Finding Common Ground: Negotiating - Ricerca sull'intelligenza artificiale specializzata al MIT

Finding Common Ground: Negotiating
Downstream Rights to Harvest with
Upstream Responsibilities to Protect—
Dairies, Berries, and Shellﬁsh
in the Salish Sea
(cid:129)
Emma S. Norman*

Astratto
Harvesting shellﬁsh is an important cultural and economic activity for coastal Indigenous
communities throughout the Salish Sea. Tuttavia, for the Lhaq’temish People of Lummi
Nation, upstream agricultural pollution has rendered this inherent right impossible for
almost two decades. In an attempt to reopen the shellﬁsh beds, Lummi Nation leaders
developed the Portage Bay Partnership, which aims to address the upstream pollution
problem through relationship building and shared connection to place. The partnership
brings to light several key points: (1) efforts to integrate different community views of
place to develop a relational approach to shared water governance, (2) the use of legal
tools to incentivize relationship building, E (3) the continued challenges associated
with competing governance frameworks and worldviews. This partnership opposes a sys-
tem that has been set up to systemically exclude or disenfranchise Indigenous commu-
nities, replacing a governance model based on acquired rights with one that prioritizes
relationships and responsibilities.

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*Sincere gratitude to those who reviewed this article in its many iterations and who helped shape
my understanding of this complex issue. In particular, I would like to acknowledge Lummi
Community members, Timothy Ballew II, Timothy Ballew Senior, Cynthia Wilson, and Becky
Jefferson for their insights and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article, as well as the generous
conversations and critical discussions that helped inform this article. Thanks also to Dave Oreiro,
vice president of Northwest Indian College and member of NWIC’s Institutional Review Board,
for his helpful suggestions and edits to this paper, as well as Lynda Jenson, who provided earlier
editorial suggestions. Many thanks to the guest editors of this special issue, Kate Neville and Glen
Coulthard, for the leadership and vision that guided this project, as well as to the three anony-
mous reviewers who generously provided keen insights that helped strengthen this article. Any
and all errors, Ovviamente, remain my own. This material is based upon work supported by the
National Science Foundation under grant number 1461441. Any opinions, ﬁndings, and conclu-
sions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not neces-
sarily reﬂect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Global Environmental Politics 19:3, agosto 2019, https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00516
© 2019 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Internazionale (CC BY 4.0) licenza.

78 (cid:129) Finding Common Ground

Figura 1
Map of the Nooksack River Basin

Cartography by Sylvie Arques.

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On January 6, 2017, a historic agreement was signed between two unlikely
groups: government leaders from Lummi Nation and agricultural leaders from
Lynden, Washington. Lummi Nation (traditionally known as Lhaq’temish—
People from the Sea) is an Indigenous, ﬁshing-based community whose ways
of life rely on harvesting from the sea, hunting, and gathering. Lynden, Wash-
ington, is a settler agricultural community whose main economy is based on
dairy and agriculture farming, particularly berries. They are connected geograph-
ically through the Nooksack River, and this very connection has historically
placed these communities at odds (Guarda la figura 1). The January 2017 agreement,
known as the Portage Bay Partnership, was designed as a ﬁrst step in recognizing
and resolving the issues associated with upstream pollution, particularly on the
shellﬁsh beds of Portage Bay.

Over the past several decades, increased upstream agricultural activities and
subsequent pollution inputs have signiﬁcantly impacted the water quality of the
Nooksack River Basin and the once-thriving intertidal ecosystem, subsequently

