Update on Makah Whaling

According to an article written by Paul Gottlieb in July of 2010, research has come out about the grey whales which were the focus of the Makah Whaling in the late 1990s. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has performed research which has suggested that the whales surrounding the Strait of Juan de Fuca may have a seperate genetic idenity than the other grey whales in the Pacific Ocean, meaning that the whales near the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Washington penninsula may be placed on an endangered species. This genetic discovery may place restrictions on the whaling of the Makahs.

While it is important that the 200 or so individuals of the different genetic variety are preserved to prevent extinction of a unique species, the right to whale should not be taken away from the Makah peoples. Restrictions should be made and perhaps specifications about which whales can be killed. Although the Makah's have killed few whales since the renewing of the whaling practice, the peoples should have the right to do so if they feel the need to.


-Brittany Vigoreaux

Source: http://indiancountrynews.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9660&Itemid=118

Homelessness in Seattle

Every day, walking from my dorm to my boyfriend's apartment I see homeless people. Sometimes they ask for money. Sometimes they have signs. Sometimes they are together along with their dogs and possessions. They are all ages and body types. Why is homelessness so prevalent and what is being done about it? All the articles I have read emphasize that homelessness does not only happen to the uneducated, lazy or drug addicts. Often homeless people (in fact 90% of women and children who are homeless according to the Daily of the UW) are the victims of abuse. They could also be just out of jail or foster care. King County has created a Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness. This plan builds and buys housing units and funds homelessness relief programs. One program works with landlords and homeless people to establish and help fund housing agreements. Others encourage job training and education. According to the plan's website it has been effective. Homelessness rates have steadily fallen, making Seattle one of the only cities in the country where this is true. This plan is encouraging and apparently effective. One issue it does not address though is youth homelessness. According to an article in the Daily, though overall homelessnsess rates are falling, the number of youths on the streets is growing. In the U District this is certainly the case. Any evening one walks down the ave homeless young people are abundant. It is unsurprising that they would choose to live in an area with a large number of students, where people are used to kids hanging around. Essentially, everything comes back to education. If the state had better programs for funding post high school education for those who cannot afford it, there would be fewer homeless youths. Unless they are assisted by the state it will be exceedingly difficult for them to obtain an education and move off the street. The Ten Year Plan needs to adress these issues and help young people into schools.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/judylightfoot/archives/174831.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness

http://dailyuw.com/2010/11/9/new-kind-homelessness-one-ave-rats-story/

http://dailyuw.com/2010/5/19/feeding-awareness/

EC

New high school course?

The previously posted article (Native education) also got me thinking about the curriculum that is currently taught in Washington public schools—and public schools across the nation for that matter.  I mean, Washington isn’t Arizona…at least we have yet to ban cultural studies in our schools.  Yet, we do seem to be severely lacking in this department.  I still remember in elementary school learning about how great Columbus was when he “discovered” America, and how vast and empty the land was, not yet touched by man.  By the time I took American history in high school, this changed a little, but honestly not as much as it should have.  But there is just so much to learn about the way Native Americans worked with the land before (and after) the Europeans arrived, how can we even dream of fitting it all into one high school course?

I think it would be awesome if high schools in Washington created a class that incorporated Native American history with hands-on projects designed around living sustainably based on Indigenous customs.  I’m picturing a lot of the information relating to material from ANTH 210, but then there would also be this real life part of the class, where students could get out of the classroom and learn gardening, agriculture, cooking, and just general living in a way that is friendlier to the environment as well as cheaper, and more enjoyable.  Students could learn what real wild rice tastes like, and how buying chicken and beef from local farms reduces environmental impacts while supporting the community.  This is not an unrealistic class to offer at a high school—it would take work, and funding, but I think that a great deal of local groups would ultimately support it.  Plus, this would give Native American youth the opportunity to really feel comfortable in school, as they learn sustainable customs that may have actually been passed down from some of their ancestors.

-Rachel Wolk

How far have public schools really come?

I found this great article from the Seattle PI about Native American dropout rates in Washington State:

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/417108_nativeeducation22.html

The article highlights a young woman who dropped out of her Seattle high school when personal and family issues prevented her from have the time to complete her school work.  Apparently, this student is among many Native Americans in the Seattle area who struggle with finishing high school and going on to college.  According to the article, 11.5% of Native American students dropped out of high school in the 2007-2008 school year, which is higher than the dropout rates of any other minority group.  Why do young people from First Nations have such a difficult time making it through school?

