A nearly-half-million-dollar grant will speed restoration of Alaska’s oldest Haida longhouse. The structure was first built 130 years ago.
Haida Chief Son-i-Hat built the original longhouse in the 1880s at the village of Kasaan. It’s on the eastern side of Southeast’s Prince of Wales Island, about 30 miles northwest of Ketchikan.
It was called Naay I’waans, The Great House. Many know it as The Whale House, for some of the carvings inside.
It deteriorated, as wooden buildings in the rain forest do. The Civilian Conservation Corps, a depression-era employment program, rebuilt it in the late 1930s.
Now, the house badly needs repair again.
An insect-infested house post is prepared for heat treatment to kill carpenter ants. (Organized Village of Kasaan)
“It’s a matter of our cultural revitalization, showing that we’re still here and part of these lands,” says Richard Peterson, president of the Tribal Council for the Organized Village of Kasaan.
“A lot of the building is still in really good condition. Some of the supports are what’s failing. I think we’re fortunate enough that we don’t need a total reconstruction, so we want to maintain as much as we can,” Peterson says.
An analysis by Juneau-based MRV Architects estimated full repairs would cost more than $2 million. A scaled-back plan totaled about $1.4 million. It listed several phases to be completed as funds came in.
And they have. In late November, the Anchorage-based Rasmuson Foundation awarded the project $450,000. Peterson says that, plus funds from the tribal government and its partners, is about enough to complete the work.
“So right now, we’re milling up the logs and they’re going to hand-adz all of the timbers. And we’re just going in and starting to secure up some of the corners that are dropping down. It’s been a really exciting project,” Peterson says.
The effort to stabilize the longhouse has been underway for around two years. But it picked up speed last summer.
Eric Hammer (front) and Harley Bell-Holter work in Kasaan’s carving shed. (Courtesy Organized Village of Kasaan)
The lead carver is Stormy Hamar, who is working with apprentices Eric Hamar, his son, and Harley Bell-Holter. Others volunteer.
Peterson says it’s an all-ages effort.“The great part is these young kids that are getting involved. And it’s across the lines. Native, non-Native, it doesn’t matter. There’s been a real interest by the youth there,” Peterson says.
Work continues through the winter. Peterson says the focus now is repairing or replacing structural elements so the longhouse doesn’t collapse.
The Whale House is already attracting attention. Independent travelers drive the 17-mile dirt road that starts near Thorne Bay. And Sitka-based Alaska Dream Cruises also stops in Kasaan, where the house is on the list of sights to see.
“Because it’s off-site, you’re not going to see any modern technology. There’s no cars driving by. You can really see how our people lived 200 years ago and experience that and look at those totems in a natural setting,” Peterson says. “It wasn’t put there for a park. This is how it was. And I think people really appreciate that.”
Without too many surprises, Peterson hopes work can be completed in around two years.
Then, he says, the tribe will host a celebration like the one Wrangell leaders put on last year when they finished the Chief Shakes Tribal House.
Scaffolding allows repairs to the Kasaan Whale House smokehole, which was damaged by rot. (Organized Village of Kasaan.)
Washington State’s recommended fish consumption rates boil down to just 6.7 grams per day per resident, or one eight-ounce fillet per month.In contrast, Oregon’s rate to determine how much contamination is allowable in its waters assumes a 175-gram-per-day consumption rate, or about 24 eight-ounce fillets per month.
The problems associated with contamination in Northwestern waters are mounting.
For years the many contaminants in Washington State waterways have prompted the state’s Department of Health to issue official warnings against eating Washington fish too frequently. Washington currently has fish consumption advisories issued throughout the state.
“The tribes are not only interested in protecting all the species of fish they eat, but they’re also concerned about protecting their economic interests,” said Ann Seiter, fish consumption rate coordinator for the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.
Tribes are calling for major changes in pollution policy. When health officials from Washington and Oregon issued advisories for mid-Columbia River’s resident fish last September due to elevated mercury and PCB levels, tribal leaders were outraged.
“The focus should not be ‘Do not eat’–it should be ‘Clean up’–the Columbia River,” said Yakama Nation Chairman Harry Smiskin in a statement at the time.
The Umatilla, Yakama, Nez Perce and Warm Springs tribes urged the governors of Washington and Idaho to update water quality standards and fish consumption rates.
“The tribes believe that the long-term solution to this problem isn’t keeping people from eating contaminated fish—it’s keeping fish from being contaminated in the first place,” Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission Chairman Joel Moffett said in a statement. “Armed with higher fish consumption rates and water quality standards, we hope there will be a greater motivation to remove pollutants from the Columbia River and its tributaries.”
Washington has also issued a lower Columbia advisory that warns of PCBs, DDT and Dioxin as well as other compounds. To the state’s east, an advisory has been issued for the Spokane River, which is contaminated with PCBs, lead and other harmful materials. There is also a statewide mercury advisory.
Washington and Idaho are reevaluating their fish consumption rates, which are used to calculate water quality standards that protect human health. The four Oregon tribes urged Washington and Idaho to adopt at least the same rate that Oregon uses to establish water quality standards protective of all fish consumers in the region, according to the White Salmon Enterprise.
Oregon’s 175-grams-per-day suggested consumption is a more accurate representation of how much fish most of Oregon’s residents actually eat. But even that does not go far enough, tribal leaders say. State and federal governments must act to clean the polluted sections of the Columbia River contaminating fish, Smiskin said.
“The fish advisories confirm what the Yakama Nation has known for decades,” Smiskin said. “State and federal governments can no longer ignore the inadequacy of their regulatory efforts and the failure to clean up the Columbia River.”
The Yakama Nation repeatedly identified contaminated sites along the Columbia, expressing concerns for the health and culture of the Yakama people and calling upon the state and federal agencies for cleanup actions that would protect the tribe’s resources, retained by them in the Treaty of 1855.
