By Melissa Cavendar, Tulalip Tribes Health & Safety Specialist
You say you don’t have time to exercise? You’re hardly alone. For many people, lack of time is the single biggest obstacle to fitness. But, experts say, you may be overestimating how much exercise you really need to get at one time. Instead of investing an hour at the gym, what if you could get fitter with 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there through your day?
There is no question that short amounts of exercise can help you get fit, help you stay fit, and help you maintain your health. Did you know some of these exercises can fit into a 5-minute time period at work, at your desk, waiting in line in the grocery store, even driving in your car and it’s not an overwhelming task, plus, the benefits can be enormous.
So how much exercise do you really need? Most of the studies show that 5 minutes of continuous movement repeated during the day is about the bare minimum to have any effect, and fitness experts believe 10 minutes is more realistic.
Simple movements, such as standing up super-straight, with shoulders rolled back, abdominals tight, and chin up. The main trick is to set a timer for 5 minutes and hold that posture. A quick fitness routine could include functional movements such as repeatedly standing up and sitting down in a chair, bending down and picking objects up off the floor, or putting something on a high shelf, taking it down, and putting it back up again, until your five minutes are up. (Think Spring cleaning your closet every day for 5 minutes!)
Stretching is another option for exercise and improved mobility. Just little movements each day can make a difference in how your body burns calories and tones muscles. Keep moving!
Just do as little or a lot, but remember to have or set goals and put them in place, prior to starting your movement or workout plan. So how much exercise do we really need? It is up to you! Take a walk, play with your children, walk your dog, and don’t forget that laughter is a stress reliever.
Is low oxygen in the ocean near Taholah killing off young crab each year, threatening the future of the fishery?
The Quinault Indian Nation proposes to research how low oxygen events may be affecting Dungeness crab populations in their traditional fishing waters. Dungeness crab is important culturally and economically to most western Washington treaty Indian tribes.
Source: Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
That’s the question Quinault Indian Nation (QIN) wants to help answer using special equipment to measure the extent and depth of low oxygen events.
QIN has requested a grant to pay for instruments that would measure dissolved oxygen from inside crab pots. “It’s a great way to get them distributed as part of a fisherman’s normal crab pot routine and they can retrieve them once a month for us so we can download the information,” said Joe Schumacker, marine scientist for QIN.
“Right now, all we know is that dead fish and crab have washed up on our shores in varying degrees in the summer for the past few years” Schumacker said. “We have no idea how far the low oxygen zones extend or how long they last. We see a result and we need to define the problem.” There is also no oral history among Quinault people for consecutive seasons of this sort of die-off.
Dungeness crab is a delicacy served in many fine restaurants and a signature Washington state seafood. Not only has it been important to tribes culturally for millennia, it forms the mainstay of the fishing season for many tribal members on the coast and in Puget Sound.
“Crab has always been a cultural resource for us,” said Ed Johnstone, QIN fisheries and ocean policy representative. “Ever since we have been on these shores, the abundant crab and razor clams sustained us along with the greens of the sea.”
QIN has only one measurement of the oxygen problem from a fish kill in 2006 when a QIN fishermen was pulling his cab pots in a line running north and south. “As he headed north toward Taholah, he was getting live crab in his pots until he crossed the Moclips River. Then it was pot after pot of dead crabs until just past the Quinault River. That’s about eight miles,” said Schumacker. One of the things QIN would like to know is if oxygen-poor water is settling over young crabs who take refuge in nearshore areas. “Maybe we’re losing whole age classes sometimes. We just don’t know,” said Schumacker.
The instruments QIN would use cost $8,500 each including annual maintenance that includes calibration. Six devices would allow QIN to minimally cover the nearshore part of their traditional fishing area. The Nation would also test less expensive dissolved oxygen meters that have traditionally been used in freshwater streams, but would need field testing side-by-side with the more expensive meters to evaluate performance in saltwater and ocean depths.
Low oxygen water naturally upwells from deep in the ocean and gets oxygenated at the surface. “Somehow this mixing isn’t occurring during some summers,” Schumacker said. “These events tend to happen when the winds and the ocean go calm.
