20th Century Woman

In less than 3 weeks we will know whether the Whatcom Chief, our brave little ferry, will be taking us on an hour long journey through dangerous waters when we go to the mainland.  For more than 100 years it has been making a 5 minute trip across Hales Passage to the Lummi Reservation.  Now the tribe says that must stop.  Today the ferry made a trial run on the hour long voyage to Fairhaven, to try docking there, “weather permitting.”

Weather permitted.  The sun shone, the sky was blue , the water lay calm and still.  The ferry is back now, chugging back and forth across Hales Passage.

Everyone who lives here knows that it will be devastating to this small island if we no longer have easy access to the mainland.  People are laying in food supplies, those with children in school are contemplating renting an apartments in town so their kids can keep going to school.  (We have an elementary school on the island, but beyond that kids are bussed to the mainland.)  Jerry and I are thinking that we may have to get a condo or a house in town for use when we have medical appointments or other necessary in town obligations.  This we could do, but it would use up all our discretionary spending money and limit out lives a lot.  We would probably have to sell the house in Alaska.

I find this situation sad in a number of ways.  It isn’t just that I don’t like having my peaceful old age disrupted with sudden, unexpected difficulties.  That happens to people of all ages, and you just do the best you can to get on with it.  I wouldn’t mind so much if was because of some natural occurrence.  People rush to aid each other in those cases.

The population of Lummi Island is only a little over 1000.  I feel, as do lot of others, that we are abandoned by our government.  The county is showing little interest in helping us.  No information is forthcoming on the so-called “negotiations” that may or may not be taking place with the tribe.  I think the “trial run” to Fairhaven is silly.  Sending the ferry to Fairhaven is not a viable solution.  It would almost surely, for one thing, triple the fare, which is presently about $10.  There is talk of daily commuters who work in Bellingham riding as passengers and keeping a car on the other side, but that would cost $6 per day parking. And it would add 2 hours or more (weather permitting) to their commuting time.

Senators and Representatives in Washington have been contacted, and have shown no interest at all in our problem.

It makes me even sadder to think that it is my neighbors on the reservation who have created this problem for me and the other inhabitants of the island.  I have always felt sympathy for the Lummis.  They were terribly treated by the settlers who began to move into this land 200 years ago.  They were forbidden to speak their own language, and their culture was systematically destroyed.  They are trying now to recover some of that lost culture but they still bear the scars of the old persecution.  However, these wrongs will not be redressed by making life difficult for their neighbors and friends across the water.  It will be much more likely to fan the flame of the racism that surely lingers still.

I wish that we on the island had established closer ties to the Lummi Nation in the past.  Everyone benefits from mutual interaction, and we have a lot to learn from each other.  I want to know about how the first humans lived in this place that is home to us and to the Lummis.  My neighbor, Mike, showed me a book about the history of the Coastal Salish people (Exploring Coast Salish Prehistory, by Julie K Stein).  They arrived here just as the last ice receded, about 10,000 years ago.  When they first arrived the ice had so recently melted that there were not even any shell fish to be had.  Today’s Lummis are descended from those people, who learned to survive and whose culture evolved here on the San Juan Archipelago.

It makes me sad that an island group has hired a lawyer and a public relations firm to represent us.  I wish we hadn’t had to do this.  Our elected government should represent both us and the Lummis, and solve this problem to the benefit of both groups.  The retainer for the lawyer, before he opened a book or talked to anyone, was $20,000.  That was so he would give us an opinion.  The money has been paid.  There is as yet no opinion, and it is now said that legal fees may go over $100,000.  Why?  What is the lawyer going to do?  The public relations person is collecting letters from islanders about what the ferry means to them.  What is she doing with these letters?  I have seen little in the way of a public relations blitz.

I am sure that there is a solution.  I am sure that we are not without bargaining points.  It looks as though, absent any real diligence or interest on the part of the County, the State or the Federal Government, we will have to do this ourselves.  Our government doesn’t care.  That makes me sad.

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Below is an excerpt from an on line law reference.  I think it shows clearly that if the Government wanted to act, it could do so.

