Cultural values teach kids about respect and responsibility
At Tulalip Quil Ceda Elementary, each day is begun with a song and a presentation of core Tulalip cultural values. Photo/Andrew Gobin
By Andrew Gobin, Tulalip News
Tulalip – Entering the main hallway of Tulalip Quil Ceda Elementary you hear the drum beat. Nearing the gymnasium you begin to feel the beat resounding through the corridors. Kids stream in off busses, excitement building as they find a seat. Others come to school, drum in hand. This is the norm for students at Tulalip Quil Ceda Elementary, where each day is begun with a song and a presentation of core Tulalip cultural values.
Started at Tulalip Elementary in its final year, the morning assemblies are an excellent forum to create a community, where students and teachers can communicate about respect and the responsibilities they have. The school’s canon of learning, GROWS, is visible in almost every aspect of the school day.
“The students have really taken to GROWS. It stands for Grow your brain, Respect for all, Own your actions and attitudes, Welcome all who come to our community, and finally Safety is paramount. The morning assemblies are used as a way to teach a value that ties into one of the GROWS,” said Dr. Anthony Craig, school principal.
The songs are led by students, with the help of occasional community volunteers. The students are seated in a fashion similar to Coast Salish traditional gatherings, which is in the round.
In an effort to build a stronger educational community, some classes are trying a technique called looping, where the students of a class will not change as they progress to the next grade. Some classrooms have dividing walls that are opened up the majority of the time, so that two classes become one larger learning group.
“We are trying to develop groups of students that learn well as individuals and as a collective,” explained Dr. Craig.
This year, Tulalip Quil Ceda Elementary will develop a cultural aspect to their educational community. The Marysville School District created a cultural specialist position in the school in an effort to incorporate traditional aspects of life into the learning process. In doing so, the district supports and encourages what the faculty of the school is trying to achieve.
Former Tulalip teacher and new cultural specialist for the district Chelsea Craig said, “Here at school you see kids walking around with a drum and a school bag. They don’t have to be a native student; they can just be themselves, at school, as they are meant to.”
The Tulalip Tribes Youth Services department created two comparable positions, with the intention of collaborating with the school. Tenika Fryberg and Taylor Henry are the cultural specialists for Youth Services.
“This has never been done [in Tulalip or Marysville] before, so I plan to develop a program where the community decides what they would like to have brought into the curriculum,” noted Craig. “I’d like to see more community involvement too. Why can’t we have a grandma in the back of every class? We should make this school ours. It is ours; it belongs to the community as every school does. We shouldn’t wait for our own k-12 program, nor do we need to,” she added.
Both she and Dr. Craig acknowledge that some families are not comfortable with their children participating in these cultural activities and have other activities available for children to opt out of the cultural practices, though all of the students are still brought together as a whole for the group message in an effort to continue to develop the learning community that is Tulalip Quil Ceda Elementary.
On September 10th the World unites to remember loved ones lost to Suicide during World Suicide Prevention Day. This year Tulalip will participate with a “Walk for Life” from the Tulalip Health Clinic parking lot to the tribal gym where we will have a potluck and candle lighting.
Suicide is a difficult subject to talk about for many people; but the most important thing we can do for prevention is break the silence, reduce the stigma and share. Please see the attached flyer, print it, give it to family members, create walking teams and help loved ones you know who may still be grieving, healing or living with suicidal thoughts themselves to come out and unite for this evening of Love, Acceptance and Remembrance.
This is an ALL COMMUNITY event, employees, friends, spouses, tribal members and everything else in between J
See you Tuesday September 10th, 6pm at the Health Clinic Parking Lot. (there will be rides back to your car afterward).
