Honoring the Future

Washington state confronts a $60 million question.

Posted February 22, 2005 5:00AM PST

Most Americans are unaware that, in Washington state, an Indian tribe is at the center of a $60 million controversy:

PORT ANGELES — More than 200 people packed a hotel banquet room Monday to throw their frustrations at each other about the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard. … The crowd was roughly equally divided among members of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe and their supporters, construction union members, politicians and civic leaders, and people who came with questions about how the project foundered after spending nearly $60 million. — 200 from all sides in graving yard controversy pack banquet room to hear from Transportation Commission, by Jim Casey, Peninsula Daily News, February 15, 2005

In 2003 work began on a 22‑acre site to build a "graving yard," where pontoons were to be built. Several metropolitan centers in Washington state are connected with floating bridges. The 1.5‑mile bridge crossing Hood Canal is getting old and several of the pontoons and anchors must be replaced. But it turned out that the construction site for the dry dock, in Port Angeles, was located right on top of an Indian village, called Tse-whit-zen, that is between 1,700 and 2,700 years‑old.

The state had little choice but to halt construction. Ouch.

(Washington Transportation Commission and Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald) explained why the state would respect the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe's wishes:

* Excavating and reburying all the remains would have delayed fixing the Hood Canal Bridge by more time than already had been lost.

* Graving yard construction had started without an environmental impact statement. Because of the burials there, anyone could invoke the Environmental Protection Act to tie up the project in court for years.

* A national outcry against the project by Native Americans and non-Natives was building.

The controversy was obscuring the objective. — 200 from all sides in graving yard controversy pack banquet room to hear from Transportation Commission, by Jim Casey, Peninsula Daily News, February 15, 2005

To the state, which had already spent $60 million on the project, this was a horrifying discovery. To many local people, it's jobs lost, lean times and that tight feeling you get in your gut when you don't know how you're going to feed your kids or pay next month's rent. To archaeologists, it's a treasure. One of those "Yahoo!" moments, followed by some private grumbling about superstitious Indians who won't let them excavate the site. To the Klallam, it's the foundation of their identity: the Red Sea Scrolls, the Arc of the Covenant, the Declaration of Independence and George Washington's false teeth, Ben Franklin's soiled linens and grandma and grandpa's coffins all preserved precisely where they are supposed to be.

But people in Port Angeles need those jobs, and as they gave vent to their understandable frustration, reasons why the word "racist" always hovers at the back of many Indian minds waddled on stage, snorting and huffing with indignation:

Jeb Maynard, who identified himself as a representative of the American Taxpayers Foundation, asked why the tribe hadn't removed the burials in the 1990s. — 200 from all sides in graving yard controversy pack banquet room to hear from Transportation Commission, by Jim Casey, Peninsula Daily News, February 15, 2005

To most Americans, this may seem like a reasonable question. The west was won, after all, a long, long time ago. The Indians lost, the pioneers won, so get over it and get on. Except, it didn't happen all that long ago, most of the losing took place before the settlers and soldiers got here, and nowhere do we simply expect folks to unearth their ancestors and move them so that civic projects can be built on top of important archaeological sites.

Well, that's not entirely true. Cemeteries have been moved, before. I don't recall particulars, but I do remember reading that it was done, though not on the initiative or expense of the families whose ascendants were being moved. Come to think of it, however, this wouldn't be the first time this has happened to America's Indians. There are other sites, like Tse-whit-zen, buried under reservoirs.

Would we do this to the "ABCs"? To Asians, Blacks and Caucasians? Sure we would, if we didn't know. But only when it's Indians, do crowds clamor to ignore the bodies, the burials and artifacts. And why not? The west was won, after all.

Or was it? In other parts of the country, maybe. But here in western Washington, where it rains from mid‑September through the fifth of July, when the "white man" came and fought what's euphemistically called, here, the "Indian war," there were less than 1,000 trappers, soldiers and settlers, and several thousand Indians. And that was after more than a century of repeated epidemics that started with an influenza‑like virus (it may have been a bad cold, which would have been deadly to my Indian ancestors in those days), and was followed by small pox, measles and malaria.

The epidemics killed tens of thousands of Indians in the Washington and Oregon territories, leaving vast tracts of land nearly uninhabited. These could have been settled peaceably, were, in fact, being settled peaceably, until those whom, today, we would call liberals, crashed the party intent on herding the "savages" onto remote reservations.

But betwixt then and now lies a fact which is either important or irritating, depending on your point of view.

Buried by 150 years of excuses, romantic storytelling and "white guilt," is a simple fact long ignored: The Indians of Washington territory were never conquered. This, all tribes here know. Our ancestors were, as these terms are used today, conservative, pragmatic people, who were much interested in learning new and better ways from the newcomers approaching on the horizon. Most of the earliest historical accounts, which took place not so long ago, as they happened during the life times of people who were known and loved by people whom I have known and loved, tell of cordial though cautious meetings.

These initial meetings were often followed by trade agreements, as Americans—e.g., the the American Fur Company—vied with the British—the Hudson's Bay Company—for competitive advantage. The west, here, was being "won" through commerce.

Seeing the advantages of the more efficient farming methods, many tribes eagerly embraced farming over gathering. But then the goon squad arrived, and the process that would have led to a more prosperous and "mainstream" existence for the tribes, here, came to a screeching halt. Territorial Governor Isaac I. Stevens rushed through the area, railroading tribes into signing boilerplate treaties that were a bad deal. With so few whites and so many Indians, it was not any threat of violence that compelled them to sign, but the promise of an exchange, value‑for‑value: "Give us this land, and in addition to guaranteeing that you will retain certain rights, we will also give you knowledge and skills, and the means with which to use them."

These were mostly lies, we now know and bewail too much, but that is part of the reason why we have so many mishaps, like the graving yard situation in Port Angeles, and messes, such as Indian‑wannabes on the left, like Ward Churchill, who confuse the issue of tribal sovereignty, which is the sovereignty of government, with nonsense about "Indigenous Sovereignty." On the right, we have those whom I otherwise generally support falsely portraying Indian tribes as untaxed corporate monopolists, rather than federally regulated governments. And in between, people who, for the sake of a day's pay, would bulldoze through more than 2,000 years of history.

Washington state can't afford $60 million dollar mistakes, but that's what we've got. It will take wisdom, intelligence and cooperation to find the path that honors the present without dishonoring the past. That's important, because dishonoring our past, dishonors our future.