When Dana Wilson steers his boat through northern straits of the Salish Sea and catches sight of sandy bluffs on the horizon, his emotions churn.
Wilson mostly feels a deep sense of belonging, because he and his ancestors have fished off these distinctive bluffs at Point Roberts since ancient times.
But recently, the Lummi Nation council member also feels a deep sense of distress, because some of those ancestors’ remains have been violently disturbed here, according to a lawsuit filed by the Nation this year.
Since 2021, workers for a telecommunications company, Whidbey Telecom, have trenched through Lummi burial grounds near the bluffs, damaging human remains and cultural artifacts, according to the federal court lawsuit, which the Nation says should bring about a broader reckoning.
The lawsuit accuses the company, Whatcom County and the federal government of multiple infractions, including gross negligence.
Whidbey Telecom and Whatcom County have denied Lummi Nation’s allegations, and the company's CEO says it has always held great respect for the history and heritage of our local Indigenous communities."
But Washington's head archaeologist is supporting the Nation's account of what's happened, and a judge has ruled the Nation is likely to succeed in claiming Whidbey Telecom disturbed and mishandled ancestral remains.
The Nation's attorneys say the debacle is symptomatic of regulatory breakdowns that are posing risks to Indigenous and other historic sites across the country, and Lummi leaders say it shows an ongoing lack of care.
Even in a state where many non-Native officials have in the past few decades tried to build better relationships with local tribes, the Lummis say they're still being forced to fight to defend what they hold dear.
The city of Blaine stopped work in 1999, apologized and later ceded land to the Nation after a wastewater project at Semiahmoo Spit disturbed hundreds of ancestors. In 2016, the Lummis blocked the construction of a coal port at Cherry Point, south of Blaine, after initial work disturbed another burial site.
“We spend a tremendous amount of time and resources protecting what is sacred to us," said Jay Julius, another Lummi council member. “I’ve developed a hate for the words, ‘I’m sorry.'”
The latest alleged transgression occurred in an isolated Whatcom County community on a peninsula that extends south into Washington waters from the Canadian province of British Columbia.
Point Roberts is part of Lummi Nation's traditional homelands and sits only 30 miles by boat from the Nation's reservation, near Bellingham, but driving there means crossing the U.S.-Canada border twice.
Salmon surge past the peninsula as they return from the Pacific Ocean to the Fraser River to spawn. The east side carries the Lummi name Chelh’tenem (CHELH-tuh-nuhm), which means a place to hang salmon for drying. Wilson, 68, began fishing here with his dad about 50 years ago.
“When you start digging up those ancient people, that’s where it brings up emotions,” Wilson said, gazing across pewter waves on his way to Point Roberts. “Because those are my relatives. Our relatives.”
Buried history
Rocks scatter the beaches that edge the peninsula. Firs and cedars soar above. Between the trees, paved streets lead past banks of quiet bungalows.
For many visitors and residents, Point Roberts is now a weekend getaway or a place to retire. What lies beneath tells a different story.
Historians and archaeologists estimate Lummi Nation ancestors occupied and buried loved ones at Point Roberts for more than 5,000 years, until they were driven off the peninsula by colonial settlers, the Nation’s federal lawsuit says.
Point Roberts has been an important location for so long because salmon migrating north through Rosario Strait and Boundary Bay have to navigate around the bottom of the peninsula to reach the mighty Fraser River.
“The sockeye have been doing the same thing for a million years,” Wilson said as he approached the place by boat this summer, explaining why his ancestors practiced sxwole (SKHW-oh-leh) reefnet fishing here.
They suspended tapered nets made from eelgrass, cedar bark, nettles and willow branches between their canoes with stone anchors, using gentle angles and natural materials to disguise the nets as reefs and coax the fish in.
Back then, the Lummis “were catching more salmon than any people in the world,” Wilson said.
Generation after generation, Northern Straits people cured salmon at Point Roberts. Lived in villages. Traded. Hunted. Made war. Held burials. Village, reefnet and burial sites passed down within lineages acquired immense significance, operating as a constellation of sovereign entities, Julius said.
Where people were buried and with what rites and objects could depend on who they were and how they died, said Lena Tso, tribal historic preservation officer for Lummi Nation. Some people were buried near the beaches, some inland. Some with more grave goods, some with less.