Tulalip, Washington – Tulalip Resort Casino is gearing up for a weekend of revelry to celebrate the 5th anniversary of Taste of Tulalip, its coveted award-winning food and wine aficionado event. Scheduled for November 8 and 9, 2013, this year’s line-up of top talent, to be announced within the next month, will include many familiar names as well as some stars on the rise. Past culinary celeb appearances have included ABC TV’s “The Chew” host Carla Hall, Bravo’s Top Chef Master and author Marcus Samuelsson, wine legend Marc Mondavi, “Thirsty Girl” Leslie Sbrocco and others. Executive Chef Perry Mascitti and Sommelier Tommy Thompson are putting together a dazzling roster of food, wine and tradition show-stoppers that have been a year in the planning. Taste 2013 will feature honorary winemaker Bob Betz of Betz Family Winery. Taste of Tulalip tickets have just gone on sale at Ticketmaster, with Friday night Celebration dinner tickets soon to follow.
The two-day gathering, with a focus on food, wine and tradition, begins with a Friday night wine and passed hors d’oeuvres reception, followed by the aptly named Celebration Dinner. The multi-course repast will focus on Native American and traditional recipe inspired dishes, paired with a global offering of rare, top wines. It is priced at $175. Tickets are limited and this event is always a sell-out.
On Saturday “All Access” pass holders ($295) will enjoy early entrance to the unforgettable Grand Taste; a VIP seminar featuring a celebrity cooking demo, table talk and Q & A session on the Viking Kitchen Stage; a private Magnum Party where they’ll be treated to a high level wine and indigenous food pairings; and a special bonus this year – two in-depth Reserve Tasting forums.
The weekend’s highlight is always the Grand Taste, spanning four hours and featuring lavish food stations as well as over 100 wines from Washington State, California and Oregon, and craft beer. It is priced at $95 and includes a Rock –n- Roll Cooking Challenge done “Iron Chef” style with celebrity judges looking for the best from both regional and Tulalip chefs, and sommelier teams. Special guest Emilio Lopez of El Salvador (a sixth generation specialty coffee producer), will be appearing at the Dillanos Coffee Roasters espresso bar, where guests will be able to sample a special TOT 5th Anniversary Blend.
All of the weekend’s wine offerings will be available in limited quantities for purchase in the Taste of Tulalip retail wine shop. There will also be book and bottle signings for those looking to personalize their purchases.
MARYSVILLE — The city of Marysville invites area families to “Touch A Truck,” a free annual event that puts kids in the drivers’ seats of public works big rigs, police and fire vehicles, and other heavy-duty equipment that children see out on city streets every day.
“Touch A Truck” will run from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 14, at Totem Middle School’s Asbery Field, located at 1605 Seventh St. NE in Marysville. Admission is free.
“Kids are mesmerized by Marysville’s big shiny rigs, and ‘Touch A Truck’ is a way for our city employees and other participants to show off the work trucks and vehicles that they use out in the field every day,” said Andrea Kingsford, recreation coordinator for the city’s Parks and Recreation Department. “Come out and run the lights and sirens, honk the horns, grab the steering wheels and push buttons just like the grownups.”
Cameras are not required, but parents will be glad they brought them.
Marysville Public Works, Police, Parks and Recreation, and Fire District personnel will bring young people face to face with their favorite municipal vehicles. Kids will get to explore dump trucks, a vactor truck, a street sweeper, garbage trucks, police vehicles, fire engines and many other vehicles, while learning all about them from the skilled employees who drive them. Sirens and horns are permitted from 10 a.m. to noon only.
The Marysville Noon Rotary Club will offer special activities for kids, while the Marysville Kiwanis Club will have treats for sale to raise money for local youth programs. Bring a canned food item and help support the Marysville Community Food Bank.
For more information, call the Parks and Recreation Department at 360-363-8400. No pets, please.
The Puyallup Tribe of Indians is looking at this year’s large pink salmon run that is showing up in the White River but is causing a backup in the fishway, causing a problem for other salmon species to make it upstream. The study will look at the delay associated with the arrival of pinks.
