Sept. 13, 2009: Mother Nature's little helpers - The busy beaver may be key to region's water issues

 Sep. 13--INCHELIUM, Wash. -- The beaver huffed indignantly as Rick Desautel prodded it into a wire cage. The night before, it had followed its nose to a musky scent along the shoreline of North Twin Lake on the Colville Reservation and ended up in Desautel's trap.

Two hundred years ago, trappers would have shipped the beaver's glossy pelt to Europe to meet an insatiable demand for beaverskin hats. But Desautel, an animal control officer for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, had other plans. 

The beaver and four others were released into a creek in the San Poil watershed, where their dam-building skills will help hold back water and restore wetlands trampled by cattle.

Once trapped to near extinction, beavers are on the rebound. As populations increase, North America's largest rodents are gaining scientists' respect. Ponds and wetlands created by beaver dams provide rich habitat for other wildlife. And in the parched West, beaver dams could help mitigate the impact...

March 2007: Florence Lee Putnam obituary

 Florence Lee Putnam, a longtime resident of Inchelium, passed away March 7, 2007.

She was born Aug. 31, 1919, in the Dixie Hospital of Hampton, VA. Florence graduated from Hampton High School in 1937 and Farmville State Teacher's College (now Longwood University) in 1941. Florence was employed by NACA (now NASA) as a mathematician, continuing her longtime interest in aeronautics. In 1941, she met a young serviceman from Inchelium, Washington, Carl Putnam who was attending officer training at Ft. Monroe. They were married at St. Johns, Hampton, on May 1, 1944.

Florence was preceded in death by her parents, Beverly Wills and Julia Armistead; her twin brother, Beverly Wills Lee Jr.; and her sister, Julia Travis Lee. 

She is survived by her husband, Carl Putnam; and her three children, James, Fred and Julia Putnam of Washington state; her siblings, Henry Lee, Rebecca Hunt and husband, Ray and Dorothy Halliday and husband Hugh of Virginia; and seven grandchildren and five great grandchildren.

June 2011: Father Patrick Conroy confirmed as new House chaplain

Jesuit Father Patrick J. Conroy was unanimously approved as the next House chaplain in a May 25 vote.

Father Conroy, 60, a native of Washington state, had been nominated by House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, himself a Catholic, as the ideal candidate for the position.

The Jesuit succeeds Father Daniel Coughlin, a priest of the Chicago Archdiocese who retired in April after 11 years on the job.

Father Conroy most recently was a theology teacher, campus ministry assistant and coach at Jesuit High School in Portland, Ore., and long served as a pastor to Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest.

Boehner, who attended Jesuit-run Xavier University in Cincinnati, decided he wanted a Jesuit to serve as the next pastor and confidant to House members and staff.

Father Conroy's nomination initially was held up by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, who expressed concern that the Jesuit belongs to the Oregon province of the Society of Jesus, which agreed in March to pay about $166 million in settlements to 500 people who have sought damages for abuse they said they suffered under Jesuits at schools and parishes in the Northwest. She later dropped her objections.

Father Conroy has not been accused of any involvement in the sexual abuse of minors or any cover-up of such abuse.

The priest was among several priests from the Society of Jesus put forward for the position after Father Coughlin contacted the U.S. Jesuits in Washington about his retirement. The office notified Jesuit provincials around the country about Boehner's wish.

The Washington scene will not be new to Father Conroy, a lawyer who had been a campus minister at Georgetown for a decade.

The House chaplain earns $167,800 a year, according to the Congressional Research Service. As a member of a religious community, Father Conroy does not keep his salary but turns it over to a common fund for Jesuit life and ministry.

At Jesuit High since 2004, he has served as superior of the Jesuit community, teacher of freshman and sophomore theology, assistant coach of the junior varsity softball team, campus ministry assistant, member of the school's board of trustees, chaplain to athletic teams and director of freshman retreats.

Father Conroy entered the Jesuits in 1973 and was ordained in 1983, having earned a law degree and several theology degrees during formation. From 1984 to 1989, he served as pastor of a mission in Inchelium, Wash., serving the people of the Colville Indian reservation. From 1986 to 1989, he also served as pastor at the Spokane Indian reservation.

Father Conroy, in an earlier interview, said that he was unnerved when his provincial approached him last fall about the possibility. But as time passed, the excitement and glamour turned to a feeling of peace, which Father Conroy said is a classic sign in Jesuit spirituality that a decision was right.

