By Natosha Gobin, Tulalip Lushootseed Language Teacher
haʔɬ sləx̌il Good afternoon,
We would like to invite all to participate in our Fall Lushootseed Family Nights, starting this Wednesday November 20th, from 5pm-7pm at the Tulalip Tribal Administration Building in the lunchroom area on the 2nd floor. The location for future classes will be announced at Wednesdays class.
Lushootseed Family Nights are open to any and all who are interested in learning basic Lushootseed in ways that you can use daily. The classes are free, and materials are provided. This is a great opportunity for all, whether you have kids who have graduated from our language programs in Montessori/ECEAP, have kids currently enrolled in our language programs, are enrolled in our Lushootseed college class, or would like to make Lushootseed a part of your daily speech!
To top it off…dinner will be provided! We hope to see you at our first class!
From crows and robins to woodpeckers and cardinals. Not every bird flies south for the winter. Depending on where you are, you could be enjoying the company of a number of species that choose to tough out the winters. Why not make it a little easier on them by providing a few bird feeders in your backyard? Not only will it be easier for the birds to find food in freezing temperatures, but their colorful little wings will also brighten up your backyard.
During the colder months food can be scarce for birds. Berries are gone, insects are dead or dormant, and other food sources may be hard to come by. As can protection from freezing winds and the dark cold of winter nights.
To stay warm birds try to conserve their energy by flying as little as possible. They also puff up their feathers to create air pockets of insulation that help keep them warm. To keep their metabolism at a normal rate they need to compensate for the expended energy needed to keep warm by eating rich, nutrient-dense foods. Basically they need to get as many calories in as they can with as little effort as possible. Though birdseed may be enough in the summer it’s a good idea to offer your feathered friends suet in the winter.
Suet comes in little hard cakes and contains animal fat, seeds, nuts, grains and dried fruits. Though you can buy it just about anywhere, it is surprisingly simple and economical to make, especially if your family is doing any hunting this fall and you have access to some animal fat, otherwise bacon grease or beef trimmings from the butcher will work. Word on the street is that the birds prefer the homemade version themselves too.
Homemade Suet
2 cups quick-cooking oats
2 cups cornmeal
1 cup flour
½ cup sugar
1 cup lard
1 cup crunchy peanut butter
In a medium saucepan, melt the lard and peanut butter over medium high heat, stirring occasionally.
In a separate bowl combine the oats, cornmeal, flour and sugar.
Add the dry ingredients to the melted fats.
Store the suet in a reusable container and scoop it out as needed. It’s recommended that you break up the suet into small chunks so that the squirrels can’t take too much at once.
Use a store-bought suet feeder to feed the birds or spread the suet directly on tree limbs.
And don’t forget to also offer the birds a little bit of warm water to drink and a few birdhouses or evergreen bushes to find sanctuary from the cold winds. With just a little bit of effort you can make the winter a lot more bearable for our feathered friends.
Darla Antoine on a recent visit to Washington State (Courtesy Darla)
Darla Antoine is an enrolled member of the Okanagan Indian Band in British Columbia and grew up in Eastern Washington State. For three years, she worked as a newspaper reporter in the Midwest, reporting on issues relevant to the Native and Hispanic communities, and most recently served as a producer for Native America Calling. In 2011, she moved to Costa Rica, where she currently lives with her husband and their infant son. She lives on an organic and sustainable farm in the “cloud forest”—the highlands of Costa Rica, 9,000 feet above sea level. Due to the high elevation, the conditions for farming and gardening are similar to that of the Pacific Northwest—cold and rainy for most of the year with a short growing season. Antoine has an herb garden, green house, a bee hive, cows, a goat, and two trout ponds stocked with hundreds of rainbow trout.
Producer Wins National Award for Related Radio Program
Salt Lake City, Utah— The Western Folklife Center is in production of a public television documentary that examines the emotional trauma of war through the prism of Native American tradition and ceremony. Healing the Warrior’s Heart reveals the central role that military service plays in Native life and explores the spiritual traditions that help returning American Indian soldiers reintegrate into society. The Folklife Center’s Media Producer, Taki Telonidis, is producing the documentary in collaboration with Gary Robinson of Tribal Eye Productions, and KUED Channel 7, Salt Lake City’s PBS affiliate.
