This blog was a backup for American Indian Adopteesblog
USE THE SEARCH BAR or SEARCH TOPICS at bottom of this blog
If you need support
Support Info: If you are a Survivor and need emotional support, a national crisis line is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week: Residential School Survivor Support Line: 1-866-925-4419. Additional Health Support Information: Emotional, cultural, and professional support services are also available to Survivors and their families through the Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program. Services can be accessed on an individual, family, or group basis.” These & regional support phone numbers are found at https://nctr.ca/contact/survivors/ .
MY EMAIL: tracelara@pm.me
Nearly 1000 Native American Children Died in Abusive US Boarding Schools, Report Finds
Angie Jaime8/1/2024
An investigation commissioned by U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland found graves at 65 of the more than 400 U.S. boarding schools where Native American
children were forced to assimilate into white, American society. While
the report found that at least 973 Indigenous children died while
attending schools in the system, it also acknowledges that the actual
number of deaths is likely higher.
“The
federal government – facilitated by the Department I lead – took
deliberate and strategic actions through federal Indian boarding school
policies to isolate children from their families, deny them their
identities, and steal from them the languages, cultures and connections
that are foundational to Native people. These policies caused enduring
trauma for Indigenous communities that the Biden-Harris administration
is working tirelessly to repair,” Haaland said in a statement.
In
the 150 years between 1819 and 1969, thousands of Native children and
youths were forcibly taken from their homes, as part of systemic efforts
from the federal government and Christian religious leaders to
eradicate Indigenous culture and identity. The report estimates the U.S.
federal government spent $23.3 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars
over the 150 years that the government supported the boarding school
system and similar assimilation policies.
It
wasn’t until 1975 that tribal nations received the right to manage
tribal schools, many of which were on tribal land, and parents could not
prevent their children’s placement in off-reservation schools until the
Indian Child Welfare Act passed in 1978.
“For
the first time in the history of the United States, the federal
government is accounting for its role in operating historical Indian
boarding schools that forcibly confined and attempted to assimilate
Indigenous children,” Assistant Secretary and citizen of the Bay Mills
Indian Community (Ojibwe) Bryan Newland said in the same statement.
“This
report further proves what Indigenous peoples across the country have
known for generations – that federal policies were set out to break us,
obtain our territories, and destroy our cultures and our lifeways. It is
undeniable that those policies failed, and now, we must bring every
resource to bear to strengthen what they could not destroy. It is
critical that this work endures, and that federal, state and Tribal
governments build on the important work accomplished as part of the
Initiative.”
The
findings follow listening sessions held by Haaland throughout the U.S.
over the past two years, in which dozens of boarding school survivors
described what they endured while separated from their families.
“I thought there was no God, just torture and hatred,” Whirlwind Soldier testified during a 2022 event
on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation led by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
“The only thing they didn’t do was put us in (an oven) and gas us,” she
said, invoking Holocaust atrocities.
Within
the report, Assistant Secretary Newland includes a number of steps that
aim to support a path to healing the nation, including among its
recommendations: issuing a formal apology from the U.S. government and
“investing in remedies to the present-day impacts of the federal Indian
boarding school system.”
The report, Haaland said, just the beginning of a long road to healing.
Anna says she feels like she was "trafficked" (ABC News: Luke Bowden)
Hundreds of thousands of babies sent abroad
For Anna, the allegations that adoption agencies paid for babies confirm her feeling that she was part of a trade.
From
her records, she estimates her Australian adoptive parents paid around
$US4,500 in adoption costs in 1987. Other agencies were charging
$US5,000 per child at the time — more than $21,000 today.
"It just felt like I was a commodity — like I was being sold," Anna says.
Australia still has an adoption arrangement with South Korea and ESWS
specifically, but ESWS has informed Australia that they are not
currently accepting new adoption applications.
For intercountry adoptees impacted by unique or difficult adoption practices, specialist support is available through the Intercountry Adoption Family Support Service (ICAFSS).
I
remember having a daydream about the opening acoustic guitar part of
“All Along The Watchtower” ending with a Native American scream and a
big native drum on the downbeat. That was the spark to assemble one of
our biggest and deepest Songs Around The World. From Beirut to New
Orleans to the Lakota Nation, musicians play and sing like a musical
army determined to stop suffering and greed all over the world. As a
society, we need to get back to our roots and connect deeper with our
ancestors and native people in general so we can find the wisdom we need
to move forward as a human race. As Jimi Hendrix once said, “If there
is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen
through music.”
-Mark Johnson, PFC Co-Founder
The Indian Child Welfare Act is a federal policy that seeks to keep Indigenous families and communities intact by regulating the removal of Native American children from their homes and the placement of children in foster care or adoptive homes. The goal of ICWA is the preservation of Indigenous communities and the safety and health of Native children.
In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed ICWA through the case Haaland v. Brackeen, which challenged the constitutionality of ICWA based on discrimination. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that ICWA is constitutional.
