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http://www.seattletimes.com/news/local/html98/meat_20000126.html
Wednesday, January 26, 2000, 07:18 a.m. Pacific

Salvaged meat helps link tribes, sportsmen

by Florangela Davila
Seattle Times staff reporter

Tribal hunters and sportsmen don't always get along. But
communities on either side of the Cascades, once entangled
in a feud over hunting rights, have found common ground
thanks to some good conversation - and hundreds of
pounds of road-killed deer.

Since November, hunters in the Methow Valley have been
salvaging meat from highways, turning the spoils of modern
life into the traditions of ceremony for some west-side
tribes. In the past two months, Methow residents have given
six Indian tribes 700 pounds of freshly killed meat, enough for
1,500 meals.

They will deliver another 400 pounds tomorrow to the Swinomish
reservation near La Conner, Skagit County, where the tribes will
serve a shellfish-and-salmon thank-you luncheon.

"What's remarkable is how a non-Indian community has stepped
forward to help us," said Harlan James of the Lummi tribe. "This is
clearly something to build on."

The happy solution was born out of rancor that erupted about three
years ago. When urban sprawl snuffed out good hunting grounds,
hunters from several tribes crossed the Cascades to find wintering
mule deer. They said it was both their treaty right and a cultural
necessity.

Venison, roasted or in a stew, is a traditional food served at tribal
funerals and weddings. To not have it, explained the tribes, would
be degrading.

But Methow residents, like hunters in many parts of the state, are
protective of their natural resources. According to state rules, you
hunt mostly in October . . . and never in winter, when the
gray-brown deer stand low in the valley, vulnerable in the snow.

The Indians, though, have their own rules. And back then, the tribes
found support in the story of a Nooksack Indian named Donald
Buchanan. He had been charged in the killing of an elk off-season
and without a license near Yakima. The Yakima County Superior
Court dismissed those charges, and several other tribes said they
too had the right to hunt on all open public lands.

In the winter of 1998, when tribal hunters started coming east, folks
in the Methow boiled.

"We talked to the game wardens," recalled rancher Bill White. "We
said, `Did you know there are some Indians over here, blasting all
these deer?' We were mad."

"There were actual threats quoted in the newspapers," recalled
Todd Wilbur, a Swinomish tribal member and chairman of the
intertribal hunting committee of the Northwest Indian Fisheries
Commission. "But we took a chance. And they had the courage to
be civil."

The tale of how the two sides reached a compromise is best told by
White, a rancher near Twisp, Okanogan County, who stood in his
kitchen the other day fixing 10 gallons of chili for the local Kiwanis
Club.

White is one of those guys who organizes everything. He's
conservation district director, involved in the athletic booster club,
gets kids in the local 4-H club to raise hogs.

"So many darn irons in the fire," he says.

It was White whom Wilbur decided to call in those days when
things were getting explosive, to see if both groups could talk.

Separate meetings were first called. In the Methow, about 100
people turned out at the local high school. Up went big strips of
butcher paper to brainstorm "concerns" and "solutions."

"Some were illogical, crazy things," White said. "Things, like, `Go
away. Go move to another country.' "

At the school, state wildlife authorities explained the history of
treaties signed in the 1850s, treaties in which the tribes ceded lands
but reserved hunting privileges on "open and unclaimed" lands.

Many in the crowd still fumed.

A joint meeting then was held at the airport in Wenatchee - neutral
ground.

Methow residents spoke about helping the mule deer thrive. The
Indians offered up actual harvest numbers: 495 deer killed in the
Methow Valley by nontribal hunters in 1998-99; 43 deer shot by
Indians.

They spoke about the treaty rights and their tribal needs. The
Methow residents gradually understood.

"They had older people who were raised eating wild-game meat
who refused to eat anything else," White recalls. "We could respect
that. We all have to take care of our grandparents and things."

The meetings that initially had the two groups with tight, folded
arms, evolved into rounds of conversation at which deer jerky got
passed around. At one meeting, they talked and munched a
White-roasted 250-pound hog.

By late spring, one of the Methow residents brought up salvaging
road-killed deer.

"It's not the most appealing way of getting the meat," Wilbur said.
"Our preferred method is to be able to go out and do our own
hunting. But when you're from a tribe, you need the meat."

The tribes agreed not to hunt deer in the winter. The locals agreed
to carve up freshly killed meat. And even though the state Supreme
Court in June overturned the Buchanan decision, essentially
disallowing the tribes' right to hunt in the Methow off-season, the
gentlemen's agreement already had momentum.

"We really appreciate what the Methow Valley people have done,"
said Scott Schuyler of the Upper Skagit tribe, who plans to present
the group with 100 pounds of Skagit River salmon tomorrow.

The tribes foresee a day when they can hunt where they please.
But they say they'll be ready to listen to concerns in the Methow,
having witnessed how a solution to their needs was worked out.

In the Methow, locals say they've learned, too.

"They're still hunters, sportsmen just like us," said Aaron Burkhart,
one of the volunteers. "That part has never changed.

"But I guess what changed is that they are not necessarily out for
themselves. That they are out to work with us."

--
Florangela Davila's phone message number is 206-464-2916.
 

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