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Muckleshoot Tribe to Loose Sacred Sites

Treaty Rights Threatened in Huckleberry Mountain Land Exchange



"Huckleberry Mountain is part of our past, our present, and our future.
And our access to it is protected by law through federally guaranteed treaties"
- Muckleshoot Tribal Chairman, John Daniels Jr. said recently.


A proposed land exchange between the U.S. Forest Service and Weyerhaeuser Corporation threatens the Muckleshoot Tribe's claim to land on Huckleberry Mountain and threatens to destroy precious culturally significant lands on the mountain.

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:

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:



Compiled by Lindsay Brown
with information from:

Muckleshoot Tribe
39015 172nd Ave SE
Auburn WA 98002
Phone: (206) 939-3311.

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



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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Copyright © 1997 WFP Collective, Inc.