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Emma S. Norman

(cid:129) 79

limiting Lummi Nation’s ability to safely harvest shellﬁsh.1 Between 1996 E
2006, 735 acres of shellﬁsh beds in Portage Bay were closed due to bacterial con-
tamination (fecal coliform).2 The bacterial runoff from upstream agriculture and
dairy activities causes harm as it overﬂows into ditches and tributaries that ﬂow
into the Nooksack River, and then into Bellingham Bay.3 Increased monitoring
from Lummi Nation and regulatory efforts from the state of Washington and
Lummi Nation helped reopen the beds in 2006. A resurgence in bacterial con-
tamination, Tuttavia, closed the beds again in September 2014. As of April 1,
2019, the beds were conditionally opened for spring harvest but remain closed
for winter (during high ﬂow and increased contamination periods). The shellﬁsh
closures impact the tribe ﬁnancially with a conservative estimate of US$8 million in commercial value lost for the ﬁrst decade of closure alone (Northwest Indian Fish Commission 2015). These closures are not just an inconvenience or eco- nomic burden; they also impact the ceremonial right to harvest and traditional ways of life for the Lummi community and other Coast Salish community mem- bers throughout the region.4 As described below, the right to ﬁsh and harvest shellﬁsh is both an inher- ent right based on cultural tradition and an acquired right reserved through treaties and associated laws and policies. The right to access is protected in many tribal treaties through access to “usual and accustomed” (U and A) hunting, ﬁshing, and gathering rights. Maintaining a way of life based on ﬁshing, harvest- ing, and hunting is an inherent right grounded in a social contract that links rights to harvest with responsibility to protect. With settler occupation of Indig- enous lands, and the subsequent increased stressors on land and water, the abil- ity to fully exercise these rights has been compromised. 1. Inoltre, the deforestation of the riparian zone, the overdrawing of wells, and the reduction of tributaries have impacted the ﬂow, temperature, and sedimentation of the river, thus neg- atively impacting salmon runs. 2. Lummi Indian Business Council to EPA Re: Nooksack River Basin Water Quality, Tribal Shell- ﬁsh Beds, and the Management of Animal Wastes in Washington State, May 27, 2010. Also www.portagebaypartnership.org, last accessed June 27, 2019. 4. 3. Adding to the pollution, the practice of spraying manure on raspberry bushes to serve as a cheap source of fertilizer has signiﬁcant impacts—particularly considering the sheer volume of crops. Whatcom County produces 65 percent of the raspberries in the United States, which equates to the largest per capita of red raspberries in the world. Allo stesso modo, the region has 183 dairy farms with more than 60,000 cows. A key driver for the dairy production is the Darigold plant in Lynden, which is the fourth largest producer of powdered milk in the United States (Lynden Chamber of Commerce 2019, https://www.lynden.org/the-lynden-community). It is important to note that the traditional territory of the Lhaq’temish People far extended beyond the current reservation boundaries. The traditional territory extended West throughout the San Juan Islands and north into Canada. The current reservation boundary is only a frac- tion of the original territory, with the contemporary boundaries comprised of a ﬁve-mile-long peninsula (Lummi Peninsula), bordered by Lummi Bay on the west and Bellingham Bay on the east. Inoltre, the reservation border includes a smaller peninsula of Sandy Point; the ﬂoodplains and deltas of the Lummi River and the Nooksack River, as well as Portage Island, and associated tidelands. Overall, the current territory of Lummi reservation includes seven thousand acres—or thirty-eight miles—of productive tidelands. An estimated 6,590 people live on the Lummi Reservation, with an estimated of 4,800 enrolled Lummi community mem- bers who live on or near the Reservation (Lummi Nation 2015, 3). (Guarda la figura 1). l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . l / / e d u g e p a r t i c e – p d l f / / / / / 1 9 3 7 7 1 8 1 8 4 5 0 g e p _ a _ 0 0 5 1 6 p d . l f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 80 (cid:129) Finding Common Ground During treaty negotiations in the 1850s, Indigenous communities throughout Coast Salish territory (Salish Sea region) of North America were forced to give up millions of acres of traditional territory and move to reserva- tions in the United States (reserves in Canada). In the treaty negotiations that occurred on the US side of Coast Salish territory, the tribal leaders maintained their right of ﬁshing and hunting in U and A areas. Maintaining the right to access U and A territory is a central component of treaties between tribes and the US government and has been reinforced in the courts, Per esempio, by United States v. Washington (1974). It is the federal government’s duty to uphold the terms of the treaty, in perpetuity, through what is known as treaty trust respon- sibility. Tuttavia, all too often it is the tribes themselves that have had to con- sistently ﬁght to uphold these rights—re-reminding governments to uphold the treaty trust responsibilities, UN (Cohen and Norman 2018; Grossman et al. 2012; McCreary and Milligan 2014; Norman 2015, 2017; Sam and Armstrong 2013; Whyte 2016). Most recently, this ﬁght occurred when Lummi Nation successfully fought off the proposal to build what would have been the largest deep-water marine terminal in the United States, on Lummi’s ancestral territory, Xwe’chi’eXen (Cherry Point). Construction of this terminal would have severely impacted the community’s ability to ﬁsh in their traditional ﬁshing grounds and would have disturbed sacred land. Similar to the Portage Bay Partnership, the Lummi commu- nity won this ﬁght through relationship building with key actors. In questo caso, the Army Corps of Engineers ultimately denied the permit to build and upheld Lummi’s treaty rights to harvest. Although Lummi Nation won that ﬁght, another threat is pending with the proposed development of the Trans-Mountain Pipeline in Canada.5 It is under these circumstances that Indigenous communities such as Lummi engage both legal means and innovate partnerships—like the Portage Bay Partnership—to protect their tribal homelands and waterways. Protecting waterways and upland habitat is critical to maintaining access to traditional foods (commonly referred to as First Foods).6 Complicating the issue, federal, state, and local regulatory authorities un- derprotected the Nooksack River Basin for decades, allowing pollution inputs to go unchecked and riparian zones to be cleared. The lack of consistent enforce- ment of existing water quality regulations and the lack of ﬁnancial commitment 5. The terminal, which is planned for construction in Coast Salish territory just thirty miles north of Lummi Nation, would increase the tanker trafﬁc (from ﬁve per month to thirty-four), io sono- pact ﬁshing access, compromise the ecology of the shoreline, and impact the endangered res- ident orca population through increased ship noise. As Tulalip Tribes chair Marie Zackuse told Canada’s National Energy Board at a hearing in Victoria, British Columbia, “our relatives, the salmon and the killer whales, do not recognize this border. … As Tulalip people, we share a sacred cultural bond with the killer whales. They are the symbol of our tribe, and it is our responsibility to speak up for them when they are in need” (Northwest Public Radio 2018). Both Lummi and Tulalip tribes are members of Coast Salish tribes located throughout the Salish Sea (which spans Canada and the United States). 6. The term First Foods is commonly capitalized in academic literature focusing on environmental and social justice issues to highlight the impacts of dispossession on the well-being of com- munities. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . l / / e d u g e p a r t i c e – p d l f / / / / / 1 9 3 7 7 1 8 1 8 4 5 0 g e p _ a _ 0 0 5 1 6 p d . l f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Emma S. Norman (cid:129) 81 by state and county agencies to monitor pollution inputs contributed to un- healthy land management practices. This absence of agency accountability and associated pollution inputs compromised the ability of the Lummi commu- nity to safely harvest shellﬁsh. Jurisdictional fragmentation throughout Coast Salish territory exacerbated these issues, as pollution inputs and zoning have, historically, not been conducted on a comprehensive, basin-wide scale, although nascent county-wide efforts are currently under way to attempt to remedy this (Whatcom County 2019). It is these circumstances that make the Portage Bay Partnership such an important and innovative approach. (See Table 1 for a detailed timeline of events leading up the Partnership.) While the focus of this case is regional, this article helps inform global en- vironmental politics by exploring the impacts of a settler colonial economy on Indigenous economies and communities and the disruption by a colonial pres- ence of the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the natural environ- ment. This disruption has occurred physically through displacement, altering pathways to the natural world (including, but not limited to, overharvesting, destruction of habitat, and external pollution), as well as through political frag- mentation and border-making processes. Examining Indigenous-led, innovative agreements that aim to resolve imbalances and assign responsibilities left unat- tended by nontribal governments is an important exercise that could be useful to apply to other arenas throughout global environmental politics. There are many academic starting points for this conversation, including Indigenous rights, impacts of colonial economies and governance structures, and environmental and social justice issues. As part of the wider collection of papers in this special issue, this case demonstrates the shift in governance ap- proaches that arises from engaging with Indigenous water relations and political economies. I argue that Lummi Nation is challenging settler colonial gover- nance terms by negotiating the partnership, guided by their own values and economies. This leadership shows grace, resilience, and forgiveness. It also comes from a position of strength. Lummi Nation’s approach to the Portage Bay Part- nership challenges Western views of resource management and property rights, drawing instead on Indigenous history and practice. By looking to Indigenous- led governance strategies to address economic and land/water use conﬂicts, this work demonstrates the value of linkages between Indigenous politics and global environmental politics for identifying and developing new forms of respectful, reciprocal governance relations. Making Space for Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Global Environmental Politics This article builds on a nascent trend in this journal (E, more broadly, within the ﬁeld) to engage with Indigenous politics (Bernstein et al. 2018; Eisenstadt and West 2017). Past articles in this journal, Per esempio, have drawn attention to the role of Indigenous rights in transboundary water negotiations and l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . l / / e d u g e p a r t i c e – p d l f / / / / / 1 9 3 7 7 1 8 1 8 4 5 0 g e p _ a _ 0 0 5 1 6 p d . l f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 82 (cid:129) Finding Common Ground Table 1 Timeline of Portage Bay Partnership Time Event Presettlement Coast Salish communities thrived off the bounty of the land and water and had reciprocal relationships with the natural world. 1855 1855 1888 1948 1972/1977 1974 1994 1996–2006 2014–2019 2015 May 2016 May–December 2016 Gennaio 5, 2017 April 1, 2019 The Point Elliot Treaty was signed between The United States and Coastal Tribes of the Salish Sea (Puget Sound region)—including Chief Seattle (si’ab’siahl), and representatives from the Duwamish, Suquamish, Snoqualmie, Snohomish, Lummi, Skagit, and Swinomish (in order of signing) and Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens. The Point Elliot Treaty established reservation borders and secured U and A rights for hunting and ﬁshing (including shellﬁsh). The Lummi signatory was Chow-its-hoot. First in Time, First in Right—or Prior Appropriation Doctrine – established through lawsuit involving two mining companies (Irwin v. Phillips). California Supreme Court established that ﬁrst-in-time users – for “beneﬁcial use” – had senior water rights. Winters Doctrine—Upholding Indigenous communities right to water. Tuttavia, the right to water only goes back to the date of treaty-signing, rather than the tribes occupation period prior to settler contact. Federal Water Pollution Control Act. 33 U.S.C. 1251–1387 Federal Water Pollution Control Act was amended into the Clean Water Act. United States v Washington (Boldt Decision). Reafﬁrmed treaty-tribes’ rights to harvest in U and A areas, interpreted ‘in common with’ to mean 50 percent of total catch, and reafﬁrmed tribes as co-managers. Rafeedie Decision—Federal District Court Judge Rafeedie ruled that the “in common” language established in the Boldt decision, applied to shellﬁsh. He ruled that the tribes reserved harvest rights to half of all shellﬁsh from all U and A places, indicating, “A treaty is not a grant of rights to the Indians, but a grant of rights from them.” Washington State Department of Health closed portions of Portage Bay shellﬁsh sites due to deteriorating water quality associated with bacterial (fecal coliform) contamination. Lummi Nation estimates an average of $850,000 of revenue loss, per year of closure.