European explorers arrived in the area in the 1790s. Just a century later, the Lummis had lost control over most of their territory and had been displaced from Point Roberts, partly to make way for a commercial cannery.
They sued with support from the U.S. government, citing their right under the Treaty of Point Elliott to continue using their traditional fishing grounds. But a judge ruled against them in 1897, depriving them of access until a court reversal in 1974. By then, non-Native people had settled at Point Roberts.
Some Lummi sites were bulldozed in the 20th century as the newcomers built homes and streets, spreading shards of history across the landscape, said Allison Calder, a Point Roberts civic leader who runs a construction company with her husband and regularly deals with archaeological issues.
In parts of the community today, these shards hide just below the grass line, said Calder. Her company sometimes installs septic tanks above ground to avoid disturbances.
“We can’t dig in certain areas,” she said. “A pile of broken shells could be an ancient site. A broken rock could be an ancient tool.”
Broadband projects
Lummi Nation has no reservation land at Point Roberts and no employees stationed there. But anyone who does construction there knows its 5 square miles are unusually crowded with traces of the past, Calder said.
The community includes over a dozen confirmed archaeological sites, which can span more than 10 acres. Whatcom County law requires a special assessment and tribal consultation for any project near one of the sites.
It's why Tso from Lummi Nation reviews more than 1,000 projects each year at Point Roberts and elsewhere.
Her goal is to minimize and mitigate disturbances, not to obstruct development, and she says she authorizes most projects without major adjustments. Still, the Nation contends Tso should have been notified about Whidbey Telecom's quest to bring broadband internet to Point Roberts.
Instead, Tso says she found out by accident, when a local archaeologist happened to drive by one of the projects and saw the company’s workers digging through the sort of black dirt that characterizes ancient sites.
“It was really overwhelming,” Tso said, comparing the disturbance of a burial with the sudden disappearance of a living relative: “There’s panic, doubt and confusion.”
Broadband is an essential service in the 21st century, especially for remote communities, Whidbey Telecom CEO Donna Hilty noted. So, the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Commerce awarded grants to help the company lay fiber optic cables at Point Roberts, including along public rights of way.
Starting in 2021, a first project trenched through more than 2,000 feet of one archaeological site, according to the Lummi lawsuit. In 2023, a second project began digging through another archaeological site, according to the suit.
Federal and county laws mandated consultation with Lummi Nation, but federal officials wrongly granted them exemptions, according to the Nation’s lawsuit, and the county missed the mark completely, later casting blame on a software glitch.
“It appears on our end that the newly installed permitting software no longer flags Point Roberts,” the county’s public works director wrote to Tso.
Federal and state officials ordered Whidbey Telecom to pause work on the company’s second project. But state and Lummi representatives didn’t learn about the first project until 2024, the Nation's lawsuit says, and it went ahead without being stopped, bringing some broadband access to the community.
Meanwhile, a preliminary damage assessment for the second project found 17 fragments of human remains from at least three individuals and 1,194 artifacts, despite looking only at a few test holes and dirt piles, according to Washington state’s head archaeologist.
Lummi Nation attorneys estimate more than 99% of the potential damage by Whidbey Telecom at Point Roberts has not been assessed. They argue it’s possible hundreds of Lummi ancestors’ remains have been harmed.
Yet another alleged misstep occurred last year, when Whidbey Telecom subcontractors were surveying for a third broadband project. They found a human skull fragment and alerted the sheriff’s department. By the time the department went to collect the fragment a month later, it was gone.
For Lummi Nation’s citizens, each revelation has hurt, Tso said. In the Nation’s long-held culture, the human body is sacred in life and in death. When ancestors are disturbed, they must be reburied with honor.
“You still love them,” Tso said. “Even when they’re not here.”
Culture under attack
A drumbeat pulsed and voices swelled in song as Lummi Nation School students stepped onto the hardwood floors of their gym this May, making shells on their dresses rattle and gently waving cedar boughs.
They escorted a miniature canoe with the year’s ceremonial “first salmon,” covered by a blanket. They recited traditional stories as Lummi citizens and guests watched from the stands. Everyone received a taste of salmon.