“The new advisories once again pass the burden of responsibility from industry and government to tribes and people in the region,” Smiskin said. “Rather then addressing the contamination, we are being told to reduce our reliance on the Columbia River’s fish. This is unacceptable.”
The iconic Chinook salmon, for millennia a cornerstone of Pacific Northwest diet, spirituality, ceremony and even the tribes’ economy, is fast becoming toxic in Washington State.
And rather than focus on cleaning up the waterways that year-round salmon reside in, Washington state agencies have issued fish-consumption advisories. The less fish consumed, at the lower limits, the higher concentration of contaminants is deemed acceptable.
But salmon are not just a way of life. They are life. And, Northwest tribes say, the cavalier attitude toward their contamination not only risks health but also guts treaty rights and the very way of life of the land’s original peoples.
Studies of adult salmon indicate that Puget Sound Chinook salmon have higher concentrations of legacy contaminants, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), than salmon from other parts of the Northwest. The state’s solution? Limit consumption to one Puget Sound Chinook fillet a week, and two Puget Sound resident Chinook (blackmouth) fillets a month.
Tribal peoples in Western Washington who eat their usual intake of fish and seafood–indeed, the traditional foods they have eaten for millennia–must do so now at risk of disease due to the toxins that lurk in their waters, not to mention in their state politics. People who eat fish more than once a month are not protected by Washington State water quality standards.
Fish, with their high levels of precious proteins and rich omega-3 fatty acids, are touted as improving health and extending life. But fish from polluted waters can expose unborn babies, infants, children and adults to mercury, lead, arsenic, PCBs and other toxins that can compromise immune function, cause cancer and adversely affect reproduction, development and endocrine functions.
Washington State’s Department of Health recommends that residents eat no more than two fish fillets a week, in concert with very strict selection, preparation and cooking criteria, to avoid toxicity. Compare that with Washington State’s Department of Ecology’s fish consumption rate (FCR) determination of an eight-ounce fish fillet a month, or 6.5 grams a day.
“Washington uses one of the lowest FCRs in the nation to regulate pollution in our waters,” said Billy Frank Jr., (Nisqually), chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.
The less fish consumed by residents, said Frank, the more pollutants that can be dumped into waterways. The higher the fish consumption rate, the cleaner that Washington waterways will need to be. Establishing a higher consumption rate will force polluters to reduce the amount of new contaminants they dump into the water, keeping salmon and other seafood clean.
Studies reveal that Washingtonians are among the highest fish-consuming populations in the nation. That’s not surprising given that 29 federally recognized tribal nations exist within a state bound by the Pacific Ocean, the Columbia River and the Salish Sea, with the state itself wrapped around Puget Sound and interlaced with numerous rivers.
“State government admits that the current rate does not protect most Washington citizens from toxics in our waters that can cause illness or death,” said Frank. Washington’s rate should be at least as protective as Oregon’s rate of 175 grams per day, equivalent to about 24 eight-ounce fillets per month, Frank said.
The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission’s (CRITFC) 1994 fish consumption survey revealed that the average Columbia River tribal member consumed 58.7 grams of fish per day, and also found that they typically ate the whole fish. The survey prompted Oregon to revise its FCR in 1994, which Oregon updated in 2011 in line with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommendations. But industry in Washington, led by Boeing, say that Oregon’s standard is impossible.
Frank said the effort to adopt a more accurate FCR is one of the biggest public policy battles in the country, pitting human health against the economy.
“Industry leaders such as Boeing are digging in their heels to delay or kill rule-making on a more accurate rate because they say it will increase their cost of doing business,” he said.
“Tribal leaders were very disappointed when [Washington] failed to adopt fish consumption standards in 2012,” Ann Seiter, the FCR coordinator for the NWIFC, told ICTMN in reference to InvestigateWest’s five-part series on the issue in 2012.
InvestigateWest’s insightful five-part-plus series describes how former Governor Christine Gregoire was divided between acting for the tribes, powerful supporters who wanted stricter water pollution rules, and her supporters in the aerospace industry, like Boeing, which were against tightening FCR rules, in 2011–2012. Ecology stopped work on changes to water pollution rules in June 2012 with a delay to at least 2014, after which Gregoire would no longer be governor, the team reported.
“The tale of how Boeing and its allies beat back … Ecology’s attempt to change a fish consumption rate that pretty much everyone involved acknowledges is too low provides a fascinating look at how the levers of power are pulled in Olympia,” InvestigateWest said.
The tribes are upset with the continuing delays.
“They’ve taken their concerns to the EPA regarding their Trust responsibilities, as well as their obligations under the Clean Water Act,” Seiter said.
Under the federal Clean Water Act, river water should be clean enough so that people can eat the fish. Environment and fisheries organizations sued the EPA in October 2013 for non-compliance under the Clean Water Act for allegedly failing to protect Washingtonians from toxic pollution entering Puget Sound, the Columbia River, the Spokane River and other waterways.
In a letter to Ecology last June, the new Governor Inslee announced that he would organize an informal group of advisers from local governments, Indian tribes and businesses, according to InvestigateWest. Inslee’s letter to Ecology Director Maia Bellon, released last June 7, called for the agency to help educate Inslee’s advisory group, “including real-world scenarios illustrating how new criteria would be applied and how new implementation and compliance tools would work in the permitting context,” they reported. Ecology officials had already said the “implementation and compliance tools” could include giving businesses up to 40 years to cut pollution levels to the amount that presumably would be required once accurate fish-consumption rates are in place.
Tribal leaders responded by taking their concerns directly to Inslee, Seiter said.
In December China banned shellfish from the West Coast, citing, among other factors, high levels of inorganic arsenic in geoduck clams harvested by the Puyallup Tribe in the Redondo area of Puget Sound, according to Earthfix.opb.org. The ban underscored the direct negative economic impact of pollution on tribes.
