SEATTLE – Two people were killed and one was critically injured when a news helicopter crashed and burned Tuesday morning on Broad Street only yards away from the Space Needle.
Emergency personnel immediately rushed to the scene.
Two cars were struck in the crash. One man could be seen running from from one of the cars with his sleeve on fire, and he was extinguished by officers at the scene.
Huge flames and plumes of black smoke poured from the burning wreckage, about 50 yards from the base of the Space Needle. Fuel gushing from the wreckage caught fire and burned for a block from the crash scene.
The Seattle Fire Department said two people were found dead in the wreckage. A third person was rushed to Harborview Medical Center for treatment of critical injuries.
Fire crews were able to extinguish the flames within a half-hour. Traffic was diverted from the area.
Irish culture is filled with tales of fairies, banshees and leprechauns, and there is nothing as Irish as a good story. It only makes sense then that there could be a good Native American story about the Irish, maybe as unprovable as the others, but as one archaeologist said, “Anything is possible.”
There are records that suggest the Irish came to America before Christopher Columbus, but while there is no solid evidence, there certainly are hints.
One of the first recorded curiosities originated in 1521, when Spaniard Peter Martyr took reports from Columbus and other explorers who had investigated the Southeast coast of today’s South Carolina and Georgia. A baptized Chicora Native and a Spanish explorer reported to Martyr that they had come upon a group of people who called themselves the Duhare.
The Duhare were different than the Chicora Natives in the area. While all of the local Natives were described as having varying degrees of brown skin, the Duhare were described as white-skinned with brown hair that hung to their heels. They were said to herd deer in the way that Europeans herded cattle. Martyr wrote that the fawns were kept in the houses and the deer would go out to pasture during the day, returning at night to suckle their fawns. After the deer had nursed their young, they were milked and the milk was turned to cheese.
Deer milk has been celebrated in Gaelic poetry but usually in mythical situations. Reindeer were herded in Scotland until the 1300s, and a paper by Erin NhaMinerva, from Ireland, mentions deer being milked, but more in mythic terms than as a regular part of the diet.
Three Irish Men by Albert Durer, 1521.
There was other evidence that these Duhare could have been Irish. They were said to keep poultry, chickens, ducks, geese and other similar fowl, and potatoes were said to have been grown in the area, though they were not yet an important food in Ireland.
While the word Duhare may have a bit of an Irish ring to it, no Irish historian could be found to say it was derived from the old Irish language. And besides the few unusual incidents above, the Duhare lived as the neighboring Natives did.
In West Virginia, there was a ruckus when Dr. Barry Fell, a professor emeritus at Harvard University, said he found writing on a rock he described as “Christian messages in old Irish script.” Although he was the editor and co-author of eight books that deciphered ancient writings, Fell found himself discredited by other experts when it came to this particular rock writing. In a blog called Bad Archeology, Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews says Fell’s arguments were not convincing. Fitzpatrick-Matthews wrote, “His [Fell’s] analysis of supposedly Celtic elements in Native American placenames and languages is fanciful; his identification of scratches on rock surfaces as Irish Ogham script shows his lack of familiarity with real Ogham.”
These petroglyphs in West Viriginia were thought to be carved in Ogam, an Irish script used from the 6th to 8th centuries. (Courtesy Roger Wise)
Nicholas Freidin, doctor of philosophy and anthropology professor at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia said: “The whole thing is simply rubbish, part of the ‘lunatic fringe’. There is no evidence whatsoever of any European presence in West Virginia before the 17th century. To perpetuate this nonsense would be a disservice to both Native peoples and professional archaeologists.”
And yet, in the 1500s, the Vikings described the Irish as able seamen who traveled extensively and great distances, as far as Iceland in the 10th century. In 2000, adventurer Tim Severin published a book called The Brendan Voyage about a journey he made in a leather-bound boat built to sixth-century Irish standards. His goal was to see if he could follow the path of an Irish monk who is said to have sailed from Ireland to Greenland and then Newfoundland.
According to the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, Saint Brendan, the Irish monk who sailed to a wooded paradise, lush with fruits. He had endured a “pelting with rock from an island of fire, seeing a pillar of crystal and encountering a moving island before finally coming upon the Promised Land, which came to be referred to as the Fortunate Islands.
St. Brendan and his Brethren setting sail, artist unknown. From Rev. Denis O’Donoghue, St. Brendan the Voyager (Dublin: Brown & Nolan, 1893) frontispiece.
Brendan explored the area for seven years before returning to Ireland, his boats filled with gems. No one is exactly certain where the Fortunate Islands were, although Columbus mentioned them in Martyr’s book.