Turns out sea otters do much more than just explain discount rates with aplomb: The adorable little buggers also clean up our oceanic messes. Nitrogen and phosphorous runoff from agricultural pollution creates algal blooms that choke the life out of estuaries — unless these thoughtful, fuzzy Dysons are around. With sea otter populations expanding into California habitats like Elkhorn Slough, where they haven’t been seen for 100 years or more, scientists are watching sea grass and kelp ecosystems return, even though humans are still proverbially shitting the proverbial waterbed. Sci-blogger-genius Ed Yong has more:
Sea otters grab shellfish and other prey from the sea floor and smash them open on the surface, using rocks as hammers and their own bellies as anvils. This makes it very easy for scientists to record what they’re eating, and Hughes used decades of such records to show that the Eklhorn sea otters are crab-specialists. “We estimate that they can easily remove 400,000 crabs per year in an area the size of 7 football fields,” he says. “That’s a huge effect, which cascades down to affect the seagrass.”
The crabs eat other animals including an orange sea slug and a shrimp-like isopod, both of which graze on algae. So by killing the crabs, the otters inadvertently protect the slugs and isopods, which in turn protect the seagrass by nibbling away at encroaching algae. This complicated four-part chain reaction (or “trophic cascade”) is what keeps Elkhorn Slough in its current healthy state.
To make sure the otters were responsible, researchers ran otter simulations — which sadly did not include grad students in discount otter suits bought from the local Furry-in-a-Hurry outlet. Ahem:
His team ringed off small areas of estuary and added fixed amounts of seagrass, slugs and isopods. Then, they added either the small crabs you find when sea otters are around, or the large ones you get when the otters are absent. The bigger crabs did indeed eat more grazers, leading to more algae and less seagrass.
Sea otters are near the top of their food chain, and it’s not surprising that they exert a strong top-down influence upon other local animals. In iconic studies during the 1970s, James Estes established them as classic examples of keystone species – those that are disproportionately influential for their numbers. They protect kelp forests by eating the sea urchins that would otherwise raze them down. With otters, you get underwater jungles of wavy green kelp. Without the otters, you get bare “urchin barrens”.
“The really interesting discovery here is that otters counter the detrimental impact of eutrophication,” says Estes. In other words, their top-down influence is strong enough to nullify the bottom-up effects of nutrients entering the slough.
As sea otter populations expand into their historic range, their tidy aftershocks could help rehabilitate ecosystems all the way to Baja California. If this also means I can get to Mexico by hugging one ultra-plush otter belly after another instead of waiting behind grinding I-5 traffic, I fully support redirecting the entire federal budget to an emergency militarized otter reintroduction plan. (What? It just makes fiscal sense, people.)
Aww, you adorable sea otters — you shouldn’t have. (Wait, no, you should!)
All that combustible fuel being produced by America’s fracking boom has federal transportation safety officials on edge.
Inspectors have started scrutinizing train manifests and tank car placards on trains departing from North Dakota’s Bakken region. The region is producing copious quantities of fracked oil, which is being carried to refineries in railway cars — many of them in a railcar model that’s prone to explode.
Operation Classification, aka the Bakken Blitz, was launched last month, just weeks after one such train carrying Bakken oil derailed and exploded in Quebec, killing 47 people and leveling much of the formerly scenic town of Lac-Mégantic. The U.S. Department of Transportation says it began planning the inspections in March after officials noticed discrepancies between the contents of rail cars and the hazardous warnings they bore. From Reuters:
“We need to make sure that what is in those tankers is what they say it is,” Cynthia Quarterman, administrator of the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, told reporters.
Highly combustible, light crude from the Bakken region is particularly dangerous, Quarterman said, and inspectors will make sure the fuel is properly labeled and handled with care.
Officials want to make certain that those responsible for the shipments know how dangerous their cargo is.
“The flashpoint needs to be taken into account,” Quarterman said, referring to the combustibility of flammable liquids that can vary according to the type of crude.
