Talk:Salish Sea/Archive 1

Bad ethnography

 * ''The khWuhlch was the primary waterway interconnecting the greater Lushootseed Coast Salish Nations. (Culture area languages and dialects had variations on the name.)[1][5]

There were more than Lushootseed-speakers even in Puget Sound, never mind northwards. Even using the Lushootseed name as equivalent to the Georgia Depression/Basin and the neologistic "Salish Sea" isn't right, as Lushootseed didn't have a priori naming authority anywhere north of Whidbey Island; I have no idea what was used in Clallam, Twana, Chehalis, Hunquminum/Hulquminum/Halqemeylem, Squamish, Shishalh, Comox and Pentlatch and whatever else in the way of languages there is in the region, but it's not very relevant, nor is the repetitive emphasis on Whulge (or khWulhlch) this article uses. And it's not as if the Lushootseed had a word for the whole basin from Olympia to Campbell River; more likely the term they used referred only to their local waters.Skookum1 19:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Merge
I'm removing the merge tag, as it's been there since November 2006. Feel free to re-add it. -- 71.62.82.126 23:46, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I support the merge proposal, with the rider that the primary article be Georgia Depression or Georgia Basin, or maybe better Georgia-Puget Basin (or Depression). Salish Sea is a fictional name - catchy, but without any local context or familiarity...too much like "invented geography" (which is one reason I got rid of the "defining" elements of "Cascadia", which has more than one "definition" anyway).Skookum1 19:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC) PS somewhere I've also heard Fraser-Puget Lowland; there's probably a few other terms kicking around. Whulge isn't one of them, and neither is Salish Sea.Skookum1 19:33, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the merge. Georgia Basin sounds right; however the Georgia Basin article needs to say that it includes Puget Sound. Never heard of Whulge. Use English. Kla'quot 07:19, 5 November 2006 (UTC)


 * According to the book I have on the geology of the Pacific Northwest ("Geology of the Pacific Northwest" by Elizabeth L. Orr and William N. Orr), the Georgia Basin does not include Puget Sound. The book describes the lowlands from Puget Sound south to the Willamette Valley as a distinct geological unit, but always describes Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca as three distinct units that happen to all be below sea level right now. Nowhere does the book offer a term for the combined inland sea. I've searched for such a name for a long time, and have never found a good one. Pfly 04:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Opposed to merge, invented or not, Salish Sea is sourced terminology. Might also find some good biological info here. heqs 09:37, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Invented, but confined to a very few publications, and even less current than "Cascadia", which is another invented term. The google search, you'll note, only pulled up a handful of books using it in the described context.  "Georgia Depression" is a term I've seen from geographers/geology people, but it may be a Canadian-origin term.  The Portland-Seattle Williamette-Puget Sound axis does have a name, the Evergreen Triangle, or the Evergreen Corridor, but again that's mostly American in context and not used; it's one consequence of the partition of 1846 - a single area split by two different national/urban perspectives, reflected in how the land is described - as with the North Cascades and the Canadian Cascades as far as the Sumallo and Similkameen (North Cascades is the article, with Canadian Cascades a redirect) they'e the same range as the North Cascades topographically-speaking, as distinct within the larger Cascade Range - which itself is thought by many Americans to extend past the Fraser and include parts of the Coast Mountains.  So while it's true there are separate and distinct bodies of water and subregions within the basin, there's no one term for it; the closest is as a natural geographic region is "Georgia Strait-Puget Sound (Basin)", which is in fact how you'll hear weather forecasters and others in the media describing the area; the issue for me is if Salish Sea should be equated with Georgia Basin; I think it's a spurious name, by and large, that doesn't deserve equal billing (I have the same problem with Cascadia re Pacific Northwest, although that has a more extensive set of emergent uses and is much more current).Skookum1 08:08, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
 * sub-thought on that - the geology context mentioned from the US side may be from a context which is natural enough, that being the "High Cascades" volcanic chain, which is very different from the area from the Snohomish-Skagit area on up to Hope and Chilliwack, and is definitely a region when looked at it from a geologists point-of-view, especially the time span. The different mountains, and the more open nature of the Georgia Basin vs. the Puget ("Georgia-Puget Basin" I've occasionally heard/seen, too but again probably only a Canadianism and unheard south of the border), do indicate a completely different geological experience up here, despite the continuation of volcanoes through the heavy mountain terrain that continues from here virtually to the Alaska Peninsula over by the Aleutians. In geological terms, no doubt there is some unity between the Williamette and the southern part of Puget Sound; somewhere around Seattle the marine nature of the space opens up and it's more like what's north of it, including in the type of mountains flanking it and similar climate to "Victoria and the Isles".
 * On the Evergreen Corridor, Williamette-Puget Sound definition, that's also a US-oriented perspective, with the automatic mental exclusion of geography outside the US; it's one definition of a region, but not this region, that "Salish Sea" and "Whulge" presume to describe and be legitimate labels for. Their existence can be mentioned, but not with pride-of-place in the opening, or equated to in the same way that "the Georgia Strait-Puget Sound basin" works, when heard in the media, for instance (or Puget Sound-Georgia Strait if heard on US media, perhaps; Bellingham is often described as being on Puget Sound but technically Rosario Strait, like Haro Strait, isn't part of either the sound or Georgia Strait; while they and the San Juans is, I'd venture, in the Gulf of Georgia; though also, from the American perspective, in Puget Sound....Skookum1 08:12, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Support the merge. Can count on one hand how many times I've heard the term used in my life growing up here. Don't really care if it's merged with Puget Sound/Georgia Strait or both. Needs to be mentioned, but own article is IMO unjustified and based on few scant references. But then admittedly I'm not as familiar with American perspective on this.--Keefer4 21:03, 29 January 2007 (UTC) (repost, my comment here removed).
 * If I removed your comment, I'm sorry; it was completely by accident. Pfly 23:01, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
 * no prob.--Keefer4 02:47, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that the San Juans separate the Strait of Juan de Fuca from the Strait of Georgia. To look from Deception Pass toward Victoria is, from everything I have seen, to look across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. On the other hand, people who kayak from the north coast of Orcas Island to Sucia Island are kayaking in the Strait of Georgia, as I understand it (although one could argue that the strait really begins north of Sucia). Puget Sound is well-defined as the waters south of Admiralty Inlet. I think the usage of Puget Sound for things like the Bellingham area bays is a symptom of the lack of a term for the whole inland sea. I'm still looking for one, but without great hope. Oh and hey, is there a difference between Georgia Strait and Gulf of Georgia? Also, my maps all say "Strait of Georgia" rather than "Georgia Strait".. difference? Pfly 21:18, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

