Tribe longs for home (Wenatchi) | Spokane Spokesman-Review

[Ediacara]

Tribe longs for home
Forgotten people want promise fulfilled


Virginia de Leon
Staff writer

At least once a month, Mathew Dick drives his old, gray pickup 130miles from his Nespelem, Wash., home to visit the grave of his great-grandfather.

John Harmelt, the last chief of the Wenatchi Tribe, is buried in his ancestral homeland near Leavenworth in central Washington.

The Wenatchi once flourished on this land, hunting and fishing for generations in an area where the Wenatchee River meets Icicle Creek.

The land -- about 22,000 acres of what is now the Wenatchee National Forest -- was promised to the tribe in an 1855 treaty.

But despite their pact with the government, Harmelt's descendants and other Wenatchi were forced to leave. Today, the Wenatchi are a forgotten tribe -- recognized merely as one of 12 bands that make up the Colville Confederated Tribes.

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[bigtree]

1. thanks for the story

Here's a good link to a history of the Wenatchee, our government, and the broken promises.
http://www.falsepromises.com/falsepromises/main.cfm

[maxsolomon]

2. that's leavenworth

the faux-bavarian town at the mouth of icicle creek.

if the wenatchi think they'll get anything other than a casino out of that area they're fooling themselves.

but maybe what they want is a casino. climbing out of 4 centuries of repression by exploiting the vices of the working class may be payback, but it isn't the moral high road.

[sybylla]

3. Moral or not, it quite often is the only road

The shame is that we have created such a "Catch 22" out of the situation. They try to live on their isolated res without a casino to bring in cash, they get grief from the conservatives for being a welfare nation. They bring in gambling, one of the few industries that can bring cash to strapped isolated reservations, and they get grief from liberals because of the social problems it can create.

What's are the indigineous to do? Of course in a perfect world gambling wouldn't be seen as the only road out of tribal poverty. Unfortunately this isn't a perfect world.