Then Wilson and the students escorted the canoe out of the building and down to a beach, so they could return the first salmon to the water.
This is the culture Lummi people have kept alive through 200 years of displacement, disease and discrimination, Nation leaders said, describing their annual First Salmon Ceremony as an example of Indigenous resilience.
But Lummi culture is still under attack, they said, pointing to the series of burial ground incursions at Semiahmoo, Cherry Point and Point Roberts.
It’s hard to imagine the Lummis driving a backhoe into a non-Indigenous cemetery, Wilson said, wondering whether the alleged damage at Point Roberts was purely accidental.
“They were going to buzz through” before anyone noticed, Wilson said.
Filed in April, the Nation’s lawsuit accuses the federal agencies of violating historic preservation and environmental laws; Whatcom County of negligence; and Whidbey Telecom of gross negligence.
It also accuses the company of violating Washington’s Indian Graves and Records Act, which says it’s a crime to knowingly injure Native graves.
The lawsuit seeks compensation for the Nation’s losses and to punish Whidbey Telecom for its alleged misdeeds.
In a July court filing, the federal government said the Department of Commerce should be dismissed from the case, arguing the agency is still reviewing Whidbey Telecom's third Point Roberts project. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment.
County officials declined an interview request and didn’t respond to written questions from The Seattle Times. They admit they granted permits for Whidbey Telecom's first and second projects but have pointed blame at the company for any damage.
Whidbey Telecom says it did nothing wrong, arguing the U.S. Department of Agriculture "managed all tribal notifications and consultations" for the projects. The company says it obtained the construction approvals and permits it needed. It claims its crews encountered zero cultural resources during its first project and stopped work when appropriate on its second. The company says it was "not the first" to work in the area where it inadvertently discovered artifacts.
"We feel that the allegations do not accurately and completely convey the circumstances surrounding the Point Roberts projects and believe that is what the evidence will show at trial," Whidbey Telecom's Hilty wrote in a statement to The Times.
Raising awareness
Greg Werkheiser, a Virginia-based attorney for Lummi Nation who specializes in such cases, said the Point Roberts mess points to wider problems.
Federal agencies that are supposed to oversee taxpayer-funded projects have been chronically understaffed and are misapplying exemptions to make development easier for companies like Whidbey Telecom, he said.
Staffing has deteriorated since President Donald Trump’s short-lived Department of Government Efficiency wreaked havoc last year, Werkheiser said. But some Democrats are also backing proposals to neuter historic and environmental regulations in the name of cutting red tape, he added.
“This is the poster child” for unintended consequences; what’s happened at Point Roberts has hurt Lummi Nation and slowed the construction of a broadband network there, rather than accelerated it, the attorney said.
On July 15, a federal judge issued an injunction that blocks Whidbey Telecom — while the lawsuit moves toward trial — from restarting its Point Roberts work without notifying the Nation.
In her order, Judge Kymberly Evanson of the Western District of Washington wrote the Nation is likely to succeed in claiming the company violated the Graves Act by disturbing ancestral remains and failing to properly rebury them under tribal supervision.
“Had a member of the public not observed the excavation and alerted” state and Lummi officials, “it is unclear if the Nation would have ever learned about it,” Evanson wrote, describing the cultural and spiritual injury experienced by tribal members as irreparable.
The point of the Nation’s lawsuit, Lummi Chairman Anthony Hillaire said, is to secure accountability and “make sure this never happens again, even as communities like Point Roberts continue to change and grow.
On a breezy Saturday in June, Wilson brought Tso there by boat so she could speak at a public meeting. Calder organized the event to help dispel misconceptions about Point Roberts' archaeology, which can add costs not only when companies like Whidbey Telecom undertake projects but also when property owners renovate or expand their homes.
The journey over the water took several hours. After tying up at the Point Roberts marina, the Lummi leaders got a ride to the local community center.
Tso introduced herself in the Lummi language. Then she explained the Nation's consultation process, backed by a PowerPoint slide titled, “What do I do if I’ve found human remains?” A few dozen residents listened politely.
Wilson stood in the back of the room, thinking about his connection to this exceptional place. The Lummis who were pushed out. The salmon that return every year. The ancestors laid to rest here.
He didn’t say a word as the meeting went on. But his emotions churned.
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