Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Bill John Baker announces a copy00 million investment in the tribe’s health care system. (Cherokee Nation)
The Cherokee Nation runs the country’s largest tribally operated health care system. And now it is investing copy00 million from its business holdings to improve it.
“This is exactly what our businesses were designed to do,” said Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Bill John Baker in a press release. “Our financial success belongs to the Cherokee people. For the first time ever, we are taking a substantial amount of money directly from our businesses and putting it where it counts the most—health care for our citizens. Using our businesses to invest in and improve our health care system is the right thing to do, and it will literally save Cherokee lives.”
The tribe plans to replace or renovate four health centers and build a new hospital over the next two to three years. Cherokee Nation Businesses’ construction division will manage the entire project, hiring dozens of Cherokee subcontractors certified by the Tribal Employment Rights Office (TERO), which will help boost the local economy.
A major component of the health system expansion is a new 100-bed hospital, which replaces the current W.W. Hastings Hospital in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Built as an Indian Health Services facility in 1984, the hospital was constructed to serve 65,000 outpatient visits each year. Today, the facility is serving more than 400,000 patient visits per year. The new $53.1 million hospital allows the current hospital to become an outpatient center.
The expansion projects also include a new 28,000-square-foot health center near Ochelata and a 42,000-square-foot health center in Jay. The Redbird Smith Health Center in Sallisaw will see a 30,000-square-foot expansion and 11,000 square feet of renovations. In Stillwell, 28,000 square feet will be added to the Wilma P. Mankiller Health Center.
The CNB board of directors unanimously approved the investment. Under current Cherokee law, an annual dividend totaling 35 percent of CNB’s profits is deposited in the Cherokee Nation’s general fund. The Cherokee Nation general fund supports a variety of services, including housing, education, social services, health care and more. Last year, that dividend payment totaled $57 million.
“The needs of the Cherokee people are so diverse that the dividend payment helps us get closer to where we need to be on health care, but very slowly,” Baker said. “This infusion of copy00 million, solely to health care infrastructure, helps us impact the health outcomes of Cherokees so much quicker. Our businesses have become so successful in recent years that it just makes sense and, quite frankly, is the right thing to do.”
“This is a great opportunity to show the Cherokee people why our casinos are here,” said Shawn Slaton, CEO of CNB. “Our goal is to create jobs, grow businesses and provide funding to the Cherokee Nation for services to the Cherokee people. We are proud to be in a position where we can make such a huge contribution to the health and well-being of Cherokee citizens.”
Aside from annual dividends, this is the first major investment the tribe’s businesses have made directly to tribal infrastructure. CNB will pay for the construction of the facilities and lease them back to the tribe for operation. One of CNB’s subsidiaries, Cherokee Nation Construction Resources, will serve as the prime contractor and construction manager of the project.
“By managing this project in-house, our construction division grows in its capabilities and gains an important past performance résumé, which they can use to win contracts from the federal government and private developers,” Slaton said. “This is a real win-win for CNB and the Cherokee Nation.”
Cherokee Nation Construction Resources, a division of CNB’s environmental and construction portfolio, is managing the construction of the health system expansion. The company is using this as an opportunity to perform work for the tribe and earn past performance credit, which is a valuable credential in both government and commercial contracting.
“When we do a project, we always know that the revenue it is generating helps the Cherokee people, but normally that’s through providing jobs and via the dividend payment,” said Cheryl Cohenour, executive general manager of Cherokee Nation Construction Resources. “But this project is so much more meaningful to us. For the first time, our work will directly affect citizens in ways the 35 percent dividend or job creation cannot. There is so much pride in knowing that as a Cherokee Nation, tribally owned business, we have something tangible to show our businesses’ commitment to making change for the Cherokee people. These new, updated health facilities are going to be a source of pride for our company, as well as the entire Cherokee Nation.”
The Cherokee Nation’s health system supports 1.2 million patient visits annually. It consists of eight health centers throughout the Cherokee Nation and W.W. Hastings Hospital in Tahlequah. Most Cherokee Nation health centers offer medical, dental, lab, radiology, public health, WIC, nutrition, contract health, pharmacy, behavioral health, optometry, community health service and mammography, or a combination of those services.
The Cherokee Nation also has future plans to make renovations at the Three Rivers Health Center in Muskogee and build a new Jack Brown Center in Tahlequah. The Jack Brown Center serves Cherokee citizens who may be struggling with an alcohol or drug dependency.
“I promised to make the health of our people a main priority,” said Baker. “This is a major step in the right direction.”
The Bureau of Indian Affairs issued a final report in February endorsing a large, off-reservation casino and hotel development for the Spokane Tribe in eastern Washington, but observers of Indian gaming say this doesn’t quite mean the tribe can start up the earth-movers.
The project requires both federal and state approval, and only five tribes across the U.S.—including the neighboring Kalispel Tribe, which is opposing the Spokane on this project—have been granted such two-part permission for off-reservation gaming in the 25 years under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.
In addition, the Spokane’s quest to build a casino close to the city of Spokane, which has nearly 500,000 people in its greater metro area, has encountered strong opposition from groups that say what’s good for the Spokane would be bad for them. This includes the Kalispel, whose Northern Quest Resort & Casino is less than four miles away on trust land, and local business groups that fear the new casino could destroy the regional economy if it endangers the area’s largest employer, Fairchild Air Force Base. The Spokane Tribe’s property is about two miles from the base, which has raised concerns about encroachment of flight paths, potentially making Fairchild vulnerable to a future round of base closures by the federal government.
