Latest news with #KalispelTribe
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Facing extreme health disparities, native voices must be added to Spokane's Board of Health under new state law
May 21—A seat meant to represent tribal communities has remained vacant on the Spokane Regional Health District board for the past three years. A new state law will require multiple tribal voices to be seated on the board overseeing Spokane's public health. The new law is set to remake the local board and potentially double its size. Local health boards must now seat a board member appointed by a local tribe or an urban Indian organization recognized by the Indian Health Service. According to the law's author, that could mean three tribal representatives on the SRHD board, if not more. "This speaks to how representation matters. When we have folks representing directly from their community and having a say in the policy, it is always more effective," said Spokane Rep. Natasha Hill, the Democrat who sponsored and led the bill's passage through the Legislature earlier this year. Because of differing interpretations of a state law passed in 2022, a seat for a tribal representative has been vacant for the past several years. The new law clarifies that the intent is to seat multiple tribal representatives on local health boards. While there is no reservation land in Spokane County, both the Spokane and Kalispel tribes have trust land in Airway Heights where Northern Quest Casino and Spokane Tribe Casino are located. Those lands would call for each tribe to appoint a member to the board. The Native Project provides health services to native peoples in Spokane and is recognized by the Indian Health Service. It would also receive a seat on the SRHD board. Current members of the board said they would discuss how to best implement the new law at their next meeting. "I welcome new voices and experiences on the board. I'm always ready to have new people to help us tackle the hard issues," board president and Spokane County Commissioner Amber Waldref said. Board member and fellow County Commissioner Josh Kerns said the board may make decisions more slowly because of its growing size. Local health boards are required to have a mix of elected officials and community members. As tribal representatives are appointed, more county commissioners or Spokane City Council members may be added too, as state regulations require health boards be evenly divided between elected officials and members of the public. Right now, there are seven members on Spokane's Board of Health, including four elected officials. Under the new law, the body's size could easily double. "This is great for diversity of thought. But things will take longer almost certainly," Kerns said. He said that adding more politicians to the typically nonpartisan health board may make their debates "more political." While ensuring the board would "abide by the law," Spokane County Commissioner Mary Kuney said the new board's composition would be interesting because it will have "the interest of one group more heavily weighted than any other groups in our community." The elected officials on the board have often been predominately made up of the Republican-majority Spokane County Commission. Because of the need to appoint more elected officials alongside Indigenous appointees, progressively aligned members on the Spokane City Council may find themselves on the board. According to Hill, creating large health boards is the intent of her legislation. "We don't need fewer people making decisions. Sometimes that means that things are getting missed. There are blind spots," Hill said. According to the 2020 census, those who identify themselves as American Indian and Alaska Native make up 1.9% of the population in Spokane County. Hill said she was not concerned that the appointment of multiple tribal representatives could be disproportionate to their population. "God forbid we're ruled by a group of natives and Indigenous people whose land we stole. Am I worried about that? Not for a second. Are white folks worried about that? If they believe in a white supremacist system, for sure they are," Hill said. Native health disparities Local health districts inform the public about communicable disease spreading in their community and how to remain healthy. Some, like SRHD, provide direct services such as Spokane's opioid treatment services. Native communities face large health disparities and local health districts sometimes struggle to reach them, according to Native Project's clinic director Dylan Dressler. "We have so many co-morbidities with chronic disease like hypertension, cardiovascular diabetes and mental health like depression and anxiety," she said. "And much of it can go untreated, especially for those who chose to live off the reservation in the cities away from community." American Indian or Alaska Native persons are the only racial group in Washington state whose life expectancy has gone down in this century. According to a 2023 report from the Governor's Indian Health Advisory Council, native life expectancy in the state has fallen from an average of 73.2 years in 2000 to 71.6 years in 2020. Native people had the highest drug overdose death rates across the United States in 2020 and 2022. According to the CDC, 