ceded in 1800s treaties.

Writing for the majority, Justice Elena Kagan said that the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act only allows a state to bring lawsuits challenging casinos operating on Indian lands. But the Bay Mills casino was opened outside the tribe’s reservation, Kagan said, placing it outside the law’s coverage.

Since the casino does not fall under federal gaming laws, Kagan said it is subject to the ordinary tribal immunity that extends to off-reservation commercial activities. Kagan said it doesn’t matter that the casino was authorized, licensed and operated from the tribe’s reservation.

Kagan noted that Michigan officials have other options for dealing with the casino, such as bringing a lawsuit against individual tribal officials or even prosecuting tribal members under criminal laws. She was joined in her opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.

The casino has been closed since 2011, when a federal judge sided with Michigan and issued an injunction barring it from operating. The 6th Circuit U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw the injunction out after ruling that the court lacked jurisdiction over some claims and that the tribe also has sovereign immunity.

In a statement, the Bay Mills tribe said the decision “affords proper deference to Congress’ judgment and it will ensure that tribes like Bay Mills can continue to fund tribal education and perform other sovereign functions.”

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said he would follow the court’s advice and target individual tribal members for civil and criminal penalties.

Sixteen other states had submitted a brief in the case urging the court to side with Michigan. They argued that criminal prosecutions are less effective and more burdensome on the state in policing unauthorized casinos.

In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said he disagreed with the court’s 1998 case extending tribal sovereign immunity to bar lawsuits arising from an Indian tribe’s commercial activities outside its territory. In the 16 years since that decision, “tribal commerce has proliferated and the inequities engendered by unwarranted tribal immunity have multiplied,” Thomas wrote.

Thomas was joined in dissent by Justices Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Samuel Alito.

Scalia also wrote a separate dissent to say that he had agreed with the court’s 1998 decision, but is now convinced that is was wrongly decided. Scalia said he would overrule that case “rather than insist that Congress clean up a mess that I helped make.”

The case is Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Community, 12-515.

———

Associated Press writer John Flesher in Traverse City, Michigan, contributed to this report.

Hash it out: A debate of popular facts and myths of marijuana use

By Andrew Gobin, Tulalip News

Marijuana, the scourge of our time. The gateway to a criminal underworld. The black market miracle medicine. Whether you are part of the outcry pleading for the legalization of marijuana or part of the opposition and fear created from reefer madness, we’ve all heard the propaganda and conspiracy theories. As Tulalip is faced with the decision to legalize or not, the issue has become shrouded in a haze of claims about the benefits and dangers of marijuana consumption. Results from a recent online survey conducted by the Tulalip Communications Staff highlighted some popular facts, misconceptions, and fears about marijuana consumption, which will be examined here:

Marijuana is harmless to smoke. There are no downsides, either for medical or recreational use.

False – Marijuana has many adverse effects on the human body. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, heavy users of marijuana have long-term impairment of cognitive function, specifically with learning and the retention of new information. In testing, the American Academy of Neurology found that the rate of decreased productivity and cognitive impairment was directly related to the rate of increase in marijuana use.

Marijuana repairs the lungs, and actually is better for them.

False – The University of Washington Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute reports that light use of marijuana, one to three times a month, caused no real harm or adverse effects on the pulmonary system. Heavy use, three to five times a week, caused a deterioration of lung tissue, and often contributed to users suffering a collapsed lung. In general, it is a lung irritant.

Marijuana repairs brain cells and promotes mental health.

True and false – This is a tricky aspect to understand, as it involves brain chemistry. The American Academy of Neurology explains that THC, the psychoactive cannabinoid in marijuana, inhibits the endocannabinoid system. The human endocrine system produces cannabinoid compounds in various organs. When THC is metabolized in the liver, the liver releases unusually high levels of endocannabinoids into the bloodstream. THC inhibits some of the cannabinoid receptors in the brain, which can help with mental disorders such as epilepsy and autism, yet the endocannabinoid compound levels are so high that the natural system becomes overstimulated. It is unclear exactly what the effects of overstimulation are.