During this time, the South Dakota Legislature considered adopting state-based protections similar to ICWA but decided to hold off until after the Supreme Court ruling. During the 2024 legislative session, the Legislature passed a bill to establish an advisory council to reflect on ICWA proceedings and begin to spark change.
This is the first step in a necessary approach to increasing protections for Indigenous communities, families and children. South Dakota is the only state in the Upper Midwest and Northern Plains that does not have state-based ICWA protections. This demonstrates a lack of attention to ICWA and the issue of the removal of Indigenous children from their homes.
In South Dakota, Native American children account for 13% of the child population but represent 74% of the foster care population. This reflects disparities faced by Indigenous children and their families and the importance of strengthening ICWA protections on a state level.
This is a systemic issue, and it is also deeply connected to the mass incarceration of Indigenous people in South Dakota.
There is a foster care-to-prison pipeline. Children placed in foster care are faced with a disproportionately higher risk of being incarcerated later in life. In South Dakota, Native Americans account for at least 35% of the prison population, but only 9% of the state’s adult population.
This shows that the disproportionate use of foster care placement for Indigenous children may be connected to the disparities in the incarceration of Indigenous individuals. There must be an effort made to conduct research on this connection and to craft policies that protect Indigenous children, families and communities.
The Lost Children
Read The Lost Children,
a series exploring the causes, effects and potential solutions to the
decades-long overrepresentation of Native American children in South
Dakota’s foster care system.
South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on Facebook and X.
Marilyn Ringland longs to know circumstances of her birth: 'Maybe I'm hoping that you'd found someone'
*
Dear Irene,
I must apologize for using your
name instead of calling you "mom." I didn't get the chance to know you
in the way a child knows their mother.
I do hope you
had the opportunity to hold me, and that you got to choose my name —
a name that my parents, the ones who raised me, kept as is to honour
you. I was promised to people who you knew would love me as their own.
I am slowly finding out your story through records and archives. I don't know which residential school you went to.
Marilyn
Ringland shows a photo of her birth mother, Irene Monias, who was a
patient at the sanitorium in Ninette, Man. 'I hope that I can be the
voice that you didn’t have the chance to be,' Marilyn writes in a letter
to the mother she never knew. (Trevor Brine/CBC)
I only knew that you contracted tuberculosis and were residing at the Ninette, Man., sanatorium when you got pregnant with me, and were there until your demise.
Demise. I can't even say the words "death" or "dying."
Maybe
it's because of what you went through in the short time that you were
here. Spending your adulthood in an institution should not, cannot be
the end. I can only say that you do live on through me and my children.
Did you know you have three grandchildren? I wish you had the chance to meet them.
Also,
my husband. We've been together for more than 30 years. I smile and
think that he's crazy to be stuck with me all this time.
I am doing more sleuthing to find out about your life.
- Marilyn Ringland
I
was very fortunate to be with the family you picked out for me.
You knew my mom was Anishininikwe, like you, and my dad a WASPy kind of
guy. Both of my parents came from large families. I don't know how much
stigma they went through as a mixed couple, but my grandparents were
accepting, and that was what mattered to my parents.
I
was told at a very young age that I was adopted, and I felt comfortable
enough to let people know that it wasn't such a big deal, and no one
asked me if it was. My brother was also adopted, though under different
circumstances. I also had an older sister and two other siblings, and
all three have since died.
'Finding out bits and pieces'
My
search for you in earnest happened after my mom passed away. I don't
know how she would have felt, but I do know that I would have let her
know what I was doing. I guess because I knew I was adopted and my
family life was content, until that point, there wasn't that need or
want to find out where I came from.
Finding out bits and
pieces of your life has been frustrating. The people who might have
known you and your family are gone. I know that I had an uncle, your
brother Walter, and a grandmother when you passed.
I have a picture of you at a hospital, but I'm not sure of which one — either Brandon or Ninette.
A
photo of Irene Monias, taken at a hospital. Ringland hopes her mother
found companionship with 'someone with the shared experience of being
away from home.' (Submitted by Marilyn Ringland)
I
don't have the patient records, but I am doing more sleuthing to find
out about your life. I do know where your resting place is — Glen
Eden Memorial Gardens.
I had mentioned to my daughters
that you might be buried in one of the cemeteries that line Highway 9,
north of Winnipeg. My mom had mentioned this one time and that stayed
with me. I didn't have the courage to ask which cemetery, but my
daughter was inquisitive enough to phone around and find you.
'Maybe you had a moment with each other'
Now I am looking for information on my birth father. What will I find once I have his name?
At first, through Manitoba Post-Adoption Services,
the post-adoption registry could give me his age but legally, nothing
else. At least, not until he turned 101 or had died. (Really? That was
the remarkable information that I received from the registry.)
Well,
if he is still alive, he would have turned 101 this spring. So now I
can find out his name, but that won't tell me what kind of person he
was.