The New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia and other sources speak of the Irish being the first white men to come to the Americas before Columbus, perhaps as many as 1,000 years before. The glory of that adventure is given to “MacCarthy, Rafn, Beamish, O’Hanlon, Beauvois, and Gafarel,” in a book called Saints In The Limelight by Siglind Bruin.
Those accounts match the Vikings’ claims that the Irish occupied an area south of the Chesapeake Bay called Hvitramamaland (Land of the White Men) or Irland ed mikla (Greater Ireland), notes the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia.
The New Advent says the Shawano Indians recognized a white tribe in Florida, said to have had iron implements. “In regard to Brendan himself the point is made that he could only have gained a knowledge of foreign animals and plants, such as are described in the legend, by visiting the western continent,” New Advent writes.
Interestingly, Martyr’s book refers to islands within Columbus’s route along the North American coast as the Fortunate Islands.
“All things are possible,” Kent Reilly, professor of archaeology at Texas State University and field anthropologist consultant for the Muscogee Nation of Florida, said. “There were many Europeans here; there were the Welsh in 1288, and the Vikings. But there is no archaeological evidence, no ceramics or metal, and as far as I know, there are no stories among the Southeast peoples about white-skinned, blue-eyed people in that area. There is no archaeological evidence, as far as I know.”
According to a website called, “Hidden Ireland: A Guide to Irish Fairies,” Saint Patrick brought Christianity to Ireland but, “from among the ancient tribes and kingdoms of ancient Ireland, whose religions worshipped the trees and lakes, stones and animals of the wild landscape. Such gods and beliefs would not die easily.”
Would it be so hard to imagine if the Irish left their increasingly Christian homelands in search of a place they could follow their ancestral traditions? In any case, it makes a nice story, and as History.com notes, “Spinning exciting tales to remember history has always been a part of the Irish way of life.”
Lakota members marched during the annual Liberation Day commemoration of the Wounded Knee massacre. People carried American Indian Movement flags and shot rifles into the air as part of the celebration. Photo: Deep Roots United Front/Victor Puertas
On February 27, Oglala Lakota and American Indian Movement activists joined in a four-directions walk to commemorate Liberation Day, an event to mark the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. As they do each year, four groups gather to the north, south, east and west and then walk eight miles until converging on top of Wounded Knee, where they honor the fallen warriors and the tribe’s rich history of resistance.
“It is an acknowledgement of the resiliency of who we are as a people,” explains Andrew Iron Shell, an organizer and activist of the Sicangu Lakota Nation. “It gives permission and courage for our up-and-coming generations to face the challenges of their time.”
The history of the occupation began with a massacre more than 100 years ago. On a cold day in December 1890, the United States army killed 300 Lakota men, women and children in a massive shoot out after a member of the First Nations refused to give up his arms. It marked the first bloodshed on Wounded Knee – although there had been many massacres of First Nations people by the colonialists before it. The event was also considered the end of the Indian Wars.
Eighty-threeyears later, on Feb. 27, 1973, about 200 Lakota members took siege of the town of Wounded Knee. Reclaiming a location that was written in the history books as a place of defeat, the Lakota stood their ground. They were there in protest of a failed attempt at impeaching the tribal president at the time, Richard Wilson, who was known to be corrupt and abusive. Initially a protest against the tribal government, the occupation took a turn when U.S. police forces arrived. The protestors switched the occupation’s focus to the United States’ frequent violation of treaties.
The armed warriors maintained control over the town for 71 days while the FBI encircled them. At the final standoff, two warriors were killed, about 12 people were wounded and over 400 were arrested. The Oglala were able to harness national attention through their occupation, using the spotlight to question the United States’ treatment of First Nations people.
As history passed, later generations rarely heard about the occupation of Wounded Knee — or about first nation people at all. This skewed national memory should be unsurprising: When you have a society and a nation built upon the subjugation of people of color, you can expect nothing more than the constant erasing of certain histories.
Ongoing genocide
I recently visited Prisoner of War Camp 344, also known as the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It wasn’t my first time in the sovereign Oglala Sioux Nation, but it was my first time joining in the ceremonies celebrating the 41st annual Liberation Day to remember the 1890 reoccupation of Wounded Knee.
The vibrant American Indian Movement flags waving in the harsh South Dakota winter wind reminded me of the old black and white photos I used to see in my history books. The Lakota would not disappear without a fight, regardless of what the United States’ intentions were. Children walked alongside elders who had taken part in the occupation, showing clearly the group’s intergenerational wisdom. These are children who are stripped of learning their people’s history in schools, but instead learn it through stories and dances. They are children who live in a sovereign nation that contains two of the poorest counties in the United States and who recognize the threats their families face every day.
