
The cornerstone of Northwest Native American art, the totem pole, served as both inspiration and rallying point this week when more than 250 residents of Whatcom and Skagit Counties in Washington state, both tribal and non-tribal, gathered at the Lummi Nation to launch the totem pole journey. The focus of the event was the announcement by six major Christian churches in the Pacific Northwest that they would join the fight to block North America’s largest coal terminal at Xwe’chi’eXen, the Lummi name for Cherry Point.
“I am honored to be here to speak for the promises that need to be kept, and our promises yet to be made,” said Reverend Charis Weathers, a Lutheran pastor who delivered the announcement to leaders of the Lummi Nation. “We hope that this journey will call people to action, that the eyes of those who have not seen what is happening to the land and waters will be opened, and the ears of those who have been deaf to the cries of the earth will finally hear.”
The ceremony began with a statement from Lummi Chairman Tim Ballew that endorsed the 5,500-mile totem pole journey. The journey will visit churches all over the Pacific Northwest that have signed onto the letter opposing coal export proposals. Lummi tribal member Freddie Lane delivered the Chairman’s statement to the assembled crowd.
“Already, coal export officials have shown breathtaking disrespect for our heritage,” the statement read. “To those who would sacrifice the way of life of all peoples of the Pacific Northwest, we say: take notice, you will not win this battle. Enough is enough!”
Master Carver Jewell James spoke to the need for, and the intentions of, the totem pole journey. “The people must be awakened to what is happening,” he said. “The salmon are dying. The starfish have disappeared … Coal exports would add hundreds of ships thousands of feet long through a narrow passage in Alaska were some of the only salmon remain.”
James explained that he hoped the journey would strengthen relationships and community alliances. “I remember as I was taught by elders who said it’s not the totem pole that is sacred, it becomes treasured from the gathering of the people around it, from bringing families together.”
Those in attendance also heard from Chief Tsilixw, hereditary leader of the Lummi tribe, who spoke to what he felt was the responsibility of people of all faiths to uphold a shared responsibility to the land and water, and to future generations.
Following the remarks of speakers, members of the crowd were invited to join in blessing the 19-foot red cedar totem pole, which ultimately will be presented to First Nations battling tar sands proposals in their homelands of northern Alberta. The journey brings together an unusual alliance of First Nations, environmental organizations,and faith communities in a combined effort to protect the sacred sites of the Lummi Nation and the communities of the Pacific Northwest. The journey, which launched Aug. 17, will take approximately three weeks to complete, with the final ceremony scheduled for Sept. 6 in Alberta.
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By Aaron W Hunter
A chance discovery of a beautifully preserved fossil in the desert landscape of Morocco has solved one of the great mysteries of biology and paleontology: how starfish evolved their arms.
The Pompeii of palaeontology. Aaron Hunter, Author provided
<h2></h2><p>Although starfish might appear very robust animals, they are typically made up of lots of hard parts attached by ligaments and soft tissue which, upon death, quickly degrade. This means we rely on places like the Fezouata formations to provide snapshots of their evolution.</p><p>The starfish fossil record is patchy, especially at the critical time when many of these animal groups first appeared. Sorting out how each of the various types of ancient starfish relate to each other is like putting a puzzle together when many of the parts are missing.</p><h2>The Oldest Starfish</h2><p><em><a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/216101v1.full.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Cantabrigiaster</a></em> is the most primitive starfish-like animal to be discovered in the fossil record. It was discovered in 2003, but it has taken over 17 years to work out its true significance.</p><p>What makes <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> unique is that it lacks almost all the characteristics we find in brittle stars and starfish.</p><p>Starfish and brittle stars belong to the family Asterozoa. Their ancestors, the Somasteroids were especially fragile - before <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> we only had a handful of specimens. The celebrated Moroccan paleontologist Mohamed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2016.06.041" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ben Moula</a> and his local team was instrumental in discovering <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031018216302334?via%3Dihub" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">these amazing fossils</a> near the town of Zagora, in Morocco.</p><h2>The Breakthrough</h2><p>Our breakthrough moment came when I compared the arms of <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> with those of modern sea lilles, filter feeders with long feathery arms that tend to be attached to the sea floor by a stem or stalk.</p><p>The striking similarity between these modern filter feeders and the ancient starfish led our team from the University of Cambridge and Harvard University to create a new analysis. We applied a biological model to the features of all the current early Asterozoa fossils in existence, along with a sample of their closest relatives.</p>Cantabrigiaster is the most primitive starfish-like animal to be discovered in the fossil record. Aaron Hunter, Author provided
<p>Our results demonstrate <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> is the most primitive of all the Asterozoa, and most likely evolved from ancient animals called crinoids that lived 250 million years before dinosaurs. The five arms of starfish are a relic left over from these ancestors. In the case of <em>Cantabrigiaster</em>, and its starfish descendants, it evolved by flipping upside-down so its arms are face down on the sediment to feed.</p><p>Although we sampled a relatively small numbers of those ancestors, one of the unexpected outcomes was it provided an idea of how they could be related to each other. Paleontologists studying echinoderms are often lost in detail as all the different groups are so radically different from each other, so it is hard to tell which evolved first.</p>President Joe Biden officially took office Wednesday, and immediately set to work reversing some of former President Donald Trump's environmental policies.
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