This Feb. 4, 2014 file photo shows Rep. Norman “Doc” Hastings, R-Wash., during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington. A crowded field of candidates is vying to replace the retiring Republican and fill the open 4th District Congressional seat in the Washington primary election. Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, AP
Washington’s August primary appears to have delivered an historic first. Two Republicans are likely to advance to the November election in central Washington’s 4th Congressional District.
Never before has the state’s top-two primary produced two contenders of the same party for a Congressional seat.
This is the seat to replace retiring Republican “Doc” Hastings. A dozen candidates filed to take his seat. The top-two contenders in early returns are former NFL-player-turned-farmer Clint Didier and former director of the Washington State Department of Agriculture Dan Newhouse. Both are Republicans.
Two Republicans are also likely to face off in the 31st Legislative District southeast of Seattle. That’s where state Representative Cathy Dahlquist is challenging longtime state Senator Pam Roach.
Two Democrats are likely to advance in Seattle’s 37th Legislative District. That’s where longtime State Senator Adam Kline is retiring.
Incumbents were largely faring well in the Washington primary with one notable exception. Tim Sheldon is a Democrat who helped Republicans take the majority in the Washington Senate in 2013. He’s in a tight three-way race.
EVERETT, Wash. – Everett Community College has hired María Peña as the college’s chief diversity officer, a new position created to lead the college’s efforts to create and sustain a climate of diversity and equity.
Peña, of Mill Creek, brings 23 years of higher education experience to EvCC. Previously, she served as dean for Student Services and assistant to the president at Peninsula College. She also assumed leadership responsibilities as the steward of the Peninsula College longhouse since its creation in 2006.
Peña began her community college career as a faculty counselor at Peninsula. She served in progressively responsible leadership positions, including lead administrator for Disability Services, retention advising specialist, associate dean for Student Success and dean for Student Development at Peninsula. She has also worked at the executive level, having served as acting vice president for Student Services at Peninsula.
Peña has a master’s degree in Educational Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Social Ecology with an emphasis on Human Behavior from University of California, Irvine.
Peña also has extensive international experiences, including studying in San Sebastian and Madrid, Spain.
EvCC’s Diversity & Equity Office advocates for the academic success of EvCC students, educates the campus and community about diversity and celebrates our differences.
Every Native vote counts! Don’t forget to vote in the Snohomish County primary by Tuesday August 5th. You have until 8 p.m. to cast your vote. It is an important mid-term election year! If you did not received your ballot please visit: www.sos.wa.gov/elections/myvote/ or call 425-388-344.
The Tulalip Tribes supports the following:
Federal Partisan Office, US Representative Congressional District 2
Rick Larsen
Legislative Partisan Office, 38th District Senator
John McCoy
38th District Representative POS 2
June Robinson
County Executive Partisan Office, County Executive
Mike Sells
County Partisan Office, County Executive
John Lovick
County Partisan Office, Prosecuting Attorney
Mark Roe
Firefighters are battling the lightning-strike Snag Canyon Fire that’s grown quite large just north of Ellensburg.
The Snag Canyon Fire is sending plumes of smoke mixing with storm clouds above tinder-dry hillsides just outside of Ellensburg, Washington.
Credit Anna King / Northwest News Network
It’s burned nearly 2,000 acres and is challenging firefighters who are trying to secure lines closest to town.
Sarah Foster, an information officer with Washington State Incident Management Team 1, said the Snag Canyon Fire grew quickly over the weekend and the erratic winds are making it very unpredictable.
“We’re hoping that resources are coming in from all across the state and around the region to help fight this fire,” Foster said. “But as everyone knows with all the fires we’ve got in all of Eastern Washington and now in Oregon and other states as well, finding the resources is becoming more of a challenge.”
She said they just don’t have enough firefighters. An emergency shelter for livestock and other animals has been set up at the Kittitas County Fairgrounds. There are a few horses and dogs there so far.
