So here is something cool: Google three words – tribes largest employers – and dozens of entities pop right up. This is our generation’s success story because across the country, in communities large and small, tribal governments and enterprises are writing lots and lots of paychecks. Tribes are big business.
An Idaho economic impact report summed up this sort of progress well. An economist said: “The study confirms what tribal planners already know – the tribes are rapidly growing, significant engines in the state.”
But that progress takes on a different context in the age of the Affordable Care Act. Tribes are employers. And that means there is a long “to do list” in order to meet the requirements under the healthcare reform law. If a tribe employs more than 50 workers, then insurance has to be offered that meets the requirements of the law and costs the employee less than 9.5 percent of their annual income. (Laura Bird and Jim Roberts of the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board wrote an excellent summary of the requirements.)
It’s important to remember that most Americans, including American Indians and Alaska Natives, get their health insurance through work. (I’ve written this before and will add again, this is uniquely American and dumb. We should not tie our jobs to our health care. But that’s where we are at.)
Right now most of the employer provisions are on hold. The Obama administration gave large employers more flexibility on insurance rules and delayed the implementation for mid-size employers until 2016. That means tribes will have more time to get ready. A good thing, too. Once all of the employer provisions begin, the penalty for being wrong could cost tribes some $2,000 per employee.
However Mark J. Mazur, assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy, wrote that the delay “will allow us to consider ways to simplify the new reporting requirements consistent with the law. Second, it will provide time to adapt health coverage and reporting systems while employers are moving toward making health coverage affordable and accessible for their employees.”
Critics of the Affordable Care Act are not happy about these changes, saying it’s more evidence the law does not work. The administration, however, is trying to make certain there are no more major glitches (such as the website) and this is a logical delay.
Another twist that impacts Indian country is that a major retailer, Target, is ending its insurance options for part-time employers because the workers would likely get a better deal through the exchanges (including tax subsidies). I suspect this would be the same for tribes and tribal enterprises.
The whole question of employment under the Affordable Care Act has taken on a new dimension with the recent report by the Congressional Budget Office. Republican opponents of the law cited this report as proof that some 2.5 million people will lose their jobs as a result. The CBO this week refuted that. The idea the CBO tried to measure was that many people would quit working because they had more choices.
The back and forth from CBO is great. “Q: Will 2.5 Million People Lose Their Jobs in 2024 Because of the ACA? A: No, we would not describe our estimates in that way.”
But, CBO points out, “there is a broader question as to whether the society and the economy will be better off as a result of those choices being made available,” a February 10 blog post from director Doug Elmendorf said. “Even though the individuals making decisions to work less presumably feel that they will be happier as a result of those decisions, total employment, investment, output, and tax revenue will be smaller. (Those effects are included in CBO’s budget and economic projections under current law.) To be sure, the health insurance system in place prior to the ACA generated its own distortions to people’s work decisions, but many of the decisions to work less under the ACA will be made possible by government-funded subsidies, the burden of which will be borne largely by other people … Hence, whether voluntary reductions in hours worked owing to the ACA are good or bad for the country as a whole is a matter of judgment.”
I think this particular debate misses an important point. The Affordable Care Act will free independent operators because it was too expensive to buy single policies on the open market. Over time my guess is that more people will launch a new business because health insurance won’t be a factor. It will be available and affordable.
But that brings us back to the political loop. Those that opposed the Affordable Care Act remain against it. And vice versa. Nothing in the news this week resolves the deep divisions.
Of course tribes and tribal enterprises – large employers, these days – now have a new means to contribute resources to the Indian health system. Fully-insured tribal employees will be a net asset every time they show up at an IHS, nonprofit or tribally-managed clinic or hospital. Tribal employees will be the prime customer.
Mark Trahant is the 20th Atwood Chair at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He is a journalist, speaker and Twitter poet and is a member of The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. Comment on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TrahantReports.
YouTube Meagan Baldy is changing Native eating habits one video at a time.
Source: Indian Country Today Media Network
From her home kitchen, Meagan Baldy, director of the Hoopa Community Garden, is teaching people how to cook meals with local, Native ingredients. Baldy launched her cooking series in fall 2013 on YouTube and Facebook to promote healthy lifestyles and agricultural sustainability in her community and throughout Indian country.
This week’s menu features black trumpet, kale and salmon stir fry—all sourced from local Native businesses or the Hoopa Food Distribution Program and Vegi Club shares—a Community Supported Agriculture.
She promotes leafy greens and superfoods, like kale and trumpets, as well as wild fish and game.
“Mushrooms are a great source of vitamin E; they’re full of antioxidants,” Baldy says on her most recent video. “They have a lot of qualities good for us if you’re trying to loose weight; they are a metabolic booster,” she tells viewers. Holding up the kale, she explains it’s a good source of iron.
“I like to take comfort foods we’re used to preparing and add fresh new ingredients,” Baldy told the Two Rivers Tribune. “You have the familiar flavors, plus something new and nutritious.”
Over the past six years, Baldy has converted the diet of her family. “My family, especially my husband, was the meat and potatoes type of family,” Baldy said. “But now they all love kale. They know it goes well with everything. Now they love to promote it, and other healthy foods just as much as I do.”
Beyond her weekly cookng show, Baldy can be found in the Hoopa at K’ima:w Medical Center’s Diabetes Program, and leading short cooking lessons at Hoopa Elementary School. She’s even got some students hooked on kale smoothies, she told the Two Rivers Tribune.
Baldy’s videos are filmed in collaboration with Hoopa Food Distribution, the Klamath-Trinity Resource Conservation District, Hoopa Food Policy Council, K’ima:w Medical Center, Hupa Resource Center and other organizations. Check out her YouTube channel here.
Inside a ceremonial longhouse in northern Oregon last September, the sun’s rays spilling between the high-peaked beams, Davis Yellowash Washines was seated in full ceremonial dress — yellow headband, red sash, beaded shoes. A rawhide drum rested in his hand, and to his left sat four teenage boys, each with his own drum and mallet. One wore a black Chevrolet T-shirt. They thumped their instruments and called out native songs as an organized smattering of young children bounced rhythmically counter-clockwise around the dirt floor. Two dozen fellow members of the tribal community, seated in folded metal chairs, looked on.
“This longhouse is used for lots of occasions,” Washines said between songs. “But this one is significant.”
This ceremony aimed to ward off coal.
Celilo Indian Village, Ore., separated from the Columbia River by only a highway and some railroad tracks, is one of many tribal communities that sit in the path of what could soon become America’s coal-export superhighway. If government agencies grant approval to three export terminals proposed for Oregon and Washington, up to 100 million metric tons of coal per year could soon be shuttled in open rail cars from mines in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana, along the shores of the Columbia River and the Puget Sound, and through ranches and reservations like this one. The coal would then be loaded onto ships destined for Asia’s proliferating fleet of coal-fired power plants.
Many activists currently fighting the plan see the impacts of burning coal on the global climate as their primary motivation. But for the Yakama, Lummi and other tribes, as well as communities in the path of these shipments, it’s the local effects that worry them most. There are the potential traffic delays and disturbances to cultural sites. Then there’s the very real prospect of toxic coal dust wafting off the passing trains, fouling the air, poisoning local waterways and even contaminating key food resources — such as the salmon on which many local tribes, including those living in the tiny Celilo Indian Village, depend.
