Yakama and Umatilla Tribes Unite for Comprehensive Salmon Recovery

Yakama and Umatilla Tribes unite for comprehensive salmon recovery

Tribes call for inclusive solutions to saving Columbia Basin salmon

Contact:

Andrea Tulee, Public Information Officer
Andrea_Tulee@Yakama.com
Kaeleen McGuire, Public Relations Specialist
KaeleenMcGuire@ctuir.org

PRESCOTT, Washinton –– On Tuesday, Aug. 9, tribal leaders from around the Pacific Northwest gathered at Fishhook Park to advocate for working together to restore Columbia Basin salmon populations. The event highlighted the power of partnerships in finding comprehensive solutions to salmon recovery.

Leaders from Yakama Nation and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) celebrated the role of salmon in Northwest Native cultures and recommended taking immediate action to ensure endangered salmon do not go extinct.

The tribes also advocated for a comprehensive fish restoration strategy, which included considering breaching the four lower Snake River dams. They noted that tribes regularly work with non-Native communities to find collaborative solutions to challenges in the region—and they can do so again to keep these vital fish from disappearing forever.

Lloyd Vivola Photos: Indigenous 'Break Free' Day of Action Anacortes Wash.

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Swinomish, Coast Salish and more!

Break Free of Fossil Fuels!

Photos and article copyright Lloyd Vivola
Censored News

Indigenous 'Break Free' Day of Action - Anacortes, Washington, Photos May 14

By Lloyd Vivola
Censored News

May 14, 2016, Anacortes WASHINGTON

Thousands of supporters converged on March Point, Washington, today from as far away as Montana and southern Oregon, answering an invitation from the Swinomish Tribe and other Coastal Salish Nations to join in a blessing of sacred earth and waters by calling for an urgent transition to renewable energy and ecological sanity while assuring economic stability and employment for the inhabitants of the Anacortes region, some 65 miles north of Seattle, where the sprawling refineries and transport stations of Shell and Tesoro now dominate the horizons of treaty lands on Fidalgo Bay.

Lummi Victory! No Coal Terminal at Cherry Point!

By Lummi Nation
Censored News
May 9, 2016 

Lummi Nation responds to U.S. Army Corps’ decision on Gateway Pacific coal terminal Tribe praises Corps’ decision to uphold treaty rights by denying permit Bellingham, Wash.— The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) announced its decision today to deny Pacific International Terminals' application to build North America’s largest coal export terminal in the Lummi Nation’s treaty-protected fishing waters off Cherry Point. The statement below from Tim Ballew II, chairman of the Lummi Indian Business Council, can be quoted in full or in part. 

This is a historic victory for treaty rights and the constitution. It is a historic victory for the Lummi Nation and our entire region. We are pleased to see that the Corps has honored the treaty and the constitution by providing a decision that recognizes the terminal’s impacts to our fishing rights. This decision is a win for the treaty and protects our sacred site.
Our ancient ones at Xwe'chieXen, Cherry Point, will rest protected. Because of this decision, the water we rely on to feed our families, for our ceremonies and for commercial purposes remains protected. But this is more than a victory for our people; it’s a victory for treaty rights. Treaty rights shape our region and nation.
As tribes across the United States face pressures from development and resource extraction, we’ll continue to see tribes lead the fight to defend their treaty rights and protect and manage their lands and waters for future generations.
The impact of a coal terminal on our treaty fishing rights would be severe, irreparable and impossible to mitigate. Today’s victory is monumental and the Corps followed a fair process defined by law to make the right decision. The Corps has honored the treaty between Lummi and the United States. We will always fight to protect Xwe'chieXen.

Published on

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

by

EcoWatch

Army Corps Denies Permits for Biggest Proposed Coal Export Terminal in North America

by

Mary Anne Hitt

 2 Comments

This is big—for our climate, for clean air and water, for our future. It’s also big because the U.S. government is honoring its treaty obligations. After a five-year struggle that engaged hundreds of thousands of people, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a landmark decision Monday to deny federal permits for the biggest proposed coal export terminal in North America—the SSA Marine’s proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal, a coal export facility at Xwe’chi’eXen (also known as Cherry Point), Washington.

In January 2015, the Lummi Nation asked the Army Corps to reject the project because it would violate U.S. treaty obligations to project the tribe’s fisheries and ancestral lands. This is a huge win for the Lummi Nation and its Northwest community allies over the coal companies

The Army Corps made the right choice and did its duty by upholding treaty rights and honoring the U.S. government’s commitment to those treaties. Time and again, Pacific International Terminals has shown disregard for the Lummi Nation and its allies, who have for years voiced concerns about the project’s public health, economic and environmental impacts.

I have had the great honor of joining tribal leaders in the Northwest and the Power Past Coalcoalition over the many years of this struggle. The Sierra Club is proud and honored to stand in solidarity with these Tribal Nations and community partners in the fight against coal exports in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve been inspired and electrified by the hundreds of thousands of activists across the region who have spoken out at public hearings, written letters, submitted comments and rallied for clean energy instead of coal exports.

