Tulalip News

Decision postponed on housing plan for coastal Native American site

A decision on the fate of a five-acre parcel known as the Ridge at the southeast corner of Bolsa Chica Street and Los Patos Avenue has been postponed. (Kevin Chang / Huntington Beach Independent / December 31, 2013)http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-housing-decision-postponed-native-american-site-20140110,0,7313049.story#ixzz2qOzsnYbw — A decision on the fate of a five-acre parcel known as the Ridge at the southeast corner of Bolsa Chica Street and Los Patos Avenue has been postponed. (Kevin Chang / Huntington Beach Independent / December 31, 2013)

By Anthony Clark Carpio

The Los Angeles Times January 10, 2014

The California Coastal Commission has postponed a decision on whether to allow new housing construction on land in Huntington Beach that opponents say is home to Native American artifacts and remains.

At the request of the city, commissioners voted unanimously this week to postpone deciding whether to allow Huntington Beach to amend its Local Coastal Program — local governments’ guide to development in the coastal zone — to allow for new homes on the northwest portion of Bolsa Chica.

Huntington Beach Planning Director Scott Hess told commissioners that city officials and housing developers want more time to analyze and respond to late changes made to a report by coastal commission staff which had recommended denying the proposed amendment because it would “eliminate a higher priority land use designation and does not assure that significant culture resources and sensitive habitats will be protected” under the California Coastal Act.

Property owner Signal Landmark and developer Hearthside Homes want to build 22 “green” homes on a five-acre parcel called the Ridge near Bolsa Chica Street and Los Patos Avenue, the Huntington Beach Independent reported.

Preservationists say the Ridge site, as with the rest of the mesa, contains Native American artifacts and remains.

The updated report recommends that before the commission considers rezoning the Ridge, the city and the property owners “irrevocably” offer an adjacent 6-acre parcel to be dedicated to a governmental or nonprofit organization to be used as open space.

Other new recommendations include requiring a cultural resources protection plan and requiring current biological assessments to be done for both sites.

Huntington Beach Councilwoman Connie Boardman, who was at the hearing Wednesday with 30 or more Bolsa Chica Land Trust members, said the coastal commission made the right move in postponing the hearing.

“It’s appropriate to postpone something when the developer brings in something the morning of the hearing so that the public and the commissioners have a chance to evaluate the changes that they’re proposing,” she said.

2000-year old Native American woman’s skeleton unearthed at Florida dig site

Underneath the asphalt of a modern highway can be treasures of history. This proved to be the case for workers trying to install a water pipe in Davie, Florida. The workers were apparently working on a historical site, as upon survey, inspection, and some digging of archaeologists, a 2,000-year-old intact human skeleton on Pine Island Road was found.

By Randell Suba, Tech Times | January 13 2014

The bones belonged to a five feet tall woman who might have been a member of the Tequesta native American tribe and estimated to be in her 20s or 30s at the time of her death. The remains did not indicate trauma, leading experts to conclude that she died of a disease.

“It’s unusually well preserved, considering it’s been under a highway with thousands and thousands of cars going over it every day,” said director of the Archaeological and Historical Conservancy Bob Carr.

Ryan Franklin, another member of the archaeological team corroborated Carr’s assessment.

(Photo : Lindsey Gira) A native American woman. In Davie, Florida, experts have unearthed an intact set of human bones at a construction site. The bones are believed to have belonged to a native American woman who lived 2,000 years ago.

“It was pretty exciting to find. We found the toe, which became a foot. When you find a toe, there’s a good chance there’s something else going on. We had to stop and contact the state,” Franklin said in an interview. “She was almost perfectly intact, which is unusual. Usually when we find graves that are this old, the acidity of the soil can deteriorate the bones, it was unusual given her age.”

Indications that this can be historical site led to a three-week pause of the construction work on Dec. 18, in accordance with Florida laws. The construction resumed last Thursday.

Out of respect to the tribes,, the skeleton cannot be photographed. Scientists cannot also chip a part of it to do carbon dating and accurately check its age. To estimate the age of the skeleton, experts based it on artifacts found earlier in the area.

According to experts, the Tequesta woman was accustomed to the life on the Pine Islands about 2,000 years back. She could have been a skilled weaver and knew how to prepare smoked fish. The woman might have also hunted and fished from her canoe. The area where the remains were discovered were actually surrounded by the Everglades that stretched as far as Fort Lauderdale and Davie.

In the 1980s, three intact skeletons were discovered in the area. The latest archaeological dig is considered as one of the oldest recovered skeletons and among the best preserved ones.

Seeking Safety Drop In Group

Family Services offers Seeking Safety as a Drop-In Group twice a week.