While the U.S. has seen a steady decline in coal use in recent years thanks to tighter federal regulations and the expanded viability of natural gas and renewable energy, the rise of burgeoning, coal-hungry economies in China, India and other fast-developing nations means the Celilo tribes — like many communities across the Pacific Northwest — now find themselves wedged squarely between a domestic abundance of the combustible rock and its most promising international market.
The potential expansion of coal exports elicits differing opinions among tribes and communities here. What may be an environmental or public health imposition for one is seen as a desperately needed opportunity for another. The coal industry, for example, argues that exports could inject welcome economic activity into struggling Northwest towns and reservations. By itself, the Gateway Pacific Terminal proposed at Cherry Point on the Puget Sound would add approximately 1,250 permanent jobs, including induced jobs such as restaurant and healthcare workers, as well as 4,400 temporary construction jobs, according to an analysis by an industry consultant. Annual local and state tax revenues would amount to about $11 million.
The dispute over the coal trains is playing out in television advertisements, on the streets and inside boardrooms, town halls and courthouses from Washington, D.C., to Seattle. A series of hearings and protests over the last few months have attracted thousands of people — some donning makeshift respirators, others wearing “Beyond Coal” T-shirts, and some even rappelling from a bridge over the Columbia River as a symbolic blockade to the shipments. Still, nowhere are the tensions so acute as on the hardscrabble reservations that either sit atop valuable coal — an estimated 30 percent of U.S. coal reserves west of the Mississippi are located on native lands — or lie in the path of the trains that would haul it to port.
Just outside the walls of the longhouse where Washines and his fellow drummers were singing out in opposition to the coal shipments, a 22-foot totem pole lay on the bed of a white truck. The carving, which depicted five salmon, two kneeling men and a hungry child, was touring towns, churches and reservations across the Pacific Northwest as part of an effort to consolidate tribal opposition to the proposed coal shipments. (The totem’s last stop, in late September, would be across the border in the Tsleil-Waututh Nation of British Columbia, where it now stands erected as a display of solidarity with that tribe’s parallel struggle over a tar sands oil pipeline.)
“Mother Earth doesn’t have a voice,” said Karen Jim Whitford, a tribal elder, as she stepped shoeless into the center of the longhouse floor. A couple of her tears disappeared into the dirt. “So we must speak for her.”
“I vote we stand up,” exclaimed another elder, Lorintha Umtuch, referring to the totem’s symbolic call for Native Americans to get off their knees and “Warrior Up!” for future generations. “Indian people need to stop this, or else corporations will trample us.”
Not all tribes stand on the same side of the coal-export battle line. CJ Stewart, a senator of the Crow Nation, said in a phone interview in October that his tribe desperately needs to develop its coal reserves to improve its economic fortunes and lift its people out of poverty. In November, the Crow Nation signed a joint resolution with the Navajo Nation in support of each other’s coal development. “We rely on coal just as they rely on salmon,” Stewart said, referring to the Yakama and other tribes represented in Celilo. “All tribes share one common enemy, and that enemy is poverty.”
Many tribes along the rail corridor, however, feel it’s not just livelihoods at stake — it’s lives. Jewell Praying Wolf James, the carver of the well-traveled totem and member of the Lummi Nation, expressed sympathy with the coal-dependent tribes during a later stop on the totem’s journey in Olympia, Wash. “We feel bad for the Crow Nation, the Navajo, the Hopi. That’s all they got,” he said. “But we want clean air, clean water. We want salmon restored and our children healthy.”
Davis Yellowash Washines presses his hand against one of the brightly painted salmon encircling the bottom of the totem. “The salmon gave its life for you, just like the tree gave its life for this purpose,” he said. (Paul Anderson)
Dig into Native American history and you will strike coal. As far back as the 1300s, Hopi Indians in what is now the U.S. Southwest used the fossil fuel for cooking, heating and baking clay pottery. In the 1800s, Native Americans made up much of the early mining workforce that would help ignite coal’s long reign as the go-to fuel source for the country’s necessities and luxuries — from transporting goods and running factories to heating homes and powering Playstations.
But King Coal’s grip is slipping. The rise of hydro-fracturing technology in recent years has unleashed torrents of natural gas, a cheaper and cleaner alternative, and left coal-rich states and undiversified coal companies with a serious revenue problem. Many have responded by looking to Asia, where mining local coal, in addition to building wind farms and solar panels, has not created nearly enough energy for the rapidly growing economies there.
Asia’s ready market and America’s still plentiful coal could make a convenient marriage. Proving particularly attractive to Asian buyers is Powder River Basin coal, which is cheap to extract and relatively low in polluting sulfur. Yet plenty of obstacles remain in the U.S. and abroad before coal interests can successfully drive their product to northwestern ports for export. There are the vocal environmental advocates, the newly elected local leaders who’ve made clear their opposition to the plans, the big-money investors who’ve withdrawn support for port builders and, of course, the tribes.
In a July letter to the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency tasked with evaluating the two Washington State coal port projects, the Lummi Nation wrote of its “unconditional and unequivocal opposition” to the terminal planned for Cherry Point, near its reservation. The tribe cited among other concerns “significant and unavoidable impacts and damage” to treaty rights reserved in the 19th century to fish at its “usual and accustomed” areas.
Patricia Graesser, a spokeswoman with the Corps, acknowledged the Lummi letter and said her agency was in government-to-government discussions with the tribe. “We have a responsibility to uphold the nation’s treaty with Native American tribes,” she said.
The Chinese government, meanwhile, is responding to a major air pollution crisis sparked largely by rapid development centered on coal-fired power. In December, Shanghai’s air quality fell to a record low and the country’s smog could be seen from space. But even with leaders in China vowing to slow down the growth of coal use, experts predict global coal consumption will jump up another 25 percent by the end of the decade.
Decisions on the Northwest export terminals could significantly influence the future of coal in Asia. “Opening up this main line of cheap American coal is a pretty important signal if you are a Chinese official thinking about how much to invest in what kind of energy infrastructure,” said KC Golden, senior policy adviser for the non-profit Climate Solutions, which has advocated against the proposed ports.
The effects would span the globe. According to estimates by the Sightline Institute, a nonprofit think tank based in Seattle, Pacific Northwest coal exports could create greater national and worldwide environmental impacts, including on climate change, than a Canadian company’s controversial proposal to ferry Albertan tar sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast via the Keystone XL pipeline.
As Jewell Praying Wolf James put it: “Once the coal gets to China, it’s pollution for all of us.”
For more than 11,000 years, Celilo Falls served as the center of trade and commerce for Native Americans of the West. The upwards of 15 million salmon that passed through the mile-long span of rocky chutes in the Columbia River every year functioned as a sort of currency. “Some tribal people call it pre-contact Wall Street,” said Charles Hudson, intergovernmental affairs director with the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission in Portland, Ore.
Lewis and Clark called it “the great mart.”
But within a few short hours on March 10, 1957, Celilo’s era of plenty came to an abrupt end. Rising floodwaters from a newly completed hydroelectric dam engulfed the rapids. Salmon runs soon shrank to a small fraction of their former numbers.
