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Neighbors Dispute Police Account of Shooting of Native Man in Seattle

By Renee Roman Nose, Indian Country Today Media Network

Courtney Lewis lives in what had been until last month a pretty quiet Seattle neighborhood. Lewis’s home is a friendly place, where children in the neighborhood regularly gather to play. She has always been close to Henry Northwind, the Cree man who lives next door with his son, Jack. Over the three years they have lived there, Henry’s son, Jack Keewatinawin, became good friends with her son, Tino Lewis-Sosa. They often played video games together, or tossed a football around in the yard. Jack, who turned 21 in early February, had mental issues, but no one in the neighborhood had ever had a problem with him. Neighbors say the poor boy was “always scared” of the demons and ghosts that haunted him, but was never a threat to his friends and neighbors.

A little before 8 p.m. on the evening of February 26, just as darkness fell, Seattle police answered a report of domestic disturbance by Keewatinawin’s two older brothers, Hawk Firstrider and Montano Northwind. On the recording of that 911 call, one of them says, “My dad is being killed right now, please! My brother’s schizophrenic and he’s flipping out and he’s got a knife to him!”

Jack Keewatinawin

Officers on the scene confronted Keewatinawin outside his father’s house, on his front lawn; they shot him with Tasers twice in an attempt to subdue him, but he pulled the two probes out of his chest and ran into the front yard of the duplex next door, where the Brubaker family lives. Officers chased him across the shared lawn of the two duplexes, and in a dimly lit area, the police say, one officer slipped and fell, and was lying on his back. At that point, the police report of the incident states, “The suspect withdrew a long piece of metal from his beltline and raised it over his head, and came toward the officer.

“The three officers were forced to fire their weapons to defend themselves, striking the suspect.”

According to Seattle Police Deputy Chief Nick Metz, this all happened very quickly. The police say less than 30 seconds elapsed from when they first approached Keewatinawin to when he was shot. Keewatinawin was shot multiple times. (Witnesses say they heard between 8 and 11 shots, but the family has not yet received a copy of the coroner’s report, so they don’t know how many times Keewatinawin was hit.) Jack Keewatinawin died moments later, lying in his neighbor’s grassy front yard, close to their driveway, in a large pool of blood.

The killing was witnessed by several neighbors, and most of them have troubling doubts about how the police handled the incident. One calls the shooting “totally unacceptable,” and others suggest that officers should have known Keewatinawin was a schizophrenic, since they’d been called to the house several times over the years when he was off his medication and having problems. Several times over the past three years, police had helped get him into an ambulance for a trip to the hospital. It is not clear if the responding officers were aware of the victim’s mental illness and history.

Henry Northwind, who was trying to calm both the police and his son that night, saw what happened from beginning to tragic end, and insists that the police murdered his son at close-range, in cold-blood.

**********

This was the second controversial shooting of an American Indian in the last two years in Seattle, and comes after the Department of Justice had investigated how that city’s police deal with confrontational situations. In 2010, totem carver John T. Williams was shot on a public street one afternoon after being confronted by a police officer mistook his carving knife to be a lethal weapon. The shooting was ruled unjustified by Seattle’s Police Firearm Review Board, and on April 29, 2011 the city of Seattle agreed to pay copy.5 million to the family of the Native woodcarver. In July, the Department of Justice and the city of Seattle signed an agreement that requires Seattle police to try to de-escalate such confrontations, and decrease their use of force.

Henry Northwind, Jack’s father, draws out a map describing how the events of February 26th happened. (Renee Roman Nose)

Henry Northwind was a agonized witness to the horrifying events of that day, and he insists the killing of his son was unjustified. He is a former policeman, and says he is familiar with the proper police protocol for such situations. He says those procedures were not followed.

He says that by the time police arrived in response to the 911 call, his son had calmed down, and that he and Jack were in their front yard. Northwind says he told the police that his son had a knife and a piece of iron. “He’s calmed down now, you don’t have to kill him,” he says he told them. “Don’t kill him, please!”

He says the lead officer pushed him aside and said, “He’s heavily armed.”

“I said, ‘Hey don’t kill my son!’ I was in front of them and Jack was [about five feet behind me]. At that time Jack turned around and ran straight back to the house and, in unison these guys moved … and I’d say there were about 15 cops on the curb … They all had shotguns and pistols drawn…[Jack] got to the porch and he turned around and two guys got him in the chest with the Tasers and he just ripped them out and took off again…he had thin, thin, really thin jacket and a real thin, super thin t-shirt, I saw [the Tasers] stick to his [chest] and he went like that”—indicating grabbing both Tasers and pulling them out—“and he just tore them away, and uh, you know that’s at least 50 thousand [volts]! [One policeman] said, ‘He just shook it off like somebody just slapped him!’”