All are welcome to attend.

Seeking Safety covers a range of important topics and safe coping skills, such as:

· PTSD: Taking back your power

· Grounding

· When substances control you

· Asking for help

· Taking good care of yourself

· Compassion

· Honesty

· Red and green flags

· Recovery thinking

· Commitment

· Setting boundaries in relationships

· Getting others to support your recovery

· Coping with triggers

· Healthy relationships

· Self-nurturing

· Healing from anger

· And other topics

Join us on Mondays 3pm-4pm and Thursdays Noon-1pm.

Questions?

Contact: Rosemary Hill: 360-716-4336 or Jeremy Franklin: 360-716-4377

‘SCALP EM!’ Racist T-shirt for Sale After Florida State BCS Victory

Simon Moya-Smith, 1/14/14, Indian Country Today Media Network

Unauthorized fan merchandise surfaced on the web recently after the Florida State University Seminoles defeated the Auburn University Tigers at the BCS Championship last week.

Among the bevy of fan merch, one specific T-shirt has FSU officials rushing to see that it is discontinued.

The T-shirt, marketed as a “Florida State University 2013 National Champs Vintage Tee,” and manufactured by RowdyGentlemen.com, has the words, ‘SCALP ‘EM!,’ emblazoned across the chest. Below the text is an arrow and tomahawk.

Liz Maryanski, vice president for university relations, told Indian Country Today that on January 10, FSU officials began measures for an “emergency cease and desist” of all sales of the offensive T-shirt.

“We would never license that shirt,” Maryanski said. “That term is extremely derogatory and it’s offensive.”

Maryanski said that during such infringement issues, FSU employs a third party company, Collegiate Licensing, to address the matter. The company will then contact the unlicensed vendor directly, she said.

“Generally, they act very quickly,” she said.

Maryanski said that even if infringement were not an issue, FSU would work diligently to see that the T-shirt is eliminated.

“This is an infringement issue, but even it wasn’t, we would do everything in our power to shut it down,” she said.

Maryanski also said that FSU is “honored” to be able to use the Seminole name and is “very protective” of it.

Gary Bitner, spokesman for the Seminole Tribe of Florida, told Indian Country Today that the tribe is confident that FSU will make sure the shirt is discontinued.

“They (FSU) move quickly and effectively to do what needs to be done,” Bitner said, adding that the tee is a “terrible shirt.”

“It’s too bad that in 2014 we still see this kind of image and stereotypical presentation,” he said.

The Seminole Tribe’s Tribal Council authorized FSU to use its name and symbols and has an ongoing relationship with the university, Bitner said.

“The relationship between Florida State and the Seminole Tribe is one of mutual respect,” he said.

As of January 13, the T-shirt has not been taken down from the website and is still for sale.

Representatives of RowdyGentlemen.com did not respond to Indian Country Today’s request for comment.

An undefeated FSU beat Auburn 34-31 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, on January 6.

Dancing for Snow Miracle Is Last Hope for Olympic Heritage Games

Eagle Wing DancersSierra Sun — Eagle Wing Dancers
Sierra Sun

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

Organizers of the Olympic Heritage Celebration need a miracle. Their 2014 games are in jeopardy unless it snows hard and fast.

“Two years ago, we had no snow,” said Heidi Doyle, executive director of the Sierra State Parks Foundation, one of the program sponsors. “The night after the Eagle Wings danced, I believe after all that positive energy, we got unpredicted snow,” she said in a news release.

Doyle hopes that the Eagle Wings Dancers can perform a miracle this year, as there’s been sparser than usual snowfall in and around Tahoe, California.

“It worked for Walt Disney back in 1960, we hope it will work for us in 2014,” said

Doyle in a press release. Doyle was referring to the year that Squaw Valley, California was chosen to host the Winter Olympic Games. In 1960, the organizers, including Walt Disney, were nervous because the world was about to watch the games in a place that was having an unusually dry winter season. There was barely any snowfall.

Disney, who was chairman of the Pageantry Committee, planned the opening ceremony. He brought in tribal dancers to coax the snow to fall, and after the snow dance was performed, the weather changed. More than 12 feet of snow fell and the games went on as planned. Doyle hopes that the Eagle Wings Dancers can perform a bit of magic for the third time.

The Eagle Wings formed in 2006 to keep the Native American song a dance alive. The songs and dances they perform are more than 1,000 years old and indigenous to the Paiute, Shoshone, and Washoe tribes.

“Our motto is ‘dancing in the steps of our ancestors,’” said Lois Kane, the director of the dance troupe in a news release. “We believe it is the spirit of the Old Ones that lead and guide us.” The Eagle Wing Dancers will perform in the opening ceremonies and dance in front of the iconic Tower of Nations at the park entrance of the park.

