Richard Arlin Walker
Special to ICT
When Pope Resources began to sell off its forestlands and unveiled plans for new development in its community of Port Gamble on the Kitsap Peninsula west of Seattle, few would have envisioned the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe ending up owning a chunk of the company’s land holdings — including the site where their ancestors had been displaced in 1852 by a lumber mill.
But Port Gamble S’Klallam Chairman Jeromy Sullivan envisioned it. He knew what removing more than a century of wood waste from the bay and protecting forests and streams meant to the environment that sustained his people and others. And in the end, his tribe prevailed.
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“He was a quiet and humble personality and leader — always diplomatic and respectful but very firm about the rights of his tribe and tribes in general,” said longtime Jamestown S’Klallam Chairman W. Ron Allen. “He always thought of everything he was doing in context of the next seven generations. He always thought the decisions he was making and advocating for were about the future.”
Sullivan, who led the western Washington tribe on an ambitious course of economic vitalization and environmental renewal, died Friday, June 30, while being treated for an undisclosed illness. He was 50.
The tribe’s offices were closed the following Monday and Tuesday, July 3-4, and plans for his memorial service hadn’t been disclosed by then.
Sullivan’s death stunned the tribe and those who knew him. He had been on medical leave for about a month, according to the tribe’s website, and had been slowly improving. He was unopposed for reelection as chairman in the tribe’s July 10 election.
“Unfortunately, his condition deteriorated quickly over the last couple of days,” according to the statement on the tribe’s website. “On Friday night, he passed away surrounded by the love of his family.”
The chairman is survived by his parents, Dianna Purser and Melvin (Poe) Sullivan; his wife, Toni; their children, Samantha and Jacob; and his brothers, Chad and Corey.
Even those who faced Sullivan from the opposing side on issues couldn’t help but come away impressed by his integrity, sincerity and values.
“Our jobs set us up for naturally opposing positions, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an opportunity for me to get to know Jeromy better,” said Jon Rose, a former Pope Resources officer who oversaw the company’s sale of forestland, which tribes and conservation groups feared would open up swaths to timber harvesting and development.
“I never doubted the sincerity of the positions that he took, which were all about preserving and enhancing the quality of life for the S’Klallam people. He was a genuine article — a very good man — and he clearly had a set of values that guided him and the things he said and his behavior and actions. He was a very ethical guy, a great leader for the Port Gamble S’Klallam people, and he had the greater community interest in mind.”
Rose added, “His death is a terrible loss for his family, it’s a terrible loss for the Port Gamble S’Klallam people, and it’s a terrible loss for the whole community. He was a real good guy — a real good guy.”
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who appointed Sullivan to the state Salmon Recovery Funding Board, issued a statement on social media, calling Sullivan “a gracious and engaged leader who was highly respected by all who knew him.”
“I greatly value the time I was fortunate to spend with him in our mutual work together,” Inslee wrote.
U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Washington, also issued a statement on social media, calling Sullivan “a gifted leader, a proud family man, and a dear friend.”
“He had such extraordinary passion for the work he did on behalf of the members of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe,” Kilmer wrote. “Whether he was advocating for affordable housing investments or for the right to harvest shellfish, he did so with heart for service and a commitment to treaty rights.”
Kilmer wrote that although Sullivan was an experienced leader, the chairman told him he often prayed for the leaders of his tribe and for the leaders of the country.
“He asked for strength and wisdom [and] he showed those every day,” Kilmer wrote.
Debra Lekanoff, Tlingit, is one of three Native people in the state Legislature and often worked with Sullivan on environmental issues.
“The passing of great leaders is a great sadness and deep loss that is felt in everything they touch,” Lekanoff told ICT. “Chairman Sullivan was one of those great leaders who led with the wisdom of his elders through the voices of his tribal members and a vision for the seven generations to come. He brought a steady, compassionate voice to difficult negotiations, found solutions forward and guided all of us during some of the most challenging times in our recent history.”
Suquamish Tribe Chairman Leonard Forsman and Sullivan worked together in a coalition of public agencies and nonprofits that acquired 4,000 acres of Pope Resources’ lands for conservation and public use.
“His leadership style reflected his life experiences as a fisherman, athlete and student of his cultural ways,” Forsman told ICT. ” He fought hard to defend the treaty rights of his people and was always willing to join forces with us and other tribes when we had a common challenge.”
Environmental achievements
Sullivan worked as information technology manager for the tribe until his election to the tribal council in 2005. He was elected chairman four years later.
In addition to serving on the salmon recovery board, he also served on the boards of several local environmental organizations and on the National Institute of Health’s Technical Advisory Committee. The Potlatch Fund awarded Sullivan the Billy Frank Jr. Natural Resource Protection Leadership Honoring Award in 2015.
During Sullivan’s tenure as chairman, the tribe acquired Heronswood, the renowned 15-acre botanical gardens established by horticulturalist/naturalist Dan Hinkley; developed The Point Casino & Hotel, a regional dining and entertainment destination that serves as a showcase for Indigenous art; and bought a commercial corner on one of the busiest intersections in the area and transformed it into The Point Market.