“The tribes are not only interested in protecting all the species of fish they eat, but they’re also concerned about protecting their economic interests,” said Seiter.
Washington business associations, cities and counties together hired an engineering firm to prepare a report, released on December 4, 2013, that evaluated technologies potentially capable of meeting Ecology’s effluent discharge limits for revised human health water quality criteria for arsenic, benzo(a)pyrene (BAP), mercury, and PCBs. The report coincided with the public rollout and comment period for Ecology’s proposed rule changes to the state’s water quality standards in early 2014, including human health criteria involving the FCR.
“Currently there are no known facilities that treat to the [health water quality criteria] and anticipated effluent limits that are under consideration,” the report stated. It also reported limitations in proven technologies capable of compliance with the revised health water quality criteria.
One tribal official who spoke on condition of anonymity said tribal leaders are sticking close to these issues.
“As we discussed this ongoing environmental catastrophe, we decided we wouldn’t go to jail anymore like we did in the fish wars,” the leader told ICTMN. “But we are ready to go to war [to] protect the water.”
Four disasters in the past six months have demonstrated the risks of crude-oil trains, which carry 11 percent of the nation’s oil, up 40-fold in five years.
MINNEAPOLIS — Oil-train explosions like the one last week near Casselton, N.D., or the one in Canada late Tuesday have revived longstanding worries that older railroad tank cars aren’t sturdy enough.
Four derailments in the past six months have demonstrated the risks of crude-oil trains, which carry 11 percent of the nation’s oil, up 40-fold in five years, according to the Association of American Railroads.
“There is an increased interest … to look at tank cars and whether we can do more to remove the risk,” said Thomas Simpson, president of the Railway Supply Institute, a trade group for tank-car builders and owners.
North Dakota, lacking sufficient pipelines, sends more than two-thirds of its crude down the tracks, typically on 100-car unit trains. Many travel on BNSF Railway and Canadian Pacific tracks through Minnesota. Minnesota’s 20 ethanol plants also rely heavily on tank cars because current pipelines are unsuitable for that fuel.
Yet most of the nation’s 94,000 rail tankers carrying oil, ethanol and other flammable liquids don’t meet puncture-resistance and other standards that apply to new tank cars. Railcar and shipping-industry officials say it could take a decade and cost billions to retrofit up to 64,000 older tankers that carry flammable liquids.
Federal regulators are considering whether to require it.
“It is a challenge, but it is doable,” said Larry Mann, a Washington-based rail-safety attorney.
In 2011, railroads and shippers voluntarily established tougher standards for new tank cars, and more than 14,000 are on the rails today. That’s about 15 percent of the tankers carrying oil, ethanol and other flammable liquids. Most of the remainder are older models with a record of tank failures in accidents since 1991, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
The safety of railcars, among other things, is playing a role in the continuing debate about the proposal to build more oil terminals in Washington state.
Railroad groups said in November they support upgrading the old tanker fleet, but the cost would fall on shippers because they own or lease the tank cars. Oil and ethanol shippers haven’t warmed to that idea, and say railroads need to do more to prevent derailments.
“The ethanol industry takes safety very seriously, but we don’t re-engineer vehicles already on the road with new, expensive suspension systems to combat any potential damage from hitting a pothole on the interstate. No, we fix the pothole. The same should be true with rail transportation,” Bob Dinneen, chief executive of the Renewable Fuels Association, an ethanol-trade group, said via email.
The American Petroleum Institute, an oil-industry trade group, told regulators in December that the retrofits only would be costly and take years, and would add weight to trains. It urged regulators to study the costs and benefits before imposing a regulation and to order railroads to improve tracks and take other steps to reduce derailments.
BNSF Railway, whose train crashed Dec. 30 in North Dakota, declined to comment for this article. Canadian Pacific, a crude-oil hauler whose U.S. headquarters is in Minneapolis, said it is always working with federal regulators and others to promote safety, but would not comment in detail.
Bruce Crummy / The Associated Press, 2013 A train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded in Casselton, N.D., on Dec. 30 and sent a great fireball and plumes of black smoke skyward. The fire continued to burn the next day.
Logistics of retrofitting
Even if federal regulators order tank-car upgrades or other measures, the new rules likely wouldn’t take effect for at least a year. “It is just a complicated issue that has taken time,” said Gordon Delcambre Jr., a spokesman for the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which is considering new regulations.
Train-car repair shops probably would need 10 years to retrofit every tank car. “There’s a finite number of facilities that can do the work,” said Simpson, of the Railway Supply Institute, which supports improving older tank cars, but questions whether all proposed modifications are feasible.
Some tank cars might be retired or shifted to carry nonflammable products. So the potential cost of upgrading the nation’s tanker fleet could range from $1.7 billion to more than $5 billion.
After the recent oil-train wrecks, more people are demanding action in the United States and Canada.
In July, 47 people died in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, in the first disaster involving a North Dakota oil train. Four months later, in Aliceville, Ala., another oil train exploded and burned, but nobody was hurt. In 2009, a deadly ethanol-train derailment and fire in Cherry Valley, Ill., prompted the NTSB to issue specific recommendations to upgrade the nation’s tanker fleet.
Mann, who represents unions and others on rail-safety issues, said all the recent oil-train explosions involved tank cars built before 2011, a model known in the industry as the DOT-111.
In Coon Rapids, Minn., which is crossed by two rail lines, city leaders in December petitioned federal regulators to get started on the tank-car upgrades. The city’s resolution stemmed from a National League of Cities conference last year in which cities, especially Chicago suburbs, discussed railcar safety.
“The concern is the integrity of the tank cars — are they inspected and structurally sound?” said Coon Rapids City Manager Steve Gatlin.
