Skokomish tribe continues progress amid COVID

Kirk Boxleitner | Sep 23, 20210

Courtesy photo count

The Waterfront at Potlatch. Below, a map showing the Skokomish Tribe's major business properties.

count

Tom Strong, vice chair and chief executive officer of the Skokomish Indian Tribe, addressed the Shelton-Mason County Chamber of Commerce on Sept. 17 as one of two "State of the Tribes" presentations.

The Journal will have a story about the Squaxin Island Tribe's address to the chamber in its Sept. 30 issue.

Strong talked about his tribe's history and resources, and about the tribe's plans for the immediate future and how it's been affected by COVID-19.

The Waterfront Potlatch Hood Canal Resort is closed to the public, but its units are dedicated to providing isolation and quarantine spaces for tribal members diagnosed with COVID.

Strong touted the value of those dedicated isolation and quarantine units in supporting tribal COVID patients, as well as limiting broader effects on friends and extended families. Strong said he expects the resort will remain dedicated to that purpose at least through the end of the year.

Strong said promising trends in the pandemic had the tribe thinking they could reopen the resort to the public by this fall, but the increase in COVID cases, first outside of the reservation, and then within it, led the tribe to delay those plans.

Moving on to Skokomish Park at Lake Cushman, Strong said he expected several capital improvements and expansions in the next year, primarily relating to RV sites, which he said have shown a "very dramatic uptick in interest."

Although the park closed last year due to COVID, Strong said its reopening this year has "seen folks flock back" with "nearly 100% bookings," which allows the tribe to focus further on an area that's culturally significant.

Strong said the pandemic has resulted in "a rash of passings" and health problems among the Skokomish people, to which the tribe responded with the active measures of closing its enterprises and tribal facilities, discouraging interaction outside of and within the tribe, allocating resources for isolation and quarantining, arranging vaccinations for tribal members and those interacting with members, and taking measures to safeguard treaty harvests.

Strong said the tribe chose the Moderna vaccine and is awaiting Food and Drug Administration approval and guidance for booster shots. In the meantime, the tribe only opens its facilities to tribal members by appointment and is limiting its seasonal and holiday activities to "drive-through" events, measures that he expects will last through the end of the year.

Because treaty harvests, including geoduck, involve diving with air piped in through helmets and masks, Strong said the tribe purchased additional masks and limited the number of divers allowed on a single boat at the same time. Similar restrictions are imposed on oyster and clam harvests.

Among the tribe's passive protection measures have been its investments in community food programs, compensation for harvesters resulting from lost revenue and expansion of the tribe's support services.

Strong devoted the final portion of his presentation to the tribe's interconnected "front burner" projects of waterline extensions, housing, facilities and transportation.

Strong said the high water table and propensity for flooding at the lower end of the reservation have spurred the development of housing on the north end, above Potlatch State Park. Connections between the new water system up north and the 1970s-era water system in the lower end are intended to solve the older water system's lack of fire suppression flows.

The housing development in the north end is likely to yield at least five more lots for development and more facilities in upland areas as the tribe elevates existing facilities and homes from their foundations in the lower end.

The tribe is seeking to make it easier and safer to go from state Route 106 to Reservation and Tribal Center roads, in addition to improving the reservation's interior roads, while the 2.5 GHz broadband that the tribe won a license to operate last year is expected to be running within 18 months to two years, Strong said.

According to Strong, the tribe is committed to providing more than 80% wireless internet coverage for the entire reservation, which would allow students to resume, if needed, online learning.