For centuries, tribal cultures have used healing songs and ceremonies to cleanse their warriors of war, and despite the loss of language and culture among many tribes, these traditions remain vital on several reservations in the West, and they hold lessons for our nation as it struggles to bring comfort to the latest generation of warriors suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Despite great efforts by medical and military professionals to treat PTSD, many veterans continue to suffer from it, and there is a small but growing community of psychologists, counselors and clergy who are looking toward Native American traditions to bring healing to our suffering soldiers.
Much of the documentary focuses on members of the Blackfeet tribe in northern Montana. The Blackfeet Nation is a place where warrior identity is very much alive in our time, even though many current soldiers have lost the connection with the healing traditions that were practiced by their ancestors. Yet there are others for whom those traditions remain relevant, both during their deployment as well as in their re-entry to society. The documentary will include interviews and scenes with spiritual leaders, veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as elder veterans, family members and tribal leaders.
In September, Taki Telonidis was honored for a radio program that grew out of his research on the film. “Veteran’s Find Healing in Native American Tradition,” aired on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered on Memorial Day in 2012, and documents how veterans at the Salt Lake City VA Hospital were benefitting from traditional healing ceremonies conducted in a sweat lodge on the hospital grounds. The Religion Newswriters Association (RNA) awarded Taki first place in the category for Radio or Podcast Religion Report of the Year for the show. RNA is a charitable, literary and educational organization whose purpose is to promote excellence in media coverage and in public discourse about religion.
Healing the Warrior’s Heart is supported by the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation, the Interculture Foundation, the Kalliopeia Foundation, the R. Harold Burton Foundation, the Palladium Foundation, the Utah Humanities Council, and by Western Folklife Center stakeholders.
The Western Folklife Center is dedicated to exploring, presenting and preserving the diverse and dynamic cultural heritage of the American West. We celebrate the wisdom, artistry and ingenuity of western folkways through exhibitions, educational programs, national radio and television programs, research and preservation projects, our website, and our premier event, the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. We nurture connections among rural and ranching cultures globally, exploring universal themes in working traditions and artistic expression, which we believe are vital links to the past, present and future of the American West.
Looking to buy cool kids’ books for Christmas gifts? Check out this one by local Lummi talent Keith and Chenoa Egawa.
Hey Friends – Anyone Christmas shopping yet? How about our picture book, Tani’s Search for the Heart? A great gift for the kids in your life (and the really big kids) who enjoy a Coast Salish Native American adventure with both traditional and unusual local creatures.
Join Tani in an affirming tale of a child overcoming adult challenges, on her journey to make the world a better place for all. Timeless lessons that’ll get you thinking and feeling.
We hope you will take a glance at our website for purchasing info and additional detail about the story, author and artists: http://tanissearchfortheheart.com/
With the lower Elwha Dam gone, and the Glines Canyon Dam scheduled to be gone in early 2014, the chinook salmon are coming back to their ancestral spawning grounds unreachable for the last 100 years. I spent a week in early September filming them in the Elwha River and one of it’s tributaries, Indian Creek. These are a few of the outtakes from that shoot, some of the final footage will be used in the film “Return of the River”, Learn more at elwhafilm.com/
MCCALLA, Alabama — McAdory High School has issued a public apology for a “Trail of Tears” banner that was held up during a weekend football game versus the Pinson Valley Indians.
The sign, which originally began making the internet rounds through a Tumblr blog post, reads:
“Hey Indians, get ready to leave in a Trial of Tears part 2”
On the McAdory High School website, Principal Tod Humphries said he accepts ” full responsibility that arrangements were not made to have the signs pre-approved before the ballgame.”
The person who is usually in charge of approving such signs, he said, is currently out on maternity leave.
The sign, said Humphries, “was not condoned by the school administration, the Jefferson County Board of Education or the community.”
Humphries then goes on to offer “sincere apologies to the Native American people and to anyone who was offended by the reference to an event that is a ‘stain’ on our nation’s past forever.”
The Trail of Tears refers to the U.S. Government’s forcible removal of
Indians from areas in the Southeast to what is now Oklahoma. The move came during the 1830s as part of a push to remove all tribes east of the Mississippi to the west. The Trail encompassed the relocation of the Seminole, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek and Choctaw nations.
About 1,070 Indians were transported from Ross’ Landing in Chattanooga to what is now Waterloo. Much of the 230-mile journey followed what is now U.S. 72.
From 1838 to 1839, as many as 20,000 Cherokee marched or rode in wagons or boats to Arkansas and Oklahoma. The route is known as the Trail of Tears because about 4,000 died on the trip.