The answer, as the article reveals, stems back quite a few decades, when white settlers forced Native American children to attend English, Catholic schools.  They had no say in the curriculum or even the language in which their lessons were taught.  This led to feelings of oppression and inferiority, feelings which are still prevalent today in many young Native Americans’ lives.  Although modern Washington public schools are far from what they were in the 19^th century, some issues still remain.  The article brought up the point that teachers continue to be predominately white…and thinking back on my elementary and high school years, I never had or even knew of a teacher who was part of an Indigenous group.  Honestly, I rarely saw teachers who were of any minority group at all.  Thinking about this makes me realize that although I did work hard in school to get good grades and make it to college, I was also very privileged in that I had a consistent feeling of comfort and security in school.  Native American students are missing this key ingredient to their success, and therefore they must work extra hard to make it as far as I have made it.  I really hope that in the near future, an increasing number of Native American students will make it to college and become teachers themselves, so that they can make students of every heritage feel comfortable, and at the same time raise awareness of the culture and struggle of the First Nations of Washington.

-Rachel Wolk

The Importance of Local Wetlands

Every year thousands of acres of wetlands are being bulldozed in order to make way for housing developments, outlet malls and roads.  In my home town of Poulsbo, Washington a ten acre wetland was paved over to make way for a highway and shopping complex.  All kinds of animals were displaced and forced to live in nearby ditches or dirty retention ponds.  It is still common to see birds of every variety hanging around the parking lot of Albertsons trying to find proper mating grounds.  There is no safe haven for ducklings to be raised anymore and they are forced to waddle across the highway in order to find a decent food supply.  In 1989 Governor Booth Gardner announced that half of the states wetlands were gone, and for every acre of wetlands that is paved over another acre of wetlands will be recreated in a different location.  He vowed that the number of wetlands would actually instead of continue to rapidly decrease.  After 21 years it is obvious that his promises have proved to be false, more and more wetlands are being filled with cement and most attempts to recreate wetlands are most often a complete failure, or nonexistent.  I for one did not see a single replacement wetland being attempted in my hometown, but did witness the destruction of several more to make room for Wall-mart, home depot and Pet-co.   Ugly retention ponds have been placed around town and it disturbs me to think that this is an acceptable replacement for miles of habitat to millions of animals such as the majestic blue heron, sandhill crane and great egret.

Most people don’t understand the profound importance that wetlands have on our planet.  The vegetation of wetlands helps anchor soils in place which prevents soil erosion which is desperately needed in a continually developing economy.  Coastline erosion is a serious threat to areas which think retention ponds are an acceptable replacement for naturally occurring wetlands.  According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), coastlines are being eroded at a rate of up to 4 feet per year.  For every foot that is lost people try to replace lost security with retention walls or other substitutions.  But there is no permanent solution because wetlands not only keep our soil from eroding from underneath of our feet, they also protect ocean waters by filtering toxins before they reach open water.  They do this by slowing water flow from the land to the sea.  When water flow is decreased, suspended particles containing toxins will drop down into the sediment layer. This action removes them from the ecosystem where they will remain inert unless the sediment layer is disturbed.  Needless to say wetlands cannot be replicated and cannot be replaced.  There have been many failed attempts and ecologists, and hopefully politicians will be forced to see the conclusion that it simply cannot be done and the destruction of wetlands has to be stopped.

-KK

Works Cited:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/hyml/localnews/2004407515_growth_wetlands15m1.html

http://www.suite101.com/content/environmental-and-economic-importance-of-coastal-wetlands-a255984

Elwha River Dam Removal cont.

Preparations for a Dam-less Summer

Since the Elwha Dams will both be removed by May 2010, this upcoming summer will be the first dam-less summer the Elwha River has seen in almost a century. Now that the dams will be removed, fish will have the ability to swim upriver and spawn again in their natural habitat. In preparation for the return of the habitat back to the fish, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe is expanding their fisheries operations by expanding and refurbishing their existing fish hatchery.

“The new space will allow us to expand our hatchery operations, even more so when the dams come down,” said Larry Ward, the tribe’s hatchery manager. “More fish will have better access to the river valley as well.”

The tribe preemptively created a steelhead brood stalk program so that the steelhead would not be wiped out during the deconstruction of the dams. The Elwha River steelhead population is part of the Puget Sound steelhead population listed as “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act.

“We’ve found that wild steelhead tend to immigrate to the ocean as 2-year-olds, so we’ll try to rear them to that age before we release them,” said Larry Ward, a fisheries biologist and hatchery manager for the tribe. “We’ve been successful at raising the 2005 stock to spawning maturity, so things are going well so far.”

The current Elwha River only allows salmon to travel up the first five miles of river, but with the dams removed the salmon will not be limited to inadequate hatching habitats. The current fish hatchery supports chum and Coho salmon, but after the expansion it will also support pink salmon. By creating and expanding this hatchery, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe is helping the local and world-wide salmon run. While salmon are an important part of their life and culture, this is not entirely a selfish act. They are directly helping all salmon fishermen economically as well as benefiting their own economic, traditional, cultural, and spiritual relations to the salmon. Furthermore, they are indirectly profiting the entire ecosystem in which the salmon are contributing to, which is a large ecosystem as they travel across oceans and travel many miles up river systems. For example, the river above where the salmon travel lacks its normal abundance of mussels, which is due to the lack of salmon. Mussel larvae feed off the gills of salmon for the first few weeks of development before they drop off and continue their development on the streambed. Scientists hope that once the river is populated with salmon once more, the mussel population will return as well.