The BIA, in its final environmental impact statement, gives lengthy rebuttals to the encroachment issue, noting that Fairchild officials—as well as the United States Air Force—participated in joint land-use planning efforts and concluded the Spokane’s casino and hotel development does not pose a significant safety threat to the base. In addition, Spokane Tribal Chairman Rudy Peone and others say Fairchild is short-listed as one of the bases that could house the new Boeing KC-46 military aerial refueling and strategic transport aircraft. Supporters of the Spokane’s casino see this as a vote of confidence against closure.
Opponents of the proposed casino in Spokane County government and regional business say the BIA has not fully addressed the encroachment concerns and plan to keep fighting, likely lobbying new Washington Governor Jay Inslee or the Department of Interior’s Secretary-nominee Sally Jewell, who is the chief executive officer of the Seattle-based outdoor gear retailer, REI. They say 5,000 jobs at Fairchild are too significant to the local economy to risk for a casino project. “Communication now is really critical for people who want to get their voice heard,” says Rich Hadley, president and CEO of the pro-business group, Greater Spokane, Inc., which opposes the Spokane’s
The project would include retail space.
proposal. Hadley and Spokane County officials previously stated that the 30-day comment period on the Final environmental impact statement, which ended March 4, was too brief. After a request from Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, (R-Washington), writing on behalf of the county, the BIA has extended the comment period to May 1. The Spokane Tribe wrote the agency to say it did not oppose the extension.
Still, Hadley said opponents will likely focus their attention on Jewell (if appointed) and Inslee. So, “when you think about who do you communicate with, you are probably naming them,” Hadley adds.
Ben Stuckart, president of the Spokane City Council, counters, “I really think a lot of the opposition boils down to economic encroachment. I don’t think that’s ever a reason to oppose a project that will bring jobs and alleviate poverty.” The city council split four to three to oppose a new casino. Spokane’s mayor, David A. Condon, is also an opponent.
Examination of the proposal—for which gaming would grow to 2,500 electronic gaming machines, 50 table games and 10 poker rooms—now goes to the BIA’s Office of Indian Gaming and, ultimately, to the Assistant Secretary—Indian Affairs at the Department of Interior, before the feds release a Record of Decision, an open-ended review process which is expected to take months. The proposal is for more than just a casino. The Spokane Tribe Economic Project also includes a 300-room hotel, several restaurants ranging from fast food to fine dining, a standalone big-box retail site along with a shopping mall, a 10,000-square-foot tribal cultural center and a tribal police and fire station.
The big issue for the BIA will be weighing benefits to the Spokane against harm to the Kalispel, several observers of Indian gaming say. On the benefit side, the casino will rescue the tribe’s economy, says Peone, citing roughly 50 percent unemployment in recent years and reduced funding to tribal services as once-robust timber contracts have shriveled. So has income from two small casinos—among the first in Washington—in the decade since Northern Quest has opened on the outskirts of Spokane. The Spokane Tribe’s two casinos are each an hour’s drive or more from the city. “It’s a no-brainer,” Peone says of gamblers going to Northern Quest. “So we really had a lot of cuts.”
On the harm side, the Kalispel have risen from dire poverty thanks to Northern Quest, which has recently undergone a $210 million expansion. The tribe, which has closed its enrollment at roughly 425 members since the casino opened, has constructed a wellness center and helps members with housing, health care and education. It also is robustly funding language preservation and other initiatives.
The Spokane Tribe, “should be encouraged,” that the BIA endorsed the full Class III gaming-plus-hotel-plus-retail option in the final environmental impact statement, says Ron Allen, longtime chairman of Washington’s Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe and chairman of the board of the Washington Indian Gaming Association. But, he adds, “When a tribe already has a casino and they want another location, a better location, the bureau takes that into serious consideration.” Also, Allen says, protection of a gaming tribe’s debt load is a significant and fairly new consideration for the BIA when weighing the risks of another tribe’s entry into the market.
The Kalispel Tribe, which did not agree to interviews for this story, has made protection of its revenue stream from Northern Quest a central argument against the Spokane Tribe’s proposal.
In a prepared statement, the Kalispel cite the conclusions of two third-party market-analysis firms: “[If] the Spokane Tribe is allowed to move forward with their proposal, it would devastate our tribe’s ability to provide services, such as health care and education, to our members, and we submitted comments to the BIA demonstrating that harm.”
Northern Quest is the Kalispel’s only method of funding tribal services, Chairman Glen Nenema has pointed out in letters to the BIA. He and others note the Kalispel reservation is small, remote and that much of it is a floodplain, severely restricting commercial opportunities.
Patrick D. Rushing is mayor of the city of Airway Heights, located between the Kalispel’s Northern Quest and the Spokane Tribe’s 145-acre site. He is enthusiastic about both projects. He says he’s optimistic about the chances of a new casino, citing a December 11 and 12 visit by Interior’s Assistant Secretary, Indian Affairs, Kevin Washburn. “He went out and looked at the Kalispel Tribe’s reservation and all of the improvements that were made and went through Northern Quest and saw all this nice stuff. The next day, he went out to Two Rivers and Wellpinit [on the Spokane reservation] and on to the Chewelah casino and could see the vast difference,” Rushing recalls.