The older DOT-111 cars have a steel shell that is too thin to resist punctures in accidents, and the ends of the car are vulnerable to ruptures. Valves used for unloading and other exposed fittings on the tops of the tankers can also break during rollovers, the NTSB said.
Tank cars built since Oct. 1, 2011, are required to comply with tougher standards, including shells with thicker steel.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has called for retrofitting the nation’s tanker fleet. In Minnesota, Rep. Tim Walz, a member of the House Transportation Committee, said he hopes the committee will examine the issue.
“It was incredibly lucky that no one was harmed in the accident in Casselton,” Walz said in an email. “It is clear there is still more we can and should do to enhance safety when shipping hazardous materials to market.”
Emergency measures
A Web-based petition last fall by the progressive group Credo Action collected 58,000 supporters of banning the “dangerous DOT-111 tanker cars in our communities.”
“They are basically bombs running through the middle of cities,” said Elijah Zarlin, of the San Francisco-based group. “Each one of these accidents … shows that this isn’t just a potential threat, it is an actual, real threat.”
Railroad towns are re-examining emergency plans. Last summer, the Minnesota hazmat teams got extra training on crude oil.
Soon after the Quebec disaster, Canadian and U.S. regulators ordered rail carriers not to leave trains unattended, a key factor in that accident. Regulators in both countries also have told North Dakota shippers to accurately classify their crude oil’s hazard level, which partly hinges on the amount of potentially explosive dissolved gas it contains.
U.S. agencies announced a “Bakken blitz” to test crude-oil shipments in August. Based on preliminary results of that effort, regulators warned shippers last week that light crude from that region may be more flammable than heavy oil. But regulators stopped short of saying that Bakken crude poses a special danger and said sample testing is still under way.
Mark Winfield, an associate professor at York University in Toronto, has called on Canadian authorities to begin a judicial inquiry into regulatory lapses before the Lac-Mégantic disaster. Among the questions to arise after the disaster is whether Bakken oil is more explosive.
“It is hard to believe that nobody on the inside, among the regulators, didn’t realize there was a potential problem here,” Winfield said.
In Perham, Minn., which is also on the BNSF line and has witnessed two minor derailments in the past 21 years, Mayor Tim Meehl questions whether regulators can limit the number of oil tankers going through towns or make rail cars safer.
“I guess we just pray it doesn’t happen in our town,” he said. “It’s a very scary situation.”
Material from the Chicago Tribune is included in this report.
The National Park Service announced Thursday that the annual Tribal Historic Preservation Office fund will distribute partial grant awards to 135 tribes.
“Tribal historic preservation offices are the fastest growing preservation partnerships within the national historic preservation program, showing the value that tribes place on preserving historic places and protecting tribal cultural traditions,” National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis said in a statement. “These grants allow tribes to focus on what they are most concerned with protecting – Native language, oral history, plant and animal species important in traditions, sacred and historic places, and the establishment of tribal historic preservation offices.”
The grants range from around copy3,000 to $22,000. Tribes need to submit applications for this part of their grant and then apply again for the final portion of the award when that amount has been determined.
The annual appropriations were established in 1992 when Congress amended the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. The amendment put Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (THPO) on par with State Historic Preservation Officers (SHPO) with respect to tribal land, including conducting Section 106 reviews of federal agency projects on tribal lands. Tribes can use the grants to fund projects such as nominations to the National Register of Historic Places, preservation education, architectural planning, community preservation plans, and bricks-and-mortar repair to buildings. Examples of recent projects funded by Historic Preservation Fund grants include:
— historic preservation surveys of approximately 195,982 acres of tribal land resulting in 7,043 archeological sites and 1,307 historic properties being added to tribal inventories. Additionally, tribal historic preservation offices prepared nominations of 64 sites for the National Register of Historic Places;
— a summer cultural forum hosted by the tribal historic preservation office of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony. “Reawakening Traditional Science – Exploring the Ways of our Great Basin Culture,” brought community and tribal members of all ages together for presentations on local rock art and archeology, ancient traditional art forms such as basketry and tule duck making, tribal language, oral history, and the use and care of traditional plants. The forum showed how knowledge based both on tribal traditions and contemporary science can complement each other.
John Brown, the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer of the Narragansett Indian Tribe said the grant goes into his office’s operating budget and is used to fund all programs.
Revenue for the Historic Preservation Fund comes from federal oil leases on the Outer Continental Shelf. The grants act as catalysts for private and other non-federal investment in historic preservation efforts nationwide. The National Park Service administers the fund and distributes annual matching grants to state and tribal historic preservation officers from money made available in Congressional appropriations.
Launch media viewer “A lot of people out here don’t even know that they have an allotment,” said Ervin Chavez, one of the settlement recipients. Paul McPherson for The New York Times
DENVER — Ervin Chavez remembers hearing talk around the Navajo reservation when he was young of money owed to American Indian families by the federal government for land debts.
Now 60, Mr. Chavez is one of the recipients of a $3.4 billion settlement that is being paid to Indians across the West, over royalties for land that was held in trust by the government and never reimbursed in full.
But as the payments are being made, more than 100 years after the trust program began, tens of thousands of Indians who are owed money cannot be located.
For months now, lawyers, specialized settlement administrators and volunteers like Mr. Chavez have fanned out across reservations, trying to track down those who are owed money.
“A lot of people out here don’t even know that they have an allotment,” said Mr. Chavez, who lives on the Navajo reservation’s edge in New Mexico. “It was something their grandparents or parents had always taken care of, and they had no idea they had ownership of land.”
About half a million Indians are eligible for payments, which vary in amount from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on how much income their land generated. More than 30,000 tribal members have not yet been located. Some may have moved or died or are unaware they are eligible. The government has simply lost track of others.
