BLAINE-LUMMI RELATIONS

In the 1850s, Lummi Indians were removed from the San Juan Islands by the U.S. Army. In the 1880s, Lummi villages at Legoe Bay (Lummi Island) and Semiahmoo Spit (now part of Blaine) were destroyed by Alaska Packers Association to build salmon canneries in their place. 

The Lummi were restricted to a reservation, which was subsequently reduced in size when the federal Indian agent sold Cherry Point to illegal white squatters. In the 1950s, oil refineries were built there.

In the 1970s, an oil spill at a refinery wiped out the state's largest herring spawn at Cherry Point. The herring are the primary food for Chinook salmon--the staple of the Southern Resident Killer Whale's diet.

In 1999, the City of Blaine intentionally desecrated a registered Lummi burial ground on Semiahmoo Spit, unearthing over 100 human remains. In 2017, Blaine paid Lummi Nation $3.5 million and deeded the two-acre cemetery to Lummi Nation.

On April 16, 2026, Blaine Planning Commission recommended approval of Title 17 amendments to the Blaine Municipal Code that would put all power over environmental decisions affecting Dakota Creek, Drayton Harbor, and Semiahmoo Bay into the hands of the Blaine planning director, and would impose a $5,000 fee to challenge his edicts. 

All Blaine environmental decisions impact Lummi Nation treaty rights to salmon and shellfish harvesting, as well as their cultural artifacts in this federally-protected estuary.

Blaine is required under the law to have meaningful consultation with the tribe on anything that might impair those rights. That has not happened.