The Obama administration is also mulling new safety rules to address the boom in oil hauling; a draft version should be released within weeks. On Friday, the administration introduced temporary emergency rules designed to prevent a repeat of the Lac-Mégantic disaster on American soil, including a ban on leaving vehicles unattended if they are carrying hazardous materials.
Sitting in her teepee on Ottawa’s Victoria Island in December 2012, Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence was officially starting her hunger strike, breathing fire into the Idle No More movement and setting off a chain reaction that would eventually force Ottawa into talks on the nature of Canada’s relationship with First Nations. Meanwhile, five blocks away as the crow flies, the federal government’s security and emergency nervous system was ramping up its efforts to keep tabs on the movement. Just how extensive, and often ham-handed, the surveillance was is only now coming to light with the release of thousands of new documents.
The little-known Government Operations Centre ran that surveillance program from Ottawa’s Laurier Avenue West. Half of the program included public “situational awareness reports” on the protests. But the government also prepared secret “restricted distribution addendums” that were forwarded to CSIS, the RCMP and the Defence Ministry’s Canadian Joint Operations Command. They included exclusive information on proposed economic disruptions, such as bridge and rail blockades. One classified report released Jan. 2 noted the joint American-Canadian-operated Blue Water Bridge “would not tolerate any bridge closures/slowdowns.”
CSIS’s involvement is revealed in other ways. On Jan. 17, representatives from Aboriginal Affairs, the RCMP and the spy agency’s Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre (ITAC) met to discuss the “potential for escalation” for the movement. The centre, created in 2004 and housed within CSIS, does threat assessments for domestic and foreign terror attacks. According to a CSIS spokesperson, ITAC was only involved due to a threat against Idle No More itself. “ITAC does not monitor Idle No More, as they do not meet the definition of terrorism from the Criminal Code of Canada,” the spokesperson says. Meeting notes suggest officials feared that outside groups were attempting to infiltrate Idle No More. “Non-Aboriginal movements [are] starting to move in,” the notes stated, including “anarchists” and the “black bloc.” CSIS would not comment on the specifics of their concerns.
Charlie Angus, the NDP MP for Timmins-James Bay—which includes Spence’s Attawapiskat reserve—is not surprised at the resources Ottawa poured into its response to the protest. “The message was always that these manifestations of outpouring of First Nations were something that needed to be managed, something to contain and possibly a threat,” he says. He accepts there may have been more radical elements in the movement. “Of course there are other left-wing groups that might join, but there was never any sense, as far as I can see, of menace or threat.”
Emails to and from Aboriginal Affairs staffers cite social media and “open-source reporting” as main sources of information—something Pamela Palmater, a political science professor at Ryerson University and a First Nations activist heavily involved in Idle No More, saw first-hand. She’d suspected government staffers were watching her social-media profiles. “They’re easy to pick out on Facebook,” she says. They’d add her as a friend and offer counterpoints to her posts that bore a striking resemblance to departmental talking points. “Who is it they’re watching? They’re watching people like me, who have no criminal record, doing nothing violent.”
Palmater says that at one talk she gave about Idle No More, she jokingly said that if any government staffers were in the audience, they were obliged to come forward. By the end, three staffers from Aboriginal Affairs and Justice had lined up to out themselves.
At one point, a group of developers created an Idle No More app that allowed activists to share information and plan protests, flash mobs and round dances. Deputy Minister of Aboriginal Affairs Michael Wernick contacted his communications director to see if the office could surreptitiously piggyback on the app to get its own message across. “Is it in any way feasible to get our backgrounders into the flow of this app without the appearance of [government] ringers calling into an open-line show?” he asks in one document.
Whether the government actually followed through is not clear. However Steven Bryant, who co-created the app, says, “We definitely did wonder when we had some of our signups.” He says a slew of the addresses came from downtown Ottawa, and he suspected that government staff were using his app.