All are owed at least $800, and in many cases, thousands more. The total owed to missing beneficiaries is approximately $32 million, according to Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, a law firm that worked on the settlement and is involved in locating tribal members.
David Smith, a lawyer with the firm, said the large number of missing beneficiaries illustrated how the Indian land trust program, administered by the Interior Department, was mishandled.
“Historically, there is no question that the government mismanaged these accounts and should have known where these people were,” Mr. Smith said.
“Individual Indians are sometimes some of the poorest people in this country,” he said. “The absence of that money has caused significant hardship.”
The dispute over the trust program dates to 1887, when Congress carved tribal lands, mostly across the West, into small plots, and assigned them to individual Indians. The land was leased for grazing, mining and other uses, and royalties were supposed to be paid into accounts set up for tribal members.
But a 1996 lawsuit filed against the Interior Department by Elouise Cobell, a Native American businesswoman from Montana, accused the government of mismanaging the royalties through poor accounting practices.
In 2009, the Cobell settlement, as it has become known, was reached, and it was eventually approved by Congress and President Obama.
Ken Salazar, the secretary of the interior at the time, hailed the settlement as a milestone for Indians, stating that it “honorably and responsibly turns the page on an unfortunate chapter in the department’s history.”
Since last year, when the first checks were distributed, 293,000 tribal members have received at least a portion of what they are owed. A second payment is expected to be made early this year.
The Interior Department initially identified 65,000 beneficiaries whose whereabouts were unknown, prompting a sweeping effort to find them.
Public service announcements have been broadcast on local television and radio stations, and reservation post offices peppered with notices. Dozens of public meetings have been held across tribal lands. Interior Department employees have set up information booths at powwows and other gatherings. Tribal governments have also been involved, poring over membership rolls.
So far, about half of the missing beneficiaries have been found, according to the Garden City Group, a firm appointed by a federal judge in the case to administer the settlement payments.
Many were surprisingly easy to locate, Mr. Smith said. Some were even federal employees or tribal officials.
Watch Now: Vintage style in Brooklyn Heights
But rural life on sprawling reservations has complicated outreach efforts.
The Garden City Group said one member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma is owed about $121,000. A member of the Quechan Tribe at the Fort Yuma Reservation in California is due more than $81,000.
“These are folks who have not been able to be found by the government for a long, long time,” said Jennifer Keough, Garden City’s chief operating officer. “They live in very far-reaching places.”
Michele Singer, principal deputy of the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians, part of the Interior Department, said her office was committed to reaching recipients of the settlement, and responded to an “overwhelming” number of requests for information.
For Mr. Chavez, the need to find those who are owed money is paramount.
“This is money that should be rightfully paid to the landowners,” he said. “It is something that has been going on for many, many years.”
BELLINGHAM, Wash. — Dozens upon dozens of crab pot buoys dot the waters around Jay Julius’ fishing boat as he points the bow towards Cherry Point. The spit of land juts into northern Puget Sound.
SSA Marine says Cherry Point is an excellent location to build a terminal because it’s surrounded by deep water with quick access to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean. If the company has its way, up to 48 million tons of coal could move through these waters each year aboard more than 450 large ships bound for the Asian market.
But if the Lummi and other tribes exercise their treaty fishing rights, there may not be any coal ships servicing American terminals in these waters.
Watch: Tribal members talk about coal exports and their fishing rights:
‘People of the Sea’
One out of every ten members of the Lummi Nation has a fishing license. Ancestors of the Lummi, or “People of the Sea” as they are known, and other Salish Sea peoples have fished the waters surrounding Cherry Point for more than 3,000 years. Today Lummi tribal officials are sounding the alarm about the impacts the Gateway Pacific Terminal could have on the tribe’s halibut, shrimp, shellfish and salmon fishery, which is worth a combined copy5 million annually.
“You have numerous fishermen up here right now,” says Julius, a member of the Lummi tribal council. He’s gesturing at the nearby crab pots as his boat idles a little more than 50 yards from the proposed site of the Gateway Pacific Terminal, one of three coal export facilities under consideration in Oregon and Washington. “What does that mean to our treaty right to fish? This would be no more.”
Tribal treaty fishing rights could play a major role in the review process for the Gateway Pacific Terminal. According to the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, nine tribes’ treaty fishing grounds would be impacted by the Gateway Pacific Terminal and the vessel traffic it would draw.
‘Usual and Accustomed’ Fishing Areas
In the mid-1800s tribes in this region signed treaties with the federal government, ceding millions of acres of their land. Native American populations plummeted and the survivors were relegated to reservations. But the tribal leaders of the time did a very smart thing, says Tim Brewer, a lawyer with the Tulalip tribe in northwestern Washington.
“They insisted on reserving the right to continue to fish in their usual and accustomed fishing areas. It is an extremely important part of the treaty,” Brewer says.
Lummi tribal fishermen at the end of a day on the water. (Ashley Ahearn)
Those treaty rights weren’t enforced in Washington until a landmark court decision in 1974 known as the Boldt Decision. It forced the state to follow up on the treaty promise of fishing rights that were made to the tribes more than a century before.
Brewer says the phrase: “usual and accustomed”—language that appears in the treaties signed by the Lummi and many other Northwest tribes—has implications for development projects, like coal terminals.
“If a project is going to impair access to a fishing ground and that impairment is significant that project can not move forward without violating the treaty right,” he says.
Since the mid-‘70s, tribes have begun to flex those treaty muscles.
In 1992 the Lummi stopped a net pen fish farm that was proposed for the waters off of Lummi Island by a company called Northwest Sea Farms.
The Lummi demonstrated that constructing the floating net pens would block tribal access to their usual and accustomed fishing grounds. “In that case the (U.S. Army) Corps of Engineers denied that permit on that basis,” Brewer says. “There was no agreement that was able to be worked out there.”
