Take back the night Aug. 6 by taking part in the National Night Out Against Crime.
Big cities, towns and neighborhoods all across the country, including Everett, plan evening activities for families.
The Evergreen Library and surrounding neighborhoods join together for an ice cream social from 5:30 to 8 p.m.
The evening’s activities include door prizes, a magician, balloon art, a face painter, craft making, and visits by Everett police and firefighters.
The Evergreen Branch Library is at 9512 Evergreen Way, Everett. For more information call 425-257-8250.
Check the city of Everett website at tinyurl.com/23ph5g6 for an updated list of neighborhoods planning events.
Night Out in Marysville events take place from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Comeford Park, 514 Delta Ave. Marysville and Tulalip Tribal police and Marysville Fire District officers will be on hand with information about the Neighborhood Watch Program and Marysville Volunteers Program crime prevention and fingerprinting kids.
Didi Garlow, Master Gardener at the Diabetes Garden helps fill planters to take home. Photo by Monica Brown
By Monica Brown, Tulalip News Writer
TULALIP, WA – The Diabetes Garden at the Karen I Fryberg Health clinic gave away, to their attendees, planter boxes with plants. The Diabetes Garden is a place where patients and community members can come to learn more about plant and garden care for a healthier future.
Community members and patients were invited to come out and fill a planter box to bring home so they can start a small garden. The planter boxes were filled with an assortment of vegetable, herb and flower plants and each person was given a fresh bag of soil to bring home.
This garden event will run until 1:00 pm Tuesday, July 16. But will continue during future, to be announced, garden and health clinic events.
Master Gardener, Roni Leahy on right, sorts out plants to take home Photo by Monica BrownPlanter boxes, plants and soil were given to each person. Photo by Monica Brown
On July 8th, The Bubble Man arrived at Tulalip Montessori in his purple van filled with repurposed “cheap toys.” He delighted the crowd of children and adults, or kidlings and kidults as the Bubble Man says, with his enormous soap bubbles, his quick wit and encouraging phrases such as, “Fun more time!”
With his purple beard and colorful hat, the Bubble Man strutted the schoolyard on a sunny afternoon, eliciting laughter from the kidlings and kidults. He explained to the children the importance of listening, behaving, being kind to the environment and having fun. While the Bubble Man offers high levels of bubble-making entertainment, he also delivers a powerful message to children about being environmentally conscious. Most of his bubble makers, which he labels “cheap toys”, are repurposed items he has acquired from around the world, such has rug beaters, plastic soda bottles, zip ties, silverware trays, toy horns and plastic soda can holders, to name a few.
Garry Golightly is the Bubble Man and he has traveled the world showing people the excitement and joy that comes from bubble making. Gary explained after his show, that no other toy brings so much joy, is as cheap and disappears so quickly like the bubble does. This was the third year in a row that the Bubble Man has made the trek to Tulalip.
Visit bubbleman.com for more information or call 206-781-6749.
The Tulalip diabetes team is pleased to provide an opportunity for receiving a wide range of diabetic services at one time. Our team is dedicated to assisting you with improving your health thru education, healthy foods, screenings and by having activities available for you to enjoy. If you have access to our services at the health clinic, please arrange to come anytime from 9-1pm. We will have breakfast and snacks available plus some quality incentive items for your participation.
Tulalip Tribal artists are invited to set up vendor tables during the 2nd Anniversary celebration of the Tulalip Tribes Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve. The Anniversary event will be held Saturday, August 17, 2013, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Vendors can begin setting up at 9 a.m.
We welcome you to reserve a table to showcase your talents as we celebrate the legacy of our ancestors with the Anniversary of the Hibulb Cultural Center opening.* One table and two chairs will be provided. Meals will be available for purchase.
Please contact one of the following people by August 9 to sign up so we can arrange areas:
For the tribes of the Tulalip Reservation—Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skykomish, and others—water has been an important economic, cultural, and spiritual resource. Shown below are some of the fountains featuring water from a Tulalip cultural perspective.