56.6 per 100,000 American Indians died of a drug overdose in 2021, compared to 30.6 per 100,000 for the population as a whole. Dressler applied to be on the board of health in 2020 and 2022. That representation never materialized in Spokane over disagreements whether the law required a single or multiple native representatives. Dressler does not plan to seek appointment to the board as the Native Project representative, but she hopes more tribal and native representation can improve the health of native people in Spokane County. "In the past decade, we were happy if our elders would reach 60 years old. Now, we're seeing their lives extending five to 10 years longer. We're still not at the life expectancy of others, but we are keeping our culture and keeping our elders to tell stories and show us the land and the water important to us," she said.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Feds to reduce grizzly monitoring in Selkirks
May 16—Federal grizzly bear managers plan to cut back on their monitoring efforts in the mountains of North Idaho and northeast Washington, leaving a hole in long-term efforts to keep an eye on the threatened bears. Wayne Kasworm, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who leads monitoring for the Selkirk and Cabinet-Yaak grizzly populations, told state and federal wildlife officials at a meeting Thursday that his office doesn't have enough cash to maintain the summer staffing levels it has had for the past several years. Kasworm's field staff has typically consisted of four two-person trapping teams that can catch and collar bears and four two-person DNA sampling teams to check remote hair snagging corrals and rubbing posts. There's only enough money for three of each this year, Kasworm said. That means he can't split the staff evenly between the Selkirk and Cabinet-Yaak recovery zones. Instead, he plans to assign two trapping and DNA teams to the Cabinet-Yaak and just one of each to the Selkirks. The Selkirk crews will also have a narrow focus. They'll be stationed in North Idaho near the Canadian border and will prioritize monitoring bears in an area where their work is funded in part by the U.S. Border Patrol. That means the rest of the Selkirks will get less attention than usual, particularly the portion of the range in northeast Washington. "The money just isn't there," Kasworm said. Kasworm was speaking at a meeting of the Selkirk and Cabinet-Yaak subcommittee of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee, a coalition of state and federal government officials working toward grizzly bear recovery. The reduction in effort doesn't completely eliminate grizzly monitoring in northeast Washington. There won't be a team that can trap bears for research, since that has typically only been done by the Fish and Wildlfie Service, but there will be crews gathering DNA samples. The U.S. Forest Service, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Kalispel Tribe all have staff that build monitor hair snag corrals and rub sites. Representatives from each agency said Thursday that they plan to continue that work this summer. Bart George, wildlife program manager for the Kalispel Tribe's Natural Resources Department, said his team will prioritize building hair snag corrals in places like the Salmo-Priest Wilderness to ensure DNA data is still being gathered. "We're going to try to pick up the slack where we can," George said. It's a time of uncertainty for grizzly bear managers across the West. Budget cuts and staffing reductions have taken a toll on the federal agencies involved. Meanwhile, a new framework for managing the bears hangs in the balance. In early January, during the final days of the Biden administration, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed a sea change in the way the agency manages the bears, which have been protected as threatened in the Lower 48 states since 1975. The proposal called for keeping the bears listed but managing the various populations as a single unit. Doing so would shrink the overall area where grizzlies are protected from the entire Lower 48 states to one contiguous zone covering all of Washington and large parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. But it would shift management away from decades of ecosystem-by-ecosystem goals and toward encouraging connectivity between the isolated populations. An initial public comment period for the rule was scheduled to end in March but was extended two months. It was scheduled to end Friday. Federal officials will now review those comments and decide how to proceed, but it's unclear exactly what will come next. Hilary Cooley, the Fish and Wildlife Service's grizzly recovery coordinator, said during Thursday's meeting that the agency still doesn't have a confirmed director, although former Wyoming Game and Fish chief Brian Nesvik has been nominated. "There are a lot of things that are paused until we have leadership in place to make decisions on what our priorities are," Cooley said. She added that there's talk of major reorganization within the agency and that they expect big budget cuts. She also said a number of cooperative agreements and grant approval processes are also on hold. The grizzly recovery team lost two longtime employees to retirements. One of them had worked directly