Ancestors' reburial brings closure to Lower Elwha Klallam tribal members

Ancestors' reburial brings closure to Lower Elwha Klallam tribal members
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A cedar wreath and handmade roses made out of cedar adorns one of the reburial sites at Tse-whit-zen, the former Klallam village on the Port Angeles waterfront. -- Photo for peninsuladailynews.com by Chris Tucker/Peninsula Daily News
From the PDN:








By Jim Casey, Peninsula Daily News


PORT ANGELES — The ancestors have come back home.

In two days of painstaking earth moving, the intact remains and skeletal fragments that were disinterred from Tse-whit-zen have been reburied close to where they were unearthed.

The work ended late Tuesday morning with Indian Shaker Church prayers and Klallam songs, including one that, translated, said:

My heart aches for you.

You are so far away.

A large front-end loader dug clean fill dirt from a nearby pile, then slowly and carefully tipped it into the burial trench beside the handmade cedar boxes that held the remains.

Workmen shoveled the jet-black soil by hand over the boxes. Leveling the larger site also will be done manually.

"There will be no more machinery on top of them," said Tribal Council member Dennis Sullivan.

Sound of a familiar flute
As the work continued, tribal elder Johnson Charles played his wooden flute as he had for days on end during the grim discoveries at Tse-whit-zen in 2003.

When all the boxes had been covered, Shaker Church members prayed over the site, then planted it with dozens of handmade cedar roses.

Songs in Klallam followed.

"They will not be disturbed again," Tribal Chairwoman Frances Charles said.

The reburial came more than five years after human remains were found at the site of what was to be the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard.

Four of those years were spent in often bitter contention between the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe and those who wanted the graving yard finished — including the city of Port Angeles, construction unions, and the state Department of Transportation.

Among the observers at Monday's reburials was former Transportation Secretary Douglas MacDonald

http://www.peninsuladailynews.com:80/article/20080917/NEWS/809170311