Tulalip Quil Ceda Village General Manager Steve Gobin speaks at his last Quil Ceda Village Council Meeting. Steve is retiring July 1st, to enjoy life with his family and especially his grandchildren. Photo by Niki Cleary
Niki Cleary, TulalipNews
At 62, short, grey and balding, Steve Gobin is not an imposing figure. He is humble, quiet, enjoys fly fishing and is devoted to his family. But ask him to talk about his tribe, economic development, sustainability, health care or any number of subjects connected to the wellbeing and longevity of his tribe, spark his passion, and Steve goes from mild mannered grandpa to razor sharp advocate in an instant.
After more than two decades of service for his tribe, Steve, General Manager of Tulalip’s Quil Ceda Village, is retiring. His career included labor in fisheries and forestry, 20 years of healthcare experience, work lobbying for expanded CHS (Contract Health Services) programs and funds, a stint in Governmental Affairs and finally his last two jobs, Deputy General Manager and General Manager of Quil Ceda Village. During his lifetime, he’s seen vast changes on the reservation, and he’s been a catalyst for some of them.
“I was born and raised here,” said Steve. “I think the tribe has gone through a lot of different personalities, but the leadership vision for the tribe has stayed consistent through those years. There’s still that consistency in the board today and I think that’s what kept us moving forward step after step after step.”
The tribe’s current prosperity is relatively new. Steve reminisced about his childhood.
“When I was a boy, we cut shakes for $3.00 a day, and we were happy to have the $3.00,” he explained. “We lived on a few thousand dollars a year. We lived on commodities, hunting and fishing. The priorities were making the family whole and feeding everybody.
“A lot of times I didn’t start school in the fall, I had to work and take care of my family,” Steve recalled. “My dad used to fish in Alaska, he used to start in June and go to November, so I got out of school early and started late. But I didn’t know I was poor.”
In his youth, Steve said, unemployment was about 80%. Then in the 1990s Tulalip built a bingo hall.
“The tribe didn’t even have an office until around 1965, and I think we had two or three employees, my mom was one of the employees they hired,” he said. “People didn’t fit in on the outside. There was no place for them to make money, the whole reservation economy was non-existent.”
Although there is always room for growth, Steve is grateful and astonished at what has been accomplished during his lifetime.
“It may seem to a lot of people that we don’t get paid enough, but look at what the tribe has given us, just in the last 20 years. It amazes me,” Steve described a few of the programs now provided. “We’ve funded healthcare, pharmaceuticals, mental health and drug and alcohol programs to help us overcome 200 years of poverty. We have money to pay per-capita payments to our people.
“No one needs to be starving or without a job. This is not the world that I knew growing up. It’s hard for me to look at my kids, even though I wanted them to have what I didn’t, and know they didn’t have the opportunity to experience living on the beach for food and to stay alive. Some of the bonding we did as a family and as a reservation, that really made us strong and we need to find a way to bring that back to our community.”
While some see addiction and social disorder as the pitfalls of prosperity, Steve says those dangers always existed. But now we have a chance to shape our future.
“The killer drug in 1970 was Rainier Beer,” he said. “Today it’s meth and heroin. But the things that stem from addiction are the same; child abuse, not feeling safe in the home, they’re the same now as then, but now there are more of us and it costs more to deal with it.
“But, with economic development,” Steve continued, “I think we have an opportunity to change the past and create a new vision for the future. Where kids don’t have to be hurt and people don’t have to go through those things. We can bring back some of that community pride to the tribe.
“A lot of what we’ve put into the ground, past Board of Directors, John McCoy, I can see it’s a future here, a future for my kids and grandkids and their kids. We’re building a sustainable economy so that our children don’t have to deal with the economic issues that we had. We’re the second largest employer in Snohomish County now. It’s been rewarding to be here.”
Right now, Steve can’t quite envision what the tribe will look like in a hundred years or more. But, family and culture, he described, have to be part of the future.