for Kasworm, leading trapping efforts for more than three decades. Annual trapping is how biologists get radio collars and ear tags on grizzlies in the wild. That work, in combination with remote cameras and DNA sampling, helps wildlife managers get a clear picture of the status of grizzly populations across the West. There were once an estimated 50,000 grizzlies between the Pacific Ocean and the Great Plains. Today, scientists put the number at about 2,000 in the Lower 48, concentrated mostly in two large populations in and around Glacier and Yellowstone national parks. The populations Kasworm monitors are much smaller. During the meeting Thursday, he said the most recent minimum counts suggest there are at least 57 bears in the U.S. portion of the Selkirks and at least 58 bears in the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem. The Selkirk population has shown more robust growth in recent years than the Cabinet-Yaak population, which is part of the reason Kasworm has decided to put more resources toward the Cabinet-Yaak. Kasworm said in an interview after the meeting that the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem is also larger. It includes two mountain ranges in far northwest Montana, one of which bleeds into Idaho. Overall, Kasworm said, it's "probably twice the size" of the Selkirk recovery zone, and it requires more effort to maintain robust data collection. Funding for grizzly monitoring comes from a variety of sources. While the recovery program is managed primarily by the Fish and Wildlife Service, it also gets money from the U.S. Forest Service. Kasworm said he has seen reductions in the funding provided by both agencies. The U.S. Border Patrol helps pay for monitoring in the Bog Creek area of North Idaho. That arrangement was the result of the Border Patrol's request for access to part of a road near the Canadian border that had been closed to protect bears. Kasworm said Thursday that funding hadn't arrived from the Border Patrol yet, and that he was "a little concerned" that funding might also be cut. Private funding is preventing even deeper cuts. The Paul G. Allen Foundation awarded money to a researcher based at the University of California-Santa Cruz for a project on grizzly genetics, which is helping pay for a couple of the DNA teams working in Kasworm's area. The foundation's money is good for multiple years. There's no predicting the future when it comes to federal funding, however. Kasworm said losing one year of trapping in parts of the Selkirks may not end up being a big deal, but multiple years would be. "It's not only this year," Kasworm said. "I'm even more worried about next year." George, with the Kalispel Tribe, said the tribe might have been able to help with the funding woes had they known sooner. Knowing it's an issue, he said they'll start looking for grants and other cash to stockpile ahead of the 2026 field season to "support a full trapping effort." Until then, the tribe will be prioritizing gathering DNA samples from hair snag corrals and rub sites in. The field work season is getting started. "We'll be getting corrals out here in the next few weeks," George said. "Hopefully, we can find some bears."
Yahoo
05-02-2025
- Yahoo
Man suspected of stealing Kalispel Tribe artifacts arrested near Yakima
Feb. 4—The man accused of stealing a display of handmade baby moccasins from Northern Quest Resort & Casino over four years ago will face trial in Spokane federal court next month. Kevin William Wissman, 61, was arrested during a traffic stop in the Yakima area on Jan. 15, court documents said. He is being held in the Yakima County Jail, according to the jail's roster. A shadow box containing five moccasins and a gauntlet made in the 1940s were stolen in October 2020 from a display case at the Kalispel Tribe's resort and casino in Airway Heights. The incident was caught on security cameras. Wissman is charged with theft from an Indian tribal organization, a federal misdemeanor. A grand jury in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington indicted him in October 2023. Wissman evaded arrest for 15 months using a false identity, according to a motion by prosecutors asking that he be detained for risk of fleeing. The court documents said Wissman was previously arrested on a DUI charge, but provided a false name, then failed to appear for a required hearing. When he was apprehended Jan. 15, he reportedly provided the same false name but eventually admitted to being Kevin Wissman. He was also wearing a disguise with two hairpieces stuffed under a beanie to make him look like he had long hair, the documents said. It wasn't immediately clear what became of the artifacts. Washington State Department of Corrections' Community Response Unit, serving as part of the Pacific Northwest Violent Offender Task Force, helped with the arrest, the agency said in a statement. The task force is led by the U.S. Marshals Service, which collaborated with Kalispel Tribal Police on the investigation. The FBI, U.S. Border Patrol, Yakima County Sheriff's Office and Yakima Police Department assisted with the investigation. James Hanlon's reporting for The Spokesman-Review is funded in part by Report for America and by members of the Spokane community. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.