It is certain, though, that marijuana users show signs of improvements in the nervous system, specifically growth and repair of nerve endings throughout the body, and nerve pathways in the brain.

Marijuana cures cancer.

True – Though not a cure, this claim is not entirely false. Reports from the American Cancer Association show that marijuana, in most cases, inhibits the growth of cancer cells, slowing down the aggressive nature of cancer. That same component works to prevent cells from binding together, which inhibits tumor growth.

Marijuana is not addictive.

False – While marijuana does not create chemical dependency, the way opiates and pharmaceutical drugs do, there is still a strong mental aspect to addiction. The overactive endocannabinoid system resulting from marijuana use creates a craving in the brain. Studies from the National Institute of Drug Abuse show subjects that have been clean of marijuana for more than a month still have long-term mental and behavioral effects, most notably an inability to feel satisfied with everyday life.

Marijuana is a great antidepressant and anti-anxiety medicine.

True and false – According to an article in Science News, marijuana, in low doses, is an effective antidepressant. However, heavy use, or prolonged use, can prove ineffective and even worsen depression, mostly in relation to the lack of satisfaction one experiences when they are not high.

As an anti-anxiety medication, low doses prove effective. Again, as use increases, anxiety can worsen. The National Institute of Drug Abuse, in addition to lack of satisfaction in everyday life, recorded a lack of coping ability with stress, leading to increased anxiety and irritability when not high.

Nobody has ever overdosed on marijuana.

True – There has never been a recorded overdose or death from marijuana consumption. The Australian Department of health conducted extensive tests on animals, looking at how much marijuana had to be consumed before a toxic level was reached. The result proved to be an unrealistic number. Though no humans were tested, for obvious ethical reasons, the hypothesized amount of marijuana needed to be consumed by the average human to reach a toxic level is approximately 8.5kg in one sitting. That’s 20lbs, or more than 300oz.

While there are no recorded deaths or overdoses from marijuana use, there are recorded deaths from the use of hash oil, though less than ten. Hash oil is processed marijuana, which extracts the THC from the marijuana leaves, and is on average five times more potent that marijuana. THC toxicity levels can be achieved in one sitting with the use of hash oil, especially by first time users. THC poisoning typically causes users to pass out. Most common resulting causes of death are apnea (the user stops breathing) or cardiac arrest.

Neither of these include statistics for accidents involving marijuana DUIs, or death related to impairment from marijuana use.

Marijuana is clean to use, there is no residue.

False – When you smoke marijuana, the residue from the THC seeps into fabrics, walls, and your skin. The Journal of the American Medical Association of Pediatrics reports a rising number of cases of infant and toddler marijuana poisoning. Most often, the cases are a result of contact with surfaces where marijuana has been smoked. The children absorb the THC residue through their skin. Symptoms recorded are excessive vomiting, irritability, and lack of balance, especially upon standing. Because they are infants and toddlers and vomit and fall often, these symptoms often go unnoticed. They are more easily spotted, though, in young children, preteens, and kids in their early teens.

These points were the most prominent points brought up repeatedly in the survey. Some are true, some are not, and some are exceedingly ambiguous. The answers here are what science has to offer for the marijuana debate.

Andrew Gobin is a staff reporter with the Tulalip News See-Yaht-Sub, a publication of the Tulalip Tribes Communications Department.
Email: agobin@tulalipnews.com
Phone: (360) 716.4188

This Memorial Day, Honor the Water, Remember the Fallen, and Protect the Mounds

FishHabitat.orgThe Ohio River Water Walk is the third Nibi walk — FishHabitat.org
The Ohio River Water Walk is the third Nibi walk

Mary Annette Pember, Indian Country Today

Officially, Memorial Day is a day on which war dead are honored. Unofficially, it’s a universal day of remembrance for all who have passed on. Many Americans will visit cemeteries over this holiday weekend in order to offer prayers, respect and honor to the graves of warriors and non-warriors alike.