One of these threats come from the so-called town of White Clay, Neb., where visitors can witness the way violence against the First Nations people has changed — but not disappeared — over the generations. Consisting of only 12 people and four liquor stores, White Clay was once part of a 50-square-mile buffer that prevented alcohol from entering the reservation. In 1904, President Roosevelt signed an executive order that removed 49 of those square miles. Since then, the town’s economy has been driven by the $4 million in alcohol sales to the people of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. There is no legal place to drink in or around White Clay: Alcohol containers can’t be opened on the property of the distributor, it’s prohibited to drink in the street, and the reservation is dry territory. Yet, somehow, the town of 12 people manages to keep four liquor stores open. Barely two miles from the reservation’s epicenter, and less than 200 feet from the dry reservation line, the town perpetrates a type of violence that is, on the reservation, known as liquid genocide.
The reason for this name becomes apparent when one examines the teenage suicide rate on the reservation, which is 150 percent higher than the U.S. national average for this age group. Many attribute this death rate to the sale of alcohol to minors, which White Clay store owners are known to do. The liquor stores also break the law by selling to intoxicated people, and by trading alcohol for pornography, sexual favors — including from minors — and welfare checks. The effects of free-flowing alcohol are devastating: On the reservation, 90 percent of all court cases are related to alcohol use.
Kate, a Tokala warrior, believes that alcoholism is part of a larger problem of the disappearance of indigenous culture. For her, the only way to live in the geographical region of Pine Ridge is the indigenous way. “We are the ones on the back roads, still chopping wood. We are living the way we used to live,” she said. “It’s not hardship; it’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
Kate and many others know that alcohol was introduced to her people as a means to steal from them. Living deeply connected to the history of their nation, they believe that if they shake free of the colonized mindset, alcohol wouldn’t even be an issue.
Threats to the land
In addition to trying to close down White Clay, the Oglala Lakota Nation is actively fighting the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. This 1,700-mile pipeline, which would carry 830,000 barrels of crude oil each day from western Canada through South Dakota en route to Texas. At two points it would even intersect with a pipeline that serves as a main water source for the Sioux Nation, affecting all of the Pine Ridge reservation as well as the nearby Rosebud reservation.
Advocates for the pipeline argue the pipeline is the safest way to transport crude oil. TransCanada, the company in charge of the pipeline, predicted that the first Keystone pipeline, which runs from Alberta to Illinois, would spill once every seven years. During its first year in operation, it spilled 12 times. The Lakota, along with other First Nations, have vowed to use direct action to stop construction of the pipeline.
For a nation whose land and sovereignty has been threatened for hundreds of years by U.S. politics, the Keystone XL pipeline is part of a long history of threats to the Lakota Nation – and to the earth itself.
“They want to get rid of the Lakota, the protectors of the earth,” said Olowan Martinez, an organizer in the Lakota community. “But what they don’t know is when they get rid of the Lakota, the earth isn’t too far behind. Our people believe the Lakota is the earth.”
President Obama is scheduled to be make a final decision on the pipeline by the middle of 2014. While the Lakota are hoping he will not approve the project, they are also getting ready to stand up and fight. During the Liberation Day celebrations, the Lakota’s dances and stories relayed messages about sacred water and Mother Earth. The tribe has also united with other First Nations to organize a three-day direct action training called Moccasins on the Ground, which was designed to prepare people to act if the pipeline is approved.
“Dead or in prison before we allow the Keystone XL pipeline to pass,” the Lakota warriors, many mounted atop horses, repeated during the Liberation Day celebration. Their words carried the weight of 521 years, and counting, of lived resistance.
Geoduck clams harvested from Puget Sound, along with most shellfish from the West Coast of the U.S., have not been allowed into China. But an upcoming meeting in Beijing between U.S. and Chinese officials could ease that ban. | credit: Katie Campbell | rollover image for more
SEATTLE — There are signs of a thaw in the icy trade relations between the United States and China over a Chinese ban on imported shellfish from the West Coast of the U.S.
Chinese officials have agreed to meet next week with U.S. counterparts to discuss China’s import ban on shellfish harvested from Alaska, Washington, Oregon and part of California.
Representatives from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will be in Beijing March 21 to discuss China’s remaining concerns about shellfish imports. China instituted the ban when officials found high levels of arsenic and a naturally occurring biotoxin in two samples of geoduck.
The shellfish with high levels of biotoxin came from Ketchikan, Alaska.
The shellfish contaminated with arsenic were harvested near a site in Tacoma where a copper smelter operated along southern Puget Sound.
The smelter was in operation for 100 years and shellfish beds nearby were closed until 2007.
The state Department of Health did some follow-up testing on geoduck from the area and says the shellfish are safe to eat.
Diane Millich, Southern Ute, shared her story of surviving domestic violence, at the signing of the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act on March 7, 2013. Photo from National Congress of American Indians
By indianz.com
A survivor of domestic violence has shut down her operation due to a loss of federal funds from the Department of Justice.