"Gulf of Georgia" never made the maps, except maybe old ones, but it's been in BC parlance since the old days and obviously is still around; the sense I get of it is from "out on the gulf" (as also "out on the chuck" or "saltchuck" still...), which would include the inland waters between the Gulf Islands and between them and the Mainland, which aren't really part of the Strait of Georgia. The term is never applied or defined in that exact sense, but by saying "out in the Gulf of Georgia" you're referring to Saturna and North and South Pender as well as the "Gulf of Ganges" or whatever it's called (Ganges Bay? BTW HMS Ganges needs a good write-up - it's there, needs more BC detail.  Any takers?). I think you may be right on the usage including Bellingham in Puget Sound is, admittedly, from growing up on KVOS-12, which was one of only two stations we got (in b&w) where we lived; the other was CHEK-6 in Victoria, it had to do with the terrain where we lived, between Mission and Maple Ridge. Media slop things around all the time - increasingly so, gratingly ("Kootenay Rockies" is awful, especially when used for Rossland and Nelson.....) - so maybe in maritime usage and charts you'd never see "Puget Sound" in the waters off Bellingham Bay, which are after all just southeast of Tsawwassen and our not-quite-the-border causeway. The scene, by the way, of one of the ship/ferry blockades during the Salmon War, which I haven't had time to dig up research on but's an interesting story. I think Evergreen Triangle was originally coined to mean Vancouver-Seattle-Portland, maybe even originally Vancouver-Victoria-Seattle or even just Everett-Seattle-Tacoma. I guess this talk page should have Wikiproject Seattle on it - Wikiproject Seattle - as this is a regional geographic issue; or Wikiproject Washington; to get some US-side input, although pfly's from stateside, or not? Someone or two is...gotta go have a nice day.Skookum1 23:56, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Move/rename
Well, now that the merge has taken place somehow one of the bots resolved things such that the proper redirect for, say, Georgia Basin, which should be Georgia Depression, now comes here. But here is not anywhere that's real, the term Salish Sea has been invented in recent years as a sort of reverse-cultural imperialism; the term is not used outside of the clique that invented it and is promoting it, and the obsession with teh Lushootseed name Whulge is just plain irrelevant north of Whidbey Island (as a matter of fact discussion with aboriginal contributors here in BC have shown there's no single name for the Strait of Georgia, never mind for the Strait of Georgia plus Puget Sound). And why isn't this the Chemakuan Sea, since they were here first? The Lekwiltok Sea, since they're here too? Fact is that in the real world the concept of the Georgia-Puget Depression/Basin already exists and is used in everytthing from regional economic discussion to weather reports; Salish Sea ISN'T. IMO "Salish Sea" and "Whulge" alike are pretentious and are trying to "force" reality by promoting the use of terms, instead of reflecting reality; I maintain "Salish Sea", is something like "original research" - "original name" - invented, created, promoted, but not part of the reality Wikipedia is supposed to reflect, not influence or create....Skookum1 (talk) 16:40, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Incredible that an IP address user would get away with removing an unresolved merge tag and let things sit as they are, archiving the discussion even. This term has no credibility at all and is only a concept; the Georgia Basin and Puget Sound Basin or Puget Basin or Georgia-Puget Basin are the realities; Salish Sea was advanced by the Chemainus First Nation, apparently, but as you can see from OldManRivers' response it's not a wording that holds any sway at all with FNs outside of Chemainus, and will never be approved by the government.  Gulf of Georgia is a more encompassing term - it would include for example Ganges Harbour, Trincomali Channel, Sansum Narrows and other inter-insular waters not part of the Strait of Georgia.  I wholly oppose the trumped-up importance attached to this article, and wonder who it was saw fit to decide (for themselves) the discusson is over.  This title is so neologistic, the content so trumped up and overwrought and "pretendng to reality while being fiction", this article almost warrants speedy-delete.Skookum1 (talk) 18:42, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * In hindsight, I guess you were wrong? I don't understand the critiques of the Salish Sea name. Is "Georgia Depression" really better? Furthermore, the absurd argument that the name is inappropriate because the First Nations of the region didn't originally have a name for the entire sea is borderline offensive; it implies that FN people are historical artifacts with an unchanging culture, and that it only matters what they said and did in the past. They are a living and diverse community, many of whom identify as part of the Coast Salish language group today. It is a contemporary name that reflects contemporary realities. No need to bring up ideas of "reverse-imperialism".99.199.144.67 (talk) 21:23, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikified
I seen the tag on their before and decided to move some wording, head headlines, and add a bit of context. I removed a lot of the Lushootseed references and such. This is because I so no connection between the term Salish Sea and their language or people. If there is, it can be re-added with references. There is a lot on there I don't think really needs to be on there. Things like all the area stuff. It needs some more citations for a lot of things too. Although, the current citation and reference system on there is the exact one I hate to use/see. I like the newer one. Maybe one day I'll get around to switching them all. In any case, I did what I can for now. OldManRivers (talk) 06:55, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Removed area section
had to do it. The folowing section is copy/pastiche from promotional copy of Salish Sea-advocating promotional groups. This is not a region article, it's about the name and the controversy and, if anything else, just the e watters; this is not a name for this region, it's not,k although ther's a sell-job on. The following material replicates material that is either in, or should be in, the respectie articles on the Juan de Fuca,l Puget and Georgia entities.:
 * '''Area ==