Davis Yellowash Washines, chief of enforcement for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, was only 5 years old when the Dalles Dam opened and drowned Celilo Falls. “I can still feel its mist. I can still hear its thunder,” he said over dinner the night before the September longhouse ceremony.
Warren Spencer, a Yakama elder, was serving in the military in Germany that year, but he recalled the time-lapse photos of the inundation he received by mail from his mother back home in Celilo Falls. “I sat there on my bunk and cried,” he said.
Now, Spencer is deeply concerned about how this new energy project might affect the futures of his four children, 17 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. The coal push, he said, represents the continued encroachment of the federal government and “white man’s money” on Native American tribes. “It’s turning brother against brother,” he said.
Members of the Lummi Nation bask in the natural light of the Celilo longhouse before the totem pole ceremony in September. (Paul Anderson)
Many of the current and former residents of Celilo belong to the Yakama Nation. Like the Lummi, the tribe put its opposition to the exports on paper. In a November letter to the Army Corps of Engineers and a state official, Yakama chairman Harry Smiskin referenced a “long history of Treaty violations from energy development in the region that permanently and irreparably have harmed my People.” The new energy projects, he said, would add “direct adverse impacts” to the tribe’s treaty rights to fish, hunt and gather food, and do more damage to the already fragile environment, culture and health of his nation.
Dr. Frank James, of the University of Washington School of Public Health, underscored the “disproportionate impacts” of the coal projects facing native people of the Northwest. Much of this vulnerability results, he said, from their traditional dependence on the salmon of the region’s rivers and coastal waters — fish that are now widely listed as threatened or endangered under federal law and could be further spoiled by air and water pollution from mining and transporting the coal, and its burning overseas.
The tribes’ reliance on salmon goes beyond a staple food and a means to make a living. “It is their total way of life,” said James. “Salmon is part of their religion, their culture, their language. To further impact that is an assault on their very existence.”
In a back corner of the Celilo longhouse kitchen, Gloria Jim sat in a folding chair, on a brief break from cooking the ceremony’s Columbia River salmon lunch with other Celilo women. She lamented that they hadn’t had enough salmon to serve for breakfast, too.
“That’s how it used to be here,” said Jim, who wore a white shirt printed with a picture of her deceased son, pink stretch pants and running shoes. She recalled the Forest Gump-like menu of her childhood: Salmon, fried or dried, stuffed or baked, or simply salted.
“My mom didn’t believe in food stamps. We lived on what we caught,” she said. “Now we have no choice. We have to go to the grocery store.”
Her people have been warned, she added, that the salmon they do catch and eat may be dangerously polluted. An estimated 17 percent of pregnant Native American women already have mercury levels high enough to disrupt the healthy development of their babies — much higher than other racial groups.
Deposits of the neurotoxic heavy metal, along with arsenic and other contaminants from coal-fired power plants, can accumulate up the food chain and into salmon. Research further suggests that around 25 percent of the mercury in Northwest American waterways and up to 10 percent of the ozone in the region’s skies is carried by wind currents across the Pacific — from power plants in Asia.
Coal exports could pollute the region in other ways. Perhaps most talked about are the risks of heavy metal-laden coal dust and diesel exhaust blown and belched from trains, terminals and ocean-going tankers. Derailments, such as the one that sent seven cars spilling coal into a British Columbia creek last week, raise further fears, as does the possibility of bunker fuel spills once tankers set out to sea through narrow, rough passages.
In November, Dan Jaffe, an environmental scientist at the University of Washington-Bothell, released preliminary results of a study on the environmental insults of existing coal train traffic. His team monitored 450 passing trains — some carrying coal, some not — from two representative sites. They sampled for about 10 days at a spot on the Columbia River Gorge and for about a month near a Seattle home that butts up against railroad tracks currently used by trains en route to Canadian coal ports. Jaffe said he confirmed elevated levels of diesel exhaust there “on par with the dirtiest air in the Seattle area,” as well as a slight increase in large airborne particles — likely coal dust, he said — when coal trains passed by.
The three proposed terminals would dramatically increase rail traffic, bringing some 35 additional mile-plus-long trains in and out of the region every day. Currently, fewer than 10 coal trains come and go.
Jaffe’s crowdfunded research has yet to be peer-reviewed, a point emphasized by Courtney Wallace, a spokeswoman with Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, whose lines would host much of the westbound coal. Wallace added that BNSF has spent more than $1 billion on rail cars and locomotives that “achieve the highest EPA standards available,” and result in 69 percent fewer diesel emissions compared to older locomotives.
BNSF has testified that up to 645 pounds of coal dust can escape from each rail car during a 400-mile journey, but Wallace also pointed to findings by the railway that this fugitive dust diminishes as railcars travel farther from the Powder River Basin and toward export terminals.
Several environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, filed a lawsuit in July against BNSF over coal contamination of U.S. waterways. Wallace called the action a “publicity stunt,” but a U.S. District judge denied a motion to dismiss the case this month.
Blown coal dust and other hazards could be particularly dire around Celilo and the rest of the Columbia River Gorge, where train tracks are sometimes just feet from tribal residences, said Hudson, of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. “The winds are reliable and strong — 40, 50, 70 miles per hour,” he said. “There’s a reason it’s the wind-surfing capital of the world.”
Located in rural Montana, the Crow Nation can’t boast a lucrative seafood or wind-surfing tourism market. What they do have is a whole lot of coal. Approximately 9 billion tons of the fossil fuel lie beneath their land, comprising one of the largest coal reserves in the United States.
“Coal is the way we’ve been taking care of our people,” said CJ Stewart, the Crow senator. Yet his people continue to struggle with poverty and an unemployment rate he suggested is upwards of 50 percent. “And the U.S. cries over its 8 percent,” he said.
In June, the U.S. government approved a deal between the Crow and Cloud Peak Energy, a Wyoming company that’s moving to increase its coal exports to Asian markets. The tribe now has the green light to lease its rights to an estimated 1.4 billion tons of coal, more than the U.S. consumes annually. The deal could be worth at least $10 million for the Crow over the first five years. Cloud Peak has also pledged to give preference in hiring, training and promotion to qualified Native Americans, as well as annual scholarships to local native students. A spokesman for Cloud Peak, Rick Curtsinger, said the company is continuing to work through an agreement with the tribe.
Crow Nation chairman Darrin Old Coyote testified in July before the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources that the deal is largely dependent on the fate of coal exports through the Northwest. Such significant coal development, he said, has “unlimited potential to improve the ongoing substandard socioeconomic conditions of the Crow people and the surrounding communities in southeastern Montana.”
“Given our vast mineral resources, the Crow Nation can, and should, be self-sufficient,” he said.
Also in the heart of the Powder River Basin, and also saddled with high unemployment, are the Northern Cheyenne. The tribe has a long history of resisting coal development due to perceived environmental health risks. But like the Crow, the Northern Cheyenne are also recognizing an increasingly tough economic reality.
“We’ve got a lot of coal underneath our land,” said Tom Mexican Cheyenne, director of the Northern Cheyenne’s community health department, who made clear that he did not speak for the tribe. “There’s a split — some on the tribal council are for coal mining and some are against it.”