“There is a lot of research interest in the low oxygen events along the Pacific Coast, but this affects treaty-protected resources and we need a great deal more information for our area to understand the extent of the problem and how we can adaptively manage around it,” Schumacker said.
In an extended clip from this weekend’s Moyers & Company, writer Sherman Alexie, who was born on a Native American reservation, talks to Bill about feeling “lost and insignificant inside the larger culture,” and how his culture’s “lack of power” is illustrated in stereotypical sports mascots.
“At least half the country thinks the mascot issue is insignificant. But I think it’s indicative of the ways in which Indians have no cultural power. We’re still placed in the past. So we’re either in the past or we’re only viewed through casinos,” Alexie tells Bill. “I know a lot more about being white than you know about being Indian.”
The Puyallup Tribe of Indians announced Tuesday that it will break ground this summer on a 2,500-stall parking structure near its Portland Avenue casino. When completed, the structure will be followed by construction of a new, full-service gaming facility.
Artist’s rendering of the Emerald Queen Casino on 29th Street near Portland Avenue. (Courtesy photo) Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/04/09/2550325/puyallup-tribes-150-million-expansion.html#storylink=cpy
The Puyallup Tribe of Indians announced Tuesday that it will break ground this summer on a 2,500-stall parking structure near its Portland Avenue casino.
When completed, the structure will be followed by construction of a new, full-service gaming facility.
Think ponds and fountains outdoors.
New restaurants inside. Table games, machines.
And nearby, perhaps a station serving Tacoma’s light rail.
Total cost: between $150 million and $200 million.
“We’ve been leading up to this,” said Emerald Queen Casinos General Manager Frank Wright on Tuesday.
Sewer, water and electrical infrastructure is ready to accommodate the new facility. Soil studies have been completed. The tribe has purchased the necessary land.
The current casino – comprising a Bingo hall built in the 1980s and three large tents – will continue in business until the new casino opens, and will then be disassembled or demolished.
Initial future plans for the space occupied by the present casino call for a mixed-use project that could include office, residential and retail properties.
“We want to establish a permanent facility,” Wright said. “As time has gone by, we’ve had time to see what the market desires. We’ve listened to what people want.”
At the Fife Emerald Queen, which offers play on gaming machines only, customers wanted low ceilings, low lighting and an unhurried atmosphere.
At the new Tacoma Emerald Queen, Wright said, “we’ll have brighter colors, flashing lights, things that excite the (younger) gamers.”
The main casino will contain about the same space as the current facility, but a new showroom will be about 20 percent larger, he said.
Final plans are not complete, but Wright said there will be “four or five restaurants, two fine-dining and one buffet, a noodle bar, a deli, coffee shop and a cigar lounge.”
The full cost for design and construction will be borne by the tribe with funds derived from cash flow, Wright said.
The parking structure should be complete within 18 months of groundbreaking, he said. The entire project may be ready to welcome guests a year or 18 months after that.
Once the current casino is deconstructed, the tribe’s economic development arm, Marine View Ventures, will plan and market the mixed-use project, Wright said.
He said the tribe was making the announcement now “to assist local government in making their development plans.”
One of those plans concerns the extension of light rail from its downtown-only route.
“The tribe has offered to establish a landing for light rail,” said tribal spokesman John Weymer.
One of the proposed routes of Tacoma’s light rail network has tracks extending into East Tacoma, which could include a stop on tribal land at the casino complex.
“We feel it would be an asset to the city,” Weymer said.
The tribe has offered to allow the city free use of its parking structure for commuters or other drivers.
“It’s our way of trying to assist the public,” Wright said. “There are times in the day when we don’t need extensive parking. The tribe is willing to partner with the city and Sound Transit. What’s good for Tacoma is good for us. We have to take care of each other.”
The anticipated increase in traffic would also mean that those people who park might also avail themselves of the services offered at the casino, which would benefit the tribe.
“If light rail doesn’t come, it won’t be the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Wright said. “We feel that we’re just doing the right thing.”
The Tacoma City Council will recommend a final extension route to Sound Transit later this month.
Tacoma City Councilmember David Boe said Tuesday, of the tribe’s light rail proposal, “That’s an interesting possibility.”
