Muckleshoot Tribe to Loose Sacred Sites

Treaty Rights Threatened in Huckleberry Mountain Land Exchange

The Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, with historical ties dating back as far as 8,000 years ago, continue to practice their traditional way of life in the Pacific Northwest from Mt. Rainier, south to Mt. St. Helens, along the Cascade Mountain Range to Puget Sound.

Established in the mid-1850s under the Medicine Creek Treaty and the Treaty of Point Elliott, the Muckleshoot Reservation consists of six 740-acre sections, connected through a diagonal pattern. The entire reservation is approximately 3,840 acres. Land ownership has been a continual problem for the Tribe as federal policies changed from assimilation back to self-determinism. Since these conflicts began, the Tribe has made re-acquisition of lands within its reservation a high priority. Their current struggle to hold onto the Tribe's hunting and fishing rights and sacred sites has resulted in a federal lawsuit to oppose the land exchange between the U.S. Forest Service and Weyerhaeuser.

The exchange involves the swapping of 4,362 acres of public land, pristine, mature forests, containing many of the Tribe's sacred and cultural sites, for 30,253 acres of Weyerhaeuser's recently clear-cut land in the Snoqualmie-Mt. Baker National Forest.

The purpose of the exchange is to consolidate checkerboard land patterns that the Forest Service and Weyerhaeuser claim are difficult to manage. The Tribe is concerned that Weyerhaeuser is interested in the exchange primarily to avoid federal forest management practices. The Muckleshoot Tribe was never invited into the contract negotiations of the land exchange agreement and as a result, the Forest Service did not adequately address the cultural and environmental impacts. Huckleberry Mountain is an integral part of the Tribe's living culture, and access to the Mountain is protected through federally guaranteed hunting and fishing treaty rights.

A majority of the 4,362 acres traded to the timber company will be clear-cut within 5-10 years, destroying all that is left of the Tribe's history and heritage on Huckleberry Mountain. Weyerhaeuser would walk away from the exchange with 200 million board feet of harvestable timber; the USFS with only half as much. And, Weyerhaeuser will harvest the trees of its newly acquired land 15 times faster then the USFS would have. It is for these reasons that the Tribe opposes the exchange. Also opposed to the exchange are the Pilchuck Audubon Society and the Huckleberry Mountain Protection Society.

In response to the lawsuits, Weyerhaeuser has announced that they will halt negotiations until the lawsuit between the USFS and the Tribe has been settled. A decision is expected at the end of 1997.

What the Muckleshoot Tribe wants in the exchange:

• Preserve historic sites: The Tribe requests that the Forest Service and Weyerhaeuser work with the Tribe to conduct a full cultural property review as required under Bulletin 38 of the National Historic Preservation Act. All sites eligible for historic preservation should be listed on the register and removed from the exchange.
• Honor treaty rights: Once historic cultural sites have been removed from the exchange, and if the exchange is still viable, the Tribe's federally guaranteed treaty rights must be included with the deeds of exchange between the Forest Service and Weyerhaeuser.
• Preserve habitat: If the lands are exchanged, Weyerhaeuser must adhere to national forest management practices or specific prescriptive practices to preserve habitat on the traded lands of Huckleberry Mountain.

The valuation used to negotiate the terms of this exchange includes neither the value of the Tribe's cultural sites nor the cost the public will have to pay to restore over 30,000 acres of clear-cut lands. The land being traded to Weyerhaeuser is worth $2.1 million while the land being traded to the USFS is worth $14 million dollars. However, 97 percent of the land going to Weyerhaeuser contains harvestable timber worth $280 million. Only 22 percent of the land being traded to the Forest Service contains harvestable timber - and 90 percent of that has recently been clear-cut - worth $12 million. When land and timber values are combined the public loses $128 million.

The Tribe has outlined several principles to guide the exchange process in the future. They are:

• Future land exchanges must involve tribes as an equal partner.
• Future land exchanges must preserve irreplaceable tribal culture and history.
• Future land exchanges must formally recognize, within the deeds of exchange, treaty rights as property rights which run with the land.
• Lands exchanged out of the public domain should follow forest management practices that ensure preservation of habitat.
• Consideration should be given to placing exchange lands that contain cultural properties and sacred sites in trust for the tribes.

Compiled by Lindsay Brown
with information from:

Phone: (206) 939-3311.

Reprinted from On Indian Land, PO Box 2104, Seattle WA 98111.

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Letters supporting The Muckleshoot Tribe
and their position on the land exchange can be written to:

Senator Patty Murray
U.S. Senate
Washington DC 20510

and:

Representatives Norm Dicks, Adam Smith,
Jennifer Dunn and Jim McDermott
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington DC 20515.

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Contents this page were published in the November/December, 1997 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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