At this point, Northwind’s telling of what happened that night diverges radically from the police account. The police report says Keewatinawin ran and one of the officers pursuing him fell at his feet, and appeared to be vulnerable to an attack. Northwind says this is not true. “When Jack ran over here, he slipped—there was no cop that slipped, I swear to God there was no cop, no! Jack was on the ground… and he got up. He was on one leg, he was getting up with his hands, and he went like this”—he throws his arms in the air—”and when he did that, they opened fire on him!

“They said he had something in his hand. There was nothing in his hand, nothing, not a damn thing.

“That last shot, my knees buckled on me and I said, “They killed my son!”

Northwind says a police officer ran up to him and said, “What are you doing over here?” Northwind says he told the policeman, “That’s my son you just murdered.”

Northwind claims that officers then put two guns to his head to keep him from running to his son.

He says that when he told one of the officers, “That’s my son you just murdered!” the officer replied, “Ugh,” and ran to the large group of officers. Moments later Northwind says he heard one policeman say, ‘Hey, found it!’ and another officer respond, “What?” “An iron bar,” came the reply. Northwind says he then heard the first officer say, “Oh, damn, now at least we have a story.”

“Right in front of my fucking face they said that!” Northwind says. “One guy said, ‘That’s the father!’ and the other guy says, “Oh, shit.”

“They were wrong, and they were in fear. I could see the fear in this guy’s eyes. I just gave him a tongue-lashing.” I asked him, “Are you happy? How many more Indians you think you need to kill?

“Finally, I just screamed, ‘They killed my baby boy!’”

**********

The knife Jack Keewatinawin was carrying when he was shot was found the next morning, but not by the police. The father of Courtney Lewis’s boyfriend found it in the Brubaker’s driveway, several yards from where Jack lay dying the night before.

Lewis says that when she and her family and boyfriend heard the commotion next door, they gathered at the windows to see what was going on. When they saw the police lined up across the street, facing them, looking toward the Northwind/Lewis duplex. She says her boyfriend sensed danger and told them all to “get away from the windows and go to the back rooms.”

As she and her children gathered in the back of the house, she called out to him to join them. As he came down the hallway the shooting began. It was over in a moment, Lewis says, and then “We could hear Henry crying out, ‘Stop shooting him! Stop shooting him!’

“I don’t think for a second that Jack was a threat to the police,” she says. “He was like one of the kids. Not for one second did I think he would hurt me or one of my kids.”

Olivia Brubaker, who lives in the duplex in front of which Jack was shot, says “There were fifteen cops in front of my house. My fiancé and I opened the front door to see Jack shot five or six times, bleeding severely, on my lawn. He was crying from all the pain and we heard the words, ‘Help me’ slipping from his lips.”

Olivia’s sister, Alexandra, says, “The cops said he had a weapon, that this weapon was a large metal rod… Those things that they have said are lies. From what I saw, from what other neighbors saw, what his family and friends saw, he had no weapon [on him] and died within minutes on my lawn.”

Several bullets fired by police went into the duplex on the other side of the Brubaker’s, one going through a front window and two through a wall. One neighbor reported that stray bullets hit a neighboring house as the homeowner was lying on the couch—that man says he heard “the bullets go whizzing by his head.”

Police reports state that Keewatinawin had three weapons: an 18-inch piece of rebar, a knife and what has been described as a “sharpened stone” but was actually a teardrop-shaped cephalopod fossil which had been in the Northwind family for years.

Montano Northwind, Jack’s oldest brother, says family members asked to view the police dash-cam videos of the shooting and were told the cameras were not turned on because the incident had occurred during a shift-change.

Olivia Brubaker says that after the shooting she saw and overheard the police arguing with one another, saying, “How could you have done that? This is a big screw-up!”

Friends and neighbors of Henry Northwind also say the police did not interview them to find out what they saw or heard that evening.

Hawk Northwind, another of Jack’s brothers, adds, “The cops weren’t telling the truth, they weren’t. All of the sudden there’s no video camera? Saying there was a shift-change?… That’s bullshit… [They] have been shooting and killing us for five hundred years—when’s it gonna stop?”

**********

At this point there are more questions than answers. The Northwind brothers and their father are questioning why they weren’t allowed to view the body before it was prepared for viewing. They have requested a copy of the coroner’s report, and were told it will take 8-10 weeks to process their request. The family has met with an attorney and is weighing their options as they seek justice for Jack. Montano says his family wants, “Justice for Jack, justice for the mentally ill, justice for the Native community, and justice against police brutality that is going on everywhere, especially in Seattle. I don’t want it to be that way, but it seems especially bad in Seattle and I want it to stop.”

The family also hopes the Seattle police department can be compelled to abide by the recommendations it accepted in that Justice Department settlement.

Their friends and neighbors are also crying out for justice. “The truth must be told and heard about this loss,” Olivia Brubaker says. “Jack must be remembered so something like this never happens again. So no more lives have to be lost like this, so the children of any neighborhood are not scarred mentally. The cops lied about his weapon, about his death, and about the threats he made toward them.

