The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe wants the state Department of Transportation to halt its multimillion-dollar graving yard project and pull it off the Port Angeles waterfront.
The Lower Elwha Tribal Council made its decision Thursday and delivered its request in writing Friday to state Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald.
Both MacDonald and Frances G. Charles, tribal chairwoman, said the immediate result of the request is that both sides have lots of talking to do.
“We’re going to talk about this with the tribe next week,” MacDonald said Saturday.
“All parties will get together for a meeting this coming week,” Charles said.
“This is the first time that the tribe has said to us that they want the project stopped,” MacDonald said.
The issue certainly will come up at a state Transportation Commission meeting on Wednesday in Vancouver.
Charles said she was optimistic that work would cease at the graving yard.
“I’m hopeful,” she said Saturday. “I have good feelings.”
She added that the tribe would seek support and help from U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks and U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, Democrats from Belfair, Shoreline and Mountlake Terrace, respectively.
Village site
The 22.5-acre Marine Drive site, where the state plans to build concrete anchors and pontoons for the Hood Canal Bridge, is where the Elwha Klallam village of Tse-whit-sen stood for at least 17 centuries before it was razed around 1920 to build a lumber mill.
Work on the graving yard began in August 2003 but stopped three weeks later when digging unearthed partial skeletal remains of 12 Native American adults and one infant, as well as numerous artifacts.
Since then, archeologists and tribal members have found the full remains of at least 265 Klallam ancestors, almost 800 isolated skeletal parts and more than 5,000 artifacts.
Both the tribe and state archaeologists say Tse-whit-zen is the largest discovery of its type in the region.
At issue are the undiscovered remains that would be entombed beneath a concrete dock big enough to fit four battleships the size of the USS Missouri, according to Department of Transportation schematics.