In March the Kitsap Patriots Tea Party (KPTP) hosted an appearance by Heidi Mund, a German citizen known internationally for promoting bigoted attacks on Muslims. On August 10, at its upcoming Summer Picnic at the Silverdale Waterfront Park, the group is showcasing its contributions to opposing the inherent sovereignty of Indian Nations.
KPTP announced that the keynote speaker at the event is Glen Morgan, the Executive Director of the Enumclaw, Washington-based Citizens Alliance for Property Rights (CAPR). CAPR is most well-known for opposing environmental regulations, including protections for water quality and fisheries habitat. For instance, CAPR frequently opposes measures in Critical Areas Ordinances (CAO) such as vegetated buffers between development projects and shorelines and streams. Buffers capture sediments that can cover salmon redds (egg nests) in streams; filter contaminants that would otherwise enter the water; and help maintain low in-stream temperatures by preserving tree cover, among other benefits.
CAPR’s Glen Morgan
Morgan voiced opposition to buffers in 2012 while serving as the Property Rights Director for the Olympia-based Freedom Foundation. Morgan offensively compared Thurston County’s Critical Areas Ordinance process (in which county-required buffers sizes are established) to the “banality of evil” described by Hannah Arendt. In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Arendt analyzed Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann’s role in the genocide against European Jews. While Morgan qualified that “it may not be as extreme as Hannah’s writings,” such a comparison belittles the atrocity of the Holocaust and demonizes community members who work to restore fisheries habitat and water quality by implying they are akin to Nazis.
During his tenure at the Freedom Foundation, Morgan also displayed his opposition to inherent tribal sovereignty, supporting the extension of Thurston County taxing powers over the Great Wolf Lodge, a project built on tribal trust lands in which the Chehalis Tribe was a majority owner. Morgan described tribal trust lands as “mini-Cayman Islands of Washington State [that] do not deserve to exist.”
Befitting such ideas, Morgan’s CAPR has built a relationship with a leading national anti-Indian activist – longtime Citizens Equal Rights Alliance (CERA) figure Elaine Willman. CERA and Willman have long been dedicated to the termination of tribal governments and the abrogation of treaties signed between Indian Nations and the United States. Morgan attended a 2013 CERA conference in Bellingham at which Willman spoke. Willman has been a schedule speaker at other CAPR events.
In May 2017, the Skagit County chapter of CAPR hosted Elaine Willman in Sedro Wooley, Washington. At the event, Willman expressed her fallacious view that treaties with tribes are “already abrogated” and distributed material disparaging the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act for “closing back up what was going to go away forever – which is reservations and tribal governments. They were intended to go away forever by the turn of the century” – that is, Willman reiterated her racist call for termination and treaty abrogation.
CAPR has continued to champion Willman as one who “points out the hypocrisy of tribal leaders and various others in what she calls the Indian industry who are invested in American Indian victimhood in order to secure political favoritism and more taxpayer largess.”
The Kitsap Patriot Tea Party continues to be a conduit into the county for those who promote bigotry and oppose inherent tribal sovereignty. We must be loud and clear that this does not represent our county.