In its impact statement, the BIA devoted an appendix to addressing the Kalispel contentions that a new casino will reduce its revenues by as much as 50 percent and will not expand the market. A report by the New Orleans–based Innovation Group in the final Environmental impact statement disputes this, offering many examples around the country of a new casino entering a market and all casinos seeing increased revenue.
Peone vows that the Spokane will develop the site with or without gaming. “We recently had our 132nd year since we’ve been placed on the reservation. I view that as survival. We’ve been here for thousands and thousands of years and we will remain. We will survive.”
TED S. WARREN/AP Whidbey Island, Washington, landslide that took down at least one home, wiped out a road and put more than 30 homes in danger.
But for a dead flashlight battery, Bret Holmes would be buried in a pile of dirt at the base of a newly formed cliff.
Staying in the Whidbey Island home of his recently deceased father and stepmother while he readied it for sale, Holmes was awakened at about 4 a.m. on Thursday March 28 by an earthquake-like rumbling sound, he told The Seattle Times. He ventured outside with a flashlight in the pre-dawn hours and had just time to note the absence of about 20 trees, some of them 200 feet tall, before his flashlight battery died. He went inside for a new flashlight and came back to find that “where I had been standing was no longer there,” he told the newspaper. The landslide, 400 to 500 yards wide and descending 600 to 700 yards down toward the water, ate 75 feet of the backyard, which now ends in a sheer drop.
No one was injured or killed when a 1,000-foot-long piece of coastline slid off the island’s west flank in the community of Ledgewood and into Puget Sound. But it brought one home down with it, pushed another one 200 feet offshore and endangered at least 17 others on top of the cliff. It also destroyed 300 or 400 feet of the road that had led to the shoreline, Central Whidbey Island Fire and Rescue Chief Ed Hartin told The Seattle Times. Another 16 homes were evacuated below the cliff by boat, since they are no longer accessible by road, Hartin told the Associated Press.
Now a dozen or more evacuees are uncertain of when they can return, since it could be weeks before the ground stops moving, said Terry Swanson, a lecturer for the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington, to The Seattle Times.
Swanson said that far from being due to climate change or a strong winter, the slide stems from a geological issue dating back 15,000 to 18,000 years, when the Vashon glacier started to advance and retreat. That action left a layer of rock the consistency of ground-up concrete, another of sand and a third of clay. Years of water accumulation eventually made it soft, and today landslides are common along the 35-mile-long, 60,000-population island, he explained.
Whidbey Island—or Tscha-kole-chy, by one American Indian name—was originally the home of the Chehalis, Nisqually, Duwamish, Snoqualmie and Snohomish tribes, among others, according to Historylink.org, a website that focuses on Washington State history.
Patrick Rice, Shark Defense / Florida Keys Community College This two-headed bull shark fetus was in the womb of a female captured off Florida in April 2011.
We’ve heard of conjoined twins in human babies. Now it has been recorded, apparently for the first time, in a bull shark.
A fisherman trolling off the coast of Florida in April 2011 caught its mother and found multiple fetuses inside, one appearing to have two heads, said a study published in the Journal of Fish Biology on March 25. The clinical name for this is dicephalia, Michigan State said in a media release, also known as axial bifurcation. It happens when the embryo starts splitting in two, as with identical twins, but does not complete the process.
“Each head has five pairs of gills and gill openings, a single pair of eyes, a single pair of nares and a mouth with well-developed dentition,” wrote study so-author Michael Wagner, an assistant professor of fisheries and wildlife at Michigan State University, according to the New York Daily News. “The teeth appear both normally formed and the observed dental formula is within the normal range.”
Such sights are rare, partly because animals born with such profound deformities usually die soon after birth, Michigan State said. Since this one was found in the female shark’s womb, it was still alive. However, it did not survive long after the fisherman cut the umbilical cord; its normally developed siblings swam away when released.
It looks not unlike the two-headed trout that turned up a little too close to the mining operations of the J.R. Simplot Company last year and caused a stir.
“This is certainly one of those interesting and rarely detected phenomena,” said Wagner, who worked with colleagues at Florida Keys Community College. “It’s good that we have this documented as part of the world’s natural history, but we’d certainly have to find many more before we could draw any conclusions about what caused this.”
Likewise, he cautioned, the shark’s existence did not say anything concrete about pollutants.
“Given the timing of the shark’s discovery with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, I could see how some people may want to jump to conclusions,” Wagner said in the Michigan State release. “Making that leap is unwarranted. We simply have no evidence to support that cause or any other.”
Photo: Kirk Boxleitner Breann Williams offers interventionary instruction to help get Totem Middle School students up to speed for Algebra I by the eighth grade.
MARYSVILLE — Three years after receiving a less auspicious designation from the state, Totem Middle School has been spotlighted by the League of Education Voters for its significant accomplishments in those intervening years.
League of Education Voters CEO Chris Korsmo explained that the LEV’s 2013 Citizens’ Report Card, which was released on March 26, cited Totem Middle School’s push to up the numbers of students in its higher level math classes, which prepare them for high school and beyond.
“This school’s success is a bright spot for Washington,” Korsmo said. “Their innovation and dedication to helping students reach their potential should be a model for schools across the state.”