This undated photo provided by the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office shows Jenise Paulette Wright. Kitsap County sheriff’s deputies are searching for Jenise, 6, who is missing and was last seen Saturday night, Aug. 2, 2014, at her home in east Bremerton, Wash. Jenise is 3 feet tall, weighs 45 pounds and has black hair. She’ll be a first-grader this coming school year. Photo: Uncredited, AP
By: Associated Press, Tuesday, Aug 5
BREMERTON, Wash. (AP) — Searchers worked through the night, looking for a 6-year-old girl who disappeared from her Bremerton home.
But a Kitsap County sheriff’s dispatcher says Tuesday morning there’s still no sign of Jenise (juh-NEES’)Wright.
She was last seen Saturday night but not reported missing until Sunday night.
A spokesman for the sheriff’s office, Deputy Scott Wilson, says the circumstances are suspicious.
The parents have agreed to take lie detector tests to help with the investigation.
On Monday, state child welfare workers removed two other children from the home, an 8-year-old boy and 12-year-old girl.
This week the federal government’s legislation, The First Nations Financial Transparency Act (FNFTA), was made law.
Financial statements and salaries of First Nation council’s were posted on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada’s website earlier this week. And those councils who refuse to participate will face a court order.
According to Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt, this is an effort to provide First Nations people with transparency and allow them to hold their elected leaders accountable. In other words, to empower them.
Given the early reactions to the publication of this data, I don’t share the assessment. So what can we expect?
First, we can expect the media to find a handful of chief and councils that pay themselves unjustifiable salaries.
This reporting has already begun and at least one B.C. chief has found himself on national news broadcasts and other national media for consecutive days.
AFN National Chief Ghislain Picard says the act calls for disclosure of information above and beyond that of other governments, including potentially sensitive information about business dealings. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)
Of course, this information is important to know. But we can also expect the media to do little else. Few will cover the hundreds of chiefs and/or councils that make $10,000 a year. Few will examine the extreme AANDC underfunding this new data reveals.
Few will ask critical questions about the consequences of First Nations (which are often both governments and corporations) disclosing the details of business dealings with current and/or future negotiating partners.
Second, because of the likely superficial media reporting we can expect many to run with the popular “corrupt chief” narrative to shape their desired policy changes.
Many so-called experts on First Nations peoples in the media and politics will generalize to indict all leaders as taxpayer leeches (though the language will be more delicate).
‘With the media identifying the problem of corrupt chiefs and so-called experts proposing assimilatory solutions, there will be confirmation that the Indian problem is the Indian’s own fault’– Hayden King
Certainly we’ll see organizations like The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which spearheaded the legislation in the first place, use the generalization to call for the erosion of treaties, end of “special” Indian status, privatization of reserves, etc. While taxpayer activism is certainly common, it seems to provoke a special kind of fury when involving Indigenous Peoples.
Third, we can probably expect many Canadians to harden their perspectives on First Nations peoples.
With the media likely focusing on the corrupt-chiefs problem and the so-called experts proposing assimilatory solutions, that will be confirmation for many that the Indian problem is the Indian’s own fault.
And since the challenges indigenous people face will be perceived as a self-inflicted suffering, many Canadians will feel absolved of any responsibility to First Nations, and will instead feel permitted to cast judgement and simply wait for civilization to reach the natives.
In short, the transparency act will be an effective tool to solidify apathy and disengagement with indigenous perspectives and ideas.
Fourth, we can probably also expect the federal government to double-down on the unilateral “aboriginal” policy that has been ongoing for some time.
This includesstripping communities of power in areas of social policy, extinguishing rights and title, reducing program resources, andgenerally trying to transform communities into municipalities under provincial jurisdiction.
With the First Nation leadership being stripped of legitimacy, and Canadians oscillating between aloof and angry, much of the opposition to this increasingly transformative trend will be neutralized. The FNFTA may actually grant AANDC greater licence to intervene in the lives of indigenous peoples.
Finally, we can expect First Nations people to use this data to continue to hold their leadership accountable.
The reality is that most communities already have access to this information (and much more) and generally they do not skirt or ignore issues of bad governance.
From the broad Idle No More movement to specific cases like the ongoing Wahta Community Fire in central Ontario (where a Kanien’kehá:ka community shut down its administrative building because the band council wasn’t following transparency rules), the formal and more provocative examples of communities holding leaders accountable and pushing for new (or very old) governance models independent of the Indian Act are numerous.