The Northern Cheyenne’s decision on whether or not to harvest their coal may, too, come down to pending verdicts on the Pacific Northwest ports. No train tracks currently run to their reservation’s coal reserves, though rail lines could be expanded with enough demand.
Mexican Cheyenne believes the council is leaning towards development of the coal. “I see a real desperation to help the economy any way they can,” he said.
Wind energy has also been on the table here for years. But impoverished tribes such as the Northern Cheyenne and the Crow often lack the funds necessary for capital investments and opportunities for outside help, such as tax credits.
Debra Lekanoff, a leader with the Swinomish Tribe of Washington, said the tribes need federal support to find alternative ways to benefit from their resources. “We urge the federal government to help our brothers and sisters with funding, capacity-building and sound science to open up the doors to new opportunities,” she said.
She suggested that the “elephant in the room” in the coal development debate is the challenge of “walking in two worlds” and soundly balancing “economic sustainability and environmental protection.”
The Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, which includes the Yakama and Lummi, adopted a resolution in September supporting a pilot project proposed by the Crow Nation to convert some of its coal to liquid fuels such as diesel and gasoline for domestic use. The tribe’s plan, which Stewart said illustrates that the Crow are not entirely reliant on coal exports, also gained support from the National Congress of American Indians this fall. It still awaits federal approval.
The official document from the Northwest Indians, however, notes that their blessing does not “supersede, replace, or rescind” a resolution made by the group in May that opposed all proposals to increase transportation through the region of “fossil energy,” including both coal and unrefined crude oil.
About a week after the resolution’s adoption, Jewell Praying Wolf James’s totem pole pulled up in front of the Washington state capitol building in Olympia for another event opposing coal exports. Much like the other stops on the totem’s journey, this ceremony’s songs and speeches pointed to both the despair and hopes of Native Americans and the deeply complex tensions at hand.
A crowd of some 50 people, many representatives of local tribes, stood in the alternating rain and sun in front of the flatbed truck. Flanking the truck was a yard sign that read, “No coal exports. We can do better.”
Creating alternatives, experts agree, is prerequisite to combating climate change and sustaining resources for future generations — and even to passing judgment on any group that chooses to develop its coal, or buy and burn it.
“At the end of the day, we’re not going to stop fossil-fuel dependency if we don’t have an answer for how to create energy and create better lives,” said KC Golden, the Climate Solutions policy adviser. “The Crow and other folks across the world want a fair shot at the relative prosperity we enjoy. We have to have a better answer than digging up half of Montana and burning it in Asia.”
Today’s casinos of flashing lights and slot machines in smoke-filled rooms attract high rollers and bad losers. Many see casinos as a lucrative business for Native American reservations — but does this myth of money-making match reality?
Twenty-five percent of the U.S. population aged 21 and over visited a casino and participated in gambling in 2010. In that year alone, U.S. casinos enjoyed revenues of $34.6 billion, according to the American Gaming Association.
It’s a common assumption that the gaming industry is a cash cow for Native Americans, especially since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that as part of tribal sovereignty, state tax and regulatory laws do not necessarily apply to Native Americans living on reservations.
Tribal sovereignty refers to tribes’ right to govern themselves, define their own membership, manage property, and regulate tribal business and relations while recognizing a government-to-government relationship with states and the federal government. But despite tribes’ independence and exemptions, the Native American population as a whole comprises the minority living with the largest disparities in health, education and income in the United States.
The unemployment rate on some reservations can reach as high as 75 percent, with nearly 10 percent of all Native families being homeless. For some of those families who do have homes, they may lack electricity or running water, Liberation news reports.
Gaming has helped raise tribal communities out of poverty by providing funds for housing, schools, health care and education, as well as stable jobs for community members, but according to the Native American Rights Fund, of the estimated 560 federally recognized American Indian nations, only 224 are involved in gaming. Tribes who are geographically located on rural, unpopulated land may never take part in the industry, while those who reside near major urban areas benefit the most from gaming operations.
Can tribal sovereignty exist within a city?
The Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa not only has a casino on its reservation in northern Minnesota, but one that is located 20 miles to the east in downtown Duluth. With the “Fond-du-Luth” casino establishment located outside of the reservation, issues pertaining to tribal sovereignty and gaming revenues are currently being disputed by city leaders.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that because Fond-du-Luth is outside the reservation, a 1994 agreement was enacted, stating that the casino would pay a 19 percent “rent” of its gross income for 25 years and an unspecified rate for the following 25 years to the city in exchange for services. This provided Duluth with around $6 million income annually from the Fond du Lac band, but in 2009, the band stopped paying.
Karen Diver, chairwoman of the Fond du Lac band, said payments were halted when it began questioning the legality of the agreement. After asking the National Indian Gaming Commission to review the 1994 consent agreement, it found the agreement violated the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which requires tribes to have “sole proprietary interest” for tribal casinos.
The band negotiated a payment-per-services model, covering services like law enforcement and fire protection, but a U.S. District Court judge ruled this month that $10.4 million is owed from the Fond du Lac band’s halted payments from 2009 to 2011, which the band might be able to appeal.
The issues that arose in Duluth were similar to those when New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) was onboard for a plan to build casinos under the Seneca Nation in Rochester and other areas upstate.
Initially, like Fond-du-Luth, there was discussion of the state government receiving a negotiated piece of the casino’s gross intake, but the sovereignty issue again posed question.
“How could you put a sovereign nation in the middle of your downtown?” said Lovely Warren, Rochester city council president.
Steve Siegel, formerly of the College of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Niagara University, told Rochester City Newspaper that most of the time, when a tax-exempt casino is placed on what is claimed to be sovereign land within an urban setting, all of the gain goes to the casino complex.
“Local businesses are devastated because they can’t compete with this massive nontaxable entity,” Siegel said.
Native Americans are still Americans
Although the casino institutions themselves are not federally taxed, in 2006 the IRS issued a bulletin stating that individual Native Americans, especially those living outside of a reservation, are still subject to federal income tax every year.
More than seven in ten Native Americans and Alaska Natives now live in metropolitan areas, and 27 percent live in poverty, according to the Census Bureau.
The bulletin states:
“While there are numerous valid treaties between various Federally Recognized Indian Tribal Governments and the United States government, some of which may contain language providing for narrowly defined tax exemptions, these treaties have limited application to specific tribes … Taxpayers who are affected by such treaty language must be a member of a particular tribe having a treaty and must cite that specific treaty in claiming any exemption. There is no general treaty that is applicable to all Native Americans.”
Even so, many Native American families subject to treaties are still not exempt from taxes. The IGRA has provisions that permit tribes to make per-capita distributions from gaming activities to tribe members and the community. But according to the bulletin, “Under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, any distribution of casino gaming proceeds to individual tribe members is also subject to federal income tax.”
Essentially, Native Americans are living in a nation where the majority of its population is struggling to make ends meet. They face taxes and economic strife while trying to support their families. Some may sit more comfortably than others, but the late-night hours from visitors at the slot machines or blackjack tables don’t quite live up to the dream.
A mile-long coal train waits south of Blaine, Friday morning, Oct. 11, 2013, to cross the border and unload in Canada. PHILIP A. DWYER — THE BELLINGHAM HERALD
By Phuong Lee, Associated Press
SEATTLE — State and local regulators said Wednesday they’ll consider a sweeping environmental review of the effects of a proposed terminal along the Columbia River in Washington that would export millions of tons of coal to Asia.