Korsmo noted that half of Totem’s students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, and yet almost all of the school’s students take Algebra I before they move on to high school, which he pointed out makes them better prepared to take the math courses that colleges and technical schools look for when admitting students.
Marysville School District Superintendent Dr. Larry Nyland expressed his pride in Totem’s staff for helping so many eighth-graders succeed in Algebra, which is traditionally a ninth-grade class.
“They have added extra periods and extra tutoring,” Nyland said of the Totem staff. “They constantly challenge students to step up a notch. They have visited other schools to learn what else they can do. They have developed roadmaps that let students work at their own pace. Totem staff don’t give up. They find a way.”
Totem Middle School Principal Robert Kalahan recalled how, three years ago, Totem received a federal school improvement grant as a “priority school.”
“It was a disheartening designation, because for each of the three years in a row prior to that, we’d seen gains of 11 percent in our reading scores,” Kalahan said. “We were making solid, steady gains in reading, but we realized we hadn’t made any gains in math during that same time. So, we called a state of emergency and got everybody on deck to teach math.”
Totem began by doubling its Algebra classes from 30 to 60 students, and then expanded further by scheduling double-periods of Algebra and working to help an additional 25 students get ready to take the state test. By the time Totem had enrolled nearly 100 eighth-graders in Algebra classes, 89 percent of them passed the end-of-course exam.
“We passed more Algebra students than all the other middle schools in town combined,” Kalahan said. “From there, we asked ourselves what more we could do, which led to us focusing on the sixth- and seventh-graders, to try and give them a math curriculum that would get them ready for Algebra by the eighth grade.”
Additional Algebra classes, further double-periods of Algebra and Totem teachers working on an elective basis to pre-teach Algebra skills soon added up to 180 Algebra students, 80 percent of whom passed the regular Holt curriculum.
“They weren’t as successful as the students the year before, but there were so many more students taking Algebra,” said Kalahan, who confirmed that nearly every eighth-grader at Totem now takes at least an Algebra class. “There’s been concern expressed over whether students are being pushed to take Algebra too early, but my research of our local ninth-graders has found that their learning has continued to accelerate in high school.”
Kalahan credited the success of Totem’s aggressive promotion of Algebra not only to teachers who believe that students can achieve at high levels, but also to teachers who are afforded extra time during the school day to intervene on behalf of struggling students.
“Thanks to the work being done at the Totem and 10th Street middle schools, as well as more students taking eighth-grade Algebra at the Cedarcrest and Marysville middle schools, we are now ahead of schedule in meeting our district goal for students taking and passing eighth-grade Algebra,” Nyland said. “Eighth-grade Algebra is one of our steps to success, as a leading indicator of student success in graduation and college readiness.”
Family photo Nineteen-month-old Chantel Craig died Oct. 8. She and her sister were found in a car on the Tulalip Reservation. The girls were suffering from malnutrition and severe dehydration.
TULALIP — They were asked to inspect the net.
Maybe somehow it can be woven tighter so another little girl won’t fall through, dying before she learns to twirl on tiptoes or color inside the lines or dream of being a princess or a firefighter.
It seems an insurmountable job — searching for all the potential gaps. How do you predict the unimaginable?
It happened in October down a dirt road on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. Chantel Craig and her sister were left in a broken down car, going without food or water for days. The toddlers’ world was restricted to the car seats they were kept buckled into. Their bodies were covered with sores, feces and maggots.
Chantel wasn’t breathing. She had no pulse. She suffered, for how long no one can really say, and then her body gave out. Her sister, 3, fought to stay alive.
Chantel died from neglect, five months shy of her second birthday. Her mother, Christina Carlson, is charged with murder.
Last month, state social workers faced tough questions about their interaction with the girl’s family as a team of experts reviewed the circumstances surrounding Chantel’s death. The examination was required by state law. Findings were made public Thursday.
After six hours of discussion the team didn’t find what the state calls “critical errors” on the part of Children’s Administration employees.
Instead, the panelists made some findings and recommendations for the future, mainly focused on what child welfare workers do to locate families. There’s a need for experienced social workers to handle the cases governed by the Indian Child Welfare Act and consistent review by supervisors. And the girls’ case demonstrates the need to more clearly define the responsibilities of state and Tulalip tribal social workers when conducting joint investigations.
The six-member fatality review committee included a medical doctor, a Marysville police detective, a Snohomish County human services manager and three other professionals connected to social services. They asked questions of the state social worker and her two supervisors. Panelists agreed they were there because of a horrible tragedy. Their conversation, however, was tempered. They all work with families, often in crisis. They know others will slip through.
“These reviews are so important,” said Cammy Hart-Anderson, the division manager for Snohomish County Human Services Department. “I volunteer as a way to assist, offering my perspective from the alcohol and drug field.
“I also believe it’s a way to honor the child who died. We’re trying to do something so her death won’t be in vain.”
The law required the state Department of Social and Health Services to convene the search mission into Chantel’s death — to look for any gaps in a system that relies on cops, courts and social workers to save other people’s children and to help patch together families, many affected by generational poverty, addiction and violence.
The Children’s Administration, a division of DSHS, is tasked with completing a fatality review within six months after a child under state care or receiving state services dies unexpectedly, or nearly dies. The idea is to closely examine how state workers were involved with the child and family, and whether policies and practices can be changed to tighten the safety net.
“We would all love to have a system in place where we never have a child in these circumstances,” said Ronda Haun, a critical incident review specialist with the Children’s Administration.