The Salish Sea, or Georgia Basin encompasses the inland sea and the land around it. Temperate for its latitude, the Olympic Mountains and Vancouver Island Ranges shield from the Pacific Ocean, the Cascade Mountain Range from continental weather; together they surround the Salish Sea, contributing most of the entering fresh water (windward of the Salish Sea lie two of the few temperate rain forests in the world). The largest ecoregion of the Georgia Basin is the Lower Mainland Ecoregion which encompasses the lowlands on the mainland in the southwestern corner of British Columbia.

The area is in the rainshadow of the mountains on Vancouver Island and the Olympic Mountains in the state of Washington, USA. Its climate is characterized by warm dry summers and cool wet winters. Like most of the west coast of BC, Coastal Douglas fir forests are typical of this area. However, much of this part of BC is dry, flat and low elevation, with unique plant and animal habitats.

Humpback and gray whales, resident and migratory pods of orca dolphins are found in its waters. Mile-high granite faces tower beside deep, indigo fjords, remnants of uncut, low-elevation old growth forest survive on its northern islands. The sea and its shores provide vital habitat for the millions of birds that migrate each year along the Pacific Flyway. More waterbirds and raptors winter here than anywhere else in Canada, and five species of salmon use the waters as the gateway to their spawning grounds. (The Pacific Northwest fisheries was once one of the richest in the world, second only to the Grand Banks.)