The review of the nearly $650 million Millennium Bulk Terminals project will consider impacts that extend well beyond the site, including global-warming effects from burning the exported coal in Asia and rail impacts as coal is shipped by train from the Rockies throughout the state.
The announcement represents a victory for project opponents, who said the decision ensures that concerns over coal dust, greenhouse gas emissions and rail traffic are addressed.
“It’s appropriate for such a massive project,” said Brett VandenHeuvel, executive director of the Columbia Riverkeeper. “It’s encouraging to see the agencies take to heart the deep public interest in protecting our communities.”
Some national and local business and labor groups criticized the broad scope, saying “cradle to grave” permitting isn’t justified and would have a chilling effect on trade and economic development.
Ken Miller, president and CEO of Millennium Bulk Terminals-Longview, said in a statement Wednesday that the company had hoped to be hiring workers now, two years after submitting permits, but was pleased the agencies are moving forward. A spokesman for Miller said he would not be available for an interview.
The National Association of Manufacturers, the attorney generals of North Dakota and Montana and others had argued for a narrower focus, saying there’s no precedent for such a far-reaching analysis.
“This decision sets an unnecessary precedent for manufacturers that could make it harder to obtain approvals for almost every product we export, from grains to airplanes,” Ross Eisenberg with the National Association of Manufacturers said in a statement Wednesday.
State Department of Ecology officials challenged the notion that this review sets a precedent for others, saying that projects are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
Ecology’s Sally Toteff also noted that the state and county has just started the study and haven’t reached any conclusions.
“How much of a concern are impacts from greenhouse gas emissions or vessel or rail transport? We don’t know yet. How might this affect permitting decisions? We don’t know yet. That is the point of the study,” she said.
The project, planned by Ambre Energy Ltd. and Arch Coal Inc., would handle up to 44 million metric tons of coal from the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming at a terminal near Longview.
It’s one of three coal-export docks proposed in the Northwest. The other projects are near Bellingham, Wash., and Boardman, Ore.
On Tuesday, Oregon regulators issued three key permits for another Ambre Energy project in Boardman but threw up a new hurdle. The state Department of Environmental Quality said it would require the project to seek a water-quality certification sought by opponents.
The proposal, known as the Morrow Pacific project, would bring up to 8.8 million tons of coal a year by train from Montana or Wyoming. The coal would be loaded onto enclosed barges at the terminal and then shipped down the Columbia River, where it would be loaded onto Asia-bound ships in Port Westward in Clatskanie.
That project still needs permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Oregon Department of State Lands.
An Army Corps spokesman said a permitting decision is expected this spring.
The coal-export issue has been a hotly debated topic with people and groups weighing in from across the region, including Montana ranchers, Northwest tribes and local city officials and labor groups.
Washington state regulators said they received more than 215,000 comments on the proposed Longview terminal. A bulk of them submitted as part of massive public comment campaigns organized by various groups.
Toteff said the environmental review will look at the amount greenhouse gas emissions attributable to the project on-site and when coal is burned in Asia, but it won’t look at impacts within any country that imports the coal.
The study could take years. It’s required before many local, state and federal permits can be approved. The county and state are conducting one review, while the Army Corps of Engineers is doing a separate one.
Last July, Ecology and Whatcom County officials also said they would consider a broad scope when reviewing the Gateway Pacific terminal coal-export dock proposed near Bellingham. The corps decided to take a narrower review of that Cherry Point project.
Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2014/02/12/2980321/sweeping-review-for-sw-wash-coal.html#storylink=cpy
Tribes on both sides of the border intervene in proceeding to address tanker traffic and oil spill risks
A boy pulls salmon from a net. Photo Courtesy of Tulalip Tribes
Press Release, Office of Public Affairs, Tulalip Tribes, Earth Justice
Seattle, WA; Vancouver, BC — Opposition to Kinder Morgan’s TransMountain proposed pipeline project ramped up today as Coast Salish peoples on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border vowed to oppose the project as intervenors before Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB). Coast Salish intervenors include the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Tulalip Tribes, Lummi Nation, and Suquamish Tribe in Washington state, and the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in British Columbia. The deadline for application to participate in the NEB process was last night at midnight.
“Over the last 100 years, our most sacred site, the Salish Sea, has been deeply impacted by our pollution-based economy,” said Swinomish Chairman Brian Cladoosby. “Every kind of pollution ends up in the Salish Sea. We have decided no more and we are stepping forward. It is up to this generation and future generations to restore and protect the precious waters of the Salish Sea.”
“Our people are bound together by our deep connection to Burrard Inlet and the Salish Sea. We are the ‘People of the Inlet’ and we are united in our resolve to protect our land, water and air from this risky project,” said Chief Maureen Thomas of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation. “We will use all lawful means to oppose it. This is why we have applied to intervene in the NEB hearing process.”
In December, Kinder Morgan filed an application with the NEB to build a new pipeline to bring tar sands oil from Alberta to Vancouver, B.C. The NEB is the Canadian federal agency that regulates interprovincial energy infrastructure. It is responsible for reviewing, recommending and regulating major energy projects, such as the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.
If approved, the proposal would see the transport of tar sands oil expanded from its present level of approximately 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000 barrels per day. With an almost seven-fold increase in oil tankers moving through the shared waters of the Salish Sea, an increase in groundings, accidents, incidents, leaks and oil spills is inevitable.
Experts have acknowledged that a serious oil spill would devastate an already-stressed marine environment and likely lead to collapses in the remaining salmon stocks and further contamination of shellfish beds, wiping out Indigenous fishing rights.
“The fishing grounds of the Salish Sea are the lifeblood of our peoples. We cannot sit idly by while these waters are threatened by reckless increases in oil tanker traffic and increased risk of catastrophic oil spill,” said Mel Sheldon, Chairman of the Tulalip Tribes.
The proposed tar sands pipeline expansion is one of several projects that would dramatically increase the passage of tankers, bulk carriers, and other vessels through Salish Sea shipping routes and adjacent waters on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border. In addition to oil, regulators in both countries are reviewing controversial proposals to export huge quantities of U.S. coal. Taken together, these projects would greatly increase the risk of oil spills and other accidents that threaten the Coast Salish economies and cultures.
“Today we are taking a stand to honour our ancient connection to the Salish Sea. The threat of oil spills and industrial pollution continue to threaten our way of life.” said Chief Ian Campbell of the Squamish Nation. “We stand in unity with all who care about the health of the Salish Sea and defend it for future generations.”
Chairman Timothy Ballew III of the Lummi Nation stated, “I am a fisherman, a father and a member of the great Lummi Nation. As the northernmost Washington Treaty Tribe of the Boldt Decision, we are the stewards the Salish Sea and will not allow the Kinder Morgan proposal along our waterways that will threaten our harvesting areas and further the detrimental impacts to the environment and natural resources.”
Source: Robert L. Walker Humans from the Clovis culture used characteristic stone points (brown) and rod-shaped bone tools.
The remains of a young boy, ceremonially buried some 12,600 years ago in Montana, have revealed the ancestry of one of the earliest populations in the Americas, known as the Clovis culture.