Maybe
I'm hoping that you found someone who, like you, was stuck in a place
that wasn't of your choosing. You found someone with the shared
experience of being away from home, lonely and not being able to have
the life that you should have had.
And so maybe you had a moment with each other — and that was enough.
Finding
out that information is what I'm willing to risk, in order to find out
the circumstances of what you went through to have me. A lot of
questions that might not be answered.
As I close this letter to you, I hope that I can be the voice that you didn't have the chance to be.
Your loving daughter,
Marilyn
This First Person article is the experience of
Marilyn Ringland, an Anishiniew woman who has family roots in Garden
Hill First Nation and was raised in Selkirk, Man. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see this FAQ.
FILE - The ruins of a building that was part of a Native American
boarding school on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in Mission, S.D., are
show here Oct. 15, 2022. Federal officials with the Interior Department
called on the U.S. government Tuesday, July 30, 2024, to apologize for a
nationwide system of boarding schools in which Native children faced
abuse and neglect. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)
SEATTLE
— More than 60 children from tribes with homelands in Washington,
Oregon and Idaho are among the nearly 1,000 Native American children who
died in the U.S. government’s abusive boarding school system that tore
families apart and devastated Indigenous communities, according to the
results of a federal investigation released Tuesday.
Between
1819 and 1969, thousands of children were taken from their homes as
part of a targeted effort by federal officials and religious leaders to
eradicate Indigenous culture and identity. The report estimates the
federal government spent $23.3 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars
over the 150 years supporting the boarding school system and similar
assimilation policies.
There
were at least 17 boarding schools in Washington, up and down the
Interstate 5 corridor, on the coast, and dotted through the arid
grasslands of the eastern parts of the state, according to the Interior
Department. Many of them were on present-day tribal land.
Tribal
nations did not gain the right to run their own schools until 1975, and
parents could not prevent their children’s placement in off-reservation
schools until the Indian Child Welfare Act passed in 1978.
The
report, commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, found marked
and unmarked graves at 65 of the more than 400 U.S. boarding schools
that were established to forcibly assimilate Native American children
into white society.
The
actual number of burial sites associated with Indian boarding schools —
and the number of Indigenous children who died there — is likely far
greater, the Interior Department acknowledged. The report also doesn’t
include details on how each child died, but officials noted the causes
of death included sickness, accidents and abuse.
The
findings come after Haaland embarked on a two-year “Road to Healing”
tour conducting listening sessions at tribes across the United States.
The
tour included a stop at the Tulalip Tribes’ gathering hall last year,
about 35 miles north of Seattle, where the secretary heard survivors
share stories of their brutal experience at Native American boarding
schools.
Deborah
Parker, a citizen of the Tulalip Tribes and chief executive of the
National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, welcomed the
release of the report, but said the federal government and her
organization ultimately need more time and access to records to
understand the full picture.
“The
department was able to identify, by name, 18,624 Indian children —
that’s only a beginning,” Parker said. “That’s a beginning.”
There
were an estimated 523 of these boarding schools in the U.S., according
to research by the National Native American Boarding School Healing
Coalition. The Interior Department report accounts for 417.
The
report does not include burial sites affiliated with other institutions
like day schools, orphanages or stand-alone dormitories, or boarding
schools operated by churches and groups that didn’t receive federal
funding. More than 1,000 institutions involved in the education of
Indigenous children did not meet the criteria used in the department’s
investigation.
A
number of children from Washington who died in the schools were
identified, including one child from the Confederated Tribes of the
Colville Reservation, one from the Muckleshoot Tribe, one from the
Puyallup Tribe, two from the Quinault Indian Nation, one from the
Suquamish Tribe, one from Skagit, one from Snohomish and two from
Yakama. The report also accounts for the deaths of 15 Nez Perce
children, and others across the West.
The tribal affiliations of more than 200 children who died at boarding schools were not identified in the report.
Suquamish
Tribe Chairman Leonard Forsman said his tribe is still reviewing the
report and working to uncover more information about the Suquamish
student identified to offer a “proper resolution.”
“We
hope this will contribute to the healing of our people from the trauma
resulting from the assimilation policies imposed on us by the U.S.,” he
said in a statement.
At
these boarding schools, children were forced to follow militaristic
schedules, performed agricultural and manual labor, and in some cases,
experienced physical and sexual abuse.
Survivors
have recounted stories of having their mouths washed out with soap and
their hair cut, or of school leaders whipping them with ropes and belts.
They were punished for speaking their language and practicing their
traditions.
By
1969 — when the federal support for Native American boarding schools
ended — 25% to 35% of all Native American children had been separated
from their families, according to studies conducted by the Association
on American Indian Affairs.
Growing
up, Parker said she witnessed how the schools disrupted healthy family
relationships, traditions and how people viewed the educational system.
Children
ripped away from their parents were left struggling to create stable
homes for their own children years later, said Tulalip Tribes Chair Teri
Gobin. Studies have found that the childhood experiences at boarding
schools left adults with serious physical and mental health issues, ones
that could also be seen among their children.