Portage Bay closed for harvesting
Lummi Nation retains lawyer for potential lawsuit regarding shellﬁsh
contamination
Xwe’chi’eXen (Cherry Point) protected, Army Corps of Engineers denies
permit for shipping terminal

Portage Bay Talks between Lummi leadership and dairy farmers

Portage Bay Partnership signed
Portage Bay Shellﬁsh Beds Conditionally Re-opened for spring harvest

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Emma S. Norman

(cid:129) 83

governance (Cohen and Norman 2018); the importance of multiple knowledge
systems (Inoe 2018); and the role of Indigenous peoples in codifying non-
Western understandings of relationships to nature (Kauffman and Martin
2018). This work builds on Eisenstadt and West’s (2017) paper that engaged
with Indigenous belief systems and climate change attitudes in Ecuador. Inoe’s
(2018) work in the Amazon is particularly salient, as it highlights the need to
focus on relationality, questo è, the relationship between human and nonhuman
worlds in situ. Her article highlights how place-based and highly contextualized
knowledge systems based on reciprocity are a fundamental starting point in In-
digenous environmental politics, one that is largely absent in Western gover-
nance models. This article continues and deepens the work of expanding
consideration of the ontologies that shape governance practices and the rela-
tionships with the natural world, Quale, outside of Indigenous politics, remain
largely framed through a Western lens.

Trying to reverse these trends both in academia and in practice requires a
critical look at how human–environmental relationships are framed. In a West-
ern framework, the environment is often characterized as a resource that can be
commodiﬁed or considered in utility terms, whereas Indigenous frameworks of-
ten characterize the relationship with the nonhuman world based on reciprocity
and relationships, with nonhuman entities considered in rights-bearing terms.
In the ﬁrst, the “right” to a resource is largely disconnected from the “responsi-
bility to protect,” whereas in Indigenous governance frameworks, they are inter-
connected (Walsey and Brewer 2018). Inoltre, the “right to protect” is also
based on a sacred relationship with nonhumans as relatives. Engaging in
Indigenous politics and governance provides an important opportunity to
broaden the interpretation of plural knowledge systems in practice and theory.