Published in this issue of Nature, the boy’s genome sequence shows that today’s indigenous groups spanning North and South America are all descended from a single population that trekked across the Bering land bridge from Asia (M. Rasmussen et al. Nature 506, 225–229; 2014). The analysis also points to an early split between the ancestors of the Clovis people and a second group, whose DNA lives on in populations in Canada and Greenland (see page 162).
But the research underscores the ethical minefield of studying ancient Native American remains, and rekindles memories of a bruising legal fight over a different human skeleton in the 1990s.
To avoid such a controversy, Eske Willerslev, a palaeobiologist at the University of Copenhagen who led the latest study, attempted to involve Native American communities. And so he embarked on a tour of Montana’s Indian reservations last year, talking to community members to explain his work and seek their support. “I didn’t want a situation where the first time they heard about this study was when it’s published,” he says.
Source: Montana Office of Public Instruction. Construction workers discovered the Clovis burial site on a private ranch near the small town of Wilsall in May 1968 (see ‘Ancient origins’). About 100 stone and bone artefacts, as well as bone fragments from a male child aged under two, were subsequently recovered.
The boy’s bones were found to date to the end of the Clovis culture, which flourished in the central and western United States between about 13,000 and 12,600 years ago. Carved elk bones found with the boy’s remains were hundreds of years older, suggesting that they were heirlooms. The ranch, owned by Melvyn and Helen Anzick, is the only site yet discovered at which Clovis objects exist alongside human bones. Most of the artefacts now reside in a museum, but researchers returned the human remains to the Anzick family in the late 1990s.
At that time, the Anzicks’ daughter, Sarah, was conducting cancer and genome research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and thought about sequencing genetic material from the bones. But she was wary of stoking a similar debate to the one surrounding Kennewick Man, a human skeleton found on the banks of the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington, in July 1996. Its discovery sparked an eight-year legal battle between Native American tribes, who claimed that they were culturally connected to the individual, and researchers, who said that the roughly 9,000-year-old remains pre-dated the tribes.
The US government sided with the tribes, citing the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The act requires that human remains discovered on federal lands — as Kennewick Man was — are returned to affiliated tribes for reburial. But a court ruled that the law did not apply, largely because of the age of the remains, and ordered that Kennewick Man be stored away from public view in a museum.
Sarah Anzick sought the advice of local tribes over the Clovis boy, but she could not reach a consensus with the tribes on what to do. She gave up on the idea, stored the bones in a safe location and got on with her other research.
In 2009, archaeologist Michael Waters, of Texas A&M University in College Station, contacted Anzick with the idea of sending the remains to Willerslev’s lab. (In early 2010, the lab published one of the first genome sequences of an ancient human, a 4,000-year-old resident of Greenland; see M. Rasmussen et al. Nature 463, 757–762; 2010.) “I said, ‘I will allow you guys to do this, but I want to be involved,’” recalls Anzick, who has published more than a dozen papers in leading journals.
In Copenhagen, she extracted DNA from fragments of the boy’s skull ready for mitochondrial genome sequencing, which offers a snapshot of a person’s maternal ancestry. Back in Montana months later, she received the sequencing data and discovered that the genome’s closest match was to present-day Native Americans. “My heart just stopped,” she says.
Right to remains
After Willerslev’s team confirmed the link by sequencing the boy’s nuclear genome (a more detailed indicator of ancestry), Willerslev sought advice from an agency that handles reburial issues. He was told that, because the remains were found on private land, NAGPRA did not apply and no consultation was needed. Despite this, Willerslev made his own attempt to consult local tribes. This led to a meeting in September at the burial site, with Anzick, Willerslev and their co-author Shane Doyle, who works in Native American studies at Montana State University in Bozeman, and is a member of the Crow tribe.
“That place is very special to me, that’s my ancestral homeland.”
“That place is very special to me, that’s my ancestral homeland,” says Doyle. He told Willerslev and Anzick that they should rebury the child where he was found. “I think you need to put the little boy back where his parents left him,” Doyle recalls telling them.
Doyle and Willerslev then set off on a 1,500-kilometre road trip to meet representatives of four Montana tribes; Doyle later consulted another five. Many of the people they talked to had few problems with the research, Doyle says, but some would have preferred to have been consulted before the study started, and not years after.
Willerslev says that researchers studying early American remains should assume that they are related to contemporary groups, and involve them as early as possible. But it is not always clear whom to contact, he adds, particularly when remains are related to groups spread across the Americas. “We have to engage with Native Americans, but how you deal with that question in practice is not an easy thing,” he says.
Hank Greely, a legal scholar at Stanford University in California who is interested in the legal and ethical issues of human genetics, commends the approach of Willerslev’s team. But he says that there is no single solution to involving Native American communities in such research. “You’re looking to try to talk to the people who might be most invested in, or connected with, particular sets of remains,” he advises.
Dennis O’Rourke, a geneticist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, who studies ancient DNA from populations native to the islands around Alaska, notes that indigenous groups have varying concerns: some want remains reburied, others do not, for instance.
The Montana tribes overwhelmingly wanted the Clovis boy’s bones interred. Plans for a reburial ceremony, possibly at an undisclosed site, are now being hashed out, with the Crow Nation playing a lead role. It is expected to take place in the spring, after the ground thaws.
SEATTLE — An extremely rare piece of history was discovered Tuesday in a South Lake Union construction site. Officials from the Burke Museum confirm that construction workers uncovered a mammoth tusk that appears to date back to the Ice Age. Joe Wells with Transit Plumbing was one of the first workers to spot the object.
“We were like, ‘So, what do we do here?’ You don’t want to damage it or just continue on and tear it out of the ground,” he said.
Bruce Crowley from the University of Washington’s Burke museum went down into the hole to examine the fossil.
“I thought it was a really nice tusk,” he said.
Crowley said the tusk likely came from a Columbian Mammoth – or mastodon, though he said you can’t really tell by looking at it, you would need to do microscopic analysis to determine that.
He said most of the mammoths found in this area, are Columbian Mammoths. There have been similar fossils found in the area, but this one may be the largest.
It’s unclear how the property owner will move forward with the unique find.
“Because the fossil is on private property and does not seem to be associated with an archaeological site, it is up to the landowner to decide what they would like to do with the tusk,” Dr. Christian Sidor of the Burke Museum said in a Tuesday news release.
Sidor said the discovery offers a “rare opportunity to directly study Seattle’s ancient natural history.” The museum has offered to excavate the tusk and provide access to scientists looking to study it. As word of the discovery spread on Tuesday, locals wandered over to the site to get a better look at the tusk.
Monique German, who works at Bright Horizons Childcare Center next door, said the children were excited to get a first-hand look at Seattle history.
“Instantly they went online and started researching wooly mammoths and mastodons and learning how their hair could be 3 feet long and the tusks could be up to 15 feet long,” she said.
German says they’ve already been using the construction project in lesson plans, one day talking with the crane operator on the radio. Another learning all that the foreman does. Now they can add paleontology.
“We found a great children’s book last night that we’re now introducing as part of the curriculum,” German said.
While the kids learn about it, the scientists at the University of Washington want to help excavate it.
“It’s big it’s got nice curvature to it. It seems to be very complete,” said Crowley said.
