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Kirk Vinish
Kirk Vinish: Tribal Transportation Officer for the Lummi Nation
Tribal Transportation Officer for the Lummi Nation
The Lummi tribe in Bellingham,
Washington, has proposed the
installation of a bench as a part of their Safe Routes to School plan. At first glance, it appears to be like any
other bench. But this bench represents
community safety for the Lummi. Located in
front of the congregate care facility for the tribe’s elders in the middle of a
long road, it faces outward towards the street and a freshly built sidewalk
connecting homes to the tribe’s traditional stommish grounds.
The idea for the bench was generated during a community-wide
discussion about how to make tribal children safer while walking to school. “It was a fascinating discussion about what
the community values,” says Kirk Vinish, the Lummi Tribal Transportation
Officer. “The bench allows the elders to
watch over the kids on the longest stretch of road during their walk to school,
acting as the eyes of the community.”
Providing a safe path to school for the tribal children has
been full of challenges for Vinish, but he believes in the Lummi Nation’s Safe
Routes to School plan which includes new sidewalks and separate pedestrian
pathways. “Right now, kids have to
follow a winding, narrow road along the coastline with no pedestrian
facilities, cliff drop-offs on one side of the road, and a ditch on the
other. For nine year olds that’s just
not a good situation.”
Tragically, Vinish explains, “Pedestrian-car crash
fatalities on Lummi land have mostly been children.” A recent study shows that these fatalities
have almost exclusively involved drivers from outside the community. Vinish has worked to reduce the number of
pedestrian deaths in numerous ways including asking Whatcom County
for crash data collection assistance. He
hopes the studies will lead to Safe Routes to School and other funding for
pedestrian improvements.
Vinish is well-respected nationally for his work in
transportation planning for the Lummi Nation.
He currently serves as the Northwest Representative and only non-Native
to the prestigious Indian Reservation Road Coordinating Committee in Washington D.C.
and has helped assemble several safety videos aimed at native youth.
For Vinish, building safe routes
for pedestrians is a social justice issue.
“It’s the very poorest populations whose default travel mode is to walk
who suffer most from pedestrian – car crashes.”
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Fatal Motor Vehicle Crashes on Indian Reservations, “the number of fatal motor vehicle crashes within Indian Reservations
increased by 52% while it decreased in the rest of the country.” Vinish and the Lummi Nation hope that their
proposed bench aimed at bringing the community together will begin to address
some of this injustice.
To learn more about Kirk Vinish and his work with the Lummi Nation, contact him at: KirkV@lummi-nsn.gov