Councilmember Marty Campbell said, “I’m excited to have a $150 million investment in my district. Any time we can have a development that brings new jobs, it helps all of Tacoma. I’m glad to see that the tribe is considering future transit operations in considering their new development.”
A lawyer has convinced a Paris judge to hold a hearing Thursday to determine the legality of a sale of sacred Hopi Indian artifacts by the Néret-Minet auction house that is scheduled for Friday.
The lawyer from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Pierre Servan-Schreiber, said he was acting in a pro bono capacity after having been contacted by Survival International, a global nonprofit organization that advocates on behalf of native tribes.
Mr. Servan-Schreiber said he told the judge that the items should not be sold until it can be determined whether they were stolen from Hopi lands, as the Arizona-based tribe believes, or were the objects of sales that violated American and international law.
Efforts to look into the history of the 70 items, he said, would be rendered “virtually impossible” once they were scattered among multiple buyers. He said a delay would “preserve evidence.”
Mr. Servan-Schreiber also argued that the sale is illegal under an old prohibition in French law that bars the sale of “non-commercial” things that are seen as “immoral to sell.” The Hopis say the artifacts, ceremonial masks and headdresses known as Katsinam, or “friends,” embody divine spirits and are purely religious. They say selling them is a sacrilege.
A spokeswoman for the auction house said it was aware of the ruling but she would not comment further. Gilles Néret-Minet, the director of the house, has said repeatedly that he will not delay the $1 million sale. He has said the collector who put the items up for sale obtained them all legally.
The United States Embassy in Paris has also asked the auctioneers to delay the sale “given the ancestry of these masks and the distance between Paris and the Hopi reservation.”
A display of its birds of prey in Snohomish impresses kids as the wildlife center continues to request financial support.
Dan Bates / The Herald Sarvey Wildlife Center volunteer Robert Lee holds a red-tailed hawk with only one wing Friday at the Snohomish Library. Having lost a wing, the hawk will remain at Sarvey for the rest of its life, Lee said.
By Alejandro Dominguez, The Herald
SNOHOMISH — A line formed in the Snohomish Library 30 minutes before the show started.Eight-year-old Lily Westman and her brother, Cooper, 6, were first in line last week, waiting for the doors to open for the “Raptor Factor” show. They were eager to see all of the birds, but hoped to see a bald eagle.
“I want to know how they take care of them,” said Cooper, who goes to Cascade View Elementary School.
The show is put on by the Sarvey Wildlife Care Center, a nonprofit located between Arlington and Granite Falls that rescues, treats and releases wild animals. It’s one of the outreach efforts by the center that has been around since 1981.
Last month, the center announced that it was having financial difficulties. The center has an operating budget of about $450,000 a year, but donations have been down. Director Suzanne West said last month the center needed $95,000 to continue to care for animals, keep the doors open and continue their programs.
In the last couple of weeks, however, the center has seen an increase in donations and new donors have also appeared. The shortfall has been reduced to $50,000.
“We are still feeling the crunch,” West said. “We have been able to tighten our belts and we have received additional funding.”
Jennifer Cutshall, 44, of Snohomish, heard about Sarvey’s financial problems. She’s hoping that people step up to help out the center. She’s seen the raptor show herself. On Friday she brought her youngest son, Isaac Tavares, 4, for the first time.
“It’s a good chance to see these birds this close,” Cutshall said.
They were about 75 kids, parents, grandparents and others who attended the show and learned about the barn owl, great horned owl, red-tailed hawk and peregrine falcon.
The children asked questions about the birds, such as the length of their wings and how fast they could fly. They were amazed when some of the birds spread their wings.
Most of them gasped when volunteers took out the last bird of the show: a bald eagle named Askate.
Seeing the animal was the favorite part of 5-year-old Kaylee Broome who goes to kindergarten at Machias Elementary School.
The Sarvey Wildlife Center is located at 13106 148th St. NE, near Arlington.
For more information on the center, including how to donate and what to do if you find an injured or orphaned animal, go to www.sarveywildlife.org/ or call 360-435-4817.