Media lines from the department stress that the federal government does not operate as Big Brother to First Nations: “[Aboriginal Affairs] does not perform any type of ‘surveillance’ of any individuals, groups, or communities,” says one communiqué. Palmater scoffs at that, citing the case of Cindy Blackstock, a First Nations child rights advocate who was under surveillance by the government’s own admission. With Idle No More, it’s snooping, not spying; still, “I don’t think they should be treating us like domestic terrorists,” says Palmater.
Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission A dike is removed from Illabot Creek to restore its historic channel, one of several initiatives under way by Northwest tribes to bring back salmon habitat. This effort is by the Swinomish and Sauk-Suiattle tribes under the auspices of the Skagit River System Cooperative.
As Indigenous Peoples of the Northwest work to restore salmon habitat and with it lost culture and treaty rights, they are grappling with the reality that continued development is undoing their efforts as they go. In September 2012 the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission released a report, “State of Our Watersheds,” documenting the results of local and state planning that have been in conflict with salmon habitat-recovery goals. Below are the principle findings as to what salmon habitat faces.
1. Estuaries are losing functional habitat because of population increases in lower portions of watersheds. “In the Suquamish Tribe’s area of concern, there has been a 39 percent loss of vegetated estuarine wetland area and a 23 percent loss of natural shoreline habitats, particularly small ‘pocket’ estuaries,” the report states. “Moreover, there are now 18 miles of bulkheads, fill and docks armoring the shoreline and degrading near-shore salmon habitat.”
All told, some 40 percent of Puget Sound shorelines have some type of shoreline modification, with 27 percent of the shoreline armored.
2. Rapidly increasing permit-exempt wells threaten water for fish. Since 1980, there has been an 81 percent increase in the number of new wells being drilled per 100 new Puget Sound residents moving into the area. The number of exempt wells in the Skagit and Samish watersheds since 1980 has increased by 611 percent, from an estimated 1,080 exempt wells to approximately 7,232.
“When more water is extracted from an aquifer than is being recharged, aquifer volume is reduced and the natural outflow from the aquifer decreases,” the report states. “This reduces the amount of fresh water available to lakes, wetlands, streams and the Puget Sound nearshore, which can harm salmon at all stages of their life cycle.”
3. Degraded nearshore habitat is unable to support forage fish. “In the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe’s focus area, according to studies since the 1970s, herring stocks have decreased from a status of healthy to depressed,” the report states. “In Port Gamble and Quilcene bays, which contain two of the largest herring stocks in Puget Sound, approximately 51 percent of spawning areas inventoried by [the] Port Gamble [S’Klallam] Tribe have been either modified or armored.”
4. Timber harvest has removed vast amounts of forest cover throughout all watersheds. In the Stillaguamish watershed, only 23 percent of the 1,777 acres of riparian area currently have any forest cover. In the Snohomish River basin, the Salmon Conservation Plan recommends that 150-foot buffers on both sides of fish-bearing streams be at least 65 percent forested. In 2006, those buffers were just 41 percent forested, with no gain since 1992 and little increase since that time.
5. Streams lack large woody debris. Large woody debris plays an important role in channel stability and habitat diversity. Estimates of large woody debris in the Green and Cedar rivers are 89 to 95 percent below the levels necessary for “properly functioning conditions” for salmon habitat.
6. Barriers cut off vast amounts of fish habitat. Despite extensive restoration efforts, many fish passage barriers, such as culverts, tide gates and levees still block salmon from accessing many stream miles of habitat. In the Quileute management area, culverts fully or partially block more than 168 miles of stream habitat. Most of these culverts are located on private forestlands. Culverts in the Chehalis basin block or impede salmon access to more than 1,500 miles of habitat.
7. Agricultural practices negatively impact floodplains and freshwater wetlands. Diking, draining and removing trees have resulted in a loss of stream buffers, stream channels and wetlands, and resulted in increased sediment and polluted runoff from agricultural activities.
