Nooksack Indian Tribe

A new state audit says hundreds of families should have been offered a chance to buy their rented home in 2023 but never got a chance.

Early on a snowy morning, Michelle Roberts prepared for a hearing in tribal court. The stakes were high: The hearing could determine whether Roberts gets to keep the home she’s been living in for 15 years. For more than 50 years, Roberts' has thought of herself as Nooksack, now she faces the possibility of tribal disenrollment.

A battle over tribal housing has reached the Washington state Supreme Court. The Nooksack Tribe says more than 60 residents aren’t members of the tribe and aren’t entitled to the housing. Cat Barril and Michelle Roberts, who have fought against being evicted for a decade, say they've been denied the opportunity to establish their eligibility for tribal membership.

Experts from the United Nations are calling on the U.S. government to stop the Nooksack Indian Tribe’s ongoing effort to evict certain families from their homes. The unusual announcement is the most recent development in a long dispute over enrollment in the tribe near Bellingham.

The Nooksack River registered some of its highest flood levels ever in the recent flooding that authorities now say caused as much as $50 million in damages. But that doesn’t fully account for the impact on salmon runs and habitat restoration work managed by area tribes.

A dam removal that has been twenty years in the making reached an important milestone this week. Explosives ripped through the concrete on the Middle Fork…