The tribe built new single-family homes, expanded its child and family services, built a new early childhood education center, and built a community health center that provides medical, dental and behavioral health care.
A key part of his legacy, however, will be his role in the environmental and cultural restoration of Port Gamble Bay, where his people have a treaty-protected right to harvest fish and shellfish.
Pope Resources’ predecessor Pope & Talbot operated a lumber mill on a sandy spit across the bay from the Port Gamble S’Klallam reservation from 1852 to 1995. The S’Klallam people know the site as teekalet, a village their ancestors had to abandon to make way for the mill. And Sullivan noted more than once over the years that Pope & Talbot occupied the site three years before the Point No Point Treaty made the land available for non-Native ownership.
Nearly 150 years of lumber milling and shipping took its toll on the health of the bay, the state Department of Ecology has reported. Wood waste and creosoted pilings contaminated the nearshore with cadmium, dioxins, and petroleum and carcinogenic hydrocarbons.
Sullivan, who dove into the bay to commercially and culturally harvest geoduck — pronounced “gooey-duck,” a large clam — talked of finding clams that were discolored from pollution.
From 2015-2017, working in consultation with several state agencies and the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, Pope Resources removed approximately 70,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment and wood waste and approximately 8,500 creosoted pilings.
It is to date the largest piling removal project in Puget Sound, Ecology reported.
‘The ghosts of industry’
In 2017, the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe acquired some 937 acres of forest lands from Pope Resources and in 2021 purchased development rights to the 18.4-acre former mill site and adjacent tidelands.
The tribe is now planning culturally appropriate uses there, including walking trails, a canoe landing area, the planting of native plants and trees, and a welcome plaza with a sculpture of a cultural figure.
Teekalet, located on the bay the S’Klallams know as nexwqiyt (pronounced noo-kayet), had come full circle.
“It says a lot about his leadership and his vision,” Allen said of Sullivan’s role in guiding teekalet’s return to the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe. “Land is as critical to the tribe’s identity as salmon or wildlife, but without land they can’t achieve their true self-governance and self-reliance agenda. Jeromy knew that, and in 15 years as chairman he made a lot of things happen.”
Frances Charles, who as chairwoman of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe fought for the removal of two salmon-blocking dams on the Elwha River and protection of an ancestral village site from a state highway project, said Sullivan was patient and knew right would prevail.
“He was straightforward and honest about the conversations that were taking place for the protections of the land and for protections of their usual and accustomed territory,” Charles said. “We’ve witnessed the challenges that we have in regards to the protection of our treaty rights – our fish and our shellfish and our clams and our oysters. It’s a balance to understand the other sides’ positions and to educate them about our concerns and our mission for the future generations of our tribes. That’s a hard balance when you have mindsets that have already made their decisions even before the conversation started. It’s really about outreach to other agencies and other individuals to try to put them in our shoes and have them understand and have a discussion.”
Sullivan successfully used outreach — and a traditional S’Klallam clambake — to educate neighbors about a federal court decision, known as the Rafeedie decision, that upholds Treaty Tribes’ rights to harvest shellfish on private and public tidelands, except for shellfish contained in artificially created beds. He wanted neighbors to know the tribe planned to exercise those rights, but also that they would be notified in advance of harvest dates and times.
Neighbors learned about the importance of shellfish to the S’Klallam traditional diet. And they went out in traditional dugout canoes to get a close-up view of the work that was being done to improve the bay’s health — work that would benefit all neighbors, Native and non-Native.
In a 2015 column for a local newspaper, Sullivan referred to Port Gamble Bay — nexwqiyt — as a “cultural keystone” that connects the reservation to a known ancestral village and is also “an irreplaceable and historic harvesting location for clams, oysters, geoduck, steelhead and chinook.”
He wrote: “When I started working on Tribal Council more than 10 years ago, the mill had closed and the jobs were gone, but we were living with the ghosts of industry. Operating a sawmill is a messy business and more than a century of woody waste and other pollutants took their toll on our precious bay.
“While protecting the bay has always been a priority, there’s been a sense of urgency placed on it over the last decade. Ongoing studies from our Natural Resources Department and other agencies have shown the need to clean up the bay to make sure it stays an abundant resource for generations to come.”
‘A gifted leader, a proud family man, a dear friend’
Those making public statements of condolence spoke in a personal tone about Sullivan’s passing.
“Jeromy was honest, open-minded, fair and positive, yet passionate in his mission to secure a just and prosperous future for not only his beloved Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe but for all of us in Indian Country,” the Suquamish chairman, Forsman, told ICT. “We will miss his sense of humor, his quiet endurance and his creative spirit. We extend our sympathy to his family and his children and pray for them to have strength during this difficult time.”
Allen, the Jamestown S’Klallam chairman, said, “I saw him as a rising next-generation leader. He already made his mark by age 50, but everybody considered that with 20 to 30 years of leadership under his belt he’d become another Billy Frank.”
And Kilmer, the U.S. congressman, wrote, “Chairman Jeromy Sullivan was a gifted leader, a proud family man, and a dear friend … The last thing Jeromy texted me were the words ‘I miss you, my friend. And I hope we connect soon.’ I will miss you, Chairman. And I hope we will connect again someday.”
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