Vancouver, British Columbia and Seattle, Washington are urban metropolises in the watershed. The human population has more than doubled between 1980 and 2005. If this rate of growth continues (as it shows consistent signs of doing), the pressures on wildlife, migratory birds and migratory fish, and the habitats these species require in order to survive, will need to be carefully managed to ensure the overall well-being of the ecosystem &mdash; as well as quality of life for the human inhabitants.

I'm going to edit this article severely in the next few days, ther's too much dross and lots of false claims; that I was asked for cites for the existence of the Georgia and Puget names is crazy when there's so much here claiming that the term is widely accepted etc. which it's not, with this article written as if thet name change were accomplished fact; yes, US curriculum materials have been printed to that effect, but these are terms used only by a small group of politicized people and not in the general public or major media. I'll also include counter-proposal from US-side Salish peoples which are a different definition than the BC/Chemainus one, as well as the Georgia Straight's theory on the name change.....Skookum1 (talk) 07:16, 22 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Perhaps we should make a page, or change this page to "Georgia Basin". I see that one of the references you moved here is called Map of the Georgia Basin. And I just stumbled across this NOAA report (which I just added to the Strait of Georgia page) that has a little section called "Georgia Basin". It says, in part: "The Georgia Basin is an international waterbody that encompasses the marine waters of Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca." ...so maybe there is a respectable name for this collection of waterbodies after all. Or, perhaps, to describe the Georgia Basin and sometimes defined to include Puget Sound, sometimes not, as seems to be the case. Pfly (talk) 07:36, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Wow, I didn't know the NOAA used what I thought was a Canada-side name only; I was thinking more like "Georgia-Puget Basin" as I've sen Georgia-Puget region (and Puget-Georgia, though not as often). This article still needs to exist, because of hte name agenda/controversy - the UBCIC's indiffernce to Chemainus' proposal is in the same webref as the proposal itself; a good example of the editorial bias of pro-Salish Sea agenda-types - another is the presence of the Georgia Basin cite in face of the demand for it from the placement of cite tempaltes on my counter-Salish SEa additions.  My intent btw is also to split Georgia Strait into the strait article and a Gulf of Georgia article, or at least a subsection on the strait page; the dissinction in that meaning has to be laid out, I suppose the main cite is Vancouver's charts showing it because it's officially ungazetted nowadays.  I think there'd been a Georgia Basin article that got merged here, also, with Salish Sea holding sway, can't remember the interpage dynamics now.....Skookum1 (talk) 14:08, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

One more data point FWIW: The Whale Museum in Friday Harbor] uses the term extensively. As a name for the summer range of the resident killer whales of the eastern North Pacific, it works. Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 22:42, 24 May 2008 (UTC)


 * When I got to it, I was going to come back and explore various citations of the usage, including trying to establish when it was first coined (because it's VERY new). US-side uses are more common due to a more successful "branding" campaign down there -a recent FN/NA conference at Anacortes included a promotion for hte name, which seems like where the Chemainus Indian Band got the idea from.  BUT they didn't come away with the same idea, as the US-side agenda renames the whole region, and doesn't seek to supplant existing names of waterbodies in teh way the Chemainus-agenda does.  So the Friday Harbour citation like a curriculum booklet from EOAA use it in the "original" neologistic definition, for all the waters inland from Cape Flattery-Port San Juan, whereas the Chemainus-BC government agenda is only about hte Georgia Strait, and wants to supplant that name and wipe it off the map.  Big difference.  This article can be about the name; it should NOT pretend to be the article for the region in the way it was first written; a similar abomination was Whulge, whatever's happened to that since (another anti-colonialist name with its own imperialist tendencies, tyring to impose a Lushootseed word northwards and also to refer to teh basin, not the body of water).  The specifics of the UBCIC objections and other tidbits about the Chemainus agenda can also be here; but the biggest thing is that a section on the differing agendas/definitions shoudl be present; speaking from my own POV that's to demonstrate what a presumputuous crock that is, but I realize I've been very POV on this one and will try and be more equananimous in future; BUT I will not "tolerate" any edits to this page that try and present this as a legitimate name or as if the name were already in use, i.e. to pretend that this is a region article.  It's not, it's an article about a name and the political agenda that goes with it.Skookum1 (talk) 21:03, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