It’s encouraging to see this fossil fuel project that poses great risks and harm to communities, the environment and local economies, receiving the thorough scrutiny it deserves. Northwest families deserve and will accept nothing less than this kind of leadership that protects our health, safety, local economy and climate.

This decision comes on the heels of the recent bankruptcy of Peabody Coal and the news last week that the U.S. crossed the milestone of 100,000 megawatts of coal plant retirements since 2010. Peabody was banking on this project as a major customer for its coal and this announcement deals another blow to promises by coal executives that they have a revival on the horizon—claims that we recently challenged in this open letter to the coal industry and industry analysts.

This is a historic win, but there is a lot more work to do. We will continue to fight until our communities are no longer threatened by these dangerous coal export proposals. Specifically, we will maintain our opposition to this project as long as the developers continue pursuing it and we will leave no stone unturned in our opposition to Millennium Bulk Logistics in Longview, which will have public hearings and a comment period this month and the Fraser Surrey project in British Columbia.

We will continue to fight Arch Coal, Cloud Peak, Peabody Energy and other coal companies that would jeopardize our health, safety, local economies and natural resources—like Lighthouse Resources’, Millennium Bulk Terminals, which wants to force a coal export facility into Longview.

These dirty and dangerous projects will not move forward and we will strive to pursue pathways for justice for all communities as justice was upheld today.

© 2014 EcoWatch

Mary Anne Hitt is director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign, which is working to eliminate coal's contribution to global warming and repower the nation with clean energy.www.sierraclub.org

Yakama/Umatilla fishing rights activist threatened with arrest for traditional cultural camp

Sid Mills at Occupation of Wounded Knee/Photo Owen Luck

Hundreds prepare to go to jail to establish Meadow Creek Indian Camp

By Censored News

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2013/07/yakamaumatilla-fishing-rights-activist.html

Sid Mills, Yakama/Umatilla tribes, long time frontline fishing rights and other indigenous sovereignty movement leader was harassed and threatened by US Forest cops with arrest on Saturday July 13, 2013.

Sid is notable as one of the frontline activists who fought with the Franks Landing Indian Community, which was recently noted by President Obama in his speech at the December 2012 meeting with tribal leaders at the White House http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/12/06/president-obama-hosts-nations-tribal-leaders . (The activist of Franks Landing!)

Sid was threatened with jail for trying to reestablish a traditional cultural camp in the Indian Heaven Wilderness Area surrounded by the US Gifford National Forest in Washington State.  The camp is called Meadow Creek Indian Camp and is within the Handshake Treaty area.

www.fs.usda.gov/main/giffordpinchot/workingtogether/tribalrelations

The traditional huckleberry picking area of many northwest tribes in it is located between 4 volcanoes, Mt Rainer, Mt St Helene, Mt Hood and Mt Adams. On Saturday 7/13/13 there was a bust by Forest Service cops who also called county Sheriffs, threatened to take Sid to jail for reestablishing traditional and cultural camp without a permit.  

As president of the Native American Church for the Washington state area, he and 20 others were preparing for the yearly gathering for ceremonies in the mountains. This yearly event brings  hundreds of indigenous people from all over the Northwest and as far as Mexico to practice and exercise cultural and spiritual ways at the end of July.

Now hundreds are preparing to attend the ceremonies and are also preparing to go to jail to exercise the spiritual and cultural rights in the usual and accustomed sites. Pictures to follow. Sid Mills is a decorated Vietnam veteran and is over 80% disabled from being blown up by mortar fire, which left him with one lung. Now impaired further with diabetes, he and others are preparing to once again exercise human/indigenous rights to practice cultural and spiritual ways at all costs. Sid fought as an Indigenous man in the armed forces only to be denied his own rights. The cops realized after threatening to take all 50 Indians to jail, that this was not going to happen, as they were all ready to call them on it. So citations to appear in Federal court for destruction of federal property and being there without a permit were handed to him. A tree was cut and hole dug in the ground.

Sid had attempted to get assistance from the US Forest Service, after President Obama issued the MOU to protect sacred sites and access to the top Federal agencies (http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/federal-agencies-announce-action-plan-to-guide-protection-of-indian-sacred-sites.cfm) by holding a meeting with the supervisor of the US Forest service for the northwest. But the supervisor undermined his efforts and compared them to the Rainbow family gathering in the US Forests, and further added that Indians had no special rights because they were also immigrants to the land. Never once did she acknowledge the President's MOU, which had been provided to them, as well as a list of other congressional and international acts regarding cultural and spiritual rights of indigenous people. While the President might make a nice written MOU, it’s the white folks in agencies like the US Forest Service that maintain ignorance and racism. Of all the people the supervisor could have brought to the meeting, like a cultural liaison, she choose to bring the head cop for the Forest service, breaking the spirit of her boss President Obama's MOU.