Indians

Nationally and internationally, John Arum was best known as the lawyer who won the Makah Indian Tribe the right to resume whaling, a case that brought him widespread obloquy from those who called themselves lovers of animals and the Earth. But as friends and acquaintances of the brilliant attorney gathered to celebrate his cut-short life over the weekend, it was impossible not to understand that John Arum was completely and utterly dedicated to caring for this planet and the creatures put here by our Creator.

I had the good fortune to meet John on a few of his later cases. I was awed by his ability to completely immerse himself in a case, mastering the obscure details of timber harvesting and stream flow and biology and geology and all the other ologies. I could tell he was a genius. I always figured I’d get to know him better as the years went on. Instead, that knowledge came second-hand from Arum’s friends and family at a celebration of his life Saturday at the Daybreak Star Center in Seattle’s Discovery Park.

The ceremony gave the several hundred present a look at an individual so much more remarkable than I had suspected – sure, a great lawyer. But also a consummate outdoorsman, a loving husband, a true friend, a devoted uncle. I wasn’t the only one learning. Even his widow, Susan Hormannn, said this of the outpouring in the weeks since her husband died in a mountain-climbing accident, “I have gotten a much broader perspective of him.”

Wife. Law partner. Brother. Sister. Father-in-law. Clients. Friends. Climbing partners. Together they sketched a portrait of an incredibly skilled litigator, negotiator and mediator driven to preserve an environment worth handing down to future generations who was at once a master climber, hiker, biker, kayaker and birder – and who still found time to stay in touch with his family and friends here in Cascadia and across the continent in his native New York.

It looks like the British Columbia sockeye salmon runs are crashing -- at what should be a high point in their cycle, David Karp reports for The Vancouver Sun. The spring runs showed up at a fraction of their forecast abundance. The big question now is whether the much-more-abundant summer runs will follow the same pattern. If so, it poses a serious dilemma: Should fishing be limited even for poverty-stricken first nations that depend on the sockeye as a major protein source?