Americans take great care in honoring their dead with fine monuments marking their lives and impact they have made on the world. To express anything other than respect for these sites would be considered downright un-American. The ancestors of Native peoples, however, are frequently not afforded this most basic level of humanity. Our dead often rest in mounds or sites that are marked with far more subtle methods than stone markers.

“There are cemeteries in Europe that are as old as our Native burial mounds here in the U.S. The only difference is that they have headstones with last names that can still be found in the immediate community,” said Kim Wesler, former director of the Wickliffe Mounds site in Kentucky.

The Ohio River Water Walk is the third Nibi walk lead by a group of Anishinabe grandmothers who pray for the water and raise awareness about the pollution that plagues this element that is essential to life. They began the walk in Pittsburgh on April 22, Earth Day, and are concluding their journey on Memorial Day near Wickliffe Mounds, a gesture that sends a poignant, potent message in both time and place.

Once a notorious example of racial disregard for Native burial sites, Wickliffe Mounds now stands as a tribute to what can be accomplished by tribal and mainstream collaboration in reclaiming the sacred.

The Nibi Walkers traveled 981 miles from the source to the mouth of the Ohio River, the most polluted river in America in efforts to reconnect people with the sacred element essential to life. Completing the journey at Wickliffe Mounds has an added bonus of underscoring the treasured graves of Native ancestors that have too often been disrespected and desecrated by mainstream America.

On this Memorial Day in Kentucky, commemorations will include ceremony not only for the war dead of the U.S., but for the many warrior and non-warrior Native ancestors, perhaps killed in defense of their homelands.

Sharon Day, Ojibwe, leader of the walk noted that the Ohio River valley is home to many sacred sites and burial mounds. “It is sad to see such a sacred area treated so badly by pollution and disregard for the ancestors who lie here,” she said.

Sharon Day, Ojibwe, begins the first leg of the day of Nibi Walk along the Ohio River in Cincinnati. (Mary Annette Pember)

Looting of Native graves by amateur and professional collectors in search of artifacts was not an uncommon practice in this region. According to historians with the Ancient Trail of Ohio, hundreds of mounds in Ohio alone have also been destroyed by farming and development.

For generations, Wickliffe Mounds exemplified disrespect for Native sacred places and burial sites.

The modern story of Wickliffe Mounds began in 1932 when Fain King, the owner of the site opened a number of burial mounds on his property, unearthing the bones of hundreds of men, women and children from the Mississippian culture. According to the Kentucky Parks Service, they were likely buried around 1200 A.D. in the large settlement located on a bluff overlooking the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. King created a roadside tourist attraction from his find. He dubbed it “The Ancient Buried City,” where he offered paying customers a close up view of the remains. After removing the tops of the mounds, he built walkways over the graves where ancestors lay interred with pottery and other items. One of the opened mounds offered for public view contained the remains of many infants. The operation continued until 1983 when it was given to the Murray State University of Kentucky. Murray State operated the site until 2004 when Kentucky State Parks took over, making Wickliffe Mounds the 11th Kentucky state historical site.

Wesler, archaeologist and current director of the Remote Sensing Center at Murray State, was charged by the university with taking over the site in 1983. Although he had little knowledge at the time of the cultural concerns of Native peoples regarding treatment of remains, he knew immediately that the bones needed to be taken off display. “I got a crash course in Native American cultural awareness,” he recalled.

“I soon learned that when you define the past as family, you take it personally,” he remarked about those early conversations with tribal peoples whose ancestors are interred in the mounds.

The road to reburial was not easy in those early days for a traditionally trained archaeologist like Wesler. “The archaeological establishment was strictly anti-reburial in those days,” he recalls. One of his colleagues threatened to sue him if he went through with reburial efforts. He was threatened with legal action from a tribe upset about not being involved in consultations. Many community members also expressed anger over the reburial efforts and the decision to remove remains from public display. “The bones were on display for over 60 years. People grew up seeing them and wanted their children to see them. It was sort of a tradition here,” he said.

