Lummi Nation

Commentary: National focus narrows consideration of potential environmental damages.

A celebration of life for Southern Resident orca Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut was a call to action as well as a remembrance.

The remains of captive Southern Resident orca whale Sk’aliCh’elh’tenaut (Tokitae/Lolita) will be laid to rest in the waters where her orca pod still resides much of the year.

Commentary: It takes a community to raise and harvest an oyster.

Commentary: Knowledge and awareness of the challenges Indigenous peoples face are good; what matters is action.

Inspired to keep alive the work of past generations and influenced by care for future generations, a nonprofit video production group’s current project focuses on the “Salmon People.”

Public school districts are working with tribes to develop a crucial new curriculum on tribal sovereignty and treaty rights.

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day is observed on May 5, and in an installation at the Lightcatcher Building through May 15.

Messages from Indigenous youth with eyes on environmental justice and the future will be featured at a Mother Earth Day celebration presented by Children of the Setting Sun Productions at Bellingham’s Maritime Heritage Park on April 22.

Salmon recovery is a priority for many in Washington who see vegetated streamside buffers as important to salmon-friendly habitat. But some in the state’s agricultural community see the threat of loss of productive farmland from proposals such as the Lorraine Loomis Act discussed earlier in this year’s legislative session.

2021 was a year like no other, with themes such as public health vis-à-vis COVID-19 and opioid addiction; social justice in the courts, the arts, housing and policing; and climate change and natural resources including water rights management. Salish Current offers a look back via articles published during the nonprofit newsroom’s first full year.

Flooding in Whatcom and Skagit counties in November put major stress on local dairies, including lost animals and lost revenues for some. Now there’s another hurdle: With storage lagoons overtopping, where can they store all that manure? Farmers and county and state agencies are stepping up to the challenge, to prevent pollution downstream and restore infrastructure.

A vigil in support of endangered salmon in the Pacific Northwest drew environmental advocates and members of the Lummi Nation and Nooksack Indian Tribe to the Bellingham waterfront on Nov. 20. The event commemorated the 30th anniversary of the original declaration of Snake River sockeye salmon as endangered, and was held in conjunction with several similar events around the region.

Weeks of sparse rainfall and a historic heat wave marked the end of June — and the start of a process to establish water rights among various users in Whatcom County’s Nooksack River basin.

Black Lives Matter signs waved over the Maritime Heritage Park amphitheater and booths lined the concrete walkway on Saturday, June 19 — the fourth annual Juneteenth celebration in Bellingham.

Several hundred people in Bellingham visited a totem pole created by Lummi carvers from a 400-year-old cedar log — the latest stop in the Red Road to D.C. tour of the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere across the U.S. toward its final destination in Washington, D.C.