Climate and World Change Proposal

[David Lockmiller]

Can This Tribe of ‘Salmon People’ Pull Off One More Win?

On the gray, rocky beach where the coal terminal would have been, I met with Raynell Squil-le-he-le Morris, a Lummi elder who worked on Native affairs in the Clinton administration. I asked her: What were the lessons of Cherry Point?

“It’s been put on us to bring an Indigenous framework to this Western way,” she said. “With local governments, county governments, state governments, federal governments and agencies, we have to ensure that the framework of Indigenous traditional cultures are valued — at the same level as science.”

The Lummi-led victory marked a high point of recognition, but extinguished only one project in the Salish Sea. Another such fight would require the same respect from the Canadian government. Ottawa is reviewing a $3 billion proposal for the construction of a new causeway and an artificial island to increase the Port of Vancouver’s capacity by 2.4 million shipping containers a year. . . . In the Roberts Bank [Terminal 2] review, the Lummi forced their way to the table. . . . Among the speakers was Ms. Morris. “We need to stop the stressors. Stop the bleeding,” she told regulators.

For those persons able to access this New York Times opinion-article, you will be rewarded with a photograph captioned “Shore birds and waterfowl on the tidal flats near the proposed location of the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 project.” Where else in the world would you be able to see such a scene of nature?

This New York Times opinion-article is wonderfully written by E. Tammy Kim. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, and a co-author and co-editor of Punk Ethnography, a book about the politics of contemporary world music. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The New Yorker and many other outlets.

Damon Winter is a staff photographer currently on assignment for Opinion. He received the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography.