PORT ANGELES — Two big things must happen, says Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s daughter, if the community is to heal from divisions caused over the discovery of an ancient Klallam burial ground on lucrative waterfront industrial property.
First, said visiting Nontombi-Naomi Tutu on Saturday, Lower Elwha Klallam tribal members and non-Native Port Angeles residents must embrace all aspects of each other’s history as their own.
That means the good and the bad, she said.
And second, spaces must be created where people with opposing viewpoints can speak honestly as well as listen to each other intently.
Those were two of the major themes hammered home by Tutu, daughter of the South African Nobel Peace Prize recipient, during a talk delivered to about 250 people Saturday night in the Port Angeles High School auditorium.
“Tse-whit-zen is the symbol of a relationship that has gone awry for a long time — the relationship between Native Americans and the rest of the Port Angeles community,” said Tutu, referring to the ancestral village uncovered at the site of the canceled Hood Canal Bridge graving yard project in Port Angeles.
“What something like Tse-whit-zen gives us is an opportunity to ask ourselves: How did we get here?”
Having arrived in Port Angeles on Friday and scheduled to leave today, Tutu spent almost all of her hours here learning about the controversy and emotion that erupted when the state Department of Transportation canceled the graving yard project last Dec. 21 at the prompting of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
On Saturday morning, Tutu was given a two-hour tour of the site by Lower Elwha leaders, including Tribal Chairwoman Frances G. Charles.
Tutu then facilitated a private and anonymous meeting with a dozen city leaders who openly exchanged viewpoints on still simmering controversy.
Tutu — who earns an income traveling around the world speaking about racial, gender and class conflicts based in part on her knowledge of apartheid in South Africa and her homeland’s post-apartheid struggle — said being an outsider with no vested interests in the Port Angeles community allows her to tell people on both sides things she feels they need to hear.