The hatchery will be completed in the spring of 2010; a few months before the last dam is deconstructed. This preemptive approach is very significant. This shows how much the removal of the dams is affecting their livelihood. As of November 2010 the hatchery is 65% complete and is on time to be completed by next spring.

WORKS CITED:
Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. "Hatchery Groundbreaking at Lower Elwha Klallam"
http://nwifc.org/2010/02/hatchery-groundbreaking-at-lower-elwha-klallam/

Seattle Times: "Elwha Steelhead Broodstock Program Successful"
http://nwifc.org/2009/07/seattle-times-elwha-steelhead-broodstock-program-successful/

-SH

Duwamish continued: Apologizing for Centuries of Mistreatment

To follow up on my previous post, here is a pretty recent article (May 2010) about an apology made by Washington Representative Jim McDermott and Kansas Senator Sam Brownback:

http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/archives/206502.asp

McDermott and Brownback apologized to the First Nations of the U.S. for “ill-conceived policies and the breaking of covenants” and for “many instances of violence, maltreatment and neglect”.  Apparently, McDermott used this apology to also point out that the federal government has continuously failed to address the issue of recognizing the Duwamish as an official tribe.  He also explained how the Duwamish are not the only indigenous group to be neglected by United States policymakers, even after making treaties with the government decades ago.

This article raises a couple of interesting questions.  First of all, considering the lack of interest the government seems to have in working towards recognizing and reconciling with American First People, why even make the apology?  As far as McDermott and Brownback are concerned, this is a small step toward affirmative action for Native Americans, and a large step for these political leaders in regards to increasing their constituency to include indigenous groups.  There does not seem to be any real movement toward aiding these under-recognized people.  In my opinion, this apology means nothing unless McDermott truly continues to push legislation to recognize the Duwamish and other deserving groups.  He explains that he “authored legislation to fix this shameful problem”, but this clearly has not yet made a difference for the Duwamish.

The other issue this article raises is, how far exactly should the government go to fix past issues?  Aside from current problems like that of recognizing the Duwamish, there have been countless injustices on Native Americans that the federal government is responsible for, many of which are irreversible.  For such issues, is a simple apology all that First People can hope for?  The government has spent a great deal of time and money creating policies for African Americans in order to boost their social and economic well-being through jobs, secondary education, and other programs; yet, similar programs for indigenous Americans are almost non-existent in comparison.  I think it is the responsibility of the federal government to ensure that these people who have been so mistreated in the past are given every opportunity to become the proud, successful First Nations that they once were.  An official apology is one step, but these apologies need to include a step by step process through which Native Americans will be reconciled.


-Rachel Wolk

Saving the Spotted Owl

The majestic spotted owl had been the focus of heated debate between loggers and environmentalists ever since the fate of this small bird, barely 8 ounces, has come into question.  The ancient forest of the Pacific Northwest has always been home to the spotted owl but over the last 150 years, as a result of heavy logging, these ancient forests have decreased drastically. Society has deemed this incredibly diverse and beautiful landscape as economic property, worthless unless it is generating revenue for the owners.  For generations loggers and mill workers have relied on the seemingly endless bounty of trees that encompasses the Pacific Northwest to support their families.  As this sacred, ancient forest meets the angry bits of steel the population of spotted owls is in terrible danger of losing their stable ecosystem which they rely on for shelter and food.  Spotted owls cannot survive in young forests, and loggers need old growth forest trees because the quality of wood is better, and their machines were made to process thick trees.  Both the owl and the logging industry need the precious trees of old growth forests.  But whose need is greater?

The Northern Spotted Owl was listed federally as a threatened species in 1990 because suitable habitat was declining throughout its range and there was evidence of declining populations.  Saving the spotted owl will save an entire ecosystem on which plants, other animals, and humans depend.  "The spotted owl is almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg," says the Forest Service's Jerry Franklin quoted from “Who gives a Hoot” in Time magazine. "There are probably dozens of other species just as threatened as the owl."  The spotted owl is considered an indicator species -- a gauge of the health of the ecosystem that provides its habitat. It has been estimated that within 30 years the last of the ancient forests outside of protected areas will fall.  It has taken centuries for old growth forest trees to grow which cannot ever be replaced in our lifetime.  Many mills may be forced to close eventually unless they adapt their machinery to work with second growth trees.  "We've been running an ecological deficit, and the bill has come in," says Jerry Franklin, a research scientist with the Forest Service. "There's going to be pain for owls, for people and for trees."  The owl dispute has not caused the problem but forced people to realize the inevitable crisis facing the Pacific Northwest. 

Works Cited

http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v4n1/

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,970447,00.html#ixzz17BXphFwv

http://communty.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archine/?date=20000806&slug=4035697