“Justice must be brought upon the cops involved with his death. I hope to encourage others to stand up and let the truth be known.”

Henry’s ‘Out [o] Fashion’ exhibit takes boundaries off beauty

Seattle’s Henry Art Gallery poses a photographic puzzle with “Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty,’ a wide-ranging show exploring cultural attitudes about beauty, running through Sept. 1, 2013.

By Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times

What is beauty? How do concepts of beauty change? And who possesses beauty — those who observe it or those who are observed?

These are among the questions raised in “Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty,” a new exhibit at the Henry Art Gallery, curated by Deborah Willis, the first scholar to take part in the Henry’s new Visiting Fellow Program.

Willis is a historian of African-American photography who teaches at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she serves as professor and chair of photography and imaging. A few years ago, the Henry invited her to pore through its holdings and those of the University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, with the idea of exploring “different attitudes about and cultural interpretations of beauty.”

“Out [o] Fashion Photography” is the result. It’s a big show that weighs how men photograph women, how women photograph men, how photographers turn their lenses on members of the own sex or people of other races, and, finally, how some artists — Cindy Sherman, Robert Mapplethorpe, the amazing Janieta Eyre — translate themselves into the most unlikely photographic icons.

As the exhibit’s punning title suggests, it deals with how ideals of beauty can go out of style, while also acknowledging the role fashion has played in shaping our concept of beauty. Wildly diverse in content, it asks viewers to draw their own connections more than it spells anything out for them.

Willis has divided it into three “thematic groupings,” although she cautions in her catalog essay that “there is overlap throughout, and many images can be discussed in multiple categories.”

If that sounds vague to the point of being unhelpful, it is.

The exhibit is better approached as a free-associative romp through the Henry/UW collections by someone with a curious eye. One question that gets raised again and again, in all three sections, is: Who is exploiting whom in the photographic process?

Willis starts off with works by Edward S. Curtis, whose passion about documenting vanishing Native American cultures may have overridden a more personal connection between the photographer and his subject.

Still, Curtis’ “Two Moons — Cheyenne” (1910) is a fine thing to behold, catching the essence of the war chief’s proud, weathered character. Frank A. Rinehart’s “Hattie Tom, Apache” (1899) tells a different story: The look of skepticism the young woman levels at the camera is withering.

Honest portraiture is one thing. Voyeurism is another.

The voyeuristic norm — of a male eye trained on a female form for purposes of arousal — seems most vividly and straightforwardly represented by E.J. Bellocq’s “Storyville Portrait” (c. 1912). But in other works, things get more complicated.

Don Wallen’s “Untitled” (1976), with its live female nude draped around a plastic-white mannequin, seems to comment on how synthetic some ideals of female beauty can be. Harry Callahan’s gorgeous silhouette shot of his wife, “Eleanor” (1948), uses photographic artifice to create something intimate, loving and mysterious.

Willis includes some actual fashion photography, including items by Hans L. Jorgensen and Irving Penn, where women are idealized by the camera, surely with their own full cooperation. And in shots of famous actresses — Cecil Beaton’s “Marlene Dietrich” (1930) and Benjamin J. Falk’s “Portrait of Miss Rush, the Actress” (c. 1892/1897) — there’s little doubt that the models are shaping their own images as much as the photographer is. “Miss Rush,” in her bow-tie, jacket, vest and trousers, is a dapper gender-bender. Dietrich, here, is in pure glamour-queen mode.

The male figure, if a bit underrepresented, isn’t neglected in “Out [o] Fashion.”

Jack Pierson’s gauzy “Belvedere Clayton” (1992) portrays a dreamy young man, swaddled in a nightshirt, sprawled back in bed and gazing at the camera. There’s something so swooning and heady about his pose that he seems made of gossamer. George Dureau’s black male nude, “Glen Thompson, Rear” (1983), on the other hand, couldn’t be more directly carnal.

In some cases, subjects’ actions, more than their looks, lend a true hypnotic allure to their images. That’s the case with Lewis Wickes Hine’s “Powerhouse Mechanic” (1921) and Barbara Morgan’s “Martha Graham — Letter to the World” (1940), which are slyly juxtaposed in the show.

There’s fine work here that seemingly has nothing to do with Willis’ chosen theme. Weegee’s masterpiece “The Critic” (1943), in which a Bowery character snarls at two preening operagoers, is surely less about beauty than hostilities between two social worlds, while Lisette Model’s “Famous Gambler, Nice” (1934) comes off as a pure character study, with little thought about the attractiveness of its subject (although the photograph itself is certainly handsomely composed).

Diane Arbus’ “A Woman in a Bird Mask, N.Y.C.” (1967) delights in how artifice can triumph over age and take a turn for the beautiful-fantastical. But in Arbus’ “A Family on Their Lawn One Sunday in Westchester, New York” (1968), it’s the total disconnect between husband, wife and child that rivets you far more than the incidental detail of the sunbathing mom’s classic, brittle 1960s looks.

