Lummi Nation v. Whidbey Telecom et. al

In April 2026, the Lummi Nation filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle against Whidbey Telecom, Whatcom County, the U.S. Departments of Agriculture (“USDA”), and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (“NTIA”). 

The suit arises from Whidbey Telecom’s disturbance of ancestral burial grounds at Point Roberts, a peninsula in northwestern Washington, which has been culturally significant to the Lummi Nation for thousands of years. Point Roberts, known as Chulhtenum in Coastal Salish, has 13 recorded archaeological sites and more than 3,000 individual archaeological features. The peninsula is a culturally critical landscape for the Nation, and its status as such is recognized in Whatcom County’s own code.

The Nation is suing based on violations of Washington’s Indian Graves and Records Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, and county permitting regulations, arguing that Whidbey Telecom’s projects proceeded without required tribal consultation or environmental and historic preservation review. 

The Nation’s complaint states that defendants:

• Authorized and undertook construction in known Lummi burial grounds without required Tribal consultation;
• Trenched through several burial grounds on multiple occasions for two separate projects and conducted ground disturbing activities for a third project at one of the same burial grounds;
• Failed to stop work upon encountering unmistakable archaeological materials;
• Failed to provide timely notice of the disturbance of human remains to the Nation and required authorities;
• Failed to secure exposed human remains and funerary objects, leaving them vulnerable to weather and further degradation for extended periods;
• Continued or resumed ground-disturbing activities after discovery of human remains and after stop-work obligations were triggered;
• Failed to conduct required site assessments and damage evaluations necessary to understand and remediate the harm;
• Withheld information and denied the Nation meaningful access needed to assess damage and reinter its ancestors;
• Issued and relied upon permits that violated federal, state, and local law, including mandatory consultation requirements; and,
• Repeated these same failures across subsequent projects, culminating in the permanent loss of ancestral remains that can no longer be recovered or reinterred.

The case remains ongoing, with a jury trial scheduled to begin in early October 2027 in federal court. The Lummi Nation is seeking revocation of the project permits, court-ordered reinterment of remains under tribal supervision, and financial damages, alongside declaratory and injunctive relief against all named defendants.