October-November 2003
Cover Story
Lummi Nation Program Defends Natural Cultural Resources
by Jeff Shaw
Jeff Shaw is the North Sound information officer with the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.
“Cultural sites like these are non-renewable resources,” says Lummi Nation Timber, Fish and Wildlife technician Tom Edwards, motioning with his hand across the expanse of a forest along Lake Whatcom.
Within a few acres from where Edwards is standing, Lummi tribal members have gathered tree bark for medicinal purposes and traditional regalia since before recorded history began. The ancient practice continues to this day on this same site.
But there are also economically valuable cedar trees here, as well as throughout the Lake Whatcom watershed, that local timber companies long to harvest. Balancing those desires with the fundamental cultural needs of treaty Indian tribes like the Lummi Nation is what the Timber Fish and Wildlife (TFW) process is all about. The Lummi TFW staff strives to ensure that local economic development does not destroy invaluable cultural resources.
It’s a big job—Lummi reviews about 4,000 forest practices applications every year—and people like Edwards are doing it, monitoring and analyzing the potential impacts of lumber operations on areas of historical, archaeological and cultural significance. It’s also a crucially important job.
Saving Cultural Sites for Younger Generation
“The continued destruction and desecration of these places impacts the ability of our younger generation to practice our way of life—a way of life we’ve been practicing since time immemorial,” Edwards said. That’s one reason the Lummi Nation has such a passion for saving sites that their ancestors used. One recent expedition revealed a totem pole estimated to be 20,000 years old; another uncovered a battle site stocked with myriad artifacts such as hatchets, arrowheads and arrows. To allow these sites to be disturbed is, in a word, unthinkable to the Lummis.
Though preserving artifacts like arrowheads, ancient petroglyphs and stone tools is an important part of the work, it isn’t nearly everything. Using information compiled from Lummi elders, tribal staff members look for evidence of cultural practices such as hunting, fishing and gathering that are still protected by treaty today.
“Everything is connected: land, water, earth, plants, wildlife,” Edwards says. “Disrupt one of them, and all of them become unbalanced—and that brings hardship to the people. We try to stop those disruptions from happening.”
For example, many of the forest practice applications the Lummi Nation reviews have the potential to hurt supplies of culturally important plants that are used for medicines and ceremonies. Every wetland that disappears is a blow to the tribe.
“We’re starting to see our wetlands disappear now,” said Edwards, “and those places are where our culturally significant plants grow. That’s devastating to our culture.”
Sometimes, documentation of cultural relics or practices on a site stops a logging operation. Much more often, though, the Lummi Nation works with timber companies to avoid impacts to cultural sites. The Timber, Fish and Wildlife process has made this work easier.
“In the past, it was much more difficult to reach agreements. Others didn’t understand the importance of cultural resources as well as they do now,” said Edwards. “There is still a lot of work to do in terms of increasing understanding, but we’ve made progress. And any progress towards protecting these sites is valuable.” §
Historic Fish Maps Could Show the Road to Salmon Recovery
by Jeff Shaw
Road maps help drivers navigate unfamiliar territory. Can fish maps help the tribal and state co-managers find their way to salmon recovery? The Nooksack Tribe’s Natural Resources Department thinks so. This spring, the tribe completed a project which documents the areas fish use and have historically used in the Nooksack Basin.
Compiling this information gives resource managers a valuable tool for protecting and restoring not just currently used fish habitat, but also that which was historically available. In this way, Nooksack Natural Resources (NNR) is preserving opportunities for recovery.
“Knowledge is power—power that can help us recover wild salmon, especially the threatened spring chinook,” said Bob Kelly, director of NNR. “This resource gives us important information that can be used to restore habitat for fish.”
That information comes at a pivotal time for the Nooksack watershed. Tribes, citizens, local governments, and state and federal agencies are in the process of cooperatively developing plans for allocating the region’s water.
Maps Are Useful Guides for Water Allocation
The new maps—which show the uppermost areas all salmonid species are known to use now, as well as the uppermost areas they likely reached in the past—will be useful in guiding these water allocations. NNR wants to be sure adequate “instream flows” are provided for streams that do and can support salmon and trout.
“We wanted to ensure that, in setting instream flows and for other management actions that affect salmon, there is some consideration for streams that salmon could use in the future,” said Treva Coe, biologist with NNR. “In some cases, these streams provide high quality habitat that is now blocked by artificial barriers like culverts. Salmon may access these places again in the future when these barriers are removed or replaced.”
Older maps, developed in 1999, documented areas that salmon use now in the watershed. But current use patterns, while necessary, don’t provide the full story of salmon in the Nooksack watershed—comparing how fish use the watershed now to where they traveled years ago would help create a more vivid and complete picture. So NNR staff collected a group of local experts, including tribal members and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists.
The team reviewed maps of the Nooksack basin, taking into account habitat types and human alteration of stream conditions, and mapped areas where they presumed different stocks would have reached in the past. They also added new information to update current salmon distribution.
“We want to make sure that our management decisions are informed by the best available science and most up-to-date information,” said Coe. “Information sources like this are never final.”