S. Fraser and the Tacoutche Tesse
I'll have to go poking around to get details from other articles and their dates/cites, but in re:
 * Canadian explorer David Thompson, of the North West Company, spent the winter of 1807–08 at Kootenae House near the source of the Columbia at present-day Invermere, British Columbia. In 1811, he traveled down the Columbia to the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first European-American to travel the entire length of the river, arriving just after John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company had founded Astoria.[30]

There's a whole story to Thompson's 1807-08 dalliance, but the story of the hunt for the northern overland route to/down the Columbia is partly also to do with Simon Fraser (explorere) - he wound up discovering the mouth of his namesake river as a result; so Tacoutche Tesse, the name they were looking for it under (as using "Columbia" I suppose implies an endorsement of Gray's voyage/claim). If someone else could add a short bit about this, probably better than me and my long-windedness/tangentiality......oh re the Great River of the Wests, there's also the Grand mer d l'ouest (on a lot of maps in Hayes' atlas).Skookum1 (talk) 14:08, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the name Columbia for the river was pretty much unquestioned after Vancouver affirmed Robert Gray's story and name for the river, and sent Broughton up the river to the Columbia Gorge, surveying and mapping, in 1792. Vancouver's names for things tended to stick. Or are you saying Tacoutche Tesse was the name for the river above the Thompson confluence? If so, that could have remained the name for the upper reach, but I think by 1811 the lower reach was well established as Columbia. Pfly (talk) 15:23, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
 * It was believed that the Tacoutche Tesse was the Columbia, and it was A. Mackenzie who first speculated that. I haven't read Fraser's journal as to his wording, I'm just meaning that the name had political issues at the time; it's probably in Thompson's notes by 1810-11, not sure in Fraser's...or Mackenzie's.  Which aboriginal language it's from I wouldn't know and have never seen a ref for; perhaps User:Billposer at the Yinka Dene Language Institute in Prince George/Vanderhoof might know.  Point still stands, Fraser's trip down the river bearing his name was based in the hope that it was the ColumbiaSkookum1 (talk) 15:36, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Oops, I mistakenly thought of the Thompson as a tributary of the Columbia. I just woke up and can't think yet. Yes, Fraser thought/hoped he was on the Columbia. But anyway, it is interesting that the Columbia and Fraser Rivers keeps their name for their entire lengths. Lots of rivers, maybe most, don't. Pfly (talk) 15:49, 22 April 2008 (UTC

Removed history section
the cited matierals there were ALL in reference to and using the name Georgia Strait/Basin and, other than that being part of the place the Salish SEa renaming campaign wants renamed, has nothing to do with the so-called Salish SEa as a concept/neologism. This is not a geography article, and management policies relating to the Georgia Strait are NOT relevant; it's presuppositions like this that newspeak-mongers revel in, pretending cites are legitimate for their cause when in fact they either have nothing to do with it, or which are distorted in context as in this case. "LemmeBot" has reinserted this material twice; Lemmebot can butt out....Skookum1 (talk) 13:42, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Neologism Sources
I will be putting some sources here to help build up the background for use of the neologism DigitalC (talk) 01:19, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
 * The first use of "Salish Sea" I could find in the media was in 1999,
 * An interesting relationship between the neologism and "Cascadia"
 * "Webber petitioned the Washington State Board of Geographic Names with the same proposal in 1989, but the board turned him down."
 * Meet the man behind the ‘Salish Sea’ - "first proposed calling the marine waters of southern B.C. and northern Washington the Salish Sea in an interview with the Bellingham Herald in 1988."
 * BC Aboriginal Relations Minister supports -
 * Other past names for it (and a tace-spime problem) -


