Page 12
Commentary
Street Roots • Aug. 21-27, 2015
Coal dust hovers over a train traveling through ike Columbia Gorge.
Native Americans are battling hate groups along with environmental degradation in their fight for the Gorge
BY STEPHYIU QUIRKE
CO N TR IB UTIN G C O LU M N IS T
hen it comes to environmental
destruction, Northwest tribes
typically have the most to lose.
It should come as no surprise, then, that
Native Americans of the Northwest have
delivered some of the strongest blows to
plans that would turn the Northwest into a
massive coal chute to Asia.
The Columbia River Gorge was once a
superhighway for salmon before dams were
built. As hard-fought recovery plans and
improved river management are finally
coming into effect, fossil fuel companies
from outside the region have decided to
transform the river into a fossil fuel freeway.
This has led to opposition everywhere from
the mines in Montana to rail-side
communities in places like Spokane, with air
quality advocates standing united with
Columbia River fishermen, and a huge wave
of opponents calling for a stop to climate
change.
According to Twa-le Abrahamson-Swan,
air quality coordinator for the Spokane
Tribe, “Tribal fishing rights are a major
force for environmental protection in the
Northwest, especially on fossil fuel
terminals.” The results of those rights have
already been striking: In August, the Yakama
Nation shot down the Morrow Pacific coal
terminal in Boardman, and is currently
opposing the Tesoro/Savage oil terminal in
Vancouver. In April the Swinomish filed a
lawsuit to stop oil trains from passing over
W
their reservation en route to a Tesoro
refinery in March Point, near Anacortes,
Wash. Puget Sound, the Lummi Nation is
successfully beating back a proposal to
construct the largest coal port in North
America, which would not only interfere
with their tribal fishing fleet, but also send
numerous Uncovered coal trains through
Gorge cities, including Portland.
According to BNSF, a single railcar
traveling its entire route can lose between
500 pounds to a ton of coal dust. The U.S.
Department of Transportation classifies this
dust as a “pernicious ballast foulant,”
meaning it can weaken and destabilize
tracks, leading to derailment.
Faced with difficult facts and an extensive
network organizing against it, the coal
industry has attempted to create an angry
backlash to attack opponents. In effect, the
backers of new coal terminals have
attempted to re-start networks that spawned
the infamous “Wise -Use” movement of the
1990s, which saw timber giants paying white
supremacists and militia groups to harass
and assault environmental activists. While it
may seem unlikely for some, the potential
for such an alliance is still alive today, and
moves have already been made to ally coal
exports with white supremacist and anti-
Indian organizations.
Coal’s Image Problem
The Alliance for Northwest Jobs and
Exports was the original industry front
group promoting coal terminals in
Washington and Oregon. The three still
remaining are opposed by the Yakama, the
Cowlitz and the Lummi for impacts to the
specific terminal sites, and by all the tribes
of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians
for their dispersed effects on climate
change, fishing rights and airbom coal dust.
“There are groups that are pulling coal
out of the river now,” says Twa-le
Abrahamson-Swan of the Spokane Tribe.
“We have fishermen on the Columbia River
that are being impacted by coal now. In
some areas the wind is already blowing coal
dust right onto them. And there’s even a
lawsuit in the works now because coal has
already spilled into the river.”
Although supported by unions that would
financially benefit from coal exports, the
Alliance for Northwest Jobs has clearly
struggled with their message to the general
public.
This became , especially obvious in
October 2013 when its PR spokesperson
from Edelman was recorded at a coal
conference by an independent journalist.
The spokeswoman, Lauri Hennessey,
recalled being reprimanded by one of her
clients at Peabody for telling Seattle
residents that her organization cared about
climate change.
“You were quoted saying ‘Of course we
worry about climate change’? We don’t
believe in climate change!” Hennessey
recalled to a vice president from Arch Coal.
“And I remember I was on the phone and
I was like ‘Well, I can’t say that - 1 can’t say
that in Seattle!”
The Alliance decided to drop Edelman’s
services after the audio recording became
public, but the incident was surprisingly
tame compared to then-current dialogue in
Whatcom County, Wash.
Coal jobs meet white pride
The main obstacle for the coal port near
Bellingham is the political power of the
Lummi Nation, a fishing people who have
co-existed with marine life in the Puget
Sound for over 3,500 years. After the coal
developers purposely desecrated an ancient
Lummi village site, constructing four miles
of roads without consulting or asking anyone
for permission, the tribes ceremoniously
burned a giant check from the coal
companies, and have repeatedly told
government agencies to deny their permits
ever since - a request that is likely to be
honored by federal permitting agencies.
“Many letters to the editor in Whatcom
County have tried to paint the Lummi
Nation as a kind of special interest'
interfering in the economy,” says Matt
Petryni of RE Sources, a non-profit based in
Bellingham. “We don’t know if these are
coming from the coal developers, but many
of us are suspicious.”
In April 2013, a group calling itself the
Citizens Equal Rights Alliance (CERA)
hosted a conference in Bellingham - near
both the Lummi Nation and the proposed
Gateway Pacific coal terminal that they say
would badly disrupt their tribal fishing fleet.
See COAL TRAINS page 13
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