But, in other situations, agreements have been made.
Dwight Jones, general manager of Elliott Bay Marina. (Ashley Ahearn)
Though it’s a ways away, the iconic Seattle Space Needle peeks out amongst the masts of hundreds of sailboats neatly tucked into their berths at the Elliott Bay Marina, just north of downtown. It’s the largest privately-owned marina on the West Coast. And it was built within the usual and accustomed fishing area of the Muckleshoot tribe, back in 1991.
It took 10 years of environmental review. The Muckleshoot fought the project.
“It was contentious, I guess would be the right word,” says Dwight Jones, the general manager of Elliott Bay Marina. The Muckleshoot “could have stopped the marina from being built.”
But instead the tribe came to an agreement with the backers of the Elliott Bay Marina.
Muckleshoot tribal members contacted for comment on this story did not respond.
Jones says the owners of Elliott Bay Marina paid the Muckleshoot more than copy million up front and for the next 100 years they will give the tribe 8 percent of their gross annual revenue.
“Anyone who’s in business can tell you that 8 percent of your gross revenues is a huge number,” he says. “It really affects your viability as a business.”
When asked if he had any advice for companies that want to build coal terminals in the Northwest, Jones laughed.
“I’d say good luck. There will be a lot of costs and chances are the tribes will probably negotiate a settlement that works well for them and it will not be cheap,” he responded.
Deal or No Deal?
SSA Marine and Pacific International Terminals—the companies that want to build the terminal at Cherry Point—have lawyers and staff members working to make a deal with the Lummi to get the terminal built. The companies declined repeated requests to be interviewed on the subject.
“I think they’re quite disgusting,” says Lummi council member Julius when asked how he feels about the terminal backers’ efforts to make inroads with the Lummi. “It’s nothing new, the way they’re trying to infiltrate our nation, contaminate it, use people.”
This past summer Julius and the Lummi tribal council sent a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers. The federal agency will have final say over the key permits for the coal terminal.
In the letter the Lummi assert their “unconditional and unequivocal” opposition to the project, and lay out the reasoning behind their position, which centers around threats to treaty fishing rights and the tribe’s cultural and spiritual heritage at Cherry Point.
But there’s a line at the end of the letter, which legal experts and the Army Corps of Engineers say leaves the door open for continuing negotiation on the Gateway Pacific Terminal. It reads:
“These comments in no way waive any future opportunity to participate in government-to-government consultation regarding the proposed projects.”
Diana Bob, the Lummi tribal attorney who was involved in drafting the letter, declined to be interviewed for this series.
This is the second of a two-part series originally published at Earthfix.opb.org. ICTMN posted Part I last week.
DAVE CHAN/POSTMEDIA NEWS Kimberly Murray, executive director of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, says there is evidence that at least 4,000 indigenous children died in residential schools.
The dark years of the residential schools era in Canada have long obscured the fate of many of the 150,000 indigenous children who were taken from their families from the 1860s through the 1990s and “educated” with the goal of “killing the Indian in the child,” as the motto went.
Though about 80,000 of these former students survive, many were never accounted for. Until now.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), mandated to unmask what really went on at the schools, has documented the deaths of at least 4,000 children during that chapter in Canada’s history. And that’s just the ones they know about, Postmedia News reported on January 3.
The figures, based on only partial federal government records, is expected to rise as more complete records come to light, Postmedia News said.
From fires, to abuse, to disease, even to suicide, indigenous children died in droves. They were buried in unmarked graves near the schools because the Canadian government did not want to pay to have them shipped back home. Moreover, in many cases the parents were never told what happened to their children, Postmedia News said.
A lack of fire escapes was one glaring example of how the system not only didn’t care for the children but also outrightly put them in danger. Many schools refused to install fire escapes, instead putting poles outside of windows for children to slide down, fireman style. But with windows locked to prevent escape, children were unable to reach the poles, PostMedia News said. Neither were there sprinkler systems, despite numerous reports calling the schools firetraps and recommending the measures.
“It’s amazing that they didn’t make those corrections in those schools,” said TRC Executive Director Kimberly Murray, in an interview with PostMedia News. “There are just so many deaths that I think could have been prevented if they had done what they were supposed to do.”
Part of the commission’s work has been to establish a data base of the children’s names, cause of death and burial places, known as “The Missing Children Project,” Postmedia News said. The TRC’s full report, due out in 2015, will tell the full story of the deceased children.
SEATTLE — Washington state officials said Tuesday they found lower contamination levels when they tested geoduck clams than those alleged by China when it said geoduck imported from Puget Sound had high levels of arsenic.
Chinese officials said they found inorganic arsenic levels of .5 parts per million in the shellfish they tested in October.
But Washington officials’ tests produced different results.
“Only one of the whole samples was above China’s standard of .5 (parts per million) and everything else was below that, so that was good news,” said Dave McBride, who oversaw the testing at the Washington Department of Health.
The Department of Health tested more than 50 geoduck clams from the allegedly contaminated area, analyzing the different body parts of the clams to compare arsenic concentration levels.
The details of the test results are perhaps revealing than the overall “whole sample” figures. The skin of the clams tested by Washington exceeded China’s safe levels of inorganic arsenic by as much as three times, although McBride said that should not be worrisome to China, given how the Chinese consume geoduck clams.
“People generally do not eat the skin and we would advise people, when you eat geoduck, to remove the skin,” he said. “What we think is that, for the vast majority of the public, this is not a health issue at all. Obviously, when we’re talking about a carcinogen there is always the risk for high consumers.”
McBride added that the whole, or averaged samples, for several other clams came close to the .5ppm limit set by the Chinese.
The World Health Organization is said to be considering setting safe levels for inorganic arsenic in food in the .2-.3ppm range in 2014.