Some of these puzzling inclusions might benefit from more commentary by Willis on individual photographs. Without that, the exhibition is mostly what you choose to make of it.

One thing for sure: There are plenty of photographic riches here — including work by Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, Edward J. Steichen and many others — to make something from.

Tribes’ court win may flow beyond culvert repairs to protect fish

A federal judge has ordered culvert repairs to ensure tribes have fish to catch, as guaranteed by their treaty rights. The ruling could have broader impact on other types of development.

By Lynda V. Mapes, The Seattle Times

A long-awaited tribal fishing-rights decision by a federal judge Friday means the state must immediately accelerate more than $1 billion in repairs to culverts that run beneath state roads and block access to some 1,000 miles of salmon habitat.

The ruling comes out of the landmark 1974 Boldt decision, which upheld the rights of tribes to fish. The ruling Friday by U.S.District Judge Ricardo Martinez in Seattle is aimed at ensuring the tribes have fish to catch.

The ruling could eventually result in other court-ordered restoration work, according to tribal leaders and policy experts.

“This culvert case is a ringing of the bell, OK you got to wake up,” said Ron Allen, chairman of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe. “We have to protect and restore the environment while we continue to look creatively for ways to develop new job and industry opportunities.”

Martinez ordered the state departments of fish and wildlife, parks, transportation, and natural resources to accelerate work to remove, replace and repair about 1,000 culverts to help restore salmon runs within 17 years.

The state Attorney General’s Office had not decided as of Friday whether to appeal the case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Martinez ruled in 2007 that Washington was violating tribal treaty rights by failing to protect salmon runs. He ordered the state and tribes to negotiate a schedule for fixing the culverts that block salmon passage to their habitat, but the parties were unable to reach agreement.

Friday’s order set standards and a deadline for the repairs.

While 17 years sounds like a long time, it’s been a dozen years since the tribes in 2001 asked Martinez to find that the state has a treaty-based right to preserve salmon runs and compel it to repair or replace culverts that impede them.

Many of the agencies have a backlog of plugged or failing culverts, the pipes that carry water beneath the state’s roadways.

The state has performed some $55 million in repairs to culverts since 2001, according to the Attorney General’s Office. However, the judge noted in his order that “despite past state action, a great many barrier culverts still exist, large stretches of potential salmon habitat remain empty of fish, and harvests are still diminished.”

Allowing salmon runs to decline further is a fundamental violation of promises made in the treaties of 1854 and 1855, Martinez wrote, under which tribes ceded most of what is present-day Western Washington.

“Governor Stevens assured the Tribes that even after they ceded huge quantities of land, they would still be able to feed themselves and their families forever,” Martinez wrote, referring to Isaac Stevens, Washington’s first territorial governor. “The promise made to the Tribes that the Stevens treaties would protect their source of food and commerce was crucial in obtaining that assent to the Treaties provision.”

While the order signed Friday focused on culverts, it may potentially have broader application to other habitat insults that harm salmon.

“Everyone knows there is a number of issues out there with regard to forestry, farming, development and standards that go along with all those different industries,” Allen said. “This case helps raise those issues on the radar.”

But the tribes’ main objective isn’t for the ruling to threaten the ability to create jobs, build homes and prosper, Allen said.

“It is a balance, so what do we do? It definitely lends itself as a steppingstone to the other issues, saying these are the other problems, and what are we going to do about them. It has to be part of the cost of doing business.”

In the short term, Brian Cladoosby, chairman of the Swinomish Tribe and Association of Washington Tribes, said tribes want to sit down with the state to figure out a schedule and budget to implement the order.

“The tribes have always been, I feel, like in a war, and this is just one of those battles,” he said. “We have to be humble in victory and now hopefully go forward working on a plan with the state to tackle this.”

He called the order a victory not only for tribes, but all of the state’s citizens. “The Creator blessed us with one of the greatest natural resources, and it is enjoyed by people of all colors, not just tribes.”

Robert Anderson, director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Washington School of Law, said it is yet to be seen how far the implications of the order reach into other types of development and habitat protection and repair.

“But this is a legal shot across the bow,” Anderson said, “indicating that more needs to be done to repair habitat and stop further damage.”

Will Stelle, Northwest regional director for the National Marine Fisheries Service, called the order “sobering and significant” because it cements the fact that treaty rights are not only a federal obligation.

Ultimately, the case is about more than culverts, or fish, said Fawn Sharp, president of the Quinault Indian Nation. The tribes want to protect not just a crucial food source, but a way of life, for Indians and non-Indians alike, she said.

“People will look back at this point in history, and I am confident that when the tribes stepped up to do this, they took a critical role in protecting Washington as we know it and the way we live here,” Sharp said.

“That is true for generations to come, and non-Indians will appreciate it, too. There is a common denominator with other residents that share these values.”