“I grew up and raised my family with the assumption that the reservation would always be a cultural center for our people,” he said. “But the sheer growth and population over the next 50 to 100 years is going to take that natural resource away from us. We’re going to have to find another way to be culturally connected to our past without fishing, hunting and the things that are the core of who we are. It’s going to be a challenge for our future leaders to take what’s best of the past and bring it forward to make a place for our people.”
Asked what teaching he’d like to leave for future generations, Steve said, “Take pride in yourself, work for your tribe’s future and the rewards that you will get will be enriching and last forever.”
Steve’s last day is July 1st. Like all of our leaders, I have no doubts that for the rest of his days, Steve will be looking out for the tribe and teaching future leaders what it means to be Tulalip. Happy retirement, Steve.
Native artist Jeffrey Veregge embraces his nerdiness
Monica Brown, TulalipNews
Jeffrey Veregge, a Port Gamble S’Klallam tribal member, has been creating art for most of his life. A few years ago, after exploring different art techniques, Jeffrey decided to mix two art forms he admires most, Salish form line with comic book super heroes and Sci-Fi. “I took what I like of Salish form line design, the elements and the spirit of it and decided to mix it with what I do as an artist and put my own take on it,” said Jeffrey about his latest art pieces.
His earlier work had a Picasso-esque theme that centered on native images. “I love cubist art. I like that it is messy but to be honest my heart wasn’t behind it [his earlier work], it wasn’t a true reflection of me,” explained Jeffrey. After taking a yearlong break to learn how to accept his nerd side, Jeffrey began to embrace his love of comic books, action figures and science fiction by recreating his favorite characters in the Salish design.
“Salish form line is beautiful and this felt like a natural extension. Comic books, Star Wars and all this stuff are equivalent to modern day myths and Salish art tells stories and myths,” said Jeffrey.
The sleek lines of the Salish design applied to superheroes such as Batman and Spiderman give them a solid and defined silhouette against a simple background. Because the placing of empty space against the background and the color contrast are both well thought out, the figures convey a sense of power and motion to the viewer. “I want to represent the comic characters in a good and noble way which they were intended,” said Jeffrey.
Last Son Courtesy of Jeffrey Veregge
Jeffrey is surprised and grateful for the success of his art, “A lot of native comic fans have approached me; a lot of support and wonderful emails, along with school programs asking for me to come show my work to inspire the students,” said Jeffrey. With the support from the fans he intends to recreate many more comic and Sci-Fi characters. Currently in the works are Iron man and possibly Deapool. Jeffrey is also organizing his attendance to the Tacoma Jet City Comic Show this November, where he will have a booth and be doing an exclusive print for the show and to Seattle’s Emerald City Comicon March 2014.
Jeffrey studied Industrial Design at Seattle’s Art institute and the Salish form line from Master Carver David Boxley, a Tsimshian native from Metlakatla, Alaska. Prints are available for purchase through his website, jeffreyveregge.com . T-shirt designs and baseball hats will be available for purchase soon.
His art can be seen at, In the Spirit: Contemporary Northwest Native Arts Exhibit located in Tacoma, at the LTD Art Gallery in Seattle, The Burke Museum and The Washington State History Museum. Other recent art commissions include a piece commissioned for the Tulalip Youth Center for their Suicide prevention campaign, a Steer Clear campaign with the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board and a double sided mural in Edmonton, Alberta.
Tribal officials need your help planning tribal parks
By Niki Cleary, TulalipNews
As the houses and debris were slowly cleared away, tribal members began returning to Mission Beach, one of few open, accessible beaches on the Tulalip reservation. Although the homes are gone, the bulkheads remain, leaving room for an exciting opportunity: A tribal park.
Grassy areas, handicap accessibility from the road to the beach, interpretive signs that play Lushootseed place names at the touch of a button and, of course, nice restrooms. These are just some of the ideas tossed around at the public meeting that Housing staff hosted to gather input from tribal members about what they’d like to see in a ‘Mission Beach Park.’