The shellfish that tested high for inorganic arsenic in China were harvested from a tract of land managed by the Department of Natural Resources that has since been closed. The tract is within the shadow of a copper smelter that was operated near Tacoma for 100 years.
“Well we know that arsenic levels are elevated in the surface soils in that area,” said Marian Abbett, manager of the Tacoma smelter clean up for the Washington Department of Ecology. Soil samples from the surrounding land show levels of arsenic between 40 and 200ppm, though that number does not directly equate to levels of arsenic that will end up in the water, or in shellfish.
Soil arsenic levels resulting from the historic deposition by the Tacoma smelter
in the vicinity of the geoduck tracts of interest. (Courtesy: ATSDR/DOH)
Inorganic arsenic levels are higher in soils in the area immediately surrounding the smelter, though wind patterns also lead to higher concentrations ending up in soil samples to the northeast of the smelter, where the shellfish were harvested.
“I’d be nervous after a big rainfall event,” said Kathy Cottingham, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Dartmouth College who studies arsenic exposure and human health. “With soils that contaminated you need to worry about the episodic events of a big rainstorm or snowmelt causing pulses into the water.”
The area was closed to all shellfish harvest until 2007, when the Puyallup Tribe petitioned state agencies to reopen the tract for geoduck harvest. At that time the Department of Health conducted tests on geoduck in the area and found levels of .05ppm. That’s an order of magnitude below the amount found by the Chinese in October of 2013 and well within the safety parameters set by the Chinese.
However, state agencies have not tested for inorganic arsenic or other metals in shellfish from the area since it was reopened in 2007.
Arsenic is a carcinogen that has also been associated with long-term respiratory effects, disruption of immune system function, cardiovascular effects, diabetes and neurodevelopmental problems in kids.
“There’s no safe level, but at some point you’ve crossed the threshold to being really dangerous and we don’t quite know where that threshold is at this point,” Cottingham said.
The Food and Drug Administration has delayed setting a safe level for arsenic in food. Washington state does not regularly test for arsenic in shellfish.
McBride said he did not see a need to test the Tacoma site further after his agency’s extensive sampling.
“I think we have a pretty good handle that this area is pretty clean and wouldn’t require further testing,” he said. “The lab results have been sent to (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and NOAA has sent them on to the state department to the Chinese (as of yesterday). We’re waiting to hear if and when the ban might be lifted.”
The ocean grew choppy and storm clouds darkened the southern sky as we paddled the final miles toward an abandoned Haida village site at the heart of a wedge-shaped archipelago 175 miles in length, 70 miles off the northwest coast of British Columbia. Until recently, this remote chain of islands was known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, but three years ago, the Haida Nation returned that colonial name to the provincial government, in a ceremony using the same style of bentwood box that once housed the remains of the dead. The place is now Haida Gwaii (pronounced HI-duh GWY) — Islands of the People — both officially and, unquestionably, in spirit.
Bruce Kirkby for The New York Times Carving the Legacy Pole.
The hillsides soaring above our kayaks, scraped bare by clearcutting three decades earlier, were an emerald-hued crew cut, a fuzz of young alder and spruce interspersed with occasional landslides. On a distant ridge beyond stood the silhouettes of giants, stark evidence of where logging had ground to a halt.
There is an even older Haida name for this archipelago, which roughly translates to “Islands Emerging From (Supernatural) Concealment.” It is an apt moniker. On these craggy islets — perched on the edge of the continental shelf and pressed against the howling eternity of the Pacific — life exists on such a ferociously lavish scale that myth and dreams routinely mingle with reality.
For three days, Dave Quinn and I — neighbors, friends and longtime sea kayak guides — had rejoiced amid a world of windswept islets, breaching humpbacks, raucous seabirds, natural hot springs and solitude. While it was glorious to return to waters we knew so well, there was a deeper purpose to our journey: Paddling from dawn until dusk and then some, we’d been racing north toward Windy Bay.
Even as our kayaks crunched aground on its white shell beach, elsewhere bags were being packed, boats readied, float planes fueled. Two great war canoes — long and colorful — were plowing southward from the traditional Haida strongholds of Old Massett and Skidegate, crammed with youth. The next morning, we would all converge here, to witness the raising of a monumental pole (a term preferred by First Nation groups over “totem”) in the southern archipelago, the first such event in over 130 years, since smallpox decimated the local population and left every village unoccupied. That fishermen, loggers, police and government officials would join alongside the Haida Nation in celebration, after decades of bitter land-use conflict, marked a once unimaginable reconciliation — and a way forward extending far beyond these remote shores.
After setting up our tent and brewing cowboy coffee, we set off on foot toward the village site — Hlk’yaah in Haida — tucked in an adjacent cove. Just a few steps into the forest, we paused in awe. Arrow-straight trunks, the girth of minivans, rose like cathedral columns from a thick blanket of moss cloaking the forest floor. Drenched with an average of 250 days of rain annually, the conifers of Haida Gwaii — red cedar, Sitka spruce, western hemlock — attain storybook proportions. According to the West Coast writer John Valliant, “These forests support more living tissue — by weight — than any other ecosystem, including the equatorial jungle.”
Bruce Kirkby for The New York Times Eagle down on the pole.
Forty years earlier, a logging company applied to move its clearcutting operations from northern Haida Gwaii — at that time ravaged by industrial-style logging — to this very soil. As John Broadhead, a local conservationist, wrote: “The company couldn’t have been leaving behind an area of more ecological devastation, or moving to one more pristine.” Having witnessed the frontier’s rapacious appetite drive sea otter and whale populations to the brink, the Haida voiced immediate opposition, but it seemed unimaginable that anyone might deflect the logging juggernaut.