‘In an era where reconciliation actually means confrontation and our public discourse is often shallow, every new policy, law, court decision, protest and blockade is a struggle to shape the narrative’– Hayden King
All of this is not an argument against the legislation itself or an endorsement of the status quo.
Aside from the obvious absurdity of Canada continuing to dictate to and administer First Nation communities, the content of the legislation is relatively benign. But the consequences may be significant.
In an era where reconciliation seems more to mean confrontation and our public discourse is often shallow, every new policy, law, court decision, protest and blockade is a struggle to shape the narrative.
Despite what Bernard Valcourt claims about the FNFTA, First Nations may find themselves with even less power to create change.
The Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. A legal settlement requires the Army Corps of Engineers to disclose the pollution that its dams put into the river. | credit: Amelia Templeton
For the first time in its history, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will have to disclose the amount of pollutants its dams are sending into waterways in a groundbreaking legal settlement that could have broad implications for the Corps’ hundreds of dams nationwide.
The Corps announced in a settlement on Monday that it will immediately notify the conservation group that filed the lawsuit of any oil spills among its eight dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers in Oregon and Washington.
The Corps will also apply to the Environmental Protection Agency for pollution permits, something the Corps has never done for the dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers.
The settlement filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, Oregon, ends the year-old consolidated lawsuit by the conservation group Columbia Riverkeeper, which said the Corps violated the Clean Water Act by unmonitored, unpermitted oil discharges from the eight hydroelectric dams.
The settlement reflects the recent tack of the EPA regulating the environmental impacts of energy. The agency has recently come up with regulations of mountaintop removal for coal and fracking for oil and gas.
As part of the settlement, the Corps admits no wrongdoing, but will pay $143,000 and the consolidated cases were dismissed.
When contacted by The Associated Press, the Corps’ Northwest and national offices requested questions via email Monday and did not immediately comment on the settlement.
The settlement will allow oversight of the dams by the EPA. The agency had the authority to regulate the dams’ pollution before the settlement, but it could not compel the corps to file for a pollution permit. The Corps will also be forced to switch to a biodegradable lubricant for its dam machinery if an internal study finds that it’s financially feasible.
The Corps isn’t just a polluter, however. It’s also a regulator of pollution under the Clean Water Act. The act grants the Corps the authority to issue permits for the discharge of materials excavated from or put into U.S. waterways.
“Under the letter of the law, they have been engaged in unpermitted discharge for years,” said Melissa Powers, an environmental law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon. “They should have long ago said, ‘This is how much we’re discharging. Here are the environmental impacts.’ “
Monday’s settlement will force the Corps’ hand. To discharge pollutants into waterways, the polluters must obtain permission from state and federal governments. Before the settlement, the EPA knew about the unpermitted discharges from the dams, but the Corps said in letters to state agencies that it is not accountable to the EPA.
The Corps argued in the same letters that disclosing the mechanical workings of the dam as part of an oil-discharge summary could compromise the dams’ security.
In July 2013, Columbia Riverkeeper sued and demanded to know what the Corps was sending into the water and how much of it was going in.
“When you’re not regulated under a permit, you don’t have to say what the impact (of pollution) on water was,” Powers said.
Nationally, the settlement could force all unpermitted dams to obtain National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits from the EPA.
Daniel Estrin, an environmental law professor at Pace Law School in White Plains, New York, said the settlement will make it impossible for the Corps to say that all of its pollutant-discharging dams don’t require discharge permits.
“The Corps’ acknowledgement of the need for permits in this settlement will make it difficult for other owners to successfully deny that permits are required in the face of citizen suits like the one brought (here),” Estrin said.
The eight dams affected by the settlement are the Bonneville, the John Day, The Dalles and McNary in Oregon and the Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite in Washington state.
Environmentalists will be closely watching the type of permit issued by the EPA, Powers said. A “site-specific” permit would likely include limits that the Corps would have to meet on the amount of oil discharged.
If the EPA instead issues a general permit, environmentalists would be less sanguine about its prospects, Powers said. General permits are less effective in compelling change because they are issued without specific metrics that must be met, she said.
