Whatcom Hate Groups

Thirty years ago, Washington Department of Ecology (DOE) initiated a water resources inventory of the Nooksack basin. Simultaneously, DOE facilitated roundtable discussions including caucuses of farmers, water resource providers, the construction industry, and environmentalists. I was selected to represent the environmental caucus. With the Nooksack river Chinook salmon threatened with extinction, there was a sense of urgency to our work. 

Hovering around the roundtable process were professional troublemakers looking for an opportunity to make money drumming up resentment against the tribes. Water rights law is "first in time, first in line." Since Lummi Nation and the Nooksack Tribe have been here for 500 generations, they are by far the senior water rights holders. Treaty rights under federal law are considered property rights. The salmon are the tribes' property.

Local media at the time was beholden to the real estate industry due to advertising revenue and attacked both the tribes and environmentalists. Today they mostly cover up bad news about their advertisers, without launching attacks, the exception being KGMI radio. Ten years ago, KGMI radio hosts invited and promoted Anti-Indian organizers to take down the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians opposing the proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal at Cherry Point.

Support for the Anti-Indian attack came from the Whatcom Republican Party, Whatcom Tea Party (now Common Threads Northwest) and Whatcom Business Alliance--founded by Tony Larson as a fossil fuel export advocacy group allied with BP which led the fight to lift the fossil fuel export ban in Congress. The Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians is opposed to fossil fuel export, which threatens their efforts to restore the Salish Sea.

Bolstering the overt racism of Citizens Equal Rights Alliance (CERA) speakers hosted on the KGMI Saturday Morning Live show is the Christian white supremacy network rooted in right wing churches and business associations. Christian Patriot terrorists, such as those arrested by the FBI in 1996 for making bombs to murder human rights activists in Whatcom and Snohomish counties, round out the milieu.

In 2018, the Center for World Indigenous Studies (CWIS) in Olympia WA published my six-part report Anti-Indian Movement, documenting organized racism in Whatcom County 2013-2017. As a think tank established by leaders from the National Congress of American Indians and the Assembly of First Nations (Canada), CWIS conducts research to advise tribes.

Water rights adjudication for the Nooksack basin begins in 2024.


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