Call me Ishmael
The Southendomish was a proud tribe, versed in the ways of the salmon and the whale before their numbers diminished to squat. Members of the tribe were scattered to the four points of Puget Sound, denied tribal rights given the others by treaty and left to scrounge what few clams and mussels and crabs they could. When the whales became scarce and the hunting grounds crammed with vacation homes, the Southendomish were nothing but a fading echo back in the nettle ravines, a myth now to the locals where once their canoes ruled the waters.
History, even for the white invaders, is continually lost to rot and rust and ruin, but for the Southendomish, little remains of their culture, not the language or the customs or their fishing skills. Oh, a few clam middens here and there. An old carving in a tree on the bluff at the Head where dozens were killed by a landslide below. An occasional stone weight for sinking their woven nettle fishing nets. But there are no photos, no oral histories, no living memory of the tribe.
So when the good city of Everett found a dead whale beached on their waterfront, the folks down there, unaware and uncaring of the noble history of the Southendomish, decided to tow the bloating beast to the former hunting grounds of the island here, a fresh indignity to the legacy of the natives, to decompose into a putrid and incredibly obnoxious smelling pile of rotting blubber not even a starving crow would approach. It arrived two days ago in an isolated cove near the Head, forty feet long, who knows how many tons. The South End evidently has been designated an unofficial cetacean burial ground, a compost pit for the NIMBY’s across the water far from the olfactory hell that now emanates from down at the beach. Thank you very much. What’s the next gift, smallpox?
If we could gather enough concerned neighbors, we would happily return the favor. Haul down our own unwanted compost waste, our sani-can pumpings, our poopscoop collections, our seafood leftovers, our dirty Pamper diapers and dump them on the waterfront of the privileged rich, a fair trade. But in the end, don’t think the Southendomish will be avenged. They won’t, not by a long shot.
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Tags: Avenging the Southendomish, Returning Favors, Whale Dump
The American government offered native tribes a treaty for “as long as grass shall grow and water run, and the reserves shall be their own property.”
Who could have anticipated the invention of Round Up, the construction of dams, and eminent domain, if not outright theft?
We gave them the ground (unless it has oil under it), we gave them hunting rights (after we slaughtered every last buffalo), we gave them fishing rights (but sadly the salmon are nearly depleted). Now they have casinos and with a little luck (bad luck for the great white fathers), maybe they’ll buy back what they had stolen. On the South End they bought the tidelands at the Head. It’s a start.