The meeting was a brainstorming session with no limits, and while a water slide (that twirls and loops and then dips underground before shooting you into the water) might not make it into the final plan, many of the ideas will
“This is a great opportunity for tribal members,” said Public Works Executive Director Gus Taylor. “There are so many tribal members who go down there right now.”
Mission Beach’s accessibility has also sparked the creation of a Parks Committee.
“The Parks Committee formed last month,” explained Patti Gobin who works on Special projects for Tulalip. She pointed out that the return of Mission Beach to tribal members is only the latest and most visible reason that parks planning is needed.
“In the past we never called them parks, they’ve just been gathering areas,” she said. “We’re growing so fast and we’re starting to have more open spaces for our people to gather and enjoy. We need some criteria for those areas to make sure they stay clean, safe and sustainable for our people. We’re going to create a parks ordinance that will set those criteria with sensitivity to our culture and traditional ways. In hundreds of years we, the tribe, will still be here. We want to make sure our open space and parks will be here for generations to come.”
The Parks Committee is still in its infancy. Right now it is composed of staff from the different tribal departments (Natural Resources, Community Development, Public Works, Administrative Services and Cultural Resources) that are currently managing the common spaces on the reservation.
Unfortunately, the Parks Committee isn’t just an optimistic endeavor to construct parks, it’s also a reaction to some of the negative activities that are taking place in the tribe’s recreational areas. Since the Mission Beach home removal, several people have reported groups of both tribal and non-tribal members under the influence and verbally abusive on the beach, graffiti has sprung up along the old bulkheads and some of the bulkhead has been burned away.
“We need to be proactive in monitoring and providing maintenance for these areas,” said Patti. Ultimately that means a Parks Department. “That will require budget to pay for staff, and we’ll have to decide, what will be the criteria for those jobs? Will it include park rangers?
“This isn’t just for Mission Beach,” Patti went on. “We have gathering areas at Totem Beach, Hermosa, Spee-Bi-Dah, Tulare, and off reservation too, at Lopez Island, Baby Island, and Hat Island. Those are just the areas I can think of off the top of my head. Eventually a parks department would also be responsible for the connectivity and maintenance of walking trails throughout the reservation.”
Patti and her team are hoping to have a first draft of the Parks Ordinance submitted for Board of Directors Review by January 2014, but, she said, Mission Beach won’t wait that long.
Because Mission Beach is designated as lease property, it currently falls under the authority of the Tulalip Housing Department, although once a parks department is created and staffed, Mission Beach will revert to parks. Housing is currently requesting input from tribal members about what they’d like to see in the future.
“Right now we’re unsure when the next meeting will be,” said Anita Taylor of Housing. “We’re presenting the ideas from our first meeting to the board, then we’ll have another community meeting, hopefully in July.”
In the meantime, a sign outlining general park rules will be going up at the parking lot and on the beach, and tribal staff will continue to maintain garbage cans with the expectation that if you pack it in, you pack it out. For other concerns or to submit your input to the park plan, contact Housing staff.
“If you have an emergency, of course call 911,” said Anita. “But if you have any other issues, want to report graffiti, find needles or paraphernalia on the beach, contact myself (360-716-4449, ataylor@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov), or Malory Simpson (360-716-4454, msimpson@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov) and we’ll arrange to have staff take care of it as soon as possible.”
The following images from Brian Way of WHPacific, illustrate some of the proposals for Mission Beach. These include pathways, viewpoints, restrooms, fire pits and a rinse station.
Jeffrey Veregge, a Port Gamble S’Klallam tribal member, has been creating art for most of his life. A few years ago, after exploring different art techniques, Jeffrey decided to mix two art forms he admires most, Salish form line with comic book super heroes and Sci-Fi. “I took what I like of Salish form line design, the elements and the spirit of it and decided to mix it with what I do as an artist and put my own take on it,” said Jeffrey about his latest art pieces.
