Lummi Nation Files Federal Lawsuit Over Repeated Trenching Through Ancestral Burial Grounds

Lummi Nation Files Federal Lawsuit Over Repeated Trenching Through Ancestral Burial Grounds

Seattle, WA – April 28, 2026 – The Lummi Nation has filed a federal lawsuit against Whidbey Telecom, Whatcom County, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Department of Commerce alleging that a series of federally funded construction projects repeatedly cut through known burial grounds—resulting in the disturbance, exposure, loss, and ongoing mishandling of ancestral human remains at Point Roberts over multiple years

The complaint describes not an isolated mistake, but a pattern: construction moving forward despite clear warning signs, operating in secret, ignoring legal obligations, and repeatedly bypassing safeguards for human remains.

“This wasn’t an accident. It was a series of decisions,” said Greg Werkheiser of Cultural Heritage Partners, PLLC, counsel for the Lummi Nation. “At every critical moment—when consultation was required, when human remains were uncovered, when work should have stopped—the Defendants chose to proceed.”

Since time immemorial Point Roberts served as a fully integrated cultural landscape for the Lummi Nation and its ancestors—supporting the largest traditional fishing stations in the region, villages, hunting, gathering, trade, ceremony, and burial. The remains of countless ancestors were carefully laid to rest in its soil.

According to the complaint, Defendants:

• Approved and carried out construction in known burial areas without Tribal consultation
• Trenched through burial grounds multiple times across separate projects
• Failed to notify the Nation
• Failed to stop work after encountering unmistakable evidence of human remains
• Resumed construction even after legal stop-work obligations were triggered
• Left human remains and funerary objects in dirt piles exposed to the weather for years
• Lost human remains
• Withheld key information about the extent of damage
• Denied the Nation meaningful access to recover and rebury its ancestors
• Repeated these same failures across subsequent projects

The federal government provided millions of dollars in grants to fund broadband expansion, which Defendants chose to implement by burying fiber lines instead of aerial solutions. As federally funded undertakings, the projects are required to comply with laws that mandate early Tribal consultation and the protection of cultural and archaeological resources.

“These protections are not optional,” said Lena Tso, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for Lummi Nation. “They are the minimum required to ensure that development does not come at the cost of erasing a people’s history. Here, those safeguards were treated as obstacles instead of obligations.”

“Cuts to federal personnel and resources have hollowed out the agencies tasked with ensuring compliance with federal preservation laws,” said Werkheiser. “Rather than speeding projects, the erosion of oversight creates exactly this kind of breakdown—where unlawful actions cause irreversible harm and trigger the very delays and litigation that effective review is meant to prevent.”

The Lummi Nation seeks a court order requiring Defendants to immediately provide the Nation with full access to be able to document damage and recover and properly rebury its ancestors.

“Our ancestors are our family. What happened here is not just a legal failure, it is a human one. The law requires respect before, during, and after any disturbance. That respect was missing at every stage,” said Anthony Hillaire, Chairman of the Lummi Nation.