Crowley says this tusk is likely 16,000 years old and if it’s to be preserved, it needs to be properly excavated. He said right now it’s water logged and if left to dry on its own, Crowley said it will disintegrate. He said the best way to remove it is encase it in plaster it, which would take a day or two, but that way it would be preserved.
The Burke Museum has offered to excavate it and put it on display if the property owner takes that route.
WASHINGTON – Restore America’s Estuaries has released the findings of a groundbreaking study that confirms the climate mitigation benefits of restoring tidal wetland habitat in the Snohomish Estuary, located within the nation’s second largest estuary: Puget Sound. The study, the first of its kind, finds major climate mitigation benefits from wetland restoration and provides a much needed approach for assessing carbon fluxes for historic drained and future restored wetlands which can now be transferred and applied to other geographies.
The Study, “Coastal Blue Carbon Opportunity Assessment for Snohomish Estuary: The Climate Benefits of Estuary Restoration” finds that currently planned and in-construction restoration projects in the Snohomish estuary will result in at least 2.55 million tons of CO2 sequestered from the atmosphere over the next 100-years. This is equivalent to the 1-year emissions for 500,000 average passenger cars. If plans expanded to fully restore the Snohomish estuary, the sequestration potential jumps to 8.8 million tons of CO2 or, in other terms, equal to the 1-year emissions of about 1.7 million passenger cars.
“The study is the first to provide a science-based assessment of climate benefits from restoration at scale. The findings are clear: restoring coastal wetlands must be recognized for their ability to mitigate climate change,” said Jeff Benoit, President and CEO of Restore America’s Estuaries. “The report adds to our list of science-based reasons why restoration is so critical.”
“Healthy estuaries mean healthy economies,” Representative Rick Larsen, WA-02, said. “I have long advocated to restore our estuaries because of the critical role they play in supporting recovery of fisheries. This new study shows that estuary restoration can play a big role in countering climate change too.”
“It is very fitting that we are implementing some of the world’s leading Blue Carbon research here in Puget Sound,” said Steve Dubiel, Executive Director of EarthCorps. “We have always known that wetlands are a kind of breadbasket, thanks to the salmon and shellfish they support. Now we are learning that they are also a carbon sponge.”
In addition to the climate benefits outlined by the study, healthy and restored estuaries act as spawning grounds and nurseries for commercially and recreationally important fish and shellfish species, provide storm buffers for coastal communities, filter pollutants, and provide habitat for numerous species of fish and wildlife, as well as recreational opportunities for hundreds of millions of Americans annually.
“This study illustrates the contribution of tidal wetland restoration to reduce global warming,” said Dr. Steve Crooks, Climate Change Program Manager for Environmental Science Associates and lead author on the study. “From this analysis we find wetlands restoration in Puget Sound likely to be highly resilient to sea level rise while at the same time continuing to sequester carbon within organic soils. Similar opportunities will exist in other coastal regions of the U.S.”
“This report is a call to action. We need to invest more substantially in coastal restoration nationwide and in science to increase our understanding of the climate benefits which accrue from coastal restoration and protection efforts,” said Emmett-Mattox, Senior Director for Restore America’s Estuaries and co-author on the study. “Sea-level rise will only make restoration more difficult and costly in the future. The time for progress is now.”
This report was a collaborative effort of Restore America’s Estuaries, Environmental Science Associates (ESA), EarthCorps, and Western Washington University. Lead funding was provided by NOAA’s Office of Habitat Conservation and additional support was provided by The Boeing Company and the Wildlife Forever Fund.
“Coastal Blue Carbon Opportunity Assessment for Snohomish Estuary: The Climate Benefits of Estuary Restoration” full report is available here, and the Executive Summary is available here.
Nisqually elder Billy Frank Jr., a lifelong fisherman who led the battle for Treaty Indian fishing, speaks to an audience of tribal leaders past and present, activists, but most of all friends, remembering the Boldt Decision with stories. Photos of “The Old Swede,” as Billy called Judge Boldt, hung as a backdrop in memory of his momentous decision. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
By Andrew Gobin, Tulalip News
When do your rights expire? When do the terms of treaties cease? Never. The Boldt Decision sought to resolve these questions. In 1970, at the height of tensions between Puget Sound tribes and the State of Washington, the United States on behalf of the tribes filed suit against the State of Washington for violating the tribes’ treaties. More than three years later Judge George H. Boldt, who heard U.S. v. Washington and for whom the decision is named, handed down his decision in favor of the tribes, reaffirming the treaties and rights secured to Indians therein. Forty years later, tribal leaders from Puget Sound tribes, activists, and other notable people involved in the battle for Treaty Indian fishing rights gathered February 5th and 6th in Squaxin Island to remember the fight to protect their right, to discuss the importance of the Boldt Decision and all that it accomplished, and to reaffirm the commitment to continue the fight.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the State of Washington began filing injunctions, blocking Indian fisheries in the name of conservation. Indian people throughout the Puget Sound, though, continued to fish, practicing their culture and feeding their families, risking arrest and violence from state law enforcement.
Billy Frank Jr., Nisqually elder and prominent figure throughout the Boldt Decision, said, “We came down to the river, and they [the cops] had confiscated everything. ‘Where are our nets? Our boats?’ I thought. ‘How are we supposed to feed our families?’”
“We had to fish at night, which was dangerous. But we had to fish at night because it was illegal. What could we do? It was our way of life, we couldn’t stop,” recalled Hank Adams, a Native American activist from the Assiniboine Sioux tribe. Adams fished with Billy Frank and his family on the Nisqually River.
Frank championed the fight for treaty rights, with many leaders at that time rallied behind him and his family. Their traditional fishing grounds, Frank’s Landing, became ground zero in the battle for Treaty Indian fishing. Frank’s Landing played host to many fish-ins in protest of the injunctions, which gained national attention. Tribal leaders were joined at fish-ins by members of AIM (The American Indian Movement) and celebrities, such as renowned stage and screen actor, Marlon Brando. Most fish-ins ended in mass arrests. One famous photograph shows Brando packing two salmon up the bank at Frank’s Landing, only to be arrested with other participants.
Puyallup Elder and fisherwoman, Ramona Bennet, recalls being arrested on several occasions.
“They heard we were fishing, and the pigs [cops] come down to arrest us. Women, children, men, they didn’t care, they arrested all of us, whole families. One of the pigs went over to my mom, knee deep in fish in the back of a pickup. She told them, ‘You want my fish? HERE!’ and she picked up a fish and slapped that pig upside the head.”
Because of the tensions at Frank’s Landing, not every fish-in ended in arrest. Hank Adams remembers how nervous Thurston County Sheriffs were, not wanting to escalate the dispute.