‘Still a huge wound’: remembering Green River killer’s victims

The Organization for Prostitution Survivors, a new Seattle nonprofit, is working to raise money and build public support for a permanent memorial to the victims of Green River killer Gary L. Ridgway. The effort has the support of U.S. Congressman and former King County Sheriff Dave Reichert.

By Sara Jean Green, The Seattle Times

PHOTOS BY ERIKA SCHULTZ / The Seattle TimesNoel Gomez, a former prostitute who co-founded the Organization for Prostitution Survivors, is raising money for a memorial to the victims of Green River killer Gary L. Ridgway, who has pleaded guilty to 49 murders. "I feel like they are my sisters," Gomez said. — PHOTOS BY ERIKA SCHULTZ / The Seattle Times
Noel Gomez, a former prostitute who co-founded the Organization for Prostitution Survivors, is raising money for a memorial to the victims of Green River killer Gary L. Ridgway, who has pleaded guilty to 49 murders. “I feel like they are my sisters,” Gomez said.

By the time a pimp put Noel Gomez to work on the streets of Seattle in the early 1990s, the Green River killer had slowed his killing spree of girls and women, many who were also caught up in the dark underworld of prostitution.

“But he was still out there and whenever I worked Pacific Highway or Aurora Avenue, I was very aware that the next car I got into could be the Green River killer’s,” said Gomez, 39, who has been out of the life for seven years now. “I was obsessed with him getting caught.”

She recalls watching “Judge Judy” on TV in her Queen Anne apartment in November 2001 when the program was interrupted by a breaking-news alert: Gary L. Ridgway, a then-52-year-old truck painter from Auburn, had been arrested. Gomez cried at the news.

Now, nearly a dozen years later, long after Ridgway pleaded guilty to 49 murders, Gomez and Peter Qualliotine are working to raise money and build public support for a permanent memorial to the girls and women Ridgway strangled and discarded.

The two are co-founders of a new Seattle nonprofit, The Organization for Prostitution Survivors (OPS). They are hosting a series of community engagements at libraries and community centers throughout the year to help educate the public about the dynamics of prostitution and the extreme sexual violence that prostituted girls and women endure.

In addition to the community engagements, Gomez and Qualliotine are holding weekly art workshops for prostitution survivors and plan to display their works in quarterly art exhibits. The women’s artwork, they said, will influence and inform the design of the memorial.

OPS has so far raised about $10,000 of its $225,000 goal. The money will be used to launch the fledgling organization, pay for supplies and salaries (Gomez and Qualliotine have been working for free), provide housing, job skills and other services to survivors of prostitution and go toward funding the design and siting of the memorial.

“In my world, in the world I roam in … it has not gone away,” Gomez said of the trauma caused by the Green River killings. “I think there’s a lot of people who don’t think about it or even know about it. But what people don’t understand is that in certain circles, it’s still a huge freaking wound.”

Gomez, a chemical-dependency professional who works with juveniles in the King County Juvenile Detention Center, previously worked for The Bridge Program, a Seattle residential-recovery center for prostituted youth.

Qualliotine, who also worked for The Bridge, designed one of the country’s first “john schools” in Portland for men who have been arrested for patronizing prostitutes. The schools examine men’s accountability in creating demand for prostitution.

U.S. Congressman and former King County Sheriff Dave Reichert has pledged to help Gomez and Qualliotine. As a 31-year-old detective in 1982, Reichert began investigating the Green River cases.

Reichert said he thought about a memorial for the victims years ago, but worried the grief was still too raw for families who had to relive horrible memories every time a new victim was found.

There has been no closure for the families whose daughters’ lives were violently cut short, he said. And for law-enforcement officers, there are aspects of the killings that they’ll never forget.

“When you collect remains for years and years and years, and sometimes multiple bodies in a week, those thoughts and visions never go away,” Reichert said. “ … This is about the victims, the families and the relatives — they’re the ones who have lost loved ones — but this has meaning for the detectives, too.”

The Green River killings were “the worst serial murder case in the nation,” with 51 confirmed victims and dozens of other slayings believed to have been committed by Ridgway, he said. More than half of Ridgway’s victims were 18 or younger.

But Ridgway, who preyed on prostitutes and runaways, “doesn’t have the name recognition Ted Bundy has,” Reichert said, referring to the Northwest serial killer who raped and killed female college students in the 1970s. He believes that’s because of the social stigma attached to those involved in prostitution.

“People were driving to and from work on Pacific Highway or Aurora Avenue or First Avenue and they were never seeing these young girls on the street,” he said. “There were hundreds of them — you couldn’t miss them — but no one saw them.

“Then they disappeared and no one missed them,” Reichert said.

Maybe Seattle and the county can embrace the idea of a memorial to the victims “as the community’s recognition that they failed these kids and for the future, maybe we will remember our failure,” he said.