Diane Millich, a member of the Southern Ute Tribe of of Colorado, made national news a year ago at the signing of S.47, a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act that recognizes tribal jurisdiction over non-Indian offenders. She shared her story of surviving abuse and a near-fatal shooting at the hands of her non-Indian former husband.
Millich created a non-profit called Our Sister’s Keeper Coalition to help other survivors. But DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women cut off all federal funds in 2012 and the group shut its doors in September, The Durango Herald reports.
“We were serving a lot of women,” Dedra White, the group’s former director and Millich’s sister, told the paper. “A lot.”
According to DOJ’s Office of Inspector General, Our Sister’s Keeper Coalition received $570,000 in federal funds between 2007 and 2011. Of that amount, auditors found problems with about $200,000 in spending that were considered “unsupported” and “unallowable.”
“We found that, OSKC did not comply with essential grant conditions in the areas of internal controls, grant drawdowns, grant expenditures, budget management and control, grant reporting, and grant goals and accomplishments,” the March 5 report stated. “Most significantly, OSKC commingled the OVW grant funds with funding from other sources, did not consistently identify funding sources for expenditures, made drawdowns in excess of grant expenditures, charged unallowable and unsupported costs to the grant, did not submit accurate or timely grant reports, and did not meet grant goals and objectives.”
Millich did not talk to the paper about the audit.
Olympia – Senate House Bill 2080, introduced to the Washington State Legislature after session in 2013, was passed this year by the House on February 13th and the Senate February 5th, which coincides with the 40th annum of the Boldt Decision which settled the Fish Wars. The bill allows tribal fishermen arrested while exercising their treaty fishing rights and convicted prior to January 1st, 1975, to apply to the sentencing court to vacate their convictions including misdemeanors, gross misdemeanors, and felonies. With this bill, the legislature acknowledges that no crimes were ever committed in these cases, making these convictions void.
Rep. David Sawyer, (D), whose district includes the Nisqually and Puyallup reservations, introduced SHB 2080 after session in 2013. That move gave legislators time to read the bill and engage with it, allowing it to move rather quickly through the House and Senate.
“It is an excellent bill, it writes a wrong for so many,” said Sen. John McCoy, (D). He was one of the point people for the bill as it moved through the Senate.
The language of the bill is just as important as the bill itself. It is not a pardon. It is a new law allowing Treaty Indian fishermen, who were wrongfully arrested and charged, to clear their name through vacation and expunction. To vacate the conviction means it has been rendered void by the court. To expunge means to remove completely from the record. Those two terms, from a legal stand point, make these convictions as if they never occurred, as opposed to a pardon which acknowledges the crime and validates a conviction, yet forgives the crime and sets sentencing aside.
“A crime was never committed, they [the convictions] should be expunged,” said McCoy, referring to the imposition of state law over Treaty Indian fishing.
During the Fish Wars, the State of Washington filed injunctions to block Treaty Indian fisheries. Treaty Indian fisheries, which stem from treaties made with the United States, preempt state law, meaning the state had no authority over Treaty Indian fishing activities. The momentous Boldt Decision reaffirmed the treaties and the fact that the state had no authority to block Treaty Indian fisheries. In turn, that means the state had no jurisdiction to convict those participating in Treaty Indian fishing under state laws. Senate House Bill 2080 acknowledges that and makes a way for people who never should have been charged and convicted to clear their name.
McCoy noted, “This should have been done a long time ago.”
Through the passing of SHB 2080, the State of Washington realizes the sovereignty of tribes, acknowledging that they had no authority over what happened more than 40 years ago. This sets a precedent for Washington tribes, and for tribes across the nation.
Andrew Gobin is a reporter with the See-Yaht-Sub, a publication of the Tulalip Tribes Communications Department. Email: agobin@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov Phone: (360) 716.4188
Just before Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana) took up the gavel of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in February, he introduced the Native Language Immersion Student Achievement Act.
Rob Capriccioso, ICTMN
Just before Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana) took up the gavel of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in February, he introduced the Native Language Immersion Student Achievement Act, which would amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) to provide increased federal financial support to Native American language programs at American Indian-focused schools.
If passed, the bill would establish a grant program to support schools using Native American languages as their primary language of instruction. The legislation would appropriate $5 million for fiscal year 2015, and “such sums as may be necessary for each of the succeeding 4 fiscal years.” The secretary of the Department of Education would be responsible for making grant awards to eligible institutions each of the years, and grantees would be required to submit annual reports.
“We are racing against the clock to save and revitalize our sacred Native American languages,” Tester said when he announced the bill. “Preserving Native languages will strengthen Indian culture and increase student confidence—leading to greater academic achievement and a stronger economy.”
