Tribe tries to attach itself to area

The Cowlitz Tribe continues its quest to appear as if it has had a significant presence in Clark County “since time immemorial.” Most recently it has employed a Clark County Fair booth (“Cowlitz Indian Tribe. Clark County. Our Past. Our Future.”) and a piece written by Cowlitz Tribe Chairman John Barnett in the Aug. 22 Reflector (“Cowlitz Tribe’s history shows residency in Clark County”).

CARS disputes the tribe’s inaccurate historic claims to Clark County because it is using them in an attempt to fulfill Department of the Interior (DOI) criteria. To take land into trust for gambling, newly recognized tribes must first qualify for an exception to a federal prohibition. The Cowlitz Tribe has applied for two exceptions: an initial reservation and restored lands.

In 2005 testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, George Skibine (then an acting deputy assistant secretary at DOI) testified that to qualify for an initial reservation or restored lands, DOI requires a tribe to have historical and geographical ties to the land.

The historic record -- including findings published by DOI -- shows that the Cowlitz Tribe’s aboriginal homeland was well to the north, primarily along the Cowlitz River. In July, the chairman of the Chinook Indian Nation added his tribe’s concerns to the discussion in a letter to The Reflector that said, “Recorded and oral history is very clear in that the indigenous peoples of the La Center, Ridgefield and Vancouver areas were Chinookan. The principle indigenous lands of the Cowlitz People were not in the present-day area of Clark County.”

For all its efforts, the Cowlitz Tribe only began attaching itself to Clark County a few years ago. Its July 20 memorandum (the one attacking La Center’s opposition) states on page 2, “Soon after the Tribe filed its fee-to-trust application in 2002 it began to reach out to the City of La Center.” (By this time, Cowlitz developer David Barnett had already purchased land and options at the La Center junction; and in 2002 the tribe asked the state to begin negotiating a gaming compact.) Had the Cowlitz Tribe truly been in Clark County to any degree, it already would have had strong ties to local communities.

Moreover, it surely would have had some presence in local media. A CARS analysis of 1994-2001 news coverage in The Columbian shows few stories related to the Cowlitz Tribe before 1999. That year, its eight stories were primarily about the tribe’s efforts to gain federal recognition—and its reaction to the Shoalwater Bay Tribe’s interest in placing a casino in Clark County.