In 1880, the Nooksack basin contained 4,754 acres of wetland to 741 acres of stream channel. By 1938, nearly 4,500 acres (95 percent) of off-channel wetland area had been cleared, drained and converted to agriculture. As of 1998, the lower mainstem retained less than 10 percent of its historical wetlands.
As of 2006, riparian areas of the Skagit River delta region are 83 percent impaired. Of that amount, only 12 percent are developed; the remaining 71 percent of impaired lands support crops and pasture.
8. Sensitive floodplains are being overdeveloped. In the Lower Elwha Tribe’s area of concern, 37 percent of the Morse Creek floodplain has been zoned for development — from utility rights of ways to single-family homes. Downstream of Highway 101, nearly half of the floodplain has also been zoned for similar development.
9. Puget Sound-area impervious surface increased by 35 percent from 1986 to 2006. It is projected that by 2026, the amount of impervious surface will increase another 41 percent.
“The Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Plan (2007) lists ‘Minimize impervious surfaces’ as a key strategy for protecting habitat,” the report states. “Impervious surface causes increases in stream temperatures; decreases in stream biodiversity, as evidenced by reduced numbers of insect and fish species; and contributes to pollutants in storm-water runoff, which can contaminate local aquatic systems.”
10. Loss of forest cover continues. From 1988-2004, Western Washington forestlands have declined by 25 percent—a loss of 936,000 acres of state and private forestland converted to other uses. Recent research from the University of Washington indicates that nearly one million more acres of private forestland are threatened with conversion.
The Skagit River System Cooperative—operated by the governments of the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe and the Swinomish Tribe, in partnership with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Forest Service, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, Pacific Salmon Commission and the state—recommends no new construction of riprap without mitigation. However, since 1998, at least one mile of riprap has been added to the existing 14 miles of riprap shoreline along the middle Skagit River.
“Shoreline armoring contributes to river channel degradation by impeding natural bank erosion and river meandering, and disconnecting terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, directly impacting salmon habitat,” according to the NWIFC’s report, “State of Our Watersheds.” “Young juvenile chinook have been shown to use river banks modified with riprap at densities five times lower than natural banks.”
Dennis Banks, cofounder of the American Indian Movement, has issued a Declaration of War on Diabetes.
LEECH LAKE BAND OF OJIBWE TERRITORIES – Dennis Banks, 77, a cofounder of the American Indian Movement, has announced a 18,000 mile motorcycle run across America with hundreds of American Indians participating to “declare war on diabetes.”
His announcement was distributed through a news release Sunday from his foundation, the Nowa Cuming Institute. The news release states:
“The Nowa Cuming Institute has issued a Declaration of War on Diabetes.”
“Diabetes is at an epidemic state in Indian country and must be halted,”
said Banks, who was diagnosed with diabetes four years ago and has reversed his diabetes through a strong diet.
The motorcycle run will have four staring locations in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego on August 11 with the final destination of the nation’s capital, Washington, DC on September 10, 2014.
Throughout the various routes across America, motorcyclists will stop at various American Indian reservations and communities as they journey to Washington.
Once in Washington, the group will visit members of Congress and present them with a national diabetes policy, according to Banks.
This will be the second endeavor by Banks to draw attention to the ill-effects of diabetes in Indian country. In 2011, he led the “Longest Walk 3 – Reversing Diabetes” that took the long walkers to 72 American Indian reservations and communities before they arrived in Washington.
“If we don’t address this medical issue now, there will no one in the seventh generation who will be healthy and if we don’t take action now to stop diabetes, they will condemn this generation,”
said Banks.
The Nowa Institute released the announcement so that tribes and others who want to be part of the pre-planning of this historic motorcycle run can do so now.
We are asking people of interest to aid in this “War on Diabetes.” said Banks.
Those interested in assisting and supplying diabetes materials may email Goody Cloud at ndn_queen_bee@yahoo.com.