“This
historical trauma has moved from one generation to the next,” said
Gobin, whose father attended Cushman Indian Hospital, a boarding school
that performed medical experiments on students. “They destroyed their
lives, their children’s lives.”
The
healing coalition has been central to the Interior Department’s
research and is advocating for the creation of a federal commission
through Congress to find and analyze the records from the government and
church-run boarding schools and uncover the horrific truth publicly.
Parker said the coalition hopes the bill’s passage would coincide with
an apology from the sitting U.S. president, and a commitment to
meaningful action.
The
healing coalition and tribal nations are still looking for records of
children who never returned home and of unmarked, or poorly marked,
burial sites. These are stories and records that have largely been
withheld from Indigenous people, Parker said.
“We
deserve truth, we deserve justice and ultimately, we want to heal from
this long legacy of abuse,” said Parker, whose relatives attended
boarding schools.
In
addition to a formal apology, the report calls for the U.S. government
to invest in programs that could help tribes heal from the
intergenerational trauma caused by boarding schools, such as violence
prevention and language revitalization.
That
funding should be “commensurate with the investments made in the
Federal Indian boarding school system between 1871 and 1969,” according
to the report’s recommendations.
“We’re
bringing back our culture, we’re bringing back our canoes, we’re
bringing back our longhouse way of life, and I’m incredibly proud of
that,” Parker said. “I hope that we continue to do that, and then others
learn from Native American people, because we have a lot to give.”
If
you are a boarding school survivor or a descendant, resources are
available from the National Native American Boarding School Healing
Coalition at boardingschoolhealing.org.
Dear Relative,
The
Franciscan Friars of California, Inc. has determined that at least
seven Native American tribes in Arizona and New Mexico are eligible to
file claims against the Franciscan Province of St. Barbara for clergy
sexual abuse as part of its ongoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.
🗓️ Key Information:
The
Franciscan Friars of California, Inc. filed for bankruptcy on December
31, 2023, due to facing 94 new abuse claims, mostly from California.
The Bankruptcy Court has extended the deadline for filing proofs of claim to August 30, 2024.
Your Voice Matters: The strength and courage to report abuse is vital.
If you or someone you know is a survivor, please file your claim to
receive support.
To
find information about the Franciscan Friars of California's bankruptcy
case, including instructions on proofs of claim click HERE.
Vice
President Kamala Harris announced Tuesday her selection of Gov. Tim
Walz (D-MN) as her running mate in the 2024 presidential election. Their
victory in November would make Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (White Earth
Nation/D-MN) the first Native female governor in the U.S. history.
by Rico Moore, High Country News February 20, 2024
This story is a collaboration betweenbioGraphic, an editorially independent magazine about nature and conservation powered by the California Academy of Sciences, and YES! Magazine, a nonprofit and independent publisher of solutions journalism. It is republished here with permission.
From our vantage point in a motorboat on the reservoir known as Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake in eastern Washington, we scan the rocky canyon walls of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville’s Hellgate game reserve for bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis). Before it was a reservoir, manufactured by the United States government’s Grand Coulee Dam, this was once a mighty, salmon-rich stretch of the Columbia River that formed the basis of an entire ecosystem — and that supported the 12 tribes of the Colville Confederated Tribes since time immemorial.
The boat belongs to Rose Piccinini, the tribes’ Sanpoil district wildlife biologist. She is part of a team that manages the herd of bighorn sheep that the tribes’ wildlife department first reintroduced in 2009. She also leads the tribes’ efforts to restore lynx populations back into the ecosystem here.
Tribal Wildlife Biologist Rose Piccinini counting bighorn sheep from the Hellgate herd along the Columbia River on the Colville Tribes reservation. These animals were restored to the reservation by the tribes.
The animals who shared this landscape were once fully integrated into every aspect of tribal members’ lives. They harvested bighorn sheep and other game for food, tools and clothing. Intricate myths, legends, and teachings about the animals were passed down by elders to descendants and bound them to who they were — and who, as a result, their descendants came to be.
But then American settlers brought domesticated sheep and goats, and with them, diseases that bighorns weren’t able to recover from. The succession of disease exposures, against which bighorns had little defense, significantly reduced their numbers and made them more vulnerable to impacts they might have otherwise withstood. Save for a few small pockets in secluded locations, the bighorns died off, and the herds disappeared from the landscape and the lives of the tribes.
As we crane our necks and squint our eyes upward in the hot midday July sun, shadows reveal more than a dozen bighorn sheep on the north side of the canyon, less than 30 meters (100 feet) above the reservoir. Ewes and lambs weave paths through stalks of mullein (Verbascum thapsus), leaving their crescent-shaped tracks in the sand, all the while feeding on shrubs that dot the hillside and scree. Their sharp horns curl back from their heads as their amber eyes attend to their surroundings. Two of the animals walk onto a sandy section of the slope, licking at minerals. They kick up dust and cascades of sand, which form rivulets and accumulate into plumes, slowly fanning down the sandy slope to the shoreline below.