Support from the National Congress of American Indians and many Native-focused organizations, which plan to hold a congressional briefing March 12 on Capitol Hill to heighten awareness of the bill, has been widespread.
“In introducing the Native Language Immersion Student Achievement Act, Sen. Tester has answered the call from Indian country to invest in Native language immersion schools,” says Brian Cladoosby, president of the National Congress of American Indians. “Not only are these unique schools our best hope to save and revitalize our sacred Native languages, but they offer Indian education the purest form of intellectual sovereignty, because no right is more sacred to Native peoples than the right to freely speak our Native languages.”
Native education advocates widely view the bill as an opportunity to influence ESEA reauthorization discussions that are ongoing in the Senate. While the ESEA, which includes the Indian Education Act, still faces some hurdles in passing this Congress, advocates are hopeful that Tester’s legislation can ultimately be included in that broader education legislation.
“Sen. Tester’s bill offers Indian country heightened ownership in its educational destiny and a lifeline in saving Native Languages,” says Ryan Wilson, president of the National Alliance to Save Native Languages, which is hosting the Capitol Hill briefing. “Just as important to Indian country it is good policy and reflects a sharpened focus and stronger Indian Education Act.”
Wilson says that tribal recommendations to enhance the Native language and education components of the ESEA have gone unheeded by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions (HELP) to date.
“Senate Committee on Indian Affairs recommendations from the 112th Congress that were contained in the groundbreaking Native Class Act and Native Build Act were not reflected as well,” Wilson adds. “Native language provisions published within the White House ESEA blueprint were also not included.”
Wilson says the Alliance is calling on Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the HELP committee, to include provisions contained within the Native Language Immersion Student Achievement Act when the committee ultimately moves its ESEA bill to the Senate floor.
As this policy discussion unfolds, tribal advocates are also noting ideas that they believe could strengthen Tester’s bill.
John Echohawk, executive director of the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), which provides legal counsel to the Tribal Education Department National Assembly, is taking the opportunity to advocate for a strong role for tribal governments in saving Native languages as part of this legislation.
“Many tribes now have Tribal Education Departments or Agencies (TEAs),” Echohawk says. “Under tribal law, under the laws of some states, and increasingly even under federal law, TEAs are in the best position to coordinate resources from tribal, federal, and state programs to focus on language immersion programs in schools and communities. Some TEAs are even developing and implementing the needed language preservation and immersion programs.
“As they grow in numbers and capacity, TEAs are consistently taking the lead in meeting the need for tribal language, culture, and history programs and curricula,” Echohawk says. “TEAs are very familiar with the link—as recognized in scores of federal reports—between culturally relevant schooling, including language immersion programs, and Native student success.”
Echohawk is scheduled to appear at the March 12 Capitol Hill briefing on the legislation.
PORT ANGELES, Wash. — Anne Shaffer sits on the sandy shoreline of the Elwha River and looks around in amazement. Just two years ago, this area would have been under about 20 feet of water.
So far about 3 million cubic yards of sediment — enough to fill about 300,000 dump trucks — has been released from the giant bathtubs of sediment that formed behind the two hydroelectric dams upstream. And that’s only 16 percent of what’s expected to be delivered downstream in the next five years.
All of that sediment is already reshaping the mouth of the Elwha, which empties into the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the northern shore of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.
The depth at the mouth of the river has changed by about 50 feet. Long, charcoal-colored sandy beaches have formed where there once only smooth, platter-sized cobblestones.
Watchvideo report:
“This place is like Christmas,” says Shaffer, a marine biologist and the executive director of the Coastal Watershed Institute. “Everyday you come out here and its something new.”
Shaffer is leading a team of researchers who are studying the Elwha’s nearshore area, where the river’s freshwater meets the saltwater tides. Shaffer explains that until recently this area was starved of sediment, and now a whole new ecosystem is forming. Her team is trying to find out what tiny creatures are moving in.
They’re searching for evidence that species like sand lance and surf smelt are using this area as spawning grounds. These tiny fish are a common food sources for juvenile salmon.
Sand lance (top) and surf smelt (bottom) by David Ayers/USGS.
Sand lance, she explained, require a very fine grain sediment in order to lay their eggs.
“We now are surrounded by the exact grain size that sand lance need to spawn,” she says.
The team scoops up bags of sand to test in the lab. So far they haven’t found evidence of sand lance spawning in this new habitat, Shaffer says. But they have found that surf smelt are spawning in areas where sandy substrate has built up.
During recent fish census surveys of the Elwha’s estuary, Shaffer’s team counted baby chum salmon in numbers they haven’t seen in years, if ever, Shaffer said. And they’ve also found a number of eulachon, a type of smelt that was once an abundant food source for coastal tribes. The eulachon is now listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
“As soon as this habitat is available, these fish are using it,” Shaffer says. “None of us anticipated how quickly it would occur. I’d never seen a eulachon in the estuary before, but in the last three months, every time we survey, we see them.”