"My thought was, if it happens, glory be to God. And if it doesn't happen, glory be to God," Father Conroy said.

Jesuit spirituality, based on the 16th-century writings of St. Ignatius of Loyola, centers on making good decisions. That could fit well in the business of the House of Representatives, Father Conroy said.

"I would hope I'd be able to remind everyone what they're about," he said. "They are not about winning something so someone else loses, but winning so everyone wins. They are there to serve, not to gain glory."

The priest said he imagines most of his work will happen in one-on-one conversations. He said he aims to help House members and staff discern which urges are coming from God and which are coming from them.

"You need to know the difference," Father Conroy said.

January 2001: Pro se Inchelium man petitions U.S. Supreme Court

“Retiree” reduces 18-year hunting rights controversy to six constitutional questions

COLVILLE, Wash. -- For the first time in 140 years a pro se litigant may have his questions answered by the U.S. Supreme Court. On October 31, 2000, Inchelium, Wash., resident Ervin Palmer, 82, petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for a Writ of Certiorari in answer to six questions that have arisen during his 18-year battle with state, federal and private entities over his right to hunt and trap his own patented land on the Colville Indian Reservation.

Palmer purchased his 120 acres in one of the wildest, game rich areas of the U.S. in 1960 with the intention of retiring there and supplementing his income by trapping on his own land. Palmer's documents show that on August 29, 1982, in order to save face on a dispute over fishing rights it would lose in federal court, the state of Washington entered into an agreement with the Colville tribe that discriminated against non-Indians. The state, through what is now the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife (WDFW), agreed to declare a non-scientific “emergency” regarding populations of certain fur-bearing animals. The WDFW also agreed that a moratorium on hunting and trapping these animals would only apply to non-Indians (The Idaho Observer, June, 1999).

Since declaring this discriminatory “state of emergency” the state has received in excess of $120,000,000 in federal habitat restorations monies.

Rather than being able to spend his retirement hunting and trapping animals on his own patented piece of land as he had originally intended, Palmer has been forced to spend his entire retirement fighting for his right legally trap the same animals his Indian neighbors are allowed to trap.

Over the last 18 years, Palmer has patiently, ethically, legally and systematically exhausted every administrative remedy at his disposal. In the process he has uncovered the evidence which proves that the WDFW-declared emergency that has taken his rights away is a fraud that was perpetrated against him for political expediency.

After nearly two decades and the collection of a 20-foot-high stack of documents, Palmer boiled his case down to six fundamental questions (which are listed in the box below) -- The answers to which would be of tremendous contemporary significance to all Americans who prefer freedom to slavery.

The Respondents listed in this case are WDFW Region 2 Director Raymond L. Duff; former Game Commission Chairman Vern E. Zeigler (of Zeigler plumbing and electric stores) and; WDFW Region 1 Director Bruce R. Smith.

“I believe that the Supreme Court will answer my petition and that its answers will set a contemporary precedent in cases all over the country where governments are violating the rights of ordinary citizens,” said Palmer.

The Court may refuse to hear the Petition, or it may rule that public officials have the right to make and enforce laws that are unconstitutional; may continue to enforce unconstitutional laws indefinitely; may commit fraud without fear of criminal prosecution; may violate peoples' civil rights without fear of criminal prosecution and; may make admissions of guilt in the commission of crimes and not be prosecuted for them.

The U.S. Supreme Court has one other option: It may rule that public officials do not have the right to lawlessly violate the civil rights of law-abiding Americans which would signal the beginning of an era where lawless bureaucrats are held constitutionally accountable for their crimes against people.

Palmer's saga was originally published in the June, 1999 edition of The Idaho Observer.

2001: Perfect fit - Michelle Hall embraces her Colville Indian roots while doing promotions for Native American filmmakers and musicians

The distance between Inchelium, Wash., and Park City, Utah, is a lot farther than the mere miles that separate them.

No one knows that better than Michelle Hall.

For Hall, who grew up on the Colville Indian Reservation, closing that distance has involved attitude. It has involved perception.

In the end, it has involved spirit.

As her mentor, film producer Millie Ketcheshawno, told her, "Keep your spirit because you're going to get knocked down, and you need to stay true to what you believe. And always remember what it is you want to achieve."

