Blessing the Journey

We were among several hundred people who gathered this morning at the Lummi Nation's Tribal Administrative Center, west of Bellingham, to be a part of the Blessing Ceremony for the 2014 Totem Pole Journey, launched today. It was a profoundly moving experience, one that I will long remember, rich in words, music, and unity.

That's master carver Jewell James of the Lummi Nation House of Tears Carvers above, with two of the photographers covering this event, on the truck carrying the 2014 totem pole. He and other House of Tears carvers have created and delivered a number of other healing totem poles to areas across the country that have been "struck by disaster" or are "in need of hope, healing, and protection."

This latest totem pole, 18 feet tall, and its 1,200 mile journey that began today, "will bring attention to the adverse effects on Native and non-Native communities in the path of the coal, Bakken oil, and tar sands oil." Included in this path is the proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal, which would be North America's largest coal export facility: the Gateway Pacific Terminal at Cherry Point, about 20 miles from Bellingham.

Cherry Point -- Xwe'chi'eXen in the Lummi language -- is "a sacred landscape that includes ancient reef-net sites and a 3,500-year-old village site." Enormous bulk cargo carriers conveying Cherry Point coal to Asia would endanger fishing in the Salish Sea that sustains many Lummi in that area, as well as other fishers, not to mention sea life. Long trains carrying coal from Wyoming and Montana through cities, towns, and countryside in several other states, including mine, will compromise public safety and disrupt life for residents in those areas.

An alliance of more than 100 health, environmental, business, clean energy, faith, and community groups are working to stop coal export off the west coast of the United States through Power Past Coal, an organization I support. From that website: "...coal companies want to export more than 100 million tons of coal each year from the Northwest, transporting it by trains and barges and loaded onto ships bound for China, India and other countries to be burned, putting 180 million tons of carbon pollution in our air each year.

If you'd like to follow the 2014 totem pole's journey, this website, which began with the 2013 totem pole's journey, is a good resource.

(Added August 18: Phil's blip provides a much wider view of this moment -- do take a look.)

Blip 1012

Link to source of the quotations in paragraphs 2-4