In 2009, the EPA found a host of toxins in fish on the Columbia River, including polychlorinated biphenyl, a potentially carcinogenic synthetic that was banned for production in the U.S. in 1979.
The eight dams use turbines that have shafts and hubs filled with oil or other lubricants. The oil leaks to the surface, along with oil from drainage sumps, transformers and wickets that control water flow.
Note: Being Frank is the monthly opinion column that was written for many years by the late Billy Frank Jr., NWIFC Chairman. To honor him, the treaty Indian tribes in western Washington will continue to share their perspectives on natural resources management through this column. This month’s writer is Russ Hepfer, Vice Chair of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and an NWIFC commissioner.
“Being Frank”
Inslee Water Quality Plan Too Little, Too Late
By: Russ Hepfer, Vice Chair of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe
Russ Hepfer
More delay is about the only thing that any of us who live here in Washington can count on when it comes to a badly needed update of state water quality standards to protect our health.
After decades of foot-dragging by previous governors, Gov. Jay Inslee recently unveiled his plan to revise our state’s ridiculously outdated water quality standards. While the plan offers a small increase in protection from 70 percent of the toxic chemicals regulated by the federal Clean Water Act, it maintains the inadequate status quo for the other 30 percent.
At best Inslee’s plan offers minimal progress in reducing contamination; at worst it provides a tenfold increase in our cancer risk rate.
Water quality standards are based in large part on how much fish and shellfish we eat. The more we eat, the cleaner the water needs to be. Two numbers drive our water quality standards: our fish consumption rate and our cancer risk rate from pollution in our waters.
Inslee’s plan rightly increases our fish consumption rate from the current 6.5 grams per day (about one serving of fish or shellfish per month) to 175 grams per day (at least one meal of fish or shellfish per day).
Support for that amount is a huge concession by tribes. Most tribal members, as well as Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders eat far more than 175 grams of fish and shellfish per day. Current studies show daily consumption rates of 236 to 800 grams. Even those numbers represent suppressed rates. If more fish and shellfish were available for harvest, more would be eaten.
While giving a little with one hand, Inslee takes away a lot with the other, increasing our “acceptable” cancer risk rate tenfold, from one in a million to one in 100,000. Do you think anyone who gets cancer from the pollution in our fish and shellfish would find that risk rate acceptable? Would you?
That one in a million rate has protected all of us for the past 20 years. By increasing the cancer risk rate Inslee effectively cancels out most of the health benefits and improved water quality provided by the increased fish consumption rate.
The fish consumption and cancer risk rates are supposed to protect those who need it the most: children, women of childbearing age, Indians, Asian and Pacific Islanders, sport fishermen and anyone who likes to eat local fish and shellfish. When the most vulnerable among us is protected, so is everyone else.
To make up for the loss of protection under the cancer risk rate, Inslee proposes a statewide toxics reduction effort that would require legislative approval and funding. While the idea of a large toxics reduction program is a good one, it is not a substitute for an updated state water quality standards rule that carries the force of law.
No one knows what the Legislature might do, but two things are certain. There will be more delay and more opposition to Inslee’s proposal. Boeing and other opponents to improved water quality rules will likely engage in full-strength lobbying during the session to block any meaningful change, claiming that it will increase their cost of doing business.
The state has a clear duty to protect the environment to ensure that our treaty foods such as fish and shellfish are safe to eat. If not, those rights are meaningless. We will not put our hard-won treaty rights or the health of our children in the hands of the governor or state Legislature.
Our treaty rights already are at risk because most salmon populations continue to decline. The reason is that we are losing salmon habitat faster than it can be restored. What good is restored habitat if it does not include clean water?
Washington could have joined Oregon as a leader in protecting human health and natural resources. Oregon two years ago increased its fish consumption rate to 175 grams per day and kept the one-in-a-million cancer risk rate. Now Oregon has the highest standards of protection in the United States.
Meanwhile, the Oregon economy hasn’t suffered and not one company has gone out of business as a result. Don’t we all deserve the same level of protection as Oregonians?
Any kind of justice that is delayed is justice denied. That includes both social and environmental justice. Further delays and weak water quality standards only worsen the suffering of many. Inslee’s plan is too little, too late.