These days, Hall lives and works in San Francisco, where she runs her own public relations business. Last month she was in Park City, site of the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. Bumping elbows with the best of the country's alternative filmmakers, she was helping publicize the documentary "Alcatraz Is Not an Island," a 70-minute film about the 1969-71 Indian occupation of the former federal penitentiary.

But Hall does know what it's like to get knocked down.

Born 31 years ago in Hemet, Calif., Hall was just three weeks old when her parents moved back to the Inland Northwest.

The next several years were, in Hall's words, a "turbulent" time. Most of that turbulence involved her parents who, she says, "loved each other, but they were just two Indian people who couldn't be together."

When they split up, Hall and her younger sister were left primarily in her grandmother's care.

"My life was my grandmother," Hall says. "She was it for me. Through her I learned unconditional love."

Nevertheless, Hall remembers her adolescence seeming like an ongoing trek between schools in Inchelium, Wash., and Coulee Dam.

By her senior year, she was attending Coulee Dam's Lake Roosevelt High School. Living in her own apartment, working and playing three sports, she studied just enough to get by. When she graduated in 1987, she didn't even consider college.

"Growing up on the reservation," Hall says, "I didn't really think that college was an option for me."

Instead, she moved to Spokane, where she spent two years working as a paralegal with the late Carl Maxey's law firm. Married at 19 and divorced 18 months later, she decided to leave the Northwest.

"Seattle wasn't far enough," she says, "and Oregon was too much like Washington. So I decided to move to the Bay Area."

She knew no one there. But with her experience as a paralegal, she got a job right away. She still harbored deep feelings of self-doubt, but gradually she began to glean a sense of her abilities.

"Never in a million years did I think I could leave home or that I would amount to anything," Hall says. "I had these dreams, but I just didn't think that I would ever do anything that would matter. But that whole experience gave me confidence."

As a paralegal, she worked on a number of major cases -- the estate of the late concert promoter Bill Graham, for example, and the winery ownership of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. But she eventually soured on the law.

So in 1995, she took a job in corporate communications at a Bay Area biotechnology company specializing in gene research. She met regularly with members of the San Francisco media, and ultimately she began working for the advertising agency that handled the corporation's account.

Soon she was learning about ecology and pharmaceutical products, about neurology and medicines designed to treat such afflictions as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and epilepsy.

She learned so much, and gained so much confidence in the process, that she ended up going free-lance.

"Essentially, I worked out of my house," she says. "Whatever the job entailed, I brought on other free-lancers -- designers, writers, artists -- and we got the job done."

Just eight years after leaving Spokane, Hall had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. The time was ripe for her to grow in a different direction.

She had, after all, taken college courses: paralegal courses at Spokane Falls Community College, then general courses at San Mateo Junior College. She eventually attended the University of California-Berkeley in 1994-95. She left without getting a degree but not before realizing something about herself.

"I got tired of people trying to get me to join their causes," she says. "I didn't know what my causes were or even if I had any causes."

A cause is exactly what she found when, tired of working with medical research companies, she started looking for a new challenge. While working with the American Indian Film Institute, she attended the group's 1999 film festival.

"The experience with the festival that year was so enlightening and so empowering," she says. "My heart was feeling so connected, which it hadn't been all those years that I had been in the Bay Area. Emotionally, I began feeling all these repressed emotions."

Being around other Indian people was what did it.

"They would say, act and do mannerisms that people back home did," Hall says. "These people were geographically nowhere near my people, and yet they were talking about fry bread and macaroni soup and saying `enit."'

One person that she met was film producer Ketcheshawno. It was through her that Hall got involved with "Alcatraz Is Not an Island."

And it is for the sake of Ketcheshawno, who died in December, that she remains working on the film for free. She'll continue to do so as it makes the rounds of film festivals in search of a distributor.

"I had to get the word out," Hall says. "Millie worked too hard to get the film to that point, and getting to Sundance was the icing on the cake for her. I just couldn't let it sit."

Nor does she intend to sit on her own career. In a few weeks, Hall plans on attending the Grammy Awards with another of her clients, Joanne Shenandoah, a nominee for Best Native American Music Album. She's working with Arizona musician Keith Secola, and she's looking for other native people and issues to promote.

Hall still pauses now and then to marvel at her life and the spirit that propels it.

"People tend to migrate toward me now," she says, "and I have to believe that it's because I'm true to my heart."