The ’70s and ’80s were a time of excess and frenzy on this coast, when tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of salmon could be hauled from a single net, and the hewing of trees worth $20,000 each was not uncommon. While the Haida engaged in a decade of fruitless committee meetings, negotiations and court cases, clearcutting crept relentlessly southward.
By 1985, the small nation was fed up. Establishing a remote camp on Lyell Island, they settled in for the long haul, standing arm in arm, blockading a logging road and day after day turning back furious loggers who in many cases were neighbors, and even friends. Beyond lay Windy Bay, and some of the last remaining stands of “Avatar”-scale old growth on the coast. Tensions skyrocketed, and soon national news outlets descended.
Eight months later a showdown took place and as police officers moved in, a young Haida Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer was forced to arrest his own elders. Over the next two weeks, 72 protesters were shackled and led away. But the images that emerged changed the mood of a nation, and led to an unprecedented agreement between the Haida Nation and the government of Canada. Agreeing to manage cooperatively what, in 1993, would become Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve, they created an accord now emulated around the world. And while roots of the Haida revival can be traced back to the ’60s — when the lost arts of canoe building, mask making and pole carving began to re-emerge — it was the blockade and the resulting co-management of traditional territory that changed everything.
Bruce Kirkby for The New York Times Traditional Haida canoes arrive for the ceremony.
Dave and I arrived at the once-abandoned village site to find a hive of activity: electrical generators, an excavator and steaming vats of seafood chowder. At the center of everyone’s attention — though still horizontal — the 40-foot Legacy Pole, celebrating the 20th anniversary of moving from conflict to reconciliation with the establishment of the park. Lying beside a recently constructed longhouse, and surrounded by carvers, its 17 deeply incised figures, all based on the traditional Haida ovoid form, sprang from luxuriant cinnamon-colored cedar.
Although the raising was just 24 hours away, plenty of work remained to be done. Penciled design lines were shaved away, even as traditional black and red paints were applied. (The red, interestingly, was “Navajo” from Benjamin Moore.) Jaalen Edenshaw, the lead carver, quietly shaped a raven’s eyes as he told us of selecting a living tree from the forests. Alongside two apprentices, he had shaped the pole for an entire year. Among the many modern stories depicted in his design was the blockade, symbolized by five protesters with interlocked arms. With an eagle at the peak and a sculpin fish at the foot, the pole also tells of Gwaii Haanas becoming the first area on the planet to be protected from mountaintop to ocean floor when a National Marine Conservation Area was added to surrounding waters in 2010.
Amid the crowd was Guujaaw (pronounced GOO-jow), Mr. Edenshaw’s father and the widely recognized former president of the Haida Nation, who had stared down decades of negotiators and became emblematic of the Haida’s dignified, nonviolent resistance.
Suddenly, above the hubbub, came a cry: “Guuj! How about a birthday song?” The war canoes had arrived, and one of the young paddlers was celebrating a birthday. Guujaaw raised a skin drum, its rhythmic beat echoing through the forest like a heart. As he launched into a forceful chant — “Hey hi yo, ha wee ah” — everyone joined in. The young birthday boy rushed forward, dancing a traditional Haida stomp, knees deeply bent, arms in the air. Then, as quickly as it began, the song ended, and the carvers returned to their work.
Bruce Kirkby for The New York Times Dave Quinn stands beside a giant tree near the Windy Bay village site.
The next morning we woke from our tent to find an immense Coast Guard cutter anchored offshore, surrounded by an armada of smaller fishing vessels. Zodiacs began shuttling dignitaries, elders, children and curious visitors ashore. By noon, more than 400 people had gathered — unquestionably the most to stand on these shores since the village was abandoned 150 years previously.
By early afternoon the skies had cleared. Chiefs gathered in ceremonial headdresses adorned with ermine skins and sea lion whiskers. Blessings were given, speeches made. A bare-chested man in a nightmarish mask danced to clear away malevolent spirits, and afterward, a matriarch splashed water over the pole, purifying it. Children followed, tossing handfuls of fluffy eagle down that floated on a soft breeze.
Six immense ropes — two inches in diameter — had been lashed to the top of the pole, and at last the assembled crowd was directed to find places on each. Weighing 7,000 pounds, the pole was relatively light, but a weathered Haida fisherman explained that any pole raising can be dangerous. The countdown began. Boots bit into mud, backs heaved, and the great pole floated skyward. In a blink it was up. A few more hoarsely shouted instructions — “Pull on the yellow rope! Ease off on blue” — and it stood vertical. Cheers erupted. Boulders were rolled into the deep hole at its base, pounded in place with long wooden beams. Shovel after shovel of gravel followed.
Two days later, Parks Canada and the Haida Nation hosted a potlatch, or celebratory feast, and in Haida tradition, every person on the islands was invited. The Canadian government outlawed potlatching from 1884 to 1951, making the event a poignant symbol of progress. In a community hall packed to the rafters, I found myself sitting near Allan Wilson, a hereditary chief from Old Massett and the junior Mountie officer forced to arrest his own elders at the blockade, decades ago. He is a squat, powerful man, and his crew cut was peppered with white. A tangle of necklaces hung from his neck. “To this day I remember every step I took,” he said. “My legs felt like they weighed 300 pounds each.” He paused, then laughed. “I was happy it was raining, so no one could see my tears.”
I asked about the pole. “It feels as if we’ve had a big pot here on Haida Gwaii with a hole in it,” he said. “Now that missing piece has been put back in. The leak has been plugged. And all our stories, from before and those still to come, can stay in there.”
Later, 14 elders who stood on the line were introduced. As drums beat and dancers danced, Miles Richardson — who led the resistance during the blockade — uttered once again the words heard on newscasts across Canada: “We are here to uphold the decision of people of the Haida Nation. There will be no logging in Gwaii Haanas anymore.” The deafening applause was that of a nation whose history now lies newly ahead.