Six life-size wood figures shouldering a 300-year-old canoe command the most attention among the exhibits at the new Suquamish Museum and Cultural Center on the west shore of Puget Sound.
Carved from cedar, the figures morph from a pair of sea otters in the rear to tribal ancestors in the middle and to modern people up front. The sculpture symbolizes the carrying of the tribe’s canoe culture forward through time.
The second new tribal museum in Washington to open in two years, the $7.5 million Suquamish Museum is on the Port Madison Indian Reservation near Poulsbo on the Kitsap Peninsula. Its opening last September followed the 2011 opening of the Tulalip Tribe’s Hibulb Cultural Center near Marysville.
The Northwest tribal museums, which include showcase displays in Oregon near Pendleton and at Warm Springs, offer travelers the chance to connect with the rich native culture that predated exploration and settlement by European Americans.
The Suquamish Museum is a short walk from the gravesite of Chief Sealth, the tribal elder who cooperated with Americans when they settled Puget Sound in the 1850s. Seattle is named for the Suquamish chief.
The museum’s small but impressive exhibits feature woodworking, baskets and beadwork. The 9,000-square-foot building, in the style of a traditional longhouse, has a performance space, museum store, plus an art gallery that features the work of 20 tribal artists, including intricate masks in the coastal Salish style.The surrounding grounds are landscaped with native plants. Nearby houses will be removed when leases expire to further enhance the tribe’s cultural district as a learning center. The tribe’s Suquamish Clearwater Casino Resort is one mile south.
The House of Awakened Culture, an indoor tribal event center, is just north of the museum on the waterfront. Seattle’s highest buildings are in view across the Salish Sea, the name bestowed recently on all the inland waters of Washington and lower British Columbia.
The new museum is three times the size of the tribe’s previous cultural display.
The Suquamish Museum address is 6861 N.E. South St., on the east side of S.R. 307 just north of its intersection with S.R. 305 (the highway with the only bridge to Bainbridge Island). The museum is open daily (except some holidays) from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; 360-394-8499, suquamishmuseum.org.
A traditional salmon bake outside the Museum at Warm Springs. Terry Richard/The Oregonian
Other tribal museums in Oregon and Washington Warm Springs: The Museum at Warm Springs features the Wasco, Walla Walla and Paiute tribes of central and eastern Oregon and the Columbia River Gorge. The 25,000-square-foot building opened in 1993. It is located along U.S. 26 in Warm Springs, between Mount Hood and central Oregon, with the relocated Indian Head Casino across the highway; 541-553-3331, museumatwarmsprings.org. Umatilla: Tamástslikt Cultural Institute tells the story of the Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla tribes of northeast Oregon and southeast Washington in a 45,000-square-foot building that opened in 1998. It also has an outdoor living-history exhibit during summer. The museum is near Wildhorse Resort and Casino, just east of Pendleton; 541-966-9748, tcimuseum.com.
Makah: Most artifacts in the Makah Museum at Neah Bay, Wash., come from a nearby archaeological dig on the Olympic Peninsula coast at Ozette. The 24,000-square-foot Makah Cultural and Research Center was built as the repository and display site for the 11-year dig, from 1970 to 1981, which uncovered 55,000 artifacts from a 500-year-old village preserved by a massive mudslide; 360-645-2711, makah.com.
Squaxin Island: The 15,000-square-foot Squaxin Island Museum opened in 2002 with an exhibit of the Salish tribes of southern Puget Sound, the “people of the water.” The museum is just off U.S. 101 near Shelton, Wash.; 360-432-3839, squaxinislandmuseum.org.
Tulalip: The 23,000-square-foot Hibulb Cultural Center, which opened in 2011, tells the story of the Snohomish, Snoqualmie and Skykomish tribes of the northern Puget Sound area. Its location is Tulalip, Wash., not far off Interstate 5; 360-716-2600, hibulbculturalcenter.org.
Yakama: The Yakama Nation Museum opened in 1980 with a 12,000-square-foot exhibit hall that tells the story of central Washington tribes, as well as famous chiefs from other tribes. The museum is along U.S. 97 at Toppenish, Wash.; 509-865-2800, yakamamuseum.com.