The opening ceremonies of the Olympic Heritage Celebration begin on January 11 at the Sugar Pine Point State Park in Tacoma, California. It’s a week-long series of skiing and historic commemorations that honor the Olympic games. The programs focus on the North Tahoe Olympic cultural history, as well as recreational events to promote the spirit of fair play and fitness.

Former Olympic athletes are also scheduled to attend, including Pete Wilson, a 1960 Bronze medal winner and Joseph William Tyler, who was a member of the 1980 U.S. bobsled team. Dignitaries will be on hand to light the caldron and tour the trails at the state park where the Olympic events took place 64 years ago.

“We encourage the community to join us as we honor our Olympic Heritage and dance for snow,” Doyle said.

Grant advances Kasaan longhouse repairs

The roof of Kasaan’s Chief Son-i-Hat House, also known as the Whale House, is covered by a tarp during repair work. (Organized Village of Kasaan.)

By Ed Schoenfeld, CoastAlaska News

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.

The tribal government is partnering with the Native village corporation Kavilco, and its cultural arm, the Kasaan Haida Heritage Foundation.

“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.

Poetry works show Alexie at his best

Kathryn Smith The Spokesman-Review

January 12, 2014

Death. Family. Loss. Love. Wealth. Poetry. Spirituality. Genocide. Prejudice. Sherman Alexie’s new poetry collection, “What I’ve Stolen, What I’ve Earned,” demonstrates the National Book Award-winning writer’s ability to tackle big themes, weaving them together in the context of his Indian identity and with his wry, unapologetic sense of humor.

And he wastes no time doing it. Alexie takes on all these topics in the collection’s first poem, the wide-ranging and powerful “Crazy Horse Boulevard,” always through the lens of his Indian identity (a member of the Spokane Tribe, he uses the term “Indian” almost exclusively). He addresses being Indian in a white world (“Most of the people who read this poem will be white people”), as well as within Indian culture, on and off the reservation (“Among my immediate family, I’m the only one who doesn’t live on the reservation. What does that say about me?”). The poem brings historical prejudices into a modern context, and Alexie calls things as he sees them, especially when it comes to the choices people make from what he sees as places of luxury (“If my sons, Indian as they are, contract some preventable disease from those organic, free-range white children and die, will it be legal for me to scalp and slaughter their white parents?”).

The focus on racial and cultural identity comes through strongest in the book’s first section. “Happy Holidays” pointedly discusses the complicated relationship modern Indians have with American holidays. “Sonnet, with Slot Machines” wrestles with the politics of Indian casinos and issues of gambling.

“Slot Machines” is one of many so-called “sonnets” in the book; the poems comprise the second section and are scattered throughout the others. In labeling these poems sonnets, Alexie initiates a conversation about form, forgoing the traditional 14-line rhyme and metrical structure and instead following formulas of his own. This reinvention of form allows Alexie to stay true to his own voice, never sacrificing his natural vocabulary for the sake of someone else’s definition of “poetic.” Yet Alexie pays homage to formal poetry and to his literary forbears by recognizing the significance of the form’s constraints while giving it his own spin.

Whatever form he uses, Alexie stays true, too, to his own style of storytelling. And “What I’ve Stolen, What I’ve Earned” is, at its core, a book of stories, told piecemeal, which hit the reader with their poignancy in the way Alexie weaves the seemingly disparate pieces together. In “Sonnet, with Tainted Love” he does this with a missing persons case, nightmares and the movie “Dirty Dancing.” “Hell” links Dante, Jimmy Durante, Moses and a fear of heights.

At 156 pages, it’s lengthy for a poetry collection, and the book does drag at times. (“Phone Calls from Ex-Lovers,” for example, probably doesn’t need to list all top 100 songs from 1984. Surely 10 would have made the point.)

But the slow moments are overcome by the tenderness of “Steel Anniversary,” by the undeniable momentum of “The Naming Ceremony,” and by the sledgehammer truths that catch us off-guard, the laugh-out-loud surprises and the utter honesty with which Alexie delivers it all.

“What I’ve Stolen” creates a world that, to borrow a line from “Sonnet, with Tainted Love,” “is equal parts magic and loss,” and it’s a book worth savoring to the final line.

Legislators Pre-file Bi-partisan Bill to Make Alaska Native Languages Official State Languages

By Mark Gnadt | House Democratic Caucus 01/10/2014

Alaska Native News

On Thursday, Representative Charisse Millett (R-Anchorage), Representative Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins (D-Sitka), Representative Benjamin Nageak (D-Barrow), and Representative Bryce Edgmon (D-Dillingham) announced they are pre-filing the Alaska Native Language Bill to make each of the Native languages in Alaska an official language of the state.