Postsovereign, Decolonial Governance

Over the past two decades, a rich conversation has emerged relating to hollow-
ing out of the state and the role of the local in environmental politics. This con-
versation has opened up space for critical engagement of Indigenous politics,
particularly in light of wider discussion of postsovereign governance and deco-
lonial processes.

Jessop (2004) famously postulates a “hollowing out of the state” in which
state-centered approaches are being replaced with regional and nonstate actors,
leading to a “rise of the local.” Norman and Bakker (2009), Tuttavia, show that
the rise of the local does not necessarily equate to a greater voice for local par-
ticipation, particularly in transboundary settings. Infatti, their work shows that
the hollowing out of the state weakens citizens’ and nonstate actors’ ability to
govern effectively due to lack of ﬁnancial resources allocated to fulﬁlling goals.
These insights prove useful to consider in the context of demanding enforce-
ment of treaty trust responsibility, while simultaneously opening up space for
Indigenous governance models and plural knowledge systems.

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84 (cid:129) Finding Common Ground

Earlier, Karkkainen (2004, 74) offered a postsovereign approach in which
“sovereign states and nonstate parties actively collaborate, roughly as equal part-
ners, to address certain kinds of highly complex problems that appear to be be-
yond the capacity of sovereign states alone to solve.” In this framework, the role
of the state is redeﬁned and downsized to that of co-participant in the formation
and execution of environmental policy, rather than the exclusive sovereign law-
making (Karkkainen 2004). The development of a postsovereign approach pro-
vides focus on an ecological, place-based regulatory approach. While managing
at the watershed level has long been advocated for and a rich integrated water-
shed resource management literature exists (Molle 2009), deﬁning a watershed
scale has proven complex, at best (Cohen and Davidson 2011). Attempts to ad-
dress the political-social-economic variations of water governance have been
pushed forward through critical geographers such as Swyngedouw (2009),
Budds and Hinojosa (2012), and Linton and Budds (2013) through what is
broadly known as the hydrosocial approach.

While engagement with a postsovereign, ecological approach is help-
ful in understanding shifts in environmental governance, a signiﬁcant gap
still remains. This gap relates to different starting points in the relationship
with the natural world. Although it is important not to overessentialize the
difference between a Western approach to landownership and an Indigenous
relationship to the natural environment, it is important to tease out funda-
mentally different starting points. As Indigenous scholars Walsey and Brewer
(2018, 1169) eloquently reﬂect, “when western management systems built on
western ideologies work to control the natural resources Indigenous people
rely on for sustenance, these western regimes come to dominate, overshadow,
and marginalize Indigenous people’s inherent rights.” Walsey and Brewer re-
ﬂect on the ongoing impacts of Indigenous ﬁsheries on the Yukon River that
are continually impacted by Western policies and laws that are incongruent
with the Indigenous populations’ place-based knowledge of and relationship
to the river. The different time and space of the managed policies, implanted
by newcomers who do not fully understand the complexities of the river,
have signiﬁcant impacts on the Indigenous communities’ ability to maintain
a way of life.

For most Indigenous cultures, a starting point for the interaction with the
natural environment is based on relationships and reciprocity rather than re-
sources and rights. This article follows such ontological premises and advances
a postsovereign/ecological approach by integrating Indigenous models of rights
and responsibilities as twinned rather than separate. This reframing in global
environmental politics could have substantial impacts if applied broadly.

Così, when looking for ways that global environmental politics literature
can interface with Indigenous sovereignty and the nation-state, a key compo-
nent is to reframe and open up space for alternative narratives and practice, both
in theory and action. This includes a reframing of relationships with the natural
environment—moving from an extractive framework to a reciprocal one.

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Emma S. Norman

(cid:129) 85

Situating Myself Within This Work: Methods and Positionality

As a scholar aligning with Indigenous research methodology and feminist and
critical geography traditions, it is important that my work engage community
priorities in a reﬂexive manner and that I position myself within the work. In
Questo articolo, the inability to harvest shellﬁsh because of external pollution is a
long-standing issue identiﬁed by Lummi Nation and other coastal tribes. IL
interest in the Portage Bay Partnership, speciﬁcally, emerged from priorities
set within the Lummi Indian Business Council and within the community.
The engagement with the partnership is also based on my ability to witness
key events, such as the signing of the partnership, and key discussions with
the architects of that partnership. My work is informed by critical scholars
who advocate that ethical research necessitates mindfulness of issues of reﬂex-
ivity, positionality, and power relations, such as Pacheco-Vega and Parizeau
(2018), who name this method doubly engaged ethnography.

Through this lens, it is imperative that I locate—or position—myself in my
own work, engage in work that is meaningful to the communities that I work
con, and represent the work in an ethical and transparent way. My roles as a
mother, partner, sister, daughter, teacher, mentor, scholar, and environmentalist
all impact and inﬂuence my work, as does my role as a non-Native scholar at a
tribal college. I work alongside and with the Indigenous communities that our
school serves. I come from a settler immigrant background, with roots in Italy
and Wales.

I have worked at Northwest Indian College since 2001, where I have
served as faculty and now department chair of the Native Environmental Science
department. After living in the Salish Sea for almost two decades, and raising
two children here, I have a gained a deep love and appreciation for the Salish
Sea; I am keenly aware, Tuttavia, that I am a guest here. This land is the ancestral
homeland of the Coast Salish Peoples and the traditional territory of the Lhaq’-
temish People. My thinking is largely shaped by the daily interactions that I
have while working at a tribal college. The priorities of the community guide
my own research and teaching. Although I have worked at Northwest Indian
College for almost twenty years, I recognize that I am an outsider within that
community and take deliberate steps to assure that my writing falls within
ethical boundaries—through a layering of community-based review processes,
academic peer-review processes, and personal reﬂections. My methodology is
inspired and guided by important Indigenous scholars who reﬂect thoughtfully
on Indigenous research methodology, speciﬁcally Kovach (2010), Smith
(1999), and Wilson (2009), and follows the research policies and practices
deﬁned by my college. Makomenaw (2012, 858) helps deﬁne Indigenous
research methods as “where the researcher understands the role of Indigenous
history, culture, lingua, and self-determination in the lives of Indigenous Peo-
ples.” Scholars such as McGregor (2016), Smithers-Graeme (2013), and Lashua
and Fox (2007) engage in this approach as a way to continue to destabilize

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86 (cid:129) Finding Common Ground

hierarchies in the academy, while simultaneously debunking the notion of
objectivity.7

To ensure that what I present in this article is accurate and respectful, IO
have had this article reviewed by Lummi knowledge holders and community
members. Any errors, Ovviamente, are my own.

