Sam Robinson, vice chairman of the Chinook Indian Nation, is “telling the story”

When Sam Robinson arrives at a public event in his distinctive cone-shaped Chinook hat to sing, play his drum and tell stories, what seems like a cultural, broadly spiritual moment is something else too: a political protest.

Vancouver resident Robinson, 66, is vice chairman of the Chinook Indian Nation. His frequent personal appearances aim to reunify and strengthen a tribe that’s been denied, disadvantaged and dispersed by government repression and intertribal competition for close to two centuries.

More than 100 Chinook tribal members and allies gathered outside the Marshall House on Vancouver’s Officers Row to press Congress to pass the Chinook Restoration Act, a law that would bestow federal recognition and start the process of establishing a Chinook reservation.

The Quinault Indian Nation has its own federally recognized reservation, but over the years, ongoing treaty negotiations also designated some Quinault land for several other tribes — first the Quileute, Queets and Hoh people, then later the Chehalis, Chinook and Cowlitz, according to Indian Country Today.

All of those other tribes, except the Chinook, have since succeeded in gaining federal recognition and establishing their own reservations. But Chinook land allotments and hunting and fishing rights on Quinault land remain in dispute. In 2018, Quinault officials said they still want the Chinook to waive any and all rights to their land.

“The conflict, from the Quinault perspective, has … centered on tribal sovereignty, specifically whether non-Quinault tribal members can exert their hunting and fishing rights there,” said Steve Fountain, an assistant professor of history at Washington State University Vancouver. “In short, if the Chinook Nation is recognized, Quinaults argue that they will lose control of their own reservation lands and resources.”

The Columbian requested comment from the Quinault Indian Nation and received no reply.

“I think you will find it hard to get anyone to go on record who is directly involved in the opposition,” Fountain told The Columbian.

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The Columbian

This is Part 1 of a two-part series connecting historical segregation policies to how minority groups struggle to get political representation today.

Segregation, red-lining, and sundown town policies in the 1940s through the 1960s shaped the Tri-Cities: Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland, Washington, according to a recent book by two history professors at Washington State University Tri-Cities.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Jim Crow-era policies forced Black, Hispanic, and other racial minorities to live in East Pasco, preventing them from living anywhere else in the region, like in Kennewick, said Bob Bauman, a history professor at WSU Tri-Cities.

“In Kennewick, African Americans were excluded completely by racially restricted covenants,” Bauman said. “Real estate prohibited anyone who was nonwhite from owning a home in Kennewick, and police would remove anyone who was nonwhite who was in Kennewick after sundown. There was a sort of term for these sorts of communities in different parts of the United States called sundown towns.”

Bauman and Robert Franklin co-wrote the book “Echoes of Exclusion and Resistance: Voices from the Hanford Region.” Using oral histories, government documentation about segregation policies, and written witness accounts, the two WSU Tri-Cities professors studied segregation in the area.

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NWPB.org

Each week, The Spokesman-Review examines one question from the Naturalization Test immigrants must pass to become United States citizens.

Today’s question: Many documents influenced the U.S. Constitution. Name one.

Written in 1787 and ratified a year later, the U.S. Constitution established the country’s federal government and is the oldest national constitution still in effect.

The Constitution has three main parts: the Preamble, seven articles and its amendments. Overall, it creates a foundation for the country, including establishing federalism, popular sovereignty, separation of power, and checks and balances. Several documents, notably the Articles of Confederation and the Federalist Papers, shaped how it was written, but there were also two documents that might have influenced it as well.

When looking for evidence of influence, historians look for text evidence like notes or letters from among those involved in the Constitution’s drafting. In the case of the Mayflower Compact, there is no direct written evidence that it had any influence while founders were drafting the Constitution.

While teaching in class, Steven Fountain said it is easy to point at something that looks like democracy and say that is where the constitution came from, but that would not be true. Fountain, a history professor at Washington State University Vancouver, said his students are always shocked when they realize the Mayflower Compact was set to create a society by restricting rights rather than codifying inherent rights as the Constitution does.

The Mayflower Compact was an agreement that was based in the time it was written, Fountain said. At the time, the compact was noteworthy because it was a document agreed upon by the people rather than being imposed by the King of England.

But he said it is a stretch to say it was of any influence, especially because the pilgrims who created the compact were far gone by the time the Constitution was drafted over 150 years later.

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Spokesman-Review

It’s a political movement willing to align with anyone to win.

Perspective by Matthew Avery Sutton, author of multiple books on religion and politics. He is the chair of the history department and the Berry Distinguished professor of liberal arts at Washington State University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect those of WSU.

White evangelicals have developed the dubious reputation of championing morally compromised political candidates — ones who seem to run afoul of their professed values. They overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, and on Election Day this year almost nine out of 10 White evangelicals in Georgia voted for the supposedly antiabortion rights Herschel Walker — who allegedly paid for two abortions and once put a gun to the head of his ex-wife while threatening to kill her — over Baptist minister Raphael G. Warnock.

A new documentary on Hulu focusing on former Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr., the first major evangelical leader to endorse Trump in 2016, also reveals that some of the religious right’s most influential leaders are as morally questionable as the politicians they support. But for many evangelicals, the ends always justify the means.

“God Forbid” chronicles how Falwell, at the same time he was playing presidential kingmaker, engaged in business ventures with Giancarlo Granda, a former pool attendant who allegedly had a seven-year sexual relationship with Falwell’s wife, Becki — one Granda charges Falwell encouraged.

While on the surface this looks like the same old tired story of religious hypocrisy, it is much more than that.

When one digs beneath the tawdry bedroom shenanigans, the story exposes how leadership sometimes functions in the religious right, and how Christian activists’ obsession over political power has transformed American culture.

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Washington Post