Although Native Americans have been held to have both inherent rights and rights guaranteed, either explicitly or implicitly, by treaties with the federal government, the government retains the ultimate power and authority to either abrogate or protect Native American rights. This power stems from several legal sources. One is the power that the Constitution gives to Congress to make regulations governing the territory belonging to the United States (Art. IV, Sec. 3, Cl. 2), and another is the president’s constitutional power to make treaties (Art. II, Sec. 2, Cl. 2). A more commonly cited source of federal power over Native American affairs is the COMMERCE CLAUSE of the U.S. Constitution, which provides that “Congress shall have the Power … to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes” (Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 3). This clause has resulted in what is known as Congress’s “plenary power” over Indian affairs, which means that Congress has the ultimate right to pass legislation governing Native Americans, even when that legislation conflicts with or abrogates Indian treaties. The most well-known case supporting this congressional right is Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U.S. 553, 23 S. Ct. 216, 47 L. Ed. 299 (1903), in which Congress broke a treaty provision that had guaranteed that no more cessions of land would be made without the consent of three-fourths of the adult males from the Kiowa and Comanche tribes. In justifying this abrogation, Justice EDWARD D. WHITE declared that when “treaties were entered into between the United States and a tribe of Indians it was never doubted that the power to abrogate existed in Congress, and that in a contingency such power might be availed of from considerations of governmental policy.”

Those of you who don’t live on Lummi Island, the center of the universe, may believe that there are important news items to think about: things like health care, earthquakes, unemployment, or even the fact that the space station toilet is stopped up (astronaut pee contains a lot of calcium) or that an 8 year old kid named Mikey is on the no fly list (he has the same name as a terrorist).

We on this important island (population about 1000 in winter, growing to 3000 in summer), however, know that what actually matters in the public realm is the ferry.

Many people (that is, many among the select group who have ever heard of Lummi Island) think that the island is part of the Lummi Indian Reservation.  It isn’t.  The ferry crosses Hales Passage, a five minute run, and docks on the mainland at Gooseberry Point which is in the Lummi Nation.  In order to get to Bellingham one has to pass through about 10 miles of reservation land.

Like many others, I like passing through the reservation.  There is another culture to learn about, another tight-knit community to compare with the outside, and, along the shore, some beautiful sights of fishing eagles and gulls, islands, sand bars and mountain views.

A ferry has been operating across Hales Passage for more than 100 years.  At first it was operated by the owners of a salmon cannery (no longer in existence) located here on the island which employed thousands of people, many Chinese.  In 1924 the ferry and the route became county property.  The present ferry, the steel, double-ended dual diesel powered Whatcom Chief, was built in 1962.

The ferry at night

I love the Whatcom Chief.  When I first moved to the island, 10 years ago, I was 67 years old and newly divorced.  My divorce was polite, but all divorces are stressful.  I felt terrible about leaving the man I had been married to for 20 years, a nice, smart man, but one who had an intractable alcohol problem.  Whenever I pulled my car into the ferry queue after a day in Bellingham taking care of my mother or my ex-husband (both often had medical issues) or doing errands, the sight of the Whatcom Chief meant that I was about to leave my troubles behind.

Five minutes would take me to a slower, quieter world: a world of woods and fields, of beaches and sunsets, of cows and llamas and sheep.  A world of crab pots and organic gardens and parties.  A world where most mornings I walked down the hill to the coffee shop called “Well, Latte Dah!” next to the only island store, and while drinking my latte worked a crossword puzzle with my friend Gwen, who owned the coffee business.

I got to know the hardworking folk who run the ferry.  Many of them are my neighbors.  They are out on the deck or on the bridge in all weathers and rough seas.  They tumble out of bed at all hours and power up the ferry to get people to the hospital for medical emergencies.

The ferry is our life-line to the mainland.  It takes children to school.  It brings the power trucks over when we have a power failure.  It brings the police over if crimes are committed (though that is rare in this tranquil place).  It brings the recycling and garbage trucks.  And the mail.  And UPS, and FED-EX.  It takes people back and forth to work in Bellingham.

I can’t imagine how we would get on without the ferry.

In September the Lummi tribe announced that the dock lease at Gooseberry Point would end on February 14 (yes, Valentine’s Day) 2010.  They will not renew it, they say.  They want Gooseberry Point for a marina and a wildlife refuge.