The state invited a Herald reporter to observe the typically closed-door discussion. The reporter agreed not to attribute to individual participants any statements made during the process. The Herald also agreed not to report information about the child or her family that hadn’t already appeared in public records. The newspaper also delayed publishing a story until the review was completed and available to the public on the state’s website.
Tribal law prevented anyone from the tribes to formally participate in the review.
The committee was advised at the start that they weren’t being asked to conduct a forensic, criminal or personnel investigation. They also were reminded of the complex legal framework that limits the actions of state social workers.
The courts have called parental rights natural and sacred, said Sheila Huber, an assistant attorney general who represents the Children’s Administration.
“Parents have constitutional rights when it comes to the care, custody and control of their children,” Huber said.
There are restrictions on when the state can interfere with those rights, she added.
State and tribal social workers had been investigating allegations that Chantel and her sister were being neglected after receiving a call from their grandmother in December 2011.
Generally the law requires state social workers to close a Child Protective Services investigation within three months. In this case, the social worker kept the investigation open for 10 months, citing concerns because of the mother’s past and her lack of contact with her own family. By keeping it open, the state could offer voluntary services to the parents. In a terrible coincidence, state social workers closed the case hours before Chantel died because they hadn’t been able to find her or her mother.
The state social worker last saw the girls on Dec. 14, 2011. There was no evidence then that they were in imminent danger, which would have been necessary to remove them. There also were no signs of abuse or neglect. The social workers agreed to continue to try to assist the family.
About two weeks after the first visit, the tribal social worker learned that the parents weren’t seeking help for their alcohol and drug abuse problems, as they claimed they were.
The fatality review committee last month questioned the state social worker about the protocols followed to locate families. The team was concerned that there appeared to be a stretch of time that no attempts were made to find the children.
Social workers are allowed to check state databases, including the rolls for those receiving state benefits. Police generally aren’t asked to get involved unless there is concern that a child is a victim of a crime.
Relatives told social workers that Carlson likely was hiding from authorities. She had lost custody of at least three other children because of her drug use and neglect, court papers said.
It is unclear if the Tulalip authorities continued to search for the family.
The Tulalips declined to participate in last month’s child fatality review.
Tribal authorities sent a letter to the state, explaining that the Tribes’ own laws prevent anyone from the tribes from commenting on their social service investigations. That is done to protect children and avoid stigmatizing families, tribal officials told The Herald last year.
Tribal social workers are allowed to share sensitive information with state social workers to assist protecting children and to provide them and their families with services. However, tribal laws don’t contain provisions about information-sharing once a child has died. That conflict prevented the tribal social workers from participating in the review.
In the letter, the Tribes asked the panel to begin the review with a prayer, seeking guidance and healing. The daylong session opened with a moment of silence.
The committee acknowledged the challenge of fully understanding the history of the case without input from tribal social workers. They knew that they were only receiving part of the story and would be left with unanswered questions.
“They were asked to look at the state’s work. I think that objective was accomplished by the committee,” said Haun, who served as one of facilitators. “We are not in the position to review the work of the Tulalip Tribes. That is their responsibility.”
The Tulalips and DSHS have an agreement sharing responsibility for child welfare investigations and providing services to Tulalip children. The agreement is meant to define the role of the state and create cooperation between the two governments.
The role of tribal and state social workers varies depending on the local agreements with specific tribes. There are additional layers of complexity because of the state and federal Indian Child Welfare Acts. The laws govern how states should respond to cases involving Indian children and spell out the tribes’ jurisdiction over their children. The federal act was passed in 1978 in response to the disproportionate number of Indian children being removed from their homes and placed in non-Indian homes away from their tribes.
The Tulalips began assuming jurisdiction over dependency cases more than a decade ago. Their child welfare services program, beda?chelh, investigates all reports of child abuse and neglect. This includes any allegations that aren’t accepted for further investigation by the state.
Among the main recommendations, the panelists encouraged the state and the Tulalips to revisit their local agreement for handling child welfare cases. They concluded that state social workers need more clarification about their individual responsibilities.
For example, state workers have protocols to locate families, but aren’t allowed to seek out tribal families without permission from the tribes to be on the reservation.
The team also urged the state to provide more consistency and stability in the unit specifically assigned to investigate allegations involving tribal children. Social workers need to be familiar with the Indian Child Welfare Act. They should be seasoned workers. Increased stability in the unit would go a long way in building relationships with tribal social workers, the group said.
The team also recommended that if a supervisor leaves the unit, the cases should be reviewed by both the outgoing and incoming supervisor to make sure complex cases don’t get overlooked. The team pointed out that the Carlson case hadn’t been reviewed by a supervisor for months. They questioned whether that was because there had been a change in supervisors.
The panelists also concluded that DSHS should make it a priority to hire CPS social workers and supervisors.
Hart-Anderson said she also walked away from the review convinced that more needs to be done to offer drug and alcohol treatment resources to families.
The county used to partner with DSHS and stationed drug and alcohol counselors in local CPS offices. They were an immediate resource for parents. That program was cut about five years ago for lack of funding.
“Alcohol and drugs are so prevalent in so many CPS cases,” Hart-Anderson said.