Chickasaw Nation Lieutenant Governor Jefferson Keel, with Kylo Prince, who is Lakota/Ojibwe from Long Plain First Nation in Manitoba, and Thomas Pearce, of the American Indian Movement of Indiana and Kentucky at an honoring ceremony to rebury ancestral remains at Wickliffe Mounds.

As he worked to make contacts and build relationships with the Native community, Wesler took the bones off display and replaced them with plastic replicas. The plastic bones served as placeholders, he said, as he struggled to strike a compromise among stakeholders.

The plastic replicas and walkways over the gravesites remained until 2011 when the Chickasaw Nation assisted in reburying the remains. The Oklahoma Intertribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes determined that since the Chickasaw were the closest living descendants of the Wickliffe ancestors they should lead reburial efforts.

During the 2012 ceremony celebrating the reburial of over 400 ancestors from the mounds, Jefferson Keel, Lt. Governor of the Chickasaw Nation noted in his speech that in the past, Wickliffe was a place of desecration. Certainly no Native person would have wanted to visit such a place. Carla Hildebrand, manager of the site that is now owned and operated by the Kentucky State Parks Service, recalled Keel’s words.

“He spoke positively about the growing cooperative relationship between tribes and mainstream officials that allowed the reburial to happen. He said, ‘Now we can move forward,’” she recalled.

The story of Wickliffe Mounds is profound according to Hildebrand. She reports that numbers of Native groups such as the Nibi Walkers now stop in to pay their respects. “I’m happy that the mounds are getting the respect and attention due them,” she said.

“I’m grateful I got to keep those promises made to Native people along the way,” Wesler said.

The history of Wickliffe Mounds reflects a slowly maturing societal opinion regarding Native burial sites, noted Wesler.

Hildebrand noted that in recent years many people expressed discomfort about having the plastic bone replicas on display. “People’s sensibilities are maturing, we are seeing a change in attitudes. People from differing backgrounds would tell us they thought even the plastic replicas were disrespectful,” she said.

Unfortunately, however, modern farming, graveling and urban sprawl continue to take a toll on sacred sites, according to the Ancient Trail of Ohio website. Following are three examples in a long list of ongoing battles between developers and preservationists over protecting sacred sites.

Wal-Mart has a history of destroying sacred sites. They have built or attempted to build stores on burial mounds in Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia, California, and Hawaii. In 2004, Wal-Mart opened a store in Mexico City within view of the 2000-year-old pyramids of Teotihuacan despite protests by local residents.

The owner of Wingra Redi-Mix in Wisconsin wants to destroy a bird effigy mound on his property in order to get at copy million worth of gravel buried beneath. The mound, part of the Ward Mounds, have been called the “Heart of the homelands of the Ho-Chunk Nation.” Effigy mounds in Wisconsin were built as long ago as 700 BC.

The Wingra Redi-Mix Quarry has been bulldozed as close to the bird effigy mound as possible. Wingra Redi-Mix seeks to destroy the mound to reap the copy0 million of sand and gravel. The mounds on the property are protected by a burial site protection act. (WisconsinMounds.com)

Recently preservationists narrowly succeeded in saving the most important surviving Adena earthworks in the Ohio Valley from developers.

A magnetic survey done in 2005 revealed the Junction Group below the surface.

Sharon Day is pondering the significance of finishing her 981-mile journey along the Ohio River near Wickliffe Mounds. Seeing the destruction of the water, earth and sacred sites along the way brings home a message from a long ago Shawnee leader, Tecumseh, who called on people to unite and take action to protect the earth.

“….soon the trees will be cut down to fence in the land. Soon their broad roads will pass over the graves of your fathers and, the place of their rest will be blotted out forever. The annihilation of our race is at hand unless we unite in common cause.”

