Our NACC (Native American Connections Committee) action team is raising $4,000 this month to pay for food for the 5 people on this 23 day 6,000 mile journey.
This year's totem pole journey is in response to the many fossil fuel projects throughout the U.S. and Canada - the Keystone Pipeline, the Kinder-Morgan toxic tarsands pipeline (Alberta to ports in BC) and the coal/oil/gas export projects throughout the Pacific Northwest. These projects will have significant and adverse impacts on Native and non-Native communities, alike.
This year's journey is entitled: Our Shared Responsibility: The Land, The Waters, The Peoples.
Check should be made out to Lummi Nation Service Organization (which is a 501c3 arm of Lummi Nation) with memo: 2014 Totem Pole Journey
Mail check to: Beth Brownfield, 3820 Fielding Ave, Bellingham WA 98229.
For more details on the back story . . .
Deb Cruz and Beth Brownfield are working with Lummi Nations Sovereignty and Treaty Protection Office which Jewell James heads. He is a most generous and knowledgeable man, and a master carver. After 9/11 he carved three totem poles, over a three year period, which he donated to the three attack sites (NYC; Shanksville, PA; and the Pentagon). He did this to help heal the victims family and to help heal this country. He has donated poles to schools that Lummi children attend, to Moles Funeral parlor that does most of Lummi funerals, to Whatcom Creek in the memory of the boys who lost their lives in the gas explosion. He is currently carving a pole for Oso landslide victims, and another for the family of Billy Frank Jr. and his Nisqualli Nation. (These are all gifts from Jewell, not funded by Lummi Nation).
Last year he carved a pole "We Draw The Line" which went from Bellingham to the Powder River Basin where the coal will be mined for the proposed Coal Terminal at Cherry Point. He brought the pole back along the railroad the coal will travel, stopping at Indian Reservations, and towns. He spoke with the people all along the route. Media coverage of this journey was reaching 20 million people with the message that Coal Kills people, animals, plants, and cultures. 20 million people might seem like an exaggeration but it isn't as USA Today, Indian Country Today, Huffington Post, national TV and radio stations, small town newspapers and news media all covered this journey. The pole returned to Bellingham and then up to Vancouver BC to a First Nations People on the Frasier River whose coal terminal is ruining their fishing grounds and contaminating their crab and fish.
Blog post submitted by Linda Fels, SEJC Communications
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