Reichert, who as a teen ran away from home to escape his abusive, alcoholic father, said 90 percent of Ridgway’s victims were on the streets because of the abuse they suffered in their own homes.

“There’s a reason those girls were on the streets,” he said. “And it’s still happening.”

It was true for Gomez, whose physically abusive, alcoholic father kicked her out when she became pregnant at 15.

And it was true for Debbie Estes, one of Ridgway’s youngest victims, who along with her two siblings was sexually abused for years by a relative, said Estes’ sister, Virginia “Jenny” Graham, of Spokane. After Estes ran away from home, it didn’t take long before she fell under the control of a pimp, Graham said.

The last time Graham saw her sister, Estes and her best friend Becky Marrero — another Ridgway victim — had stopped by the family’s Federal Way home to pick up some of Estes’ things.

Soon after, Estes was raped and pistol-whipped by a serial rapist. She was set to testify against him when she disappeared on Sept. 20, 1982.

Estes’ body was found almost six years later, on May 30, 1988, in Federal Way. She had just turned 15.

Marrero was 20 when she disappeared from a SeaTac motel on Dec. 3, 1982. Her body was discovered in an Auburn ravine December 2010, years after Ridgway had admitted he killed her.

“When these particular girls were being killed, it was like no one cared,” said Graham, a married mother of three. “You couldn’t go anywhere without people talking about it, at the grocery store or wherever. I heard some of the cruelest things being said, like: ‘It’s her fault for being out there.’

“But what people didn’t realize was my sister didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t go home,” Graham said.

Graham and Reichert are working together to contact other victims’ families and hope to meet with them to discuss the memorial.

“It’s for healing, it’s positive and it will happen, I have little doubt,” she said.

To learn more

For more information on The Organization for Prostitution Survivors and to donate to the Green River Victims Memorial, visit www.seattleops.com. The website includes a video about the effort.

Community engagement

The next OPS community engagement will be held the second week of April, and the first art exhibit is planned for early May. Dates and venues haven’t been confirmed yet, but information will be available on the OPS website.

The Organization for Prostitution Survivors

Coast Salish Art Programs at the Burke

April 2013
Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture
Seattle, WA

First Woman. Yellow Cedar.By Luke Marston. Photo by Armstrong Creative. — First Woman. Yellow Cedar.
By Luke Marston. Photo by Armstrong Creative.

Seattle – The Burke Museum is pleased to offer a variety of programs featuring the groundbreaking artwork of Coast Salish artists. In April, attend a discussion panel with practicing artists, see art demonstrations and talk to artists about their work, and view Coast Salish art from the Burke Museum collections.

Discussion Panel: Coast Salish Art in the 21^st Century
Friday, April 5, 2013 • Kane Hall 120, UW Campus • 7 pm

Coast Salish artists are using computer graphics, laser cutters, and glass hot shops, as well as adzes, knives, and looms to bring traditional forms into the 21^st century. Join a panel of artists lead by Shaun Peterson as they share the challenges and rewards of transporting the vision of their grandparents into the modern world.

Panelists include artists Heather Johnson-Jock, lessLIE, Luke Marston, and Danielle Morsette.

FREE for all and open to the public. Pre-registration recommended. Reserve your seat today at www.burkemuseum.org/events.

Special Event: Coast Salish Art & Artists Day
Saturday, April 6, 2013 • Burke Museum • 10 am – 3 pm

Explore artwork and demonstrations by notable Coast Salish artists in mediums such as weaving, sculpture, and print-making. Attend film screenings, and try your hand at a communal weaving piece on a large loom.

Art demonstrations include:

Coast Salish weaving on tabletop and upright frame looms
Cedar bark basketry weaving
Hand spinning yarn with a spindle whorl
Acrylic on paper pieces
Film screenings of Teachings of the Tree People: The Work of Bruce Miller and Killer Whale and Crocodile

Participating artists include Bill and Fran James, Heather Johnson-Jock, lessLIE, Luke Marston, Danielle Morsette, and Karen Reed.

Included with museum admission; FREE for Burke members.

Coast Salish Art programs are supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and 4Culture.

Weekend Activities @ the Burke: Coast Salish Art
Saturdays & Sundays in April • Burke Museum • 11 am – 3 pm
Every weekend in April, enjoy Coast Salish art activities at the Burke. See Coast Salish weaving pieces not normally on display, and try your hand at a large weaving loom. Also enjoy guided exhibit tours every Saturday at 1 pm.

Included with museum admission; FREE for Burke members.

The Burke Museum is located on the University of Washington campus, at the corner of NE 45^th St. and 17^th Ave. NE. Hours are 10 am to 5 pm daily, and until 8 pm on first Thursdays. Admission: $10 general, $8 senior, $7.50 student/ youth. Admission is free to children four and under, Burke members, UW students, faculty, and staff. Admission is free to the public on the first Thursday of each month. Prorated parking fees are $15 and partially refundable upon exit if paid in cash. Call 206-543-5590 or visit www.burkemuseum.org. The Burke Museum is an American Association of Museums accredited museum.

