PORT ANGELES — A city councilman who wrote fellow Realtors urging them “to draw a line in the sand” about land that overlies Native American ancestral sites says he meant “asking valid questions that need to be asked and hard questions that need to be answered.”
Larry Williams, in an e-mail to Port Angeles and Sequim real estate agents, wrote: “We need to draw the line in the sand here and now and assert the treaty agreements and purchases that have been made since the first ‘foreigners’ landed.”
On Monday, he told Peninsula Daily News: “We have to drag out the treaties and examine the treaties for what kind of power the tribe can claim.”
The 1855 Point No Point Treaty cleared the way for non-Native ownership of land on the North Olympic Peninsula, including the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe whose Tse-whit-zen village was unearthed by construction of the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard.
The Klallam had “usual and accustomed” hunting and fishing grounds from the Hoko River on the west to the Hamma Hamma River on the east, said Lower Elwha Chairwoman Frances Charles.
‘Foreigners’ reference
Williams said his reference to “foreigners” is “a characterization that is floating around out there.”
Charles said she has never used the word, speaking instead of “Europeans” who met indigenous peoples in the 18th century.
As for that confrontation, she said: “We were here to greet you.”
She added that before the federal government allowed Native Americans to own land, “people moving into Port Angeles were running out the Indian people. They were chasing out our Native people from where they had grown up.
“I would hope that some of it would come out right for what had occurred.”
In his e-mail, distributed in advance of last week’s state Transportation Commission community meeting in Port Angeles, Williams called the state’s decision to shut down the graving yard “the Three Mile Island of the harborside development industry and it needs to be shut down, contained, and cleaned up now before it spins out of control any further.”
Williams said Monday that the tribe’s resolve that ancestral remains be left undisturbed on the 22.5-acre graving yard site is similar to issues occurring throughout the region and nation.
Other transportation projects in question include a bridge over the Columbia River, the Evergreen Point floating bridge and the Alaskan Way viaduct in Seattle.
“And that’s just in our region,” he said.
Asserting claim asserted
Williams told other Realtors that the Lower Elwha “are now asserting claim to the entire harbor from the Coast Guard station to Port Townsend” on behalf of other tribes on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Williams said he had not spoken with Charles on that issue, but Charles said the notion that tribes want to claim the entire shoreline was “bulls–t.”
The Lower Elwha “have shared information with a lot of the other nations about how we are going to be challenged in the future,” she said.
“It is something we definitely talk to our neighboring tribes about. The Northwest tribes stand united.”
Charles added that her tribe had signed memoranda of agreement and understanding with the city and the Port of Port Angeles that the agencies would protect ancestral burials on the shoreline.
“Maybe they need to go back and review those policies and those regulations and understand the laws,” she said.
Wide distribution
His e-mail has been circulated to the Washington and National Association of Realtors, Williams said, although he said he did not speak for any real estate group.
It also has had wide circulation to other computers on the Peninsula, including that of Native American activist Keith Hunter of Neah Bay.
Hunter in turn e-mailed his supporters: “This is but one example of . . . recent attempts at escalating racial tensions and recklessly endangering civil rights protections . . . by local elected and civic leaders.”
“It’s not the disagreement,” he said Monday. “It’s the way the disagreement is expressed.”
Williams said he has received “a couple of e-mails expressing appreciation for taking a stand.”
He said he sent his message to Realtors to draw them to the Feb. 14 open meeting about the graving yard hosted by the Transportation Commission in the Red Lion Hotel.
“We need to be clear: If no graving dock construction can disturb the ancestors, then no other type of construction can take place there either,” he wrote.
“It will be a grassy memorial park — period.”
Elwha Dam removal
Williams also wrote: “The whole story about the Elwha Dam removal and numerous other simmering disputes are the tip of the iceberg.
“We are now getting a glimpse at the true danger of inaction, and we need to get someone’s attention about the gravity of this whole incident — now.”
Asked what the graving yard had to do with the Elwha Dam, “it all involves the tribe,” he said Monday.
Charles said Williams needed to read the federal legislation that initiated the dam removal — and another removal upstream — long before the Tse-whit-zen issue arose.
Williams’ e-mail also said the controversy could make the 26-year-old Boldt fishing-rights decision “pale in comparison.
“The Boldt decision will seem like a grade school lunchroom food fight over fish sticks,” he wrote.
Williams said Monday: “My job as an elected official is to attempt to reconcile what’s going on (at the graving yard site). My job as a real estate professional is to ask some very hard, probing questions.”
The e-mail also called the tribe’s position an “attempt to reverse history.”
Absence of discussion
On Monday, Williams characterized it as “the idea of shoving the invaders back into the sea, a modern-day Dunkirk in the absence of reasonable discussions around a table.”
Charles, however, said the tribe has invited such discussions but has had no takers.
“We have not been contacted about this except by hearsay,” she said, “just the rumors. We have offered many times to sit down with the local governments to talk to them.
“I have never gotten a call.
“We need to make this a government-to-government discussion. It’s something we will work out together, but it is not going to happen overnight.”
Archaeologists have called Tse-whit-zen, where they found a 2,700-year-old firepit, one of the biggest Native American discoveries in the nation.
Williams said Monday he wants more documentation “on just how world-class this site is.”
“If we can verify that this is indeed what at first blush it appears to be,” he said, “we have other areas along the waterfront as an acceptable alternative (for the graving yard) while recognizing the historic and cultural significance of this find.”
Should it match archaeologists’ expectations, Tse-whit-zen should be treated like Ayers Rock in Australia, the pyramids of Mexico and Central America, the catacombs of Rome, “and other similar archaeological, historical, spiritual finds around the world,” he said.
Williams said he deplored that individuals and organizations who disagreed with the tribe had been characterized as racist.
“I am trying harder than ever to say the extremes on either side of this must be dealt with,” he said.
“When you don’t have an open and free exchange of ideas, all it does is breed speculation.”
Charles thanked Williams for visiting the tribe in 2003 to outline economic opportunities the Lower Elwha shared with the city.
She said, however, Williams’ e-mail “makes it very difficult to have an open mind and a perception of that we all are involved to be united.”
She said the tribe still would “try to educate those who want to remain open-minded.”