The island was stunned.  The county had negotiated a 25 year lease with the tribe a few years ago.  However, the lease needed to be okayed and signed by someone at the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, and the person who was supposed to do that had died before he got around to signing it.  End of lease.

A group of islanders has organized and hired a law firm.  There are people in the group at the extremes of the greater political spectrum, but they are working together on this.  There is a web site.

There is no viable alternative to a ferry dock on Indian land.  The configuration of the coastline is such that any other place would mean a ferry journey of at least an hour.  The Whatcom Chief, fine vessel that it is, could not manage hour long trips in rough seas.

There are recriminations back and forth in the press between the tribe and the island folk.  The tribe says it might go for a 70 month lease if the county spends millions of dollars on reservation roads and sidewalks.  The trouble with that is that the county, in these days of recession, hasn’t got much money to negotiate with.

I don’t think the ferry will stop running.  But I am not sure.  The county is run by an executive who keeps getting reelected (he’s been in office for the entire 15 years I have lived in Whatcom County), but his skills are political, not administrative, and I am told his legal advisor is lazy and marginally competent.  That would seem to be born out be our present predicament.

Islanders are nervously stocking up on staple food and supplies at Costco.  My dentist, who has a house here on the island, says he is looking into buying a landing craft.  People are worried about property values and obtaining mortgages.

There’s a rumor that the tribe will put a chain across the Gooseberry Point dock on Valentine’s Day.

One thing I am sure of: a ferry fare increase.

Seasons change slowly here in the Pacific Northwest. 

Not like in Alaska where it’s hot and never dark in summer.  There flowers erupt sequentially in frantic bursts: wild irises, bluebells, wild roses, delphiniums and finally fireweed, together with sudden swarms of monarch butterflies and dragonflies.   And always, always mosquitoes constantly pursued by darting iridescent swallows.  The fireweed turns orange and red and fall lasts a few days. Then, lickety-split, it’s winter; it’s cold and white and always dark.

Here on the island day by day there is a gradual change.  Days get shorter, cooler, it rains a little more often, birds, except for jays, are quieter, blackberries ripen and fall, rose hips turn from yellow to red and the flowers make seeds by the thousands.

The reefnetters are still fishing.  Out in Legoe Bay their long boats are lined up facing the incoming tide flow, buoys stretching the long nets between them.  The fishermen stand watch on tall platforms waiting to see schools of migrating salmon swim into the artificial reef.  This way of fishing is derived from an ancient native practice, in which the boats and nets were made of cedar.  Lummi Island is one of the few places where reefnetting is still done.

Reefnetters watching for salmon

Reefnetting is said to result in fish of higher quality because there is less trauma incurred in catching them, and thus less of the bitter tasting lactic acid released into their muscle.  In addition, protected or unwanted species can be separated and released without harm, so it is considered to be an ecologically sound method.

reeling in the net

Reefnetting is all that is left of commercial fishing here on the island.  At the turn of the 20th century there were two busy canneries, and the population of the island was about 2000.  The canneries are gone.

remains of the old cannery

Summer may be slipping away slowly, but not so the ferry.  A ten minute walk from Legoe Bay, where we can watch the fishermen, is the ferry dock.  All of a sudden, tomorrow, our faithful car ferry, the Whatcom Chief, will chug off to Seattle for her annual overhaul, and we will have only a passenger ferry for the next 3 weeks.

Dry dock is a special time on the island.  The tourists vanish.  There is hardly any traffic.  That’s because there’s no place to go.  Jerry and I are lucky to live within walking distance of the ferry dock, so we won’t have to hunt for a parking place there.  Parking near the ferry dock on the mainland is at a premium now.  Everyone who needs to go to town during the next 3 weeks keeps a car in the parking lot on the mainland.

The Whatcom Chief

The last days before dry dock are a rush of getting all the heavy stuff one needs for 3 weeks stored up.  Delivery trucks are all over the place, and the construction people frantically lay in supplies.  And we all plan the best time to get a car on the other side.  There are always those who wait till the last minute, and they are sorry.

the ferry line the day before dry dock

This is how the ferry line looked at noon today when the ferry crew were having lunch. 

We like drydock.  We have parties.  We meet neighbors we haven’t seen for ages on the foot ferry.  Everything slows down. 

Last year when the ferry came back the trim was painted black and yellow.  The big question is: what color will they paint it this year?