To request disability accommodation, contact the Disability Services Office at: 206.543.6450 (voice), 206.543.6452 (TTY), 206.685.7264 (fax), or email at dso@u.washington.edu. The University of Washington makes every effort to honor disability accommodation requests. Requests can be responded to most effectively if received as far in advance of the event as possible, preferably at least 10 days.

27th Annual Seafair Indian Days Pow Wow, July 19-21

Source: United Indians of All Tribes Foundation, http://www.unitedindians.org/powwow/

Dear Community,

United Indians of All Tribes Foundation is excited to announce that our 27th Annual Seafair Indian Days Pow Wow will be held on July 19-21, 2013! As many of you all know, we had to make a really hard decision and cancel this pow wow last year due to lack of funding. This year we plan on making this pow wow bigger and better than ever! Mark your calendars and save the date! We are in need of donations, please click on link to the left to donate!

EMCEE: Jerry Meninick
ARENA DIRECTOR: Ken Gopher and Tony Bluehorse
HOST DRUM: RED BULL

CATEGORIES:

GOLDEN AGE: 1000-800-600-400-200

ADULT: 1000-800-600-400-200

TEENS: 400-300-200-100

JUNIORS: 300-200-100-75DRUMS: SESSION PAY FIRST TEN EACH SESSIONSPECIALS:

Bernie Whitebear, Team Dance: Owl Dance: Others TBA

GRAND ENTRY:
FRI 7:00 PM
SAT 1:00 AND 7:00 PM
SUN 1:00 PMTRADITIONAL SALMON DINNER!!ADMISSION:
FRI: FREE FAMILY NIGHT
SAT AND SUN: $5.00

(Admission funds go towards cost and production of pow wow)

VENDORS:

Vendor Space 10×10: $400

Limited Spaces available, provide own tables and tents
POWER $25 AND (1) RAFFEL ITEM

Professional and SPD Security Available

FOOD VENDORS BY INVITATION ONLY

Contact United Indians for Camping

JOHN ROMERO 206-498-7640

john.romero.sr@live.com
CHRISSY HARRIS 206-285-4425 x1020

charris@unitedindians.org

VOLUNTEERS:

We are in need of many volunteers for this event. Please contact our volunteer coordinator if you are interested!

Willeena George pwvolunteers@unitedindians.org

4th Annual Lushootseed Language Conference, April 20

Expect traffic snarls this weekend in Seattle

March 1, 2013 at 10:15 AM

Posted by Nick Provenza in the Seattle Times

There’s the potential for some traffic snarls this weekend around the Sodo stadiums, the Alaskan Way Viaduct and on I-5, so be prepared and plan ahead.

Here’s a list of what’s happening:

The Viaduct is closed from 6 a.m to 5 p.m. Saturday and from 6 a.m. to noon Sunday, for its routine semi-annual inspection.
The on-ramp from the West Seattle Bridge route (elevated Spokane Street) to southbound I-5 will close from 10 p.m. Friday until 5 a.m. Monday, to repair expansion joints between the elevated bridge spans.
Sounders FC play a match Saturday night at CenturyLink Field, against the Montreal Impact, drawing an expected 40,000 fans.
Emerald City Comicon runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday, bringing 19,000 people to the state convention center.
A running event, the Hot Chocolate 15k/5k, will close the Aurora Bridge on Sunday from 6:15 a.m. to 11 a.m., and draw up to 12,000 people to Seattle Center and surrounding streets.
Three of four southbound lanes of I-5, from Green Lake to the Ship Canal Bridge, will close Friday night and Saturday night, from 10 p.m. to 10 a.m., for pavement regrinding.

The state Department of Transportation’s homepage about weekend closures, and the DOT’s traffic app, can be found here.

Source

Going Native in….Seattle

American Indian dancers perform during dinner in the longhouse at Tillicum

Lynn Armitage, Indian Country Today Media Network

When you think of Seattle, the first things that come to mind are probably the Space Needle, Puget Sound, the birthplace of Jimi Hendrix or maybe professional sports franchises like the Mariners or the Seahawks. Somehow forgotten among all the contemporary lore of this beautiful seaport is the knowledge that it teemed with Native Americans for at least 4,000 years before white settlers arrived.

In fact, Seattle, the largest city in the Pacific Northwest, is named after a leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish tribes, Chief Si’ahl. Other tribes in the area include the Muckleshoot and Snoqualmie. Today, many of them continue their long-held artistic traditions, including basket-weaving.

If you’re planning a trip to this vibrant city, you should by all means take in its traditional tourist attractions. But to really rock your visit with some Native American culture, we recommend these five destinations, all off the beaten path:

Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center

Located on 20 acres in Discovery Park, Seattle’s largest city park, with views of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains, the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center is a central hub showcasing all the Native tribes in the area. Daybreak Star serves many purposes, says its parent organization, the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation—a conference center, a pow wow venue, a gathering place for after-school programs and an art gallery that features a large body of work by Native artists.

