HomeMy WebLinkAbout061626 Give Protection Island back to the Jamestown S'Klallam NationALERT: BE CAUTIOUS This email originated outside the organization. Do not open attachments or click on links if you are not expecting them.
Dear Heidi, Heather, and Greg --
The US National Park Service and National Forest Service have been displacing Indigenous people from their traditional lands for more than 100 years. Conservationists use the language
of environmentalism to push aside the original people of a place in the name of "saving the land."
As Patty Krawec so elegantly puts it in Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future:
"This story repeats itself across the United States and Canada. Indigenous people banished from what conservationists saw as pristine wilderness. These parks were seen by settlers...as
natural cathedrals: protected landscapes where people could worship the sublime...an Eden untouched by humans. But...these places were never untouched. In a reenactment of the fall,
the settlers cast out the original people and called it pure." (133)
Restoring federally-controlled and state-controlled land to the people from whom we took it is long overdue.
If we take seriously the idea of conservation, restoring the land to the Jamestown S'Klallam is the right thing to do.
The current Republican Administration has rescinded past executive orders that limited ATVs and dirt bikes to roads and marked trails in National Forests and National Parks. This means
that very soon, ATVs, some of which are larger than the car I drive, will now be allowed anywhere on federal land. These are not people I trust with any land.
In a fact sheet posted with the orders, Trump labeled the off-road vehicle limits “outdated and burdensome”.
“As the United States marks 250 years of independence in 2026, we must shine a light on our nation’s greatest natural treasures and ensure every American can recreate on these majestic
lands,” a Forest service spokesperson said in a memo announcing the opening.
We cannot get Protection Island out of federal hands fast enough.
Please support Representative Emily Randall's efforts.
Please!
Angela Gyurko & Chris Swartz