Bighorn Sheep from the Hellgate herd along the Columbia River on the Colville Tribes reservation. These animals were restored to the reservation by the tribes.
For the 12 tribes of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville, whose reservation is located in north-central Washington state, their ecosystem isn’t complete without the animals and plants who have long inhabited the land alongside them. Maintaining these relationships of reciprocity in modern times involves the protection and reintroduction of native species, as well as the restoration of their habitats, an ambitious effort that the tribes’ wildlife department has been leading since its inception in the 1970s.
As the tribes work together to restore populations of more native species like bighorn sheep and salmon to their lands and waters, they bring collective healing with them. This healing is felt by the people who have long endured cultural trauma from the forces of European and American colonization. It further strengthens their enduring resilience.
BIGHORNS WERE AMONG the tribes’ first relatives to be extirpated from the region, but the world-shattering impacts of colonization only intensified henceforth.
Salmon have always been at the center of the tribes’ culture and, until the mid-20th century, their diet and economy. The fish fed the people and the land with, among other things, the nutrients stored in their bodies. The fish consumed sea life and later carried this sustenance upstream in their migratory journey inland. Tribal representatives cite reports of 20,000 salmon per day, weighing on average 15 kilograms (35 pounds) each, swimming up the Columbia. With their death and decomposition, the nutrients brought by the salmon in their flesh and bones nourished the forests, prairies, and riparian areas, as well as the coyotes, deer, elk, bighorn sheep, lynx, pronghorn, buffalo, wolves, eagles, and innumerable other beings interconnected within these systems.
Shelly Boyd, cultural leader for the Lakes Band, also known as the Sinixt, of the Colville Confederated Tribes photographed at the location of Kettle Falls, a traditionally vital fishing location, which was drowned by the Grand Coulee Dam.
But in 1942, the U.S. government built the Grand Coulee Dam and “ended a way of life,” according to a documentary produced by the tribes. The dam blocked 2,250 kilometers (1,400 miles) of salmon spawning habitat and flooded 22,600 hectares (56,000 acres) of land, as well as the ecosystems that supported whole communities of animals and people. This included critical winter habitat for deer and elk, and areas the tribes relied on for native food and medicinal plants, all of which were drowned by the government’s dam construction.
No fish passage was built then, nor since.
“Overnight, it was shut off,” says Richard Whitney, a member of the Sinixt band of the Colville Confederated Tribes and the tribes’ wildlife department manager, who assumed leadership of the department in 2014. All at once, salmon, who were the tribes’ staple food and the foundation of their culture and economy, were gone.
The Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River, finished in 1942 by the US federal government destroyed all anadromous salmon runs above. The dam is a mile wide, 550 feet tall and backs up the river for over 150 miles. The river marks the boundary of the Colville Reservation (which lies to the north, lower section of photo).
To survive, the tribes turned to other species native to the ecosystem, and started a decades-long effort to restore wildlife populations in the area. By 1975, the tribes had established a wildlife management department with funding from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, in accordance with the Bureau’s trust responsibilities to the Indigenous peoples with whom it had signed treaties. Elk (Cervus canadensis nelsoni), Whitney says, have, “stepped up to offer themselves so [the tribes] could persist.”
Today, thanks to the tribes’ reintroduction efforts, their elk herds are strong, growing from 481 total elk counted in 2002, to more than double that in 2022. Whitney says elk numbers on the reservation are at a 20-year high, which gives Tribal members additional opportunities for harvest.
With elk reintroduction efforts underway, the tribes next turned their attention to sharp-tailed grouse (Tympanuchus phasianellus) in the late 1990s, then bighorn sheep in 2005 and pronghorns (Antilocapra americana) in 2014, followed by lynx (Lynx canadensis), salmon, and buffalo (Bison bison).
Although they have not reintroduced wolves (Canis lupus), the tribes have allowed the apex predators to recolonize their lands since discovering evidence in 2008 that wolves had started returning on their own. Wolf packs are now managed here at a stable level.
The Colville Confederated Tribes’ plan to re-establish bighorn sheep began with six translocations that ultimately brought 136 bighorns back to the reservation. Although the herds have continued to suffer from diseases carried by domesticated goats and sheep—exposure that is worsened by drought as it concentrates animals around smaller watering areas — Whitney says the population has since grown to more than 250.
Wildlife Manager Richard Whitney oversees all of the tribes' projects to restore wildlife to their unceded lands.
As Whitney assumed leadership of the wildlife division and took over the restoration of bighorn sheep, it was suggested to him that the tribes sell licenses for trophy bighorn hunts to non-tribal hunters to help pay for more staff. Some state fish and wildlife departments sell hunting licenses via auction or raffle for a number of species considered to be trophies to the highest bidder to generate revenue. For example, in Washington this year, one bighorn sheep hunting license generated $181,460, while a similar license was auctioned for $370,00 in Oregon.