In current state law, English is Alaska’s only official language. This bill would expand the list to include Iñupiaq, Siberian Yupik, Central Alaskan Yup’ik, Alutiiq, Unangax̂, Dena’ina, Deg Xinag, Holikachuk, Koyukon, Upper Kuskokwim, Gwich’in, Tanana, Upper Tanana, Tanacross, Hän, Ahtna, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian.

“Losing a language is losing a way of understanding the world,” said Kreiss-Tomkins. “We hope this legislation will add even more momentum to the revitalization of Alaska Native languages.”

“Native culture enriches the lives of Alaskans in so many ways,” said Millett. “Naming Alaska’s twenty indigenous languages as official languages of the state of Alaska demonstrates our respect and admiration for their past, current, and future contributions to our state.”

“This legislation will highlight the importance of preserving and revitalizing the rich and diverse cultural legacy inherent in Alaska Native languages,” said Edgmon, chairman of the House Bush Caucus. “We recently celebrated our 50^th year of statehood. In another 50 years I would like to see the many languages of our first Alaskans playing a vibrant role in the lives of people all over the state.”

“I want to thank Representative Kreiss-Tomkins for starting the process of the passage of this bill. We, the co-sponsors, feel this bill will be a positive and long overdue formal legislative recognition of all the Native languages still spoken in this great state of ours and the people who still speak their own language,” said Nageak.

Nageak continued, “Those of us who still speak and write our language want to make sure that all Native languages in the state of Alaska do not die off and want them passed on to the younger generation and the generations that will come in the near and distant future. The first words I ever spoke in my life were Iñupiaq words. My generation spoke only Iñupiaq when we were growing up and did not learn to speak English until the age of 6 years old when we started school as kindergartners. Our generation has struggled with and has been somewhat complicit in not speaking our languages when we became parents, therefore the majority of the generation we parented does not speak or write the different Native languages that were spoken entirely by Native people from generations past. We, as prime co-sponsors, feel that this bill is a start in making sure that future generations of Native speakers multiply until someday all of our Native people will once again be totally fluent in their own Native tongue with the added capability of speaking the English language.”

Making these languages official languages of the state of Alaska is a symbolic gesture to acknowledge their importance to Alaskans and the state’s heritage. Passage of the bill will not require public signs and documents to be printed in multiple languages, and it will create no additional costs to the state.

The bill will be assigned a bill number and released on Friday, January 10. It will be read into the official record and assigned committees of referral on the first day of the upcoming legislative session, January 21, 2014.

State ferries have started their winter schedule. Privately-owned Coho ferry in Port Angeles now only U.S. ferry to Vancouver Island

By Peninsula Daily News

SEATTLE — Washington state ferries started their winter sailing schedule Sunday.

Service to Sidney, B.C., is suspended, and fewer sailings are scheduled in the San Juan Islands and some other routes.

The winter schedule is in effect through April 5.

Schedule details, including the Port Townsend-Coupeville route, are online at http://tinyurl.com/pdn-winterferries.

Unaffected is the privately owned MV Coho ferry between Port Angeles and Victoria, which already has begun its winter schedule.

The Coho makes one round trip daily — departing from Port Angeles at 8:20 a.m. — until the vessel goes out of service Jan. 20 for its annual two-week maintenance.

It will return to service Feb. 6. More schedule information can be found at http://tinyurl.com/pdn-coho.

Canada’s energy officials take over job of protecting fish from pipelines

By John Upton, Grist

Move aside, Canadian federal fisheries and oceans officials. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s administration has decided that the nation’s fossil-fuel-friendly energy regulators would do a better job of protecting fish in streams and lakes that cross paths with gas and oil pipelines. Northwest Coast Energy News has the scoop:

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has handed responsibility for fish and fish habitat along pipeline routes over to the National Energy Board. …

DFO and NEB quietly announced a memorandum of agreement on December 16, 2013, that went largely unnoticed with the release three days later of the Joint Review Panel decision on Northern Gateway and the slow down in news coverage over the Christmas holidays. …

Enbridge no longer has to apply to DFO for permits to alter fish habitat along the Northern Gateway route. …

Fish and fish habitat along [that] pipeline is now the responsibility of the Alberta-based, energy friendly National Energy Board.

This looks to be another horrifying step in Harper’s efforts to quash any science (or common sense) that might slow down the extraction and transportation of gas and oil in Canada.

Source

DFO hands over fisheries protection along pipelines to the NEB, Northwest Coast Energy News

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.