The drone of a single-engine plane causes Shaffer to look up and shield her eyes.
“I bet that’s Tom,” she says with a smile.
A Bird’s Eye View
Port Angeles pilot and photographer Tom Roorda has had one of the most unique perspectives during the last two and a half years while the dams have been slowly dismantled. He started taking land-survey photos of the Elwha eight years ago. Back then his photos were used to help the federal Bureau of Reclamation prepare for dam removal.
Today his jaw-dropping aerial photos capture the giant plume of sediment flowing out of the mouth of the Elwha.
“Until I started taking these pictures, no one had any idea how much sediment was coming down or how far it extended out into the strait,” Roorda said.
The flush of sediment has moved the mouth of the Elwha north by about 300 feet, creating a long skinny spit that extends into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The area that used to serve as the Elwha’s estuary has been inundated with freshwater and a new estuary is forming downstream.
“As soon as it starts to rain that sediment gets washed down into the river and we get these big gulps of sediment coming down,” Roorda said.
This winter’s rains have continued to flush sediment downstream, so much so that the river’s flow is currently 10 times higher than normal. While all that sediment is ideal for building nearshore habitat, some worry the water will be too murky for salmon. Sediment can clog and irritate their gills and make it difficult to find food.
But Shaffer for one, isn’t concerned.
“Salmon are brilliant,” she said. “They have evolved over millenia. If they’re given a chance to acclimate to it, they will.”
The First Leap?
Today the entire length of Elwha looks like a free-flowing river. That’s because recent storms have submerged the remaining 25 or so feet of the Glines Canyon Dam.
Glines Canyon Dam, March 10, 2014, Olympic National Park
From webcam images, it’s difficult to even identify the slope of what remains of the 210-foot spillway. This is causing some to wonder how much longer it will be before the first fish leap over the concrete barrier that remains.
It may take weeks or months, but when the first leap happens, it’s not likely to be a salmon.
“Steelhead are quite the athletes. A steelhead can leap up to 12 feet in a single jump,” said John McMillan, a NOAA biologist who is tracking fish recovery on the Elwha.
McMillan is betting on steelhead — trout that, like salmon, are born in freshwater streams before migrate to marine waters. He says he’s seen steelhead ascend a 35-foot cascading waterfall by taking a series of long leaps.
Researchers are using imaging sonar to track the different fish returning to the Elwha, and they’ve found that some steelhead have already returned to the lower Elwha, McMillan said. The bulk of the run, however, is expected to take place from April to early July, he said.
Dam deconstruction will pause May 1 to minimize disruption to the steelhead spawning season.
Removal of the Lower Elwha Dam finished in March 2012. The last of the rubble of the Glines Canyon dam is expected to be gone by September 2014.
On Tuesday Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget request of $11.9 billion dollars for the Department of the interior. The 2015 budget request represents an increase of 2.4 percent from 2014 or $33.6 million dollars to support Indian country initiatives such as land and water conservation, strengthening tribal nation relations, renewable energy development and expanding employment opportunities for Native youth.
“The President’s balanced and responsible budget strategy supports the pivotal role this Department plays as a driver of jobs and economic activity in communities across the country,” said Jewell in a DOI release.
“The budget enables the Interior to carry out its important missions and contains key proposals to uphold our trust responsibilities to American Indians and Alaska Natives, provide a new approach for responsibly budgeting for wild land-fire-suppression needs, invest in climate resilience, and bolster our national parks and public lands in advance of the National Park Service’s 100th anniversary in 2016,” she said.
Jewell also stated that President Obama will continue to support full, permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which she said was “one of the Nation’s most effective tools for expanding access for hunting and fishing, creating ball fields and other places for children to play and learn, and protecting Civil War battlefields.”
“We are very pleased to see the administration’s continuing commitment to Indian country in a time of tight budgetary constraints, said Bill Anoatubby, Governor of the Chickasaw Nation in an email to ICTMN. “We are hopeful that the proposed budget will have a positive impact on the lives of Native Americans.”
According to the DOI, funding from the U.S. Government to Indian country is not one-sided. The Interior’s programs and activities contributed an estimated $371 billion to the economy in 2012 and supported another estimated 2.3 million jobs in the U.S.
The DOI also stated that the Interiors programs continue to generate an excess of revenue for the American people monetarily above their annual appropriation. In 2015, the DOI estimates receipts of nearly copy4.9 billion. A portion of these funds will be shared with State and local governments for school funding, infrastructure improvements and water-conservation projects.
In the confines of the 2015 budget, the DOI also proposes revenue and savings legislation that is estimated to generate over $2.6 billion in the next 10 years.