For more details, go to UnitedIndians.com/daybreak.html.

Tillicum Village Adventure

For a real taste of Native culture—literally—go on a four-hour escape to Tillicum Village on Blake Island, just eight miles west of Seattle, in Puget Sound. Guests are treated to steamed clams upon arrival and can watch a traditional Northwest Coast salmon bake in the longhouse. After the feast, enjoy a Native music and dance show that tells the colorful story of the Coast Salish Tribes, also called the Puget Salish or Lushootseed peoples. Daily tours run from May through September.

For ticket prices and tour details, go to TillicumVillage.com.

Juanita Bay Park

If you’re up for a beautiful drive to observe the region’s abundant wildlife, Juanita Bay Park is a quick 15 miles east of Seattle, on the other side of adjoining Lake Washington. It’s a 110-acre marshy wetland that is home to all kinds of wildlife, including songbirds, shorebirds, turtles and beavers. Guided tours are available, or walk along the paved trails and boardwalks solo. Either way, you will learn a lot about this natural habitat through interpretive signs that are positioned throughout the park. Don’t forget to bring your binoculars!

Wetlands in Juanita Bay Park (Facebook)

For more details, go to KirklandWa.gov.

Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture

Located at the University of Washington, the Burke is the state’s oldest museum. It is dedicated to honoring, researching and sharing the heritage of diverse peoples from all over the world, including the many Native tribes in the state and beyond. Here you will find thousands of Coast Salish artifacts and artworks, as well as a number of exhibits that feature artwork from other tribes, such as the Tlingit and Haida of British Columbia and southeast Alaska.

For more details, go to BurkeMuseum.org. (On this site, you will also find an extensive list of Native American cultural centers and museums. Just type “Native Americans” into the search box.)

The Center for Wooden Boats

A must-see for aquatic enthusiasts is the Center for Wooden Boats, a fun place for the family to learn about boats—on and off the water. The center refers to itself as a “living museum,” since visitors can take their historic wooden boats out for a quick sail. Free public boat rides are offered on Sundays. Tourists can also learn how to carve northern-style canoes from a Haida carver named Saaduuts, the artist in residence, who holds classes periodically just across the way in Lake Union Park as part of the Canoe Project, a partnership of the center, United Indians of All Tribes Foundation and Antioch University Seattle.

Come sail away at the Center for Wooden Boats (Center for Wooden Boats)

“The Living Breath of Wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ: Indigenous Ways of Knowing Cultural Food Practices and Ecological Knowledge”

May 1, 2013 at 9:00am until May 2 at 5:00pm

Walker Ames Room, Kane Hall, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195

SAVE THE DATE! The University of Washington’s American Indian Studies Department invites you to a two-day symposium to be held May 1-2, 2013 in Seattle, Washington.

“The Living Breath of Wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ: Indigenous Ways of Knowing Cultural Food Practices and Ecological Knowledge,” will bring together primarily Northwest Coast and regional Native leaders, elders, and scholars who will share their knowledge and expertise on topics such as tribal food sovereignty initiatives, food justice and security, traditional foods and health, global climate change’s impact on coastal indigenous food systems, treaties and reserved water rights, and treaty fishing rights and habitat protection.

Indigenous peoples in the Northwest have maintained a sustainable way of life through a cultural, spiritual, and reciprocal relationship with their environment. Presently we face serious disruptions to this relationship from policies, environmental threats, and global climate change. Thus, our traditional ecological knowledge is of paramount importance as we strive to sustain our cultural food practices and preserve this healthy relationship to the land, water, and all living things.

This symposium will be the inaugural event to honor UW’s future longhouse-style community building, Wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ (a Lushootseed word meaning Intellectual House), that will open its doors in 2014. This event symbolizes the spirit of Wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ and embodies the essence of the work we envision doing in this cultural and intellectual space.

Registration details are forthcoming.

Coordinators:
Dr. Charlotte Coté, Clarita Lefthand-Begay, Dr. Dian Million, and Elissa Washuta.

Charlotte Coté (Nuu-chah-nulth) Ph.D., Associate Professor, UW’s Department of American Indian Studies; Affiliated Faculty, Canadian Studies Center, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies; Chair, UW’s Wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ (Intellectual House) Planning and Advisory Committee.

Clarita Lefthand-Begay (Diné) MS, Ph.D. candidate, UW’s School of Public Health, Graduate Student Representative, Wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ (Intellectual House) Working Committee Member, 2012 First Stewards Witness.

Dian Million (Athabaskan) Ph.D., Assistant Professor, UW’s Department of American Indian Studies.

Elissa Washuta (Cowlitz) MFA, Academic Counselor and Lecturer, UW’s Department of American Indian Studies.