“One day we were fishing, and Billy went up the [Nisqually] river to check the net. The Sheriffs launched two air boats at the rail bridge upriver and were comin’ for Billy. I was at his sister’s place. He come tearin’ down the river shouting, ‘Get the gun!’ So I grabbed the rifle and headed out the door. I ran down the bank and came to a clearing and ran into some other law enforcement. There was an old burnt out car, so I ran and jumped down behind it. I used my army training and used the butt of the rifle to break my fall, and when I did that the rifle went off. At the same time my hand slipped off the butt of the gun and hit what Billy tells as a broken beer bottle, but it was a Pepsi bottle. So I cut my hand on the neck of that Pepsi bottle and was bleeding everywhere. But when that gun went off, the guys in those airboats hit the deck and flew right on past Billy, and he hit the bank and was unloading his fish. Next thing we know, there’s about 30 Thurston County Sheriffs cars and some state troopers pulled up, guns drawn, and the chief jumps out in front and says, ‘Hold your fire, put your guns down, everyone just calm down.’ He come over and looked at me and my hand, ‘Come on over here I got a first aid kit in the truck,’ he said. He got me all bandaged up, the bandages were all bloody, it really just looked terrible. The newspapers the next day said, ‘Mystery surrounds evening events at Frank’s Landing. No arrests were made, though Native Activist Hank Adams sustained some sort of injury.’”
These encounters happened on a daily basis, as the state held their injunctions to be valid, and acted accordingly. Tribal families experienced hardships as heads of household were jailed repeatedly. The tribes stood firm on the treaty, fighting to protect their fishing rights, and ultimately their sovereignty.
Frank said, “Who do I go to? Do I go to the governor? Do I go to the congress? Nobody listens…oh you’re all just Indians.”
In 1970, with the state continuously challenged by the tribes, the United States as the trustee of the tribes filed suit against Washington in Federal District court, Judge George H. Boldt was assigned to the case.
Members of Judge Boldt’s family attended the celebration and were honored for his memory. His daughter, Virginia Riedinger, had this to say.
“My father grew up in Chicago with nothing but the American dream. His father moved them to Montana where he finished high school. He put himself through college, and graduated with a law degree from the University of Montana in 1926. After practicing law for more than 15 years, he enlisted to serve this country in WWII at an age that was unheard of, especially as a volunteer. When he returned he became a trial lawyer in Tacoma Washington, and was later appointed by President Eisenhower as the Federal District Court Judge in 1953, where he spent more than 25 years on the bench.
As a judge, my father held true to the laws of this country. He believed in the law, and was known for his hard decisions and expedited court processes. He often was recruited to assist in other courts across the nation that were backlogged with cases. One thing was constant, my father always did what he knew was right and I never knew him to look back with regret or doubt.”
Members of Judge Boldt’s family that attended the 40th Anniversary Celebration of the Boldt Decision. His daughter, Virginia Riedinger (center) spoke about her father and the toll the Boldt decision took on him and his family. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
As the case continued, and later was decided, Judge Boldt and his family were subjected to vicious public attacks on his reputation. A photo displayed throughout the celebration captured a burning effigy of the Judge, strung up in a tree outside the District Courthouse, all wrapped up, presumably, in an Indian fishing net. Even so, Boldt remained undeterred in his will to uphold the law.
For more than three years the case went on, hearing from both sides. The case was rather unique in some aspects, as the question of fishing rights had not been previously understood from a legal perspective. There was limited legal precedent that reaffirmed the treaties and preempted state laws. For this case, the information had to be more in depth. Charles Wilkinson, a law professor at the University of Colorado and well-known legal scholar, gave a powerful speech about the Boldt Decision.
“Judge Boldt, ruling on the basis of justice in its most luminous dimensions rather than on the strenuous hearsay and other technical objections of the state’s attorneys, accepted the elders’ testimony into evidence and listened raptly.
Ask people who saw all or most of that trial, and they will tell you that the elders’ testimony brought the whole story together. Judge Boldt had worked hard and open-mindedly on this case and, by the time the elders took the stand, he had acquired an expansive knowledge of Indian law, and all the testimony already heard may have caused him to have his final ruling in mind. But the straightforward, utterly authentic words and bearing of the traditional Native people made his decision of February 12, 1974 inevitable.”
Charles Wilkinson delivered a powerful speech on Judge Boldt, his decision on U.S. v. Washington, and what it means for Federal Indian Law today. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
Relying on testimony of the elders, along with the vast ethnographic work of scholars, such as Dr. Barbara Lane, who were called as expert witnesses, Judge Boldt looked critically at the language of the treaty. He handed down his decision in 1974 in favor of the tribes, holding the United States accountable to the promises of the Stevens Treaties of the Washington Territory, including the Treaty of Point Elliot, the Treaty of Point No Point, and the Treaty of Medicine Creek.
What did the decision mean? Was it truly a victory? At the time, not all tribal people saw it as such.
“I cried when I heard the decision. ‘We lost half our fish!’ I yelled,” said Bennet.
Others saw it as a great victory, for Washington tribes, for fishing, and treaty rights, and for tribes across the nation. The decision reaffirmed the treaties and recognized the sovereignty of tribes.
Wilkinson said, “Make no mistake about it: the transcendent contribution of the Boldt Decision was to uphold the treaty rights of the Northwest tribes. But it was also a national case about national commitments and values.”
Because the state refused to act on the decision, continuing attempts to block Indian fisheries, Judge Boldt exercised continuing jurisdiction, rarely used, which maintains the court’s control over decisions, to ensure the decision was implemented. Judge Boldt was committed to upholding the law and his decision, and his continuing jurisdiction is still in effect today.
The fight continues, though today the questions have shifted. What does it mean to have a treaty right to fish? Boldt’s decision recognized tribes as sovereign, and having a shared right to the salmon resource naming them as co-managers and regulators of the resource, but what does that mean? The fight for Treaty Indian fishing was about bringing the past forward, the fight today is about protecting the future of the resource.
Frank said, “We have to protect the salmon. Look at California. The tribes there have the first water right, but there is no water. We have a right to the salmon, but if there are none, what kind of right we got?”
Billy Frank Jr. adresses the current issues tribes face. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
Recently, what’s known as the Culvert Case held the state accountable for making streams in developed areas passable to salmon. The State Fish Consumption Rate, which affects water quality and pollution, says that, on average, citizens consume eight ounces of salmon a month, about the size of one U.S. quarter a day. For Puget Sound tribes, salmon is a staple both in diet and culture. Today, it remains central to tribal economies as it has historically, even pre-contact. If the consumption rate stands, more pollutants would be allowed to go into the water, meaning more salmon die off.
Frank said, “They’re poisoning the water. It’s poisoned. The salmon that come out of the Nisqually River, half of them are dead before they reach the Narrows [in Tacoma].”
The tribes have won the Culvert Case, and continue to work on others.
In recognition of all the ancestors, the empty chair sat at the front of the room to remind people they are still here. The basket was filled with names of people who have passed on, who fought through the Boldt Decision. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
Throughout the celebration, an empty chair sat near the front. It was a symbol of all the ancestors of the tribes that fished the Puget Sound, as well as those warriors of the Boldt Decision that have passed on; Guy McMinds, Bernie Gobin, Vernon Lane, and Chet Cayou Sr., to name a few. The importance of this chair is immense. It represents the passing of the torch to the younger generation. The celebration of the Boldt Decision was to remind the younger generation about the importance of the treaty, how hard their elders fought to protect it, and how hard they need to continue to fight for the treaty, for their sovereignty, and for their culture.
Youth from all the different tribes that attended the Boldt 40 celebration were honored and thinker, as well as reminded of their responsibility to pick up where the elders are leaving off. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
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