Situating the Place: The Physical, Political, and Economic Geography of
the Nooksack River

The headwaters of the Nooksack River start at the glaciers of the Cascade Moun-
tains, meander through rolling foothills, and then drain into the Salish Sea. IL
seventy-ﬁve-mile-long, glacier-fed Nooksack River is a salmon-bearing stream,
important especially to the Lummi and Nooksack tribal communities along
the river. The current political boundaries of Lummi Nation are at the mouth
of the Nooksack River, where the waters drain into Bellingham Bay. The tradi-
tional territory of Lummi Nation, Tuttavia, extends through the San Juan island
archipelago and the adjacent mainland. The traditional territory extended north
into what is now Canada, east into the Cascades, south to the Stillaguamish
River and west into the San Juan Islands, where ﬁshing villages were established
(Deardorff 1992). The Usual and Accustomed territory of Lummi Nation has
been and continues to be ligated in court cases.

Oral histories provide accounts of salmon returning to the river in such
magnitude that the water was no longer visible—only the backs of the silvery
salmon were visible as the salmon migrated upstream by the millions (Nugent
1982). Today, the salmon return in only a small fraction of the historic runs.
Disturbed upstream and estuarine habitats, increased water temperatures, E
reduction of the river’s ﬂow have all severely impacted the ecology of the
Nooksack River and the ability of the river to provide a habitat for the salmon.
Allo stesso modo, agriculture and dairy farms along the river continue to impact
the water quality, ultimately contributing to shellﬁsh contamination. IL
Nooksack ﬂows through the agricultural towns of Everson, Lynden, E
Ferndale before reaching Lummi Nation and proceeding to Bellingham Bay,
Portage Bay, and the Salish Sea. Both the physical and political geography of
the Nooksack River and settlement patterns in the region exacerbate upstream
pollution and its impacts on downstream neighbors.

The changing physical geography of the Nooksack River Basin is directly
linked to the changing settlement patterns and the associated changes to the
landscape. The wave of immigrants who settled in the region in the 1800s
brought different values and interpretations of land management. Great effort
went into removing the forested landscape to make room for agricultural prac-
tices that were familiar to the new immigrants, in this case, dairy farming from
the Dutch and Scandinavian inﬂuence and, Dopo, berry farming. These changing

7. Drawson et al. (2017) provide an important overview of Indigenous research methods.

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(cid:129) 87

land uses not only impacted the physical environment (declining water quality,
increased siltation, loss of habitat) but also established a different interpretation
of the relationship with the landscape. The Coast Salish communities had thrived
for millennia throughout the Salish Sea region by working in a reciprocal relation-
ship with the natural environment. The newcomers had different interpretations of
the natural world and imported their ideas of agriculture and economy from a
different geographical and philosophical context. These differing visions of the
lands and waters of the Salish Sea region created the context for conﬂicts between
settler farmers and Indigenous communities—and could not be reconciled within
a colonial legal framework. The development of the Portage Bay Partnership,
detailed in the next section, reveals efforts by Lummi Nation to move beyond
those divides, although the negotiations of the partnership reveal a complex inter-
play between Western legal tools and Indigenous relationship building.

The Portage Bay Partnership: Finding Common Ground

The signing of the Portage Bay Partnership Agreement occurred in the Lummi
Indian Business Council (LIBC) chamber ofﬁce. Walking into the LIBC ofﬁce,
through four large cedar pillars—reminiscent of longhouse architecture—the
words “Lhaq’ temish/People of the Sea” are carved above the entryway. As
you enter the council chambers, a large circular medallion hangs behind the
council seating area with the words “Lummi Nation—1855 Treaty Tribe” carved
into the wood. These two reminders speak to both the inherent and acquired
rights of harvesting from the sea.

On the day of the signing, Gennaio 5, 2017, the council chamber was packed
and emotions ran high. A diverse range of people—Lummi leadership and com-
munity members, Lynden farmers and families, local and state governmental of-
ﬁcials, students and faculty from Northwest Indian College, and members of the
press—were gathered to witness this historic event. For many of the dairy farmers
in the room, this was their ﬁrst time in the LIBC Administration Building.

The lead-up to the agreement went beyond the months of negotiations
between the dairy farmers and Lummi leadership. Piuttosto, it was part of a wider
process of addressing issues of water rights and territorial control in the region.
In this region, like many regions in the western United States, water rights are
established through what is known as ﬁrst in time, ﬁrst in right. This right—
referred to as the prior appropriation doctrine—was used to assure settlers that they
would have access to water, with an emphasis on supporting mining and agri-
culture investments.8 Central to this doctrine is that the water be used for “ben-
eﬁcial use,” which was largely deﬁned as mining, farming, or household use.
The genesis of this doctrine came largely to support the gold rush activities of
the mid-1800s. Although Indigenous communities clearly had established ﬁrst-
in-time status, they consistently ended up with last-in-right access, as their water

8. https://nationalaglawcenter.org/overview/water-law/, last accessed June 27, 2019.