Contact Snohomish Health District to prevent rabies
Source: Snohomish County Health District
SNOHOMISH COUNTY, Wash. —Beware of bat bites and scratches. Most bats are harmless, but about 1 in 100 bats caries rabies.
Bats like to “hang out” in vacation cabins, attics, barns and outbuildings, and wherever there are plenty of insects they can eat. A bat bit a toddler in Pasco last year after falling out of a patio umbrella. The toddler got treatment to prevent rabies even before the bat was tested for the disease. Rabies is almost always deadly.
Last year, 32 people in Snohomish County got a series of shots to prevent the virus after possibly being exposed to rabies. Thanks to such preventive efforts by public health, no cases of rabies exposure in Washington state have advanced to human rabies disease since 1997.
Anyone who might have been bitten, scratched or simply sleeping in a place where a bat is later found should contact Snohomish Health District Communicable Disease staff at 425.339.5278.
Bats found in a home or setting where they may have contacted humans should be safelycaught:
·Close the doors and windows to the room
·Find a small container like a box or a large can
·Wait until the bat lands on the floor or a wall
·Wearing leather gloves, put the box over the bat
·Close the box by sliding an extra piece of cardboard under the opening
·Leave some small air holes in the sealed box
·Call us for advice
We will help you determine if any people or pets in your home may have been exposed to rabies, and can arrange to test the bat if needed. If a bat is not available for testing and people have been exposed to it, rabies shots are usually necessary.
In the Northwest, bats are the only animal likely to carry rabies, though there have been cases of pets getting rabies from bats, and of dogs infected with rabies being brought in from other countries.
Established in 1959, the Snohomish Health District works for a safer and healthier Snohomish County through disease prevention, health promotion, and protection from environmental threats. Find more information about the Health Board and the Health District at http://www.snohd.org.
A new sports-logo T-shirt has become a hot seller in Canada and parts of the United States.
The words “Caucasians” with the image of a grinning caricature (reminiscent of the Indians’ Chief Wahoo) across the front hints at how offensive Native mascots on professional sports teams can be. The Toronto Star reported that it is a “hot fashion item” in the Ontario First Nations community.
“People’s reaction has been all positive and they see the humour in it both on and off the reserve,” Tracy Bomberry, Six Nations of the the Grand River, told the Star.
Her inspiration to wear the shirt came after learning that Ojibwa singer Ian Campeau, aka, DJ NDN of A Tribe Called Red was accused of being a “racist hypocrite” for wearing one, the paper said.
Campeau from A Tribe Called Red wears the “Caucasians” T-shirt. (cbc.ca)
According to MetroNews.Ca, an email was sent anonymously to Westfest, a popular music festival in Ottawa, Canada, where Tribe Called Red was scheduled to perform. The individual who sent the email threatened to boycott the concert because Campeau was spotted wearing the T-shirt.
“I thought how hypocritical that he would be accused of racism for wearing a shirt that turns the tables in a satirical way of how our image as native people has been misappropriated by the Cleveland Indians, Washington Redskins and the like,” Bomberry said.
Campeau, his band, and staff members of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), including First Nations Chief, Shawn Atleo, filed a lawsuit to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario claiming that the Amateaur football team, the Nepean Redskins, use of the R-word was racially discriminatory, and sought to quell its use. The tribunal dismissed the complaint in March, but the team changed its name to the Nepean Eagles.
Brian Kirby of Shelf Life Clothing in Cleveland said that the interest in the T-shirt “skyrocketed” after the Campeau controversy. “We have been selling a modest amount of shirts to Canada for years … but nothing like the volume of the last month,” Kirby told QMI Agency in an email interview Tuesday. “We are a mom and pop business, working day and night to make sure everyone who wants a shirt gets one.”
Kirby noticed the cultural effect of the Chief Wahoo logo in the Native community after moving to Cleveland from New York. He said that the overall interpretation of the shirt shifts. “Interpretation of the shirt ranges from a ‘reverse racism,’ ‘see how YOU like it’ intent, to a ‘see, I’m white and it doesn’t bother me to be caricatured!’ attitude,” Kirby told the Star.