Whitney was adamantly opposed to the idea, and his reasoning provides insight into the approach he takes to wildlife management: “That animal is worth more to me than a biologist position. That animal has value and it’s not in dollars,” he says. With so much wildlife management reliant on hunters paying license fees, which in turn fund conservation and management, Whitney says the priorities are off. “If it just comes down to money, then you guys are in the wrong business. You’ll never get it right.”
“That animal has value and it’s not in dollars.”
In addition to providing sustenance for tribal members, the restoration of native species serves to restore a community of species of which people are an integral part. “There’s a harmony there, and anything that’s missing breaks that balance,” Whitney says. “There’s still a harmony, but it’s missing a note here and there.” With each member of the ecological community Whitney’s wildlife department restores, the whole community sings fuller-voiced.
Pronghorn antelope on the Colville Tribes reservation. The tribes restored pronghorn to their reservation in the 2010s.
RICHARD WHITNEY WAS RAISED on the reservation, and was always in the woods, cutting firewood, hunting, fishing, or just being “out there, on the rez,” especially with his father and uncle. “It’s always been an important part of my life. I feel like I belong in nature,” he says. This sense of belonging, rooted in a culture with ancient ancestral connections to the land they reside on, dovetailed with the scientific management of natural resources when Whitney began a series of internships with the tribes’ forestry, fisheries and wildlife departments at the age of 14. He went on to earn his Master’s degree from Washington State University in natural resource sciences, studying sharp-tailed grouse. Nearly a decade ago, Whitney took his current position as the tribes’ wildlife program manager.
Soon after taking the position in 2014, Whitney began leading pronghorn restoration efforts for the tribes. Using knowledge gained from habitat evaluation surveys he’d worked on previously, as well as feasibility reports from the 1990s and early 2000s, he determined that the region offered plenty of suitable pronghorn habitat. In addition, he and his team looked at pronghorn reintroduction attempts by a number of other agencies to determine what had worked and what hadn’t. The Yakama Nation, for example, had successfully restored pronghorn in the past, while the state of Washington had tried, but failed.
Pronghorn antelope on the Colville Tribes reservation. The tribes restored pronghorn to their reservation in the 2010s.
In January 2016, after determining there was adequate habitat and food on the reservation, Whitney and his team reintroduced 52 pronghorn. Some of those animals died, likely due to stress and overexertion during transport. In the project’s second year, the team introduced 98 pronghorn — earlier in the year (in October rather than in mid-winter) and in smaller groups, shortly after they had been captured. Survival of reintroduced animals greatly improved in year two, providing valuable information on reintroductions for the future
Now, on a sunny July day, Sam Rushing drives us in his pickup truck through the hills outside of Bridgeport on the reservation to see the results. He is the tribes’ Omak-Nespelem district wildlife biologist and is looking for some of the pronghorn the tribes reintroduced from Nevada seven years earlier. We scan the open, grassy hillsides in the valley, near a wildfire burn scar, until we spot a herd in the flats near a creek bottom, between two tall ponderosa pines. Spooked by our presence, the group of nearly two-dozen animals — does, fawns and one large buck — trot uphill together. Rushing says the tribes’ herd now numbers 225.
For Whitney and his relatives, animals are friends and often referred to as such. “We don’t rule the kingdom, but are part of it by relating with friends,” he says. “We’re reuniting with old friends. We’re restoring a community, restoring the system.”
“We’re reuniting with old friends. We’re restoring a community, restoring the system.”
Assistant Director of Fish and wildlife Jeanette Finley releases chinook salmon into the San Poil River on the Colville Reservation.
FOLLOWING PREVIOUS CEREMONIAL releases, in late July 2023, tribal members gather at the San Poil River’s edge. As they wait, the sun illuminates the sky—blue, save a few passing clouds—and shines down through the ponderosa pines and into the river, the rays of light twirling through currents and dappling the round stones below.
Members of the tribe form a line between a fish-hauling truck and the river. They pass Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha)—one after the other, from one to another—in specially designed rubber bags toward the river, returning the generous offering of life to the salmon, and in turn, the animals and land. At the end of the line, in one continuous motion, Patrick Tonasket, Keller District representative for the tribal council, gently pulls a large Chinook by the tail from a bag and orients the fish in the current’s flow. He holds his right hand on the salmon’s broad back until the fish feels the current’s rush, then flicks her tail and jets upstream.
“We’re dedicated to bringing those salmon back,” Tonasket says quietly.
Darnell Sam, Salmon chief for the Wenatchi standing in the San Poil river watching chinook being released into the river.
Tribal Wildlife Biologist Rose Piccinini releases chinook into the San Poil River.
By day’s end, the tribes will release 70 summer Chinook salmon. Prior to the operation, biologists working for the tribes had ensured that the fish were free of disease and had inserted tiny monitoring tags before trucking them upriver for the ceremonial release. These releases give tribal members the opportunity to hold ceremony with and for the salmon. With each salmon released, healing and hope surges through those gathered by the river. Later on, the proof that salmon can spawn in this river will most likely reinforce habitat and model assessments, aiding in future reintroduction efforts by proving they can succeed.