In the Carlson neglect case, she is accused of leaving her girls alone for hours on Oct. 8 while she tried to contact a drug dealer. Witnesses told investigators that the 36-year-old mother smoked heroin in the car while the girls were in the backseat. Tests showed that the surviving child had been exposed to opiates.
It is hard to fathom a parent’s neglect for a child, Hart-Anderson said.
“Addiction is a very powerful disease, so powerful that some people are not capable of parenting, and their number one priority is their addiction,” she said.
Social workers have an overwhelming job, Hart-Anderson said.
“As a society we don’t appreciate that enough,” she added.
OLYMPIA — Gov. Jay Inslee prescribed his plan Thursday for pumping $1.3 billion more into the state’s public school system then challenged lawmakers to buck up and pay for it by ending popular tax breaks and extending taxes set to expire this summer.The first-term governor wants to fund full-day kindergarten in high poverty schools and make preschool available for more children of low-income families.
He also wants to pay for smaller kindergarten and first grade classes, beef up reading intervention and dropout prevention programs and hire 1,400 secondary school teachers in order add courses in middle and high schools.
And he’d pour half of the new money into shouldering a greater share of the bill for school bus service and the purchase of materials and supplies in each school district.
Most of the investment is a first step toward complying with a Supreme Court decision last year that found lawmakers in violation of the state Constitution by not adequately funding public schools.
“To govern, it is said, is to choose,” Inslee said after releasing a broad blueprint of his priorities for the next two-year state budget. “Today, I choose, and I believe we should all choose, education over tax breaks, and to make good on our constitutional and moral duty to quality schools for our children.”
Republicans in the House and Senate didn’t object to how Inslee wants to spend the money only his reliance on taxes to pay for it. They wished he’d looked harder to trim government spending and not put as many dollars into salaries and benefits of state employees.
“I don’t see one on there I can support,” Senate Republican Leader Mark Schoesler of Ritzville said of the list of tax breaks. “You’re not choosing between kids and tax cuts. You’re choosing between bureaucrats and tax hikes.”
House Democrats said Inslee’s plan spending and tax proposals are on the same scale as the ones in the budget they are writing.
“Overall I think the budget reflected the values of our caucus pretty well,” said House Majority Leader Pat Sullivan, D-Covington.
To pay for his education plan, Inslee wants to generate $565 million by repealing or revising 11 tax exemptions most of which have been a political hit list before and survived.
Among them are ones that could lead to bottled water getting taxed and Oregon residents paying sales taxes.
Time and again Thursday, Inslee said it comes down to preserving those breaks or preparing the next generation of engineers and scientists.
“I challenge anyone, anyone in any part of the state in any industry to argue that any single one of these tax breaks is more important than the STEM education of these students,” he said.
Sen. Barbara Bailey, R-Oak Harbor, serves on the Senate budget committee that will have to approve any of them.
“I don’t think anything is more important than education other than getting our economy going again,” she said. “Adding more taxes on businesses has a dampening effect on growth.”
Inslee also wants to make permanent a hike in the business and occupation tax paid by doctors, lawyers and accountants and a 50-cent-per-gallon tax on beer. He also wants to expand the beer tax to cover all producers; today it only applies to those making in excess of 60,000 barrels a year.
Inslee hopes to bring in $661 million from these taxes which were enacted in 2010 and are set to expire June 30.
Inslee, who campaigned against raising taxes, said his plan doesn’t backtrack on that. He said he repeatedly pledged to close tax break and not seek a general tax increase.
“I am fulfilling on my commitment to the ‘T’,” he said.
For owners of small breweries the change in the beer tax means they the tax they pay on each 31-gallon barrel produced could rise from $4.78 to $20.28.
“We’re going to pass it through and it will go through to the beer drinker,” said co-owner Phil Bannan, co-owner of Scuttlebutt Brewing Co. in Everett. “Beer is a common man’s drink so this is going to hit the common man in the wallet.”
Kegs, which hold 15.5 gallons and cost around $135 apiece today, could go up in price by about $10, he said.
“I don’t disagree with the priority of education,” he said. “But I disagree with his way of solving it.”
What Inslee released Thursday was his spending priorities for the two-year budget which begins July 1.
With a projected shortfall of $1.3 billion, Inslee is proposing to save $321 million by suspending the cost-of-living raises for teachers required under Initiative 732. He also suggests cutting $29.8 million in funding for alternative learning experience programs which cover costs of online and home school programs.
In other parts of his budget proposal Inslee backs full expansion of the Medicaid program. That move, he said, will reportedly save the state nearly $300 million as the federal government picks up the cost of covering the estimated 255,000 adults who could become eligible.
He wants to hire more child and adult protective services caseworkers, restore the 3 percent pay cuts for state employees and put $23.7 million into state parks.
With release of his proposal, Inslee kicked off the budget debate in Olympia.
The Republican-dominated Senate Majority Coalition expects to release its budget early next week followed by the House Democrats.
The 105-day legislative session is scheduled to end April 28.
Dan Bates / The Herald (From left) Susan Marshall, Tanner Bellows and Karrington Jessup relax on a comfy white leather couch, just above the tide line, while they watch the house moving.
MISSION BEACH — Kippy Murphy brought tissues. Her brother, Mike Dutton, brought beer.
It was a sentimental occasion for the Everett siblings. The two-story gray house on the beach where they’d spent decades of summers was being moved across the Sound to Whidbey Island, where it would have a new family.