 * What's a "tace-spime problem"? Oh, a quasi-space-time problem, otherwise known as "invented history"....Anyway further to the IP contributor's change of "claimed to be the traditional name used by first nations peoples" to simply "neologism", I agree, even though it was me who applied that phrase to replace the previous "was the traditional name used by first nations peoples" which had been there.  This is an example of where citations, even a US government site, can say something so completely both inane and false that the term "reliable sources" is not worth the bytes it takes to type it out.  Is there a word for an "agenda neologism"; similarly the attempt to supplant/equate Pacific Northwest and Cascadia, and given the edit war at Queen Charlotte Islands about the use of Haida Gwaii......essentially Wikipedia is being used by some parties to advance their agendas, covertly, under the guise of seemingly encyclopedic content, "forcing a trend"; there's lots of other examples, from mis-use of "Sto:lo Nation" for all Fraser River Salish (it's the name of a specific tribal council, and between it and the other Sto:lo Tribal Council]] not all Sto:lo groups are included in either, and some aren't even Sto:lo by their own self-definition...but p.c. people insist on using it as though it's correct and everybody else is stupid or colonialist or both.  This is one of those examples...another one I spotted the other day on http://www.ecotrust.com or http://www.ecotrust.ca (whichever it is) makes a similar claim about Kwakwaka'wakw Sea, aka Queen Charlotte Strait, being "re-instated" after allegedly being supplanted (according to User:OldManRivers, who himself is 1/2 'Namgis, there is no Kwak'wala name either for that strait or for the Georgia Strait, and likewise among hte Skwxwu7mesh there is no single historical name for the body of water allegedly "traditional" as the Salish Sea.  Overpaid self-righteous academics are the problem here, in my view....they can publish all they want, it doesn't mean we have to repeat it; except to repeat it as a claim made by them, which is the case with what I'd tried to do in this lede....problem is to provide a counter-refutation against cited claims is technically OR, though self-obvious as a falsehood, though a widely spread falsehood....with a decidedly POV agenda....anyway I'll fix up some bad grammar/structure I noticed on scanning the article just now, just wanted to comment on the propagation of "false geography" alongside much "false history".....Skookum1 (talk) 00:49, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Map
Any interest in replacing aerial/satellite photo with a map with labels and shading? See here. The cartographer says it is available for public, non=commercial use with notification and credit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.156.35.100 (talk) 08:23, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It has to be available for commercial use, since Wikipedia content is resold and is also sold as a firmware product. I've tried getting to that server4 before, by the way, and it just doesn't want to load; the "faculty and staff" server at Western Washington U. is a likely place, I suppose, to find someone with a promotional (and no doubt highly POV) map of this geo-concept/agenda......the proponents for which continue to misrepresent its status and aceptance and validity etc (see next section). One map I saw, maybe on the crosscut blog, actually tried to label the whole BASIN as "Salish SEa" (i.e. up into the mountains and the upper Fraser Valley, as if the Lower Fraser River and Harrison Lake were part of this "sea".....this name change is not going to fix any historical evisl, but it's sure causing a few, and being advanced using petty evil, too.....  ("petty evil" = "misrepresentation", otherwise known as lying)Skookum1 (talk) 13:40, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Washington Board on Geographic Names decision
Some comments about this recent event: There is a bit of mistakes or outright misinformation in the reporting. The press release about it, straight from the WA Board on Geographic Names itself, contains several statements that are misleading or outright wrong. First, the WA BGN claims that their decision "mandates that cartographers must use Salish Sea on all maps or in all atlases". And further, the WA BGN page on their own Legal Authority claims that their decisions are "binding on all non-Federal advertisements, maps, and documents published in the State of Washington". Both of these are gross overstatements about the power of the WA BGN. The actual state law about the powers of the WA BGN clearly says that the Board's decisions merely apply to "shall be used" in "publications issued by the State of Washington"--not everything published in the state. Second, the WA BGN press release claims that the term Salish Sea "has been adopted by the British Columbia Geographic Names Office", but this does not appear to be true. In addition to the straight.com and the blog cites about it, GeoBC lets you search for place name decisions here, and there is nothing to be found about the Salish Sea at all. A search for "Salish Sea" in BCGNIS returns zero results. Clearly the term has not "been adopted by [GeoBC]", as the WA BGN press release would have it. Third, the press release says that the term Salish Sea "is already used by scientists to describe the unified ecosystem and habitats of the inland waters." It would have been clearer and more accurate if they had said "is already used by some scientists". Fourth, the press release says "Salish is a term used by linguists to describe the peoples and languages of tribes in the Pacific Northwest", which is another sweeping over-generalization. Salish is hardly the only "culture" or language family of the Pacific Northwest.

It is clear from reading the WA BGN's minutes from May 2009, when they took Salish Sea under initial consideration, that little to no time was spend researching the topic, and that they relied only the statements of the person making the argument for the change and one person arguing against, and that one member of the Board said he had heard the term used in one of the NGOs he works with. The proponent for the name based his case largely on the notion that the term "Salish Sea" has "widespread" and "strong local usage", which sounds to me like a major overstatement. The minutes from this final consideration meeting are not available yet, but it is likely they spend less than 30 minutes on it, with perhaps two or three people making a case for or against, and without doing any research themselves. All this is fine if that is how the WA BGN works, but if so their press release should not make the sweeping and somewhat extreme claims it does.