Specific initiatives in the budget geared toward strengthening tribal nations include a $34 million dollar increase from 2014. These monies provide support to fund social services, economic development, sustainable stewardship of natural resources and community safety in Indian country.
The budget also includes directives to improve educational outcomes in Indian country by providing $79 million for elementary, secondary and post-secondary education programs. The increases are $46 million in 2015 to support the Bureau of Indian Education and its associated programs.
Improving and increasing access to health care in communities includes $4.6 billion for Indian Health Service (IHS) with an additional Opportunity, Growth and Security Initiative that includes an additional $200 million for the construction of IHS health care facilities.
There will also be a $5.23 billion budget over the next 10 years to support the training of 13,000 new residents in a medical education program that incentivizes physician training; $3.95 billion will be budgeted over the next six years to scale up the National Health Services Corps to place 15,000 health care providers annually in the areas that need them most.
Additional budgeted monies include non-specified resources to support the Affordable Health Care act, $650 million for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Native American Housing Block Grant program, $395 million for Department of Justice (DOJ) public safety initiatives in Indian country and $352 million for Public Safety and Justice programs funded by the BIA.
Kevin Brown, who is chief of the Pamunkey Tribe in Virginia and stands on a promising threshold to become federally recognized by 2015, said he is encouraged by the budget increase as a recognition as to the importance of the viability of Indian country.
“All of this sounds promising as well as encouraging,” Brown said. “If I am not mistaken, I also believe there are line items in the BIA’s budget which allows for the allocation of funds of newly federally recognized tribes. I’d like to be able to secure some of that funding.
“All of my time has been volunteered, my assistant chief volunteers as well as my secretary. I’d like to get broadband, and have a computer for the tribal office to get connected to the world.”
Youths’ suicides rattle Indian country: The silence that has shrouded suicide in Indian country is being pierced by growing alarm at the sheer numbers of young Native Americans taking their own lives — more than three times the national average, and up to 10 times the average on some reservations.
By Sari Horwitz, Washington Post
SACATON, ARIZ. The tamarisk tree down the dirt road from Tyler Owens’s house is the one where the teenage girl who lived across the road hanged herself. Don’t climb it, don’t touch it, admonished Owens’s grandmother when Tyler, now 18, was younger.
There are other taboo markers around the Gila River Indian reservation — eight young people committed suicide here over the course of a single year.
“We’re not really open to conversation about suicide,” Owens said. “It’s kind of like a private matter, a sensitive topic. If a suicide happens, you’re there for the family. Then after that, it’s kind of just, like, left alone.”
But the silence that has shrouded suicide in Indian country is being pierced by growing alarm at the sheer number of young Native Americans taking their own lives — more than three times the national average, and up to 10 times on some reservations.
A toxic collection of pathologies — poverty, unemployment, domestic violence, sexual assault, alcoholism and drug addiction — has seeped into the lives of young people among the nation’s 566 tribes. Reversing their crushing hopelessness, Indian experts say, is one of the biggest challenges for these communities.
“The circumstances are absolutely dire for Indian children,” said Theresa M. Pouley, the chief judge of the Tulalip Tribal Court in Washington state and a member of the Indian Law and Order Commission.
Pouley fluently recites statistics in a weary refrain: “One-quarter of Indian children live in poverty, versus 13 percent in the United States. They graduate high school at a rate 17 percent lower than the national average. Their substance-abuse rates are higher. They’re twice as likely as any other race to die before the age of 24. They have a 2.3 percent higher rate of exposure to trauma. They have two times the rate of abuse and neglect. Their experience with post-traumatic stress disorder rivals the rates of returning veterans from Afghanistan.”
In one of the broadest studies of its kind, the Justice Department recently created a national task force to examine the violence and its impact on American Indian and Alaska Native children, part of an effort to reduce the number of Native American youth in the criminal justice system. The level of suicide has startled some task force officials, who consider the epidemic another outcome of what they see as pervasive despair.
Last month, the task force held a hearing on the reservation of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community in Scottsdale. During their visit, Associate Attorney General Tony West, the third-highest-ranking Justice Department official, and task force members drove to Sacaton, about 30 miles south of Phoenix, and met with Owens and 14 other teenagers.
“How many of you know a young person who has taken their life?” the task force’s co-chairman asked. All 15 raised their hands.
“That floored me,” West said.
A ‘trail of broken promises’
There is an image that Byron Dorgan, co-chairman of the task force and a former senator from North Dakota, can’t get out of his head. On the Spirit Lake Nation in North Dakota years ago, a 14-year-old girl named Avis Little Wind hanged herself after lying in bed in a fetal position for 90 days. Her death followed the suicides of her father and sister.
“She lay in bed for all that time, and nobody, not even her school, missed her,” said Dorgan, a Democrat who chaired the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. “Eventually she got out of bed and killed herself. Avis Little Wind died of suicide because mental-health treatment wasn’t available on that reservation.”