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88 (cid:129) Finding Common Ground

uses were not seen as economically productive. The ﬁrst case to challenge the
water diversions that were impacting Indigenous communities was Winters v.
stati Uniti (1888), involving the Fort Belknap Tribe (located in the state of
Montana) whose water from the Milk River was being diverted by encroaching
settlers. The US Supreme Court afﬁrmed the Fort Belknap Tribe’s position, rec-
ognizing the need for water rights to maintain self-sufﬁciency, which was con-
sidered implicit in the establishment of reservations. Complicating matters,
Tuttavia, the rights are interpreted in Western law as having been established
on the start date of the reservation rather than as extending over the much lon-
ger presettlement timeline (Thorston 2006). This means that ﬁrst in time
continues to be interpreted through a colonial lens.

In the Portage Bay case, downstream water pollution and the resolution of
water rights are intertwined and are part of a longer history of Lummi Nation
efforts to safeguard their territory. The start of the negotiations for the Portage
Bay Partnership occurred in May of 2016, after Lummi Nation had successfully
blocked the deep-water marine terminal at Xwe’chi’eXen (Cherry Point), as dis-
cussed above. With the threat of that development project behind them—at least
temporarily—Lummi leadership was able to focus more fully on the Nooksack
River Basin, water rights, and the ongoing issue of shellﬁsh contamination.

In an effort to resolve the wider issue of senior water rights9 (referred to
locally as a global water initiative or settlement) between the agricultural and
Lummi communities, it was critically important to work with dairy farmers and
bring them to the table for conversation. As former chairman Timothy Ballew II
(who spearheaded the Portage Bay Partnership initiative) explained in a conver-
sation with the author in 2019, the partnership was both about addressing the
impacts of downstream pollution on shellﬁsh harvesting and addressing the
larger issues of senior water rights. Thus the pollution issue is intertwined with
the broader issue of establishing water rights. Prior to the agreement, minimal
progress had been made between the communities to address the chronic water
quality issue and subsequent shellﬁsh contamination. Recognizing the need to
shift the dialog, Lummi Nation announced in 2015 that they had retained a
lawyer and planned to litigate for the damages caused by upstream pollution.
Tuttavia, Lummi leadership saw an opportunity to try a new approach—one
that would replace incentives and penalties with relationships.

Between May and December 2016, tribal leaders and the farmers met reg-
ularly to discuss possible solutions. Although the threat of litigation remained,
the aspiration was to articulate a solution based on trust and good intent—to
carve out a different path forward of dialog and problem solving. To help foster
Questo, discussions took place in the kitchens and living rooms of those impacted.
Several generations after colonial settlements disrupted Coast Salish lands,
members of each community are participating in a partnership to reconcile their
different worldviews and ﬁnd a meaningful way forward in a reparative way.

Senior water rights are connected to ﬁrst-in-time, ﬁrst-in-right status.

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(cid:129) 89

The farmers who joined the partnership were a cohort of leaders in
Lynden’s dairy community who wanted to work toward a joint solution. On
the Lummi side, the leadership of the conversation came from the chairman
and council members (who are also lifelong ﬁshers). In a conversation that I
had with then-chairman Ballew in 2017 about the partnership, he reﬂected that
the partnership centered around ﬁnding common ground and building relation-
ships. Agreeing to work together collaboratively with the upstream neighbors—
even a small percentage of the dairy farmers—took a tremendous amount of trust
building and moving beyond a rhetoric of difference. Identifying common
themes was critical in moving forward with the partnership. The negotiators rec-
ognized that both communities were interested in maintaining family tradition
and preserving a traditional way of life, although the time frames (a few gen-
erations vs. hundreds of generations) and practices (agriculture vs. harvesting)
were different. Inoltre, spirituality and connection to a higher being—and
higher purpose—also played an important role in the negotiations. Praying
before meals, Per esempio, although perhaps in different ways and to different
Creators, is common to both communities. These commonalities provided a prac-
tice through which to discover and strengthen shared norms, focusing on similar-
ities rather than differences.

Even though only seven farmers (of the approximately 140 farms in the
region) initially signed on to the partnership, its negotiation was widely viewed
as an important ﬁrst step in regional reconciliation and improving the health of
the waterway. On their website, for instance, the Portage Bay Partnership
describes their efforts:

This Partnership is a very important ﬁrst step in what the signers believe will
be a positive, long term working relationship between Whatcom’s family
farmers and the Lummi Nation. This relationship is vital to address a num-
ber of issues important to the Tribe and to the future of farming. It is a rec-
ognition that tribal treaty rights are a concern for farmers and the entire
community. It is also a recognition by the Lummi leaders that preserving
a future for farming [È] in the Tribe’s and community’s interest as well as
farmers’.10

Allo stesso modo, Rich Appel, a dairy farmer and key member of the team that

developed the partnership, reﬂected,

While this ﬁrst step involves a number of actions aimed at addressing water
contamination, we believe the most important element is the beginning of a
more positive, constructive and beneﬁcial working relationship between the
farmers and the Lummi Nation.11

10. www.portagebaypartnership.org, last accessed June 27, 2019.
11. https://nwtreatytribes.org/ lummi-farmers-agree-protect-portage-bay/, last accessed June 27,

2019.

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90 (cid:129) Finding Common Ground

Getting to the agreement relied on a combination of goodwill, taking the
time to get to know neighbors, and asserting legal rights related to treaty
protection. The agreement began the process needed to resolve decades of
environmental damage related to manure runoff and associated bacterial con-
tamination in the Nooksack River and along its shorelines. The spirit of the
agreement was captured by then Chairman Ballew:

We want to work together to protect water for all and to return it to the pro-
ductive state it once was. The Portage Bay Partnership is an opportunity for
the Lummi to safeguard our harvesting communities by working with
farmers to address all sources of water contamination.12

Besides the desire to work collaboratively with Lummi Nation, an added
beneﬁt for the farmers was protection from future litigation. The partnership
indicates that farmers who sign on to this partnership—and maintain the goals
in good faith—will be immune from future lawsuits that address the issue of
past damages. Ancora, while the group of initial farmers has led the way for others
to join, progress has been slow to date. The hope is that many of the dairy
farmers in the room during the initial signing will eventually sign on to the
agreement, although no additional farmers had signed on at the time of writing.