Anyway, that is all. I just wanted to point out the rather poorly worded statements put out by the WA BGN, not just about the Salish Sea but about the Board itself. It should be interesting to see what the federal US BGN makes of it. Pfly (talk) 09:12, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Not just poorly worded, but actively deceptive, and it applies to the claims made about what BCGNIS has done (which, really, is nothing). Prof. Webber has a history of making one-sided, misrepresentative statements throughout this campaign; now with this latest they've pretended it HAS been accepted when in fact it has NOT. I know the BC Govt's attitude is "give them the name change, we've got an Olympics to run and don't have time to argue about it", but even they've passed it on to Ottawa, who as always are out of their depth on anything to do with BC, but even they are waiting for Wash DC ...... somewhere I'm gonna stat finding news/op-ed copy from people from Coast Salish-speaking peoples who don't like the name and oppose it, but .... cant' get any airtime.....why giving this a supposedly native name (which it's not) is going to help with environmental issues is beyond me; but lately a lot of geographers have teen taking on political campaigns like this, rewriting history to suit themselves in the process, and somehow think that indigenous=green or something; not just p.c. posturing, but sort of a weird eco-religion where all things native area sacred and p.c.-ness will fix everything (in the meantime Victoria keeps on dumping raw sewage in the S de JF).Skookum1 (talk) 13:48, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
 * "Salish" is not a Native name? And who are you to decide that? It was not a name used in this region in antiquity by First Nations peoples - but it is certainly in use today, by linguists, by everyday people, by many FN groups, and by the Coast Salish Gathering! First Nations culture is not a historical artifact...it is a living, breathing and evolving multiplicity. Salish is a valid term used by many. Some don't like it - that's no surprise. But it's wrong to state that Salish is not a Native term, whatever that is supposed to imply.99.199.144.67 (talk) 21:33, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