Earlier today, BuzzFeed posted a story about the controversial banner on its website.
The banner and its message have also sparked conversation on Twitter:
Photo: Last night, this sign went up at a McAdory High School football game. I am absolutely disgusted that… http://t.co/4v6alGkeGt
On 11/15/2013 at a football game at McAdory High School, a sign was displayed that made reference to the “Trail of Tears” in which Native Americans were subjected to horrific atrocities. This was not condoned by the school administration, the Jefferson County Board of Education or the community. The person who would normally be responsible for approving such signs is out on maternity leave, and I take full responsibility that arrangements were not made to have the signs pre-approved before the ballgame. Please accept our sincere apologies to the Native American people and to anyone who was offended by the reference to an event that is a stain on our nation’s past forever.
In response to the “bust thru” sign used by McAdory High School during the Round 2 State Play-Off game versus Pinson Valley High School, all social studies and history teachers will re-teach and/or review units concerning Native American displacement following the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
Offshore hydraulic fracturing operations off the coast of California use highly toxic chemicals that are often released directly into water along the state’s coast, the Center for Biological Diversity revealed today, calling on the state’s Coastal Commission to halt fracking for oil and gas in state waters.
In an analysis sent by letter to the Commission ahead of a meeting this week in Newport Beach, The Center for Biological diversity pulls from data disclosed by oil companies and obtained from government documents that highlights seven risky chemicals used in “hundreds of recently revealed frack jobs in state waters” that directly violate the Coastal Act.
Multiple oil platforms, according to the research, are discharging wastewater directly into the Santa Barbara Channel, according to a government document, and other areas along the California Coast.
The letter states:
In the offshore context, fracking fluid is either discharged into the ocean or transported for onshore underground injection. When disposed of at sea, these chemicals enter the marine ecosystem. The Coastal Commission acknowledges that approximately half of the platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel discharge all or a portion of their wastewater directly to the ocean. This produced wastewater contains all of the chemicals injected originally into the fracked wells, with the addition of toxins gathered from the subsurface environment. These discharges of toxic chemicals directly contravene the requirements of the Coastal Act, which charges the Coastal Commission with the “protection against the spillage of . . . hazardous substances.”
“The Coastal Commission has the right and the responsibility to step in when oil companies use dangerous chemicals to frack California’s ocean waters,” said Emily Jeffers, a Center attorney. “Our beaches, our wildlife and our entire coastal ecosystem are at risk until the state reins in this dangerous practice.”
The research shows that at least one-third of chemicals used in offshore fracking operations “are suspected ecological hazards” and are suspected of “affecting the human developmental and nervous systems.”
The chemicals include X-Cide, which is “classified as a hazardous substance by the federal agency that manages cleanup at Superfund sites.”
“Because the risk of many of the harms from fracking cannot be eliminated, a complete prohibition on fracking is the best way to protect human health and the environment,” the letter states.
A recent report by the Associated Pressshowed that California coastal regulators were unaware until recently that offshore fracking was even occurring.
The agricultural industry has reaped the rewards of laws requiring ethanol cultivation, but now the environmental ramifications are causing second thoughts.
The impacts of ethanol on the nation’s wetlands and conservation sites are becoming more apparent, as farmers take over once-protected land to cultivate corn for the ever-growing ethanol industry — one initially intended to help the environment.
A report released by the Associated Press paints an entirely different picture.
Ethanol, which is derived from corn, is added in the nation’s gas supply in order to create a blend that offers renewable energy sources and a lighter impact on pollutant emissions. Yet the Associated Press report indicates that the cultivation of farmland needed to meet the nation’s ethanol requirements is contributing more to carbon emissions than previously thought — all the while affecting the environment through the use of fertilizers and wetland destruction.
According to the report, more than 5 million acres of land that had been designated for conservation purposes have been restructured for the production of ethanol. Throughout that process, natural habitats have been destroyed and fertilizers have been released, creating a new environmental issue of its own.
The 2007 Renewable Fuel Standard, signed into law by George W. Bush, required 18.15 billion gallons of ethanol production per year — it also required refineries purchase and blend ethanol into the nation’s gasoline supplies.
While Bush signed the standard into law, the Obama administration carried on with the pledge. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency is calling for a reduction to the standard’s production mandate — down to 13 billion gallons a year.