SNOHOMISH COUNTY, Wash.– The local food regulations in Snohomish County have changed to conform to the newly revised state food laws. Three years of state-level meetings culminated in state-approved revisions to the food regulation, WAC 246-215, effective May 1. The Snohomish County Health Board passed a resolution to adopt the changes in the county at its monthly meeting, April 9.
The Snohomish Health District, which inspects about 3,250 food establishments in the county, hosted a training update to food service regulators, and posted the revised code and a summary of its changes to its website.
The new rules absorbed a good deal of the formerly more stringent local code, which is now trimmed to three areas: enforcement procedures; food service manager training and certification; and recertification training of restaurant managers and operators.
The menu of statewide changes includes hot holding temperatures of 135°F or hotter. Cut leafy greens and cut tomatoes were redefined to be potentially hazardous foods and will be required to be kept at 41°F or below.
Other revisions include updated requirements for tracking and documentation of wild mushroom harvesting, more flexible guidelines for preschools, and deletion of all but dogs and miniature horses as service animals.
Local health jurisdictions and the food service industry were represented in the three years of deliberations. The Health District also facilitates a 20-member Food Advisory Council of local food establishment owners and operators, who have followed every step of the state revision process.
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
Soil health is always important, but extreme weather in the last few years has shown landowners just how important managing for it really is.
Source: USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service
Soil health is always important, but extreme weather in the last few years has shown landowners just how important managing for it really is.
“The vital part of soil is topsoil, which unfortunately is also the part most susceptible to the effects of weather. That’s what makes protecting it so crucial,” said Doug Miller, NRSC Minnesota soil health coordinator.
The top two components of topsoil are clay content and soil organic matter which hold nutrients and water for plant use and growth.
“The amount of clay content is determined by glacier content left behind and cannot be changed, but the percent of organic matter in topsoil can be increased,” Miller said.
One percent of organic matter in the top six inches of soil can hold about 27,000 gallons of water per acre. Increasing organic matter increases the holding capacity for water making your land more resilient to extreme weather.
Even with last year’s drought, landowners benefitted from improved soil health.
“There were two farms separated by a road that had the same soils, same crops and same precipitation. While one farm thrived through extreme weather, the other one lost corn plants, soil and water. The variable here was the management of the land,” said Miller.
Landowners are the managers of soil, so it’s important to use practices that help protect and improve your soil, he added.
NRCS identified four principles that help improve soil health.
Keep soil covered as much as possible.
Use plant diversity to increase diversity in the soil.
Keep living roots in the soil as long as possible.
Disturb the soil as little as possible.
Managing for soil health can help increase productivity and profits, decrease inputs and improve sustainability for farms and ranches.
“We need soil to be productive not just this year, but five years from now, 20 years from now, 60 years from now, and that starts with soil health,” Miller said.
NRCS’ soil health webpage provides in-depth knowledge and experiences from landowners across the nation. Visit your local NRCS office or visit the website (http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/national/soils/health/) to see how soil health is making a difference.
The Indian Health Service and several other federal agencies plan to improve interagency coordination in providing safe drinking water and basic sanitation to tribal communities. The IHS, which is in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Agriculture.
In 2007, these agencies and tribal representatives assembled an infrastructure task force to improve access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation in Indian Country. The memorandum of understanding formalizes federal cooperation toward the task force’s goal of reducing the number of tribal homes lacking access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 50 percent by 2015.
The agreement will help to coordinate available funding, programs, and
expertise for access to basic sanitation as federal officials work with tribal officials to develop successful sanitation programs in Indian Country.
Since 2007, substantial progress has been made to improve access; for instance, the number of American Indian and Alaska Native homes lacking safe drinking water has been reduced from 12 percent in 2007 to 7.5 percent in 2013.
The IHS provides essential sanitation facilities, including water supply and sewage disposal systems, to American Indian and Alaska Native homes and communities. Safe sanitation facilities improve public health in many ways, including by lowering the incidences of gastrointestinal disease and infant mortality.
The IHS works in partnership with tribal communities to provide a comprehensive health service system for approximately 2.1 million American Indian and Alaska Natives who are members of 566 federally recognized tribes.