“I had to come out and have my last beer at the beach house,” Dutton, 53, said Tuesday as he stood on the flat white shore southeast of Tulalip Bay.
It marks the end of an era for generations of tenants of more than 20 homes on a quarter-mile stretch of beach owned by the Tulalip Tribes. The tenants owned the homes, but not the land, and the tribes want to restore it back to natural beaches for use by members.
Tenants had seven years notice to not only vacate the premises, but to take their homes with them. Most houses were stripped and demolished.
Murphy, 46, didn’t want to destroy her family’s summer getaway — a five-bedroom, 3,000 square-foot home built in 1993 to replace a rustic fishing cabin.
“My dad built it to be barged because he knew that eventually the leases would expire,” she said. “Our parents have passed, so it made us feel good to know that we saved the house.”
Murphy and her brother sold it for $1 through the house moving company, Nickel Bros.
“It’s sad,” she said, “but I’m happy that somebody is going to use it.”
The home’s new owners, an Issaquah couple with two young kids, couldn’t be happier.
“It was the perfect house for us,” said Annie Schinnerer. “I’m excited. I can’t wait.”
It cost about $60,000 to move their $1 vacation home to Mutiny Bay in Freeland, she said. “When it’s all said and done, it will be about $150,000, which is still $50 a square foot and a great deal.”
The two families chatted on the beach Tuesday evening as workers bustled around the jacked-up house for its daunting sprint to the nearby barge.
Spectators brought chairs, blankets, beer, dogs and grandkids to watch the work take over place over several hours Tuesday.
A crew of men in orange coveralls and hardhats put planking over the sand using what looked like giant Tinker Toys.
From there, the boxy home was hoisted onto a flatbed truck that had to pull a tight sharp turn away from a retaining wall. The crunch of wooden planks resounded from the home’s weight, stirring the crowd of onlookers armed with cameras at the ready.
The truck lurched forward, groaning. It slowly carried its oversized cargo up a skinny steel ramp tilted over the shore.
Silence prevailed at the precarious spectacle. Would the house topple?
A few people stepped back, just in case.
A cheer erupted when the house rolled onto the barge deck intact.
But it wasn’t smooth sailing from there. The barge got stuck in the sand and couldn’t leave until Wednesday morning.
Duwamish Chairwoman Cecile Hansen has been fighting for federal recognition for her tribe for 36 years. On March 22, a federal district judge ruled the tribe was wrongfully denied federal recognition under the Bush Administration in 2001 giving them another chance.
ICTMN Vincent Schilling
March 28, 2013
Nearly 36 years ago in 1977, the Duwamish Tribe, the people of Chief Seattle, petitioned the Bureau of Indian Affairs for federal recognition. Originally told their quest to be recognized would probably take only about five years, the Duwamish tribe fell victim to multiple changes in the BIA’s process ultimately ending in denial in 2001. However, the Duwamish now have a second chance at gaining federal recognition.
On Friday March 22, 2013, Seattle federal district court Judge John Coughenour ruled that the Bush Administration’s Bureau of Indian Affairs wrongly denied the Duwamish Tribe of Seattle’s petition for federal recognition in 2001. Citing the denial was “arbitrary and capricious” Judge Coughenour ordered the Bureau of Indian Affairs to re-evaluate the petition.
According to Chris Stearns, (Navajo) Chairman of the Seattle Human Rights Commission and former Attorney for the Federal House Committee on Natural Resources who has followed the progress of the Duwamish, “After a decade-long battle in the courts to get the Bush Administration’s 2001 decision thrown out, Duwamish Tribal Chairwoman Cecile Hansen has won. She didn’t win federal recognition outright, but she now has a shot at least. The Obama Administration will now get a crack at deciding whether the Duwamish should be a federally recognized tribe in Seattle.”
Throughout the entire 36-year quest to be federally acknowledged, the Duwamish have faced several ups, downs and broken promises in the process.
In 1996, Clinton Administration’s Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, Ada Deer, issued a preliminary ruling against the Duwamish. As the Administration was preparing to leave office in January of 2001, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Kevin Gover reversed a preliminary finding of Ada Deer against another Washington tribe, the Chinook. His Deputy, Michael Anderson took over for Gover and on January 19, 2001, the last day of the Clinton Administration, Anderson reversed Deer’s preliminary finding against the Duwamish and ordered them recognized.
Anderson personally called Duwamish Chairwoman Cecile Hansen to tell her the tribe was recognized. However, Anderson did not sign his approval statement and returned three days after the Bush Administration had taken over. While waiting in a car outside the Interior Department, Anderson retroactively signed the approval statement which was dated January 19, 2001.
Unfortunately for the Duwamish tribe the new Bush Administration put a hold on all new regulations and determinations that had not yet been published in the Federal Register. The Duwamish approval was held, never made it to the Federal Register, and thus never took effect.
On September 25, 2001, the Bush Administration’s Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, Neal McCaleb, reversed the Anderson approval and formally issued a final decision refusing the Duwamish’s bid to be recognized.
Since 2003, Seattle Congressman Jim McDermott has introduced a bill every two years to restore recognition to the Duwamish which has never made it out of the House Committee on Natural Resources.
According to Nedra Darling, Spokeswoman at the Office of the Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs, when asked about their stance on the issue, she stated ‘It is the Department of the Interior’s policy not to discuss matters that are currently under litigation.”