changed misleading content/cite labels
I've changd "official adoption" as a section title to "status of name-change application", which is far more accurate and doesn't presume to claim that the name is now officially approved (as that section indeed did when it was first added....). I also made a visit to the first of the bibliography links, suspecting somethningn was not quite right there, and sure enough, the title of the link was ENTIRELY wrong; it's the "Coast Salish Sea Initiative" and doesn't say anything about the name-change application and in fact fields a term - SQELATSES - which is maybe from Straits Salish or Hunquminum, it doesn't say, as the actual name for the region (as if there was a unified language.....).... Misrepresenting citations like this has been standard fare on t his page, and it's been somewhat shameless.....I suppose "overblown self-importance" and "freewheeling academic fiction" are perks of having tenure, but wantonly flouting links as if they meant something they don't is REALLY TIRESOME. The Govt of Canada page linked makes NO MENTION of the name-change proposal, other than using it, in a different form ("Coast Salish Sea") in reference to regional management agendas....and as noted actually field an actual indigenous-language term, as opposed to one transplanted into the region by English-speaking anthropologists/linguists.....Skookum1 (talk) 14:36, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
 * And here is a blog item from a Coast Salish person who opposes the name-change; maybe it would help if Prof. Webber would actually talk to people first instead of telling them what to think....all you little Salish Sea activists puttering about this page might want to actually give some thought to the realities/historical context in that link.....and stop pretending like this is a "done deal" and that it has "wide acceptance". Widely-bandied-about is not t he same thing as "wide acceptance", unless you're only looking in your own mirror and admiring the makeup you've applied......Skookum1 (talk) 14:44, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Maps and Webber's reported conception vs actual proposal
Here's something. I've looked for online or published statements about the Salish Sea proposal written by Webber himself, but can't seem to find any. There are articles that report about him and his ideas though. One of the longer articles about Webber and his Salish Sea is Setting sail for the Salish Sea, by Knute Berger, published by Crosscut.com. On page 2 of this article is explains how "The boundaries of the sea are part of the homeland of the [Coast] Salish speaking tribes", then explains: "..the natives of this region are distinguishable culturally and lingustically from others nearby. The Salish Sea, for example, in Webber's conception extends part way down the Strait of Juan de Fuca, but not to Neah Bay on Washington's Northwestern-most tip, territory of the non-Salish Makah tribe.." I found this interesting because I have not been able to find a definition so specific. Everything I have seen, including the actual proposal Webber submitted to the WA Board on Geographic Names, says that "Salish Sea" would apply "a collective name to the three bodies of water": "Puget Sound, Strait of Juan de Fuca" and the Georgia Strait" (these specific quotes are from the WA BGN's May 2009 minutes). All the maps I have seen, like this one, and that one (mentioned above), and this other one, include the entire Strait of Juan de Fuca. So crosscut.com's report about "Webber's conception" of the Salish Sea not including the western end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca confuses me. Does he hold to that definition? Did he once, but no longer? How come Webber seems to talk to a lot of reporters and government people but has not, apparently, written anything for the general public? Must our information about his work on this topic, his "conceptions" and so on, come only second-hand? A great many of the sources that publish info about him and the Salish Sea proposal contain obvious mistakes (such this page, from the Canadian government itself, which says: "For thousands of years, the Coast Salish have exercised environmental stewardship over the land and resources of this unique and sensitive ecosystem, a place referred to by the Coast Salish Nations and Tribes as the Salish Sea..") It is rather frustrating. In any case, despite Crosscut.com saying that Webber's "conception" of the Salish Sea does not include the western part of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, it appears that Webber's actual definition,as submitted to the governments involved, disregards such details as the Makah not being Salish. Curious. Pfly (talk) 04:20, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Suffice to say that politically-correct agenda-ists are to be noted for their inconsistency, and also for a lack of historical and geography accuracy; "expediency" is the name of the game, Webber knew that trying to name half the strait wouldn't fly, for instance, so compromised; the FN/NA-agenda here was to replace all the other names, not just create an overlay-name. The Tulalip were represented, I think at the "Coast Salish Gathering" in Anacortes that passed a resolution about this (but which was different from the Chemainus proposal, which was only about the Georgia Strait, even though they, too, were at the same conference); I don't think the Coast Salish Gathering was a council of chiefs/governments, more like activists from each band, I'll ahve to dig more to find it again, it's not on their website now (google it, I can't remember teh domain name might be http://www.coastsalishgathering.com - which is where that one map is from, I think).Skookum1 (talk) 15:13, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * the Cdn federal government's parroting of the lie - "a place referred to by the Coast Salish Nations and Tribes as the Salish Sea.." is very typical of p.c.-posturing from the feds; note that there is no timeline on that "referred to by" and it's not stated that only one "Coast Salish Nation" in BC (the Chemainus} want to use the term. Somewhere between brow-beaten and craven, is my estimation of such parroting....Skookum1 (talk) 15:15, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, heh, you are right--the federal Canadian quote doesn't say when the Coast Salish Nations and Tribes used the term Salish Sea. Starting the sentence with "For thousands of years" kind of sets the stage though. Personally I tend to assume these kind of things stem from simple ignorance or poor writing skills rather than a deliberate skewing of facts, intentional misinformation, etc. Either way it doesn't matter much to me--I'd just like to see mistakes corrected. There's an article about the recent WA BGN decision in the Journal of the San Juans, online here. They are simply repeating much of the WA BGN's press release info, including the more glaring and annoying mistakes, such as "It does mandate that cartographers use "Salish Sea" on all maps and in all atlases", and "has been adopted by the British Columbia Geographical Names Office". I might write to them about these errors. Pfly (talk) 18:42, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Somebody has to, it's pretty clear proponents of this name aren't interested in being either factual or truthful and engage in misleading statements constantly; make sure you include Dustin's http://www.liberatedyet.ca post re native opposition (which there's more of in BC than you'd think, or more studied indifference from other Coast Salish FNs....). I'll see what turns up in the various papers around the Gulf and I've even been thinking of sending a protest/caution to BCGNIS and CGNDB about teh tactics used by proponents of this name, and challenging their claim that it is "widely accepted".  claiming something and it actually being the fact, as you know, are two very different things.  Apparently not taught in the Geogrpahy Department of U.W. or wherever it is that Webber has tenure at ..... Skookum1 (talk) 21:07, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Western Washington University in Bellingham, thank goodness--I'm overly fond of UW Seattle. Pfly (talk) 09:20, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Again, why this obsession with the antiquity of the name - or lack of antiquity? Why would this matter in the slightest when we are talking about living communities and a constantly evolving culture? I'll grant that inaccurate claims have been made about the name "Salish Sea" - it certainly wasn't used hundreds of years ago. But again...so what? What exactly is your point, that change is bad?99.199.144.67 (talk) 21:39, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Everything on this page from here back dates to before the official decisions and is basically out of date for actually working on the article. To avoid unnecessary confusion it should probably be archived. I'll get to it in a few days if no one has a problem with it. Pfly (talk) 21:58, 9 January 2010 (UTC)