THE SETTLEMENT signed Aug. 14 by Gov. Chris Gregoire, Lower Elwha Tribal Chairwoman Frances Charles, Port Angeles Mayor Karen Rogers and Port Commissioner Bill Hannan includes these provisions:
* The tribe receives the central 11 acres of the 22.5-acre site that overlie Tse-whit-zen, an ancestral village and cemetery; $2.5 million to rebury ancestors, preserve artifacts and construct a museum.
The state will retain the Marine Drive portion of the canceled graving yard but lease it at low or no rent to the tribe to build the museum.
The money is in addition to $3.4 million the state gave the tribe in 2004 and about $600,000 in unpaid wages the tribe received in 2005.
The state also will remove the massive concrete slab and steel sheet pilings from the canceled graving yard and regrade it with clean fill.
Earth removed earlier from the site and trucked to the Fields Shotwell Recycling Facility west of Port Angeles will be returned to Tse-whit-zen if tribal members find that it contains remains or artifacts.
* The Port gets $7.5 million — 126 percent of its 2006 regular revenue — and the shoreline slice of the graving yard that links Port properties on both sides of Tse-whit-zen.
The land includes a coffer dam the Port is considering transforming into a barge dock.
The Port had sold the entire site to the state — under threat of condemnation — for $4.84 million in 2002.
* The city likewise receives $7.5 million for economic development, $480,000 to hire an archaeologist who will survey the harborfront for Native American remains, and up to $500,000 to attract businesses to town or to keep them here.
For comparison, the city’s anticipated 2006 revenues prior to the settlement totaled more than $104 million.
The graving yard agreement was reached after five months of formal negotiations that followed a year of fruitless informal discussions between the Lower Elwha Klallam and the state.
By the time the graving yard was stopped in December 2004, archaeologists had recovered 337 intact burials, thousands of skeletal fragments and 10,000 artifacts.
Portions of Tse-whit-zen date back 2,700 years, and archaeologists say it is the largest Native American village ever discovered in Washington.
The tribe now hopes to rebury its ancestors at the site within a year.
Peninsula Daily News