Indian youth suicide cannot be looked at in a historical vacuum, Dorgan said. The agony on reservations is directly tied to a “trail of broken promises to American Indians,” he said, noting treaties dating back to the 19th century that guaranteed but largely didn’t deliver health care, education and housing.
“The children bear the brunt of the misery,” Dorgan said, adding that tribal leaders are working hard to overcome the challenges. “But there is no sense of urgency by our country to do anything about it.”
At the first hearing of the Justice Department task force, in Bismarck, N.D., in December, Sarah Kastelic, deputy director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association, used a phrase that comes up repeatedly in deliberations among experts: “historical trauma.”
Youth suicide was once virtually unheard of in Indian tribes. A system of child protection, sustained by tribal child-rearing practices and beliefs, flourished among Native Americans, and everyone in a community was responsible for the safeguarding of young people, Kastelic said.
“Child maltreatment was rarely a problem,” said Kastelic, a member of the native village of Ouzinkie in Alaska, “because of these traditional beliefs and a natural safety net.”
But these child-rearing practices were often lost as the federal government sought to assimilate native people and placed children — often against their parents’ wishes — in “boarding schools” that were designed to immerse Indian children in Euro-American culture.
In many cases, the schools, mostly located off reservations, were centers of widespread sexual, emotional and physical abuse. The transplantation of native children continued into the 1970s; there were 60,000 children in such schools in 1973 as the system was being wound down. They are the parents and grandparents of today’s teenagers.
Michelle Rivard-Parks, a University of North Dakota law professor who has spent 10 years working in Indian country as a prosecutor and tribal lawyer, said that the “aftermath of attempts to assimilate American and Alaska Natives remains ever present . . . and is visible in higher-than-average rates of suicide.”
The Justice Department task force is gathering data and will not offer its final recommendations to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on ways to mitigate violence and suicide until this fall. For now, West, Dorgan and other members are listening to tribal leaders and experts at hearings on reservations around the country.
“We know that the road to involvement in the juvenile justice system is often paved by experiences of victimization and trauma,” West said. “We have a lot of work to do. There are too many young people in Indian country who don’t see a future for themselves, who have lost all hope.”
The testimony West is hearing is sometimes bitter, and witnesses often come forward with great reluctance.
“It’s tough coming forward when you’re a victim,” said Deborah Parker, 43, the vice chair of the Tulalip Tribes in Washington state. “You have to relive what happened. . . . A reservation is like a small town, and you can face a backlash.”
Parker didn’t talk about her sexual abuse as a child until two years ago, when she publicly told of being repeatedly raped when she “was the size of a couch cushion.”
“A majority of our girls have struggled with sexual and domestic violence — not once but repeatedly,” said Parker, who has started a program to help young female survivors and try to prevent suicide. “One of my girls, Sophia, was murdered on my reservation by her partner. Another one of our young girls took her life.”
Stories of violence and abuse
Owens recalls how she used to climb the tamarisk tree with her cousin to look for the nests of mourning doves and pigeons — until the suicide of the 16-year-old girl. The next year, the girl’s distraught father hanged himself in the same tree.
“He was devastated and he was drinking, and he hung himself too,” Owens said.
She and a good friend, Richard Stone, recently talked about their broken families and their own histories with violence. When Owens was younger, her uncle physically abused her until her mother got a restraining order. Stone, 17, was beaten by his alcoholic mother.
“My mother hit me with anything she could find,” Stone said. “A TV antenna, a belt, the wooden end of a shovel.”
Social workers finally removed him and his brothers and sister from their home, and he was placed in a group home and then a foster home.
Both Owens and Stone dream about leaving “the rez.” Owens hopes to get an internship in Washington and have a career as a politician; Stone wants to someday be a counselor or a psychiatrist.
Owens sometimes rides her bike out into the alfalfa and cotton fields near Sacaton, the tiny town named after the coarse grasses that once grew on the Sonoran Desert land belonging to the Akimel O’Odham and Pee Posh tribes. She and her friends sing a peaceful, healing song she learned from the elders about a bluebird who flies west at night, blessing the sun and bringing on the moon and stars.
One recent evening, as the sun dipped below the Sierra Estrella mountains, the two made their way to Owens’s backyard. They climbed onto her trampoline and began jumping in the moonlight, giggling like teenagers anywhere in America.
But later this month on the reservation, they will take on an adult task. Owens, Stone and a group of other teenagers here will begin a two-day course on suicide prevention. A hospital intervention trainer will engage them in role-playing and teach them how to spot the danger signs.
“In Indian country, youths need to have somebody there for them,” Owens said. “I wish I had been that somebody for the girl in the tamarisk tree.”