Collaborative Governance and Its Challenges

The collaborative governance structure followed only after the formation of re-
lationships between the community members—even if they were nascent. IL
architecture of this mechanism has three central pillars: individual farm man-
agement plans, ﬁnancial compensation for restoration of beds, and the devel-
opment of a legal framework. Importantly, the Portage Bay Agreement included
an initial payment of US$600,000 to the Portage Bay Shellﬁsh Recovery Fund,
which is used to restore the impacted shellﬁsh beds. This payment—which was
raised by the group of seven dairy operators who signed the agreement in com-
bination with state funding—was an acknowledgment of how past practices
negatively impacted Lummi Nation. The payment is only a small portion of
the actual losses, and two years after the payment, no further payments had
been made. Despite this lag, this payment is generally seen as an important step
in reconciling the ﬁnancial impact of the pollution.

The Partnership Agreement outlines a process to develop Water Quality
Improvement ( WQI) plans for individual farms in the Lynden community.
The process allows for Lummi representatives, farmers, and agreed-upon experts
to collaboratively develop the plans. As of April 2019, Tuttavia, negotiations
have stalled after the dairy farmers did not accept the expert suggested by
Lummi Nation to develop facility-speciﬁc WQI plans. A letter to re-initiate these

12. https://nwtreatytribes.org/ lummi-farmers-agree-protect-portage-bay/, last accessed June 27,

2019.

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(cid:129) 91

discussions was sent in early 2019 to the dairy farmers by the current LIBC chair-
Uomo. To date, Tuttavia, negotiations have not resumed.

This stalling is not surprising considering the different starting points,
worldviews, and political structures that inﬂuenced the land practices that led
to the shellﬁsh pollution. As Mitch Moorlag of Edaleen Dairy, a negotiator
for the farmers, stated, “While farms were major contributors of contamination
in the past, today there are multiple causes that must be addressed.” Merle
Jefferson, executive director of the Lummi Natural Resources Department, fur-
ther reﬂected, “Farms are not wholly responsible for the contamination, ma il
farms that have joined the partnership are stepping forward as leaders in ﬁxing
Esso, and we hope others will follow their example.”13 Still, even with mixed will-
ingness from dairy farmer participants to accept current responsibility for water
contamination, the partnership has enabled Lummi and Lynden communities
to begin to address the damage; for instance, Moorlag also commented that
“this partnership enables us to work with Lummi leaders and others in the com-
munity to more effectively address the water contamination that keeps the shell-
ﬁsh beds from reopening.” It remains unclear when (or if ) the negotiations will
resume. Tuttavia, the governance architecture that was created represents an
innovative, Indigenous-led governance solution and holds potential not only
for addressing pollution pathways and water quality but also for re-orienting
Indigenous–settler relationships along the river.

As discussed in the section below, a signiﬁcant distinction between
Western/colonial governance mechanisms and Indigenous governance is a man-
agerial regime that fragments rights and responsibilities and those that pair
them through reciprocal relationships, a starting point for many Indigenous cul-
tures (Cajete 2000; Tallbear 2011; Todd 2014, 2017; Walsey and Brewer 2018;
Watts 2013; Wilson 2014). Examining these frameworks provides ways forward
for further collaborative approaches.

Rights and Responsibilities/Inherent Rights, Reciprocity, and Respect

Inherent and Acquired Rights

To explore the pairing of rights and responsibilities, it is important to under-
stand the difference between inherent and acquired rights. Understanding this
distinction provides a critical lens under which to engage Indigenous world-
views and frameworks within global environmental politics.

Over the course of two decades working within (and alongside) Indige-
nous communities on the traditional territory of Lummi Nation, I have come
to understand the difference as critical. I have learned through these teachings
that an inherent right is a right that is divine and that these rights are passed

13. https://nwtreatytribes.org/ lummi-farmers-agree-protect-portage-bay/, last accessed June 27,

2019.

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92 (cid:129) Finding Common Ground

down from the Creator from family to family through generations and held in
sacred responsibility. Inherent rights are also considered a social contract that
families have with the natural world, and they are born from place (Nadasdy
2003). The fabric of life and ways of being are in situ, in context to the place
called home. This place-based social structure includes legal and governance sys-
tems that guide the relationship with the nonhuman world. These tenets are
underscored in Indigenous scholarly writings (per esempio., Cajete 2000; Vaughan
2018; Walsey and Brewer 2018) and are present in oral history traditions. For
the Nooksack River, this relates to important work, such as the First Salmon Cer-
emony and other practices that both honor and feed the nonhuman relatives.
The linking of rights and responsibilities, underpinned by reciprocity and
respect, is found throughout Indigenous communities the world over. Vaughan
(2018), Per esempio, describes the intergenerational relationships to tidal lands
of the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i in her book Kaiaulu: Gathering Tides. Here she
describes the Hawaiian word ho‘ihi‘ as meaning “to make sacred”—to treat
something with reverence and respect. Her masterful autoethnography shows
how ﬁshing is steeped in traditions of reciprocity, where men’s and women’s
kuleana (right, privilege, concern, responsibility) is to maintain “respectful, Rif-
ciprocal relationships between people and resources, which together constitute
community.” Here the community belongs to—and is not separate from—the
natural environment. This belonging comes with both rights and responsibili-
ties. Although each Indigenous community has their own unique relationship
with place, the accountability and relationship between place and humans are
common themes throughout Indigenous communities (Cajete 2000; Hayman
2015).

Similar relationships hold within the Lummi community and other Coast
Salish tribes.14 In this case, an inherent right is a right to ﬁsh, to hunt, to live near
the waters, and to provide for your family, all of which are matched by a duty to
care for the animals, plants, waterways, lands, and shorelines of the region.
Through such pairing of rights and responsibilities, Coast Salish communities
not only survived for thousands of years from the bounty of the Salish Sea—they
thrived.

