The Environmental Priorities Coalition, which includes environmental groups such as the Washington Environmental Council and the Sierra Club, and faith groups such as Faith Action Network, met recently to set priorities. A tentative list of 2023 priorities include salmon recovery, housing affordability and density, recycling, water, forests and land use. There are still issues pending…
For those of you who are not aware, literally thousands of bodies of Indian children are being discovered and exhumed from boarding school sites all across the continent. Yes, Unitarian Universalists also had missionaries running board schools. Sec. Haaland has ordered review of all US Boarding Schools (https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/secretary-haaland-announces-federal-indian-boarding-school-initiative) and UUs have been identified (https://boardingschoolhealing.org/healing/for-churches/ ). The…
This article is one of a pair of stories about the Skagit River and the federal process to relicense three major hydroelectric dams along its length. Read the companion story here. As he explored his ancestral homeland, Schuyler visited the upper Skagit River Valley, where he encountered the Gorge Dam. When the city of Seattle…
Being Native American may mean being deeply involved in protecting, teaching and advancing the knowledge and traditions of one’s tribe(s). Or it may mean being less connected to tribal communities while maintaining unique Native American identities in other ways within the larger society. There is no “one way” to be Native American. Every tribe and…
There’s a widespread notion that “tribal sovereignty” and “Indian treaties” are legal, historical, practical and correct terms. Actually, sovereignty is sovereignty, and treaties are treaties, nation to nation is between and among sovereigns; the use of “tribal” or “Indian” or any modifier is both misleading and belittling. A two-year research project, Reclaiming Native Truth,released its…