Sea Star Wasting Syndrome Perplexes Scientists

George Stearns, shellfish biologist for the Puyallup Tribe, inspects a sick sea star caught during the tribe’s crab monitoring study.

Puyallup Tribe Observes Disease Affecting Sea Stars

E. O’Connell, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

As part of its regular crab population monitoring, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians is tracking the impact of a myste-rious ailment that is killing sea stars.

An outbreak of sea star wasting syndrome was first noticed last fall in British Columbia. The syndrome starts as small lesions and eventually the infected sea stars disintegrate. Since symptoms were first noticed, the syndrome has quickly spread throughout the Salish Sea and along the Pacific coast.

While there have been previously documented outbreaks, nothing on this scale has ever been recorded. There is no known cause.

“After we started conducting crab surveys in April last year, we started seeing a lot of sea star by catch,” said George Stearns, the tribe’s shellfish bi-ologist. “One pot near the north

point of Vashon Island was full of sea stars.”

The tribe regularly monitors eight stations between the north end of Vashon Island and the Tacoma Narrows. Each station includes nine crab pots.

During the tribe’s early surveys, the sea star population seemed healthy. But Puyallup tribal scientists recorded a sharp die-off in October.

“We saw one monitoring site go from four sea stars per pot in April to 12 in September to zero in October,” Stearns said.

When a diseased sea star catches a ride on a tribal crab pot, it deflates quickly. Within a few minutes, a normally rigid sea star will be hanging on the pot like a wet rag.

“Some of the sea stars we are finding are literally melting in front of us,” Stearns said.

Tribe Narrowing Locations Where Crabs Molt

The Puyallup Tribe monitors crab to pinpoint exactly when the shellfish in the tribe’s harvest area molt, or shed their shells.

“Crabbing during the middle of molting, which makes them soft and vulnerable, can increase the handling mortality,” said George Stearns, the tribe’s shellfish biologist. “It’s a common practice to shut down harvest during the molt. But we’ve

only had a general idea of when that occurs down here.” The data collected will also

help the fisheries managers put together a more complete picture of crab populations in South Sound.

“We GPS the locations so we’re at the same spots and put the pots in for the same length of time,” Stearns said. “So we know we’re comparing apples to apples each month.”

Tribes Recovering from Geoduck Ban

Suquamish Seafoods employee James Banda packs geoduck for international shipping. T Royal — Suquamish Seafoods employee James Banda packs geoduck for international shipping.
T Royal

T. Royal, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

Western Washington tribes are quickly recovering from a sudden ban in December 2013 on selling geoduck to China.

The Asian country claimed it received a shipment of geoduck from Ketchikan, Alaska, that had high levels of paralytic shellfish poisoning, and a shipment from Poverty Bay in Puyallup, Wash., that had high levels of arsenic.

As a result, China announced it was ban- ning all imports of bivalve shellfish from Washington, Oregon, Alaska and North- ern California. This was just before the Chinese New Year, a lucrative time for harvesters and buyers, when geoducks are traditionally served.

“It was bad at the beginning because we didn’t know what was going on,” said Tony Forsman, general manager of the Suqua- mish Tribe’s Suquamish Seafoods, which regularly ships shellfish internationally. “China didn’t tell us for two weeks they were doing this.”

Officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been working with Chinese officials to deter- mine how they came to their conclusions and have been in close communication with Washington Department of Health and western Washington tribal officials about the progress.

The shellfish in question from Poverty Bay passed all the rigorous tests needed to be exported to China, said David Fyfe, shellfish biologist for Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.

“We’re working with China to figure out why we suddenly don’t meet their stan- dards,” he said.

In the meantime, harvesters and buyers are continuing to send their catches to oth- er Asian countries, including Vietnam. U.S. officials are asking China to reduce the ban area from the West Coast to just the two original areas of concern.

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