In an interview with Indian Country Today Media Network, Chairwoman Cecile Hansen shared her thoughts of a nearly 36-year battle in seeking recognition for her tribe.
How did the petition for recognition begin?
We were fighting for fishing rights and we naïvely believed that we were going to get recognized and get our fishing rights given back. That was the whole point of us getting into this process.
HELENA — A woman’s shawl, laid across a chair, told a story almost too painful for words.
Patty McGeshick, the chairperson of the Montana Native Women’s Coalition and a member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux tribes, laid the empty shawl over the back of the chair and began a ceremony during Wednesday’s two-day conclave held at the Red Lion Colonial Hotel. The event concludes late this afternoon.
The event is a listening session that focuses on domestic abuse and sexual assault on Native American reservations.
“What this represents is all the women out there who are,” she began and then stopped as though memories would not let her continue. The silence lengthened before she could continue speaking. Her voice was shaky as she said, “living in violence and who need help.
“The ceremony that we’ve done here is to honor them,” she said.
McGeshick asked that those attending the morning session pray for these women. She said she hoped that someday people would live in a violence-free community and in the safety of their own homes.
“We are still living in a time when women and men are still being hurt, still being battered, and it’s really a shameful thing,” she said.
She called upon Native American men to answer the call for help from women in their communities, to answer it on behalf of their mothers, their grandmothers and great-grandmothers.
According to an online account of an October 2011 hearing by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, 1 in 3 Native American women will be raped at least once in their lives and 3 out of 5 will be victims of an assault.
McGeshick cited the statistic on the prevalence of rape before beginning the ceremony and said, “We want people to be accountable if they commit these acts” against Native women.
Gov. Steve Bullock, who delivered opening remarks before Richard Opper, the new director of the state Department of Public Health and Human Services, said, “Whether you are a survivor, an advocate or a policymaker, the work you do every single day does not go unnoticed. Your effort, whether individual or collective, is valued — it is needed, and I hope that you will never stop fighting for what is right.
The rate at which violence occurs in Indian Country is much higher than elsewhere in the state, Bullock said.
“I stand with you and do our part to help the victims who survive, to heal, to support them, to share our strength with them and to let them know that they are not alone. Today, victims no longer have to remain silent and or feel any shame.
“The next generation, and all the generations that follow, must learn that the behaviors that lead to violating others are not something to be proud of. Our prevention efforts must be diligent,” the governor said.
Cathy Cichosz, a member of the Gros Ventre tribe who lives in Hays, which is on the Fort Belknap Reservation, is an Army veteran from some 40 years ago. She was asked to attend the conclave to carry the American flag during the opening ceremony. Native singers with drums provided the backdrop.
Waiting for the conclave to begin, she said that since those days in uniform she worked for seven years to put herself through nursing school in San Francisco then eventually returned home to take care of her ailing mother who would live to be 111.
The conclave, she said, “will make people more aware of what’s going on and hopefully how to prevent it.”
Discussing domestic and sexual violence helps bring it out in the open, she said, instead of having its victims “push it under the rug.”
“It used to be such a shame; they were ashamed to talk about it, go to anybody,” Cichosz said. “It will be more preventable this way.”
The goal of the event is explain what is happening to Native American women and children, said Elaine Topsky, an at-large member of the coalition and a member of the Chippewa Cree tribe who lives on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation.
Topsky is the program director for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in her community, which is a federal block grant program that seeks to help move recipients into work and turn welfare into temporary assistance.
Her program works with about 150 families and affects about 1,000 people, she added.
The isolation of living in small communities on reservations means that violence may go unreported, Topsky said.
A Native woman will endure domestic violence at a higher rate before she is willing to leave the home, said Donny Ferguson, a child advocate with the Rocky Boy’s Children Exposed to Violence Project.
“It’s the way we believe, the way we’ve been conditioned,” Ferguson said. “It’s a normal way of life sometimes.”
Topsky’s efforts on behalf of her agency are to try and keep the family together until the environment becomes abusive.
“As Indian women, our families are who we are,” Topsky said.
“They’re the backbone of the family. It’s their responsibility to keep the family intact.”
Her program offers a variety of services aimed at helping families that are experiencing difficulties to make steps toward improvement. Parenting classes can be one of those steps. Making sure the family’s children are attending school each day can be another one.
Advocates appointed by tribal councils, who are called peacemakers, help to intervene using tribal values to assist families reconcile their troubles.
“That’s one of the best things we’ve ever done,” Topsky added.
McGeshick said the coalition wants to improve local, state and federal relationships so there is better communication on issues of Native women and violence.
She said that she doesn’t see Native women as being more vulnerable to violence as there are other dynamics involved in reservation life where communities are smaller. Others said that help for those involved in violence can take a while to arrive and locating other housing to get a woman out of a home where an abusive situation exists can be difficult as there is a housing shortage in some reservation communities.
All women should be treated with respect, McGeshick said, and those living in these communities should have access to the same services such as domestic abuse shelters that are available to women in more urban communities.
“I want to have all the rights for the Native women as all other women in Montana,” McGeshick said. “We want to have the same rights.”
“I don’t want to draw a line between Native and non-Native women. We’re all women,” she said.
Life on a reservation is rich in culture, rich in beliefs. People are truly tied to the land where generations of their families have lived before them, McGeshick said.
“We have to focus more on our successes rather than out problems,” she said.