“The salmon used to run strong here,” says Darnell Sam, a descendant of the Sanpoil Band of the Colville Confederated Tribes. Sam is the Wenatchi Salmon Chief, and leads a ceremony for these fish, whom, he says, in the beginning, offered themselves to the people so they could survive. Sam is also the great nephew of Chief Jim James of the Sanpoil, who presided over the Ceremony of Tears, when his relatives’ millennia-old salmon fishery at Kettle Falls was inundated following the construction of Grand Coulee Dam. Now, Sam stands in the river, his shirt adorned with images of mountain lions and white and blue ribbons that pulse in breeze, and he releases a salmon to the river, as the sun shines down.
Sam says the salmon have always run parallel to his people, specifically regarding their resilience: “They’ve endured a lot. Our people have endured a lot. … They’ve been colonized; they’ve been oppressed. So has the salmon, but yet, they still endure, and they still survive, and they’re still here.” Recalling the Ceremony of Tears for Kettle Falls, where his ancestors mourned the loss of the salmon from Grand Coulee Dam, he says, “This is an opportunity for us to wipe them tears.”
First light on the forested Kettle Mountains where the Colville Tribes are recovering Canada Lynx.KEEP READING👇
THE KETTLE MOUNTAIN RANGE runs north-south along the eastern flank of the Colville reservation and north into the tribes’ ancestral territory in Colville National Forest. Lynx are known to live in the Kettle Mountains, but in very low numbers, and likely only as transients.
The species is listed as endangered in the state of Washington and threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. But lynx once existed in abundance in Washington state—including on the tribes’ ancestral territories—before colonization, habitat destruction, trapping, and climate change-worsened wildfires all took their toll. These compounding factors have had a lasting impact on the region’s lynx population.
While the cats are protected in the U.S., they are still trapped without limit in British Columbia. Many of these lynx might otherwise migrate south across the border. But without that natural influx, human-aided immigration may be necessary for the survival of lynx, at least in Washington state. In 2013, an interagency task force was formed and affirmed the importance of the Kettle Range in conserving lynx in the U.S. because of its viable connection to existing habitats and populations north of the border.
Climate change and the growing threat of catastrophic wildfires are key reasons for the lynx’s precarious conservation status. While lower intensity fires historically created mosaics of lynx habitat, massive wildfires, which began in earnest throughout the region in 2002, have burned entire swaths of the Okanogan Mountain Range, including some of the state’s few core lynx habitats. By 2019, fires like these had substantially impacted 50% of the suitable lynx range in the Okanogan Mountains.
In this era of climate change, widespread drought, and wildfires of increasing frequency and intensity, the already-small lynx population in Washington could soon be left without adequate habitat. Lynx disappearing from the state has become a real possibility.
Sanpoil District wildlife biologist Rose Piccinini, who is not a tribal member, grew up close to the land, due north of the reservation in an area known as the “North Half,” where the tribes maintain traditional hunting, fishing and gathering rights. “I always am proud to say that I work for the tribe, and I think part of it is that connection to the land and the connection to the animals, and the holistic way the tribe looks at managing,” she says. “I don’t work in a vacuum, only looking at lynx and lynx habitat, but recognizing that all of the animals are important, and part of the picture and part of that balance that we’re trying to restore.”
Assessments conducted by Washington State University and the nonprofit Conservation Northwest between 2013 and 2019 determined the Kettle Mountains still contained a small number of likely transient lynx and adequate habitat and food for lynx to be re-established there, despite the heavy impacts that megafires have had in the Okanogan Mountains.
With this evidence in hand, Whitney, as the tribes’ wildlife department director, gave his department the go-ahead to jump on board. The 5-year plan was to translocate 10 lynx per year from British Columbia to the Colville Reservation. They hoped the lynx would make their homes there and begin to reproduce. In addition to restoring the community, a major goal was to provide an additional population in western North America as well as increase the chances of connectivity with lynx in B.C. and an existing population in the Okanogan highlands.
The first season, which ran from November 2021 to February 2022, saw three of the nine introduced lynx return to Canada. One of those later made her way back down to the Kettle Mountains, demonstrating that north-south connectivity was not only possible but happening.
During the second season, in October 2022, the team trapped and released the animals earlier in the fall instead of through winter as they had in the first year. “They had an opportunity to get the lay of the land before the winter,” Piccinini says. The team trapped and released 10 lynx the second year, two of which had been captured the first year and had returned to B.C. Earlier this year, the team was planning to set up a geofence and use newer, better GPS-collars to determine more precisely where and how lynx are moving between habitats, which may inform future wildlife corridor projects.