That’s at least a step in the right direction for those who are concerned about the impact the industry is having on area waterways, wetlands and conservation sites. Iowa, which is a hotbed for the ethanol industry, has seen the adverse effects on water systems, particularly related to nitrate contamination.
Utility Company Des Moines Water Works told the Associated Press that nitrate levels in area rivers have steadily increased, particularly in the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers, which serve as the source of drinking water for nearly 500,000 Iowans.
“This year, unfortunately the nitrate levels in both rivers were so high that it created an impossibility for us,” General Manager Bill Stowe told the Associated Press.
Yet for the agricultural industry, which has benefitted from the creation of the new business, the EPA guidelines would be bad news. Renewable Fuels Association President Bob Dinneen maintains that the ethanol industry is a boost to both farmers and the environment, claiming that ethanol is still a cleaner source of energy.
In response to the Associated Press story regarding the negative impacts of the industry on Iowa wetlands and conservation sites, Dineen’s organization released a statement, claiming the story was yet another attack on the industry.
Books of Seattle-area interest: “Tulalip, From My Heart,” “The Pig War” in paperback, “Larry Gets Lost in Prehistoric Times” and “Why Do I Sing.”
Source: Seattle Times
“Tulalip, From My Heart” by Harriette Shelton Dover (University of Washington Press, $50). In this hardcover book, Dover describes her life growing up on the Tulalip Reservation. She highlights the troubles the Tulalip Tribes encountered as they resettled, moving from their villages to the bayside reservation. Once there, the tribes faced hunger, poverty and persecution. Dover, born on the reservation in 1904, was the first Indian woman to serve on the Tulalip Board of Directors.
“The Pig War” by Mike Vouri (Discover Your Northwest, $18.95). New in paperback: Vouri tells the story of a sequence of events in the San Juans during 1859, when a shot pig almost led to war between Great Britain and the U.S. This new edition includes additional photos, maps and illustrations. Vouri is the chief of interpretation and a historian for the San Juan Island National Historic Park. He lives on San Juan Island.
“Larry Gets Lost in Prehistoric Times: From Dinosaurs to the Stone Age” by Andrew Fox and John Skewes, illustrated by Skewes (Sasquatch, $16.99). For ages 4-9: Larry, a dog who famously got lost in Seattle, now time-travels to learn about dinosaurs, woolly mammoths and Homo sapiens in this picture book. Both authors live in Seattle.
“Why Do I Sing: Animal Songs of the Pacific Northwest” by Jennifer Blomgren, illustrated by Andrea Gabriel (Sasquatch, $16.99). For ages 4-8: With rhyming verse and beautiful paintings, the book celebrates the Northwest’s noisy natural inhabitants, from the “long, low voices” of fin whales to the bugles of a Roosevelt bull elk. Blomgren lives in Port Townsend and Gabriel lives in Bellingham.
The largest run of Chinook salmon in decades returned to the Elwha River this fall, according to officials with the Olympic National Park.
PORT ANGELES, Wash. — The largest run of Chinook salmon in decades returned to the Elwha River this fall, according to officials with the Olympic National Park.
Fish are streaming into stretches of the Elwha River and its tributaries that were formerly blocked by the Elwha Dam, park officials said Friday on its website.
The Elwha Dam, one of two dams on the river, stood for nearly a century before it came down in 2012.
Removal of the remaining 210-foot tall Glines Canyon Dam resumed last month after nearly a year hold to give officials time to fix problems at new water-treatment facilities built as part of the $325 million river restoration project.
During a one-day survey in September, biologists counted 1,741 adult Chinook and mapped 763 reds between the remnants of the Glines Canyon Dam and the river mouth. About 75 percent of those were spotted upstream of the former Elwha Dam site, park officials said.
The biologists navigated over 13 miles of the Elwha River and tributaries, walking and snorkeling to find living and dead salmon along the river from Glines Canyon Dam to the river mouth. They also surveyed lower portions of three river tributaries, including Indian Creek, Hughes Creek, and Little River.
Results from the survey indicate this year’s Chinook return is one of the strongest since 1992, according to park officials.
Dam removal is scheduled to be complete in 2014.
With the two dams removed, the glacier-fed Elwha River is expected to flow freely as it courses from the Olympic Mountains to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Salmon and other fish that mature in the ocean and return to rivers to spawn will once again have access to more than 70 miles of spawning and rearing habitat, much of it within the protected boundaries of Olympic National Park.