The rich ecosystems of the coastal waters of the Salish Sea provided ample
food, with a nutritious diet of salmon, halibut, crabs, clams, berries, bulbs, net-
tles, seaweed, duck, deer, and goat. In the Lummi governance system, policies,
laws, and structures are built into cultural protocols and passed down through
family lines, stories, and ceremony. Gifting protocols through potlatch and cer-
emonies continually redistribute wealth.15 The ethos was, and remains, one of
collectivism, where everyone thrives and everyone has a role.

14. See Ballew and Julius in the Salish Sea Speakers Series, www.nwic.edu/ life-on-campus/degrees-

and-certiﬁcates/b-s-in-native-environmental-science/, last accessed June 27, 2019.

15. A potlatch is a gift-giving feast practiced by Indigenous peoples along the Northwest Coast,
including Coast Salish communities. The potlatch distributes wealth through gifting, anche
as establishing claims to names, and afﬁrms family status. As part of assimilation policies,

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Acquired rights, in contrast with inherent rights, are assigned to Indige-
nous communities by foreign, colonial governments. They are the rights that
have been codiﬁed and reserved through various legal processes (including,
but not limited to, treaty negotiations). Acquired rights are framed through a
Western legal lens, where the starting point assumes separation of humans
and the nonhuman world and rejects metaphysics and theism as a premise
for law (Cajete 2000). As McGregor (2016, 69) writes, “inherent rights imply
Indigenous rights … that exist outside of colonial legal processes, and that pre-
cede and were not dissolved by colonization.” This follows from Dale Turner’s
(2006) work exploring how Indigenous people can assert their legal and polit-
ical distinctiveness. Turner advocates for a broader intellectual conversation
about the meaning of Indigenous rights, sovereignty, and nationhood as they
relate to Indigenous philosophies and Western European tradition. Indigenous
legal scholars consistently discuss how colonial frameworks (acquired rights)
are out of context for and jeopardize the spirit of Indigenous law (Boelens
and Vos 2014; Borrows 1997, 2002, 2016; Borrows and Coyle 2017; Boyd
2017; Craft 2014, 2017; McGregor 2012, 2014, 2016; Napoleon and Friedland
2016). A colonial legal framework also fails to respect the complex cosmology
that links rights and responsibilities.

Concluding Reﬂections: Reframing Contemporary Governance to Pair
Rights and Responsibilities

The signing of the Portage Bay Agreement was not just about the partnership
between Lummi Nation and Lynden, Washington—two different communities
joined together by a common river. The partnership is about the beginning of a
new era, in which Indigenous leadership is fostering innovative partnerships to
work toward shared goals across diverse communities. This partnership opposes
a system that has been set up to systemically exclude or disenfranchise Indige-
nous communities, replacing a governance model based on acquired rights with
one that prioritizes the linkages between rights and responsibilities. The partner-
ship models a governance framework that is based on Indigenous belief
systems, speciﬁc to place and based on values of relationships and reciprocity.
Tuttavia, as seen in the ongoing struggles of sustaining the partnership,
this work also highlights the difﬁculties in overcoming colonial law and the
devastating impacts of environmental degradation and unchecked resource
extraction.

governments outlawed potlatch from 1884 A 1951. Despite these laws, potlatch continued
and remains important to Coastal Indigenous communities today. The U’mista Cultural Cen-
ter (2018) in Alert Bay describes potlatch as follows: “The potlatch refers to the ceremony
where families gather and names are given, births are announced, marriages are conducted,
and where families mourn the loss of a loved one. The potlatch is also the ceremony where
a chief will pass on his rights and privileges to his eldest son.”

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94 (cid:129) Finding Common Ground

The partnership also comes from a place of strength—in which the inno-
vations are grounded in community values—and the expectation that treaty
obligations will be upheld. In the leadership of this Partnership Agreement,
Lummi Nation shows grace, forgiveness, resilience, and long-term thinking.
Allo stesso modo, the willingness of a cohort of forward-thinking farmers to make them-
selves accountable for past practices—both through ﬁnancial compensation for
past damages and also by changing farming practices—is an important step
forward to realigning management practices in consideration of the health of
the whole river basin (and downstream neighbors).

The Portage Bay Partnership rejects solely operating through the lens of
acquired rights as the framework for protecting Lummi Nation shellﬁsh opera-
tions and instead turns to a relational, reciprocal model of watershed care. Such
a governance arrangement reﬂects a postsovereign/ecological approach, by twin-
ning rights and responsibilities into the regional political economy of farming,
ﬁsheries, and land use. The conditional opening of the Portage Bay shellﬁsh
beds in April 2019 shows that although progress is slow and difﬁcult, it is
possible with perseverance.

The partnership also fosters accountability and transparency in land prac-
tice behaviors. Realigning fragmented governance systems and grounding work
in place open up space for more innovative, Indigenous-led agreements. Invest-
ing in partnerships based on trust, shared values, and connection to place will
undoubtedly continue to reverse the environmental damage that is reducing
access to First Foods and limiting Indigenous ways of life. This partnership pro-
vides a way forward that not only supports Indigenous rights but also contributes
to better land practices. Questo è, linking rights with responsibilities at a watershed
scale requires navigating through different governance frameworks and ontol-
ogies. Although there is currently a stall in the negotiations, much can be gained
by examining the process and structure of the governance architecture.

Emma S. Norman is the chair of the Native Environmental Science Department
at Northwest Indian College. She is a political and environmental geographer
whose research and teaching engage with questions related to water governance,
borders, and environmental and social justice. Her most recent book, Governing
Transboundary Waters: Canada, the United States, and Indigenous Communities, won
the Julian Minghi Distinguished Book Award for best book in political geogra-
phy in 2015.

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3 Finding Common Ground: Negotiating image

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