Now, at the beginning of the project’s third year, all metrics point to success. Of the surviving 17 lynx trapped and released in both years, 10 appear to have established themselves in the Kettle Range, while four have returned to B.C. Three of the relocated lynx have since died. This sobering news, however, is at least partially offset by the likelihood of a new litter of kittens born on lands north of the reservation boundary, which if confirmed, will help bolster the local population. Piccinini is anxiously awaiting confirmation from trail cameras she and tribal members have set up in the area. Seven additional lynx were recently captured and, of those, five remain on the reservation.
Shelly Boyd releases a Canada lynx onto the Colville Tribe's reservation.
THE RETURN OF LYNX to the Colville Confederated tribes’ lands represents an important geographical reciprocity. Some of Whitney’s human relatives, too, are re-establishing themselves in B.C., where they once lived with the lynx, the salmon, the elk, and myriad other relatives. “We’re intermingling,” he says. “They’ve taken care of the habitat up there for us and ensured our return, so we’re helping them return as well.”
The territory of Whitney’s band, the Sinixt, extends from Kettle Falls, in Washington State, to the Big Bend area north of Revelstoke, B.C. The Canadian government declared the Sinixt people extinct in 1956 as they were negotiating the first Columbia River Treaty. “They declared us extinct so they didn’t have to do anything,” Whitney told me in his office in Inchelium, Washington, approximately 24 miles as the crow flies from Kettle Falls, which now lies dormant beneath Franklin D. Roosevelt “Lake.”
In order to have the Sinixts’ rights recognized in Canada, Whitney’s uncle, Richard Desautel (after whom Whitney is named), shot an elk in British Columbia on traditional Sinixt territory and turned himself in to the provincial wildlife law enforcement agency. After a series of court victories and appeals in 2021, Desautel and the Sinixt won a landmark supreme court victory in Canada that forced the government to recognize their Aboriginal rights in British Columbia. The tribe recently opened an office in Nelson, B.C. to further assert those rights.
Meanwhile, the tribes haven’t slowed their efforts to restore their community. Next up are burrowing owls, Whitney says, and if possible, buffalo. But only if they’re allowed to run free, he says. Whitney cites historical evidence of the presence of buffalo in the tribes’ territory. “A lot of stories I’ve been told were of folks back in the day who would jump on their horses, ride over to Montana, and round up a bunch of buffalo and bring them back. And then they would persist, however many years, until they either ate them all, they dispersed too far, or they died,” he says. The Kalispel Tribe recently gifted the tribes 33 buffalo, which they released on the range at the beginning of October. “Our goals are being developed and will be compiled into a bison management plan over the winter months,” Whitney says.
Wildlife manager and tribal member Richard Whitney sets a live trap for lynx in the Canadian Okanagan.
Bighorn sheep from the Hellgate herd along the Columbia River on the Colville Tribes Reservation. These animals were restored to the reservation by the tribes.
Whitney loves the work of restoring his community. “We talk about animals like people, like friends,” he says. “I grew up in the woods learning about different animals, and spent time with my father and uncle. A lot of them aren’t around anymore,” he says.
Whitney thinks back to a separate ceremonial release of salmon he participated in at the inundated site of Kettle Falls, where he released salmon into waters that hadn’t known them since the dam blocked access to their ancestral spawning grounds. “It was pretty emotional,” he says. Not long after, some of those same salmon were caught by anglers in the Canadian reaches of the Columbia River. “We have proven that they will go to Canada,” he says.
Traveling in parallel with Whitney and his Sinixt relatives in Canada, the salmon are also traveling north. And along their way, the spawning salmon the tribes have released will provide information about the suitability of spawning habitat along their journey. In turn, this will likely put pressure on the U.S. government to ensure that salmon can pass through the dams on the Columbia River and spawn through the Colville Confederated Tribes’ lands on up into the Canadian headwaters of the Columbia River.
Essentially, voice by voice, individual by individual, the tribes are working together to restore, protect and sustain their community on lands under their jurisdiction by managing those lands in line with their cultural and traditional values with the aid of science. By strengthening the very fabric of the ecosystems their ancestors have been stewarding since time immemorial, they’re strengthening their vital role in those systems — in that community, in that chorus. In this way, the community itself evolves together toward a natural balance that is abundant, resilient, and mutually reciprocal.
“It makes my heart happy,” Whitney says. “It heals me.”
The tracks of a just-released lynx heading into the forest on the Colville Reservation.
Rico Moore is a freelance journalist based in Port Townsend, Washington, whose work has been published by High Country News, The Margin and others. He is also on the board of directors for the Society of Environmental Journalists.
David Moskowitz's current work as a photographer focuses on wildlife and wildlands conservation, with an emphasis on mountain landscapes and the intersection of Indigenous sovereignty and conservation in western North America. He is the photographer and author of three books: Wildlife of the Pacific Northwest, Wolves in the Land of Salmon and Caribou Rainforest. He resides in north-central Washington.
T he Métis National Council and the Government of Canada will be working collaboratively, Nation-to-Nation, to develop a process to engag...
To Veronica Brown
Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.
OUR HISTORY
BOOK 5: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects
